On Victoria Day I started the week south of the border with three hours of substitute-host-level Excellence in Broadcasting on America's Number One radio show. You can find a few moments from my guest-hosting stint here. Thank you as always to Mr Snerdley, Ali, Mike, Keith, Greg and the rest of the gang: the best team in radio, no question, and I treasure my many years in their expert hands.
Among the subjects we talked about was my two-part interview with George Papadopoulos re its wilderness of mirrors and the deep state. If you missed it, here it is:
The second part of my interview with George Papadopoulos will air tomorrow.
If you're one of that small, brave band who enjoy me on video, I'll be on the telly with Tucker live coast to coast across America tonight, Monday, immediately after the President's rally at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific.
The Mark Steyn Club is celebrating its second anniversary, and, if you're finally getting around to maybe considering perhaps becoming a member at some point in the course of this third year, we'd love to have you with us: for more info, please see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership. In this birthday week, we are grateful for the support of all our friends around the world - from London, Ontario to London, England, via Longueuil, Londonderry, and Long Beach - and look forward to welcoming many more in the years ahead.
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You pointed out the other day, how the endless investigation of the Trump administration was such a burden of wasted time and energy for them. How much more they could have accomplished without this drag on their momentum!
As others have pointed out, the investigation also weighed on the mid-term election. If Meuller knew "collusion" was a no go from early on he could have wrapped up the investigation or let his core findings be known. Instead the tax payer funded investigation became a Democrat part Pac using the American people to fund the 2018 House election.
Finished listening a little while ago, wonderful as always.
Few things disgust me more than anyone who does not recognize the blatant abuse of power that Mark hammers home during today's show. For that bozo Amash to call himself libertarian, wow, he has a completely different idea of liberty than I do. He is not a libertarian, he is a libertarian poseur. I can't even say what I'd like to see happen to him, other than for him to face the full force of the bureaucracy he apparently supports coming down on him personally, and everyone surrounding him.
This harkens back to a question I posed to Mark a couple weeks ago during a recent Q&A, where I posited that the movies today are one of the few ways to teach conservatism to the masses. I don't think I did a very good job explaining my position. I agree with the wise man who has stated many times "All storytelling is conservative by its very nature, actions and consequences". What I think is incumbent upon all of us is to point out these things when it's inconvenient to the modern narrative.
For example, I think it was the largely entertaining film "V For Vendetta" that had a character saying, people shouldn't fear their governments, governments should fear their people. Each of us needs to point this out to any liberals/progressives/Democrats/socialists/whatever, that the Mueller Dossier (love that term, George Papadopolous!) is naked government power, not Trump's tweets about it! Anyone disputing this is someone whose judgment must never be trusted on anything.
Thanks again for subbing for Rush, Mark, you make it easier to renew that 24/7 subscription every year. I enjoy Rush, but I'd pay the entire amount just to hear the shows you alone do.
I was able to listen to most of your guest hosting duties on Rush and it was another top-notch performance. Thinking about the attempted coup against President Trump, I realized that in D.C. there really is one uniparty, the elite establishment. This self serving elite has taken over the administrative state from the DOJ to the FBI and pretty much every other department in the executive branch. You could also see it in Paul Ryan and Mitchell McConnell. It would interesting to see what James Comey and the FBI was telling these two Republican leaders. They may not have been involved in the coup, but I am sure they believed in its goal, which was to remove the outsider Trump from office.
I believe a massive history can be written about this coup and all the other ways the establishment in DC worked/works to undermine Trump. The Trump transition staff had a massive Trump transition/administration job website which I understand was taken down by the administrators in DC and all those qualified and outside candidates for jobs were ghosted.
I can also share from past and personal experience that the military leadership isn't as conservative as people think it is. You could see that when they came out against Trump's transgender ban. I think a lot of conservatives tell themselves that the national government can never truly overreach because the military will be a bulwark against that. I can tell you, I have known many military members that would follow whatever orders they were given without question. I have heard a few members say that if they were told to collect arms from the general public, they would have no problems with that order.
I am signed up for another great year at the Mark Steyn Club and can't wait.
I agree with you about the "conservative" military. It was my observation that the military had many good leaders up to the Lt. Col./Commander rank and then a promotion "filter" of some sort began to weed them out. Certainly by the time a General was named it was all political.
If it came to the military confiscating civilian arms the majority of combat troops would be deployed overseas to protect the frontiers of empire. The troops involved in confiscation would be a pick up band of political thugs, not unlike the situation in Venezuela.
