Welcome to the weekend edition of The Mark Steyn Show: The President and Mrs Trump test positive for Covid-19, old-school corrupt Philly Democrats back in the saddle, a bipartisan presidential commission on who gets to run, and a silent near-majority in Vermont - plus Steyn on NPR, turnout models then and now ...and a jolly song, because we all need it to round out the week.
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49 Member Comments
"Mushy neutered Republicans."
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Mark, that's a keeper.
It is interesting, Mark, that you noted the cyclical pathologies of urban America. When the song was presented and cut by Elvis (who cut it in 23 takes in one night session), it was originally subtitled "The Vicious Cycle". RCA and Elvis' management thought that was too political for Elvis and asked the subtitle be removed. A wonderful tune and performance produced by the great Chips Moman.
Your sane perspective in this crazy time is one of my favorite things about listening to the show.
Alas ... time constraints at the end... the final stanza of Nac Davis..
"Some folks say that I'm egotistical
Hell, I don't even know what that means
I guess it has something to do with the way that I
Fill out my skin tight blue jeans"
I miss those days so much... music may not save the world ... but music saves my best memories.
I listened to the show in its entirety last night and I enjoyed the segment about Vermont, as my daughter and her family lives there. Regarding the many who wrote letters to the left-leaning newspaper voicing contrary opinions on BLM but were afraid to give their name/town and so were not published, I read about a poll conducted by the Cato Institute about Americans' willingness to publicly share their views. It found 62 % are afraid to do so and 77% of those who identify themselves as conservatives self-censor their beliefs and opinions out of fear of reprisal. I'm afraid if Biden and the Democrats win, things will get even worse in that regard.
As my other long-time favorite personality whose surname rhymes with yours said this week, "Civility has disappeared."
I still take heart in the fact that Tucker's show is #1, not just on Fox but over the whole spectrum. Rush still has millions listening daily and that's increased. Bill O'Reilly's site and his analysis of the debate drew millions around the globe and he gains subscribers daily.
Don't forget that the only lawn signs I see are the occasional Biden/Harris...the Trump voters remain sign-less for obvious reasons. I guess I am a deplorable person...my neighbor's bulldog was out this morning and chose to pee on the fence, not the Biden sign, but there's always tomorrow!
Leftists always love to project their own failings and perfidious behavior onto others. As I recall it was Pelosi and DiBlaiso who were telling everyone to hang out in China town when covid was first on the scene. It was Biden who called President Trump 'xenophobic" for shutting down travel from China and in general from the rest of the world in response to the virus showing up in America.
Given that millions in America are now working from home I'm not sure why President Trump should be 'taken out of the game.' He can still run the country and proffer his opinion and be interviewed by reporters where he is. If Tucker Carlson, the most watched individual on broadcast media, had President Trump on two or three times a week, and Rush Limbaugh interviewed him every few days, President Trump would get more attention than he gets posting on twitter, a platform that most of his voters pay no attention to anyway. If we hear about what he says on twitter it's because some idiot on cnn is making a big deal about it and Fox or OANN or Newsweek or Howie Carr or Mark Steyn say something about that. If no one ever reported what anyone ever said on twitter it would be as if the twits posting their hate were shouting at each other in an elevator. No one else would notice. If President Trump and Mark Steyn shut down their twitter accounts and moved to Parler twitter would lose such a large segment of their members it would become like myspace.
It would be healthy for twitter, a disgustingly unhealthy cesspool created by the left, if all twits proffering their opinions were forced to also publish their real names and perhaps even their addresses, if their other social media accounts were openly linked to twitter so you could see their selfies at the Grand Tetons alongside their contemptuous hateful screeds on the screeching meeting place of the worlds ugliest of uglies.
Mark, it must be hard to be humble when you are .....
You may be the last link to a healthy civilization in these extraordinary times. Stay strong, stay free!
