Today, Monday, I'll be back behind the Golden EIB Microphone for three hours of substitute-host-level Excellence In Broadcasting on America's Number One radio show beginning at 12 noon Eastern/9am Pacific.
Yes, yes, I know: Rush was supposed to be back today, but hold the rotten fruit. As I mentioned last week, he postponed his treatment week by a fortnight to help boost up Trump, so this last bout was a little more clobbering than expected. I'll do my best to keep the Attila the Hun chair warm, and hope you'll want to dial us up either via the iHeart Radio app or on one of over 600 stations across the fruited plain, such as our old friends at WNTK New Hampshire, where you can listen to the full show from anywhere on the planet right here.
It's two weeks since the election, but in America that means the votes are still coming in, albeit rather slowly: on a typical day, California counts more new Covid cases than "election day" ballots. On today's show we'll talk about all that, and the President's tireless lawyer, the great Sidney Powell, will join me to update the state of the legal battle. We seem set for another fast-moving news day, and, in the absence of the one and only Rush, we will do our best to stay on top of it.
~As I was saying only yesterday:
To reiterate a point I've made for months: on free speech and related issues, things are going to head south very fast. I carelessly assumed they'd wait till the inauguration, but it seems 'the Office of the President-Elect' is already on the case.
Over the weekend the website Conservative Treehouse received notice from WordPress that they're being deplatformed:
Given the incompatibility between your site's content and our terms, you need to find a new hosting provider and must migrate the site by Wednesday, December 2nd.
I owe Conservative Treehouse a debt of gratitude because, at the absolute low point of all my years in America, they did a piece on certified cockwomble Cary Katz and his vanity network CRTV's breach of my contract. Which, amidst the silence elsewhere, jollied me up no end.
So I thank the Treehouse very that, and I utterly despise WordPress's garbage "notice". As they make explicit, they're canceling the guys because of "your site's content" - which has been unchanged in its general tenor ever since they hung out their shingle. Furthermore, there's no claim by the no-name corporate wanker that Treehouse breached WordPress's "terms", only that "your site's content" is "incompatible" with "our terms". It's like a dating agency: we're simply incompatible; it's never gonna work.
"Incompatibility" is not really a legal concept with respect to contractual terms. It's an ideological breach: We're all-in for the one-party woke-party state ...and you're not. Which suggests a bunch of other websites are likely to be getting similar sayonaras from WokePress.
These guys hate Treehouse. They hate you. They want you cowed into silence and enduring a living death. And, with "President-elect Biden" bestriding the land like a colossus, they see no reason to pretend otherwise. If they ran grocery stores, they'd be happy to deny you food and watch you starve. Take them at their word. Don't patronize these totalitarian tosspots, and get your chums to cut 'em loose, too.
As a guy now in the ninth year of a free-speech case, I've long felt the First Amendment is largely irrelevant. What matters is the broader culture of free expression, and on the Internet that's in its death throes. Might be gone entirely by, oh, April.
~It was a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with another go-round of our Clubland Q&A and a splendid hour of questions from Mark Steyn Club members live across the planet. Afterwards, I made a rare Friday appearance on America's Number One primetime show. Tucker wanted to end the week with a glass-half-full monologue on all the good things about America that endure despite electoral setbacks. I'm more of a glass-fifteenth-sixteenth-empty kind of guy, but I did my best to get into the spirit. Click below to watch:
On Saturday I covered for Kathy Shaidle on the movie beat with a prime minister out of season and feeling the chill. My Sunday column looked at Trump's lawyers and lawyering, and our Sunday song selection was the all-time classic standard. If you were too busy rumbling with antifa this weekend, I hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
Also, in the coming days, I'll be launching a brand new Tale for Our Time. Tales for Our Time, Clubland Q&A and The Mark Steyn Show are all made with the support of The Mark Steyn Club. As I always say, Club membership isn't for everyone, but it does come with some special benefits, including:
~Tales for Our Time, our monthly audio adventures of classic fiction, including a very pertinent election yarn;
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly, such as last Friday's;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show, Mark's Mailbox, and other video content;
~My Sunday series of video poetry;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, assuming I'm ever again allowed to make any;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
See you on the radio at noon US Eastern - and do give me a call.
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36 Member Comments
For the past 3 years I've been obsessed with the idea that most conservatives simply do not understand what they are up against with this 'new left'. It's certainly coming into sharp focus now for most of us. Rush has long pointed out that you cannot reason or deal with this crowd. Marxism is more of a religion than anything else and like Islam is an all encompassing ideology. Our 'Pravda like' press seems already on board to facilitate this frightening move to seek retribution on all who opposed their 'socialist workers paradise' dream now within reach after nearly 100 years of relentless organizing. A couple of weeks back Tucker profiled an NBC staffer hosting an online tutorial on how to go about harassing ordinary Trump supporters presumably such as those who frequent conservative web-sites or grass roots supporters. All this began with our so called intellectual class falling under the spell of the Bolsheviks in the early 20's. Does anyone really believe they will ever willingly give up power after this long of a struggle?
