Opinion
By Jeff Childers
05-17-23
Good morning, C&C! It’s Wednesday, and our roundup includes: First China, now Africa tries to broker Ukraine peace deal while Zelensky stays anywhere but in Ukraine; Russian hypersonic missile seems to have beaten the Patriot missile system — but what does it mean?; NIH announces development of new “universal” mRNA vaccine for flu, but it gets even worse; New York City creaks under the strain of illegal migrants; Feinstein and Fetterman stink up the Senate; and a nice heartwarming video for starting your day.
🗞💬 *WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 💬🗞
🚀 The Hill ran a narrative-bending story yesterday headlined, “Putin, Zelensky to Host ‘African Leaders Peace Mission,’ South Africa President Says.”
According to The Hill, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he’d called both Putin and Zelensky over the weekend, and they each agreed to attend meetings with leaders from six African countries in Moscow and Kiev, respectively. President Ramaphosa will join leaders from Egypt, Zambia, Senegal, Congo and Uganda who make up the peace delegation to Russia and Ukraine.
South Africa was one of a handful of countries that abstained from the UN vote condemning Russia’s invasion, and is widely seen as a Moscow ally. But Egypt and a couple of the other countries on the list did condemn the Russian actions.
When asked about the new peace delegations, White House national security propagandist John Kirby told reporters “We would support any third-party peace proposal, as long as it can be seen as credible, enforceable and sustainable.” The press conference ended early, after Kirby’s nose grew so long it kept knocking over the microphone stand.
As far as I can tell, Zelensky still has not returned to Ukraine since the drone attack on the Kremlin. Yesterday he met Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the UK, and over the weekend he was “attending meetings” in Germany and France. It’s a good thing the boys back home have everything under control.
Or, has Zelensky fled? How long can he keep up the “just visiting” routine?
🚀 Do our generals have any idea what they are doing? I ask because another Proxy War story of great interest appeared yesterday in the UK Daily Mail, headlined “Ukraine Shoots Down Six of Putin’s ‘Unstoppable’ Hypersonic Missiles as Russia Hits Kyiv With ‘Exceptionally Complex’ Attack That ‘Destroyed US Patriot Air Defense System’.”
The story began with a grainy cellphone video that made the rounds on social media over the last couple days. But what it appears to show has potentially profound implications, so the major media players started picking it up.
For non-military folks, the video doesn’t explain much. It shows some Patriot missiles (cost: $5M ea.) rising into the sky from a residential area of Kiev, then it shows a bright flash on the ground where the missiles came from, then about twenty (20) more Patriots (cost: $100M) fired in quick succession, seemingly in random directions, then another bright flash on the ground, and finally nothing.
Kiev promptly, who has also recently claimed to have been hit by falling satellites and meteorites instead of Russian missiles, claimed their U.S.-supplied Patriot missile systems were undamaged and fully operational, having successfully shot down several hypersonic missiles, along with drones and other types of missiles in an “exceptionally complex” aerial attack against Ukraine’s capitol Monday night.
But most analysts agreed that the video appears to show at least two hypersonic Kinzhal missiles hitting their target: the Patriot battery. Reporters later asked John Kirby to confirm whether the Patriot had been destroyed or damaged, and in his typically nonplussed, arrogant style, Kirby shrugged and said, “if it got damaged in the attack, the U.S. will fix it.”
Kirby completely missed the point. Probably on purpose.
Some reporters suggested that other US officials were quietly willing to admit the Patriot system had at minimum been damaged in the attack:
A Patriot battery is not a single unit. Rather, it is a collection of mobile equipment on separate trucks that is staged around a defensive area. This illustration gives you an idea how many pieces there are (there will normally be several launchers):
And here’s how they’re deployed:
The Patriot system’s two most expensive parts are the radar array and the mobile central control unit. If either of those are damaged or destroyed, it’s basically over for that battery. By separating the launchers from the radar and control unit, it’s a lot harder for enemies to track and destroy the battery, especially with a rolling control unit.
Nobody knows what really happened Monday night, and the smog of official lying ensures it’s impossible to pin it down. But the speculation that makes the most sense is that the video appears to first show the Patriot system shooting at drones, then a Kinzhal hits a critical part of the battery, possibly the radar system. Then the operators wildly fired the remaining 20 missiles in under 2 minutes, because they were siting ducks, and if hit they didn’t want the unused ordinance to massively explode in the middle of Kiev. Finally, either a second Kinzhal found its target (the second flash), or the defenders had fired all their ammo and turned in for the night, and it was done.
