We trust you had a good Thanksgiving. On this Black Friday I'll be back on your TV screens for a full hour of guest-host-level semi-competence on "Tucker Carlson Tonight". The fun starts at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific - with a rerun for West Coasters and late birds at midnight Eastern/9pm Pacific. Hope you'll dial us up if you are in the general vicinity of the receiving apparatus.
I don't know what's on the rundown for tonight, but perhaps some follow-up on what we discussed on this morning's "Fox & Friends" with Dean Cain, Dr Nicole Saphier and Pete Hegseth - including ongoing protests from brave Hong Kongers and narcissist climate slacktivists:
Mark Steyn reacts to Hong Kong protesters celebrating US support, 'Fridays for Future' climate change march https://t.co/8zzOinr6yQ @FoxNews #AAG #AAG2020
— All American Girl (@AIIAmericanGirI) November 29, 2019
If you prefer, you can see that segment over at Fox News here.
~It's Black Friday at the Steyn Store, too, because SteynOnline is now seventeen - old enough for the Duke of York to deny he's ever met us. We hung out our humble shingle on the Internet at Thanksgiving 2002, and we're thrilled we're still here, even as the livelier blogosphere of the early twenty-first century has been all but obliterated by the butt-numbingly boring one-size-fits-all control-freak social media cartel of Facetube-Youbook. And to celebrate our survival, in honor of our seventeenth birthday, we're offering seventeen per cent off all my books and CDs over at the Steyn Store.
By the time of our 83rd birthday that could prove a crippling business model, but for now we're going all in. That seventeen per cent applies not only to my solo bestsellers, but also to our two climatological bestsellers - Climate Change: The Facts and "A Disgrace to the Profession": The World's Scientists - in Their Own Words - on Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick, and Their Damage to Science, Volume One - and my bestselling cat album and Christmas album, too. And the regular savings on our Steynamite Christmas specials are additionally enhanced by that seventeen per cent birthday discount. And you even get it on our 99-cent digital downloads, like "Cat Scratch Fever". So just shop till you drop as you normally would, and the discount will be applied to your basket as you check out. But only through Monday!
Oh, and if you're a Mark Steyn Club member enter your special promo code at check-out, and you'll get even more savings on over forty different items.
~If you're looking for something a little different for your loved one this Christmas, there's a stateroom waiting for your nearest and dearest on the third annual Mark Steyn cruise (following our sold-out inaugural voyage last year, and our sold-out second voyage this September).
~And don't forget the present that lasts all year: A one-year gift membership in The Mark Steyn Club, which this holiday season comes with a special personalized Christmas card from yours truly and a gift-boxed special USB stick with three of our most popular Tales for Our Time for your pal or relative to listen to in the car or perambulating through the wilderness or almost anywhere else. That would be The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine and The Thirty-Nine Steps.
Membership in the Steyn Club does come with some other benefits, too, including:
~Our above-mentioned nightly radio serial Tales for Our Time;
~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;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show, SteynPosts, and other video content;
~My ongoing series of video poetry;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, such as last week's trio of members-only events;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~The opportunity to join me and my guests on next year's third annual Mark Steyn Club Cruise;
~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
See you on the telly for Tucker tonight.
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15 Member Comments
It's interesting to see the law enforcement narrative emphasised following the attack in London. Dan Bongino discussed the shrunken land mass of ISIS, overlooking the real estate transformation of Europe and elsewhere that Mark has written about. To focus on what's really going on - including root causes - would be "Islamophobic", so best to chalk it up to the growing number of Misunderstanders-of-Islam.
https://www.steynonline.com/9730/the-language-of-losing
People are getting to the end of their ropes with the Islamic terrorizers, drug cartel terrorists and psychopaths ruining our lives while at the same time being held up as examples of our virtue signaling vomit. That we have provided them safe havens in our countries or that they are let off scot-free from serving time for their crimes against humanity, we only made them examples, elevated them to victims of our "unfair" system, to the point they've become heroes; Oh, we've made great strides in criminal reform and shown such compassion to them that we have bent over backwards so far we now made ourselves vulnerable to the dismantling of our entire systems of governance. Where there is no law and order, no equal justice for all, we have no countries. We just have arrangements, but more like deranged arrangements. Mark has talked plenty about this.
