Opinion
By Jeff Childers
10-26-23
Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Your roundup today includes: House finally elects a new Speaker, and it is terrific news; shooter loose in Maine—what we know; WEF strangely silent on Middle East War; Reuters alarmed at plummeting trust in media; Middle East mini-updates; Hamas used a low tech way of evading Israel’s high-tech surveillance; Israel’s focus on the West Bank’s weapons problems; media narrative splinters over Gaza invasion as Biden dithers; federal court tosses long-standing California assault weapons ban; NYT admits “slight” problem with jabs causing strokes and seizures; meet the terrifying annual Fall tripledemic, just in time for Halloween; India sees mysterious outbreak of heart attacks among festival dancers; and a revealing insight into twisted, booster-seeker thinking.
🪖 Note: I’ll be on Steve Kirsch’s VSRF podcast tonight about a hot topic:
Vaccine Safety Research Foundation on X
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
🔥 You’d think corporate media would have stopped whining and been happy that, at long last, the House finally elected a new Speaker.
You really would think, after all the querulous carping they did all week, that reporters would now be happy to have a new Speaker. But I guess you just can’t please some liberals. This morning’s New York Times headline probably tells you everything you need to know about Representative Mike Johnson (R-La.), our terrific new Speaker of the House:
He’s not just a rightwing conservative. According to the Times, aptly-named Johnson is a hard-right conservative, which is infinitely better than a limp-right conservative, which as the ladies can attest, is more or less useless, not to mention unattractive.
For its part, having recovered from a brief fainting spell, the flaccid Washington Post called Mr. Johnson the very worst name in its entire “Slander for Dummies” playbook: a Trumpian election denier:
And you know what should happen to election deniers! Who are just like insurrectionists and other Civil War treason rats. Well, except for democrat ones, like Hillary Clinton or that plump lady from Georgia, whatshername.
You’ll be forgiven for not having noticed Representative Johnson before. He appears to be one of those quiet, effective ones, who get things done and stays out of the crosshairs. Until now, of course. But don’t underestimate him. It took a lot of respect from his peers and some skillful politicking to land the Speaker gig, especially with everything swirling around the nation’s toilet bowl the way it is these days.
For a sample of his political views, here’s what Mr. Johnson tweeted about censorship and the Twitter files:
“Twitter was basically an FBI subsidiary before Elon Musk took it over… The Twitter files should be a matter of bipartisan concern for every member of Congress and every American citizen because it is a bedrock principle of our Constitution that the government does not get to decide what speech is acceptable or true.”
For what it’s worth, President Trump likes Johnson, who got all caps and an exclamation point:
Further confirming Johnson was a great choice, deranged liberals like Ed Krassenstein think Johnson’s election was the worst thing they ever heard of and are hoping it was just a Halloween prank:
The first item incoming Speaker Johnson brought to the House floor yesterday was a popular resolution affirming support for Israel and condemning Hamas that easily passed 412-10. Johnson has got a lot of work to do, what with a controversial budget deadline looming next month, and with Joe Biden sniffing everybody’s hair trying to find even more taxpayer money to send to the billionaire oligarchs losing Ukraine’s war.
After “congratulations,” and “good luck,” my message to the new speaker is: Fix Our Borders First.
🔥 In the overnight news, the New York Times ran a story early this morning headlined, “At Least 7 Dead in Lewiston as Police Put City on Lockdown.” The sub-headline added, “The sheriff of Androscoggin County said the number of fatalities was ‘growing.’ The authorities said they were seeking a man who was ‘armed and dangerous.’”
It looks like another shooting spree, this time in Lewiston, Maine — the state’s second largest city after Portland. Early reports say a lone gunman shot seven people in a bowling alley and then went into a bar. Authorities told the general public to hide:
Given various descriptions of the scene, the number of dead seems likely to be much higher than seven. Unconfirmed reports as of posted put it in double digits.
Authorities are searching for Robert R. Card, 40, of Bowdoin, Maine, having identified him as a person of interest but specifically saying he is not a “suspect.” He remains at large. Social media is already going berserk with everyone trying to leverage the shooting politically and to shape the narrative. We are in the “hot takes phase” and having alerted you to the basics, I will now sit back for a day or two, pray for the victims and their families, and wait for some reliable facts to bubble up out of the noisy information swamp before I comment any further.
I suggest you do the same.
🔥 Tell me what you think this interesting information nugget means. Since October 7th, despite hundreds of interim tweets, the World Economic Forum’s twitter feed has mentioned the War in Israel exactly zero times.