As loathsome as Chris Murphy is (a 12.8 on the 0-10 Maher Scale of Fugliness), somebody had to elect him. Twice. That would be over 800,000 CT citizens in 2012 and 2018. The same people who also sent "war hero" (just ask him) Richard Blumenthal to the Senate. Who was reelected with over a million votes AFTER his stolen valor story came out. (But who am I in the Glass State of Massachusetts to cast stones?)
Murphy, Tlaib, AOC, Pelosi--they speak for the people. We all hear them. In person, on Twitter or Facebook: far from hiding their glee at the condition of the President and First Lady, they celebrate it. They are like proverbial pigs in sh*t, wallowing in their own excrement. I will defend pigs, who have no sweat glands, and wallow in mud to cool off. If there is feces in the mud, blame the farmer for not keeping the sty clean. The gloaters, on the other hand (drawing myself up like Don Corleone), them I do not forgive. I have long maintained that we already are in a civil war, and that while I have taken a side, I will not draw a weapon (not one more lethal than a computer keyboard). Much as I detest the language and behavior I have seen, I love America more than I hate the offenders. I pray for the war to end and for us to proceed as "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." I would even accept Biden's alternative vision: "One nation, indivisible, under God. For real." What I cannot accept is another four years of Deep State treason when--note choice of word-- when President Trump is reelected. If the people elect a Congress in opposition to a President, that is their will. (Thank God for the Tea Party movement in 2010, for example.) Gridlock is a choice, often frustrating, but certainly more legitimate than one-party rule. Unelected bureaucrats, up to and including those in the laughably named Justice Department are, as Nancy Pelosi said of the President and her Republican Congressional colleagues, the true "enemies of the state". Who abets these enemies? Who holds Peter Strzok up as a paragon of public virtue? They've had their four-year temper tantrum. Wipe your nose, pull yourself together. Time's up.
Josh, I live in Massachusetts (although I'm in the process of moving to New Hampshire). I'm a nurse. In 2008 I was working for a private agency that had sent me to care for the developmentally delayed adults at Minuteman Arc in Concord. While I was there Acorn workers came into the facility, spoke with the director, and began registering all of my patients to vote. All of my patients were developmentally disabled. Some of them couldn't say their names let alone sign them. Yet, this group of mostly young women were going from room to room having gotten my patient's addresses and personal information from the director, and they were registering these disabled adults to vote. How much do you want to bet that all of my patients voted for obama via absentee ballot? When I challenged the Acorn workers they accused me of trying to rob disabled adults of their right to vote.
It was surreal. Most of these young women were attractive, but with their necks tattooed and their faces pierced in weird places.
When Scott Brown was running for the senate I worked the phones in his Littleton campaign office. I only did this for a day, so this could be an anomaly, but I was making cold calls from a computer generated list of independent voters who voted in the 2008 election. One in five of the people I called while I was there told me they didn't vote in the 2008 election. Most of them were immigrants of some sort, legal or otherwise, who barely spoke English and insisted that they weren't registered to vote and hadn't voted. One was an 11 year old girl whose mother got on the phone and yelled at me that they were democrats and how dare I call her daughter who was too young to vote and ask her to vote for Scott Brown. I didn't know how to respond at the time, but I wish I had asked her how it was that her daughter came to be registered to vote independent in 2008 in the first place.
If we want to beat the left we have to get rid of voter fraud. We're going to have to do it strategically because there aren't enough of us to deal with it everywhere. New Hampshire is a state with promise. It needs more aware and aggressive conservatives voting and working to keep the state healthy. Getting rid of voter fraud may be impossible in Massachusetts. Not so in New Hampshire.
That's a scary but fascinating story about vote harvesting and the possibility of voter fraud and should be heard by someone who could look into it further. Two things come to mind: one is the inconsistency between developmentally disabled being registered to vote and the judge in Texas who overturned death sentences of men who were intellectually disabled, which I assume is not as sever of an impairment. So I guess if you are merely uneducated you are not responsible for your actions and don't know right from wrong when it comes to taking someone's life, but a person who can't even write or say their name should have full voting rights even though they do not possess cognizant powers required to make a decision about candidates and issues.
