☕️ CO-INCIDENCES ☙ Tuesday, April 9, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Coincidence strikes another bridge-bound cargo ship; no news is good eclipse news and good Iran news; Ukraine aid package inches closer as tearful Zelensky keeps begging; Vatican v. Trans; and more.

Good morning C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup today includes: coincidence strikes again as another cargo ship loses power right around a major bridge that just happened to be vulnerable to collapse by a cargo ship collision; some news dogs that didn’t bark yesterday; Ukraine aid package inches closer to a vote in the House of Representatives while Zelensky keeps crying about it all over the world; the Vatican enters the transgender fray, teeing up a Church-Cross Dresser showdown; and Switzerland prepares to vote on anti-immigration referendum.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 Oops, I did it again! The New York Post ran a story Sunday headlined “Massive container ship loses power near NYC’s Verrazzano Bridge days after Baltimore Key Bridge disaster.” It’s coincidence time, again, which means it’s time to play connect the dots.

Early last week, in the days following the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster, the Wall Street Journal ran an unrelated but eerily prophetic story headlined, “These Eight U.S. Bridges Are Vulnerable to a Repeat of the Baltimore Crash.” The eight “vulnerable” bridges named in the Journal’s article included lucky number seven, New York’s Verrazzano Bridge. The Journal added a helpful infographic showing that, out of the eight vulnerable bridges, Verrazzano is the next closest to the Francis Scott Key’s heap of fresh wreckage.

The Journal explained that all eight of the “vulnerable” bridges, including Verrazzano, have “fracture critical members,” meaning the failure of even just one steel part under tension could cause a catastrophic collapse. Not all bridges are vulnerable; ones built after 1980 or so feature design elements eliminating fracture critical members and protecting bridge supports from ship collisions (I know, allisions).

On Saturday, the fully-loaded, 90-thousand ton container ship APL Qingdao was sailing under the vulnerable Verrazzano Bridge when the ship suddenly and unexpectedly, right at the worst possible spot, lost power to its propulsion system. It went adrift, spinning in the middle of the channel and drifting toward the bridge. Fortunately, three tugs had already been assigned to the Qingdao, and three more were staged nearby, apparently for just such an emergency, and leapt in. The six tugs easily moved the massive ship out of harms way, and the propulsion came back on.

After reporting to the Coast Guard, the Qingdao was cleared and sailed for Norfolk, Virginia. And that’s all we know. Nothing to see here.

Coincidentally, two massive container ship power failures underneath two vulnerable bridges in two weeks. Well, what are the odds? Maybe it’s just that the crew forget to plug in the charger overnight? Or maybe they forgot the ship’s charger back in the hotel room? It happens.

Seriously though, the good news is this story suggests that authorities are now fully prepared for the next coincidence to happen.

🔥 We should take note of some news items that were, perhaps, broadly expected, but still didn’t happen. First, the Moon eclipsed the Sun yesterday — and blocked out a whole news day — without any earthquakes, UFO invasions, or mass casualty terror attacks. Not even mega-traffic jams or clogged cell towers. In fact, unsurprisingly, no city, county or state experienced any type of “emergency” justifying in any way the various declarations of emergency.

Just like every time before, folks watched the impressive show in the sky and then went back to work.

Emergency powers are being abused. Just saying.

🔥 Next up, Iran did not retaliate against Israel for its intentional F35 missile attack on Iran’s diplomatic consular building in Damascus, which blew up (among others) two top Iranian generals who were close personal friends of Iran’s Supreme Leader for life, Ali Khamenei. You can imagine Ali wasn’t a very happy Supreme Leader or a happy camper either. It wasn’t even an accident, since Israel immediately claimed responsibility and in a completely unnecessarily provocative and unseemly way sort of gloated about it.

As you can readily imagine, Iran has been making lots of noise and bluster, and strong rumors had suggested a massive retaliatory strike against Israel this weekend.  But nothing happened. Like Russia after its Nordstream bombing, or more recently after its Moscow concert attack, Iran is demonstrating uncharacteristic restraint. It’s almost like the Iranians and Russians think some global power is trying to tempt them into a larger war or overreaction or something.

Both the Russians and the Iranians are starting to look in the public’s eye more sinned against than sinning, if you follow me, which is … interesting.

It feels like Iran and Russia are waiting, for … something. A sign? A starting signal? They appear more to be following a plan, and not just reacting to provocative events. Prior to the Proxy War, Russia and Israel were more closely aligned than were Russia and Iran. But Russian requirements for Iranian drones early in the war led to a realignment.

So Israel can thank Joe Biden for Russia and Iran becoming so cuddly and aligned.

All that said, regardless of the cause, Iran’s restraint has been good news for avoiding World War III.

🔥 Speaker Mike Johnson is under withering pressure to let an Ukraine aid proposal to the floor for a vote. For two days, in a news search for “Ukraine,” Google returned CNN’s headline as the first result: “Ukraine ‘will lose the war’ if US aid not approved, says Zelensky.”

Poor Zelensky. “If the Congress doesn’t help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” Zelensky flatly told fund-raising group UNITED24 on Sunday. Then the tearful former-actor-turned-dictator warned, “If Ukraine loses this war, other countries will be attacked. This is a fact.”

Well, maybe that is not so much of “a fact,” not at least in the sense of something real and verifiable. But why let “facts” get in the way of helpful opinions?

So apparently the Proxy War is now Congress’s to win or lose. My vote is to lose it; cut our losses. Stop the Ukrainians from dying and let Russia take over; I assume it’s better to become a live Russian than to become a dead Ukrainian. (Cue all the Putin-loving accusations in the comments.)