Sydney Powell's charges must be fleshed out, she opens herself to ridicule .
Once a vote gets digitized it becomes fungible
Computers have "backdoors", they open to the internet
Algarythmns have tweakable " components
American votes travel to Europe? ?
If she's right this needs daylight
Dominion software must be hacked open
I wish to propose a new Three Fifths Compromise in which 3/5ths of votes by the Deceased American community shall be counted. The Republic has been saved!!!
Parody Alert: think Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" for Lockdown World.
Apropos Conservative Treehouse and the detestable behaviour of their web hosting provider, I notice that The Republican Governors Association and The White House both use Wordpress - for now. I hope that changes. I saw their sites listed when I had a quick glance at Wordpress just now.
Also on the 'About us' pages of WP's corporate website, there is clear evidence that the company don't do irony quite as well as they do self-aggrandisement. As a mission statement and under the title, 'Democratise Publishing' comes this bold declaration: "The freedom to build. The freedom to change. The freedom to share."
Doesn't seem very free to me.
People have suggested starting free speech social media sites and other institutions but the sad fact is that they would all end up being grifts run by scam artists. Another problem with alternate social media is that it feels like they get turned into a conservative ghetto as almost a self fulfilling prophecy and it's just an echo chamber that accomplishes nothing (Parler is a great example of this).
Mark, Sidney Powell was an awesome guest! Great interview, lots of stuff I was not aware of. I am praying for her, we are running out of time, we need objective media coverage but I think that ship has long sailed (even with Fox, except for Tucker and a few brave souls).
I would propose a maxim: If they can be changed in the software then they are not ballots.
If you study history, as I do, you might recall the momentous decision President Obama took in appointing the First Dunce, Biden, as Head of Mission Control for a "Cancer Moonshot" to eradicate the dread disease. (No, really, he did.) I don't know how the Moonshot is going, but it seems unescapable to me that Biden's grift at best—at best—diverted money, and at worst stole it. Okay, fine, he stole it, no "best" about.
Not my field of history, but my colleagues who study these things remind me that Obama also put Biden in charge of Ukraine. (No, really, he did.) You'll never guess how that turned out. A septuagenarian gonnif can't change his liver spots.
Just as I was trying to figure out how to close my never-launched WordPress site, I got a call from a friend of mine who just got her "Stop the Steal" knit hat pattern removed from Etsy. It would seem that even "The Handmade Market Place" has rules about "harmful election disinformation" and are against anything that questions the validity of the "projected winner." This is the site where hipsters buy plastic earrings and hand thrown pottery: you can buy an embroidered hoop with any obscenity under the sun, but Deplorable Knitters "Stop the Steal" is too much for them.
"Deplorable knitters" haha! But actually the situation is not funny at all and very scary. I'm wondering if any of this "silencing" is legally actionable? After all, if you're not in violation of their terms of service, what legal reason would they have? Why don't they just come right out and say they will censor speech, images, products, etc. they don't agree with or, more importantly, that doesn't meet with the approval of the Democrat party? I wonder how all those Leftists got those mugs, t-shirts, decorative objects, etc. made that say "F*ck Trump"?
Oh, didn't you know? They changed their polices in AUGUST to say they will not allow any items that would suggest that people not do their civic duties, such as vote and fill out the census, or apparently disagree with an online story about election results. On the main page Etsy is promoting t-shirts that say "Madam Vice President Elect Harris" in the cutest curlicues. And you can still go out and buy a Trump shirt on Etsy, if you are so inclined, but since "all tyranny is capricious" you can never know who will be cancelled next. Or if you will be shut down like "Garlands of Grace" for having a statement on your Christian headcovering shop saying you believe marriage is between one man and one woman. Luckily Garlands is made of stronger stuff than Chick-fil-a, and took their business elsewhere.
Interesting financial news out of China, where state-owned businesses are defaulting on bonds. "Bond" meaning promise. China's economy is a Potemkin structure - only real if you think it's real, like the support for Biden.
Perhaps China thinks this is a good day to bury bad news. Hot on the heels of the aborted ANT IPO, we're so absorbed with our own navels that we may be missing something much bigger.