Surveying the topics most featured in the WEF’s busy feed, you’d get the impressing the WEF is a teenage boy with a “savior” dating strategy: it’s all climate change, artificial intelligence, and women. And, I’m sorry ladies, but according to the WEF, you are on a rapid downhill slide:
Nothing about Israeli women though. Or even about Palestinian women, for that matter. War can be pretty hard on women, and you’d think with all the WEF’s fascination with the gentler sex it might have snuck in a tweet or two for the hardships of the war moms. But no. And given the vast — nearly incalculable — global economic implications of a regional Middle Eastern war, you would think the World Economic Forum might have something to say.
Instead it’s all just silly, woke buzzwords. The WEF is obsoleting itself, and I say good riddance. Become obsolete faster.
What do you think the WEF’s silence means?
🔥 Earlier this month, Reuters published a massive media status report clocking in over 158 pages, titled Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023. It’s a stinker.
Reuters is wringing its withered, bloodstained hands over the fact that traditional media — aka corporate media — is getting its butt kicked by random loudmouths on social media. In other words, the largest block of people would now rather get their news from Coffee & Covid than from The New York Times:
For some reason that Reuters thinks involves “misinformation,” global trust in trad-news media is low and still falling. In its conclusion, Reuters called for another bowl of buzzword salad: it said “urgent collective multi-stakeholder action is needed to rebuild trust in the media ecosystem, tackle disinformation and promote media information literacy.”
Haha, these marxists kill me. Collective action! Media ecosystem! They’re not even pretending that the different trad-media outlets are competitors anymore. They are just symbiotic or parasitic members of some kind of gross media hive. Collective action? Back when we were doing capitalism, that kind of thing used to be called “monopolistic action” and was barred by the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Times change, I suppose.
In more bad news, Reuters revealed that only 32% of Americans say they “trust” trad-media. Haha. Of course, Reuters blamed President Trump and goofily claimed that pandemic-era reporting somehow increased trust in media, which made me laugh harder than a hyena who got loose in a cannabis dispensary:
I may have to start reading some Finnish newspapers to see what’s going on there. Google translate works. Kind of. Sometimes it generates some very amusing locutions. Any Finlanders in the house today to explain to the rest of us why Fins trust their trad-media so much? Is it the fresh Finnish air or something?
Anyway, there’s a lot more great stuff in the report, but I’m not suggesting you read it all. Here’s my bottom line: I predict trust in trad-media will continue falling. Why? Because nowhere in Reuters’ mega-report did it suggest TELLING THE TRUTH or FAIRLY PRESENTING BOTH SIDES.
It was even like those concepts were somehow impolite or offensive, like asking whether masks actually work back in 2021 or something. They just aren’t getting it.
🚀 Middle East Update 🚀
💣 Information is starting to trickle out about how Hamas outsmarted Israel’s crackerjack intelligence agencies. On Tuesday, the New York Post ran a story headlined, “Hamas used landline phones in Gaza tunnels to evade Israeli intelligence for 2 years while plotting attack: report.”
“Hello? Can I get a medium double-stuff pepperoni with extra cheesy bread?”
Hamas’ vast concrete and metal-reinforced tunnel network, dubbed the “Gaza metro” by Israeli Defense Forces, runs for over 300 combined miles underneath Gaza, allowing the terror group to hide, plot, store supplies, move fighters, weaponry and supplies undetected throughout the region, and carve their initials into the concrete walls. The tunnels are highly sophisticated, offering all the comforts of a terrorist’s home: power, air conditioning, cement roads, rail systems, and apparently, a completely-independent, secure, analog phone system that cannot be monitored by Israeli intelligence.
The Hamas tunnels give a different take on the term, “moles.” They are moles armed with rocket launchers and machetes. Anyway, it is helpful to understand how Hamas used a low-tech solution to avoid Israel’s high-tech monitoring systems.
It made me think of the (friendly) anonymous letter I received this week that had been typed on a typewriter. A real typewriter. With a ribbon and stuff. I had a brief thought that it might be handy to have a typewriter around these days. You know. I’m not saying why.
🚀 In a second story shedding light on the horrifying failures of Israel’s intelligence services, the Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday headlined, “Weapons Flood West Bank, Fueling Fears of New War Front With Israel.” You may or may not know that the West Bank is a gigantic, Palestine-occupied territory in the middle-west of Israel. The West Bank is much bigger than the tiny Gaza Strip in Israel’s south:
Don’t ask how it got that way, it would take all morning to explain.