Now, cast your mind all the way back to last week, when the Ukrainians triumphantly claimed to have shot down a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile — using a Patriot battery. When you combine last week’s story with yesterday’s story, it begins to look a lot like the Russians are playing a game of cat and mouse, testing the Patriot batteries using different strategies to try to figure out how best to defeat the American missile defense system.
And if the Russians DO figure out how to beat the Patriot system, we’re going to have much bigger problems on our hands than Ukraine. I sure hope our generals can spare a moment from trading makeup tips, and consider whether it is a good idea or not to continue dumping our highest tech into the Proxy War for the Russians and anybody else to toy with.
Maybe we should stop trying to find out who has the stiffest missiles.
💉 On Monday, the National Institutes of Health issued a cheerful press release titled, “Clinical Trial of mRNA Universal Influenza Vaccine Candidate Begins.” The sub-lead stated, “Trial will test the experimental vaccine for safety and its ability to induce an immune response.”
Wait a sec. Right there’s your first problem. “Ability to induce an immune response” is not the same as “preventing disease,” or even “reducing severity” of disease, whatever that means. Injecting topsoil or lemonade mix also induces an immune response, but that doesn’t mean it protects anyone from taking a dirt nap or catching scurvy.
These scientists. S.M.D.H.
Anyway, the NIH’s proud press release described the “clinical trial of an experimental, [mRNA, quadrivalent,] universal influenza vaccine” developed, not by big pharma, but by the government itself. In fact, the new “universal” vaccine was developed by Fauci’s old team, the boys over at the NIAID, the crack team who seems to be all involved with DoD’s bioweapons development, purely for defensive reasons, of course, and not that it has anything whatsoever to do with the new mRNA flu vaccine, no, don’t be a silly goose.
You don’t need to study any of this stuff. Leave it to the government experts. Keep playing your cell phone games, aren’t they fun?
The NIH experimental vaccine trial will enroll up to 50 healthy volunteers, aged 18 through 49. I have some questions for these volunteers. I’d like to understand the thought process that leads someone to agree to have an “experimental quadrivalent mRNA vaccine” injected into them in exchange for a small styrofoam cup of watery orange juice and a stale donut.
Will the volunteers ask who will pay for their long-term medical care, or who will support their loved ones if something bad happens? Do they care?
Somehow I doubt these people are as reckless with their money as they are with their bodies. But, if they are, I have some exciting investment ideas I’d like to pitch to them while the opportunity is ripe (i.e., before they get the shot).
The early-stage jab trial will be run through a government program called the “Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers” (CIVIC) program, which was established by NIAID long, long ago, in 2019. I suppose it wasn’t that long ago.
But what’s so interesting is that the GOVERNMENT is developing this drug, not the pharmaceutical companies. Why? Why is the U.S. government getting into the pharmaceutical business? Is there an “influenza emergency?” For a couple years there, we had a good long stretch without any flu at all, and that was even without any experimental quadrivalent mRNA flu vaccines.
What I’m especially wondering is: are the regulatory rules different, maybe less stringent, for government study researchers as opposed to private sector researchers? Or is this all because the government is completely shielded from liability for jab injuries by sovereign immunity?
On the other hand, maybe you find it reassuring that the government is developing experimental vaccines instead of big pharma. Maybe you believe you can trust the government, unlike those evil private-sector money-grabbers. Maybe you think we should just put the government in charge of everything.
Maybe. Or maybe you’d be crazier than a sprayed roach if you thought that stuff.
🔥 New York City is full of illegal immigrants and its woke liberal citizens are starting to chafe a little. The New York Times ran a story yesterday headlined, “New York City Plans to House Migrant Families in Public School Gymnasium.”
Last week:
Don’t mess with Texas.
Then on Thursday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he was asking a judge to reconsider the city’s “right to shelter” law. The Mayor explained, “We are now in court now, today, asking the judge to revisit this law to deal with this humanitarian crisis because, even when they decided to put in place that law, no one thought they would be dealing with a humanitarian crisis of this proportion.”
No. They thought they could spread some sweet tax money around to their buddies running fake charities supposedly helping immigrants. They never thought they’d ever actually have to DO anything. Now the City can be sued by migrants if it doesn’t immediately put them up someplace.
Nice job, geniuses.
In order to comply with its own right-to-shelter rules, which force the City to immediately find private rooms for illegal migrants, the City has been housing migrants in luxury hotels, City rec centers, and now public school gymnasiums, alarming parents.
“People are really concerned,” Brooklyn Councilman Ari Kagan said Friday night. “I got a lot of phone calls from concerned parents, from community leaders. Nobody, nobody expressed their support for this plan.”
Weird!