The U.S. has had a pretty poor record with a garrison military going to war. It takes a long while to sort out the dead wood and get the citizen soldiers up to speed and in charge of the local conduct of the war. I don't think we have the time for that in today's world.
Loved all the righteous ranting on Rush! Yes, Trump has been far too restrained on Twitter, given the deliberate and ongoing sabotage of both his reputation and presidency. #ResJudicata... #GoToHell
PS. Enjoyed the take on Newspoll: "They're addicted to it, like crack."
You are an Aussie . Please keep out of their affairs.
Ouch! I take it that's payback for the impertinence below (and don't recall you restricting your many comments here to *our* affairs). Should Canadians follow that advice too?
It would seem the involvement of Mr Downer - and other Australians - means the sabotage of Trump is our affair too.
Ms Bishop - the only West Australian to whom I've alluded - is pure nastiness, as she confirmed on election night.
I'm in a non-Queensland seat that was "in doubt" - and flipped to Liberal. Does that count as one of the deciding seats, noting that the triumph was indeed "getting back to nothing"?
Astounded that you missed the nastiness of Labor (politicians and activists); when even the Guardian reports it - free read on Google search - it must be happening.
Look forward to commentary on Morrison and 18C. Or is that criticism reserved for AbbottAbbottAbbott?
I read all MSC articles and comments but only comment on things Australian , or as Mark might say , the Commonwealth.
Have never criticised T. Abbott , a very good man, but not always the most operative of politicians, to his credit.
Mark replies:
We don't have regional memberships in the Steyn Club, Cottesloe. Our Solomon Islands members are entitled to weigh in on Slovene politics, and vice-versa. I myself comment on Australian politics, although I'm not sure, after a couple of beers, whether I could reliably pick Harold Holt out of an identity parade.
Now. Now Now. We don't want to have an Antipodean civil war in the MSC. At least not until we get the Pay-per-View set up.
Sticking my Yank nose into your business but the Liberals should change their party name to something more inspiring. From it distance it sounds like lose-lose.
I did learn a new word the other day -- larrikin.
Cd, I don't think Abbott could be accused of being "gutless" re 18C, given the support for "hate speech regulations" by Australia's Official Jews (which are ultimately to their detriment: criticism of anti-Semitism is "Islamophobic", as we've seen in the US). FYI, the AHRC is always recruiting though.
Mark, have a couple more beers and your judgement in this matter should be just fine.
Yank meddling in Antipodean affairs would seem quite justified. And your observations about those across the Tasman - not least of all Jacinda - are particularly astute.
Yes, the Liberals are a long way from the small-l liberal + conservative party founded in 1944. Malcolm Turnbull in fact boasted that he led "a progressive Liberal Party"! Even the current PM thinks it's his job to tell Australians (like Israel Folau) what they can and can't say. So a long way off reclaiming the word, as Mark suggested on Rush.
HH: a reminder that AD is not the first high-ranking Liberal politician to be accused of spying. This time around it seems entirely plausible though.
While on the subject, have often thought great respect to your Cook Island members,who must have the slowest and most expensive internet on the planet.
Mark, I enjoyed your analysis of the failure of Australian pollsters to foresee the outcome of the election. Your explanation that the average voter is either going to avoid responding to a poll or give an answer that is likely to please the pollster and thus avoid a pointless confrontation, has a great deal of significance if we consider how malleable our political leaders have proven to be. The vast majority of our "conservative" politicians spend most of their career testing the winds, and taking the path of least resistance. Listening to news reports, it is not unusual for the lead in to the story to reference a recent poll of public opinion. This is then followed with an interview with some politician to verify that he is responding in the desired way to the pulse of the electorate. Few politicians have the intelligence and experience to challenge the apparent will of the public, and thus they go along with the fantasy created by the pollster. Politicians who challenge the poll results are considered statemen if they can argue the point authoritatively, but I can name only three in the 20th Century who could do this.
This suggests that the failure to predict elections is not really a problem for the pollsters and the MSM. They are succeeding where it counts. They are dictating the terms of the debate by building an edifice of lies that channels the political discussion in such a way that only one solution becomes self-evident. How else can you explain the work product of the last twenty years: CO2 is a pollutant; sex is a choice and not a genetic imperative; open borders are compassion and not a death wish; and any attempt to argue forcefully to the contrary is a threat to the peaceful well being of our latest generation.
Meanwhile Down Under we rejected the divisiveness and nastyness of the extreme left in our federal election on Saturday. We even returned the sitting government with an increased number of seats.
