Mark Steyn is back!

Programming note:  The great Mark Steyn has not made his usual twice-a-week guest appearances on Tucker Carlson for about three months. As of this evening’s (Weds.) 9pm broadcast, HE’S BAAACK!

And this evening’s severe thunderstorm passed through downtown Cleveland.  It inflicted far less damage than the riots and ended with a rainbow:

Photos by Cleveland Tea Party’s roving photographer

Pat Dooley Photography

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Ending the lockdowns now

Ohio is starting to re-open.  Not soon enough, but Ohio is faring better than New York.  New York Post (and Federalist) contributor David Marcus was on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson program yesterday evening to expand on his NY Post op-ed.  He wants New York to get back to work.  He’s right.  Here’s some of his editorial:

By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty.

It needs to end. Now.

In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it.

We were told we were moments away from running out of ventilators. We weren’t, and now the United States has built so many, we are giving them away to other countries.

Meanwhile, the Big Apple is ­dying. Its streets are empty. The bars and jazz clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses sit barren. Beloved haunts, storied rooms, perfect-slice joints are shuttered, many for good. The sweat equity of countless small-business owners is evaporating. ­Instead of getting people back to work providing for their families, our mayor talks about a fantasyland New Deal for the post-coronavirus era.

Open the city. All of it. Right now. Broadway shows, beaches, Yankees games, the schools, the top of the freakin’ Empire State building. Everything. New Yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated.

. . .

Read the rest here.  

We also know that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice has been wrong every time.  For a listing of his continuing mistakes, here’s a column by Mark Simone posted earlier this month at the 710 WOR website.  Not to beat the dead horse, but today we are reading that “Mastermind of LOCKDOWN Dr. Anthony Fauci NOW says staying closed for too long could cause ‘IRREPARABLE DAMAGE’! (headline quote via Pamela Geller here.)  

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Sen. John Kennedy: open the US economy soon or it will collapse.

Sen. John Kennedy made such good sense on Tucker Carlson last night. Via FoxNews:

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Wednesday that deciding when to reopen the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic is like choosing between "cancer and a heart attack."

"The American people are not morons. They understand what I'm about to say," Kennedy said Wednesday. "We've got to open this economy. If we don't, it's gonna collapse. And if the U.S. economy collapses, the world economy collapses. And trying to burn down the village to save it is foolish. That's our cold, hard truth."

Kennedy went on to say that most Americans know the virus is still spreading and understand it will spread faster whenever states and cities loosen their restrictions. As a result, he said, officials will have to be smart about the situation.

"Don't open up in the middle of a hot spot," Kennedy said. "Encourage your elderly and those with preexisting conditions to stay quarantined and provide them financial support. Wear masks, try to socially distance.

"Use technology without violating privacy to try to track the hot spots and track people who have been exposed," Kennedy said. "Test as much as we can. Make sure that we got health care capacity."

Kennedy also reacted to reports that Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is eyeing July as the target for an economic opening.

"He's talking about leaving the economy closed until July. Do you really believe the American people are going to stand for that? They're not," Kennedy said. "This economy is going to collapse."

It was important for Sen. Kennedy to point out that when the economy re-opens for business, new cases of the virus will increase. The supposed purpose of the shut-down was to postpone some of the infections so as to not overwhelm the healthcare system. Plenty of debate going on as to whether that was ever a viable strategy, or even whether that purpose is behind all this.  (Sundance has a good analysis of the ideological aspects in his coverage of the New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy's interview on Tucker Carlson here.  UPDATE: Here's another at Issues and Insights.)

And if you or someone you know contracts COVID-19 / Wuhan virus, you know to ask your doctor if you are a candidate for a hydroxychloroquine cocktail.  Here's a quick look at the risks of taking hydroxychloroquine. 

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President Trump signed bad spending bills

image credit: business insider.com

Just before Christmas, The Swamp Creatures passed more gazillion dollar spending bills and then left town. And unfortunately, President Trump signed them. Roll Call has the details here.

Here are related tweets via Tucker Carlson and his guest Ned Ryun:

Tucker Carlson & @NedRyun Slamming America Last Spending Bill Passed by the Swamp Before Christmas

Ned Ryun: "We elected @realdonaldtrump to veto these things, not to sign them. It's immoral to continue using the American taxpayer as an ATM for the ruling class."

Agree.  It is the first major black mark, IMHO, on President Trump’s report card.  In addition, some amnesty provisions were included in some of these spending bills. See here and here. 

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Corruption in the GOPe

Michael Ramirez cartoon via International Liberty

Some readers will have watched Tucker Carlson’s segment last night on Paul Singer, someone I had never heard of before. The segment interviewed residents of Sidney, Nebraska about the destruction of their town as a result of Singer’s predatory actions.

Today, the blog Ace of Spades has much more, pulling back more of the masks of the Uniparty:

Tucker Carlson Obliterates Free Beacon Funder & 

Possible FusionGPS Paymaster Paul Singer, 

as Well As His Owned-and-Operated Pet Senator Ben Sasse

This is an important story. Both video and a transcript at the link.

