Opinion
By Jeff Childers
09-09-23
Good morning, C&C, itβs Saturday! The Weekend Edition roundup includes: Fifth Circuit slams White House for covid and elections censorship in Missouri v. Biden; Pfizer gene therapy; Pelosi will keep running until sheβs 109; key vaccine advisor advises against boosters; is Australiaβs flu-demic real or media manufactured?; turbo flu killing folks Down Under; Australians just canβt get over their colds but have a fun name for it; field reports; New Mexico outlaws guns as an emergency public health measure; UN declares we are in the climate end game; and New York teachers fired for not jabbing get giant checks and their jobs back.
ππ¬ WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY π¬π
π₯ The New York Times ran a delicious story yesterday headlined, βAppeals Court Rules White House Overstepped 1st Amendment on Social Media.β βOversteppedβ is a bit understated.
The story referred to the case of Missouri v. Biden. In what the Times goofily called βa victory for conservatives,β rather than for all Americans, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court injunction banning the White House, CDC, and FBI from influencing social media companies to remove so-called βdisinformation.β
In the delightful 75-page order, the judges opined that the White House and its Surgeon General had “coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences” and “significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes.”
The appellate court also found that the FBI had illegally coerced the companies, which had taken down 50% of the online material that the bureau’s agents flagged as problematic. “Given the record before us, we cannot say that the F.B.I’s messages were plainly threatening in tone or manner,β the judges wrote. But “we do find the F.B.I’s requests came with the backing of clear authority over the platforms.”
Itβs not an exaggeration to say this case is probably the most important civil rights case in our lifetimes. This ruling is terrific news. To give you some inside baseball about how good it was, Iβll explain some injunction law.
There are four main elements that a party must prove to get an injunction. Three of them are tough. One of the tough ones is that the party must show a βsubstantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits.β In simpler words, that means the party seeking the injunction has to convince the court it will probably win the whole case.
So when a court grants an injunction, it must also find that, at this point, it looks like the party is probably going to win. Itβs like an early trial, a preview of the courtβs final decision, a trial-before-the-trial. The party that wins the injunction then has a huge, permanent advantage in the case.
So the fact that in Missouri v. Biden, the trial court and now the appellate court have both agreed on the injunction, things are looking very bad for the government and its censorship machine. Which explains why the New York Times finally reported on the case.
According to the story, the White House βis consideringβ appealing to the Supreme Court, and I hope they do. But I would be very surprised if that happens, because we all know the Supreme Court is probably dying to weigh in on this issue.
Major progress.
π Look out below! This βsponsored contentβ appeared on Politicoβs homepage this morning:
They arenβt giving up, not even close. Stay vigilant!
But at least Politico labeled it as βsponsored,β which is a massive improvement over what they were doing during the pandemic.
π₯ Nancy Pelosi, at only a youthful 83, announced yesterday she intends to run for re-election in her California district, which she has hogged for 36 straight years now since 1987.
π The UK Daily Mail ran a surprising story yesterday headlined, βFDA vaccine adviser Dr Paul Offit says healthy young people don’t need another Covid booster – despite new BA.2.86 variant pushing virus rates up.β Whoops! This wonβt be good for business!
Pro-jab pediatric vaccine specialist Dr. Paul Offit, who advises the FDA on a range of shots for infectious diseases, and sits on the FDAβs vaccine approval committee, advised the Mail that middle-aged and younger Americans without chronic diseases already have strong enough immunity to prevent severe covid illness this winter.
Offit explained, βUnderstanding that the goal of the vaccine is to prevent severe disease β¦ Boosting otherwise healthy young people is a low-risk, low-reward strategy.β
Yesterday, someone connected to my office, who has an an autoimmune disease, got a call from her doctor the day before she was scheduled to get her covid booster shot. They cancelled β not rescheduled β her booster appointment explaining, βthey donβt work.β
The βconsensusβ is crumbling.
π The UK Daily Mail published a many-layered onion of an article back in July. Youβll forgive me for missing it at the time, since the storyβs real news was buried under a fake news headline. Letβs start with that: βHealthy and fit father-of-three, 37, dies from the flu just five days after falling ill with a slight cough: ‘It’s like we are living in the 18th centuryβ.β
Five days from cough to croaked? Sounds like turbo-flu!
The headline was true to the extent that Australian Mate Babic, a healthy and fit 37-year old dad died shortly after catching the flu.
The Daily Mailβs reporter either did a terrible job of trying to frame flu for Mateβs death, or she was secretly trying to smuggle out the true story. Either way, read the Mailβs description of his flu death and then letβs compare notes:
Carla contracted Influenza B early last week, and on Friday Mate had a slight cough, but was still going about his day as normal, cooking dinner for the kids and settling in for a night in front of the footy⦠On Tuesday night, the 37-year-old was struggling to sleep, running a high fever and suffering from sweats, shaking and bad bouts of coughing so he got up and ran himself a bath.