Tucker had a smart gentleman on recently who explained that the Left has shown they can't solve our problems, so they focus on outlandish issues that nobody cares about. It's a decoy and they hope we won't notice their ineptitude and their lack of fortitude to take our problems seriously and work across the aisle to help solve them. They made us out to be the problem: we're the good for nothing, labeled the "racists and the islama-homo-trans-immigrant-aphobes." They would like nothing more than dispose of all conservatives.
The Left avoids spotlighting these violent animals as the problem because they fear them to their very core. They've been bought and/or corrupted by their fear. Why these violent animals continue to get their way with us doesn't help the Left's narrative. It's highlighted, as Mark mentioned when he was talking about the out-of-control Martin O'Malley in the bar challenging Ken Cuccinelli to a parking lot brawl: the Left and who they protect always get the pass.
What do the Leftist politicians care about more, their own citizens' safety and security or lifting up the criminals, psychopaths and border jumpers to give them the opportunities that citizens have?
If we peel away the lies, the Left can't hold onto their power any more because people are waking up to them. The faster it slips away, the deeper they go to the outermost brink of sanity to hold on to their power and their only solution now is to replace the citizens of the countries they were elected to represent and protect with foreign, evil elements. It just takes a little time and they have all the time in the world. Yet another topic Mark has spent time on.
Can't disagree with anything there, Fran. It's alarming to see the literal trashing of America in the space of just a few years.
How long before action is taken to root out the cartels in Mexico and how long can people put up with the cartels defeating the Mexican government's own military? This has been going on a long time and I think we're only just hearing about it across the news. People should be very worried. I knew the drug cartels were duking it out in the various towns around the border and beyond and I knew thousands upon thousands were being slaughtered and hung from bridges as warnings to anyone who would cross them. I knew hundreds of young women between the ages of 18 and 24 were made to disappear in the mid to late nineties in Mexico but to the extent that the Mexican government actually has taken them on and been defeated to the point of surrendering one of the drug cartel's chiefs, that was new to me. Up to that point I thought it was just politicians on the take. This is a whole new level of corruption and President Trump is the key to cleaning up the mess even if it means going in there with our troops.
Those of you who don't subscribe to newspapers missed the anti-Thanksgiving diatribe presented by the Associated press featuring the annual no-thanksgiving festival hosted by 'native Americans' back east. First off there are no true 'native Americans' just first settlers. Apparently no other settlers should have ever emigrated here since the first in owned the entire continent of North America. I've had it with this never ending guilt trip laid on the evil white man. In self-governed Indian communities - not reservations - they are free to live where they like - the level of alcoholism, drug abuse, crime and spousal and child abuse are at horrendous levels. Guilt trips are not going to solve these issues. American Indians must take ownership and assume responsibility. I'm getting off the guilt train.
RAC, having a few Indian Fighters in my ancestry going back to the Mayflower, I just respond to modern critics by saying that my forefathers took this continent fair and square. These SJW attitudes are not new. It has always been true that sympathy for Lo, the Redman is directly proportional to the bleeding heart's distance from the frontier. Now this distance includes the time since the days of yore. Besides, when it comes to who got here first, I have better paperwork.
Not to get too psychoanalytic here, but can another group place guilt ownership upon another? Guilt is either productive or non-productive and if it's non-productive then it can be tossed because it's totally useless. Guilt is a tool used to correct some wrong or misdeed that falls outside one's personal boundaries distinguishing right from wrong. It probably has been hijacked erroneously by bullies as a weapon because it seems a sure-fire method to tricking someone into submission or doling out punishment. But guilt laid on another by the other is just a facade for a sinister plan. (Not a psychologist, just raised in the Catholic Church and an inordinate amount of time was spent each week having to examine one's conscience and then fess up. I was never sure what a little seven-year old could come up with each week to fess up that was so sinful. Nothing really negative meant against Catholics, it's just that it has been hard to avoid thinking a lot about it).
