Opinion
By Jeff Childers
03-17-23
Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! You only have to suffer with one more day of late posts; on Monday, we’ll be back to normal.
Your roundup today includes: banned Chicago reporter gets the last word with Lori Lightfoot; a new Florida bill would charge woke employers with de-transitioning costs whenever they incentivize gender transition procedures; House Oversight hot on the Biden money trail; Google entrepreneur David Friedburg explains how the financial crisis was caused by bad pandemic policy; Project Veritas jumps back on the Pfizer bandwagon, right after C&C called them out; Florida Surgeon General becomes the first to recommend against the jabs for ANYBODY; British TV aired a real Proxy War debate; and a hilarious Babylon Bee headline to make you laugh as hard as Kamala Harris announcing the start of World War III.
🗞*WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞
🔥 Long-time Chicago reporter William J. Kelly, whose municipal press credentials were revoked during the pandemic by Mayor Lori Lightfoot (aka “Beetlejuice”), finally got the last word, in a feisty diatribe at Mayor Lightfoot’s final city council meeting before leaving office, having badly lost the most recent election.
Kelly didn’t mince words and used his three minutes to great rhetorical effect:
I feel like this is more like a victim impact statement … You shut down the schools, you shut down the churches, you shut down the businesses … Shame on you … Future historians are going to have a hard time understanding how you ever became mayor. I intend to write that book. I intend to make sure there is some possible way for the city of Chicago to move forward. I hope that you realize what damage you have done to the city. I hope that, after today’s City Council meeting, you will pack your bags and get the hell out of my city. You ARE a pandemic. Thank you.
The good part starts around 2:09 in this clip:
Real Mac Report @RealMacReport
7:28 PM ∙ Mar 16, 20235,973Likes1,751Retweets
The pandemic’s walk-in closet holds lots of skeletons, with more lurching out all the time. Kelly’s story has illustrated another government censorship technique. Municipal Machiavelli Lightfoot contemptuously revoked Kelly’s press credentials merely for asking her some real questions about her pandemic policies. Doing so accomplished two goals: it purged the bothersome Kelly and also sent a message to the other reporters: if you want to keep the access on which your job depends, toe the censorship line.
And THAT is how you shut up troublesome local media: hit them right in the pocketbook.
The politicians dialed their crackdowns against local media (and citizens) up to “maximum,” right up to the line of illegality. Kelly might actually have had a good First Amendment lawsuit, but he also could have lost, because bureaucratic despot Lightfoot would rely on her “full discretion” over picking the press pool, and would have just made up some stupid fake reason they flushed Kelly apart from his inconvenient questions. Plus, Kelly would surely have lost against Mayor Lightfoot in Chicago’s courts and had to appeal.
But time, the great salve which healtheth all wounds, has begun fixing it. Lightfoot is now joining the other disgraced pandemic leaders who’ve taken a powder, and William Kelly got a chance to publicly dish the petty potentate a piece of his mind on the way out the door. It wasn’t as satisfying as a swift kick to Lightfoot’s pillowy parts, but it was better than nothing.
But don’t worry about her! I’m sure Ms. Lightfoot will do fine, she’s had plenty of time to graft, I mean prepare, for this moment.
🔥 Yesterday, Epoch Times American Thought Leaders published Jan Jakeliak’s interview with Pussycat Dolls star Jessica Sutta about her tragic vaccine injury. Fair warning, it’s hard to stop watching after you start:
Jessica Sutta interview (38:40).
In the interview, the courageous girl-band singer speaks eloquently (and often tearfully) about her devastating experience, including the pressure not to speak out, her agonizing muscle spasms, the bizarre gaslighting by her doctors, her excruciating small-fiber neuropathy, her multiple hospital experiences (“I won’t step foot in another hospital ever again”), her spinal lesions, having MS symptoms without the disease, her terror at how her condition is getting progressively worse, and described how her former friends think she’s doing something morally wrong by talking about it all.
Tellingly, after begging for months, when Jessica finally got her doctor to approve seeing a neurologist, Jessica said the first thing the new doctor asked her was “when did you get the vaccine?” She broke down in tears of relief. And after reviewing her case, the neurologist told her, “I think you’ve had an adverse reaction.”
He was the first doctor in a long string of doctors who was even willing to consider the possibility the new mother had been vaccine injured.
Jessica’s interview is candid, poignant, and personal. She described the pressure in Hollywood from other celebrities and industry players to get the vaccine “for the community,” the pressure from her beloved, trusted doctor to vaccinate during her pregnancy and how she resisted until after her son was born, and what it means for her career to speak out (“it’s one of the worst things I could ever do”).