Another thought is the Left/Dems have also dangerously compromised the most fundamental aspect of a democracy by politicizing it, like they do with everything else, by constantly citing voter suppression and intimidation by Republicans/GOP-created laws. It's a strategic "don't look here, look over there" tactic in order to distract attention from their own questionable actions. After all, historically speaking, no one does voter fraud like a Democrat!
Your story (-ies) is/are simultaneously terrifying yet unsurprising, Kitty. Also very derivative of the movie Chinatown, when Jack Nicholson's private eye character discovers that several residents at an old folks home have become recent owners of large tracts of land (without knowing anything about it). Repeated tales of voter fraud here are dismissed as mere "anecdotes", and you are right that they are unlikely ever to be addressed. So, we are left either to stay and be disenfranchised, or to move to a state where our vote has even the faintest hope of ever counting. You are making the correct decision, and I suspect we will follow you soon. Unlike previous Massholes who fled the high taxes of the state, but brought their straight-D voting pattern with them, we will honor the tradition of our new home and make New Hampshire rock-ribbed Republican again. It may be one of the only strategies left to conservatives: moving homes with the Electoral College in mind.
AlyM, the sad part is that without knowing it my patients voted for obumma who would have had them aborted late in the pregnancy when they were found to be 'imperfect' by leftist standards. They were voting for the future wholesale murder of their cohort. God have mercy on mankind.
Yes, it does appear to be a good strategy. If biden through the current perverted election system gets elected then we must connect with each other, join conservative groups, especially join Christian organizations. No one can plan their own defense alone. No one can plan their own defense by messaging anyone on facebook, twitter, or any other online platform. Even text messages are insolvent as the NSA has all of our text messages and email conversations stored up. We would need to meet face to face, put our phones where they couldn't pick up our conversations and discuss strategies to help and defend each other.
It breaks my heart to have to say these things. I love this great nation, but we're on the verge of collapse. I'm a nurse. After obmaama care became law I began to pick up patients who needed care but had lost coverage from medicare or medicaid due to his destructive policies. I took care of them mostly for free. For a decade, even before obamama care I cared for elderly nuns at a convent near me for free. The younger nuns who teach and have a small vegetable farm and grape arbors where they grow grapes and make their own communion wine would at times pay me with asparagus, zucchini and squash depending on what was in season. They would collect windfall apples from local orchards and give me some of the better ones.
If biden wins the dollar will surely fall as it's on the edge of a precipice now. We're going to need to barter and be kind to one another.
Pray and be of good faith. God who is all powerful, who created us all, loves us.
Spera in Deo, quoniam adhuc confitebor Illi: salutare vultus mei, et Deus meus.
In 2016 in your soon to be adopted state of New Hampshire Maggie Hassan beat Kelly Ayotte by 1017 votes for U.S. Senate. NH has same day registration and later analysis by Kris Kobach, vice chairman of President Donald Trump's Advisory Commission on Election Integrity showed 5,313 of those who registered to vote on Nov. 8 using an out-of-state driver's license as an ID had neither obtained a New Hampshire license nor registered a motor vehicle in the state as of a year later. State law requires people who come to live in the state and have a motor vehicle to register that vehicle in the state and obtain a New Hampshire driver's license within 60 days. So Massachusetts residents made a day trip, registered to vote and went home. Guess which party they voted for? So NH is represented by an illegitimately elected Senator, the second I can think of. Minnesota "elected" Al Franken aka Stuart Smalley and he became the critical vote for Obamacare.
You have your work cut out for you.
