Opinion
By Jeff Childers
10-03-24
Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Already. Your roundup today includes: Cajun Navy sets sail for Hurricane Helene areas since folks can’t wait around for Biden to remember them; giddy corporate media runs tired January 6th claims as failing October Surprise; MSNBC gets unexpected answer from impeachment witness; corporate media coming around to painful admission that JD Vance won the Vance-Walz debate and tries claiming it doesn’t matter; Wall Street Journal fails journalism again by completely missing the point in Elon Musk political donation exposé; and citizens rally to save four-legged friends.
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🔥🔥 They’re baaack! Yesterday, Fox reported a terrific story headlined, “Cajun Navy activates in Hurricane Helene aftermath, says devastation comparable to Katrina.”
The “Cajun Navy” refers to a loosely organized group of volunteers, mostly from Louisiana, who use their own boats to help with search and rescue after natural disasters, especially floods and hurricanes.
The name “Cajun Navy” came into common parlance after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, when Louisiana residents, frustrated by the government’s glacial response, took matters into their own hands. They started using their personal airboats, fishing boats, canoes, and inflatable rafts —you name it— creating a massive flotilla for rescuing people stranded in the floodwaters. The group, or movement, whatever you call it, endured.
For instance, the Cajun Navy mobilized in 2017 for Texas’ devastating Hurricane Harvey.
Now, having expanded the loose-knit group to include private pilots and boaters from other states, they’re heading for the hills of Western Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, to save some more Americans.
One skilled volunteer interviewed for the story said the need remains immense. “America needs to come together. You got to imagine these people lost everything. Everything. So when we are doing donation drives, I tell people that there’s no such thing as, ‘Will they need this?’ They need everything. Food, water, hygiene, medical supplies, tents, tarps, the whole nine — they need everything,” Army Veteran Curtis Drafton explained.
Help for Helene victims continues flooding in. This is America. This is self-reliance. This is how we do it.
🔥🔥 Yesterday, in giddy excitement, corporate media dropped its bath towel and raced out into the national dining room naked, forgetting all about stranded Hurricane Helene victims and the gathering vultures of nuclear war. They even forgot to put on their special prosthetic genitals. They are distracted by a much more intoxicating story, and so this morning the New York Times headlined the first of its multi-part series, “Judge Unseals New Evidence in Federal Election Case Against Trump.”
Of course, the Times completely missed the actual, history-making part of this story and turned it into a boring pre-election hit piece stitched out of ancient, confused January 6th claims.
I’m going to save you a lot of time. In President Trump’s “J6 Insurrection” case in Washington DC, Judge Tanya Chutkan (above right) unsealed prosecutor “Don’t Know Jack” Smith’s latest legal brief. As if coordinated, nearly every platform is running long, hyperbolic stories claiming the now-unsealed brief includes new facts! revelations! things that make Trump’s head go boom! And that sort of thing.
But if you read far enough down the story, the Times eventually coughed up the truth like a moist furball: nothing in Jack Smith’s brief changes anything. Mixed metaphor alert:
So … the new details add texture. Okay, fine. What kind of texture? Smooth, like the parts of the New York Times’ brain that should be covered in bumpy parts? Anyway, the incoherent Times reporter started out with a sports metaphor (“game-changing”) but switched in mid-sentence to “texture,” evoking the visual arts, like how a certain brush stroke can add fine detail to a portrait. Ugh. But, I digress.
If you fed the Democrats’ grotesque “January 6th Commission Report” to ChatGPT, requesting a legal motion arguing that Trump shouldn’t get any presidential immunity under the new Supreme Court standard, you’d get something that looks remarkably like Jack Smith’s brief.
Unsurprisingly, even though the Times wrote six related stories about Judge Chutkan’s politically-convenient unsealing (30 days before the election), it somehow completely missed the real story.
Remember when Joe Biden complained that the Supreme Court’s immunity decision turned Presidents into “kings,” and I told you the exact opposite was true? Jack Smith’s brief proved me right. Even a political hack like Smith could make a case against a President under the new immunity standards.
The days of de facto complete Presidential immunity are now, mercifully, over. We now exist in an exciting new era of personal Presidential liability, and if the Times hadn’t received six boosters, it would have noticed that critical fact. Future and other past Presidents should take careful note.
The corporate media is badly overestimating how helpful January 6th will be for Democrats as an October Surprise. On MSNBC (of all places), anchor Ari Melber asked an anti-Trump impeachment witness, EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland, to talk about how awful Trump was and so on. But the segment went off the rails when Gordon said he changed his mind. He’s planning voting for Trump now even after trying to help impeach the President. A shocked Melber gets visibly upset:
CLIP: Trump impeachment witness changes mind, says voting for Trump now (1:04).
In a word, Melber was gobsmacked. He demanded Gordon say again whether, after testifying against Trump in the impeachment trial, he really planned to vote Trump. Gordon was resolute, insisting, “It is an absolute yes for me. That is how badly the Biden-Harris team has prosecuted their job.”
An obviously rattled Melber tried again. He read back Gordon’s own words from an old MSNBC interview, reminding the Ambassador that he’d said before that the issue of January 6th and saving democracy was bigger than any other consideration. Gordon admitted he’d said that, and while it was true at the time, now “I am seeing so many attacks on Democracy that eclipse January 6.”
