It’s a comment that you see frequently these days. “Why all these train derailments all of a sudden?”
I suppose that what we have here is a case of train derailments haven’t been happening because the news hasn’t mentioned it. Let’s start with facts that the news media won’t tell you:
Since 2020 there have been something on the order of five train derailments per day in this country. It should be noted that figure is down rather markedly from previous years. All of that data being provided by the federal railway administration.
So with that information the question becomes, why are we suddenly hearing about these things now? I think we can pretty much guarantee that the reason is the need for a distraction rather than an overt concern for safety.. this of course constitutes another reason not to fully trust the mainstream news media
A distraction from what, you may ask.
A distraction from the utter disaster, economically socially and geopolitically over the last 3 years. That’s particularly true in comparison to the four years before that.
I’m sure you can fully understand the current administration wanting to focus the attention of the American people on choo-choos running off the rails instead of the country running off the rails under their watch.
So, when Daryl Brooks, the guy who drove his SUV into a Christmas parade killing however many people, writes on his Facebook page
“LEARNED ND TAUGHT BEHAVIOR!! so when we start bakk knokkin white people TF out ion wanna hear it…the old white ppl 2, KNOKK DEM TF OUT!! PERIOD..,”
…That stays online for months, long enough for the news people to find it after he did what he did.
And yet, Facebook put my account in limbo for what reason, again?
Must be that white privilege thing.
Migrants are funneled towards the U.S. southern border via a sophisticated logistics operation paid for by American taxpayers and the United Nations, says war correspondent Michael Yon.
These buses full of migrants just left toward America from Darien, Panama. Any idea the Darien is closed is false. I made this video a couple minutes ago. pic.twitter.com/gmGlFruHuP
— Michael Yon: Callsign BIG HONEY 6 (@Michael_Yon) April 15, 2023
Yeah, Mike, we know.
According to Breitbart News:
Fox News is trying to sideline former Tucker Carlson Tonight host Tucker Carlson through the 2024 election, multiple sources familiar with the matter told Breitbart News.
Well, gee, isn’t that what I said the other day?
As of right now, the plan remains the same: pay out Carlson’s contract and keep him on the sidelines through the 2024 elections,” one source close to Fox News senior executives told Breitbart News. “They knew they would take a beating for this, but everyone — and I mean everyone — is pretty rattled. They weren’t expecting the blowback to be this bad. Hate to say it, but it’s clear that Rupert has lost a step or two.”
I’ve written a number of pieces over the last year or so describing the anger out here in America. I think it’s reached the tipping point somewhere between Dylan Mulvaney and Rupert Murdoch. As Sarah Hoyt wrote some months ago…
There is an anger in the land I don’t think you’re even vaguely aware of. I’m not — not even close — the most hot tempered on our side. And I was a very reluctant Trump voter. But watching your sham- wow-impeachment (It’s Russia, it’s Ukraine, it’s taxes, it’s mean tweets against the squad, it’s the fact that orange man bad), your attempt to reverse elections you don’t like, and silence people who don’t agree with you, has me spitting mad, furious, not even sure what to do with all this anger. And I’m not alone. You have no idea of the anger stalking this land. (And if you say “you sound angry” guess what “Damn skippy. You have no idea how angry.” The only ones not angry aren’t paying attention.)
If we are seeing the signs correctly, the tipping point has been reached. It’s my take that they’re not going to be able to put the fire out.
Far be it from me to suggest that the big guy has diminished brain capacity, but here’s a guy that wakes up every morning wondering if he’s president yet. (Oddly enough, Kamala Harris wakes up every morning wondering the same thing.)
How would you like to be one of the handlers of the big guy? My god, there’s a daunting challenge.
No wonder they were using covid as an excuse to keep him in the basement. Made their job far easier. No need to worry about being popular when your friends the Chinese have the voting machines in hand. We’ll just turn the whole thing on its head at 4:00 in the morning.
