Opinion
By Jeff Childers
10/17/24
Good morning, C&C, itβs Thursday! Tick, tock, the clock continues counting down. Todayβs sharp and wide-ranging roundup includes: testy Kamala misfires in interview on Fox and media runs cover; bad news for another covid shot maker; China surrounds Taiwan again, and we wonder about the Great Dragonβs moves before our election; Trumpβs foreign policy versus continuous war; Israel-Iran conflict getting on everybodyβs nerves; Times drops a bomb on Michigan University and it explodes on DEI; and Elon employs novel get-out-the-vote strategy.
ππ¬ WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY π¬π
ππ CNN ran a revealing story yesterday headlined, βKamala Harris spars with Fox News anchor in testy interview.β Almost every mockingbird media headline about yesterdayβs interview with Fox Newsβ Brett Baier included the word, βtesty.β So now we know! Testy means when the reporter insists that the interviewee answer the question, a rare strain of media treatment Kamala has never before encountered, but which used to be the default back before the government acquired corporate media.
CLIP: Brett Baier tells Kamala he has no idea what sheβs talking about (0:50).
During her βtestyβ interview with Brett, Kamala tried to execute the same oleaginous maneuver as during her debate with Trump, which was to recite a little memorized speech whenever Brett asked her a question, even if the little speech had nothing whatever to do with the question Brett asked except for the topic area.
For instance:
BRET: βHow many illegal immigrants would you estimate your administration has released into the country over the last three and a half years?β
KAMALA: βBret, let’s just get to the point. Okay? The point is that we have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired.β
(Am I the only one who finds totally infuriating Kamalaβs verbal tic of punctuating her speeches with βOkay?β)
She also claimed, possibly for the very first time, that her presidency would not in fact just continue Joe Bidenβs regime. But, when Brett asked her to name something sheβd do differently than Joe, she couldnβt even come up with a single example. She just rambled away sixty seconds of precious airtime.
Based on corporate mediaβs desperate efforts to rescue her from herself, and based on social mediaβs crowd reaction, it was the worst interview performance Kamala has ever given. My guess is she wonβt be sitting for any more unscripted interviews. Back to the basement.
ππ The Wall Street Journal ran a startling story yesterday headlined, βNovavax Says FDA Puts Clinical Hold on Covid-19, Flu Vaccines.β Uh oh!
According to Novavaxβs mandatory SEC disclosure filed Monday, the FDA paused trials both of Novavax’s covid and its standalone flu vaccines, after a trial participant reported nerve damage (motor neuropathy). The stock plunged -24% on the news.
If only the original covid vaccines, approved under EUA, were subject to full clinical trials like Novavaxβs new subunit protein vaccine is. I wonder if weβd have discovered more adverse effects, like whatβs happening right now. The FDA is trying to recapture its long-lost public trust, but it will take more than this. A lot more.
ππ We need to check in on developments with China. The New York Times ran a story yesterday headlined, βWith Jets and Ships, China is Honing Its Ability to Choke Taiwan.β Iβm not sure βhoningβ is the right verb for that mixed metaphor, but we got the idea. China put Taiwan in check yesterday with military chess pieces.
In our intense focus on the upcoming elections, itβs easy to forget how rapidly the rush of events is overtaking the world in other places.
Yesterday, the United States, Japan, South Korea, France and Britain held massive joint military drills near Taiwan. Then, China responded with its own record-setting drills, completely encircling the island nation with Chinaβs Coast Guard, and buzzing it with fighter jets launched from Chinaβs first production aircraft carrier.
One sympathizes with the average Taiwanese citizen who, observing all this military attention, probably feels like itβs been one damn thing after another lately.
Beyond describing the military schlong measuring, the article unintentionally confessed an ugly truth. Neocon China hawks often argue China would be easy to beat since it hasnβt βpracticed warβ since Vietnam. (You could also say China has remained peaceful for the last 50 years, but nobody wants to hear that.) In making that overly simplistic point, the formerly peace-loving Times grotesquely bragged how the United States has honed its warmaking skills over decades of continuous war:
While continuous war might be great for military-industrial complex shareholders, for everybody else, continuous war is noisy, expensive, and every now and then somebody actually gets killed. Continuous war is kind of exactly what we were hoping to avoid.
Thatβs why we need President Trump!