It's impossible for American consumers to avoid China-made goods, and American businesses are shielded from the moral culpability of funding a murderous, repressive, vicious Communist regime that uses slave labor and incarcerates enemies of the state; Nazi-style; while it's backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. Why not begin a Chexit and start gradually divesting from China by relocating manufacturing to better places? It's also a way to blunt or redirect the energy of the economy-crippling red new deals and in the interest of national security. We Hawley have a choice.
#SenJoshHawley2024
Also, I think "Black Friday" is like, totally racist, hater.
And Good Friday is totally judgmental and culturally insensitive.
I caught the comment at the end about protesting climate change at the Chinese embassy. Maybe you could use your Mark Steyn Cruise connections to set up a trip to Hong Kong for the climate change protestors. I would contribute one protestor's fare. Many of us Club members would pay to send an "experienced" climate change protestor to Hong Kong! They could take their frivolous signs, if they want, or join the serious people there waving Trump signs seeking something vital and immediate. They also will see what happens when protests really are about something, not merely cutting Friday classes. The Hong Kong protestors are heroes.
Excited to see Mark in tonight for Tucker. Our tv blew out a bulb the day or two before Thanksgiving but a delivery person sometime yesterday during some steady rains dropped the new bulb over the gate onto the tiled patio below from a good height and it miraculously survived the drop. So after the turkey dinner we pulled out the mammoth dinosaur telly to replace it. I turned on the remote and there was Mark on a Final Quiz rerun, the one where he lost all the points for a whopper of a defeat. I especially liked the "crane in Spain" one. I'm sure he didn't let him defeat him but for a nano second. Tonight will be a winning show, I just bet.
I saw Mark on Final Exam the first time with high hopes and expectations on every question as the disaster unfolded. Last night I remembered every correct answer from before and it was like a slow motion car wreck. Hearing the question, futilely shouting out the answer hoping for a different result but each time knowing doom approached. It was worse than when Greg Gutfeld plays, I Taw't I T'aw A Puddy T'at when Mark comes on his show.
I was so traumatized I thought I would cry myself to sleep but I had eaten enough tryptophan laced turkey that it wasn't a problem.
I didn't mind watching because I knew Mark pays attention to the big Western Civ picture stuff, not game shows, not birds on Spanish runways, not Bernie Sanders's bank account, not even how far as the crow flies to the nearest black hole, all of which denotes a great cerebral intellect. His opponent, Pete Hegseth, who for sure, clearly deserved the win, showed a soft side, which possibly is a sign of emotional intellect, when he admitted to crying every time he watched Titanic. (Well, I can't really say anything ill re this trait about him because I just watched the pilot episode of Little House on the Prairie and cried, and nobody even died. I was trying to figure out which little girl was the young, brilliant Melissa Frances but I could only find two other actresses named Melissa). If Tucker would ask more film and music questions, Mark would wipe the floor up with whomever.
Oooh!
We love the baby blue with the orange/brown palette. Was that a subtle nod to Thanksgiving? If so, sartorial masterstroke OBVS!!!
OK, now that I've commented on the most important thing I'll comment on the Hong Kong clip and say how inspiring the bravery of the protesters is, and how moving it is (even though it's embarrassing that there's no Canadian flags-obviously Prime Minstrel Hairpiece is on the side of his "Basic Dictatorship" overlords).
You mentioned President Trump's adroit linking of trade with the protests. I'm curious if you think the Trump administration has any similar strategic policy plan regarding the Iranian protesters. I know Sec. Pompeo issued a statement of support for the Iranian people, but a Persian acquaintance recently asked me why the Trump administration isn't "doing something" about the situation in Iran and I asked her what exactly she felt is the "something" it could do?