He walked back into the bedroom and sat on the end of the bed, where he died.
‘It is just an absolute tragedy, I just donβt even know what to do. It doesnβt even seem real,’ Carla said.
Um. Mate β who symptoms included a fever, sweats, and a cough β died sitting on the end of his bed waiting for the tub. He never made it to the hospital. He never even called the hospital. He never even stood up. Before Mate could gasp out a word of protest, flu struck him dead as a doornail, right there, perched on Carlaβs best duvet.
Right before that he was walking around, for crying out loud.
Is that like any flu death you ever heard of? Let us count the problems. First of all β and I shouldnβt even have to say this at this point in our collective involuntary viral-sciences education β nobody dies βfrom flu.β People with bad cases of flu die from complications like bacterial pneumonia, sepsis, or βexacerbation of chronic underlying conditionsβ (per CDC).
Just like covid, coincidentally. But I digress.
Flu doesnβt just strike people dead while theyβre waiting around for a nice hot bath to fill up. The very idea is complete rubbish, poppycock.
Now add the fact that seasonal flu almost never kills healthy 37-year-old dads. When it does kill, seasonal flu kills frail seniors and infants. Remember, weβre talking about seasonal influenza, not 1918.
Thatβs why I called the articleβs headline βfake news.β Even the Daily Mailβs reporters arenβt dumb enough to buy the pathetic story that Mate died βfrom flu.β It was probably a massive heart attack.
And that was just the storyβs outside layer. Now letβs peel back the onion.
π The next layer was the storyβs ostensible narrative frame, which is that Mateβs death was not due to flu, per se, but only happened becauseΒ he didnβt get his flu vaccine.Β To give that weak story some stuffing, the article recountedΒ CarlaβsΒ flu close-call from December. Look atΒ this:
The couple weren’t vaccinated against the flu after Carla had a bad reaction to the Pfizer Covid vaccine. She said they were ‘a bit apprehensive to have the flu vaccineββ¦ Both she and Mate contracted Influenza A in December, with Carla’s illness progressing into pneumonia and resulting in her having to be admitted to hospital.
Wow. This poor couple. First of all, theyβd had their covid jabs, which were mandated hard in Australia. Then Carla had a vaccine injury, which is why they didnβt get the not-mandated flu jab. Unsurprisingly, the story didnβt describe Carlaβs βbad reaction.β
Then, and follow me here, the young, healthy couple both got severe flu twice in less than a year. Theyβd had bad flu in December β resulting in Carlaβs hospitalization, and then again in July, resulting in Mateβs death. The Daily Mail claimed β without evidence β they had Influenza A in December and Influenza B in July, but didnβt cite any test or diagnosis. Thatβs just the Mail trying to cover up the real issue: the couplesβ jab-suppressed immune systems.
Letβs peel back another layer.
Heavily-jabbed Australia is heading toward its βdeadliest flu season in history.β Which is weird, coming right out of the pandemic, with so many people jabbed for so many things, and with everyoneβs immune system on high alert. Of course, if theyβre counting tub-waiting deaths as flu deaths, we can assume the flu mortality figures are inflated.
Anyway, hereβs how the Mail described the flu-demic. Remember, this is back in July:
Australia is on track to eclipse its deadliest-ever flu season in 2019, with medical experts pointing the finger at poor vaccination rates in the post-Covid period.
At least 107 Australians have lost their lives to influenza since the start of the year, according to data from the Federal Department of Health.
Dumb Australians, not taking their safe and effective flu vaccines.
π Now letβs drill down into the 107 dead Australians and see what we find. According to a second Daily Mail story, also from July, βthe highest number among children.β
But it wasnβt infants, as you would expect. It turns out that, coincidentally, the flu deaths are mainly among older children, children old enough to get the covid jabs. In one example, the Mailβs headline read, βLittle Emma, 11, who died from the flu was released from hospital just one day earlier – as cases surge across Australia.β
Emma Schwab, 11, was treated for βInfluenza Bβ at Noosa Hospital in Queensland on July 5th and returned home. In other words, Emma was well enough that the hospital discharged her. The next day her parents called for emergency services but it was too late; Emma either died at home or shortly after getting to the hospital.
I guess now we do have βturbo flu.β It can kill you in one day and you wonβt even be able to make it to the hospital. It can kill you right on the edge of your bed. One minute youβre sitting there musing about whether your wifeβs fancy shampoo would make a nice bubble bath, and then β WHAM! β influenza. Itβs all over.
