Opinion
By Jeff Childers
09-07-24
Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! It’s time for an abridged Weekend Edition roundup, mostly good news: Boeing’s troubled space ship lands by remote control and doesn’t blow up or even lose any landing gear; jab-pushing TV doctor questions the public health establishment over mosquito lockdowns; Hunter Biden ditches his trial in favor of throwing himself on the mercy of the court; good news on President Trump sentencing schedule angers corporate media; Georgia shooting case twists answer some questions; DOJ cracks down on Russian social media buys; and like Liz Cheney, Putin endorses Kamala Harris for President.
🗞 C&C ARMY POST 🗞
🪖🪖 With luck, Dad will be discharged today. We plan to move him in with us for the time being to get him back to scratch. Thanks to everyone for the many prayers and expressions of support.
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
✈️✈️ The BBC ran a spectacular story yesterday headlined, Boeing Starliner returns to Earth, but without astronauts. It was a partial win for the embattled aircraft manufacturer. It landed without exploding, so that’s good. It also delivered the astronauts to the space station. But, and I’m not quibbling, bringing astronauts back is a pretty important part of the whole spaceship process. Forgetting to bring the astronauts is not like forgetting your credit card at the Mexican restaurant after a couple happy-hour margaritas.
On the plus side, on Wednesday Boeing successfully landed its troubled Starliner spaceship using remote control, which is harder than you think. It was a nifty bit of engineering that sadly is not getting the recognition it probably deserves, since the human beings didn’t participate and are still bobbing around the International Space Station in zero gravity, racking up costly holdover-tenant charges.
Boeing isn’t super happy with how things turned out, especially since they feel like they were right about their spaceship working and all. So Wednesday, Boeing representatives boycotted NASA’s press conference announcing the spaceship’s successful return. When asked by reporters about their absence, NASA official Joel Montalbano explained only that Boeing decided to “defer to NASA” to represent the mission.
As for our intrepid space travelers, well, it’s not like missing a connection in Atlanta. The two marooned astronauts, Butch and Suny, are still on an extended standby list. They plan to hitch a ride back to Mother Earth in February, on a repurposed SpaceX mission. Assuming they don’t get bumped again.
Boeing is probably upset since they’d insisted that Starliner was fine for passengers, but NASA overruled them. NASA’s reluctance to try anyway might have to do with the leaking helium tanks or the scrambled onboard computer software, but it may also have something to do with headlines like this one from last week:
Or this CBS Colorado headline from three days ago:
I’m just a lawyer, not an aerospace engineer, but maybe Boeing should check the bolts on the plane wheels or something. Are they on tight enough? I mean, why do the tires keep falling off? Wheels may not seem very important for a flying vehicle, but just as getting astronauts back is a small but essential part of space travel, landing can also be an important part of the whole commercial flying process.
If I were Boeing, I would stick a ring camera on all those plane wheels. Just saying.
🔥🔥 Jab-happy TV covid doctor and former Planned Parenthood director Leanna Wen is still hanging around and offering unwanted advice on when to get your next jab. But in an encouraging development, it seems her advice is much more nuanced now. This week she even published an op-ed in the Washington Post headlined, “A rare mosquito-borne illness is resulting in curfews — and controversy.”
Some local health officials have come up with their latest germaphobic obsession: mosquito lockdowns. Wen noted that, after one guy died from eastern equine encephalitis, several New England towns issued voluntary curfews, and at least one closed its public parks from dusk to dawn. It wasn’t clear whether they filled the skate parks with construction sand.
But astonishingly, Dr. Wen began her piece —and maybe I’m reading this wrong— intensely critical of public health officials:
I would have said they still don’t have a strong grasp on strategies, but as I said, I’m no quibbler. The TV doctor disclosed that in 2019, six people in Massachusetts died from EEE, but nobody imposed lockdowns back then.
Wen carefully avoided answering the question, but —and this was the important part— she fairly described both sides of the argument, maybe even leaning into the this is dumb side of the controversy.
Of course, the answer is ‘no lockdowns,’ since protecting people from natural hazards has never been, and is not the government’s job. Sure, tell folks that mosquitos carry infectious diseases. But expect citizens in a representative Republic to evaluate their own risks, and either stay home or go to the park if they want to.
This nannyism is getting out of hand.
Wen didn’t mention it, but I think it is also fair to note how some of these local officials giddily lock down for a single EEE death but are strangely unconcerned with the myocarditis epidemic. Weird.
🔥🔥 CBS ran a surprising story yesterday headlined, “Hunter Biden pleads guilty to all 9 charges in tax evasion case before trial in Los Angeles.” On Thursday, right on the eve of jury selection in his tax evasion trial, Hunter Biden shocked media by pleading guilty to all charges. He finally fessed up.