As evidence of how difficult the job of the handlers of the big guy is once he’s out and about, consider the cheat sheet that he got caught with the other day. It shows that his handlers forbade him from taking questions from anybody who wouldn’t be a willing lap dog, who wouldn’t be tossing him softball questions.
Seriously now, sending this guy up to run at 80 years of age with his obvious lack of mental acuity is probably the most cynical act in the history of American politics.
And let’s remember that the job of the vice president is to make the president look good. Kamala Harris does seem uniquely qualified for that position.
The most frightening thought in the world for me is the idea that Kamala Harris has more functional brain power that Joe Biden does.
So desperate are these people to hang on to political power, that they offer up this Biden Harris ticket again?
Yeah, okay, you and I are having a bit of a giggle over this business. But if we’re laughing, what do you think leaders around the world are doing?
The media landscape has changed so much in just the last few years that Carslon will be writing his own ticket rather easily. People are used to paying for content à la carte now. That wasn’t the case even five years ago.
And that’s true enough.
The fact is that the changes in the electronic news business are being driven by technology as well as content. In fact, I will suggest to you that because of the way streaming technology works, people are making their own choices what programming to watch in a way that wasn’t possible just a few short years ago. Thus, the programming that survives is by far more in tune with the viewers then it was back in the days when there was only a few channels and you either took that or you turned the set off.
Back in the old days, when only The Big Three …CBS ABC NBC and with them to a lesser degree PBS, had a monopoly on what people saw and when they saw it. Thing is, even back then the news organizations existed solely on what I’ve seen euphemistically called life support from those networks entertainment divisions.
The interesting part about that is that Fox alone made enough money to survive.
With more people turning to on- demand programming these days that Monopoly cannot possibly exist. The finances as problematic as supporting a news division was back in those days, these days it’s impossible.
Increasingly, there’s simply not enough viewers left, even if we assume that these major news outlets were programming things that people actually wanted to see.
And that, too, is problematic at least from the perspective of the people responsible for programming over the air and cable channels, particularly where news programs are concerned. Witness the horrendously poor ratings for bottom feeders like CNN, MSNBC etc.
Don’t look for the rise of leftist talk shows or news programs on streaming services, because of fox being stupid about Tucker Carlson. Oh, they’ll continue stumbling along but they will never draw the kind of numbers needed to support such a venture.
Remember that viewer or listener choice rules most of this.
Most of you probably won’t remember this but some genius came up with the idea of putting former governor Mario Cuomo on the radio, supposedly as a counter to Rush Limbaugh. It lasted for about a month and a half, mostly because nobody was buying what he was selling. That’s a lesson that has yet to be learned by some quarters.
Call it as you will, the very reason that Sean Hannity Tucker Carlson and before that Bill O’Reilly managed to get the viewership numbers they did was because people actually wanted to watch them, whereas people are somewhat less willing to sacrifice a particular time slot in their day to listen to the ramblings of Rachel Maddow, Don Lemmon, etc.
The more popular programs that we have spoken of here moving to the streaming world, will undoubtedly cause the delta in those popularity numbers to grow, not shrink.
Carlson, Hannity, etc, are most likely going to be the last gasp of network based shows of their kind. But let’s not shed any tears. The Monopoly of the channelized programmers has been broken and people will actually get programming they want.
That smile you saw on Tucker Carlson’s face yesterday? He knows it. No matter what happens at this point he will be doing well, because simply put, the restraints are gone, both in terms of what they put into their programming… A point which has been a problem with Fox for some time now… and when viewers and listeners can take part in those shows.
It comes down to the idea that Carlson and the other programming that people actually want to watch will only get larger as a result of this, not smaller.
And that’s a good thing.
If you haven’t seen this have a look here:
Good evening pic.twitter.com/SPrsYKWKCE
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 27, 2023
Already, there are 37 million views on this video. I will guarantee you that the Fox network viewership numbers in the same time period do not total anywhere near that.