According to the Journal, the West Bank has been flooded with weapons this year. Because of the growing perceived threat, the IDF has been focused on the much bigger West Bank, and less so on tiny Gaza. The IDF suspects Iran created a pipeline for smuggling arms into the West Bank, and probably not for any innocent self-defense purposes.
The numbers have significantly spiked over previous years. As examples, the Journal explained that in May, a Jordanian official was caught trying to smuggle over 200 guns into the West Bank. In July, Israeli forces seized about 1,000 weapons and hundreds of explosive devices in the West Bank, and dismantled six bomb-making operations.
“This probably explains part of the intelligence failure , because Israel was more focused on the West Bank than Gaza,” opined Michael Horowitz, head of an Israel-based risk consulting firm, quoted for the story.
What are the odds Israel was distracted on purpose?
💣 There is a developing narrative that the U.S. is the one acting as the “Restrainer” holding Israel back from a Gazan ground invasion. To date, Biden has not stopped coming up with new reasons that Israel should keep waiting. For just a few examples: (1) Biden needs more time for hostage negotiations, (2) the ground invasion would be useless anyway because it would just become a quagmire like Afghanistan, and the latest excuse, (3) the U.S. needs more time to ship air defenses to the region.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story suggesting that Israel had agreed to wait so the U.S. forces, who aren’t in the fight, can get hold of some air defenses, to protect them from an unnamed and identified enemy:
It’s a good thing the U.S. isn’t in a real war that doesn’t wait around for you to ship your air defenses by UPS ground.
On the other hand, also yesterday, PBS said that Israel would probably delay the invasion for hostage negotiations. According to its article, “there are new signs that an Israeli ground invasion may not be imminent after all,” and “the ground invasion appears to be on hold for now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated tonight.” Its headline:
So many reasons to delay.
But there were signs yesterday the Israelis may be catching on that their allies could be trying to frustrate their Gazan invasion plans. I’ve been following influencer Amir Tsarfati, an Israeli messianic Jew (a Christian) who has kept his telegram updated with hour-by-hour news. Until yesterday, Amir has lauded Biden for his support. Last night, Amir posted this update, titled “Biden fooled Israel”:
I suspect a lot of Jews are feeling the same way as Amir about Biden. Welcome to our world.
Israel is sitting in a thorny political corner. This morning, the Financial Times ran a story suggesting Israel may have found a third way: a “non-invasion” invasion. Late last night, Israel conducted a large incursion — not an invasion — with troops returning to the border after completing the action.
In a widely-dissected televised address yesterday, Prime Minister Netanyahu again said Israel was “preparing a ground invasion,” and again he did not offer any timeline. But incursions aren’t invasions. After all, since troops don’t stay there, an incursion nothing like an invasion, with incursions having the additional highly-desirable benefit of not becoming quagmires.
Meanwhile yesterday, according to a White House summary of their call, President Robert L. “Pedo” Peters — who sure is a chatty Kathy about Israel these days — told Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday that he, Biden, is looking for a “pathway for permanent peace” between Israel and Palestine at the end of the conflict, which is probably the last thing Netanyahu wants to think about right now.
Why is Biden talking about “permanent peace” when the invasion hasn’t even started yet and the parties have yet to agree to their first ceasefire? Look, I’m an optimist. I’m not being critical, I really want to know. Does Biden think this could all be magically resolved in the midst of rising hostilities?
👨⚖️ Last week, a Federal Court in the Southern District of California, applying a new 2022 Supreme Court decision, threw out a 1989 California law that banned so-called “assault weapons.” Behold how the marvelous opinion begins. Sometimes, like this time, you can tell judges are about to hand you a massive win right from their very first sentence:
Like the Bowie Knife which was commonly carried by citizens and soldiers in the 1800s, “assault weapons” are dangerous, but useful. But unlike the Bowie Knife, the United States Supreme Court has said, “here is a long tradition of widespread lawful gun ownership by private individuals in this country.”
Miller v. Bonta, 2023 WL 6929336 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 19, 2023).
The opinion just got better after that. Well, not in everyone’s point of view. California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta will, of course, appeal the decision:
Given the Supreme Court just gave the Second Amendment more breathing room last year, I have my doubts about Bonta’s appellate chances. Stand by.