Seriously, what possible chance of winning does a country have if it is totally dependent on other countries for its war resources? It’s like a bankrupt guy asking for one more loan and this time his latest scheme will be wildly successful and then he can pay everybody back. Just another 61 billion and we can do it this time, I promise.

Speaker Johnson’s question — and every Congressman’s question who is not under deep state management — should be what is the plan? How will the $61 billion, or any amount of money, help achieve the objective? What is the objective? Is the new aid package just meant to help Ukraine hang on until after the election, while poor Ukrainians keep dying? What are we getting for the money? What about our border?

An hour ago, the Hill ran a story headlined, “Greene drama builds for embattled Johnson.” “This is not an easy job right now,” Johnson understatedly told Fox News last week. The House reconvened this week after its Easter break, and Johnson has hinted that he will soon allow a Ukraine aid package to the floor for a vote. Nearly every U.S. and every NATO leader have been constantly hectoring Johnson around the clock and giving the inexperienced Speaker not a minute’s rest.

This time, outspoken conservative Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) seems to be taking point for the House Freedom Caucus (last time Florida’s Matt Gaetz led the charge against now-removed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy). She opposes any Ukraine aid, at least while our border remains unsecured, and has threatened trying to remove Johnson if he allows a vote on any bill including Ukraine aid.

It may be an empty threat. It’s not clear Marjorie has the votes. Also, democrats have “promised” to support Johnson and help keep him in the position, but that would be a horrible look for the brand-new Speaker. And that’s if he trusts them at all, which, well, you know.

Johnson does have an excruciating job. He has so far masterfully delayed Ukraine aid for months under terrific pressure. But it seems like eventually, one way or the other, Johnson will be pressed into allowing a vote on the best package he can scrape together. We’ll see.

🔥 The New York Times ran a reluctant story yesterday headlined, “Vatican Document Casts Gender Change and Fluidity as Threat to Human Dignity.” The sub-headline fretted, “The statement is likely to be embraced by conservatives and stir consternation among L.G.B.T.Q. advocates who fear it will be used as a cudgel against transgender people.”

The clarity of the Church’s unsurprising anti-transgender position surprised activists anyway because Pope Francis has recently let gay Catholics receive ‘blessings’ — a kind of marriage-lite — and permitted open transsexuals to be godparents in Catholic ceremonies.

The new document, issued by the Vatican yesterday and titled Dignitas Infinita (Infinite Dignity), explained a person’s birth sex is an “irrevocable gift” from God and “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” People who want “personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes,” risk succumbing “to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.”

The document also condemned surrogacy in all cases, which is an issue important to transgender people, who are not as a rule the most fertile group of folks.

The media apparently were not this time provided a narrative, since the headlines were all over the place. For example, the UK Telegraph:

Versus the Associated Press:

The difference between the two takes highlights the age-old gnostic argument over mind-body duality. Trans activists clearly believe people have a gendered spirit separate from their physical, sexed bodies. (This explains, by the way, activists’ attempts to appropriate the Native American concept of “two-spiritedness,” which historically referred to a kind of naturalistic demon possession, but which has been culturally co-opted and whitewashed in service of transgender philosophy.)

And to transgender activists (at least as of about ten years ago), the spirit predominates in the mind-body relationship, to the point that invasive surgery is required to force the rebellious body to conform to the idealized spirit’s self-conception.

But real scientists and sane theologians all agree that the mind (‘spirit’) is not separate from the body; the two are inextricably intertwined and are two essential parts of a complete person. And so this group believes the word ‘gender’ to be just a more specific synonym for ‘sex,’ similar to how the word ‘ocean’ is synonymous with ‘water,’ or maybe more like how the word ‘woman’ — an adult human female — is just a more specific form of the general category of ‘female,’ which more generally describes any mammal capable of giving birth to offspring.

The transgender philosophy is so unholy or anti-holy that I sometimes wonder whether the transgender ‘revolution’ was invented for the express purpose of precipitating some kind of legal or cultural final conflict with the Church. After all, as a core philosophical principle, the Church cannot ever accept the gnostic, pagan concept of an infinite number of bizarrely-sexed ‘spirit genders’ limited only by people’s peyote-fueled imaginations. After all, the Bible could not possibly be more clear, and right from the start of the book: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27.

What do you think? Is this sudden transgender phenomenon an artifact of ‘cultural evolution’? Or is it something more sinister?

🔥 Finally, in good cultural counter-revolution news, Remix News ran an encouraging story Friday headlined, “Swiss to hold immigration referendum on restricting country's population to 10 million until 2050.”

Last Wednesday, the conservative populist Swiss People’s Party submitted its petition meeting all requirements needed to hold a referendum in the next national vote. Switzerland has a direct democracy system.

The petition, which cleverly co-opts leftist language, is titled “sustainable demographic development.” If passed, it requires the Swiss government to ensure that Switzerland’s population never exceeds 10 million souls prior to 2050 — even if that means cracking down on or stopping legal and illegal immigration.

Under the proposal, the Swiss government would be required to take urgent measures as soon as the country’s permanent population passes 9.5 million by, for example, suspending migrants’ ability to obtain residence permits, Swiss citizenship, or any other way to stay in the country.

The petition was made possible by the recent parliamentary gains of the People’s Party last October. At the time, Reuters reported the auspicious development under the headline, “Swiss shift rightwards in vote as immigration fears trump environment.” (I don’t think the word ‘trump’ was selected by accident, either.)

So. Like other stories we’ve seen recently, this story shows there are a lot of people all around the world, an army of Davids, working together and separately to push back the Goliath globalists’ leftwing advances.

Have a terrific Tuesday and be of good cheer! I’ll meet you all back here tomorrow for another coincidentally delicious C&C roundup.

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