Kevin Downey over at pjm says:
Cook County, Ill., State’s Attorney Kim Foxx — whose thug-hugging, limp-on-crime approach has turned Chicago into Tijuana North — has decided not to run for re-election next year.Two questions arise from this.
Has the Soros organization already picked her replacement?
Will the people of Chicago be brain dead enough to accept the Soros appointment?
I just read the words, we must hold our noses and take the cross over votes. Just do what it takes to win. Seems some Republicans claiming to be Conservatives’ have questionable morals, or are confused on what they believe Conservative Voters want. Or simply don’t understand how we have ended up in the shape we are now in.
The “Cross Over” votes are NOT coming from Democrat’s to the Conservative canidate, the “Cross Over” votes are coming from Democrats to the Establishment Republican Canidates. People seem to believe all Republicans are Conservatives. That is absolutely not the case, and the division is becoming more clear to me.
Conservatives are tired of being expected to compromise our core values. We are tired of being lied to. We are tired of being mocked and we are tired of watching our freedoms being snatched away from us.
We conservitives believe in our “Constitutional Rights” Not Goverment Mandated Rights. We need unity within the Republican party, “We The People” must UNIFY against Goverment Control. And until “We The People” realise this, we ALL loose. But more importantly, Our Children and Grandchildren loose.
Fox Corp stock on the very day that Tucker Carlson’s leaving the network was announced, lost on the order of $962 million worth of value.
Now, admittedly some of that loss was probably attributable to Dan Bongino being dismissed, as well. After all, those who play the market tend to watch for trends, not individual situations,and those two hosts leaving the network within days of each other constitutes a trend that any market watcher will react to.
One does not get to the point of being as wealthy as Rupert Murdoch without understanding that kind of thing. He must have known there would be a sizable loss but I think it has outstripped anything that he imagined. Does any company, any organization survive losing that kind of money? We seem to be running in uncharted Territory here.
( Aside….I suppose we will see similar losses to automotive companies pushing electric vehicles, and for the same reason… Public reaction.)
I’ve seen several people speculate that Rupert Murdoch is in the process of setting Fox up for a sale. Well, while I consider that possible, certainly, who is going to buy the place in its devalued condition? Frankly, I have my doubts that he’s ever going to find a buyer this way. And so I wonder if that’s really what he intended. I have my doubts.
Don Surber, whose opinion I value greatly, seems to feel that Murdoch took a dive on the Dominion thing because he needed an excuse to silence conservatives, essentially. But needed why? He has no particular loyalties of his own. Who’s pushing that button? And in any event, it won’t achieve the goal if in fact that is the goal. It will merely inflame the situation.
One gets the impression that the bloodletting at Fox is not complete as yet, if in fact silencing conservatives is the purpose behind all of this. Again however, Rupert Murdoch has no political loyalties to speak of, beyond what’s going to aid his pocketbook. So who is pushing this house cleaning?
The idea of outside influence on the decision-making process here, still ranks very high on the list of possibles. That notion would seem to be reinforced by CNN releasing Don Lemon at precisely the same moment. Not many have mentioned it, but I have yet to see any contradictory evidence to that notion.
Bill O’Reilly seems to think that the action by Fox in the matter is itself a reaction to forthcoming lawsuits. I’d say whatever the lawsuits are that are coming probably won’t hold a candle to the nearly 1 billion dollars worth of losses on the stock over the last few days.
But this forces a question: Where are these suits actually coming from?Somebody’s paying the legal bills. Who? And, why? How much of the lawsuit action going on with regards to Fox is being funded by George Soros, for example? We don’t know, but it’s not hard to see his fine hand in all of this, given the seemingly organized action in that area.
It does seem clear that Carlson was being taken to the woodshed over the January 6th coverage. Apparently, somebody’s seriously afraid that the left will be damaged by the truth coming out.