Conservative treehouse is a superb site. It's regrettable but 100.% predictable that the deep state was going to shut it down one way or another. In a slightly tin-foil hat way I am slightly concerned that my own details as a fairly regular reader and commenter have been noted somewhere. VPNs can only do so much. I only hope the driving force, who calls himself Sundance, quickly finds another platform to share his findings on.
John, rest assured we're all on The List.
Hey, Mark. You know a lot about music. What's that old Roger Whitaker tune? Something like "I've Got No Faith in Durham, Now." Something like that, if memory serves.
Dur-ham.
Dur-ham.
Dur-ham-Dur-ham-Dur-ham
Dur-ham-Dur-haaaamm!
Inspector Clouseau to the rescue.
I just had to share with my wife that this clips provides the perfect anecdote to explain why I listen to Mark Steyn. Who else other than Mark Steyn could I rely upon to tell me that his local fire chief and Marilyn Monroe are both direct descendents of John and Priscilla Alden?
In these enlightened times the fire chief - just like his renowned relative Marilyn Monroe - could go out in public wearing a little black dress and nobody would even notice. Well... almost nobody.
Out here on the West Coast it is non-stop "cases, cases, cases", and "hospitals are being over-run". Of course the case number increases are due to the fact that the virus spreads and testing is ramping-up exponentially. I can find no evidence of hospitals being swamped with very ill covid patients. Never a mention of the low death rate or that the fatalities are mostly old folks with pre-existing conditions. Our genius governor Newsom got caught having a party at the French Laundry (super expensive, high end, Northern Cal restaurant). The rules do not apply to the "woke" left. As far as nothing so far from the Durham "Criminal Investigation", the Swamp will probably win, as usual. Democrats from the swamp don't go to jail.
In the UK, at-home death rates are up 20%-25% according to a report out today.
Most hospitals are way under capacity, with all those NHS "heroes" having few inpatients to torment.
In the face of this hatred, many conservatives will grovel, plead and apologize, and sell out their colleagues, like parents being interrogated by STASI hacks after being ratted out by their children for having wrongthink.
Fatal error, of course.
Whilst conservatives are happy warriors crusading for freedom, leftists are waging jihad on us. Turning the other cheek is not the answer. The biblical answer probably lies in the Old Testament.
"Whilst conservatives are happy warriors crusading for freedom, leftists are waging jihad on us." Indeed. Which is why the left loves the right's amiable losers like Mitt Romney. They're very useful to the left because it creates the illusion that there's actual competition for political ideas. Then along comes Trump who's down to scrap. It's going to be hard to find someone like Trump again because so many Republicans are concerned about what will happen to them, in the likely event that they lose a tough election campaign.
"concerned about what will happen to them" - unlike liberals, who get a gig at a University, TV company or on a "not for profit".
Exactly. Brett Kavanaugh got a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court but Christine Blasey Ford got a lifetime appointment to the liberal speaking and awards circuit.
Mark fills in for Kathy on Saturday and Rush on Monday. If Steyn is your bench, you have one hell of a team.
Love and prayers to both starters on their treatment and recovery.
Well said!
Okay, a couple of things. As I was watching Tucker, he said something that made me pause and go make a drink. That's so I could replay it and do a spit take. "In some ways, it's getting better. The music's definitely improving..." WHAT?! Where can I hear this improving music? Perhaps Tucker should've played a short clip of Cardi B's haunting "WAP"?
The second thing has to do with the jarring change of viewpoint from first to third person and back in this column. Steven doesn't like this! It upsets him. I'm picky about such things.
Mark replies:
Sorry about that, Steven. Last-minute hasty merger of two separate pieces, in the interests of not over-burdening people.
Dan Bongino just tweeted that Durham has ended his "investigations" with NO INDITEMENTS siting the fear of blowback from Biden. Fools gold from the beginning and we fell for it. This is a disgrace and Trump should fire Durham and Barr. No more reports, just justice is all I want.
Shocker. (Not!) Talk about slow walking things. The pace of this "investigation" was a dead giveaway as to where it was headed. But hey, at least the FBI and Justice Department got to the bottom of that McMillions thing!
The flaw that Trump had was not surrounding himself with yes men to show that he's open and transparent. I'd rather go down with the loyal yes men I hired than go down alone hiring my own assassins plotting my destruction.
The success of all those investigations was always predicated on winning the 2020 election to create the necessary time. It will be one of the great tragedies of history that not only will these people get away with it, but the odds are that the underlying crimes will be lost to history. They will go down the memory hole, and people studying the goings on of the early 21st century will only wonder why those crazy conservatives were so crazy.
The accuracy of Orwell's vision is truly shocking. I can simply never get used to it.
