Opinion
By Jeff Childers
10-10-22
Good morning, C&C, and Happy Monday! Today’s roundup includes: CDC makes a big change in covid reporting and some people don’t like it; progress in CDC’s mask guidance; PayPal fines and then un-fines misinformation in one day; Twitter censors, then un-censors, official government misinformation; Russian attacks Ukrainian infrastructure after Ukraine attacks a key Russian bridge; Obergefell prediction comes true; FBI feels the heat from Republicans in the Senate; and a hilarious followup to Biden’s “two words” gaffe.
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🗞*WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞
🔥 Last Thursday, CBS ran a long-overdue story headlined, “CDC Ends Daily Reporting of Covid Case and Death Data, in Shift to Weekly Updates.” Finally!
The massive health bureaucracy explained the shift would “allow for additional reporting flexibility, reduce the reporting burden on states and jurisdictions, and maximize surveillance resources.” Sounds good. The new guidance states that from October 20th, state and local health departments will now only need to report new covid cases and deaths to the agency every week, on Wednesdays.
I thought it was good news, but Twitter covid experts were “furious:”
@DataDrivenMD They don’t care if we die. They don’t care if more people are disabled by this. They don’t care if kids have to live with knowing that they gave a virus to a family member and it killed them or disabled them.9:54 PM ∙ Oct 9, 2022
I don’t know. Maybe these fearful folks should be more a smidge more concerned about the risk of global thermonuclear war, rather than fretting about getting their daily updates on a bad cold that has a ton of available treatments at this point?
Just asking. Don’t cancel me.
🔥 This next story is progress, but it’s going to vex you anyway. Guess what the scientists at the CDC just discovered? FACES ARE IMPORTANT FOR CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT.
#DidYouKnow smiling is a developmental milestone for babies? Celebrate #WorldSmileDay by making silly faces to make your baby smile 😊. Visit cdc.gov/Milestones to find other milestones you can track.
Where was World Smile Day the last two years? Oh, that’s right, it was masked by an ineffective cloth virtue-signaling device. That’s where it was.
Thanks, CDC! $cience.
You have to pay close attention. Science changes fast. It can turn on a dime. Here’s the same over-funded government health agency from THREE DAYS BEFORE:
Parents: #COVID19 vaccination helps keep kids from getting seriously sick if they get COVID-19. Protect the health of your children ages 6 months & older by getting them vaccinated as soon as you can. Learn more: bit.ly/3u3wsHF.
So.
💉 The news is moving fast these days. There were two stories over the weekend where the action completely reversed in the SAME DAY. First on Saturday, PayPal published a new user license agreement that allowed the transaction processor to fine users $2,500 every time it thought a user “promoted misinformation,” whatever that means, but by the end of the day, and after thousands of prompt account closures, the company reversed course and said nope, sorry, how’d that get in there, it was just an accident.
Never mind!
Then yesterday, Twitter jailed as “misinformation” Friday’s tweet by Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, wherein he announced Florida’s new guidance advising against vaccination for males under 40, citing drastically high rates of cardiac death following the jabs.
1:58 PM ∙ Oct 9, 202228,185Likes10,249Retweets
You can imagine what people were saying. Ladapo is a STATE OFFICIAL. His agency’s guidance is OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT INFORMATION. Who is Twitter to decide that official government information is MISinformation? Who died and made Twitter king?
Apparently Florida asked twitter to explain themselves. Then — whoops! sorry! — by the end of the day yesterday, without explanation, Twitter un-jailed Dr. Ladapo’s official tweet:
Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD @FLSurgeonGen
Today, we released an analysis on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines the public needs to be aware of. This analysis showed an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39. FL will not be silent on the truth. Guidance: https://t.co/DcWZLoMU5E Press Release: https://t.co/Y0r9yepi7F3:55 PM ∙ Oct 9, 20221,335Likes373Retweets
Twitter really needs to get its act together. What the heck.
🚀 German news magazine Bild ran an indignant story early this morning headlined, “German Consulate Also Hit in Kiev.” The sub-head clarified, “The visa office of the German consulate in Kiev was hit by Russian missiles.” The article included this picture:
If that photo is accurate, that is a HUGE visa office. My goodness. Just how many German visas were they processing in Kiev? It must have been truckloads of visas. Now they’ll have to figure out a different way to handle all those Ukrainians wanting German visas, since Russia has decided to redecorate the place.