Kitty, you're one of those people who ought to be canonized. I do things for free but nothing like offering up nursing skills. When I tell people jokingly that I somehow got into a little property managementI on the side for free because the Covid kept the neighbor still with her elderly mom in New Hampshire going on two years next Memorial Day they ask, "why are you such a doormat?" I didn't know the few months away was going to becomes eighteen months. Who knew anything May of 2019? I woke up the other day and realized I was 63 when she left and I'll be on Medicare when she returns. Who leaves their house for two years? Well, I know someone and they live in New Hampshire. The snapshots of the wildlife she sends are exceptional, I will say. It sums up what this Chinese virus has done to one little postage size corner of the world. How many others have similar nutty experiences? Everyone I know says I'm a doormat and the stories I tell them about what had transpired up at her house nobody can believe and would make a good basis for a bad sitcom reflecting on the crazy stuff that has happened to people not even pertaining to health. Nature and wildlife move in when a homeowner packs up and doesn't come home.
Fran, you're very generous. I'm not a saint. I'm the biggest sinner I know because I know my own sins. I don't know the sins of others.
Taking care of someone else is a privilege. They're doing me a favor, not the other way around. If I didn't know and understand that I wouldn't be much of a Christian.
Good angels keep watch over you, Fran. You're a good woman.
You're right, Kitty. So many times giving up of our time is the privilege. I picked that up early from Laura and her Links; the Human Grace stories have been inspiring me throughout the Covid crisis. I know that we can strive to be happy in this life but it's more important for our spiritual wellbeing to do things to help others when they need help knowing there's nothing in it for us. That's when the meaningfulness in life kicks in. I didn't really buy the doormat theory anyway especially at this time. These are quite strange times we're living through.
One little bright spot that developed over the weekend. My daughter asked if I would give my granddaughter some drawing lessons while she is doing K remotely (LA county) and only spending thirty or forty minutes a day with the teacher and the rest with her dad who works from home. She is getting bored with practicing her putting and making cookies.
Her Jewish paternal grandma (a retired interior designer) started giving her lessons in craft making a few weeks ago and didn't want me to feel left out. I was so excited I spent the weekend planning my strategy. It'll be something to look forward to for the two of us this next however many months are left of remote learning. I pulled some books about Leonardo da Vinci's favorite drawings and even found an illustrated copy of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe which was sitting nearby. Then I spotted a book talking about the history of the Mexican Lotteria game so I think I will teach her how to draw images to go with her alphabet so to make her own cards for a memento of her bizarre Covid K year.
We can fill the alphabet cards with images of survival from Robinson Crusoe! This will take the granddaughter's mind off quarantine for a few hours each week and my mind off trapping wild desert animals up at the neighbors.
Good luck to you in your new home, Kitty. It was interesting to read all of your comments above about the President and how he can easily go forward with his job as the leader of free people.
Mark,
Is this the right forum for Mailbox questions? (I'll eventually figure it out if not.) Anyway, my question is:
Can you share your thoughts on the potential for mail-in voting fraud this time around? I am deeply concerned the Dems have tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots already prepared and sitting in warehouses in close and swing states. They will "find" them if need be, and quietly shred them if not. After all, Trump won in 2016 by slim margins in several states. And the US voting system is not prepared for large-scale voting by mail.
Thanks!
Isn't it interesting that the left keeps insisting that the election results will have to be delayed this year? It's almost as if this whole covid thing was constructed to keep President Trump from being re-elected.
The results have never been delayed in my lifetime. Have they ever been delayed before? I'd love to have Mark answer that question as I don't have time to do the research myself right now.
I've had the same deep concerns. While I think it is a step too far to blame Democrats for the virus (the ChiComs already own that) I can heartily agree that the Dems and their monetary source(s) used a disease as a way to cause panic, fear, and over-reaction, i.e., closing the economy, enforcing lockdowns, isolation, the wearing of funny masks, etc. I agree with you that it would be useful to know how local elections were carried out during 1918-19, 1957-58, even in 1968, when the Hong-Kong flu, which I can personally attest to was a dreadful illness. And recall in 1968, an equally despised, if not more so, candidate, Nixon, won.
