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 stay the rotten fruit. No one worked harder these last ten months, in extremely difficult circumstances, to propel Trump and the GOP to victory - and, if America's Anchorman needs an extra day to get him through that wretched Supreme Court decision, he's earned it: He'll be back to break it all down tomorrow. Meanwhile, 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.
The Electoral College is set to meet today and hand the White House to Joe Biden and whoever's waggling the sock puppet. On today's show we'll talk about all that, and the state of play in Georgia as the run-off approaches. 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.
~It was a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with the Friday edition of The Mark Steyn Show. On Saturday we re-aired a highly pertinent episode from just over a month ago. Our weekend movie date contrasted two takes on Christmas office affairs, and our Sunday song selection featured the first Noël to write an American Christmas classic. If you were too busy being penetrated by Chinese intelligence this weekend, I hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
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I have realized recently how mistaken I have been about the character of Bill Barr. I have defended him in comments frequently. Now I find he is, indeed, a man of empty words and no courage. Also, how could there be only 2 Supremes willing to face this abomination head on? We are drowning in decadence and moral turpitude.
This is my take on the so-called Justice Department and the judiciary generally. You have a guy who stabs someone to death in broad daylight in a public place. There are dozens of eyewitnesses. The murderer is apprehended and the weapon is recovered and fingerprinted. It is well-known that the murderer is a felon and has a long criminal record. It is also known that he had a deep, irrational hatred for the victim. It is also known that the murderer has reliably voted Democrat for years and has often made campaign contributions. The murder remains under "investigation" for another two years. Finally a statement is issued that investigators had found a watch at the murder scene and haven't been able to prove that it belonged to the murderer so the case was dismissed. Satire alert? I don't think so.
Beautiful job behind the EIB mike today!
For Democrats, every hill is the hill to die on. Whether it's the pronunciation of Kamala or addressing Jill as doctor, there's a price to be paid for noncompliance. Imagine if Margaret Thatcher demanded she not to be referred to as Maggie, or Media celebrities insisted on the most respectful pronunciation of Melania.
Does Jill Biden demand to be called doctor when she's at the hospital?
Great show as ever! Don't know how you soldier on as this tragedy unfolds. Bon courage. I am making my famous mince pies as some snowflakes come down. Joyeux Noel quand même!
I am of the opinion that pushing everyone to go to college is among the most catastrophic policy decisions in American history. At least 90% of people who go to college are essentially wasting their time and shouldn't be going to college. So when they do they aren't going for a hard degree and gravitate towards woke studies/social science garbage degrees that aren't worth the price of the paper they are printed on, become drooling morons programmed like drones incapable of independent thought and in debt for the rest of their lives to boot.
As James Lindsay tweeted recently, "Systematically creating a whole bunch of (heavily indebted) people who the economy can't properly employ who are simultaneously convinced that they're too good for normal jobs is the problem here."
And the Covid Crash is compounding the problem: rise in unemployment > acquire more qualifications > acquire more debt.
Another terrific show, as always.
Gotta admit, I'm a secession promoter. I see no way we can proceed as it's gone for the last many decades, where we are either charging left, or drifting left, depending on who wins what. Forget agreeing on policy or values, we can't even agree on what are facts. Anyone to the left of wussies like W or Mittens or McDisdain simply ignores reality, and that's who the media, the left wing culture, big tech, and everyone else relies on, while those of us who actually look to the occasional fact are called conspiracy theorists.
I'm done. The only question left is where will I end up.
"Forget agreeing on policy or values, we can't even agree on what are facts."
Profound and true!
It's beginning to feel creepily more with each passing day like living in the Soviet Union with all of the election fraud, foreign machines tabulating our votes, censorship of newsworthy reporting and our supremes refusing to hear this most important case. I wonder if we would see a new designation for our country under B-H. Something like United Sino States of America. The USSA. Would half the country even care?