The notion of inside influence occurs to me as well. For example, I would be very interested in need to see a breakdown of stockholders with an eye toward of the stock is controlled by China, for example. that’s a question I’ve not seen anybody ask, yet.
As this is written Tucker Carlson is apparently doing just fine, thank you. He’s had several offers but I believe I mentioned yesterday that he was taking the news director’s position at OAN. And when his viewers follow him to his new digs, the financial damage to Fox will be even greater.
And all of this just as we are ramping up to the presidential election cycle. That can’t be a coincidence.
After listening to this… Twice, it should be noted… The answer to that question can only go one of two ways. Either it’s always been Tucker Carlson himself, or else the differences between Carlson and his staff are immeasurably small.
Dentist listen and see for yourself.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/04/24/thoughts-on-tucker-carlsons-firing/
An interesting read, is this.
I speculated yesterday that Carlson may very well have had a non-compete clause it is contract. According to this report, he did not. As a result, I expect the things are going to get very interesting, quickly.
I also suggested yesterday that there was some sort of external control on both Fox and CNN to have caused yesterday’s events. And going over this morning’s reporting and commentary I see nothing to counter that suggestion.
Be that as it may, Rupert Murdoch is always been something of a loose cannon on Deck. He has no particular loyalties or more principles that he has guided by past what’s going to make him money. He served the cause of individual freedom in the form of Fox News for some time. But now that mask has been ripped away at the backlash from the long time Fox loyalists both within the company and without is nothing shy of fearsome to behold. That backlash and it’s all the earmarks of surpassing the anger we saw displayed in the Bud light fiasco.
Given that backlash, it seems that even by his utter lack of moral guideposts, always being driven by his bottom line, Murdoch may have even made a bigger mistake than the marketing director over at budweiser. Murdock stepped up and said, essentially, hold my beer. Entirely, but while I admit that’s possible I tend to doubt it. It seems more likely to be however is it this event will end the dominance of Fox among middle America. Murdoch has stepped into a mess of his own making, and just how big of this remains to be seen.
It’s obviously going to take some days for the situation to develop fully, but with the fresh understanding that Carlson has no non-compete clause to worry about, it’s also understood that he’s free to do whatever it is he wants already but there’s a plan in the works.
One of the first things that I would expect to see happen is the remainder of the January 6th security tapes to be processed and released on whatever platform that Carlson decides to land on. And by the way, with that thought comes the idea that speaker Kevin McCarthy releasing those tapes to Carlson’s specifically and not to Fox News in general was probably a stroke of genius or at the very least it shows an understanding of the playing field in Fox News that most people don’t have.
As a further aside, one wonders about the future of Greg Gutfeld, Mark Levin and Sean hannity. Not a one of them needs to be there so it’s a question of how they’re going to react.
Addendum:
Reports have it that Tucker Carlson has accepted a position as news director of OAN.
Addendum II:
Let’s be clear about this, canceling Carlson took more money out of Fox News than Dominion did. Ponder that for a minute.
One thing is certain, this story is far from over yet.
At the same time however I noticed that Don Lemon has been removed at CNN.
There are three things I’m absolutely sure of:
Dan Bongino and Tucker Carlson will go someplace, probably together, and bring their very large ratings with them, and we’ll see them again as soon as whatever non-compete clause they signed, expires.
Don Lemon meanwhile given his history will be asking the age-old question “Do you want fries with that?”
This course of action from Fox was precisely what the Chinese Communist in the form of Dominion was pursuing with the over large defamation lawsuit.
What CNN is up to is a little more difficult to fathom. Then again it’s always more difficult to judge the thought processes of the clinically insane.
Addendum:
I suppose that I should explain the title a little.
When I originally wrote this article I wasn’t quite sure how to put into words what I was thinking, but I have to say that even this afternoon before I fully thought it through I had the notion that there was some degree of manipulation going on here. And then, when the story about Don Lemon also getting canned came out, I became convinced of it.
