Programming note: Join me tomorrow, Saturday, for an Armistice Day episode of my Serenade Radio weekend music show, On the Town. It starts at 5pm Greenwich Mean Time - which is 6pm in Western Europe and 12 midday North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~I see the Deep State have moved to Plan B:
MORE - Monkeys escaped the experimental drug and infectious disease lab, Alpha Genesis, late Wednesday night. Residents are told to lock their windows and doors. So far, none have been captured despite the use of traps and thermal cameras deployed by police.
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 7, 2024
NBC News cautions:
Anyone who finds a monkey should not interact with it.
I feel a chorus of the old jabba-jabba-jabba coming on. In fact, the plague monkeys have "escaped" from this secure facility before. The last time they had a big mass breakout was ...oh, eight years ago.
That would be 2016. So they're only loosed upon the land when Donald Trump becomes President-Elect. Good to know.
~Susie Wiles, Trump's campaign manager, has been appointed America's first female presidential chief of staff. I liked the way he announced it:
Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns. [EMPHASIS ADDED]
Ann Coulter said just the other day that "any other Republican would be fifteen points ahead right now". I don't believe that for a moment - and which of the "any others" anyway? Nikki Haley? Tim Scott? Mike Pence?
Sorry, but only one man could have delivered Tuesday. For four years, I've said Trump pulling a Grover Cleveland in 2024 would be a necessary act of "political hygiene" ...and he accomplished it, brilliantly. So he is entitled to slip in the occasional pointed adjective and refer to his "successful" 2020 campaign, thereby keeping a permanent asterisk on Biden's "victory". For you parchment fetishists who enjoy doing the Constitutional mambo, it's not a small thing to have had an illegitimate leader for four years.
Speaking of which, I chanced to see this Tweet from Mitch Hyman:
Lot of truth coming out. On the linguistic front, Mark Steyn revealed in his Wed. podcast it was a point of principle - even when filling in for Tucker on Fox - never to use the phrase "President Biden." (Only "Joe Biden" or "Mr Biden.")
Kept quiet about 4 years; I wonder why...
I didn't "keep quiet" about it. I've stated this as my consistent position since Biden "took office", so the implication that I only disclosed it when it was safe to do so is bollocks. I fear Mr Hyman is confusing me with the Cumulus pansies with the butch-boy bumper music. For example, here's me on The Mark Steyn Show three-and-a-half years ago - June 16th 2021 (about an hour in):
These guys are serious about power, that's why they stole the election... I can't do much about it, but I have never referred to Biden as 'President Biden'. When I'm on Fox I call him 'Joe Biden', I call him 'Mr Biden'; I don't call him 'President Biden'.
Because this is a joke - and again it gets to one of the big problems with the American right: the things that they claim are all the most potent weapons against what's happened have in fact proved useless. 'Oh well, you know, we have to elect Republicans so we can nominate all these rock-ribbed originalist judges.' Okay so we've had judge after judge after judge after judge after judge, including an entire third of the Supreme Court - and what did all those judges do for you?
Bugger all when it counted.
That's one reason why Trump should take the advice I gave him last time round - skip the tedious six-hour inaugural parade and the Z-list celebs, and have a strictly-business five-minute ceremony at the southern border, with - like Coolidge (in the most truly republican assumption of power in this nation's history) - a simple swearing-in by a low-level justice of the peace.
Or does he really want to be sworn in by John Roberts?
Revenge is a dish best served cold. And, after the last four years, Trump needs to start serving it from Minute One of Day One.
~For one thing, America's arse class (which accounts for about ninety per cent of the population of DC and surrounding counties) has signaled in the last forty-eight hours that it is incapable of behaviour modification.
Good morning, this "political analyst's" video is still up.
Enjoy it! 😂😭😂 pic.twitter.com/U1feADLdcD
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) November 7, 2024
Do watch the video: it's hilarious. "I'm a political analyst," she assures the store clerk, I'm telling you right now" - whereas you're just the schlub selling me the fizz to toast "Madam President". Did you major in "political analysis"? Do you have six figures in "political analysis" college debt?
The "analyst"'s key insight is:
Reproductive rights are what it all comes down to.
In the end, abortion didn't deliver for the Dems. I wonder if even American women are as eager to kill their kids as, say, my own newly elected Republican governor seems to assume:
As for abortion itself, set aside religious and moral objections - because, as Kamala Harris (in possibly the only truly authentic remark of her campaign) assured that "Jesus is Lord" guy, "You're at the wrong rally." Nevertheless, whichever rally you're at, America has now joined Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc, in the demographic death-spiral. That means it relies on "migrants" to prevent the collapse of its 1930s welfare boondoggles. And immigration on that scale comes at huge cost to social tranquility, and transforms your nation into something other.
So, simply as a utilitarian proposition (as I've been arguing for over twenty years), the state has zero interest in making it more convenient for you to off your baby. If you are obliged to drive to a neighbouring jurisdiction, tough. But the Spanish state's interest is in getting Spaniards to have more Spanish babies, and the Greek state likewise - and that goes for Americans, too.
~My New Year's resolution is to eschew the arse class entirely. Cy Coleman, the great composer of "Witchcraft" and "The Best Is Yet to Come", once told me of going to a Tony Awards rehearsal at a time when Broadway was occupied from top to toe by the big Brit hits (Cats, Phantom, Les Miz, etc).
The run-through didn't go so well for Andrew Lloyd Webber's offering. So Andrew turned to Cy as they stood in the wings and said, "You seem to be much better prepared." And Cy replied: "I live here."
That's the first problem with America's ruling class: they don't live where you live; they don't even want to visit where you live; they have no desire to set foot where you live. And, in consequence, they know nothing.
I have met The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin just the once, a long time ago, at the Plaza Hotel, at a roast for Norman Podhoretz, at which I was speaking along with Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger and the like. And at the end Ms Rubin came up and introduced herself and said what a thrill it was to meet me. In those days, she used to do a sort of morning news round-up for Commentary and often linked to my columns hither and yon.
Then she joined The Washington Post as their "conservative columnist" and, when Trump came down that escalator, commenced to "evolve" into ...well, see for yourself:
It is 1933. Hitler is in power. No time for a fucking seminar on Democrats messaging errors
— Jen Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) November 8, 2024
Her old boss John Podhoretz responded:
There's a pogrom going on in Amsterdam right now. Hitler is in Amsterdam, not here. Hitler is in Iran, not here. I am sickened by you, Jen. Rachel would despise what you have become, and the fact I had anything to do with your having a career is one of the shames of my life. https://t.co/aXf24iDw6i
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) November 8, 2024
He's right about that pogrom in Amsterdam. But it's only 1933 in Washington because Jennifer Rubin and her friends wish to make it so. That's sad and pathetic. The bad news is they are insane; the good news is they are insane and impotent. As we learned on Tuesday, they are talking only to themselves.
Ignore the irrelevant Ms Rubin and The Bulwark and Max Boot et al, but focus on the real obstructionists buried deep in the Permanent State ...and, if you're Trump or Vance or Musk, serve that dish icy cold.
~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on towards our first decade. We thank you all. For more information on the Club, see here.
