☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Tuesday, May 31, 2022 ☙ FROZEN 🦠

Trudeau aims at gun owners; who'll replace Biden?; jabs up and cases up in the U.S.; Cheney struggles; jabs don't stop long Covid, study says; Iranians cheating; UN makes a surprising choice; & more.

Good morning, and happy Tuesday! I hope everyone enjoyed Memorial Day yesterday. I apologize to European readers who didn’t immediately guess C&C was closed for the U.S. holiday, and whose coffee turned frigid waiting for news; I should’ve mentioned it last week. I’ll make it up to you!

Today’s roundup: Canada aims the euphemism machine at gun owners in a politely-worded new bill; papers speculate about the new dem nominee for 2024; while jabs have increased, so have U.S. covid cases; a baffling new Nature study says jabs don’t stop long covid, for some reason; Liz Cheney not polling well in Wyoming; Iranians have been cheating on their nuclear treaty; US officials want to “negotiate” Sweden and Finland into NATO; Ukraine refuses to negotiate for peace; and you’ll never guess who the UN put in charge of its nuclear disarmament group.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 While summer is showing up everywhere else, Canada’s political climate is getting even icier. Yesterday, Fox News ran an article headlined, “Canadian PM Trudeau Announces Legislation to ‘Freeze’ Handgun Ownership, Buy Back ‘Assault-Style Weapons’.”

Canada just introduced one of the strictest gun control bills in its history. Castro look-alike and prime minister Justin Trudeau can’t think of many reasons why people even need guns in the first place: “other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives,” he opined.

No reason at all.

The bill creates a bunch of red flag laws, bans magazines holding more than five rounds, establishes a “mandatory buy back program,” and most importantly, “implements [a] national freeze on handgun ownership.”

When pressed for details about the so-called gun “freeze,” Trudeau explained, “it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada.” Yep, sounds like a freeze all right. Frozen solid.

The marxists just love their euphemisms, don’t they? “MANDATORY buy back!” That’s a really good one; Orwell would have loved it. “It means we’re going to take your assault weapons one way or the other, but if you cooperate we’ll pay you something we think is fair.” And, a “freeze” on handgun sales basically means “ban on all transfers.”

You have to freeze them in place first so then you can catch them. Haha, good one, comrades.

📉 The Washington Times ran an article this morning headlined, “Talk of 2024 Alternative Spurred by Biden’s Age and Political Headwinds.” Uh oh.

The article notes Biden will be 82 years young in 2024, calls his public performance halting and inconsistent, and suggests Joe isn’t polling well. But who would replace him? That’s the problem. The article runs through all the obvious possibilities: Kooky Kamala, Bourgeois Bernie, Liz “Pocahontas” Warren, and little Petie Buttigieg.

Unfortunately, nobody is looking too good right now. Not Biden or anybody else either. It’s a political conundrum.

💉 The safe and effective jabs are just working great. The Hill ran a story this weekend headlined, “As Summer Begins, US COVID-19 Cases Six Times Higher Than Last Year.” My gosh! How could this have happened? A year ago we had a tiny fraction of jabbed people compared to now. How could cases be higher?

Well, experts are baffled because Johns Hopkins reported a seven-day average of 119,725 cases as of Saturday, compared to only 17,887 cases on May 28th of last year. That’s a big difference.

The Hill quickly rushed to explain that, even though cases are up, DEATHS are down. On Friday, the seven-day average of 470 deaths compared to 637 on the same day last year. So, it’s down, but not to the same degree that cases are up. And back during Narrative 1.0, deaths USED TO BE a lagging indicator. And, the Hill omits mention that the CDC changed the death counting definitions in January. So… who knows how it really compares?

Current covid cases are still well under this winter’s Omicron peak, so it’s not clear at all where things are headed yet. But this jump in cases seems to be breaking the seasonality curve for the first time, which is something to keep an eye on.

🔥 Republican-In-Name-Only Liz Cheney, one of two republicans who defected and joined the January 6th Committee investigating President Trump, is now 30 points behind her Trump-backed primary opponent in Wyoming.

So. Weird.

💉 Last week, CNBC reported on a newly-published Nature study in an article headlined, “Vaccines Offer Little Protection Against Long Covid, Study Finds.” Whoops! Yet another thing jabs don’t offer protection against.

The study found the risk of long covid in a fully vaccinated person was reduced only by about 15% compared to an unvaccinated person. That’s not much. CNBC gloomily described the study’s conclusions as “disappointing, if not surprising.”

But don’t blame the vaccines. The article quotes a cherry-picked expert who explained that the vaccines were originally developed “long before doctors, scientists and patients knew of the existence of long covid.” So it’s not their fault! And even after calling it “surprising” a few paragraphs before, CNBC said since nobody knew about long covid when they cooked up the vaccine, it’s totally NOT surprising the jabs don’t stop long covid. Apparently long covid is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT DISEASE than regular covid and needs its own separate vaccine or something.

See how great the jabs are? They can stop PART of covid — the severe illness part — but like a laser they slice off the long covid part. You need a different vaccine for that one. Same virus though. Trust us.

I’m old enough to remember when long covid was the main reason to take the vaccine. When people objected, “I don’t want the jab because I’m not in a group at high risk for severe covid,” the pro-jabbers would patiently explain like you were five, “true, but you could still get LONG COVID.” Meaning, the jabs would save you from the dire fate of forever covid with its list of over 200+ symptoms, and counting.