Cast your minds back to notorious mobster Al Capone, whose tax evasion trial began on October 5, 1931. On the first morning of trial, District Court Judge James Wilkerson shocked everyone by switching out the entire jury for a slate of alternates right before the trial started (he suspected jury tampering, if you can believe that). About two weeks later on October 17th, the jury deliberated for nine hours and found Capone guilty on all counts of evading paying taxes on his murderous illegal activities.
Judge Wilkerson sentenced the infamous mobster to 11 years in federal prison, fined him $50,000 (plus $7,692 for court costs), and ordered Capone to pay back taxes in the amount of $215,000 plus interest.
I mention Capone’s case as a benchmark against which we can measure what happens next in Hunter’s case. The two cases bear remarkable similarities in terms of their media profile, the allegations of other, harder-to-prove crimes, and the failed efforts to broker plea deals (Capone’s pre-trial plea deal fell apart just like Hunter’s did).
One big difference between the two cases was that Hunter avoided the embarrassing public trial process, by throwing in the towel right before the proceedings started. It’s a fair guess that Hunter’s legal team was trying to control the narrative and mitigate the political fallout, by avoiding potentially damaging testimony or evidence they knew would emerge during his trial.
The article reported that Hunter first tried to enter a rare ‘Alford plea,’ where he could continue to claim innocence, but still admit the prosecution had enough evidence to convict. Alford pleas are highly unusual and judges are not bound to accept them. After extended argument, Hunter abandoned that line and just entered a straight ‘open plea.’
District Judge Mark Scarsi must now decide on Hunter’s sentence. The maximum available sentence for the charged crimes is 17 years. Normally, criminal defendants get some credit for pleading guilty, which results in a shorter sentence, but since Hunter waited until the eve of trial, the judge might not consider his plea as strongly a factor for leniency.
Judge Scarsi set Hunter’s sentencing hearing for December 16, 2024 —after the elections— which was probably the right move. But wait till you see who else’s sentencing was pushed till after the elections.
🔥🔥 Corporate media was madder than enraged hornets yesterday about what you will probably consider good news. Politico ran a highly annoyed column with the argumentative headline, “There Was No Good Legal Reason to Delay Trump’s Sentencing.” When you also consider Hunter’s sentencing schedule, it adds up to another bizarre, 2024-style confluence of events.
At a practical level, Manhattan Judge Merchan had little choice. The DA’s office had filed a motion indicating it did not oppose Trump’s request to delay sentencing till after the election. In his order granting the delay, Judge Merchan said the DA’s lack of opposition could “fairly be construed as a joinder of the motion.”
In other words, DA Alvin Bragg had agreed to push the sentencing hearing. Presumably he has his reasons. So the judge was faced with nobody arguing for sentencing the President —an unprecedented sequence of words— next week as planned.
Politico’s columnist was offended by the delay. He clearly suggested Judge Merchan should have moved forward anyway. The news mag blamed MAGA attacks on the judge, suggesting Judge Merchan had been cowed by a barrage of conservative inquiries and harsh criticisms.
In other words, it’s Trump’s fault. It’s gotten political.
But — what did they expect? There’s a good reason why Presidents have never been prosecuted before, and that reason is because Presidents are polarizing political figures. Even if the case had merit, which it doesn’t, it was always inevitable the case would become inextricably mired in politics right from the filing of the initial indictment.
This case is the Stormy Daniels “hush money” case, where Trump was convicted of ‘falsifying business records’ because his accountant wrote “legal expenses” on several payments to Trump’s lawyer. Since Trump is a first-time offender, the crime is a victimless white-collar crime, and since it was such a creative prosecutorial stretch, Trump should get probation. Meaning, no jail time.
If Judge Merchan sentences Trump to prison anyway, it would provoke an unprecedented Constitutional crisis over the separation of powers. The easiest way to avoid that unpleasant outcome would be to order Trump’s sentence to start after he left office. Assuming Merchan did not take that easy out, the case would likely return back to the Supreme Court.
At that point, the simplest way for the Supreme Court to solve the Constitutional conundrum would be to stay Trump’s sentence until after his term, on the theory that imprisonment is inconsistent with Trump’s ability to fulfill his Constitutional duties as President. That way, the Supremes could avoid wading into deeper legal waters by creating controversial new immunities or presidential doctrines.
It is worth marveling about the miraculous fact that, despite the dizzying and historic barrage of state and federal lawfare, Trump remains free as a Twitter bluebird and politically undamaged. If anything, all the lawfare helped the former President. For just one example, Trump’s constant legal battles have kept the former President in the media’s klieg lights, and have guaranteed his constant publicity, which inarguably fueled his campaign fundraising.
Trump is a marketing genius, and his enemies handed him troves of public relations ammunition.