Gordon offered to provide examples, but wisely, Melber ended it there.
📉📉 Despite 48 hours of nonstop media damage control, it appears we correctly picked the ultimate winner from Tuesday’s Vance-Walz debate. The New York Times ran a post-debate story yesterday alliteratively headlined, “Tim Walz as a Harris Ally: Folksy, Factually Sloppy and Far Less Visible.. F, F, and F. Let’s call it ‘F-minus’.
The Times evidently decided not to lipstick the vice-presidential pig. “Mr. Walz,” the story plainly admitted, “has a history of misspeaking, misstating facts and otherwise getting over his skis.” The article admitted that, even while delivering uncomfortable gaffe moments, Walz also still avoided answering:
This wasn’t the first time. Walz was in trouble last month for wildly exaggerating his military service, claiming heroic combat status when, in fact, he was never even in the same country as combat in the now-media-forgotten “stolen valor” incident.
Walz is Pinnochio!
A Walz theme may be developing. I’m not the only one who’s noticed Walz’s tendency to, shall we say, stretch the facts to the point they snap and whip Walz right in the eye. For instance, posted yesterday:
The best evidence that Vance did win this week’s debate came toward the end of the story, when the Times punctiliously noted that, “Win or lose, vice-presidential debates have almost never moved the polls.”
Yep, Vance won.
🔥🔥 The Wall Street Journal ran an unintentionally hilarious story yesterday headlined, “Elon Musk Gave Tens of Millions to Republican Causes Far Earlier Than Previously Known.
It’s not news that the world’s richest (and most productive) man donates in large amounts. How is that news? Where are all the exposés about Bill Gates’s donations? Or George Soros? One hint may be that the WSJ called Elon “one of the biggest donors to conservative causes.” That, combined with Elon’s Twitter reach, led the Journal to deem the space entrepreneur “one of the most influential figures in U.S. politics.”
Indeed.
A more interesting fact from the article, which will encourage some of you, is that Musk was apparently one of the largest donors to Governor DeSantis’ short-lived presidential campaign. I think that particular fact evidences both Musk’s intuition and intelligence, especially considering that SpaceX relies heavily on certain resources located in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The Journal also breathlessly reported that Musk gave $50 million in 2022 to a 501c named “Citizens for Sanity.” Sanity? Say no more! Where do I sign up? (It’s an anti-castration group.) There was lots more about various Musk donations, but at the end of the day, the Journal’s exposé said nothing we don’t already know. Musk is active in politics. Ho hum. But that’s where things got really funny.
Behold! One part of Musk’s personal political progress baffled the Wall Street Journal’s crack investigative team:
Hahahaha! Talk about burying the lede. True, Musk “seemed” to undergo a rapid political transformation. But why? Why did Elon undergo a rapid political transformation? Why does the Journal use the mysterious word “seemed?” Why was it hinting that it doesn’t believe in the transformation?
What happened?
What happened was Elon was a lifelong Democrat until California’s power-drunk, out-of-control, barely-literate state politicians chased him out of California. Full stop. Musk was painfully red-pilled by the pandemic.
That’s the real story. The headline should have been, “How Democrats Created The Most Influential Conservative Figure in U.S. Politics.” My old journalism professors are surely spinning in their graves. Well, they’re spinning unless they’re still alive, in which case they are prudently protecting their careers by rationalizing the controlled demolition of journalistic ethics, which is a whole different and less complimentary sort of spinning.
Some folks still have legitimate concerns about Musk and his brain chip project. But you can’t deny that Elon Musk is doing more for our fellow Americans in the Western Carolinas than is the entire federal government:
Free satellite communications to all the affected areas. That must be expensive. But Musk is paying for his generosity and compassion in more ways than just with his money. Consider this op-ed headline from the Hill, two days ago:
(The left’s Public Enemy Number One is, of course, Donald John Trump.)
Musk didn’t need to put himself in the left’s unforgiving crosshairs. He has a lot to lose. But he did it anyway, and for that, Elon Musk deserves much credit.
🔥🔥 Finally, enjoy some good news for all our C&C animal lovers. The New York Post ran a heartwarming story yesterday headlined, “Heartbreaking footage shows heroic rescues of animals across Hurricane Helene’s destruction — as shelters across the country step in to help.
While people remain the top priority for rescue from storm-ravaged Western North Carolina, it will reassure you that some folks are also looking out for our four-legged friends of all varieties: dogs, cats, horses, cows, and so on.
Shelters across the Southwest are taking in furry critters rescued from flooded areas. The stories are filling up the back pages of local and national media.
For example, yesterday Newsweek reported that eleven horses were rescued from a submerged wedding venue. Asheville’s Humane Society — at ground-zero of Helene’s fiercest damage — has evacuated over 100 animals as of yesterday. Many of their volunteers are currently homeless because of the storm, but stayed behind to help remove animals trapped in local shelters.
There are many more similar stories. It bears remembering that, while people remain the most important priority, the animals who keep us company and enrich our lives are not being forgotten. We are a deeply compassionate nation, and disasters like Helene bring out the best in us.
Have a tremendous Thursday! And circle back here tomorrow morning for your free refill of essential news and commentary to help get us all through this election season’s last leg.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