Trumpβs foreign policy is based on competing with other countries economically rather than kinetically. Trump is confident he can outwit, outmarket, and outsell other countries, without anybody having to die or even get mangled in a drone strike.
This kind of competition is out of the leftβs reach. Democrats and generals are cowards; they are scared they canβt compete on a fair economic table, so they wield the bully clubs of American military and economic sanctions trying to tilt the scales in our favor.
The very same people whining about Trumpβs straightforward proposals for temporary tariffs never saw a sanctions package they didnβt love. This is a terrific example of the structural problem when deep-state bureaucrats pull the levers of power behind the scenes. On the one hand, the deep-staters are over-emboldened by their lack of accountability, which makes them too aggressive when they should be diplomatic. But they are also fundamentally cowards, constantly fearing exposure, so they are also too passive when they should be forceful.
Deep-state bureaucrats experience constant anxiety over professional βdeath,β which is being thrust into the political spotlight like Fauci and thus rendered useless to the rest of the blob. This results in obsessive secrecy, where it seems like the government classifies almost everything it does.
In other words, we arenβt being told a tenth of what is really going on in the Pacific theater. (Where did the mystery drones flying over US airbases come from?) If China does plan to invade Taiwan anytime soon, the best time might be proximate to the U.S. elections, either just before or just after, especially if a close election is contested resulting in a difficult period when it isnβt clear whoβll be in charge.
Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail, and the election will not even be close.
ππ Reuters ran a suggestive story yesterday headlined, βIran warns Israel against retaliation for missile attack.β The gist is that a building layer of anxiety about what will happen next with Iran blankets the substrata of constant conflict between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Weβre all enduring the awful strategic positioning phase, waiting nervelessly for Israel to hit back at Iran.
It seems fair to say Joe Bidenβs βheroic,β over-hyped, CIA-led peace talks finally failed. If there were actually any βpeace talksβ to begin with, that is. Take it up with mendacious media, which has dropped that now-inconvenient part of the narrative like a hot falafel.
The Israel-Iran conflict is something completely new to modern warfare. I can neither recall nor locate another historical example of this kind of slow-motion, tit-for-tat escalation. Israel hits Iran (or a proxy). Then, weeks go by. Then Iran hits back. Then Israel pauses. And so on.
The conflict suggests a cyclical, even rhythmic pattern. Maybe itβs more like labor painsβshort bursts of intense stress followed by lulls, but suffused with the constant tension of knowing the next “contraction” is on its way. Each round of missile strikes ratchets up the pressure, and even during the quiet moments in between, there’s a collective breath-hold anticipating the next escalation.
And itβs all unfolding in the context of an ever bigger picture: the contractions mean some kind of a βbig momentβ is coming soon, but they donβt say exactly when.
This unprecedented style of conflict, bookended by dramatic pauses, provides the illusion of a peaceful lake stretching between spikes of violence poking up from the water. But peace is a mirage. The ever-present undercurrent of impending escalation makes it impossible to forget that something bigger is coming around the next bend.
Everyone is anxiously waiting for the “next one” to hit. The βquietβ periods of building anticipation, as between labor pains, are themselves draining and unsettling. Itβs hard to say which is worse. At least when the rockets come, folks can stop imagining the worst.
As Yeats famously asked: What rough beast, its time come βround at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
Heading into these final weeks before the election, it seems inevitable some unpleasant beast will be born if Kamala is elected since a Kamala Administration will be a mere continuation of Bidenβs foreign policy midwife.
Our only hope of avoiding what is looking more and more like a worst-case scenario is electing Donald Trump.
So vote like this might be your last chance! And nag other folks into voting, too. The most surprising thing Iβve learned from watching hardworking voter-registration heroes like Scott Pressler is how many people either arenβt properly registered to vote in the first place, or who say they arenβt planning to vote for some reason or other.
Local, local, local.
π₯π₯ Due to blowing past this morningβs looming deadline, I cannot give this significant story the time it rightly deserves. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a long-form, magazine-style report, explicitly labeled as βinvestigative,β headlined βThe University of Michigan Doubled Down on D.E.I. What Went Wrong?β You might want to read this one. (I donβt often suggest reading NYT articles, either.)