People, the timing of these moves cannot be coincidence.
Yes, I’m quite aware of the rumors going around that there were impending lawsuits that would be directed at the Fox board of directors, and that the order to dismiss Carlson came from the board on that account. I’m also aware of the reportedly impending lawsuit from Ray Epps, the one really must Wonder whether the government or George Soros is funding that effort.
Those were reasonable explanations for Carlson’s dismissal until such time as the CNN firing of Don Lemon came along. With both of these occurrences happening at once, one must concede the possibility that the timing of these dismissals has to do with the 2024 election, most likely coming from outside each of the companies.
Now, before you start on me, I will say that 5 years ago I wouldn’t even have considered that possibility, and that I would have been derisive toward anyone making that suggestion.
Given what we are now learning about the 2020 election and the partisan activities of both the government and the press both before and since the 2020 election, however, that possibility has been raised to more of a probability than anything else.
Speculation? Why, of course it is. But ask yourself, with what we know about the players and their activities over these last several years what is the likelihood that we’re actually going to get truthful answers to these questions?
And lets you and I also consider the question of who benefits by these dismissals? I dare to suggest to you that each and their own way they both were damaging to the chances of the Democrats regaining power in Congress and hanging onto the White House… Lemon by being the clown that he’s always been and Carlson committing the sin of actual journalism.
I’m beginning to smell the fish here.
1-Mike Hayden, former CIA director, now analyst for CNN
2-Jim Clapper, former director of national intelligence, now CNN pundit
3-Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary
4-John Brennan, former CIA director, now analyst for NBC and MSNBC
5-Thomas Fingar, former National Intelligence Council chair, now teaches at Stanford University
6-Rick Ledgett, former National Security Agency deputy director, now a director at M&T Bank
7-John McLaughlin, former CIA acting director, now teaches at Johns Hopkins University
8-Michael Morell, former CIA acting director, now at George Mason University
9-Mike Vickers, former defense undersecretary for intelligence, now on board of BAE Systems
10-Doug Wise, former Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director, teaches at University of New Mexico
11-Nick Rasmussen, former National Counterterrorism Center director, now executive director, Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism
12-Russ Travers, former National Counterterrorism Center acting director
13-Andy Liepman, former National Counterterrorism Center deputy director
14-John Moseman, former CIA chief of staf
15-Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA chief of staff, now senior advisor to The Chertoff Group
16-Jeremy Bash, former CIA chief of staff, now analyst for NBC and MSNBC
17-Rodney Snyder, former CIA chief of staff
18-Glenn Gerstell, former National Security Agency general counsel
19-David Priess, former CIA analyst and manager
20-Pam Purcilly, former CIA deputy director of analysis
21-Marc Polymeropoulos, former CIA senior operations officer
22-Chris Savos, former CIA senior operations officer
23-John Tullius, former CIA senior intelligence officer
24-David A. Vanell, former CIA senior operations officer
25-Kristin Wood, former CIA senior intelligence officer, now non-resident fellow, Harvard
26-David Buckley, former CIA inspector general
27-Nada Bakos, former CIA analyst and targeting officer, now senior fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute
28-Patty Brandmaier, former CIA senior intelligence officer
29-James B. Bruce, former CIA senior intelligence office
30-David Cariens, former CIA intelligence analyst
31-Janice Cariens, former CIA operational support officer
32-Paul Kolbe, former CIA senior operations officer
33-Peter Corsell, former CIA analyst
34-Brett Davis, former CIA senior intelligence officer
35-Roger Zane George, former national intelligence officer:
36-Steven L. Hall, former CIA senior intelligence officer
37-Kent Harrington, former national intelligence officer
38-Don Hepburn, former national security executive, now president of Boanerges Solutions LLC
39-Timothy D. Kilbourn, former dean of CIA’s Kent School of Intelligence Analysis
40-Ron Marks, former CIA officer
41-Jonna Hiestand Mendez, former CIA technical operations officer, now on board of the International Spy Museum