Students “spontaneously” began protesting the use of their public school gyms as migrant relocation centers:
“We support asylum-seekers, not on school grounds,” chanted the students, carefully threading the virtue-signaling minefield by first showing support for illegal migrants and only THEN going all NIMBY.
But this temporary-housing fracas is only part of the story, right? Isn’t the real question where these migrants go AFTER they are temporarily housed in the hotels, rec centers, and gyms? Who’s putting them up someplace in the long term? And who is paying for them to get up there?
I have a sneaking suspicion I know who is paying for it, and that would be us.
New York City’s migrant story is still growing. Yesterday, the Post Millennial ran a story headlined, “Biden drops Eric Adams from campaign advisory board as New York struggles with illegal migrant crisis.” Whoops! Biden dropped the Mayor, his grip isn’t what it used to be. Or it could be because last month Adams told reporters, “The president and the White House have failed this city.” Apparently, Adams’ relationship with Biden has not improved since Adams made that crack.
Also yesterday, the DC Enquirer ran a story headlined, “Democrat Governor Hochul Says New York Will House Migrants In The Streets – We’ve Reached ‘A Breaking Point’.” Hochul warned, “you’re gonna start to seeing people living in tents, not just on the border, but in New York.”
Welcome to New York Fransisco!
🔥 You will be glad to hear, I’m sure, that Congress has opened its new senior daycare in the U.S. Senate. Yesterday, Slate ran an newsmaking story headlined, “A Brief, Concerning Conversation with Dianne Feinstein.” The sub-headline explained, “The senator seems to not remember being absent from the Capitol.”
Just to remind you, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), 89, despite being fully vaccinated for covid AND shingles, until recently was out of work for three months recovering from her horrible shingles infection. The Senator’s absenteeism hamstrung democrats, who couldn’t approve any Biden judicial picks without Feinstein, since she is on the Judiciary Committee, and without her the committee lacks a democrat majority. Votes must be made in person, and can’t be made from a California sanitarium.
Senator Feinstein’s no spring chicken. Or even a summer chicken, or a fall chicken, for that matter:
The news was, the Senator appears to have completely put her shingles episode out of her mind, as it were, and as the lefty Slate reporter dutifully reported.
“No, I haven’t been gone,” [Feinstein] said.
Okay.
“You should follow the-I haven’t been gone, I’ve been working.”
When asked whether she meant that she’d been working from home, she turned feisty.
“No, l’ve been here. I’ve been voting,” she said.
“Please, you either know or don’t know.” After deflecting one final question about those, like Rep. Ro Khanna, who’ve called on her to resign, she was wheeled away.
Haha, wheeled away! Good one.
Seen online:
Meanwhile yesterday, the Senate’s senior daycare center also hosted John Fetterman, who, like a big boy, was given the chance to ask the president of recently-failed SVB Bank some tough, hard-hitting questions. The problem was, Fetterman’s damaged brain can’t hold the words together long enough to finish a sentence.
The transcript is even better than the video. Fetterman, wielding his glasses dramatically and pointing emphatically, asked the following, highly-extended question:
Is it staggering? Is it a staggering responsibility, that, that the head of a bank, could literally, could literally crash our economy. That’s astonishing! That’s like if you have, I mean like, and, and, they also realize is that, that, that, now they have, it’s in guaranteed, a guaranteed, way to be saved. By no mat-, again, by no matter, no mat-, by how? You know. So, it’s, it’s, you know, isn’t it appropriate that they, those kinds of controls be more stricter? Prevent this kind of thing from going? Or should we just go on, just bailing and sailing whoever bank, regardless of how, how, er, there’s, their conduct is.
You know, uh, uh, I’ll give you an example. The Republicans, uh, want to give a work requirement for SNAP. Your know, for uh, uh, uh, a hungry family has to have these, these kind of penalties, or this some kinds of word, working, required, req-, shouldn’t YOU have a working requirement? After we sail your bank, with billions of your bank?
Because they seem to be pre-, preoccupied uh, when, then SNAP, ah, requirements for works for hungry people, but not about protecting the tax-, the tax-papers, you know, that will bail, no matter, whatever does about a bank that crashes.
SVB’s president didn’t quite understand what Fetterman was getting at, either:
The propriety of big bank bailouts are an excellent question, but who’s going to bail out John Fetterman?
🔥 Finally, to make up to you for that cannibalistic bird video, here’s another heartwarming clip of a dog saving another small child without any animals being gobbled up. In other words, here’s nature acting nobly, instead of gluttonously:
That’s the kind of canine you want to have around. Good boy.
Have a wonderful Wednesday! C&C will return tomorrow morning with another fantastic roundup.
Join C&C in moving the needle and changing 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-
Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com
Emailed Daily Newsletter: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com
© 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.