In case you missed the news back in 2021, Australia also mandated covid vaccines for kids.
π Itβs very tempting to blame all this silly flu fear-mongering on creative death-counting techniques the media honed up during the covid pandemic. It make sense theyβre just trying to sell more flu vaccines. But Iβm starting to think there might be something more going on.
Hereβs yesterdayβs headline from the Sydney Morning Herald:
Weird. Itβs just like Mate and Carlaβs quadruple-flu story. AustraliansΒ keep getting sick. Here are the storyβs first few paragraphs:
Australia is grappling with the βyo-yo fluβ, where cold symptoms continually return, as a sharp rise in respiratory infections has been driven by an early flu season, continuing cases of COVID-19 and the circulation of nasty viruses.
Sydney pharmacist Sylvia Thai said she and her family had been sick intermittently for the past several months, and believed it was a byproduct of low natural immunity.
βWeβve been constantly sick, and itβs been going around in a cycle, we keep giving it to each other,β she said.
Got that? Australianβs βcold symptoms continually returnβ as folks have been βsick intermittently for the past several months,β as a βbyproduct of low natural immunity,β making them βconstantly sickβ in an endless βcycleβ of discomfort, runny noses, and Kleenex.
According to the anecdotal pharmacist cited for the story, Sylvia Thai (if thatβs her real name), customers have been streaming into her pharmacy to get doctorβs notes and cold medicine β and many keep returning every few weeks for more.
The experts arenβt even trying to hide it; they admit the flu season has been fueled by depressed immunity. They just blame depressed immunity on lockdowns instead of jab injuries:
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners vice president Bruce Willett said Australians would also have limited natural immunity after two years of staying indoors, increasing their susceptibility to infections and secondary infections β though this was likely to be the final year of low immunity levels.
To a certain extent, I agree with Mr. Willett. I agree Australians probably have limited natural immunity. We disagree only as to the cause. Hopefully Mr. Willett is right this will be the last year it happens.
π Along the same lines, anecdotally, I got two texts yesterday. The first was from a friend who said her long-standing doctorβs appointment got canceled the day before the appointment, since her doctorβs office said it was dealing with a huge influx of covid cases βpresenting as strep.β Or it was just strep. Then I got a text from a friendly mole inside one of the big health agencies who said the agency was assembling an emergency response team for covid, flu, and RSV.
Our flu season hasnβt really started yet. So far thereβs no evidence of unusual flu activity. But it is going to be an interesting flu season.
NOTE: The Daily Mailβs article about the bereaved young Australian family mentioned that Mate worked for himself, had no retirement or life insurance, and now his fatherless family is having to sell the house that Mate built for them. They have a GoFundMe at https://gofund.me/230e7364.
(Hat tip to Dr. William Makis and his excellent Substack MakisMD, which relentlessly covers covid deaths and studies. Heβs nearly as prolific a poster as I am. Dr. Makis mentioned Mateβs story in a fascinating stack speculating pharma is trying to rehabilitate mRNAβs reputation using flu season.)
π₯ Queen Hotchibobo has spoken! The Santa Fe New Mexican ran a story yesterday headlined, βGovernor bans carrying guns in Albuquerque after 11-year-old killed.β
Who cares if itβs unconstitutional? If it saves just one life.
On Thursday, New Mexicoβs Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham declared gun violence to be a public health emergency. The next day, yesterday, on the strength of Thursdayβs emergency order she signed another emergency public health order that, effective immediately, prohibits citizens from carrying firearms, either open or concealed, in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County for the next 30 days, regardless of whether they have a permit.
Open and concealed carry are (normally) legal in New Mexico. They have a lot of snakes, including the human kind.
Governor Grisham said she βwill either amend or remove or adjustβ the order after the 30-day ban period, depending on βcircumstances.β Circumstances like how her emotions are feeling that day. βI realize, it is a pinch, and then some, on responsible gun owners,β Governor Grisham explained. βItβs a sacrifice that allows everyone else to get their arms around the growing, significant problem.β
Got that? A βsacrifice.β By responsible gun owners. For the greater good.
During the press conference, Governor Grisham explained she doesnβt think that constitutional rights are absolute, especially in emergencies. And she can make an emergency whenever she wants! All social problems are potentially emergencies! Itβs great!
Grisham explained it doesnβt matter at all, that there are already laws on the books against illegal guns, donβt be silly, what nonsense, because there areΒ too many criminalsΒ and everybody knows criminals donβt follow the laws”.”
βI canβt arrest everyone . There are literally too many people to arrest! β¦ We wonβt be able to arrest all of them. If Iβve declared an emergency, I can invoke additional powers. No constitutional right, including my oath, is intended to be absoluteβ¦ If Iβm unsafe, whoβs standing up for that right?
