Turning off the noise …

I’ve been a fan of Tucker Carlson for years. He’s bright, articulate, funny and makes good commonsense points much of the time.

But I can’t watch his show anymore. It’s simply too annoying.

It’s not Tucker; it’s his guests. 

I’m tired of the same guests. The same talking points. The same bullshit night after night.

There’s far too much Richard Goodstein, a Democrat strategist.  No matter what the question is – immigration, voter ID, mid-term elections, whatever – Goodstein always doubles back to the U.S. intelligence agencies who said Russia interfered in the last election, and that former Trump campaign officials have already pleaded guilty. Talk about conflating. 

Left out is that no former Trump campaign official – or anyone else, for that matter – has provided anything that proved collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Or that the oft-quoted intelligence report never said there was collusion between Trump and the Russians.    

One scalp collected so far by the Mueller's team is General Flynn, who entered a guilty plea for lying to the FBI, not anything else.  Another was George Papadopoulos, a power-broker wannabe on the campaign staff, who also entered a guilty plea for lying to the FBI.  Paul Manafort has been indicted for financial shenanigans that occurred long before he joined the Trump campaign.

None of these has anything to do with Trump or the campaign. The only thing close – and only tangentially – is the plea by Papadopoulos who had bragged to Russian operatives he could set up a meeting with Trump, and then lied about that to the FBI. Papadopoulos did try repeatedly to get anyone in the campaign to set up that meeting, but he was such a lightweight and the idea was so preposterous nobody in the campaign would even respond to him.    

But Goodstein blathers on. Why this blowhard is always on escapes me. 

Tucker is also often joined by radical feminist Cathy Areu.  Why? I have no idea. 

Areu is a true believer that all men are guilty of toxic masculinity from birth; it’s just a matter of time before every male acts on it to the detriment of society as a whole and toward women in particular. Consequently, every man is automatically guilty of sexual harassment or abuse if they’ve been accused of either by a woman. He’s a male, that’s all anyone needs to know. 

Her looneyness doesn’t stop there. She believes calling breastfeeding by women “natural” reinforces gender stereotypes and puts too much pressure on a woman to feed her children. In the same interview she seemed uncertain as to whether men can breastfeed. 

I guess she skipped Biology 101. Why give air time to this obvious nutjob? 

How about Jorge Ramos? This “journalist” has nothing to add to the immigration debate except that America has a moral obligation to give illegal immigrants amnesty.  And also, no choice.

It’s the same crap every time he’s on: illegals are already here, they are contributing to our economy, they’re paying taxes, and without them there wouldn’t be anybody to harvest our food and do all the jobs Americans won’t do.  There’s no way we can deport them all, either. 

Left out, of course, is that every illegal here is a criminal, having already committed a felony by coming here illegally. There’s also the fact that any illegal “paying taxes” is using forged or stolen Social Security numbers, another felony. Or that Mexico, where Ramos is from, puts in prison anyone who crosses their borders illegally. But we have a moral obligation?  

There’s almost always someone on if Ramos isn’t to talk about the “Dreamers” and how cruel it would be to deport them, as well. It usually focuses on how mean Trump is to announce the end of DACA, the Obama-era program to protect from deportation the hundreds of thousands of kids – most now adults – brought here illegally by their parents, who also came here illegally. 

The argument is always the same: the Dreamers are innocent people serving in our military, police forces, and among the best and brightest – everyone knows that.  Why punish them for the acts of their parents?    

What about the laws the Dreamers have broken – like being here illegally, falsifying documents, getting financial aid and free public education under false pretenses?  And as far as the “serving” in our military and police – maybe at best that’s less than half of 1% of the Dreamers.

Finally, no one wants to bring this up but DACA was an unconstitutional Executive overreach from the get-go. It would never stand up if it hit the Supreme Court docket. Obama knew this. So did every member of Congress. But nobody wanted to do anything.  

DACA was indeed on a path to the Supreme Court when Trump acted.  If overturned there every DACA recipient would be liable for immediate deportation.  When Trump put an end date on DACA, and pushed it over to Congress where it should have been handled legislatively from the beginning, he merely forced Congress to do what they should have done already.   

Nobody defending DACA wants to acknowledge that the real issue is not protection under DACA, but the push to end chain migration.  Without new limits on chain migration, everyone granted permanent legal status could legally bring in a large number of other family members as new citizens; they could also give a pass to their parents, who committed the original illegal immigration crime. 

We’re talking millions of new people, most with no job skills, eligible for benefits. 

Ramos has already said everything he’s going to say. We’ve heard it all before.  Why continue to give this guy – or the Dreamer advocates – a chance to say it all again, and again? 

Then there’s the clueless crackpot of the day. These barely coherent buffoons can’t articulate much less defend whatever bizarre thing they’re promoting.

It could be a call for white genocide. It could be for impeaching the President, although they don’t seem to know how or what reason would qualify as grounds. It could be for abolishing the Electoral College although they seem unaware that would require amending the Constitution. Or it’s about giving lesser sentences just to black male criminals because their mostly illegitimate children grow up without a father. Or it could be for granting “personhood” to animals. Or allowing anyone to choose their own gender or race because that’s how they identify. 

It’s all just more bullshit.

Is Jerry Springer now in charge of programming? That’s what if feels like to me.  What’s next? Interviews with people claiming to have been abducted by aliens who told them Trump is actually an alien replicant? Or that Hillary is secretly a member of the Illuminati?  

It’s getting to be just too much foolish noise. 

I already won’t watch any shows where guests shout at each other.  Or shows where panelists gang up on the token far-left liberal or far-right conservative apparently selected to be the designated punching bag. Or shows so biased and predictable you can almost outline their opening monologue with 98% accuracy before they even come on the air. 

The upside is it’s dramatically reduced the number of shows I feel compelled to watch. This gives me more time for shows not pretending to be anything but fiction.  And those are more entertaining and enlightening than the standard fare today of opinion shows.

Far less annoying, too. 

I still follow the local news on the Orlando stations, mainly for the weather.  For factual national and international news I rely almost entirely on the printed WSJ.

Nobody shouts at each other on those. And they take reporting seriously. 

I appreciate that more and more every day.