☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Friday, July 1, 2022 ☙ LIFELIKE 🦠

Good news from the Supremes; Zelenko succumbs; Florida's Right to Privacy; Biden adds China to the naughty list, because why not?; Biden trades F16s for votes; and the most insane C&C story ever.

Welcome to July! Today is — this time — Friday, the last day of the week and the first day of the new month. And I have a great roundup for you: the Supreme Court slaps the EPA’s kooky climate change rules; Florida crushes education; Zelenko succumbs to cancer; Tallahassee judge enjoins Florida’s new 15-week abortion limit; PA senate passes Don’t Say Gay bill; Abbott labs still closed, for some reason; the single craziest story I’ve EVER reported; the US announces new forces and bases in Europe; NATO goes after China; the US will sell Turkey F16s for its vote to admit Finland and Sweden; and I do some rough calculations of our odds.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞

🪖 Note that next week, I’ll be litigating a jury trial, so I don’t know yet what’ll happen with C&C. I’m trying to line something modest up. See yesterday’s post for more details.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 The Supreme Court issued another 6-3 ruling yesterday, this time finding that the Biden’s new EPA rules about “climate change” are an unconstitutional power grab. The EPA cannot legislate, that’s Congress’ job.

In its opinion, the Court aptly described the goals of the new rules as being to “compel the transfer of power generating capacity from existing sources to wind and solar.” With emphasis on the word, “compel.” But the Court said if they want to shut down coal and force the country to somehow run on wind and solar, they need to vote for it, not casually slip it into the agency’s rulebook.

Reactions were mixed. Leftists thought the decision was the worst possible thing that ever could have happened, ever. Worse than dropping the airplane mask mandate! Racial-advantage grifter and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren hysterically tweeted that the world was on fire:

Apparently it didn’t occur to SENATOR Warren that the Supreme Court just said it’s up to HER — the legislature — to fix climate change, if that’s what they want to do so badly. Congress already gets the last word, dummy. But maybe Congress is facing a legitimacy crisis too.

Pugnacious Paul Krugman saw Warren’s “world on fire” tweet and upped the ante all the way to total civilizational collapse:

Yawn.

📈 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced yesterday that, unlike most other states, Florida’s literacy rates have been steadily increasing since he became governor — despite the pandemic. I wonder what the difference could be? Do you think open schools might have had something to do with it? Just spitballing.

Statewide, about 75% of students scored at or above Level 3 in Civics in 2022, an increase of +5% over 2021. African American students had the largest increases in both social studies and science, and increased +8% in Civics and +4% in U.S. History. Nice.

🔥 Dr. Vladimir “Zev” Zelenko, the man who discovered and implemented the early treatment for covid that literally saved millions of lives worldwide, passed away yesterday after a four-year battle with a rare cancer. Born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1973, he was 48 when he passed.

Zelenko had an unshakeable faith, and often described his cancer as a divine gift. Once he described it like this:

“My cancer is what prepared me for the COVID-19 pandemic. Without it, I would not have developed my passion for searching for answers that others said couldn’t be found, and without it I could not have held to the persecution and ridicule I received for daring to treat patients. I have looked death in the eye and I have been made ready to meet God. I fear nothing on this earth.”

I know just how he felt. And you’d be surprised how many of the heroes of the pandemic who I’ve met told me something similar.

Zelenko believed until the end that God had created a special mission for him on this earth, and that the prayers of millions had kept him alive long enough to fulfill that mission.

Godspeed, Dr. Zev.

TexasLindsay™ @TexasLindsay

Message from Dr. Zelenko 3 weeks ago. ❤️🙏🏼

🔥 In a hearing yesterday, Judge Cooper in Tallahassee — who has struck down several of the Governor’s orders and favored laws, only to see them reinstated by the First District Court of Appeal — ruled in court yesterday that he will enjoin Florida’s 15-week abortion limit. Media complained that because it will take the judge a few days to write the opinion, he won’t get it out before the law takes effect today (Friday), and abortions will be limited for a few days.

DeSantis told reporters the state would appeal, of course.

I fully expected this to happen; I became a narrow subject-matter expert on Florida’s constitutional right of privacy back when I was litigating the mask mandate. In fact, most of the recent decisions under the right to privacy were about abortion restrictions. For example, in the “Gainesville Woman Care” case, which I relied on heavily in my briefing, the Supreme Court struck down a 24-hour waiting period to get an abortion.