Actually Fran my take here is that half the country would be ecstatic - a quarter are too incurious and apathetic to even pay attention and the remaining quarter are conservatives who care a great deal but really so what? They stood by for the last 30 years and did nothing while these neo-Marxists took over the education of our children, watched as the lunatic left totally corrupted and seized the national media print and broadcast and now control the social media giants, and this one is the most pernicious of all by far as these now provide national and global news for most Americans. The left plays to win and isn't constrained by any ethical issues or morality - as always the ends justify the means. I liken it to a boxing match with the good guy entering the ring wearing his regulation boxing gloves while his opponent steps in carrying a tire iron and wearing brass knuckles and the ref (our judicial system) is deaf dumb and blind. The outcome isn't really too hard to predict.
The Leftist teachers soon will be replaced by Chinese teachers. Those teachers will be sent to the slave camps to wait for slots to open in China's factories and warehouses to make tennis shoes and nifty pocket size computers or fulfill orders. The one thing the Chinese teachers will dump from the curriculum will be the gender studies programs and gone from the school libraries will be "Johnny Has Two Mums." There's always a silver lining if you look.
"The left plays to win..." No doubt about it...The boxing analogy is great, except that it gives 'the good guy' too much credit by suggesting he is gloved and actually planning to fight (fairly). What we have is the opponent sitting on his bare hands. Pruning books a week ago and dusted off a copy of 'The Disuniting of America (1991, A. Schlesinger)...it's all there, the slide into the abyss foreseen (but alas, not to be forestalled).
Scott Adams has named it The United States of China.
The United Socialist States of America.
"The Leftist teachers soon will be replaced by Chinese teachers." Wow! Bonus points!
No cloud without a silver lining.
Life's getting to seem a little like that chutes and ladders game we played as kids. We squandered our two hundred fiftyish year history climbing the generational ladders of hard work, scholarship, personal and national achievements and incredible wealth accumulation only to realize it was all to witness the Chinese Commies pay off a single corrupt greedy politician with calcium deposits growing between the ears (and that's just his second favorite failing organ), and a son who would make any parent proud with his highly refined skill of smoking crack and his insatiable appetite for sleeping with hookers and with these two joke excuses for human beings they find the key to dropping down the chutes into our White House with their high tech buddies along to advise them.
The freshly snookered American people will be singing different lyrics to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" this Christmas.
Chorus:
You better watch out, you better not cry
You better watch out, I'm telling you why,
Chairman Xi's coming to town.
He'll use big tech to see you
censor you when you're awake.
He knows what you are texting
and when watching news that's fake.
Chorus
He'll find you and he'll kill you
There'll never be a trace
He'll sic you with a virus
Force masks across your face
Chorus
He'll rob you of your freedoms
Offer food that tastes like glue
He'll teach you to obey
And do jobs that Chinese just won't do
Chorus
(And remind me again, what was so hateful about Donald J. Trump?)
"[F]reshly snookered American people" indeed. There is no question in my mind that the West is looking in the wrong places for solutions to its problems, F., and has been doing so for a while. I simply don't see that the West has problems which need socialist solutions and, speaking for myself, I cannot see any socialist solutions not already in widespread operation which will bring good outcomes in the West.
(I take care to speak of "socialist solutions not already in widespread operation" because there is an argument to be had about whether such things as state-funded education and emergency medicine for all, progressive taxation scales, civil service unions and so on are socialist solutions and another as to whether they are the most effective solutions. The character-limit forbids engagement with that.)
Evidently, there are many people out there who disagree with me, and have long disagreed with me. Whether it reflects on me or on something else, I am accustomed to finding that my views generally aren't reflective of the majority of folk. I guess we all have to accept that, from time to time, there will be elections and more people will vote for more ideas that I don't like than will vote for ideas which I like - well, somewhat more. To throw tantrums about it would be puerile, and an absolute waste of time.
That's the boon of the MSC. Here, I can let it all hang out a little, among folk who might not agree on every fine detail but feel like the people I wish I could live among all the time. The world's not like that, though. The struggle continues, naturally, but we can live with the folk who don't share our views, and under policies we don't like, reading newspapers which we don't believe and hearing utterances with which we'd like to take issue, just as they can live with us most of the time.