Definitely watch until the very end, where Tucker Carlson lays into Ben Sasse, one of Paul Singer's wholly-owned subsidiaries, for refusing to make any comment whatsoever -- or even respond to inquiries from Carlson -- about his views about Paul Singer's destruction of a town in the state Sasse allegedly represents.

Here's a Fox news print story about the topic.

People like Paul Singer control the GOP and are effectively in a conspiracy against actual GOP voters. When Singer's kid announced he was gay, Paul Singer basically mandated that the GOP become pro-gay marriage, and the GOP complied.

Another billionaire funder, Stanley Hubbard, told, in 2016, his own pet candidate Scott Walker that he must not question the Corporate Class Consensus on birthright citizenship and high levels of tolerated, supposedly illegal immigration.

Hubbard issued his rebuke, and Walker changed his tune to sing the Corporate Class anthem within a day.

. . .

Paul Singer calls the shots in the GOP. If you ever wonder why the GOP supports so many unpopular positions with incredible zeal and passion (such as vulture capitalism), and why the GOP runs away from some popular issues like border enforcement, and why the GOP takes the Democrat side on issues which are 50/50 (gay stuff, abortion), it's because very rich liberals like Paul Singer, who have no interest in the GOP or conservatism except to pervert it into a tool to help put more money into their pockets, have willed it so . . .

The full report by Ace of Spades is here.  There will always be vultures like Singer, whether in a free market or in a government-controlled economy, but it is particularly scary to see yet more corruption in the political class, including most of the GOP.   

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First Amendment documentary coming up

Dennis Prager and Adam Carolla were on Tucker Carlson’s program yesterday. They were there to unveil the trailer for their forthcoming documentary, No Safe Spaces. Fox News has an interview with Mr. Prager:

Radio personality Dennis Prager and comedian Adam Carolla's upcoming documentary "No Safe Spaces" is a film detailing the ongoing debate over the First Amendment on college campuses across the country and how identity politics enables it.

Prager and Carolla argue that younger generations have been trained to hate alternative, often right-leaning, opinions and unleash their anger on those with opposing views.

Prager says he's been working on the film since 2017 and was hoping for a PG rating but the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wouldn't budge from its PG-13 designation.

“Despite our best efforts to meet the MPAA more than halfway, they have continued to deny us the PG rating our film deserves," Prager said in an exclusive statement to Fox News.

"Jordan Peterson’s and my quotes will stay and we will not censor the real-life punching of a conservative student. The much more graphic films that regularly receive PG ratings only serve to illustrate what I have experienced with Google in their efforts to make PragerU videos hard to find: powerful forces in Silicon Valley and Hollywood have one standard for ideological allies and another for people like me," he added of the film which mentions "sexually transmissible disease" and "Debbie Does Dallas" and a student is seen getting punched. 

"I will urge my friends and fans who only go to PG movies to ignore the MPAA’s fake PG-13 rating and go anyway. And please bring friends," Prager continued.

The film features commentary from a variety of Hollywood actors, scholars, academics, political figures, and media members, including Van Jones, Alan Dershowitz, Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Cornel West, and Tim Allen.

Carolla also talks to fellow comedians about the challenge of doing stand-up on a campus today. Many comedians, such as Jerry Seinfeld, have said they will not appear on college campuses.

"No Safe Spaces" is scheduled for release Oct. 25.

The home page for this documentary is here. The film premieres in Phoenix/Scottsdale. No dates yet for northern Ohio. Will keep readers posted.

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Mark Steyn is back on Tucker Carlson

photo credit: SteynOnline

Fox News has been moving slowly left, and the shift is more in evidence on the weekend programming (see, e.g., here). But the last time I commented on this subject, I noted with dismay the sudden disappearance of Mark Steyn as a twice-weekly guest on Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show. I am pleased to say that in this instance, my concern was misplaced. Mr. Steyn was on an unannounced summer break and he returns to his Monday/Thursday appearances with Tucker this week, starting this evening. Good news.

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Fail: Fox News blacks out

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse reports on yesterday’s power outage in New York City:

Fox News talking hair Leland Vitter uses his best dramatic voice, channels his inner Shep, and proclaims the end of the known universe is nigh, because the power went out in a part of Manhattan, New York City.  Evacuations, crisis, no stoplights… oh, my.

OMG… “pitch black”, it’s the beginning of the zombie apocalypse or something, only this time they’re bringing hashtags!

I’d go a little further. We had Fox News on yesterday evening, and could not help but notice a disproportionate amount of coverage of this power outage, with endless loops of video, pointless man-on-the-street “interviews,” and thrilling footage of fire engines moving down the street with all lights flashing.

But it was Saturday night, and we often tune into The Greg Gutfield Show for a few laughs. After the opening credit, Fox cut to the “Fox News Alert” bit, right back to the power outage. Ten minutes into the hour, they were still blathering on about the power outage. We switched channels. At about the 30-minute mark, I checked back to see if Gutfield & Gang were finally on air. They were not. Yet more “news” about the power outage. 