In my briefs, I argued if the right to privacy stops government from making you wait one single day for an abortion — “an inconvenience” — then it should also stop the government from imposing the “inconvenience” of mandatory masking. That language came from the County’s briefs, where they had always characterized masking as a “mere inconvenience.”

The First District Court of Appeal agreed with me, sort of. The written opinion betrays an undercurrent of criticism of Florida’s Supreme Court for “correcting” the First on its ruling in Gainesville Woman Care. The First DCA had allowed the 24-hour waiting period, finding it was legally justified, but the Supreme Court reversed them, saying they’d applied the wrong standard, and sent the decision back down for a new ruling.

In other words, the First DCA struck the mask mandate essentially explaining, “look, you made us do this. We tried to tell you that the right to privacy wasn’t absolute but you guys said we couldn’t even save a 24-hour waiting period, so the mask mandate has to go. Nothing we could do, sorry!”

But my mask decision also includes a strong concurrence by Judge Long complaining about the right to privacy and laying out the bones of a solution. I’m paraphrasing badly, but he said the right to privacy needs some balance. Taken to an extreme, nearly ANY law could be struck by a court because it interferes with citizens’ “right to be let alone” somehow.

So the exciting thing is, my mask decision is likely to be featured in the new briefs about the 15-week law, by both sides. The pro-choice team will use it to show a recent example of how strong the right to privacy is and how it’s recently been applied; the pro-life team will use Judge Long’s concurrence to argue the Supreme Court should create some guardrails for courts applying the right to privacy.

Maybe I should submit an amicus brief.

Currently, Florida’s supreme court is described as the MOST CONSERVATIVE state supreme court in the country. Every single justice has been appointed by a Republican governor. This should be interesting!

🔥 The Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill banning gender identity and sexual orientation instruction in pre-K through fifth grade — similar to the Florida law. Progress.

🔥 Six months later, that Abbott baby formula lab in Sturgis, Michigan is still closed. First it closed due to a murky FDA order that was later rescinded after public outcry. Then the plant was restarted for about ten minutes but before the FDA could sign off, it got flooded during a thunderstorm or something, so it closed “for cleaning.” That was three weeks ago.

They must be cleaning it REALLY well. And whenever it opens, it still has to be re-certified by the FDA.

🔥 The simulation is failing. To fully convince you we are now about halfway through the first third of the Book of Revelations, the New York Post ran an article yesterday headlined, “Vegan Burger Hyped for Tasting Like ‘Human Meat’ Wins Award.”

There is SO MUCH wrong with that headline.

Last week, the Cannes Festival of Creativity gave some kind of award to Swedish plant-based food company “Oumph!”, which offered ravenous judges a human flesh-flavored burger. A company spokesperson said it did its very best to make sure the burger was “as lifelike as possible.”

I can’t even.

The sinister burger’s alleged ingredients include soya, mushrooms and wheat protein, plus plant-based fats and “a mysterious spice mix.”

Hmmm.

“I am incredibly proud of this award and the great teamwork behind it. Our mission is to change how people eat, and it is our duty to use creativity as a tool to make this change happen,” bragged macabre Henrik Åkerman, global brand leader at Oumph!.

Yes, but change how we eat HOW? Into WHAT?

This is the quote that really got me: “We developed this burger in no time as soon as we knew what taste and texture we were after,” creepy co-founder Anders Linden explained.

Wait. HOW did they know what taste and texture they were after? How did they find out? Who did the taste and texture comparisons? And, more importantly, WHY??

Finally, here is Oumph!’s October 30, 2021 cannibal-burger ad, in case you needed any other reason to avoid eating plant burgers:

I wish I were making this story up. The other thing I’m wondering is, what’s next? A beast with ten heads rising from the ocean with a harlot on its back?

🚀 *THE MINORITY REPORT* 🚀

🚀 Joe Biden slowly read a teleprompter at a NATO summit in Madrid Wednesday, announcing that the U.S. is ramping up its forces and equipment all across Europe, and will build a new permanent military base in Poland due to ‘potential’ Russian threats.

Poland has been Europe’s punching bag for a long time, and not surprisingly, welcomed the news. They’ve been looking to host an American military base for a long time. In 2018 they offered to name the base after President Trump if he’d agree to build one.

🚀 As if our semi-hot war with Russia just isn’t good enough, the Biden Administration is now gunning for China, too. An article in The Washington Post yesterday was headlined, “Companies in China Are Aiding Russia’s Military, U.S. Alleges.” The sub-headline should have been the real headline. It explains, “Commerce Department adds [Chinese] firms to a trade blacklist, saying their contracts to supply Russia violate export controls.”

