☕️ COACHED ☙ Thursday, August 22, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Daily DNC update for non-watchers; betting markets begin shifting; FTC loses in agency powers case; WaPo dishes truth about peace talks; Trump expands platform; CNN slips in Kamala truth bomb; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Thankfully, the DNC is almost over. Today’s essential news roundup includes: DNC update as second half of Kamala comedy duo is ‘introduced’ to democrat delegates who don’t even care whether the VP candidate is breathing; the betting markets begin shifting as fast-food DNC delivers sugar and salt and no protein; FTC’s huge noncompete rule struck down by Trump-appointed judge; weird WaPo op-ed by deep-state reporter signals intelligence operation instead of peace talks in the Middle East; President Trump starts making meaningful platform moves, in contrast to DNC’s marshmallow policies; and CNN anchor throws a Kamala truth bomb on the network’s live DNC broadcast.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥🔥 Last night’s penultimate DNC chapter was intended to ‘introduce’ Veep candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim “the Coach” Walz. They overworked the coach metaphor. Many commenters, especially the gals, said they wished they understood all the football references. Put me in, coach! We’re on the third-yard line with 36 seconds clocked! We’re lining up the special teams for a tight-end leak! What? It looked more like a classic fumblerooski.

Oprah was last night’s billionaire headliner. The talk show diva is personally worth $2.7 billion, but she fumbled, complaining bitterly and unpersuasively about all the racism and sexism that has always held back her career, which she ineloquently claimed occurred from the “redwoods to the Gulf Stream waters.”

Racist redwoods. It had a nice ring to it, but the wrong billionaire delivered the line. Ball, dropped.

JD Vance gained several yards in a pick-six yesterday by observing that, now that Walz has visited Chicago, the Coach can honestly say he’s been to a real war zone.

Bill Clinton spoke, or rambled, to a clearly ambivalent and unimpressed audience. The Obamas have intercepted the Democrat party, and the Clintons are sidelined.

Writing for the New York Times, leftie author Matt Labash gave away the game, admitting that last night’s DNC proved a “keen reminder that Harris’s most appealing quality is that she’s not Donald Trump.” At least she has one appealing quality.

Harris didn’t attend last night. The Democrat’s quarterback is at her best when she’s not playing.

Fake conservative David Brooks, who’s already endorsed the Cackler, was frustrated by the lack of substance at the Convention, warning “Democrats are making a big mistake by not talking more about how to create a growing economy, which is the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds.” David noted, as I have, that “this was another night when they seemed to have nothing to say about it.”

They had nothing to say about the economy or anything else anybody sane cares about. But they had double-man coverage on the high school football lingo. So.

Hilariously, I’ve now counted at least three conservative moles showing up around the DNC: Matt Walsh, James O’Keefe, and a gentleman interviewed by the BBC yesterday who remarkably resembled Alex Stein, down to the “my wife’s boyfriend” bit, but was claimed to be conservative pundit Alex Strenger.

Years ago, I attended an RNC Convention, and security was super tight. Not a single protestor made it in. But it looks like security is pretty lax at the DNC, which most closely resembles a teeny tiny police state, a miniature North Korea inside of a concert stadium. But their border is leaking. Maybe they need more coaching.

Now that Walz has been ‘officially’ nominated, the Democrats have offered the country the Cackler and the Coach.

📉📉 Watch out below! Before the DNC started on Monday morning, wagering site Polymarket bettors favored Kamala Harris (52%) over President Trump (48%), a +4 advantage for the Cackler. But after last night’s joyfully weird DNC ended, and the Coach had been introduced, the betting markets flipped, favoring Trump (53%) over Harris (46%), a +7 advantage, and more importantly, a +11 shift in Trump’s direction.

Polymarket is one of the places where people vote with their own money, which tends to make folks focus a little harder than, say, answering some telemarketing pollster in the middle of dinner.

Looks like the Coach fumbled the snap. It’s hard to say, the officials are still reviewing the tape. But Polymarket’s new numbers may also account for Robert Kennedy’s leaked plan to endorse Trump tomorrow, right after Kamala has been fully and finally nominated.

🔥🔥 There was more good news about shrinking agency powers. Yesterday, Reuters reported, “US judge strikes down Biden administration ban on worker 'noncompete' agreements.” A Texas court found the FTC lacked authority for its broad rule banning noncompete clauses in American employment agreements. Plus, the Trump-appointed judge said the rule was illogical. In other words, Biden threw a desperate 50-yard pass, but the court intercepted the FTC’s ball.