We're going to see how the West deals with China. I've cast my vote: there's not a hell of a lot more I can do. It's a wonderful boon to find folk here in the MSC whose concerns are like my own. So, in reply to that last chorus, President Trump didn't arrest the ruin of the American fiscus, didn't solve the immigration problem, and didn't curb the Chinese. And he blew what ought to have been a winnable election. In a nutshell, my concerns after his departure will be much the same as my concerns before his advent. More is needed; more was needed.
In the meantime, as you indicate, the world is in motion.
I think I may have to tweak the last two lines of the last verse, one longer by a syllable and the last shorter by one or two. I need to stop waking up at 2 AM to put my thoughts to Christmas tunes.
I think we have a lot of similar thoughts about how the world should work, S. You just have a more intelligent way to articulate. I lean towards gesticulation with my hands and exaggerated expressions and would've been a terribly unfocused lawyer, unless I could start singing my clients case to a ragtime tune or something a la Gilbert & Sullivan. Another lifetime perhaps.
F., Thanks for your kindness, but you impress me hugely: it seems to me that you have all the skills which I lack and change. And you're great fun to engage with. We'll chat again.
As to lawyers, there are two sides to that story, too...
"Chimerica" - per Niall Ferguson, who seemed to think it was a good thing.
How was it that "experts" failed to predict that we'd become more like China?
"The left plays to win and isn't constrained by any ethical issues or morality - as always the ends justify the means."
Sometimes they openly admit (as the left has in Australia): Whatever It Takes!
They underestimated the power of evil. The experts fed the beast of their own greed and their greed is eating us whole. We have a saying here along the border when someone isn't satisfied with one's own allotted portion we say, "They're going for the whole enchilada." The next question is: do you want that red or green.? China sees it all Red, the West sees Green. You don't find out until the day after that devouring it whole made you regret you didn't stop when you should've.
Looking forward to the show. I hope you find time to mention the the list of 2 million members of the Chinese Communist party that are working in what used to be called the free world. I am beginning to wonder why none of them has bothered to seduce me.
That's what I call cutting to the bottom line, G.!
Me too Gareth - I mean lefties are already on their side so why not target some of us? It doesn't seem fair at all to me. Why should only moronic democrats get the hot Chinese chicks?
You are SO right that Chairman Xi deserved to be Time Magazine's Autocrat of the Year. But see it from Time's point of view: if they had so honored Xi, Big Tech would have removed any mention of it. I had to refer to the New York Post directly several times to pinch myself back to reality that the Hunter Biden allegations had even been made, much less corroborated. As with the movie Alien, in (cyber)space no one can hear you scream.
Mark,
So, you wouldn't be a honey-trap spy for all the tea in China?
It is well known that people who have STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) PhDs generally aren't addressed as "Doctor". (However a PhD who is also a professor is respectfully addressed as "Doctor.")
However, people who hold doctorates in education insist on being addressed as "Doctor". I was clued into to this years ago by a by a co-worker. My experience has shown this to be the case. Jill Biden holds a doctorate in education so it is not wrong to call her "doctor." She's just using the customary form of address in her circles.
She's such "a hell of a doctor", Whoopi Goldberg suggested she'd make a great surgeon general.
Just about every MD I personally know do not like to be addressed as Doctor except when they are at the office or hospital. And they are truly the only doctors.
She's just the doctor to be the Covid Surgin' General (sorry, I couldn't help myself).
"She's such "a hell of a doctor", Whoopi Goldberg suggested she'd make a great surgeon general." There's no helping morons, K. The good thing is that they usually bring disrepute upon their own moronic causes.
Happily, the lines which she had to learn as an actress were short and simple - and cooked up by somebody with two brain-cells to rub together. Well, anyway, a spark of sentient life. An occasional spark.
She and Mr de Niro were wonderful at doing simian expressions, though. You can build a career in the media on that, it would seem. And in Hollywood, to be sure.
Don't their emissions represent some sort of threat to the ozone layer, or something like that, please?
Like most things in life, we all tend to evaluate things in terms of our own experiences. I can tell you, my father is the truest medical doctor of anyone I have ever met. He dedicated his entire life to the pursuit of his degree, and the following 40 years spent in research and teaching and being a physician. And he introduced himself to everyone as "Dr. George Pazin". He was justifiably proud of where he started - the son on an 8th grade orphan immigrant - and what he accomplished, and he is flat out one of the 3 smartest people I've ever met, and I am a graduate of an Ivy with a degree in math (the other two were math guys).