But now, it looks like they don’t have that argument anymore for taking the jabs. I wonder what argument they’ll come up with next?

🚀 *THE MINORITY REPORT* 🚀

🚀 I know you probably won’t believe this, but the Iranians have been cheating on that nuclear deal Obama purchased for all those cash pallets. And now the Middle East’s political Geiger counter is flipping its little needles all over the dial. AFP ran a story yesterday headlined, “Iran’s Enriched Uranium Stockpile 18 Times Over 2015 Deal Limit: IAEA.”

The Wall Street Journal’s article on the story was more direct. Its headline said, “U.N. Says Iran Has Enough Uranium to Produce Nuclear Weapon.”

Iran originally agreed to keep its enriched uranium stockpile under 660 pounds (300 kg). It also agreed to keep the level of enrichment below 4%, and it was required to only use old-style centrifuges incapable of refining uranium to weapons-grade levels. (Trump pulled the U.S. out of the multinational agreement in 2018, but the agreement continued.)

Now, a recently-released International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA) report says that Iran has completely blown the deal limits, and now has at least 8,400 pounds (3,800 kg) of enriched uranium, and with at least 100 pounds enriched up to 60%. The report also discloses that the Iranians are breaking the deal by building new, more advanced centrifuges, which are used to purify uranium. The Iranians’ obvious goal is to reach nuclear-capable levels at bomb-grade (90%) enrichment.

Commenters observed that 100 pounds of 60% enriched uranium can be enriched to bomb-grade levels in about 2 weeks.

The Russia-aligned Iranians claimed, I am not making this up, that someone PLANTED the highly-enriched material discovered in its labs, calling it an act of sabotage. “Officer, those aren’t MY drugs! I was just holding them for a friend.” In other words, somebody gave Iran a bunch of priceless enriched uranium just to get it in trouble.

The muslim theocracy, sitting on an ocean of oil, also insists that its nuclear program is one hundred percent peaceful.

This development is troubling because Israel has pledged that it will not allow Iran to obtain bomb-grade uranium, implying a military solution, mostly because the muslim nation has often pledged to use a bomb to destroy the jewish democracy. One has to wonder whether the new report itself is a consequence of Israel’s secret monitoring efforts, bringing the issue to a very public head.

The IAEA meets this week to discuss what to do about Iran’s nuclear status. Reuters headline on the story concludes, “…Clash With West Looms.” Stay tuned for a clash.

🚀 The New York Times ran a story on Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership headlined, “For NATO, Turkey Is a Disruptive Ally.”

The article is a buffet of word salad, but the bottom line is Western elites are frustrated by Turkey’s obstinate veto of Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership application, which is necessary so the elites can punish Russia. Turkey says Sweden and Finland support dangerous Kurdish terrorists or something.

The Times is ESPECIALLY frustrated. Its article tosses around jabs like “Turkey has increasingly become a problem to be managed” and “Mr. Erdogan’s objections … have even renewed questions about whether NATO might be better off without Turkey.”

The problem is that Turkey has the second largest army in the 30-country military alliance, and sits on a critical strategic location in the Middle East.

But don’t worry! Democrats are also frustrated but are super ready to throw a bunch of your money and our weapons at the problem. The Times quoted Representative Adam Smith (D-Wa.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who said “we need to sit down [with Turkey] and we need to cut a deal. And we need to get aggressive about it, like now.”

🚀 Ukraine isn’t messing around. Last week, the New York Post ran an article headlined, “Ukraine Rules Out Ceasefire as Fighting Intensifies In Donbas.”

Why is Zelensky ruling out a negotiated peace when it looks like he’s losing? As always, it is hard to get accurate information about what is REALLY happening in the war. But in searching the independent sources, and observing the radio silence from the normally bellicose pro-Ukraine corporate media, it seems that Russia is probably winning the battle for the Donbas region. If some credible-sounding reports are correct, Russia may be winning pretty definitively.

Mainstream reports appear to confirm this. The Post reported that Zelensky would only say, “The situation in Donbas is extremely difficult.” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently called for an immediate ceasefire in the region, which the Ukrainians appear to be rejecting.

Multiple sources report that Russia is using a “new strategy” of a slow, cautious, and relentless push into the Donbas region behind a devastating wall of thermal artillery ripping up Ukrainian troops and assorted mercenaries.

Donbas is a large area occupying the southeastern half of Ukraine. If Russia were to annex Donbas, like it did in the Crimean peninsula in 2014, Russia would have enhanced access to the Sea of Azov, the Black Sea, and would have a land link to Crimea. Some commenters suggest that is all Russia wants.

I predict calls for Russia sanctions and more Ukraine aid will intensity this week.

🚀 Hahaha, you really can’t make this stuff up. This weekend, UN Watch ran a story headlined, “North Korea to Head UN Disarmament Forum, 40 NGOs Urge Walk-out.”

The gist is that North Korea took over yesterday as the new chair of the UN’s nuclear disarmament group. Under UN rules, as chair, the North Korean ambassador to the forum helps organize the day-to-day work of the conference and sets meeting agendas.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said even though the chair position is largely a formality, “North Korea holding the president’s gavel is liable to seriously undermine the image and credibility of the United Nations, and will send absolutely the worst message.”

Well. It may be the the UN’s image and credibility are already at the minimum levels and can’t really go any lower. So, that’s the silver lining.

Have a terrific Tuesday, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow with more Coffee and more Covid. News, that is.

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