File this story under more great news for freedom; we are enjoying the first fruits of the post-Chevron generation.

Even if you think noncompetes are anti-competitive and unfair to employees, federal Executive-branch agencies should not have the power to rewrite major chunks of ancient contract law because fairness. If it must be done, let the states do it. (In fact, most states already have detailed laws governing noncompetes, which tend to be employee-friendly.)

The FTC’s rule was indefensibly broad. The blanket ban left the agency’s lawyers with almost nothing to work with. The lawyers tried running the ‘parade of horribles’ play, by burying the judge under 100 different examples of obviously unfair contracts. But to counter that play, the plaintiffs only had to find one single contract that made sense.

They did. So the judge asked the FTC a completely predictable question: why did you ban all noncompetes, instead of just the bad kinds? The FTC’s answer was gibberish and gobbledygook, hence illogical.

I bet they won’t appeal, even though FTC spokesperson Victoria Graham said the disappointed agency is “seriously considering a potential appeal.” It was a give-away; too many weasel words: seriously considering and potential appeal. It’s now a post-Chevron world, and they know it.

⚔️⚔️ Yesterday, the Washington Post gave us another chance to learn critical reading skills. The paper’s own David Ignatius, who is up to his neck in deep-state contacts, ran an astonishingly detailed op-ed headlined “An eerie quiet as Biden races to silence the guns in Gaza. The ‘eerie quiet’ was the ostrich-like corporate media ignoring the story of Biden’s continuing failure to broker a peace deal with Hamas, despite holding the leverage of half the U.S. Navy and the full weight of the Central Intelligence Agency, which keeps showing up everywhere these days.

The article was remarkable in that it disclosed so many fresh details. For example, it off-handedly mentioned where a top Hamas leader was sitting yesterday, an underhanded threat (it said Hamas chief Yehiya Sinwar was “trapped underground in Gaza and running out of ammunition and supplies”). It also described fresh intel suggesting that Iran was standing down for the foreseeable future, following the “the biggest American military effort to aid Israel since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.”

These are details we’ve never heard before. Literally no other corporate media platform is reporting anything like this level of granularity, not even about the record-setting scope of U.S. military involvement. It seems more likely than not that Ignatius was carrying water for the negotiating team.

In other words, the article was intended to be a sneaky message to Hamas. Consider who’s negotiating for the U.S.:

Ignatius didn’t point this out, although he should have, but the CIA, leading the negotiating team, isn’t a diplomatic agency. It’s utterly remarkable, a violation of every diplomatic protocol there is. Where is the State Department? Why isn’t State leading the mediating team, with CIA support?

Let’s try to guess.

The CIA has three missions: information gathering, analysis, and covert operations. Negotiating with Hamas is unlikely to be an ‘information gathering’ mission. Nor is it ‘analysis.’ But it could easily be a covert operation. In other words, Burns isn’t there to negotiate. He’s not trained in that. He’s there running an operation.

If they wanted peace, they’d have real negotiators there. So we can assume the CIA has different goals. Maybe they’re using the conference to find Hamas and root them out. Maybe that’s why Hamas stayed away.

The bottom line is that recognizing the “peace talks” as a CIA covert operation offers much more explanatory power for what we’re observing than does the official narrative. For example, it would explain the CIA chief’s ‘leadership,’ the absence of the State Department, and all the opaqueness around the ‘peace process,’ which looks more like covert ops than traditional diplomacy.

So it’s perhaps unsurprising they haven’t signed a deal; peace might not be the goal. The Biden Administration has never made peace with anyone.

🔥🔥 Trump, now campaigning in a bulletproof box, is beginning his Act Three warmup. He made some big moves at a North Carolina rally yesterday, announcing policies with all the substance the DNC lacks, and drawing a drastic contrast between the camps. First up, Trump took on deviant sexual politics in the military:

CLIP: Trump on the trans military (0:28).

President Trump said, “If you want to have a sex change or a social justice seminar, then you can do it somewhere else. But you’re not going to do it in the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, Space Force, or the United States Marines. Sorry.”

