☕️ COLLISION ☙ Wednesday, March 15, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

What's the "current thing" these days? Reason prevails as the US and Russia collide; SVB board even more incompetent than you thought; DeSantis says Ukraine not a vital interest; and more.

Good morning C&C! It’s Wednesday. Technically, it’s still “good morning” for our East Coasters, and our early-bird West Coasters have been sharing the pain of waiting. Your action-packed roundup today includes: an essay on the disappearing “current thing” and media homogeneity; a close encounter in the Black Sea does NOT trigger WW3; SVB board members turn out to be incompetent political types who should have been nowhere near management; DeSantis trolled for saying Ukraine is not a vital national security interest; new Florida bill would ban DEI from higher ed; FDA approves bivalent jab for babies; House committee closing in on treasonous Biden grifting; and Shark Tank star drops some home economic truths on bewildered CNN anchors.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞

🪖 I had some time to think yesterday while I was troubleshooting why my phone stopped charging. Was it the phone? The cable? The charging block? The outlet? It took a good half hour to scour the hotel premises for spare parts to test out different theories, and it ultimately was a particularly vexing ordeal because it turned out that it was BOTH a bad cable AND a bad charging block that were both working the day before. What are the odds?

Anyway. As I was grinding my teeth and chasing replacement cables and blocks, I was thinking about how there isn’t any “current thing” right now for the reflexive mob to virtue signal about, and how that must be extremely unfulfilling, leaving millions of Americans without any useful sense of purpose in life. Rainbow flags and Ukraine flags are passé, masks are a non-starter, war balloons are deflated, anti-Trumpism is pretty played out, and the newest issues like woke failed banks and drag-queen story hours have failed to grip the public imagination.

What should people decorate their social media badges with now?

The lazy psyops team needs to get working. This is a tragic situation for people who depend on the deep state to tell them what to care about. It’s simply unconscionable to leave them hanging like this.

Please leave all your suggestions in the comments — what should virtue signalers brag about this week?

And THAT clued me in to a way to figure out exactly when the government co-opted the corporate media. We need a journalism school someplace to undertake a study, and it would be child’s play. All they have to do is compare articles from major newspapers and networks over different time frames, and figure out the precise moment when they all began to agree on every controversial political issue.

There was a time when you could read six major newspapers and get six different opinions about major policy issues. Now they’ve become completely homogenous, right down to the use of the same emotional trigger words in all the headlines.

Did this happen because of excessive government involvement in pandemic reporting? Or did it happen before? I think it started BEFORE the pandemic. Googling the term “homogenous headlines” brought up this bit of media analysis from a 2019 industry website:

I disagree with the simplistic notion that media uniformity is evidence of “information at the speed of internet.” Simple economics suggests that homogenous headlines and identical opinions aren’t good for profits of ostensibly competitive media outlets. In other words, why should we read YOUR newspaper if it says the exact same thing as every other newspaper?

It should be easy to do a retrospective analysis and figure out when the media organizations stopped having their own opinions and adopted the official narrative. I hope someone does it soon, as I’m dying to know.

🗞*WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🚀 The Wall Street Journal ran a surprisingly optimistic story yesterday headlined, “Russian Jet Collides With U.S. Drone Over Black Sea.” While the article doesn’t say this explicitly, it reveals that the people in charge of the Proxy War on both sides are working hard to avoid a catastrophic result.

It’s hard to say which, the DOD or the Russians, is likely being more honest. I’m sure you remember the detailed and reliable information that the DOD recently provided about the Chinese war balloons, a problem which apparently has completely resolved with any further information from military officials being necessary, don’t trouble your pretty little head about it.

Anyway, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday the DOD’s version that, after the Russians discovered a peaceful, $15M unmanned MQ-9 “Reaper” surveillance drone was minding its own business and not hurting anybody running general maneuvers somewhere over international waters in the Black Sea, a Russian fighter jet did a flyby and dumped fuel on the drone, then a second fighter attempted the same maneuver but couldn’t pull it off and accidentally collided with the drone, forcing the Reaper’s operators to land the aircraft in the Black Sea. For everyone’s safety.

The DOD said won’t recover the multi-million-dollar high-tech drone — why would it? — and for that matter doesn’t even know exactly where it is. And that is all the DOD is going to say about that. In a statement, the DOD’s European Command criticized the Russians — I am not making this up — for POOR ENVIRONMENTALISM and being “unprofessional”:

“Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 [Reaper] in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner,” the military’s European Command said in a statement. “This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional.”

Those two charges are obviously ridiculous, which highlights the ABSENCE of escalatory rhetoric. The DOD is clearly attributing the collision to an accident and NOT Russian aggression.