Likewise, I also know a wonderful woman who has a hard earned E.D., and while she NEVER introduces herself as Dr. to anyone other than her students, she does introduce herself to her classes as a Dr., and I know she earned that title.
The situation with Jill is different, much like the situation with the senile Joe: the media insists OTHERS refer to her as Dr. because they are trying to make the rest of us genuflect to her brilliance. Well, I believe the Brits would say, sodd off, I ain't callin' 'er that. And I'd agree with that sentiment.
The whole discussion is both silly, and revealing.
As is most of the discussion in the media and cultural circles today.
I wonder if the present holder of the Office of the President Delicti has even the faintest notion of what his fawning courtiers have in store for him--a Kamala Regency as soon as he has served his purpose.
Will it be the madness of King Joe, or will they go full 25th? They might want get the 25th under their belt before the 2022 midterms. The down side is that it will be very hard to get a VP nomination confirmed, no matter who controls the senate.
Purpose served! Looks like the plan is to ensure he "fails to qualify" so the "Vice President–elect" is sworn in as (acting) president on Inauguration Day.
Either option will serve, Michi-. I don't know that fighting over a Vice President will matter much once Commie-law is speaking ex cathedra.
We shall see, Kate, we shall see. Anything is possible in such "un-presidented" times.
The only problem for Harris is that she very well might be impeached. Then you could wind up with Pres. Kevin McCarthy. It's brass knuckle time.
Now we can be cancelled for declining to call Jill Biden "Doctor"? First Lady Melania Trump had to endure being called a "prostitute" (and earned a legal settlement of $2.9 million from the Daily Mail for her injury). How about I decline to call First Lady Jill Biden (if the election stays swiped) either one? Nothing against her academic achievement, but no lab coat, no honorific. As for the other term, leave it to the other side to slander for sport.
We can call her Dr Jill Biden when the left start saying Dr Gorka.
If I may say so, J., "doctor" is a title and not an honorific, and it is the appropriate title for a person with a doctorate. It is a courtesy title when used for medical practitioners who possess the equivalent of a bachelor's degree and a second honours-level bachelor's degree. It is not their qualifications which determine their worth: never was. Surgeons revert to the title of "master" - mister, if you insist on colloquial usage.
The reason I insist that it should not be thought of as an honorific has much in common with your thinking, though. Nowadays, there are doctorates and doctorates. The title used to denote leadership in a field. That used to indicate ground-breaking research - and I mean really ground-breaking, real research, not a literature review supported by application of extant research techniques or other people's research. The good Dr Biden has a "doctorate" whose hard core was a dissertation and not a published research report, and moreover a dissertation addressing an already thoroughly explored area. I'll call her Dr Biden because that is her title, but I would not want it to be taken in any honorific sense. As far as I'm concerned, her doctorate might as well have been purchased in a bait-shop at the end of the pier for all it says about her leadership in the field of education.
We are shortly to be confronted with the need to speak of President Biden. That title also will convey no honorific weight in my eyes: it will be the title of a senile, lecherous, corrupt toady put in an office far beyond his competence by people whose motives seem to me to be inexplicable, but that will be the appropriate title.
Dr Biden is not a clever person to draw attention to the dubious nature of her credentials. If the future President Biden had a grain of sense and self-awareness to his credit, he would be eschewing titles and enjoying his retirement, trying to remember where he left his spectacles and troubled by dreams of attending large gatherings without trousers.
On the other hand, perhaps she insists on being addressed by her title and surname to discourage familiarity. That is fairly common practice in our civilisation, and I must say that I have a measure of sympathy for it. Is it a good way to go for the wife of an American president? I think probably not, so I am eager for her to pursue the practice. Dr Biden, nobody in the field of education. Dr Biden, nobody in academic purlieux. Dr Biden, wife of President Biden, crook and creep.
"... troubled by dreams of attending large gatherings without trousers."
Classic.
Thanks, K. That's a big accolade, coming as it does from the author of many unforgettable observations.