Opinion
By Jeff Childers
10-14-24
🔥🔥 First, there was the British Baking Show. Then came the Cheese Wheel Races, which can even be won while unconscious. Now meet the next entrant in the UK’s colorful cultural exposition. Just over a month ago, ITV.com ran a metaphorically timely story headlined, “Family ‘proud’ after teenager wins World Gravy Wrestling Championships.”
CLIP: Five delicious minutes of can’t-look-away British Gravy Wrestling, 2024-style (5:07).
There’s still one place —Lancashire, England— where men are men, women are women, and gravy is, well, gravy. The mere existence of this flavorful activity could renew your faith in humanity and, dare I say, Western Civilization itself. Or it might just make you hungry.
The saucy annual event is hosted in a ten-meter by ten-meter inflatable gravy boat just outside the Rose ’N Bowl pub. Costumed contestants compete in two divisions —men’s and women’s— and are scored mostly on crowd reaction and entertainment value for money. Overly dramatic fake wrestling moves are required but actual wrestling ability is optional.
In this year’s heated and savory contest, frontrunners Lloyd Clarkson and Imogen Young splashed and splattered their way to the 2024 Men’s and Women’s Division titles, respectively. (Sorry lads, you are not permitted to compete with the ladies, regardless of costume.)
It’s messy, ridiculous, and mostly fake. I like to think of gravy wrestling as a metaphor for the U.S. election season, except British gravy wrestling is less stressful and more entertaining, and frankly much more honest than U.S. politics.
🔥🔥 Yesterday afternoon, the Associated Press ran a bizarre story headlined, “Man with loaded gun arrested at checkpoint near Donald Trump’s weekend rally in Southern California.” It was a bit more than just a loaded gun. Vegas resident Vem Miller, 49, was arrested on Saturday just outside the Trump rally in Coachella, California, with a loaded handgun, a shotgun, a high-capacity magazine, multiple passports and driver’s licenses with different names, all while driving an unregistered car with a homemade license plate.
It gets weirder. Mr. Miller said it was all just a big misunderstanding and, being a huge Trump fan, he would never hurt the President. Even more bizarre, it turns out Miller is a regular feature on the conservative media circuit. Conservative podcaster/independent journalist Mindy Robinson vouched for Miller, referring to him as her business partner in a long-standing media venture named America Happens Network.
Miller is not, in fact, Vem’s real name. His real name is Vem Vim Yenkovian. He’s originally from Armenia. According to allegations in his various lawsuits, he adopted the last name “Miller” to avoid widespread anti-Armenian discrimination.
Riverside County’s sheriff department initially suggested to media that his deputies stopped “another assassination attempt,” and the media gravy was out of the pitcher. But Miller was promptly released on $5,000 bail, suggesting the judge saw him as no real threat. He swore he is a “100 percent a Trump supporter” and that he always travels with firearms for protection due to death threats related to his media work.
Miller’s fake passports, fake license plate, and fake driver’s licenses remain unexplained.
He’s been around conservative media for a long time. Miller founded his America Happens Network in 2007. It makes online shows and podcasts under the motto “rage against mainstream media.” Miller denies being connected to any anti-government groups. He calls himself a former-Democrat-turned-Trump-fan.
Two years ago, Miller ran unsuccessfully for Nevada State Assembly as a Republican.
Late last night, Miller, obviously not listening to his lawyer, if he has a lawyer, released a long, rambling statement on Rumble, where you can hear his side of the story if you have an hour or so(1:15:30; he finally gets around to what happened at the 32:00 mark). Miller blamed the cops, miscommunication, dehydration, and low blood sugar, and admitted he argued with and threatened the police.
In his video, so far as I can tell, Miller never mentioned his fake credentials, the home-made license plate, or explained why his car was unregistered. If cops made up those claims, I’d expect Miller to at least deny them, laugh it off, or something.
Federal authorities say they’re still investigating, but agreed President Trump was never in any danger. There is no doubt but that Miller is a pretty zesty character. But is the Armenian podcaster more like a gravy wrestler, or is he a strange, Ryan Routh-style enigma?
Speaking of Ryan Wesley Routh, the media appears to have lost all interest in the second Trump assassin. Despite volumes of unanswered questions, corporate media’s most recent story about the failed tiny-home contractor was over two weeks ago, when he pleaded not guilty.
Bless the Epoch Times, which ran a long-form Routh Roundup article late last week. Spoiler: they still have no idea how Routh funded all his travel and illegal weapons purchases.
🔥 The New York Times ran a truly miraculous story yesterday headlined, “SpaceX Advances Starship Program With a Launch and a Catch.” With everything happening these days, it would be easy to miss the record-shattering significance of yesterday’s SpaceX landing. A 20-story tall, 300-ton booster rocket lifted its cargo, then landed autonomously by precisely descending into the tender mechanical arms of a gigantic robotic crane custom-built for the purpose. It was literally the pinnacle achievement of human engineering.