New Mexico Republicans were not amused. Many called her a βdictatorβ and other words that I canβt reproduce in this family blog. Senate Minority Leader Greg Baca (R-Belen) slammed Lujan Grishamβs order as βunconstitutionalβ in a statement from Senate Republicans, saying her βsoft-on-crime approach has failed and put the safety of all New Mexicans in great jeopardy.β
Representative Baca has a point. The Governor just disarmed all the people who follow the law, and as she said, criminals donβt follow laws anyway. Maybe the hoodlums will go along with it since itβs a public health order.
This is just more rotten pandemic fruit. Governors who want to do unconstitutional things now think all they need to do is declare a public health emergency. It worked for covid, after all.
As Iβve said many times before, emergency executive authority is the worst, most anti-democratic idea ever, and we need to drown it in weed-killer everywhere it has sprouted up. The good news is, there are a lot of attorneys who now have plenty of practice challenging insane government overreach like this.
Stand by.
π₯ The Washington Free Beacon ran an awful story yesterday headlined, βCalifornia Dems Pass Bill To Allow Custody Judges To Consider ‘Gender Affirmationβ.β
The bill passed the California Assembly yesterday in a lopsided, party-line vote (57-16), making family-court judges prefer parents in custody disputes who “affirm” their children. The bill now sails over to almost-recalled Governor Newsomβs desk for signature, and he is expected to sign it with great relish.
Before the vote, Legislators took to the microphone and somberly declared that parents βhave a duty to affirm our children.β The bill requires judges, when considering the best interests of a child, to more strongly score the parent who βaffirmsβ their childβs insane belief they are a different gender.
To me, this is a natural outgrowth of a trend I saw developing during the pandemic, when my office would regularly get calls from panicked parents in custody disputes when judges were considering parent preferences for covid vaccination. Some judges were weighting pro-jab parents more highly in custody disputes. Sadly, there wasnβt much we could do. Judges are required to consider the βbest interests of the child,β and too often during the pandemic that came down to whether the judge personally thought vaccination was in the childβs best interest or not.
As you can imagine, the outcomes of these cases were highly inconsistent, since judgesβ personal vaccination opinions varied. Desperate parents seeking to protect their kids from jabs would call the office, hoping that we could somehow put the vaccines on trial in their custody case and convince the judge the vaccines are dangerous. But the problem always was that the βbest interestsβ standard is so fuzzy that a smart judge could just bury the jab issue inside a global βbest interestβ finding.
What California just did was cement that judges must consider the gender affirmation issue, and they have to consider βaffirmingβ to be a positive. It probably wonβt change anything that a liberal judge would have done anyway, applying the βbest interestsβ standard. It only handcuffs conservative judges.
If you stay in California, be careful who you have kids with.
π₯ Yesterday, Portuguese communist and Secretary General of the United Nations AntΓ³nio Guterres called the whole game. Itβs all over. The climate breakdown has begun. Weβre doomed!
Well, βdoomedβ might be over-stating things a little. First, Iβd refer the Secretary General to the Hunga Tonga volcano. Second, Iβm not even too sure about the Secretaryβs data. For example:
And itβs worth hauling out this old Project Veritas 2021 chestnut, in which a CNN technical director admitted the network was scheming to pivot to climate hysteria after people got tired of hearing about pandemic hysteria:
So.
π₯ Finally, NTD News ran an optimistic story yesterday headlined, βJudge Rules Teachers Can Get Jobs Back With Back Pay After Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine.β
A New York state judge ruled Wednesday that ten teachers fired by New York Cityβs Department of Education for refusing to get the covid vaccine must now be reinstated β with back pay. Think about that. Two years of back pay. That will be a sweet little check. Or, not so little. The judge also awarded their attorneyβs fees.
Judge Ralph Porzio found the cityβs denials of religious exemption requests was unconstitutional, capricious, and arbitrary. βThis Court sees no rational basis for not allowing unvaccinated classroom teachers in amongst an admitted population of primarily unvaccinated students,β Judge Porzio wrote. βAs such, each classroom teacher amongst the Panel Petitioners is entitled to a religious exemption from the Vaccine Mandate.β
The so-called βrational basis testβ is the standard most forgiving to the government. Itβs almost impossible to beat, because βany rational basisβ will justify the governmentβs decisions. But the lawyers beat it here.
More progress!
Have a wonderful weekend! Rest up and weβll regroup on Monday morning to kick off the new week in post-pandemic.
Consider joining with C&C to help move the nationβs needle and change minds. I could use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-learn-how-to-get-involved–
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Β© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
