Opinion
By Jeff Childers
08-21-24
Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! Your roundup today includes: second DNC update produces more of the same vapid nothingness and a couple amusing outtakes; directly contradicting what speakers were lying about at the Convention, the department of labor statistics lost a million jobs somewhere; House Task Force on Trump Assassination produces initial report with some very interesting findings; the Water Tower; the FBI cover up; more weird Secret Service failures; Kennedy campaign considers dropping out and endorsing President Trump; and Russia spotlights the West’s creeping authoritarianism by becoming the world’s first ’traditional values’ sanctuary state.
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
👿👿 Last night, the DNC continued its second joyful night of weirdness, safely ensconced in Chicago’s United Center and several levels of physical security, shielded from furious Democrat voters by a medium-sized army of cops and miles of border walls erected in concentric circles. After years of defunding, they finally found something worth funding police for—protecting themselves.
One bright spot flashed when keen-eyed DNC watchers spotted Conservative Daily Wire commenter and filmmaker Matt Walsh in the background, during a live CNN interview with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Shumer, an antique Senator and a walking advertisement for budget plastic surgery and discount Botox, sang President Trump a little song. You missed nothing.
Matt Walsh, bless him, was seen wearing a “White Dudes for Harris” shirt and a red Kamala cap. I’m guessing he was there in costume marketing his upcoming movie, Am I Racist?, which starts in theaters September 13th. Get your tickets early and often.
The Walsh spotting was the evening’s best moment. Yesterday’s schedule of official speakers was so top secret that they didn’t even publish it until after 5 p.m, but in fairness, what difference did it make? Nobody cared anyway. Once again, the folks who won the evening’s speaker Hunger Games avoided discussing any actual ideas for political improvement. With the possible exception of a rambling wonky Bernie Sanders snooze-fest, nothing was said about the economy, border, Middle East, Eastern Europe, inflation, and so forth.
Don’t mention the war!
The Democrats’ pitch can be distilled into two elements: First, and most important, they’re not Trump, and Trump is worse than a planet-killing asteroid. Porcine Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker bragged in his speech, “Take it from an actual billionaire! Trump is rich in only one thing: Stupidity!”
A classic self-own. I’m sorry, Illinois. I feel your pain.
Second, Democrats roundly promised to ensure abortions can be performed at pharmacy drive-thrus and late-night Taco Bell chalupa trucks. That’s basically the whole agenda.
Oh, and both Obamas gave saucy speeches signifying nothing. It was kind of like the Sixth Sense of political conventions. So nothing is exactly what you missed, again.
📉📉 In related news, while DNC surprise speakers gaslit MSNBC anchors and unfortunate viewers with tall tales about the terrific Biden economy, yesterday the Daily Mail ran a terribly awkward story headlined, “US jobs growth in the last year could be revised down by ONE MILLION—refueling concerns the economy is headed for a downturn.” Uh oh.
It’s not unusual for the Bureau of Lying Statistics, I mean Labor Statistics, to “revise” previous employment figures. And nobody is ever surprised that the over-estimating and the inevitable revisions always go the same direction.
But the scale of this revision was very unusual. Bloomberg said that, depending on how it shakes out, this could be the biggest downward revision in employment in over 15 years and maybe the largest in history. Another 2024 record!
The financial articles all debate how big the reduction will be (guesses range anywhere from minus 500,000 to minus one million) and are already laboring to minimize its meaning and find a silver lining. But as usual, they all missed the more meaningful point: Why is it okay for the government to lie like this?
This deceptive shell game is a good tradeoff for an amoral Biden/Harris Administration. Instead of a year of persistent bad economic news, they get 11 months of good (but fake) figures, and only one month of sour news, when they reset the clock. Don’t worry though, they’ll be at it again next month, and will claim Harris fixed everything.
The news was, however, awkward timing, what with the election looming so near, and a Convention under way.
🔥🔥 Media may have forgotten, but we haven’t, that President Trump was recently shot in Butler County and narrowly escaped death by miraculously avoiding an assassin’s eight bullets. Many questions have arisen, and few answers. But last week we got a few answers and a few new questions.
Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins (R-La.) is a former law enforcement officer and a member of the House Freedom Caucus. While serving as a public information officer with the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s office, Captain Higgins published a popular ‘Crime Stoppers’ YouTube series (for example, here).
Higgins serves on the House Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of President Donald Trump. The Task Force assigned Higgins to visit the scene in Butler and provide a preliminary report, which he did last week on August 12th. You can read Congressman Higgins’ full report here.
Rather than summarize the six-page report, let’s look at a few issues of great public interest. Read the whole thing for a full briefing.
🔥 The Water Tower. Many people have suspected a second shooter on top of the nearby water tower, which is a natural sniper perch and enjoys a clear line of sight to both Trump and Crooks’ positions.
But after visiting the site and inspecting the tower, Higgins has cooled to the idea of a tower sniper. He noticed the water tower had a retractable safety ladder that, on the day of the shooting, was raised 25 feet off the ground. Higgins opined that, if a sniper did get up on the tower, it must have been some next-level work “beyond anything I’ve ever actually seen.”