It’s also striking how the political prosecutions amount to legal attempts to assassinate President Trump, which have all failed just like the actual assassination attempt did.
I predict probation, but I’m not ruling anything out. This is 2024, after all, and anything could happen.
🔥🔥 We got a few answers in the tragic Georgia shooting case yesterday. The UK Daily Mail ran a story headlined, “REVEALED: Georgia school shooter Colt Gray was ‘bullied for being gay’.”
The Mail got hold of a 2023 transcript of a police interview with Colin Gray, shooter Colt Gray’s father, who was also charged this week for criminal negligence. Last year, the Jackson County Sheriff investigated a Discord post threatening a school shooting, which the Grays denied Colt had anything to do with.
In the 2023 interview, Colin said two noteworthy things. First, he plausibly explained he’d taken up hunting with Colt, to get the boy outside more, and off of video games. The assault rifle Colin gave Colt at Christmas does not seem like a hunting weapon, but it’s reasonable it could have been intended for shooting practice. So that was one mystery explained.
More curiously, Colt’s dad also told police the boy was being bullied at school for being gay: “It went from one thing to another… I was trying to get him on the golf team… [they were like], ‘Oh, look, Colt’s gay. He’s dating that guy.’” It’s still not clear whether Colt was transitioning, but it did confirm a nexus with LGBTQ+ brainwashing. Colt was in middle school.
Confusing kids about their sexuality is not helping relieve kids’ anxiety.
🔥🔥 Those rascally Russians are at it again! Buckle up. Russiagate 2.0 has officially begun, just in time for the election. The New York Times ran a story this morning headlined, “Russia Secretly Worms Its Way Into America’s Conservative Media.” Never mind they just caught another deeply embedded Chinese spy in New York. Putin is always the problem. And, even after reading the article, it’s not at all clear that ‘America’s conservative media’ was involved.
Remember that, during covid, the U.S. government paid influencers to push jabs and lockdown narratives. Biden and Cackling Harris are paying influencers to promote their campaign. And NATO paid influencers to come to their big confab recently to promote warmongering.
But when Russia does it, it’s pure evil.
The gist was that a couple Russians hired a Canadian PR firm called Tenet Media. Tenet then paid social media influencers, to buy original content that was publicly posted on Tenet Media’s website. Tenet then “promoted” its original media channels on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, etc.
This week, with great fanfare, including an appearance by Grandma Garland herself, the DOJ indicted two Russian employees of Russia’s TV network “Russia Today,” in absentia, for money laundering and for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which is only enforced against conservatives. Hunter Biden could not be reached for comment. The DOJ’s indictment named but did not charge a variety of U.S. influencers like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, describing them as unwitting victims of the foreign influence scheme.
The Times asked Russia Today to comment on the indictment, and the network promptly replied, “We eat U.S. D.O.J. indictments for breakfast. With lots of sour cream, usually.”
I would have guessed they’d eat it with ketchup, but maybe that’s just my American bias.
The DOJ’s indictment was unsurprisingly short on details of exactly what ‘influence’ the Russians were allegedly pushing. The only concrete example the indictment cited was general criticism of the Ukraine war, which seems like low-hanging fruit. I mean, I’ve personally dished out that kind of criticism in double handfuls. (Full Disclosure: I am not being paid by the Russians or anybody else for criticizing the Proxy War.)
It’s still gross, but this kind of pre-election DOJ censorship is vastly better than what we were dealing with the last time around. At least we can see them doing it this time.
🔥 In related news on Thursday, Politico (EU edition) ran a curious story headlined, “Putin: Kamala Harris laughs ‘infectiously,’ we want her to win.” The sub-headline added, “Russian leader again claims he’s rooting for the Democrats in U.S. election.” Claims? I guess they don’t believe him.
CLIP: Russia Today interviews President Putin, who endorsed Kamala Harris (1:09).
President Putin said Kamala’s laughter was what captured him. “She laughs so expressively and infectiously. That means she is doing well,” the Russian leader wryly explained. He further explained that, if Kamala does well, then maybe she’ll lift the economic sanctions that both Presidents Trump and Biden imposed.
But Putin further explained his support for Candidate Plan B is nothing new. “We previously said Biden was our preferred candidate. So now we will do as he said, we will support Ms. Harris,” he explained. Russia Today’s studio audience seemed pleased with the president’s endorsement.
Or at least amused by it. It’s hard to tell with Russians. Inscrutable.
You just can’t win with Democrats nowadays. Putin can endorse them all he wants, but if Russia Today hires a few influencers (exactly what the U.S. always does, here and abroad), well then, it’s war. Again.
Have a wonderful weekend! C&C will return on Monday with another terrific roundup of essential news and commentary.
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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
