Programming note: Please join Mark tomorrow, Wednesday, for another midweeek Clubland Q&A, when he'll be taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet. The fun starts at 3pm Deep State Standard Time - which is 8pm Greenwich Mean Look Time.
~For much of my adult life I have been writing about US election years - mainly because the US is the only country that has an "election year", as opposed to the six weeks that Britain and most of the Commonwealth require for an election campaign. But this is quite the weirdest primary season in American history: On the Republican side, a year ago Trump had the support of 45 per cent of GOP voters; now he's at 75 per cent, climbing to eighty. The caucuses and primaries are of less consequence than the indictments. Nevertheless, for Nikki's donors, a sham contest staggers on, of little interest and less importance.
Over on the Dem side, they can't even be bothered with lame-o nomination dinner-theatre. Four years ago, in response to a guy who's all candidate, no minders, they came up with a guy who's all minders, no candidate. It worked, and they figure it will work again.
Meanwhile, a man with the highest name-recognition in American history, mainly because his father and his uncle were both assassinated, has been denied Secret Service protection by personal order of his own party's Homeland Security Secretary. Robert F Kennedy Jr is the first candidate to have his security application rejected in fifty-five years ...which is to say since his namesake dad was killed.
Odd. If one were of conspiratorial bent, one might begin to wonder if the Deep State isn't inclined to teach a brute, hard lesson in what happens when scions of blue-chip brands are minded to wander off the reservation.
~RFK himself is bursting with good health, as you can see in the brief muscular T-shirted glimpse of him with a certain "niche Canadian" included in this video:
Many people ask me where I stand on energy, chronic disease and abortion. Aaron Everett has made another beautiful video featuring many of the statements I've made on the issues you care about.
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 15, 2024
For the full interview with yours truly glimpsed above, see here. It's worth a watch.
I don't agree with everything the candidate says above: I find the "spirituality" passage somewhat insufficient and the abortion stuff a little too close to the conventional evasions of Kerry/Clinton Democrats. But RFK is a serious man asking serious questions. Quote from the above:
Why are we the sickest people on earth?
Indeed. Just about the first thing any foreigner notices when watching American telly is that the news shows are full of ads for products you've never heard of promising to cure ailments you've never heard of. If this seems striking, it's because the only two countries on the planet to permit total untrammeled unrestricted direct-to-customer pharmaceutical advertising are the US and, oddly, New Zealand. But in the latter Big Pharma does not lavish its bounty on the news guys in the same way they do on Madison Ave: one might almost get the impression that in America it's not about selling the pills but about buying off any media outlets inclined to look too closely into those pills.
As a result, America is the most medicated nation on earth - and pays more for the worst outcomes, certainly in the developed world. Per the CIA, the US comes in at Number Seventy-Two on the world's Life-Expectancy Hit Parade - and that life expectancy is in decline:
At least partially as a consequence of over 1 million Covid-19 deaths, life expectancy in the U.S. has declined significantly over the past few years, falling from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77 in 2020 and 76.1 in 2022 — undoing over two decades of progress. This puts the country far behind its wealthy peers: Countries such as Japan, Korea, Portugal, the U.K., and Italy all enjoy a life expectancy of 80 years or more. Countries such as Turkey (78.6) and China (78.2) also fare better.
Yeah, but, if it's the Covid, all those other countries had the WuFlu too, didn't they?
Which topics are worth discussing in the world's longest election campaign? RFK Jr wants to talk about why Americans are "the sickest people on earth"; Nikki Haley wants to talk about why we need war without end on at least three continents.
~Speaking of American "spirituality", St Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue has just held a funeral service for a transgender "sex worker" at which she was celebrated as "the mother of all whores" while her fellow prostitutes danced in the aisles.
~By common consent, the best day-by-day coverage of the Mann vs Steyn trial came from everyone's favourite Irish chancers, Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer - whose audio dramatisations have enlivened our days at SteynOnline for the last month or so. For a postscript on the proceedings, here's McElhinney & McAleer on Steyn and sundry other matters in the latest edition of The Ann & Phelim Scoop. Click below to watch:
There will be more from Ann and Phelim later this month on the Mark Steyn Caribbean Cruise.
~On the other hand, for the pithiest précis of the trial, there's always Dawn of Climate:
🚨 Michael E Mann vs Steyn & Simberg
3 Week Trial: The Abridged Version
cc: @MarkSteynOnline pic.twitter.com/nNAXawApUu
— 𝔻𝕒𝕨𝕟𝕋𝕁𝟡𝟘™ 🇵🇭💖🇨🇦 Climate of Dawn (@DawnTJ90) February 16, 2024
~Meanwhile, the ambition of those who would "save the planet" grows ever more unbounded. The madmen in the Nehru jackets at the Spectre board meeting in Davos are hot for their latest wheeze:
Scientists plan to begin pumping chemicals into the sky over the next few weeks and months from several countries around the globe, including in the United States, Australia and Israel... The idea, promoted by [Bill] Gates and leftist billionaire George Soros, involves pumping manmade white clouds containing chalk dust and other chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the Earth's surface.
Blocking the sun's light would allegedly lower the planet's temperature enough to reverse global warming.
Because, if you want to block out the sun, putting the guy who invented Windows 98 in charge of it makes perfect sense.
~You have to be able to talk honestly about climate and Covid all the rest, and increasingly in the west you can't. So I've been enormously touched by how many readers, listeners and viewers wish to support my free-speech lawsuits on both sides of the Atlantic - over the warm-mongers in Washington and against the UK state censor Ofcom over the Steyn Show's coverage of the vaccine injuries and deaths. There are several ways to lend a hand, including:
a) signing up a friend for a Steyn Club Gift Membership;b) buying a chum a SteynOnline gift certificate;
c) ordering a copy of Mark's latest book, The Prisoner of Windsor (you won't regret it - ask Kathy Gyngell); or
d) lavishing upon your beloved a once-in-a-lifetime Mark Steyn Cruise.
With the first two methods, one hundred per cent of the proceeds goes to a grand cause - and you or your loved one gets something, too.
~Finally, we thank all the newcomers to our ranks in recent days, from Surrey Hills to Singapore, Welshpool to Wicklow, Minneapolis to Monrovia (seriously). We hope to welcome many more of you in the years ahead. For more information on The Mark Steyn Club, see here.
~Notwithstanding the stresses of recent days, we had a very busy Presidents' Day weekend at SteynOnline, starting with Mark's column on constitutional desecration both metaphorical and literal. On Saturday he marked the third anniversary of the death of the indispensable man. Rick McGinnis's weekend movie date opted for Tony Randall in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, and on Sunday Mark pondered the increasingly brazen politicization of US justice. For the Washington/Lincoln/Presidents holiday, Steyn offered a two-part musical cavalcade of forty-five songs for forty-five presidents (plus an asterisk).
If you were too busy spending the weekend waving the US Constitution at random passers-by, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a shortened work-week begins.