The shameless attack on Germany’s visa office appears to be part of a larger initiative. The New York Times ran a story this morning headlined, “Live Updates: At Least 10 Cities in Ukraine Come Under Sustained Attack.” The subhead says, “Authorities said at least five people were killed in Kyiv, as Russia fired missiles across Ukraine in retaliation for an attack on Saturday on a key bridge.”
Ukrainian officials stated the Russians unleashed 77 missiles from 6:20 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. this morning in a nationwide attack. Airstrikes also came from Belarus and the Crimean peninsula using 17 Shahed-type drones. Ukraine’s prime minister Denys Shmyhal said in a Telegram post that eleven important “infrastructure facilities” in eight regions and Kiev were damaged. “Parts of those regions have been de-energized,” he said.
I think he means without power, not demoralized.
One still-unanswered question that I’ve been asking since February is, why hasn’t Russia targeted Ukrainian infrastructure from day one? Russia could have easily crippled the Ukrainians without the loss of a single comrade. So far, I see nothing in the breaking news suggesting that the Russians have made any serious effort to shut down Ukraine’s power and water. They’re just poking at it. It’s like they’re not even trying.
Russians are starting to ask similar questions about the war. I listened to a podcast this weekend — the no-excuses pro-Russia “Russians with Attitude” — and the hosts seriously discussed whether the war was “real” or possibly stage-managed — principally because of the lack of infrastructure damage.
The only rational explanation I can imagine is that Russia has scrupulously avoided creating more humanitarian injury than necessary. But that explanation is inconsistent with the corporate media narrative that president Putin is frenzied madman. So.
This morning’s attacks are being attributed to ‘bridge revenge.’
🚀 The Kerch bridge is a 12-mile span connecting Russia with Crimea built in 2018, after Crimea controversially joined Russia in 2014. According to lore, Putin himself inaugurated the bridge, and was the first to cross it in an orange dump truck. Ukrainians famously detest the bridge, they just can’t stand it, they see it as a symbol of Russian occupation.
On Saturday, a mysterious, massive explosion destroyed a key segment of the middle of the Kerch bridge. Hot takes initially identified the cause as anything from a “truck explosion” to a “commando demolition,” and the BBC later “revealed” the driver’s license of a Ukrainian boat captain alleged to have conducted a suicide attack using a fishing boat or something.
Insider Paper @TheInsiderPaper
JUST IN 🚨 The aftermath of Crimea bridge explosion
7:06 AM ∙ Oct 8, 20221,416Likes648Retweets
But yesterday I saw this, which makes much more sense than a suicide boat attack. It was probably a missile strike.
9:47 PM ∙ Oct 8, 2022787Likes424Retweets
Tellingly, in an official statement, Putin labeled the bridge strike an illegal terrorist attack on “critically important civilian infrastructure,” which frankly is hard to argue with. Ukrainian social media pundits argued that since Russia drove some tanks over the bridge one time, it is fair game, or something. But if that holds water, then nothing is civilian infrastructure.
Vladimir Putin has declared the explosion on a key bridge linking Crimea and the Russian mainland was a terrorist act planned by Ukraine special services. Watch TalkTV live 👉🏻 youtu.be/8VC8gFexeZc
Putin’s logic seems to justify this morning’s attacks on Ukraine, under the goosey-gander rule. In his statement, Putin also alleged that Ukraine “tried to blow up” the TurkStream natural gas pipeline. He warned, “If attempts to carry out terrorist attacks continue, Russia’s response will be severe and at the level of the threats facing it. Nobody should be in any doubt.”
We can see a pattern developing. The Nordstream pipelines, the Kerch bridge, and now possibly the Turkstream pipeline: The Ukrainians hate things in the water! Haha, just kidding. It appears they are targeting significant Russian assets outside the borders of that country. Since Russian law forbids use of tactical nuclear weapons unless the Motherland is directly attacked, the choice of oceanic targets suggests the Ukrainians are being careful not to give Russia any nuclear options.
🚀 Last week, Russian president Putin signed a declaration annexing four Ukrainian territories into Russia, meaning under Russian law any attack on them will now be a direct attack on the Motherland. One of the four regions was Zaporizhzhia, home of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.
🔥 Apocalypse alert! The New York Post ran a bizarre story this weekend headlined, “NYC Judge Rules Polyamorous Unions Entitled to Same Legal Protections as 2-Person Relationships.”
Hahahaha! That HAS to be a mistake! We were PROMISED when Obergefell made gay marriage the law of the land that this would NEVER HAPPEN. It was just a lunatic conspiracy theory to predict that the extra-constitutional decision would be quickly extended to polygamy and all sorts of other deviant sexual behavior.
