Opinion
By Jeff Childers
05-31-23
Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! Your highly-caffeinated roundup this morning includes: call for accountability volunteers; thanks from FBI whistleblowers; a mini-roundup trying to figure out what on Earth is going on in the Texas legislature this week; in the absence of any truth from those involved, rumors begin to emerge about Jamie Foxx’s health condition; Russia blows up Ukraine’s intelligence agency and Ukraine hits a Moscow apartment building; questions about the not-so-secret counteroffensive that has been almost starting for four months; House Oversight Committee prepares to hold Chris Wray in contempt; the House loses a Republican member to a mystery illness; another jab-happy journalist succumbs to turbo cancer; and high school baseball reminds us never to give up.
🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞
🪖 The hardworking group of accountability-project software volunteers that we formed several months ago has been quietly hard at work and has come a long way. They’ve done quite a bit of software development on the project, which is meant to provide a free website for storing and searching documents related to covid, the jabs, and the coverups. This project fits into the second slot (“investigation”) in C&C’s four-phased plan to bring real accountability to the pandemic’s bad actors.
The plucky team of selfless workers has also done a lot of organization, forming a 501c3 with its own directors, establishing bylaws, and have put up a website, c19files.org.
Now they are ready to expand the team. If you’re interested in helping on this critical accountability project, however much or however little, take a quick peek at their volunteer needs web page: https://c19files.org/volunteer/
While part of their current needs include more technical help, most of the needed roles are in traditional business areas (like marketing, graphic design, and data entry) and for subject-matter experts like medical and legal professionals who can read and rank professional/academic literature. And of you volunteered on the first go around and weren’t a perfect fit at that time (while they were mainly looking for coders), now is a great time to check in again.
Even if you can’t help right now, take a look at the list anyway, you might know someone who’d love to pitch in and help make accountability happen faster: https://c19files.org/volunteer/
🪖 FBI Whistleblower Kyle Seraphin graciously thanked you, the C&C Army, in a heartfelt tweet yesterday about the recent multiplier operation:
We did that! Multiplier power.
🗞💬 *WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 💬🗞
🔥 In some more unfortunate Red-on-Red news, the Texas Legislature recently turbo-impeached the state’s MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton. Mr. Paxton has been openly and actively champion in the anti-mandate movement, as well central in fighting for election integrity in the state. The Lone Star state is rapidly sliding into the purple, with Soros prosecutors popping up all over the state including in its largest counties.
Many have asked me to explain what’s going on there. It’s not straightforward.
One popular theory is that RINO House Republicans initiated the impeachment to stop Paxton from calling out election fraud and complaining about the 2020 elections. In late April, about a month prior to his impeachment, Paxton gave a Heritage Foundation talk explaining how he tried to help President Trump prevent losing Texas, and really the country, because of mail-in balloting.
Listen for yourself. Paxton explained how mail-in balloting allows cheating, his strategy to fight it, and called out the Soros prosecutors in Texas who refuse to prosecute voting fraud (10 min), and some people think that’s what got him in trouble:
Maybe. It’s true that Paxton has been under legal attack ever since he officially became an “election denier” after the 2020 election disaster. He’s allegedly being investigated by the FBI for the last two years for bribery, for example, for allegedly issuing some favorable rulings that helped a real estate developer named Nate Paul.
But there is no evidence that Nate Paul paid any money to AG Paxton. Paxton has denied all allegations of wrongdoing, and I could find no proof that he accepted any bribes from Paul. So it looks like the typical politically-motivated, two-tiered-justice-system nonsense that we are getting so very used to these days.
It’s not clear to me Paxton is being impeached for his elections comments. Why would House Republicans try to sabotage election reform? I get the “uniparty” theory, but the uniparty phenomenon seems least likely to show up in the State House of Representatives, where officeholders have to run again every two years and where they turn over the fastest. (Not all of them. Texas lacks term limits for House Representatives. Senfronia Thompson (D-141) has served 25 consecutive terms, for example. By contrast, Florida’s House reps are term-limited to only 8 years, or 4 two-year terms).
