Talk Check
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Kirby Wilbur

Host of the morning drive-time show on Seattle's KVI 570AM

Have you heard something outrageous from this host?

Kirby Wilbur Summary for 11/27/06

With special guest host John Carlson:

Time: 00:00 - 00:15
Topic: Snow Day
Summary: With Kirby on vacation and Carlson evidently sleeping through his alarm, we're left listening to news chick Carleen Johnson read the list of schools closed to due a freak November snowstorm.

Time: 00:15 - 00:30
Topic: Snow Stories
Summary: Carleen opens up the phone lines for callers to blame mean old gubment for the snow storm. Evidently the fact that Seattle DOT was sanding streets in Seattle but not in Bellevue is a bad thing.

Time: 00:30 - 00:45
Topic: Official Snow Story
Guest: Doug McDonald, WA Transportation Secretary
Summary: The state's secretary of transportation gives the official view of the winter weather catastrophe.

Time: 00:45 - 01:00
Topic: Snow Stories
Summary: Back to the phones for caller's snow-based horror stories, with a sprinkling of school closures. It's really pretty funny how these rugged individualist conservatives look to the often despised government to immediately clear every road across Western Washington when we get a snow storm once every other year. zzzzz....

Time: 01:00 - 04:00
Topic: Snow Stories (with prizes!)
Summary: John Carlson comes in and opens up the phones for more caller stories, and offers to give exciting prizes to those with the best. The proud winners will receive: "set aside" (don't dare call them "left-over"!) tickets to the KVI holiday party, surely featuring an open bar of non-alcoholic punch and delicious soft drinks. While hilarity ensues when Carlson can't find the school closure information on his own website, things soon settle into a predictably boring set of tales told by some of the worlds worst story tellers. 3 hours of zzzzzzz.....

Last Updated 11/28/2006 17:22
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Kirby Wilbur Calls Hillary Clinton Antichrist

From the January 26th Kirby Wilbur Show:
TONY SNOW: She [Hillary] just comes across as cold and weird and detached. And she's somebody that's working hard and you almost feel sorry for her but you're not going to vote for her for President just because she's got crummy husband.

KIRBY WILBUR: Look, she's the antichrist Tony.

TONY SNOW: No she's not. Oh come on, get off it.

KIRBY WILBUR: She's the closest thing in American politics.

TONY SNOW: No she's not. Look, she's a empty, wounded woman who's looking for something to validate herself. Don't drink the Kool-Aid on that stuff.

I hope we don't have to wait too long for our self-policing friends on the right to denounce this unhinged behavior.

UPDATE: blatherwatch reports that continued his antichrist talk after the mere sight of Hillary at the State of the Union address.


Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Great Moments In Talk Radio

Memories of 1998, courtesy of the September 25th, 2006 edition of the Kirby Wilbur Show :
CALLER: And furthermore, you know that interview [of Clinton on Fox]? I saw that interview on television yesterday. You know? I thought at that moment, that he blew up at Chris Matthews, I mean Chris Wallace. I really feel, you know that Juanita Brodderick, that he raped her? I think he showed his true colors there.
KIRBY: What do you mean?
CALLER: Psychologically. I think he could be more capable of rape than anybody I've ever seen on television.
KIRBY: Well he got a little strident, but I don't think I'd go that far
CALLER: I think he came pretty close to trying to wring his neck.
KIRBY: Well he got pretty close and very intimidating.
CALLER: And that's why I believe he women when they, um, said he raped them, and all that.
KIRBY: Right
CALLER: And I feel it like a woman would feel it.
KIRBY: Thanks [CALLER], I appreciate it.


Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Radio vs. Reality

From Kirby Wilbur, 9/25/2006:
KIRBY: And by the way, those of you out there who are really Clinton partisans, empirically consider this. When Clinton bombed that aspirin factory in Sudan that later turned out to have nothing to do with terrorism, a lot of us defended him. Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, and myself, a lot of us defended him. The people who raised the issue of whether this was a distraction from Monica Lewinsky was the mainstream press! The comedy channel, the comedy show, John Stewart, said Desert Shield defended him from impeachment! It was the media that questioned whether this was a real attack on terrorism.
Reality provided by Glenn Greenwald:

Sen. Trent Lott, GOP majority leader: "I cannot support this military action in the Persian Gulf at this time," Lott said in a statement. "Both the timing and the policy are subject to question."

Rep. Dick Armey, GOP majority leader: "The suspicion some people have about the president's motives in this attack [on Iraq] is itself a powerful argument for impeachment," Armey said in a statement. "After months of lies, the president has given millions of people around the world reason to doubt that he has sent Americans into battle for the right reasons."

GOP Sen. Dan Coats: Coats, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement, "While there is clearly much more we need to learn about this attack [on bin Laden] and why it was ordered today, given the president's personal difficulties this week, it is legitimate to question the timing of this action."

GOP activist Paul Weyrich: "Paul Weyrich, a leading conservative activist, said Clinton's decision to bomb on the eve of the impeachment vote 'is more of an impeachable offense than anything he is being charged with in Congress.'"


Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Kirby Wilbur Lies About Clinton

On the September 26th edition of The Kirby Wilbur Show, the host made the claim that Clinton lied in his Fox News interview:
KIRBY: Bill Clinton made some, well to be honest with you, he lied. Not that anything's new, but he lied. And I'll tell you what he lied about in that interview. He specifically said in that interview, and maybe we'll find an excerpt and if so play it for you. But he specifically said that 'I left a comprehensive terror plan with the Bush administration', and 'they demoted the best guy in the country to run it, Richard Clarke.'

As proof that Bush didn't demote Clarke, Kirby refers to Clarke's book and picks out a single passage that describes how Clarke was moved to a cyber-security post at his own request after 9/11. However, this deliberately misconstrues the larger point Clarke makes in the book: when Bush took office, before 9/11, the job of anti-terror czar was demoted from the "Principals Committee" of the National Security Council. That committee included top-level administration officials such as the National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense. While in the Clinton administration Clarke had the full attention of the most powerful members of government. Once Bush took over, he was demoted to dealing with lower level staff members.

Anyone who has read Clarke's book or paid the slightest attention to the news over the last few years would be aware of the facts surrounding his very real demotion. Therefore it's safe to conclude that while Clinton didn't lie on this first point, Kirby Wilbur most surely did.

Kirby's second point that Clinton didn't leave a comprehensive anti-terror plan for the Bush administration is disproven by Kirby's often (though selectively) cited 9/11 Commission Report (h/t Think Progress):
As the Clinton administration drew to a close, Clarke and his staff developed a policy paper of their own [which] incorporated the CIA?s new ideas from the Blue Sky memo, and posed several near-term policy options. Clarke and his staff proposed a goal to ?roll back? al Qaeda over a period of three to five years ?[including] covert aid to the Northern Alliance, covert aid to Uzbekistan, and renewed Predator flights in March 2001. A sentence called for military action to destroy al Qaeda command-and control targets and infrastructure and Taliban military and command assets. The paper also expressed concern about the presence of al Qaeda operatives in the United States.? [p. 197]
That shouldn't be a very difficult part of the report to find for someone who so often uses it to make his own points. Therefore it's safe to conclude that while Clinton didn't lie on this second point, Kirby Wilbur most surely did.

We're then left with a simple fact: Kirby Wilbur is a liar who uses his lies to falsely accuse other people of lying.


Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Iraq vs. WWII

The debate over the leaked National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism continued on the September 27th edition of the Kirby Wilbur Show, with the host discounting the importance of the many new terrorists the Iraq war is creating. He made use of a World War II analogy to make his point:
KIRBY: Did the Nazi party grow in strength when we attacked Nazi Germany? Would that have been a reason to stop fighting Germany? Or did more Japanese volunteer to be kamikaze pilots because we bombed the Japanese mainland in World War II?
I'll help Kirby out with a more realistic analogy between the Iraq war and WWII. Here's the timeline for what would have happened if Bush was president during the 1940's:
  • 11/9/1941: President Bush gets intelligence report titled "Japan determined to strike U.S.", but does nothing
  • 12/7/1941: The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor
  • 6/4/1942: In the battle of Midway, U.S. naval forces come close to a major strategic win against the Japanese, but Secretary Rumsfeld fails to commit enough ships at the last minute, allowing the biggest enemy ships to escape
  • 3/20/1943: The Bush administration decides to de-prioritize the war against Japan and instead launches a preemptive strike against China, even though China was a traditional enemy of Japan and completely unconnected to the events of 12/7. But they are both Buddist countries and the people look the same, so it seems logical at the time. Reports of fearsome new Chinese weapons are ginned up to sell the invasion to the public.
  • 9/1/1943: Although a weak Chinese military led to victory in the initial battles, Rumsfeld tries out his theory of "efficient mid-20th century warfare" and refuses to commit enough troops to pacify the country. Attacks by civilians against U.S. forces grow quickly
  • 6/1/1945: The European campaign is abandoned and plans for D-Day cancelled because all of our forces are tied up in China
  • 8/6/1945: Our lack of focus on Japan has allowed them to regain strength and threaten our previous gains against them
  • 2/4/1949: After taking extra-constitutional powers to stay in office, Bush is still in charge. The war in China has expanded to almost all of Asia, with previously friendly countries now openly opposing U.S. interests.
  • 7/9/1953: After millions of deaths and with a now shattered economy, the U.S. is forced to withdraw from Asia. Senator McCarthy and other Republicans start up a congressional committee that attempts to blame 10 years of failure on Democrats.


Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Great Moments In Talk Radio Punditry

From the Valentines Day 2006 edition of the John Carlson show:
CARLSON: Kirby, you and I are very familiar with George Allen, going back to his record as governor, which was stellar. Go ahead and tell our listeners more about the man you hope to be president.
KIRBY: Well, I think Allen has a couple of strong points. One, he has a very good style in terms of campaigning, very folksy, very reminiscent of Ronald Reagan, in his own way. I think he has a solid conservative voting record, he's right on all the issues.

Fast forward to the November 8th Washington Post:
Democratic challenger James Webb held a slim lead over Republican Sen. George Allen this morning in Virginia's U.S. Senate race

Kirby, you really know how to pick 'em.





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