This week's Q&A session is online! This weekly feature is typically only available to Premium Members (paying subscribers), but today I’m making it available to everyone as a sneak preview. Enjoy!
Also, a quick note to new members: The deadline for sending me questions for the weekly Q&A is Wednesday night/Thursday morning at midnight. Any questions I receive after that time will be added to the following week's Q&A. Thank you.
Congress can resolve the illegal immigration "challenge" but prefers border chaos instead. The Democrats seem to want illegal immigrants to come, so why don't Democrats just expand legal entry quotas? The legal entry process is so cumbersome that the average wait time is around 15-17 years to be approved - quotas are so low that it discourages almost everyone from completing the lengthy application process. The quota for employment-based immigrants is 140,000/year established by Congress which equates to about 0.04% of the US population, and that includes the applicant plus spouse and any minor children. Four one-hundredths of a percent appears to say that the US does not want hardly any immigrants even when all politicians praise the contributions of the vast majority of immigrants. If Congress moved that quota up to about 0.5% annually, the border chaos would substantially go away and the government would more easily control bad actors trying to enter. Congress knows this (if they don't, God help us) but continues to blame or shield each president regarding our borders when it is Congress putting children in cages. -- DonEstif
Thanks, Don, for your take. Providing work visas would help too. That way migrants can enter the U.S. when there's work and go home to Central America when there isn't. The system now is a mess. I think everyone would agree with that -- except maybe the president and his team that can't even acknowledge that it's a crisis.
Mr. G., I read this morning that since the election, some of the more left leaning cable news networks have lost almost 50% of their prime time audiences of young to middle aged adults. And that on-line news sites hits are also way down. Wouldn’t ratings numbers like these in the past have resulted in serious changes in anchors and producers? Wouldn’t advertisers begin walking away from these dwindling ratings? Has the news business model become over subsidized and now just solely agenda over profits? --ScottyG
It's never "solely" political agenda over profits, Scotty, but you are on to something when you raise that question. I've long believed that politics is the only thing that might trump profits. But in the case of cable, profits are number 1 in terms of importance ... and profits are intertwined with presenting a liberal or conservative political agenda. Pandering to the audience is how they make money. So don't expect CNN to become less liberal ... or for that matter, don't expect Fox in prime time to become less conservative just because ratings have gone down.
But there's really one reason ratings are down ... and his name is Donald Trump. Bashing him got CNN and MSNBC ratings. They can still bash him but it's not quite the same thing without him in the White House. The bashing is not resonating the way it used to. Hence, younger viewers are finding better things to do with their time. Watching CNN hosts bash Trump was ... entertaining. It was news as entertainment. No Trump means it's no longer entertaining. And in the United States of Entertainment, that translates into lower ratings.
Bernie, why do Democrats and the media only push for gun control when the perpetrators are white men? -- Joe M.
Good question, Joe. Because if they made a big deal out of people in Chicago and Baltimore and other urban areas who use guns to kill people they don't like ... they'd have a certain kind of problem. And we both know what kind of problem that would be.
What’s your opinion on The Patriot act? Is it time to end it or do you believe it’s still pertinent today. --Tim H.
Too complicated for a simple answer. The law has many facets, Tim. But I do know that parts of it give government too much control over our lives.
What do you think of CNN's GPS with Fareed Zakaria and of CNN's Smerconish? -- Bob H.
I think they're both smarter shows than what's usually on CNN. Do they lean left like everything else on CNN? Yes, but they're opinion shows not hard news and the ideology isn't overwhelming.
It appears the high heels are about to drop as the WH announced this week that the current administration is now required to be referred to as the "Biden/Harris administration" (or is it Harris/Biden?). Oh wise one, that raises the issue of who will play the minor role in the Harris-? administration and what criteria will be invoked. What are the odds that a white cis-male might be be selected? Do you think Mrs Clinton is lobbying for the post? Will Vegas or other locales provide odds and the opportunity to be part of the process? -- Michael F.
I don't know who will be playing the minor role, but I do know who's playing the major role. Bernie Sanders. He lost the nomination and won the presidency. Way to go Bern!
Hi Bernie - I enjoyed your interview w/ Matt Lewis today. As I listened to both of you struggle for a term to describe cable news commentators. Here's my suggestion. Call them all "performers". -- Hank G.