Instead, there’s another curious possibility: a grudge. Dade Phelan, Speaker of the Texas House, made the news a few weeks ago for appearing on the House floor, drunk as a Texas skunk, badly slurring his words, with everyone acting like it was normal. Maybe it is normal.
Anyway, loads of embarrassing “drunken Phelan” videos made the rounds last week. Here’s one example:
But last week on May 23rd, Attorney General Paxton sent an official letter calling for Phelan’s investigation, which was political dynamite, quite like the first artillery round launched by the troops at the Alamo.
On May 24th — one day after Paxton’s letter, and all in a single day — the Texas House of Representatives filed and then immediately voted to impeach Paxton on 20 articles of impeachment, alleging bribery, abuse of office, and obstruction of justice. This week the House managers are supervising Paxton’s impeachment trial in the Texas Senate, which began yesterday and is expected to last several weeks.
If Paxton is convicted by the Senate, he will be permanently removed from office.
The timing of the two events — Paxton’s letter and Phelan leading the impeachment effort — are too close together to ignore. It looks like Phelan started Paxton’s turbo impeachment in retaliation for Paxton asking for an ethics investigation. It is also possible that Paxton got word of a planned impeachment effort and struck first. Who knows.
Six of Paxton’s AG office staff have taken personal leaves of absence to help defend him. Meanwhile, under Texas law, Brent Webster took over for Paxton as interim Attorney General while Paxton is on involuntary leave pending the Senate trial’s outcome. According to the Houston Chronicle, Governor Abbott, a former AG himself, has been silent on the impeachment.
Paxton is the first statewide official to have been impeached in Texas since 1917. If he’s removed as Attorney General, it will be a historic first.
The bottom line is, the reason why the Republican Legislature in Texas is firing HIMARS at its own Attorney General is as clear as the mud constantly bogging down the heroes in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove series. It remains to be seen whether AG Paxton will effect a last-minute escape in the Senate from House Republicans that appear more hostile than wild Comanches, or whether they’ll claim his scalp.
💉 Where is Jamie Foxx?
He’s still missing, that’s where. And it’s creating an information vacuum for rumors to fill. Yesterday, Dr. Drew interviewed journalist A.J. Benza, a tough-talking entertainment-industry author and former celebrity news columnist for the New York Daily News, who claimed to have first-hand information from “someone in the room” that Foxx got a blood clot in the brain after reluctantly taking the jab because his movie’s producers mandated the shot.
Now, Benza says, Foxx is partially paralyzed and blind:
Benza’s story would be pretty consistent with the Foxx family’s carefully-scripted stories. They’ve only said he was awake and “communicating.” Which could easily be true; Jamie could be awake and tapping out morse code, but he can’t really move or see anything. The family understandably “forgot” to mention the bit about paralysis and blindness.
It Benza is right, it would also explain Foxx’s extended hospital stay, and why they are euphemistically calling his stroke a “health incident.” It’s true that they oddly mentioned Jamie was recently “playing pickleball,” which is either fake, or it could just be some activity that resembles pickleball but is part of his physical therapy.
Whichever, we prayerfully hope for Jamie’s full recovery and restored good heath.
🚀 Over the last few days, Russia destroyed what it claimed was Ukraine’s entire military intelligence headquarters, an oxymoron to be sure, and killed a bunch more bunkered, underground war schemers, including some American and British advisors. Ukraine did not deny that, but retaliated with a swarm of drones launched deep into Russia at its capitol city, Moscow.
It’s not clear the Ukrainian drones did any significant damage. Moscow claims its air defense systems worked.
The Hot Takes are running wild; folks are speculating whether Russia will retaliate for Ukraine’s retaliation by nuking Kyiv or finally starting the kinetic phase of World War III or something, which all seem unlikely. It’s true that Russian officials have previously sworn that attacks on Russia’s interior would be red lines, and you don’t get much more interior than Moscow.
But this attack, and the last one with explosive drones over the Kremlin, look a lot more like symbolic or propagandistic attacks rather than anything that was intended to — or able to — do any real damage.
A Ukrainian drone damaged a Russian apartment building, kind of, and broke a couple windows
So none of it makes much sense. Russia’s attacks seem strategic and if they can be believed, effective. Ukraine’s counterattacks seem symbolic and mostly intended to deliberately poke the Russian bear. But the Russians have been remarkable patient to this point and not eager to take any of that kind of bait.
