Programming note: Because Britain and Europe have fallen back to winter while the Americas remain sprung in summer, today's edition of Steyn's Song of the Week airs at 5.30pm Greenwich Mean Time/6.30pm Central European - but an hour later than usual on the western side of the Atlantic - 1.30pm North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: From my former National Review comrade John Derbyshire on his weekly podcast:
My advice to Trump would be to hire himself some really first-class private security and not rely on government employees. Even such precautions might not be enough, though. They don't have to shoot the candidate. Trump's doing appearances all over, presumably flying private jet from one to the other. Bringing down a plane isn't that hard, and needn't be obvious. You don't need a hypersonic missile, just a pair of willing hands in the maintenance hangar at the airport.
Dark thoughts. Stay safe, Mr President, please.
On the first point: Trump's not free to get rid of his "government employees" - the Secret Service. The state needs them in situ in case they have to arrest him in the early hours of Wednesday morning or whenever.
On the second point, I was thinking the other day of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary who fell out with Putin and shortly thereafter fell out of the sky. His 'plane mysteriously exploded. In the last Facebook post of her short life, the poor stewardess Kristina Raspopova [above, top right] told friends and family that she was waiting to take off but that the jet was "under maintenance or urgent repairs".
I hope Trump is not as trusting as the late Mr Prigozhin.
~HITLER OF THE DAY: The Harris campaign is now denouncing Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Kamala's "climate engagement director" Camila Thorndike says that Democrats need to start attacking the Green gal. As we all know, democracy is on the ballot and, in the words of Ms Thorndike, Jill Stein is "not a friend to democracy".
Got it. By offering herself for election, Ms Stein is a threat to democracy. For democracy to survive, only Democrats should be on the ballot.
~WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT LIONEL: For three and fifty-one-fifty-seconds of every four years, the novelist Lionel Shriver writes insightful and perceptive columns on the woeful state of our world - which is why we always enjoy having her on our show.
But then, for the last week of the quadrennial cycle, she tells us why she could never support Trump. I first heard it, direct from Ms Shriver, in the green room before The Mark Steyn Show eight years ago. Four years later, she announced in her Spectator column that she'd be voting for a Biden presidency.
Of course, she didn't get a Biden presidency. We have no idea who's been running the United States government these last four years, except - just to narrow it down a smidgeonette - it certainly wasn't Joe. He's still technically head of America's executive branch, although even his own staffers have given up pretending.
This election season it's all a bit more ambivalent. After noting that chums such as Bret Stephens, a purported "conservative" at The New York Times, are all hot for Kamala, Ms Shriver declines to 'fess up:
While as a voter I've the right to a secret ballot (in Democratic New York, it doesn't matter for whom I vote anyway; relaxing, innit?), surely as a pundit I'm obligated to take a side? At last I've decided the answer is no. I don't recall 'will make emphatic presidential endorsements' in my Spectator contract.
That may well be so. "My friend Bret", as she describes him, is not exactly ringing in his endorsement:
I fear that Harris is every bit as vacuous behind the scenes as she seems to be on the public stage. I fear she will be tested early by a foreign adversary and stumble badly, whether it's in stopping Iran from building a nuclear weapon or China from blockading Taiwan or Russia from seizing a portion of a Baltic country. I fear she will capitulate too easily to her party's left flank, especially when it comes to identity politics, economic policy or polarizing cultural issues. I fear she'll have no domestic policy ideas that don't involve mindlessly expanding the role of government. I fear she'll surround herself with mediocre advisers, like her embarrassingly bad veep pick. I fear she won't muster the political will to curb mass migration. And I fear that a failed Harris presidency will do more to turbocharge the far right in this country than to diminish it.
But still and all, when the alternative's Trump, what's legions of mutilated and infertile schoolgirls, Tampon Tim a heartbeat from the Oval Office, and the Third World War? So he's for her. In dodging the question, Ms Shriver makes a different point:
So if she wins, her presidency will likely be titular. She will do as she's told by the same handlers who controlled her senile predecessor.
But isn't that the point? Four years ago, you voted for the "senile predecessor" and now you tell us some handlers unknown have been "controlling" him? And wouldn't that be a more honest argument for non-endorsing? If you vote for Candidate A, Control Central will be running the show, and, if you vote for Candidate B, Control Central will subvert his second term as they did his first. So what's the diff?
But what kind of attitude is that for a supposedly free-born citizen? Four years late, you admit that government of the people, by the people, for the people has, in fact, perished from the earth (or, at any rate, from the southern half of North America). Yet you're kinda relaxed about it?
Kamala is what you get when "identity politics" busts off of the campus and metastasizes to every aspect of life. Also from The New York Times, this election is all about sexism:
Why Gender May Be the Defining Issue of the Election
The issue is rarely directly addressed by either Vice President Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. But the 2024 contest is, in ways overt and subtle, a referendum on the role of women in American life.
As Barack and Michelle have recently been berating their audiences, men need to knock it off with the misogyny and get with the programme:
"If she were a man, would this race be this close?" Gov. Janet Mills of Maine asked a clutch of Democratic women after campaigning for Ms. Harris in suburban Pittsburgh. Joyce Reinoso, one of those women, shot back, "Oh, she would've won three weeks ago."
As Ann Althouse responded, if Kamala were a man, no one would ever have heard of him:
If Kamala Harris were a man, she would not have been chosen for Joe Biden's Vice President, and if she were not Vice President, she would not have been the one that the nomination that was stolen from him got handed to. She wouldn't be anywhere near the presidency.
Old feminist line: Behind every great man is a woman. New feminist line: Behind every great woman is a man telling her what to do. And Lionel Shriver is cool with a "titular" president?
The most basic requirement for a free society is the right to know who is running your government. The Dems are right: "Democracy is on the ballot" - just not in the way they think.
~KAMALA'S CLOSING HAPPY ENDING: This is an actual Democrat ad. Ladies and gentlemen, #WankersForWalz:
NEW: Democrat groups release an ad of a young man m*sturbating in an effort to get people to vote for Kamala Harris.
The Democratic Party: The party of abortion and p*rn addicts.
Progress Action Fund and Defend the Vote have released a $2.5 million ad campaign with the... pic.twitter.com/r8hFYYMnJc
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 27, 2024
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