Is it just me, or are we not really seeing any believable video testimonials from people talking about their wonderful post-jab experiences?
🔥 Fox News ran an encouraging story earlier this week with the awkward headline, “Florida Lawmaker Pushing to Make ‘Woke’ Employers Responsible for Detransitions Fires Back at Biden.”
During a Monday interview on “The Daily Show,” Joe Biden — assuming he was even aware of what he was saying — described Florida’s policies banning puberty blockers and genital mutilation surgeries “cruel” and “as my mother used to say, close to sinful.” His mother knew about trans surgeries? Whatever, Governor DeSantis responded with a feisty tweet.
Biden suggests it’s “sinful” and “cruel” to ban puberty blockers and sex change surgeries for kids. https://t.co/y3OOFdle063:14 PM ∙ Mar 14, 202348,958Likes8,466Retweets
Biden and DeSantis were responding to a new bill filed in Florida this week by Republican Florida State Senator Blaise Ingoglia, titled “Employer Coverage of Gender Dysphoria Treatment.” Hilariously — BUT JUSTLY — the proposed law would require any employer who pays for employees gender transitions to also pay for their DE-TRANSITIONING surgeries and medical care if they later change their mind.
Hahahaha! It’s brilliant! Here’s the main bit from the proposed law, SB 952:
An employee who received gender dysphoria treatment through coverage provided by an employer is entitled to full coverage by that employer of the total costs associated with treatment that reverses gender dysphoria treatment if the employee later determines that the gender dysphoria treatment was not appropriate for him or her and wants to reverse the treatment, regardless of whether the person is currently employed by that same employer at the time of such determination.
Who can reasonably argue with this? It’s perfectly fair. If it’s critical for employers to support people slipping on the “right” gender, then it’s just as important to thrust them back into the prior gender when they find out their selected surgery didn’t quite resolve their gender dysphoria, but instead delivered a pallet of new, unanticipated problems.
Even though Florida has already discouraged radical gender surgeries, the proposed law would spray herbicide on new laws sprouting up like weeds in psychotic states like California, which incentivize medical tourism for gender-bending treatments. “Woke businesses need to be held accountable when offering to pay for gender-affirming surgeries in other states, such as California, because they are nothing more than political decisions masquerading as healthcare and human resource decisions,” Senator Ingoglia explained.
If SB 952 becomes law, woke corporations like Disney trying to curry cheap virtue-signaling points by offering a fig leaf of transitioning support, say by limiting transition coverage to $15,000 or something, but they would also be hooked under the proposed law for the ENTIRE unlimited cost of reversing transitions if they doesn’t work, and regardless of whether or not the employees still work there.
In other words, they’ll be on the hook FOREVER.
One suspects that an employer who could potentially be permanently liable for unlimited costs of de-transitioning might want to make SURE that an employee would REALLY benefit from castration and breast mutilation, and wasn’t just crazy as a sprayed roach.
In other words, put your money where your flapping pie-hole is, Disney. As Disney’s Mandalorians would say, This is the Way.
A note to Senator Imbroglia: I would suggest three amendments.
First, add a provision that an employee cannot waive this right or indemnify the employer through contract, since employers may try to skirt the law by having employees sign something when they apply for transition coverage.
Second, whenever an employer provides transition coverage for employees’ kids, require de-transitioning support for those minor children as well.
Finally, we might as well require employers to cover employees’ unanticipated side-effects from the transition procedures, since the procedures are basically experimental in nature.
🔥 Fox News ran a revealing story yesterday headlined, “Biden Family Received More Than $1M From Hunter Associate After 2017 China Wire: House Oversight.” The sub-headline explained, “Hallie Biden received thousands of dollars from a Hunter Biden business associate, subpoenaed financial records reveal.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky) got the new records from a Bank of America subpoena, which showed that “at least three Biden family members” received lucrative payments from a bank account belonging to Hunter Biden’s “business associate” Rob Walker and Chinese Communist agents. The account was held by “Robinson Walker, LLC,” whose members included Hallie Biden (Beau Biden’s widow), Hunter, and Hunter’s uncle (Joe’s brother).
Hallie Biden cemented her ties with the Biden family by promptly dating the clan’s moneymaker, Hunter Biden, right after Beau’s untimely death in 2015.
Fox reported Hunter’s legal team confirmed the payments had occurred, but claimed they were for legitimate financial reasons and stressed that the accounts “belonged to Hunter, his uncle and Hallie – nobody else.” Meaning, not the Big Guy. No, never. They’re WAY too smart for that.