In other words, we’re starting to sanction China now, too.

Why not just sanction everybody? Oh, wait: “Today’s action sends a powerful message to entities and individuals across the globe that if they seek to support Russia, the United States will cut them off as well,” undersecretary of commerce Alan Estevez said in a statement.

It’s a good thing we don’t get much of our stuff from China, right? And it’s not like they hold a boatload of US treasury bonds or anything.

🚀 It’s not just itty-bitty sanctions, either. At the NATO summit in Madrid Wednesday, for the first time in history, NATO declared China to be a “strategic threat” to the West. Fox News reported the story in an article headlined, “NATO Cites China as Top Threat, Beijing Cries ‘Ideological Prejudices’.”

President Trump’s laughter could be heard up to 300 miles north of Palm Beach on I95. I guess corporate media will finally start running anti-China stories now that the narrative has pivoted. I wonder if Disney will have to stop editing the LGBTQ++ scenes out of its Chinese kids programming? And I wonder, what kind of social media banners we should be putting on our profiles now?

Anyway, in a contemporaneous report, NATO’s Atlantic Council said “the likelihood of imposing secondary sanctions against China is now at an all-time high.” Uh huh. Told you.

Benjamin Norton @BenjaminNorton

The US-NATO imperialist bloc is threatening to expand its economic war on Russia into one on China too NATO's Atlantic Council, which is funded by the US and other Western governments, says "the likelihood of imposing secondary sanctions against China is now at an all-time high"

🚀 Joe Biden was super busy at the Madrid summit. He personally thanked Turkish president Erdogan on Wednesday for dropping Turkey’s veto to the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO, by agreeing with Turkey’s request to buy F-16 warplanes.

I told you Turkey would be in a strong bargaining position with this NATO vote thing. Have you ever tried to haggle over a Turkish rug? Joe is completely out of his depth, which is kiddie-pool depth anyway.

Oh, I almost forgot. The US State Department says the agreement to supply the F16s has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Turkey’s NATO vote, it’s merely coincidental.

Erdogan said he feels satisfied with how things worked out for everybody at the Madrid summit. “Thanks to our efforts, we believe that we will be able to go back to our countries with our hands full and with full satisfaction,” he said.

Russia is not going to be happy about Finland and Sweden joining NATO, not one little bit, and which is going to happen any minute now.

🚀 I’ve been doing some math, which is dangerous, because I’m a lawyer, not a mathematician, but it seems to be that we’re a little on the outnumbered side.

First of all, there are currently 2.3 million soldiers in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and another 800,000 in its Armed Police Force, so the total number of active personnel in China is 4.1 million. That seems poor odds for us, if numbers mean anything.

And, there are like 3.2 BILLION people in the BRICS countries. So, if there’s 3.2 billion people in BRICS, out of a total world population of 7.9 billion, then the five BRICS countries alone account for about 40% of the world’s total population. Meanwhile, the G7 countries total population is only about 777 million. So there’s THAT.

And, don’t take this the wrong way, but the G7 group is led by feckless sub-par politicians like Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, and Justin Trudeau. The BRICS leaders seem somewhat, well, more manly or lively or something. At least they seem to be able to talk without detailed instructions. Just saying.

Now again, I’m only a lawyer, not an international expert, but it seems a little, well, RISKY to go to war with BRICS, even it’s just cold war or economic sanctions war. If the Simulation wasn’t on the fritz, I would expect Congress to be up in arms about this. Who is Joe Biden to get us into this mess? Nobody voted for NATO to label China a stinky persona non-grata, right in the middle of a worldwide conflict with Russia.

I mean, what am I missing here? Plus, at this point, it seems inevitable that India will shortly find itself on the naughty list, too. Who’ve we got? Canada? Germany?

Maybe — try to follow me here — maybe if we’re so keen on beating Russia in this Ukraine deal, MAYBE we shouldn’t be alienating everybody else right now. I mean, shouldn’t we TALK about this or something? I realize I’m not an expert or anything but it seems like common sense, which is in super short supply these days.

Senators? Congressmen? What say you? Remember, you are ONE THIRD of the government. Do you guys actually DO anything, or just hold UFO hearings now? People, PLEASE.

Have a fabulous Friday! I’ll be back tomorrow morning for the final pretrial roundup.

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