I don't know if anyone has yet pointed out the hypocrisy of this revelation. They didn't see an issue screwing over Trump by investigating a duly elected president and painting him as a Russian agent but now it's an issue because if we don't already know, the Democrats are never dirty and we fear the wrath of Dems more than we do Trump. Maybe it's time for Trump to make them fear him and our base.
Mark, thanks for your tremendous insight and courage in defense of free speech, and liberty more broadly. I can't add meaningfully to what's been said here and elsewhere on the matter of the election, so I'll resort to a literary concoction in hopes of making a small contribution in these parlous and treacherous times. It's all I can do, to offer a (third-rate) poem – from me, to you:
Tally On, Tally-Ho
Tally, tally, through the night
Tally on till morning light;
Tally with no one in sight
Tally till the count's not Right.
Purported victors claim their spoils
And pounce upon their vanquished foils;
With sanguine smiles, with wicked grins
Demand atonement for their sins;
A lust for pow'r drools from their lips
Beguiling words from fork'ed tips;
What dreadful deeds will soon descend
From proclamations to amend?
Set sail on Novus Ordo Seclorum
To the hoi polloi, adrift: deplore 'em;
As purblind captains take the wheel
And everything that they can steal;
Fat swine, in gravy, in the galley
Dead reckoning – the final tally.
Is She destined for Messina's maw?
Can She bear the roll, and pitch, and yaw?
All-Seeing Eye dreads what it saw,
Now pressed beneath the Panda's paw.
And on the receding shore, astern
Liberty slips to the sea...to yearn;
For what was and might yet again be
A beacon of light, from misery.
Does a whirling maelstrom loom ahead?
Or just mournful surrender...instead?
What else might the sea portend?
Halcyon days, with no end?
Beyond, on terra firma fetid,
Where man has always toiled and sweated;
Do beware the boist'rous braying,
By Donkeys straining in the thick;
Tho' discordant and dismaying,
'Tis but a prelude to a kick.
Some will take it on the jaw,
Others in their pockets;
Rule of man and not of law,
Will put 'free' men on dockets.
Dare ope thy mouth or drain the quill,
Thy hand be smashed and lips made still;
Blot the words and quench the voices,
Freedom now deprived of choices.
Come harmony from perfidy?
Or unity through tyranny?
Methinks unlikely in this age,
When silencing is all the rage.
Poignant lessons will soon be learned,
Among those not yet taught in school;
If not spurned, most can be governed,
Others are determined to Rule.
The Sirens' echoes call for love,
From the swamp and through the mist;
But when appears the velvet glove,
Prepare to feel the iron fist.
"They hate you." That says it all and it's something to be remembered every time you make a purchase and otherwise engage in optional business transactions. I say "optional" because, for example, I know that my electric utility hates me (they constantly send emails and reminders to reduce my energy usage due to the coming horrors of 'climate change') but I have no choice but to do business with them. I also have no choice but to deal with the ridiculous people who run my children's school district and I'm positive they hate me given the various emails that I've received regarding their anti-racism initiative that was initiated due to "recent events." I'd gladly send them to Catholic school (like my parents did for me) but unfortunately their (very liberal) mum has say so over such matters.
My point is that the party of "choice" seeks to ensure that you and I have fewer and fewer choices for just about everything we do in our lives. At first we thought this was merely because they wanted to sop up our cash for the unions to spend on fixing elections, but we now see (and if you don't please clean your glasses) that the Democrats want to wipe out choice just about everywhere in our lives so that they may assume total control...of everything. So cheer's to Mark's exhortation, "Don't patronize these totalitarian tosspots, and get your chums to cut 'em loose, too."
Hi Sal, I think It's difficult to get the average American to believe they are hated and despised because of two things: most news and information is biased in support of the The Left/Democrats and their agenda. It's mass brainwashing, and unless you hear another viewpoint often, you will remain deluded. Another reason is that the average American is preoccupied with everyday matters - paying bills, work, tending to their families, not to mention dealing with the ever-changing COVID restrictions and mandates. They don't have time to worry about how their country, and the election, has been commandeered by socialist thugs who despise them and intend to discard the principles this country was founded on and destroy what is good about this country.
In my experience and observations, people don't get riled up and act unless it affects their wallet. That was also true for the colonists who complained about being ruled from afar but were not moved to action until the taxes became unbearable and punitive. I also witnessed it in CA when Democrat Gray Davis was governor. He raised fees sky-high on auto registration and was slow to act on the energy crisis caused by market manipulation and lack of supply which resulted state-wide blackouts and higher costs. The voters successfully recalled him and he was replaced in a special election by Schwarzenegger. For once, the Right and Left were united, as even his Democrat base turned on him, but again, the motivation was primarily economic.