He explained, “Our warriors should be focused on defeating America’s enemies, not figuring out their genders.” Seems reasonable. I still don’t understand what’s wrong with just looking down, but they tell me it’s complicated.

“On Day One, I will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our US armed forces,” Trump promised hotly. “We’re taking it out.”

Trump attacked the atrocious Afghanistan disaster and ventured into vaccine territory. The New York Post reported, “Trump would demand ‘Afghanistan disaster’ resignations, ‘back pay’ for troops fired for refusing vax on Day 1, he says at NC rally.”

Trump promised that immediately, on his first day in office, he would demand the “mass resignations” of all military officials involved in the disastrous surrender to Afghanistan. “It was the most humiliating event in the history of our country,” Trump said of the “catastrophic retreat” from the now Taliban-run country, which enforces its rule on hapless citizens using $80 billion worth of left-behind U.S. weapons, keys in the ignition.

“I will ask for the resignation of every single senior military official who touched the Afghanistan disaster,” Trump promised, adding “I want their resignations immediately.” He said he wants those resignation letters already on his desk on Inauguration Day. My bet is the same officials involved in Afghanistan were involved in the mandates, and they probably dress in drag. So the mass resignations would be a three-fer.

You’re fired!

Next, President Trump promised to compensate all service members fired for refusing the jabs, with full back pay. He also promised to rehire and reinstate them, with an official apology. I realize many folks still want to hear Trump disclaim the shots, but this is a good start.

Regarding Ukraine, Trump promised he’d end the Proxy War even before Inauguration Day. “I’ll get it settled as president-elect. I’ll get that war stopped. It will be done before I get into office,” Trump pledged.

Lest anyone think Trump is scared or hiding in his Secret Service-required security area, the Times of India ran a sweet story yesterday headlined, “‘We Love Trump…’ Crowds Chant As Trump Hugs Woman Who Fainted At His North Carolina Rally. ” After Trump saw a rally attendee appear faint, he left his bulletproof box and went down to the audience, giving her a hug of support and making sure she got medical attention.

Maybe it was staged, but if so it was perfect. Trump seemed real, warm, and sympathetic, and the folks at the rally loved it.

Get ready. Act Three starts tomorrow.

🔥 There was more great election integrity news yesterday. First, Texas Attorney General (may he soon be the US’s Attorney General) Ken Paxton announced an investigation into groups helping illegal aliens register to vote.

That was good news. But it was also great news that they’re using undercover investigators. I can’t recall recently hearing that investigative technique ever applied to election integrity. Maybe they got the idea from watching Project Veritas and James O’Keefe.

The announcment of the investigation was itself an election security achievement, in the sense that it discourages illegal voter registration just by existing.

The next story ran in local KUNR Public Radio, headlined “Nevada Supreme Court declines to hear Secretary of State’s election certification case.” It began when Washoe County Commissioners refused to certify two June primary races following widespread allegations of voter fraud. Then, Nevada’s Secretary of State sued the Commissioners, arguing they may not refuse to certify elections for fraud, but must certify the results regardless of whatever they think about how the election was conducted.

Rather than decide the Secretary’s case, Nevada’s Supreme Court deferred, dismissing it it moot. Now, county officials all over Nevada can withhold certification if they believe cheating occurred. They can wait for the facts, and won’t have to automatically vote ‘yes’ under duress.

It was another small but critical win in the election integrity war. There are so many of these tiny battles happening all over the country it is impossible to keep up with all of them. Be encouraged.

🔥🔥 Finally, sometimes a little truth breaks out in the most unexpected places.

CLIP: CNN panelist drops truth bomb on DNC panel (0:48).

Stoney-faced CNN panelists along the bench were forced to sit and listen, while one overly truthful panelist criticized Kamala for claiming Trump caused the country’s problems even though she’s been in the White House for nearly four years now. Why hasn’t she already fixed these problems? Worse, he pointed out that, “Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years, and somehow, it’s still all Trump’s fault.”

The other panelists gave their best impressions of poker players holding terrible cards.

As I’ve said, the real race starts tomorrow. Consider this: if you could’ve hand-picked the two best candidates —meaning the worst— for Trump to run against, could you have possibly come up with a better pair than Cackle and the Coach?

Have a tremendous Thursday! Then get back here tomorrow morning, to find out how Kamala did with her big speech, and to kick off Act Three with panache.

We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds.  I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:  ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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