I’m also mystified by the endless corporate media chatter about the Ukrainian counteroffensive. I’m just asking, but in war, isn’t it usually best to keep your counteroffensives secret? This Ukraine counteroffensive has to be the most-publicized and slowest-starting counteroffensive in history.
Now, I’m just a simple country lawyer, and not a fancy NATO military war-planner, but it seems even to me that it has been a well-known fact for a very long time that armies shouldn’t normally broadcast their battle plans and timetables to their enemies and the whole dang world:
- “If the enemy is aware of your plans, then they are aware of your vulnerabilities.” – Sun Tzu
- “Secrecy is the essence of warfare; if you cannot deceive, you cannot defeat.” – Sun Tzu
- “The element of surprise is worth three divisions.” – Frederick the Great
- “The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.” – Marcus Aurelius
But what did those relics know about war? We have modern military geniuses like sniffy Joe Biden and Zelenskyy the comedic pianist.
The absence of any strategic timing, and its interminable “almost starting,” make this whole counteroffensive smell like a psyop. It’s more like a marketing plan than a real military maneuver. I’m not saying there won’t ultimately be fighting and tanks and stuff, but it sure feels a lot like they’re daring the Russians to strike first.
Assuming they know what they are doing, it seems like there’s some kind of obscure military game of chicken going on, and meanwhile ordinary Ukrainians are being ground into hamburger to keep the game going a little longer.
🔥 Yesterday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky) issued a statement, explaining the FBI has officially refused to turn over subpoenaed materials related to Joe Biden’s bribery, and so the House will begin holding FBI Director Chris Wray in contempt:
Mr. Comer also said that the contempt charges would look a lot like what the democrats did to Steve Bannon. That’s fine, contempt seems appropriate, but what happens after THAT? Will the House cut the bottom out of the FBI’s purse, or uselessly move on?
🔥 Republican House Member Chris Stewart (R-Ut) resigned from Congress yesterday to help care for his ailing wife, Evie Stewart, who has been battling an “undisclosed illness” for an uncertain amount of time. In other words, nobody knows anything.
All Chris will say about Evie’s condition is that she is “fighting bravely.”
Most of the hot takes focus on how Stewart’s resignation affects voting in the House. Basically it reduces Republicans’ slim majority from +4 to only +3. Now there must be a special election in Stewart’s district, one of the most democrat-leaning districts in mostly-red Utah. So.
Obviously, Stewart made the right choice for his family, regardless of the political consequences. Hopefully Evie’s secret illness is not an iatrogenic one. We pray for her quick and complete recovery.
💉 The Evening Standard ran a story two days ago headlined, “ITV News Journalist Emily Morgan Dies After Short Battle With Lung Cancer.”
“Short battle” is the new euphemism for “turbo.” In other words, ITV’s health and science editor Emily Morgan, 45, mother of two young daughters, died suddenly and unexpectedly from turbo lung cancer.
Not surprisingly given her job, Emily was super pro-jab. Her articles included optimistic jab-boosters like this:
According to Birmingham Live, before the end, Emily told her colleagues at ITV that she wanted to be remembered not as a journalist, but as a mother, wife, sister, daughter and friend. “They are the things that matter,” Emily reportedly said.
Science editor Emily followed the science. She followed the science right into the Hereafter.
🔥 Sometimes, things just don’t go your way. And sometimes, just when you think God’s handed you your pink slip, He turns around and gives you the biggest bonus you ever got.
In this short clip from a recent high school championship baseball game, the Pal-Mac Red Raiders won the big game last week on a bizarre technicality, flipping the script in mid-celebration, all owing to the presence of mind of one single-focused runner who just didn’t quit.
I don’t think it was planned. Just look at how the downcast the Raiders were until they started to realize something wild was happening — the strange, ultra-rare dropped third strike rule.¹ The moral: Never give up! Because you never know.
Have a wonderful Wednesday! Tomorrow we will refill your C&C mug, available on the store if you don’t have one yet. 😇
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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.