The same bank records showed that on March 1st, 2017 — less than two months after then-Vice President Joe Biden left office — Chinese State Energy HK Limited wired $3 million dollars to the Robinson Walker, LLC account — the same one which Hunter’s legal team confirmed belonged to the three Bidens.
Three million bucks. For nothing.
“After the Robinson Walker, LLC account received $3 million from State Energy HK Limited, Biden family members and their companies began receiving incremental payments over a period of approximately three months,” the memo states. “The recipients of the money included Hallie Biden, companies associated with Hunter Biden and James Biden, and an unknown bank account identified as ‘Biden.’”
In the understatement of the year, Oversight Committee Chairman Comer opined “it is unclear what services were provided to obtain this exorbitant amount of money.” Unclear! Meaning, undetectable. Hunter’s lawyers called the payments “seed money,” since no business venture later occurred.
Uh huh. Seed money. Seed money is money used to set up a new company. Or in this case, for nothing. Let me assure you that, in legitimate business transactions, NOBODY pays millions of dollars in speculative “seed money” without getting something tangible for it that is equally or more valuable than the cost. Nobody.
You might recall that Joe Biden has repeatedly insisted that Hunter “never made money in China.” Think any reporters will ask him about it? I give it bad odds.
🔥 Although he’s more forgiving than I am, podcaster David Friedberg, entrepreneur, investor, and former Google employee, recently gave the most succinct explanation to date for why the government’s reckless and incompetent pandemic response caused the current financial crisis.
kanekoa.substack.com @KanekoaTheGreat
8:03 AM ∙ Mar 17, 20231,393Likes371Retweets
In other words, the geniuses at the White House locked down the economy, and “fixed it” by using the national credit card to buy every teenager in the U.S. a sports car with an unlimited gas card. It seemed like a great idea at the time, but now we’ve got a lot of high-speed shenanigans, panicked phone calls to local tow truck companies, and an insurance bill that makes you wonder if we’ve accidentally adopted a small country.
🔥 Within a few hours after C&C reported on the absence of any promised Pfizer followup by Project Veritas, the media company’s investigative team published a confidential internal Pfizer document trumpeting the document proved the vaccine maker was aware of the risk of myocarditis as early as April, 2021.
Project Veritas @Project_Veritas
10:02 PM ∙ Mar 16, 202324,042Likes12,125Retweets
Weak.
Nice try, but it’s not breaking news. The CDC formally added the risk of myocarditis to mRNA vaccines in June, 2021 — two months after the April data collection point. If anything, this disclosure only makes Pfizer look better, suggesting that it properly reported the myocarditis cases to the CDC as it should have.
Not impressive. Do better. I WANT Project Veritas to succeed, but this just makes it worse.
💉 Yesterday, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joe Ladapo became the first state Surgeon General to recommend that NOBODY should take the mRNA vaccines. Specifically, he said:
An employee who received gender dysphoria treatment through coverage provided by an employer is entitled to full coverage by that employer of the total costs associated with treatment that reverses gender dysphoria treatment if the employee later determines that the gender dysphoria treatment was not appropriate for him or her and wants to reverse the treatment, regardless of whether the person is currently employed by that same employer at the time of such determination.
NOW – Florida Surgeon General says mRNA vaccines have a “terrible safety profile.”
3:31 PM ∙ Mar 16, 202315,564Likes5,281Retweets
Florida is leading again. Who will follow?
🔥 If you’re starved to hear an intelligent pro/con debate about the Proxy War, Britain’s TalkTV published a 22-minute intellectual back-and-forth between the amazing Peter Hitchens (brother of the late Christopher Hitchens) and “Ukraine expert” Cormac Smith. More than anything, it illustrates the absurdity of our U.S. corporate media which NEVER carries legitimate debates anymore. Here, it’s just 100% propaganda, all the time.
Watching the video, it’s difficult to conclude that the best pro-war argument is anything more substantial than, “Putin is evil.” Here’s how clip starts:
Smith: “I think this is the first time since the Second World War that we have a war that is so clearly defined between good and evil.”
Hitchens: “I think would be very, very unwise to imagine that the overthrow of Vladimir Putin would lead the planet into a new age of peace, prosperity, and contentment.”
🔥 Finally, this Babylon Bee headline provoked a hearty chuckle:
The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee
Stephen Colbert Finally Gets Someone To Laugh At His Show babylonbee.comStephen Colbert Finally Gets Someone To Laugh At His ShowNEW YORK, NY — History was made last night, as a human being laughed at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for the first time since the…12:30 AM ∙ Mar 17, 202314,582Likes1,512Retweets
Have a fabulous Friday! Let’s meet back here tomorrow for the weekend edition, the last day you’ll have to suffer under the Spring Break schedule before we get back to normal.
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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.