CLIP 1: Official SpaceX video of Starship “chopstix” landing (0:22).
CLIP 2: Enthusiastic bystander reaction to astounding Starship landing (1:11).
Musk explained that the engineering purpose of the landing is so that Starship can keep working without long delays through “launch and return.” The goal is for the ship to be ready to rapidly re-launch just one hour after landing, so that Starship will be more of an everyday workhorse than a delicate one-trick pony like NASA’s Space Shuttle.
NASA, which could not build anything close to this even with its massively bigger budget and its access to decades of the full resources of the U.S. government, broke tradition and did not congratulate SpaceX on its successful landing. Sore losers.
SpaceX’s mechanical crane system just plucked one of the heaviest rockets in service right out of the air. And the rocket navigated itself into the perfect position to be caught. It’s nearly impossible to imagine the incalculable numbers of component parts that had to perfectly come together for the midair capture to work.
It truly is an incredible time to be alive.
🔥 While SpaceX was breaking more records, Engadget ran a story Saturday headlined, “Boeing to lay off 17,000 employees to ‘stay competitive’.” The military-industrial giant will shed ten percent of its workforce, including executives and managers.
The cuts were announced by Boeing’s brand-new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, hired in August, who is starting to look a lot like a corporate axe-man. The manufacturer’s recent woes just this year include two criminal plea deals, a machinists’ strike, ejecting door plugs, wheels falling off, and two astronauts marooned on the International Space Station that SpaceX will bring home instead.
Diversity is Boeing’s strength. But for some reason, unlike Starship, Boeing is not sticking the landing. Just as a reminder, an April headline from The Stream:
🔥🔥 This weekend, Senator and Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance sparred with ABC’s Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz in an interview about Venezuelan Gangs. It was priceless.
CLIP: Vance vs. Raddatz on truth of gang stories (1:24).
Raddatz shot out of the interview gate trying to manufacture a narrative that President Trump lied about or exaggerated the threat posed by violent Venezuelan Gangs capturing U.S. apartment complexes. She was armed with comments from a “Republican” mayor who minimized the invasion.
It was a bad start. Martha argued, “the incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes. A handful of problems.” That half-witted excuse gave Vance the perfect setup.
“Do you even hear yourself, Martha?” Senator Vance asked. He continued by expressing proper levels of astonishment that ABC’s top correspondent obviously thinks there’s an acceptable amount of gang-captured apartment buildings. It’s only a handful!
Vance’s correct point was that even one gang-captured apartment building is one gang-captured apartment building too many. Handfuls of them should be a five-alarm fire situation. Far-left media is reaching hysterical levels of denial. In handfuls.
📈📈 Last week, the phrase “Democrats panic” surged into corporate media headlines, despite the polling showing Harris up a couple points at that time. But yesterday, Democrat panic reached even higher levels of awkwardness when the New York Times published liberal stalwart Ezra Klein’s latest op-ed with this astonishing title:
Ignore the polls? One detects a marked lack of confidence on the Democrat side. But why? What’s really going on? The answer might be found in less partisan foreign headlines, like yesterday’s from Al Jazeera:
If the polls show your candidate losing, then the polls don’t mean anything. Democrats’ current problem seems to be a Harris slide.
Last week, the polls —whatever they’re worth— showed Harris up by several points. But those small leads have flatlined and are now non-detectable. The problem is the trend. It keeps going the wrong way. That’s why previously poll-happy pundits like Klein are getting ahead of Harris’s inglorious slipping, and are warning Democrat readers to ignore the polls.
But of course, ignoring is not a strategy.
Just this morning, USA Today ran a related story headlined, “Donald Trump takes betting lead over Kamala Harris for first time since debate.” I’ve reported before on Trump’s lead on the betting site Polymarket, but USA Today aggregates several such sites, and finds Trump now ahead everywhere.
The implied odds reflected in that Bet 365 chart above favor Trump (58%) by ten points over Kamala (47.6%). Note those are odds of winning, not the proportion of voters. It’s easy to get confused. The betting sites work differently than polls.
That said, I prefer the clarity and cleanness of the betting sites over the murky black box of the polls. Betting sites don’t make statistical “adjustments,” and everyone’s incentives are fully disclosed. This week will answer the biggest question, the question that is on everyone’s mind, the question that is panicking Democrats like Ezra Klein: is the Kamala slide a continuing trend, or a reversible blip?
My bet is on the trend. We’re halfway through the month; they badly need another October surprise.
Have a marvelous Monday! Wrestle your way back here tomorrow for more sweet and savory Coffee & Covid, for a full serving of essential news and commentary. With gravy.
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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