I was a fan of both Mac Davis and Helen Reddy, and I was saddened by their passing. Thanks for talking about them.
Cant let your omment just slip by, Walt, without a hearty Great.
sc
Mark,
A little bit late, and o/t, but in your eulogy of Dame Harold Evans you should have mentioned his reflexive litigiousness, especially as backed by English libel laws.
I wonder how he would have treated your Jarndyce proceedings involving Michael Mann.
The late, really sorely-missed, Auberon Waugh had wonderful takedowns of Evans in his Private Eye diaries.
Quoting from memory:
On writing a letter to the Times Waugh is stuck:
"My problem is the beginning. Since Dame Harold Evans turned up at The Times (the real Times, not the subliterate tabloidy one published on the Hudson) in a tracksuit one can't address the editor as "Sir", let alone "Dear Sir". "Dear Dame" sounds facetious, whereas "Dame, my attention has been drawn ..." sounds a trifle peremptory.
He had a perfect response to Dame Evans' repeated libel suits against Private Eye:
"And that is called paying the Damegeld
And we've proved it again and again
That if once you pay him the Damegeld
You never get rid of the Dame."
Mark, great job on Tucker giving Chris "sociopath" Murphy the smack down he so richly deserved.
A few days ago I thought Mark's club was the only place I had some kindred spirits regarding President Trump.
I am part of that strange cult ACB belongs to.
Now that our spiritual homes have opened up again. I have been speaking to others in my cult, it seems many in my neck of the woods are also big for Trump. Quite a wonderful revelation!
As is our way, lots of love and prayers for the intention of President and the First Lady will be said for their health and recovery.
I belong to that cult too! It's more of a family. Cheers!
Just heard President Trump in a short clip speaking before he left to the military hospital. He says he feels pretty good so we shall see. Not sure if Melania is going as well as she is much younger of course. Best wishes.
Following Ann and Phelim's filming of Obamagate: the Movie. This is about the FBI lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and director Comey. The funding for the movie is about 75% done but seems to have stalled. Please consider going to Obamagatethemovie.com and helping out with any amount.
Mark, your tearing that horrible slug of a man Chris Murphy a new one tonight on Tucker had me standing up and cheering wildly. You summed up the utter disgust that me and any other decent person was thinking hearing that clown vomiting out his vile diatribe. He is symptomatic of how in a quarter of a century Connecticut went from just about the most prosperous state in the union to a sclerotic dysfunctional hellhole.
I found your poem about the Obama debate/wedding anniversary to be quite entertaining just like you and your shows, Mark. I'm sure they love you over at NPR but just don't know how to show it. Thanks for the pick-me-up music to end a very unsettling week.
The President and The First Lady are in very good hands, I'm sure. They've been very courageous throughout this horrible CCP delivered Corona virus pandemic and I think the American people will wake up and see that if anyone can survive this unfortunate turn of events it will be the President Donald Trump and the First Family. The country is long overdue for a positive turn of events right about now. Swift recovery to the President and Melanie Trump,, Ms. Hope Hicks and anyone else affected.
Very worried about Trump, hope that he and his doctors can fight this menace.
If you need some light entertainment in these dark days try finding Elvis singing A Little Less Conversation in a clip from the movie Live a Little Love a Little. I thought A Little Less Conversation would be a natural for Tom Jones, but no he was too over the top. A video of Mac Davis in a duet with Tom Jones is quite something. Davis' hips are not as wild as Elvis', but he does have some interesting moves, which after the initial thrust, I think he moderated, given how close he was to Tom Jones.
Mac Davis's "Texas In My Rear View Mirror" is worth revisiting if you're reviewing his body of work now that he's gone. That song was always one of my favorites. And every Texan, boy or girl, can identify with the line, "So I lit out one night in June stoned on the glow of the Texas moon..." when at about 16-years old with a newly minted driver's license he or she lit out from home while on summer vacation for a nighttime drive down an open highway completely unsupervised. Ah, freedom.