NYC judge rules polyamorous unions entitled to same legal protections as 2-person relationships trib.al/fVtdv3J
But the headline was NOT a mistake. The lawsuit was about tenants’ rights; the lease provided that only family members could use the unit. The judge found that the third gay polygamist — it was three men — was just as much a part of the “family” as the two original guys in the apartment and was entitled to renew the lease too. It seems there was a breakup and the original guy on the lease left to go touring European festivals or something.
Finding that the third “partner” could renew the lease, even though he wasn’t on it, the judge described the bizarre arrangement using the unwieldy euphemism “significant multi-person relationships”:
The instant case presents the distinct and complex issue of significant multi-person relationships.
Uh huh. It’s complex all right. She continued, raising the awful specter of hateful INTOLERANCE: “Why then, except for the very real possibility of implicit majoritarian animus, is the limitation of two persons inserted into the definition of a family-like relationship for the purposes of receiving the same protections from eviction accorded to legally formalized or blood relationships?”
Um, maybe it’s not hateful animus. Maybe it’s just because landlords want to have SOME control over who lives in their units.
Then the judge asked the $64,000 question: “Do all nontraditional relationships have to comprise or include only two primary persons?”
Um, yes. It should’ve ended there.
But, amazingly, the judge cited Justice Robert’s DISSENT in the Obergefell decision, where he ruefully predicted this very thing would happen: “If not having the opportunity to marry serves to disrespect and subordinate gay and lesbian couples, why wouldn’t the same imposition of this disability … serve to disrespect and subordinate people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships?” Roberts opined sadly.
Indeed. I can’t wait to see the next kind of “nontraditional relationships” New York judges find deserve the full and fair protection of the law. Maybe puppies? Cat people?
🔥 The Hill ran a story last week headlined, “665 FBI Employees Left Agency After Misconduct Investigations: Whistleblower Disclosure.” The gist is that for the last 15 years or so, the agency allowed a bunch of FBI agents — mostly supervisors — who were credibly accused of sexual abuse to retire instead of being disciplined, allowing them to keep their taxpayer-funded pensions and retirement benefits.
Senator Chuck Grassley penned another nasty-gram to FBI Director Chris Wray, which said “The allegations and records paint a disgraceful picture of abuse that women within the FBI have had to live with for many years. This abuse and misconduct is outrageous and beyond unacceptable.”
Republicans in Congress seems to be turning up the heat on the FBI. For some reason. Maybe it has something to do with the agency’s selective prosecutions lately, I don’t know.
“The FBI has failed to announce a single arrest in connection with some 83 attacks on Catholic Churches and 73 crisis pregnancy centers. Strange then that it would have time to track down Houck and the 73-year-old Gallagher.” thefederalist.comThe Next GOP Congress Should Impeach Merrick GarlandGarland has weaponized the DOJ and the FBI, using them as blunt instruments to criminalize the Biden administration’s political opposit…9:37 PM ∙ Oct 7, 20224,906Likes2,193Retweets
Just saying.
💉 It’s baffling. ANOTHER celebrity has been diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy, joining Justin Bieber and Canadian actress Jennifer Gibson. That’s three in one year! This time, it’s broadway actress Susan Egan, who’s had to cancel her Disney-princess-themed show because of a bizarre, sudden and unexpected flare up of facial paralysis:
Susan Egan has revealed that she will no longer be touring with Disney Princess – The Concert this fall due to being diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy. broadwayworld.comSusan Egan Reveals Bell’s Palsy Diagnosis; Anneliese Van Der Pol & Sarah Uriarte Berry to Perform as ‘Belle’ on TourSusan Egan, who has been performing on tour with Disney Princess – The Concert and was set to star in its fall 2022 leg, has revealed t…7:43 PM ∙ Oct 6, 202243Likes9Retweets
Maybe we should call this one, “Belle’s Palsy?”
Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.
🔥 In a hilarious followup to Joe Biden’s “two words — made in America” gaffe last week, congresswoman Lauren Boubert baited a bunch of lefties right into the social media briar patch.
End Wokeness @EndWokeness
LMAO @laurenboebert baited the blue-checks into mocking Biden’s latest gaffe
4:12 AM ∙ Oct 9, 2022
52,604Likes9,569Retweets
LMAO @laurenboebert baited the blue-checks into mocking Biden’s latest gaffe
4:12 AM ∙ Oct 9, 202252,604Likes9,569Retweets
Apparently these wokesters think only a friggin’ moron would get confused over “two words.” So.
Have a magnificent Monday! I’ll catch you back here tomorrow for a free refill.
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The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