It was "The win no-one saw coming" - https://thewest.com.au/opinion/lanai-scarr/federal-election-2019-the-elction-win-no-one-saw-coming-ng-b881204021z .
"Bill Shorten learns Australians won't cop class warfare. For too long, Labor have believed their own bulldust." - https://thewest.com.au/opinion/federal-election-2019-bill-shorten-learns-australians-wont-cop-class-warfare-ng-b881204149z .
It wasn't the Labor Left who were the nasty ones this time but the elected Liberals , with their new taxes lies . Mind you , this was only matching Labor's bar setting lies about Medicare last time around.
Any West Aussie will tell you "the West " is no publication of record.
An increase by one seat for the Liberals, so its back to the same old .
The triumph was getting back to nothing.
There are at least two extreme left wing American political agitation organisations operating in Australia. I've seen them operating locally. They, and their client populace, are divisive and nasty. I've seen that first hand. And I know the language that they use and the paradigm that they speak from. And I've seen that coming from Shorten and the Labor party. It is very un Australian and totally unacceptable. it works against the basic principles - basic rules - that Australia operates on. I'm very glad that the Libs got in. And I'm very happy reading The West. It's a quality publication. It has good contributors. And Gareth Parker is certainly one of them.
Get Up bit their own derrières, which was very amusing to see.
By the other , I hope you don't mean the MSC.
"It wasn't the Labor Left who were the nasty ones this time..."
Yet the widespread impression was of Labor-Greens' outright hostility towards voters. As for activists, The Guardian was upfront about GetUp's "hitlist" of ministers - Abbott, Dutton, Porter, Taylor and Hunt - and subsequent reporting thereof.
Speaking of West Aussies and nastiness, a high profile one was unable to contain herself (on live TV) on hearing of the Member for Warringah's defeat: "That felt good".
Queensland decided the election, otherwise its navel gazing
Queensland decided the election.The rest is
West Aussies aren't nasty and congrats on getting back the Liberal vote.
No one reads the Guardian since they moved from Manchester.
By the way, I'm a native Queenslander. In the spirit of the election (see Janet Albrechsten's article today): Please don't tell me what to do.
Get Up, yes. However I'm more talking about Transition. They popped up in the Massacre a year ago. Our local area has a large Conservative population but it also has a not quite so large left leaning \ greenie \ hippie artist population. Two of my neighbours being such. I had the pleasure 18 months ago of attending a show at their property which included a very racist poet. Needless to say I quietly departed at that point. They don't seem to have repeated the activity this year. We have various amounts of rainbow activity in various parts of the SW. Mainly north of here in the more populated areas.
I'd guess that few members on this site follow the LPGA golf tour but what happened recently to one of the nicest all-american girls one could ever root for speaks volumes about America of 2019. Lexy Thompson committed a terrible faux pas in the minds of the social media collective and was so savaged she removed herself from her large fan club and other contacts given the ugly vitriol and threats directed her way. True, in the minds of many Americans it was an unforgivable crime against humanity and an affront to simple decency in this age we find ourselves mired in. You see - she had the unmitigated gall to play a round of golf with the President of the United States.
And even worse, the round of golf even included Rush Limbaugh!!!
We live in sick totalitiarian times, with leftists in ascendry. It will be fearful times a'coming for those who think, act, do, or love freedom.
Mark, I was listening today and I was taken by the woman who has some sort of job in the obstetrical field. I could not understand her actual job title. It was a profound segment and I hope that it airs far and wide, I would like to hear it again.
She was a doula/midwife.
thanks Laura. We seem to be living in creeping tragedy.
Couldn't follow a lot of your programme but since it is Victoria Day I was wondering if you would bring up on Tucker's programme or elsewhere the shameful closing to the public of the recently dedicated memorial to those Canadians soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan. Publicity about the memorial only came three days after the dedication and no family members of slain soldiers were invited (they also must make an appointment to see the memorial which is indoors in National Defence Headquarters).
Your "Mary Harmon, Mary Harmon" rant was epic. I'm ashamed to say that Justin Awash, err, Amash is from my home state. Hopefully, he can be retired in 2016.
I enjoyed that rant too. Ms Harmon was probably educated in one of our elite public schools where feelings are more important than facts.
The "man" that went to the hospital and had a still born child was really representative of the insanity in this country.
I meant 2020, but if I had HG Wells' time machine, 2016 would be even better.
Mega dittoes on the rant, Mark.
In the real world it is 1440AH, sad to say.