As you can see from the map below, the Reaper drone — which is also called a “hunter-killer” and carries FIFTEEN TIMES as much ordnance than the prior model — splashed down near the southern tip of Crimea — i.e., Russian territory. The DOD said it was just minding its own business and conducting a “routine mission in international waters.”

Now let’s hear the Russian version of events.

In its own statement, the Russian Ministry of Defense says that a U.S. drone flight was detected in Russia’s Crimean region, heading in the direction of the Russian border. The drone’s transponders were turned off, violating airspace rules and posing a danger to aircraft in the area. Russian fighter jets scrambled in response.

The Russians say its fighters did not use their WEAPONS — which is consistent with fuel dumping — and deny contacting the US drone. The Russians say that as a result of “sharp maneuvering,” the U.S. drone went into “uncontrolled flight with a loss of altitude” and “collided with the water surface.”

Other unverifiable online sources claim that the Russians have recovered the multi-million dollar unmanned aircraft, which features some of the U.S.’s top tech. Neither side officially commented on where the drone is now; in other words, neither side denied the Russians have the drone.

Furthermore, both sides claimed the collision was accidental — nobody’s fault — and merely blamed the accident on each other’s bad flying. So, while the hot takes are screaming about nearly starting a hot war, to me it looks more like cooler heads on both sides rapidly de-escalated any potential conflict. That’s the best news I’ve seen from the Proxy War in months.

🔥 Prepare to be shocked. Shocked and appalled. The New York Post ran an article yesterday headlined, “Obama Official, Hillary Donors, Improv Actor: Meet SVB’s Board of Directors.” You thought the bank’s woke, sex-obsessed risk manager was bad, wait until you hear THIS. It explains a LOT.

Here are a few of the people who managed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on its 12-member board of directors:

— Kate Mitchell, 64, a Hillary Clinton mega-donor and diversity champion who went to a Shinto shrine to pray after Donald Trump won the White House.

— Mary J. Miller, 67, Obama’s undersecretary of domestic finance before her own run for Baltimore mayor failed spectacularly (her PAC sent an awkward email to potential donors saying her campaign strategy was to target white voters.)

— Garen K. Staglin, 78, a prolific Democrat contributor, including Nancy Pelosi — who owns a Napa Valley vineyard just 15 minutes from the Pelosi’s vineyard.

— Elizabeth “Busy” Burr, 61, who is implementing DEI as the interim CEO of RiteAid, and is a longtime improv actor.

— Former Congressman Barney Frank, 82, who ironically was co-author of the biggest bank security law in history, the Dodd-Frank Act. According to the Boston Herald, Frank has earned $2.4 million since 2014 for his great work on the board.

Want to know how many people with ANY relevant banking experience were on the board? ONE — Tom King, 63, who retired from finance at Barclays Bank in the UK. Of the twelve, only one was under 60, and Frank, the oldest, is 82. The board is 41% female.

All the board members donated to Obama, Clinton, and Biden, as well as to local Democratic congressional reps (including Pelosi), as well as political action committees for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), a longtime member of the powerful Senate Banking Committee. That was lucky, huh?

That, folks, is how you do it. Get woke, go broke, get bailed out, start over!

🔥 The New York Times ran an outraged story Tuesday headlined, “Ron DeSantis Says Protecting Ukraine Is Not a Key U.S. Interest.” The sub-headline tried to tie DeSantis and Trump together, explaining “The Florida governor, on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, broke with Republicans to attack President Biden’s foreign policy and align more closely with Donald Trump as he weighs a presidential bid.”

The Times wrote an entire article reporting that Tucker Carlson read Governor DeSantis one-line response to some surveys Tucker sent to potential presidential candidates. The Times, not realizing they are actually advertising for Tucker’s show, clearly has no love for the talk show host:

Mr. Carlson is one of the most ardent opponents of U.S. involvement in Ukraine. He has called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a corrupt “antihero” and mocked him for dressing “like the manager of a strip club.”

Haha, Zelensky dresses like the manager of a strip club, that’s a good one!

Anyway, the Times wrote an entire article about one sentence from DeSantis’ written response to a question about Ukraine. Basically DeSantis said we don’t have any vital national interest in Ukraine, which is self-evidently true:

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests … becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement that Mr. Carlson read aloud on his show.

The Times thinks DeSantis’ opinion was nearly treasonous. Even worse than that, the Times said DeSantis and Trump are now basically the same candidate:

Mr. DeSantis’s views on Ukraine policy now align with Mr. Trump’s. The former president also answered Mr. Carlson’s questionnaire.

The Times recited Trump’s answer, which didn’t sound anything like DeSantis’ to me, but I suppose shared the comment denominator that they oppose further money-dumping into the Proxy War.