💉 Uh-oh! This won’t be any good for the dwindling covid jab business. Tuesday, The New York Times ran a story with the stingy headline, “ Covid Shots May Slightly Raise Stroke Risk in the Oldest Recipients. Shots! Not vaccines. The linguistic sleight-of-hand didn’t stick past the headline, but I’d like to shake that rebellious headline editor’s hand.
It was a double-whammy. The Times just admitted there’s a teeny-tiny, slight problem with the jabs, nothing to worry about, you’ll barely notice it, but they might occasionally cause you to stroke out or possibly, rarely, very rarely, probably never happen, but you might get epilepsy. Strokes and seizures, oh my.
According to a brand-new analysis by the FDA, the mRNA jabs may slightly (after all possible adjustments were made) increase the risk of stroke when combined with the flu shot. You never know. Specifically, the researchers detected an increased stroke signal among folks 85 years or older who got the Pfizer jab, and those 65 to 74 who got the Moderna shot.
People in those groups who got both covid and flu shots saw a +20% increase in the risk of ischemic stroke after the Pfizer booster, and a +35% increase in stroke risk after Moderna.
And they were trying really hard not to find anything.
A separate FDA analysis, published at the same time last week, found a “small” but statistically significant increase in seizures after covid vaccination in children ages 2 to 5.
When you add up all these “small” and “slight” and “rare” additional risks, at the end of the day, when you put it all together, does it maybe total to numbers that aren’t actually “small” or “slight?” Is the mRNA shots’ demonic confounder the fact that they injure people in so many different ways?
The Times blandly reported the FDA would not make the researchers available for interviews. For some reason.
💉 Get ready! They’re starting it up again, and I just can’t bring myself to run the same exact post for a third year in a row. So I’ll just show you. Behold the terrifying, annual, Fall “tripledemic:”
Bottom line, they want you to start taking three annual shots now, at least two of which are for their lab-created bugs that escaped (covid and RSV, probably). No, thank you. You keep those ones. My question is, where does this jab mania finally end? This delusion that mankind can invent a better immune system in a needle than the human immune system?
At some point will they have a 72-jab annual shot schedule, like the poor school children?
Stuff their tripledemic. Great job, public health, I’m a never-vaxxer now.
💉 Nothing to see here! It happens all the time. The Times of India ran a SADs story this week headlined, “10 Die Of Heart Attack At Garba Events In Gujarat, Youngest Was 17.”
The Gujarat province of India, population 62.7 million, enjoys an annual holiday called “Garba” featuring colorful costumes and carefree dancing. The popular festival has always been a much loved and anticipated celebration when Indians can shed their cares, let their hair down, bust a move and generally enjoy themselves.
Until a menacing threat obscured this year’s dancing joys.
According to the Times, over 500 ambulances were called in the first 24 hours during Garba this year. Five hundred. There were so many emergency calls that the government even issued an emergency alert, asking organizers to take “all necessary measures” to be prepared for … wait for it … cardiac incidents.
For some reason, they wanted defibrillators and people trained in CPR on hand. For the first time in history. Weird.
In just the first 24 hours of this year’s festival, at least 10 heart attack deaths were reported during Garba events, with the youngest victim being only 17 years old. They died mid-dance. Another 13-year-old, not counted in those numbers, also died shortly after getting home from a Garba party.
What on Earth? Totally unrelated, over 2 billion vaccine doses were delivered into Indian arms as of September 1, 2022 (mostly AstraZeneca).
Question asked:
Spoiler: no, the experts did not explain. It was all just a bunch of hand-waving about the exertions of dancing, literally that was their very best idea, and without any context offered about the previous six thousand years of human dancing history during which teenagers did NOT get heart attacks and they did NOT need to keep defibrillators on hand and they did NOT need to require CPR training for dancing events.
There is literally no bottom to the stupidity of experts.
💉 In case you wondered who at this point is still WANTING the boosters, behold this young lady, who has chronicled all her shot reactions on TikTok, including her very latest booster shot, which she took last week:
CLIP: Booster Gal describes reactions and side effects (2:47). Adult language.
Wow. I hardly know what to say about all that. I guess that’s how you know the shots are working. And please note that the boosted gal has not posted anything since her last update on October 17th, so … we hope she makes it. (Hat tip to the wonderful Texas Lindsay who combined the four daily TikToks.)
Have a tremendous Thursday! Return with mug in hand tomorrow morning and we will refill it, for free, with another delicious C&C roundup.
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© 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.