42-Emile Nakhleh, former director of CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, now at University of New Mexico
43-Gerald A. O’Shea, former CIA senior operations officer
44-Nick Shapiro, former CIA deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to the director
45-John Sipher, former CIA senior operations officer
46-Stephen Slick, former National Security Council senior director for intelligence programs
47-Cynthia Strand, former CIA deputy assistant director for global issues
48-Greg Tarbell, former CIA deputy executive director
49-David Terry, former National Intelligence Collection Board chairman
50-Greg Treverton, former National Intelligence Council chair, now senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
51-Winston Wiley, former CIA director of analysis
Over at American Thinker, Tom Lifson makes a few important observations:
Knocking 6 billion dollars off the market value of one’s employer normally would result in heads rolling. The inevitable has just happened at the Anheuser-Busch subsidiary of InBev, the global brewing giant. AdAge has reported in a paywalled article that Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s V.P. of marketing, has “taken a leave of absence.” The U.K. Daily Mail has a lengthy article on the subject with no paywall.
To be sure, this is not quite the same as being fired and carrying your personal belongings out of the office in a box, but I have a hard time imagining that Ms. Heinerscheid will ever again be entrusted with guiding a major beer to its customers. As the very first female to head marketing for what is claimed to be the world’s biggest beer brand, certain niceties must be observed by Anheuser-Busch in her defenestration.
Look, first of all, I have my doubts that she made such choices as she made, unilaterally. Certainly she made the move because she believed in the idea. But what was the companies’ position? Do we even know how AnBev, based in Belgium (who recently bought Budweiser) deals with such questions outside of the North American market? See, that’s the thing…. for all the heavy breathing going on on this topic, we’ve yet to see that point addressed. Can it be that AnBev totally misunderstood the values of it’s customers? Or is it that they simply didn’t CARE about those values? We’re not going to get an answer to that one, I’m thinking. At the least, not in the short term. It’s my take that they’re probably struggling to figure out what the bleep happened.
Their response to the mess created tells us clearly that they’re clueless how to address this one. They’re trying to be neutral when what is required is a firm stand. They know that, for example, were they to claim it wasn’t a mistake, and continue with their virtue signalling, they’d have an even bigger problem on their hands. But they’re also trying to not offend the sexual dysphoria crowd. I submit that so long as they continue to play it that way, they’ll lose.
The greater question, though, as Tom points up is the political question going forward. Given the strength of the backlash against Bud over this:
Trans issues have the potential to bring many new voters to the GOP in 2024. This includes the highly prized suburban soccer mom demographic, as well as males who had not previously bothered registering to vote but who resent being forced to accept a mental illness as perfectly normal and treat people as if they were the opposite of their natural sex.
Indeed so. And I suggest it goes further. ALL the values positions that the left has been pushing are going to be the downfall of the Democrats going into 2024… and I suspect, the establishment GOP with them. (You know, the “go-along-to-get-along” crowd.. The McCain/Romney/Bush wing of the party.) Both groups should heed the warning signs here. This event is the first thing, really, that the average American has had the ability to respond to in any meaningful way. The anger brought forward by this promotion is a a huge flashing amber light. The next opportunity is going to be the 2024 election.
The backlash on this is huge, and threatens to bring down AnBev. However, mark this well: The backlash is what it is because the America people have voted with their wallets to some very real consequences. The connection is direct.
The question now is, will the next election be as direct, or will we see more campaigns from the Biden Basement, miraculously getting the largest number of votes in history at 4am, confirmed in the middle of the night and another inauguration held behind 20,000 troops and barbed wire?
Thing is, that unlike Government, Anbev cannot do that kind of security. They rise or fall on the backs on their customers and the satisfaction of same.