This “news” warranted maybe 30 seconds, a minute at most. A year or two ago, I might have thought that the producer in the newsroom was merely exercising poor editorial judgment. But I am more cynical these days. While Fox is covering the power outage, they are not broadcasting political satire. And their “news alerts” are not covering real news. With the hiring of Donna Brazile and others, and many anchors not even pretending to be objective (think Chris Wallace), Fox is moving relentlessly away from “fair and balanced” and “we report, you decide.” Moving slowly but relentlessly to the left.

In our household, we usually check in with One America News Network, Lou Dobbs on Fox Business, and Tucker Carlson on Fox. But even Mr. Carlson seems to have dropped his best twice-a-week guest, Mark Steyn, who has not been on for at least a month. I cannot help but wonder how long we will be able to access conservative online sources of news. Scary times.

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Tucker Carlson’s Ship of Fools

image from Amazon

Jeffrey Lord may have been fired from CNN for no good reason, but he continues to publish on various websites, including American Spectator. Yesterday, he posted his review of Tucker Carlson’s bestselling Ship of Fools. It’s a rave, and I am posting a few paragraphs, either for those who are interested in reading the book or those who want a short précis instead:  

A serious look at a serious American problem by a serious thinker

A truer examination of a serious American problem could not be had.

In his new book,  Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution, Tucker Carlson gets to the heart of the seriously bad situation that confronts America.

Ship of Fools is, says the opening flap of the book, “the story of the new American elites, a group whose power and wealth has grown beyond imagination even as the rest of the country has withered. The people who run America now barely interact with it. They fly on their own planes, ski on their own mountains, watch sporting events from the stands in skyboxes. They have total contempt for you.”

In thumbnail, that could not possibly be a more accurate description of American elites, not to mention the reaction they produced: the election of Donald Trump. As someone who long ago left the precincts of Inside the Beltway Washington, D.C. to come home to the wilds of Central Pennsylvania, it was plain what was coming down the pike in November of 2016. This area was awash in Trump signs. They were everywhere, even hand-painted on the sides of barns. As it were, this was a sure sign of what Tucker describes this way:

Trump’s election wasn’t about Trump. It was a throbbing middle finger in the face of America’s ruling class. It was a gesture of contempt, a howl of rage, the end result of decades of selfish and unwise decisions made by selfish and unwise leaders. Happy countries don’t elect Donald Trump president. Desperate ones do.

Bingo.

Read the full review here.

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Social media, surveillance, and your vote

image credit: picstopin.com

Breitbart has reported on the "the extent to which major technology companies such as Google are surveilling their users." But the segment that I hope everyone will watch (it’s less than 4 minutes) is Dr. Robert Epstein’s appearance on Tucker Carlson from (apparently) a few months ago and re-broadcast last Friday. 

Video credit: YouTube [another platform for surveillance] via thelibertydaily.com

Here’s a partial report and transcript from The National Sentinel: 

Dr. Robert Epstein, a research psychologist at the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, joined Carlson to discuss an upcoming presentation on “The Search Suggestion Effect (SSE): How Search Suggestions Can Be Used To Shift Opinions and Voting Preferences Dramatically.”

The researchers looked at the power of Google and Facebook to influence elections over a period of five years and came up with powerful results.

“I can tell you we should be paranoid because what Google and Facebook can do is really mind-boggling,” he told the host.

“For example, if Mark Zuckerberg on election day last year, if he had chosen to press the enter key early in the morning and just sent out a message to Hillary Clinton supporters only saying, ‘Go out and vote,’ that would have sent her an additional 450,000 voters that day with no one knowing that this had occurred. And that’s just Facebook,” he added.

“What Google can do is really off the scale. Our studies show that Google can take a 50-50 split among undecided voters and change it into a 90-10 split with no one knowing they had been manipulated and without leaving a paper trail,” the research continued.

“It has to do with those search suggestions. Literally from the very first character that you type into the search bar you are being manipulated,” Epstein said. “And we’ve done 16 months of experiments. We’ve done all the research now and we know exactly how this works… The threat is absolutely, positively profound.”

Read the rest here or watch the video. Please share with all your social media friends.

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Mark Steyn on Fox about the weather

via YouTube

If you did not watch Tucker Carlson's show on Fox yesterday evening at 8pm, you'll want to set aside 5 minutes to watch this video clip. If you did watch this segment, here it is so you can watch it again. Author and blogger Mark Steyn is at his most politically incorrect, lampooning insane theories about climate, weather, microaggression, and the Land of Opportunity. 

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Richard Dreyfuss on Fox

Photo credit: pinterest

 

When Fox News dumped Bill O’Reilly and 'The Factor,' it moved Tucker Carlson into the 8pm slot. While I have not watched most of his debut week, I did watch his interview with Richard Dreyfuss. This was not your usual Hollywood celebrity interview. Have a look (Dreyfuss segment starts around the 1:15 mark):

 

 

Dreyfuss's website describing the initiative to reinstate civics in school curricula is here. 

 

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