While believing it was scoring points off both DeSantis and Trump, the Times actually helped the two presidential politicians, by naming off a long list of unpopular Republicans who DO support the war, like Chris Christie and Mitch McConnell. The Times practically torpedoed the barely-detectable candidacy of Mike Pence, by pointing out that Pence blasphemously compared Ukraine to the Savior:

“Never forget, the light does shine in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it,” said Mr. Pence, standing at a lectern with American and Ukrainian flags behind him, and addressing the Ukrainian people. “We will not forget your struggle for freedom and I believe the American people will stand with you until the light dawns on a victory for freedom in Ukraine and in Europe and for all the world,” Mr. Pence added. “So help us God.”

I’m starting to think Ukraine more needs freedom from the Deep State than from Russia. Get ready for the media’s latest narrative, that Trump and DeSantis are just alike, so you should hate both of them.

🔥 The Hill ran a breathless story yesterday headlined, “New Florida Bill Would Ban Diversity, Inclusion Programs on University Campuses.”

On Monday, HB 999 passed Florida’s House of Representatives. The bill is titled “Public Postsecondary Educational Institutions,” and among other things broadly bans Florida state schools from financially supporting “any programs or campus activities that espouse diversity, equity, or inclusion or Critical Race Theory rhetoric.”

It also forbids use of CRT in hiring and tenure decisions.

Predictably, hysterical democrats ironically accused the Republicans of censorship, thought control, and totalitarianism.

The bill would require a long list of grievance studies to be removed from Florida’s curriculum. All the affected majors, like Radical Gender Theory, Queer Studies, and so forth, are utterly useless and don’t provide kids with any professional or trade prospects. So it’s hard to see what the problem is, given the crippling levels of debt that gullible students find themselves subject to after studying the racist roots of Harry Potter and similar nonsense.

💉 The Daily Mail UK ran a story yesterday headlined, “FDA Approves Pfizer’s Bivalent Covid Booster for Babies as Young as Six Months — Saying the Shot ‘Remains the Best Defense Against Disease’.”

Babies — the last group denied access to the safe and effective wonder drugs — have been loudly clamoring for the vaccine and now their wait is over. In fairness, due to a language barrier it was not easy for doctors to understand exactly what the babies were clamoring for, but scientific experts concluded with statistical certainty that the infants’ wails and coos were actually strident demands for mRNA vaccination, and they were definitely NOT hungry or ready for a nap, as their mothers insisted.

Even the Daily Mail admits “There are questions swirling over whether children in this age group need the shots at all, with studies finding they suffer little risk from the virus.” But those irritating anti-science questions posed no problems for the FDA, which easily found a rationale for jabbing the little ones.

“Currently available data show that vaccination remains the best defense against severe disease, hospitalization and death caused by COVID-19 across all age groups,” explained Dr. Peter Marks, who oversees vaccines at the FDA.

It’s really too bad that we let go of the whole tarring and feathering thing. I think that’s where things first started going off the rails.

🔥 The House Oversight Committee is hotly pursuing the Hunter Biden — Joe Biden money connection, and Representative Comer is connecting dots between bank records and wire transfer logs. Comer claims that the records he already has show the Biden family directly receiving money from people linked with the Chinese Communist Party through a shady shell corporation:

Rep. James Comer @RepJamesComer

I have Biden family financial records. There is a money trail. @WhiteHouse denied it. Democrats denied it. There is no denying it now & @USTreasury knows it. That's why they caved. @GOPoversight will now have access to Biden family suspicious activity reports. @JesseBWatters

According to Comer, the Chinese deposited large amounts of money into an inactive LLC’s bank account. The money was then wired from the LLC to bank accounts owned by the Bidens. There is currently no public explanation for why the Chinese were paying the Bidens this way.

Representative Comer also said the Treasury Department must now provide records related to any “suspicious activity reports” on the Biden accounts. For some reason, those reports have been withheld until now.

It is hard to imagine that anything will come from this, but you never know. It’s great news that the Republican majority in the House is looking into the Biden’s finances this carefully.

🔥 In a delightful weekend clip, Shark Tank’s “Mr. Wonderful,” Kevin O’Leary explained to dumbfounded CNN anchors that it is now impossible to do any profitable business in the Blue States, calling them “uninvestable”:

Deplorable4trump2024 @PTRUMPFORTX2020

Kevin O’Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank, calls out the insanity of the Democrats. This clip is absolute 🔥 for all the CNN viewers watching. He explains that the leftist policies are destroying blue states and says they have become “uninvestable.”… https://t.co/y8Lnq9V9qD

You can see from the CNN anchors’ faces that they just aren’t getting it.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! I’ll be back tomorrow for more, as we surmount the midpoint of the week of late posts. Till then.

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