Thank you for the suggestion, just listened to "Texas In My Rear View Mirror". Davis ends the song with: "When I die, you can bury me in Lubbock Texas in my jeans." And he will in fact be buried in Lubbock, Texas, where he was born. There will also be a motorcade procession along Mac Davis Blvd. Not sure about the jeans.
Seems fittin' he should be buried in Lubbock, Texas, and I hope he is buried in his jeans like the song says. It is a great song. And Mac Davis was a much beloved native son of Lubbock, Texas. I am glad to hear he will be buried there. Many of my family members went to school in Lubbock, my mother told me she once got knocked over by a tumbleweed while in school at Texas Tech, and I had occasion to visit Lubbock from time to time when my siblings were in school there. It is a nice town. You can't help but think of "(Lubbock) Texas In My Rear View Mirror" when you drive in and out of there.
I remember him also for his co-starring role in North Dallas Forty along with Nick Nolte. The film was popular and also somewhat controversial for showing the seamy side of pro football. Davis's performance as the team's quarterback, based on real-life football legend Don Meredith, also received kudos.
Lubbock's in the middle of nowhere, Elisa, but the middle of nowhere is looking kind of good now. I can almost see how this would inspire the song and title. I always wanted to drive to the Buddy Holly Center but it being a twelve-hour drive through a flat moonscape kind of terrain, I couldn't talk anyone into coming with me. Someday when I get the urge for seeing New Mexico in my rear view, I will get there. That is funny your mom was struck by a tumbleweed, not so funny, because they can get huge. I read the tumbleweeds are not native. It was a weed that somehow made its way here when there was early migration of peoples from Russia.
Well, I made a faux pas of my own and was wrong about when the tumbleweed invasion was so here is the correction I found: "They arrived as invaders from Russia around 1870 and have been impossible to get rid of since.
The weeds first arrived in Scotland, South Dakota, likely in seed form in a batch of flaxseed imported from Russia, Zocalo reports. Just 15 years later, the tumbleweed (also called the Russian thistle) had rolled its way to both Canada and California."
This from Rachel Nuwer from Smithsonianmag August 14, 2015 under Smart News.
There is also kochia, a noxious weed native to Asia through Europe. Kochia is the big, round tumbleweeds and Russian thistle is typically skinnier and more prickly. The Russian thistle came in wheat seed while kochia was supposed to be an ornamental.
Oh, those Russians and Asians!! Been sending us their worst for ages! They started with the plants even when we were first fighting among ourselves.
Trump should put out a Tweet, "It's my dying wish that Amy Coney Barrett be confirmed to the Supreme Court."
You and the Babylon Bee! They also have a bit about your healthcare being run by people who wish death on their political opponents.
Mrs. Chris
So he should, Walt. I also think (per Ilhan Omar) mortgage payments on all his properties should be suspended. And if he were taking any salary for what Don Jr. says is a near round-the-clock job, that should be supplemented too.
That's excellent!
Great show today. Thanks Mark!
Mark replies:
Thank you, Stanley. Glad you liked it.
Great show indeed, S. Usually, I leave it to my many betters to comment on the musical component, but for what it's worth I was surprised and delighted to find myself listening to one of the great beer-swilling sing-along redneck country songs of all time. Cool.
I offer for the record my best wishes to the Trump family for a speedy and complete recovery. On his back rides the hope of a great many decent people.
As my other long-time favorite personality whose surname rhymes with yours said this week, "Civility has disappeared."
Colin Flaherty frequently plays a parody of "In the Ghetto." I don't recall the exact words, but I think there's something about Jussie Smollett being mugged by a unicorn, "in the ghetto."
Mark,
Thanks for playing the "Humble" song. Besides Laura's column, it was the biggest laugh I got this week. Very rare indeed these days.
Best regards!
With everything else going on in the world I missed the passing of Mac Davis.
Baby don't get hooked on me still sounds as good as it ever did.
RIP and thank you.