They're certainly not journalists. They're entertainers. Performers also works.
Two horrific mass shootings have occurred. This is tragic and vile. And of course the mainstream media has jumped on the white supremacy band wagon, despite the fact that the scum bag that shot up the Asian massage parlor employees publicly stated that his sick twisted motivation was to resist a sex addiction he has, and the other scum bag that shot up a supermarket is a non-white Syrian immigrant and (cue the left wing pearl clutching)—-A Muslim! It appears to me that both shootings were carried out by deranged individuals without a religious or bigoted agenda. Here’s what I want to know—-how can the mainstream media and left wing politicians seriously blame white supremacy for these incidents, and how can so many Americans (including Asian Americans) actually take any stock in any of this obviously bogus narrative? -- “White Supremacy isn’t to blame!? So what!? Push the narrative anyway!” Regards From The Emperor
First, please go back and listen to this week's Off the Cuff on this subject. How can they blame white supremacy? Easy. They blame white supremacy on all sorts of things that have nothing to do with white supremacy. It is obviously bogus, as yo say ... to you and to me ... and I hope to more and more reasonable Americans.
To try and escape the huge lawsuits being filed against her by Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems (for spreading lies and false conspiracies about their voting machines), Sydney Powell's lawyers are now arguing that “no reasonable person would conclude that [Powell’s] statements were truly statements of fact.”
In other words, her lawyers are admitting that she lied her butt off, but are saying she shouldn't be held liable for defaming those companies because her lies were so outrageous that only total morons could have believed what she was saying. Of course, millions of people DID believe her including some who attacked the Capitol.
Do you think this legal strategy has any prayer of working? And if it does, won't that just encourage even more outrageous forms of defamation? -- Ben G.
I almost spit out my lunch when I read that her lawyer said, "No reasonable person would conclude that [Powell's] statements were truly statements of fact." But ... it might work. It's worked before, as I understand it in cases involved Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow. Judges have ruled that people know what they're getting when they watch certain cable show. They know they're not getting hard news facts. It's crazy, but Powell might actually succeed.
I read an article yesterday by Gabby Giffords promoting gun control and the revision of the 2nd Amendment. I feel sad that she was a victim of some madman, but gun control is not the answer to an issue of the mental health of a handful of people, or less, annually. A madman goes nuts and a 100+ million law-respecting American gun owners are supposed to yield to more oppressive government regulation when past actions of the same have done zero in resolving the mental health issue. Here in El Salvador, gun laws are as restrictive as the US and guns are as pervasive, especially leftovers from the civil war, but there is never a madman that kills a bunch of folks in a supermarket, or a theater, or a school (we do have deaths from the US-imported MS-13). It's interesting that many people here do not want to send their kids to college in the US because of the frequent killing sprees. Why the US has this problem when almost all other western countries do not? Do you think it is U.S. gun laws, or is it something unrelated to guns? -- D.E.
Whatever one thinks of guns and gun rights, mentally ill people should not have guns -- or access to them. Everyone I hope agrees with that. The problem is ... how do we determine who's dangerous before it's too late. That's where the serious thinking should be. How do we keep guns out of the hands of people who simply shown signs of mental problems -- but not more than that? It's not an easy one to deal with.
Bernie, Sidney Powell achieved a tremendous amount of publicity and notoriety (and became a hero to many on the political right) for attacking the legitimacy of the U.S. election using completely insane (and easily debunked) conspiracy theories. If her lawyers manage to win the defamation lawsuits filed against her, on grounds that what she was saying was too idiotic to be taken seriously, don't you think it would make sense (and be legally safe) for YOU to start spreading insane conspiracy theories about big corporations in order to bring more attention to yourself and your Premium Membership? I think it would be worth a try (as long as you leave John Daly out of it). -- John D.
You make an important point, John D, and as I believe I've said before ... if you wear a hat nobody will notice that point. If I may suggest, the hat should be made of tin foil.
Thanks everyone! You can send me questions for next week by leaving a comment under this column or sending me an email.
Side note: Click here to read contributor columns on my website this week from Dennis Prager, Bill O'Reilly, and John Daly.