A geared sniper would have had to somehow scale the first 25 feet without a ladder, scurry up the next 75 feet on the ladder, and then clamber up a tiny and precarious dome ladder to the tippy top. Higgins was doubtful.
Still, Higgins plans to return and climb the water tower himself (it wasn’t possible on the day he was there) to make sure.
🔥 Signs of FBI Cover Up. Higgins is very suspicious about the way the FBI handled the investigation.
Representative Higgins identified several way the FBI deviated from normal procedure, not to mention the procedures they should have followed in a top-level case that would surely receive microscopic scrutiny.
Yet, for still unexplained reasons, the FBI made some inexplicable and unexplained decisions seemingly designed to shut down the investigation:
— On the night of the shooting, the FBI released all the first responders (EMS, cops, and so forth) without taking their statements.
— The FBI released the entire crime scene after only three days. Higgins reported that local law enforcement expressed “everything from surprise to dismay to suspicion” at how quickly the feds cleared the crime scene. This meant the evidence was not preserved to allow agencies to do their work.
— On-scene FBI agents “cleaned up biological evidence” from the crime scene, instead of following normal protocol and letting a specialized evidence unit handle the cleanup. Higgins said this was unheard of.
— The FBI released Crooks’ body for cremation just ten days after the shooting, surprising all the locals, and even though legally, Butler County had jurisdiction over the body. Now, we are stuck with the initial examination report, whatever it is, which still hadn’t been published as of the date of Higgin’s report.
Higgins described the FBI’s “pattern of investigative scorched earth” as reasonably calculated to be “an obstruction to any following investigative effort.” So.
🔥 Secret Service Questions. Higgins found even more questions about how the Secret Service responded at the event, including one huge, previously unknown problem.
Representative Higgins found that:
— Butler County had provided radios for the Secret Service, so they could stay connected with local security efforts. But for some reason, Secret Service never picked up the radios.
— It appears the Butler event was the first time Secret Service counter-sniper teams were ever assigned to Trump’s detail. Why?
— Most astonishingly, the Secret Service’s sniper was not the first to shoot back. Crooks was shot twice. A Butler County SWAT officer took the first shot. It was a very difficult shot, taken on the move while clearing cover and putting the officer into the line of fire. He hit and disabled Crooks’ gun, injuring Crooks with shrapnel. Only then, only after Crooks’ weapon was disabled, did the southern Secret Service sniper shoot and kill Crooks (a headshot).
Maybe the oddest fact of all was that, until now, neither the FBI nor the Secret Service ever mentioned the heroic Butler SWAT officer who disabled Crooks, allowing the assassin to be terminated by the Secret Service sniper. Weirdly, local SWAT guys ended the threat before the Secret Service snipers did.
There were several other fascinating and unanswered questions in Higgins’ report. Read the whole thing.
🔥🔥 Yesterday, the New York Times ran a startling story headlined, “Kennedy’s Running Mate Suggests They May Drop Out of the Presidential Race and Endorse Trump.”
CLIP: Shanahan says Kennedy Campaign considering endorsing Trump (2:09).
During a podcast interview yesterday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, said the campaign is considering dropping out and endorsing President Trump. Shanahan blamed the Democratic Party for sabotaging their campaign through ballot-access lawfare. The Kennedy Campaign has survived Democrat legal challenges and made the ballot in only 19 states, although a dozen other states remain undecided.
When asked for a response, Trump told CNN he would consider giving Kennedy a “position in the administration” if the third-party candidate endorsed him.
“The question,” Ms. Shanahan posed to the podcaster, was whether “the risk of a Harris-Walz presidency is worth us staying in?” The risk. They are still thinking about what to do.
🔥🔥 Two can play at the sanctuary state game. Late last week, President Putin issued a decree making Russia into a sanctuary country for people with traditional Christian values. You cannot make this stuff up; it could only happen in 2024.
In short, Putin’s decree waived certain Russian immigration requirements, such as demonstrating Russian language proficiency and passing a history test, for people applying for temporary residence permits. Applicants must come from countries “imposing destructive neoliberal ideological guidelines that contradict traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”
Traditional Russian spiritual and moral values are anti-LGBTQ+, orthodox Christian values.
Even more entertaining, Putin ordered the Russian government to compile a list of approved countries with “destructive neoliberal values.”
Who wants to bet the United States appears prominently at the top of that list?
In classic Putin fashion, the move was not just virtue signaling. The overheated Russian economy is thirsty for skilled workers. The category of only ‘neoliberal’ countries ensures temporary workers will come from preferred, higher-income areas. The ideological character of the test causes applicants to self-select for conservatism; liberals won’t bother applying.
I wish we could do the same thing for Florida residency.
Putin has thrown down the bearskin glove and challenged the West to vote with their feet. As for me, I plan to stay and fight to the bitter end. How about you?
Have a wonderful Wednesday! If you eschew destructive neoliberal values, immigrate back here tomorrow, for another informative and educational Coffee & Covid roundup.
We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠
Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