Apart from Matt Walshβs movie (βAm I Racist?β), nothing this year has more evidenced the promising advances in the conservative counter-revolution than this article springing from one of the wellsprings of DEI, which, as it turns out, is not, after all, Ponce De Leonβs fountain of eternal academic youth.
DEI is prematurely aging. It isnβt aging well.
The article described how no university in America embraced DEI as tightly and passionately as did the University of Michigan. In 2016, after Trumpβs election, every single MichU department, hundreds and hundreds of them, were ordered to develop and staff comprehensive DEI radicalization plans.
Even the universityβs plant nursery (the βArboretumβ) delivered a 37-page buzzword-packed diversity plan, born out of wedlock, which vowed to adopt βa polycentric paradigm, decentering singular ways of knowing and cocreating meaning through a variety of epistemic frames, including dominant scientific and horticultural modalities, Two-Eyed Seeing, Kinomaage and other cocreated power realignments.β
They are deadly serious, but that right there is a joke. I defy you to explain what that means in simple English. (Two-Eyed Seeing? Apart from BB gun accident victims and the mythical Cyclops, is there any other kind of seeing?) I also defy you to justify how a plant nursery could be so racist it had to be βfixedβ in the first place.
The Timesβ investigative journalist interviewed numberless faculty members, mostly unlucky teachers who the institutional DEI machine had masticated at one point or another. A common theme developed. The original architects and power brokers of MichUβs DEI industry refused to talk to the Timesβ reporter. They sensed it was too dangerous.
A second theme bubbled up: white women were the worst. A βcartoon professorβ was investigated by the Universityβs DEI police after students reported her for showing them a βracistβ cartoon (a 1960s political cartoon about Maoist repression). She told the Times sheβd been reported by a group of female white students. βThey want to do something β be a part of the cause,β the professor explained.
Another professor remarked that creating the DEI tipline and policing process was like handing tasers to a gang of six-year-old children. At times, the article swerved β almost certainly intentionally β toward Matt Walsh-levels of self-parody. For example:
As the article wrapped up, Michiganβs DEI administrators were fully exposed as clueless nitwits. The reporter quoted them defending the schoolβs horrible racial performance statistics, like dropping black enrollment and student surveys showing higher rates of racial angst and animus on campus. According to the DEI Administrators, these failing numbers show Michiganβs DEI programs are actually working because, paradoxically, when you βfixβ racism it βstirs up anger and resentment.β
We always thought that racism was anger and resentment.
In sum, the Timesβ story β again, well worth reading β conveyed a pervasive sense of dilapidation, as though the entire edifice of DEI is rotting from the inside, paint peeling off the walls, doors hanging from the hinges. Let us never forget that DEI was still under construction until the pandemic exposed the reprehensible ideology to appalled parents.
π₯π₯ PennLive ran a terrific story yesterday headlined, βMusk hits campaign trail in Pa. with deal for voters that sparked election law concerns.β When we said Elon went all-in, it turned out there was a lot more βinβ for the billionaire to go.
Elon is taking a pre-victory tour through Pennsylvania to entice voting. He tweeted out an invitation to events: βTomorrow night through Monday, I will be giving a series of talks throughout Pennsylvania,β Musk wrote. βIf youβd like to attend one of my talks, thereβs no attendance fee. You just need to have signed our petition supporting free speech & right to bear arms & have voted in this election in Pennsylvania.β
Imagine how valuable Elon Muskβs time is, even a single hour, nevermind days on the campaign trail.
The βelection law concernβ in the headline referred to a quote by a lawyer citing a federal statute that prohibits inducing someone to vote by offering something of value. Here, the βsomething of valueβ is attending Elonβs TED Talk. Elonβs deal is right on the legal line, but he might be okay since his offer is after the fact (they already voted).
Maybe itβs more like getting that little βI voted!β sticker or a free donut or any of a number of get-out-the-vote incentives. Weβll see.
Regardless, Elonβs tour is a terrific way to remind everyone in Pennsylvania to go vote early, which is the current GOP strategy. Elonβs putting his time and celebrity where his mouth is. Again. Heβs in that state because the pundits are projecting that whoever wins Pennsylvania will win the election.
In related news, Trump continued surging yesterday on Polymarket:
Keep encouraged but also keep frosty.
Have a tremendous Thursday! Tour back here tomorrow morning for more essential C&C news and commentary.
Donβt race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nationβs needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: β Learn How to Get Involved π¦
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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