☕️ CRAZY EYES ☙ Thursday, April 13, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

NPR rage-quits Twitter; BBC outs Biden lies; Sy Hersh shatters more Proxy War Narrative; red states rally to Florida; anti-CBDC bill; Walmart now fleeing Chicago; unneeded mask advice, and more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! I hope you are all well, fully caffeinated, and ready for a terrific roundup: Government-funded media rage-quit Twitter; BBC outs more Biden lies; France blocks Ukraine arms deal; Seymour Hersh drops another blockbuster exposé on Ukrainian corruption; red states rally to help Florida defend its anti-genital mutilation law from democrats; Like Portland, Chicago Walmarts shutter operations after a year of enduring crime sprees; OMG exposé prompts House request for FEC investigation of ActBlue; Florida proposes law to kneecap central bank digital currency; and a loony doctor gives some mask advice.

🗞💬 *WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 💬🗞

🔥 Bloomberg ran an outraged story yesterday headlined, “PBS Joins NPR in Quitting Twitter Over State-Backed Label.”

NPR and PBS rage-quit Twitter yesterday after being accurately labeled as “Government-Funded.” Twitter owner Elon Musk seemed more amused than punished:

“PBS stopped tweeting from our account when we learned of the change and we have no plans to resume at this time,” PBS spokesman Jason Phelps said in an email. “We are continuing to monitor the ever-changing situation closely.”

“Guess they won’t mind losing federal funding in that case,” Twitter’s owner Musk said in a tweet. “Defund NPR,” the billionaire entrepreneur wrote in another.

I could get behind that. The most interesting thing about this story is that, by rage-quitting, NPR and PBS are implicitly admitting that taking government money creates an impression of bias. Imagine that. They just don’t like being called out for it.

🔥 Government-funded BBC ran a story yesterday headlined, “Ukraine War: Leak Shows Western Special Forces on the Ground.” Ruh-roh.

The story was kind of a blockbuster, since the BBC is basically calling Joe Biden a liar AND a criminal. Joe has repeatedly promised Congress and America that the US did NOT have troops on the ground in Ukraine, which legally requires prior Congressional authorization.

The BBC focused on the small number of troops, which are all special forces, as shown in a leaked document dated March 23rd. The roster listed operational special forces by country: UK (50), Latvia (17), France (15), the US (14) and the Netherlands (1).

The BBC’s goofy take had two parts: (1) it was delighted to discover that the Ukrainians are finally getting some effective assistance, and (2) it was enraged at the leaker, citing multiple quotes from top US military officials vowing rapid justice.

Like U.S. corporate media, the BBC completely missed the lede.

The story is most significant in that it adds even more evidence of official corruption and mendacity at the highest levels of the United States and United Kingdom governments. They are lying liars and, more and more, appear to have broken serious laws on use of force authorization.

And behind THAT story is another bigger story. WHY? Why lie? Why break the law? Why risk impeachment and removal? What is going on in Ukraine that caused Joe Biden to throw out his ethics and morals — granted, perhaps not a heavy toss — plus his fear of consequences out the window?

The predictable next move is the House will send a letter to DoD demanding to know how exactly many U.S. special forces soldiers are in Ukraine and for what purpose. Then they must decide if they are ready for impeachment, which is becoming an ordinary phase of serving as president in the U.S., and then you get prosecuted on trumped-up charges of not reporting your decade-old payments to sex workers in the right box on your tax return.

Oh, haha, I almost forgot. The Wall Street Journal reported the story about Biden’s illegal troop deployment yesterday in an article headlined, “Jupiter Mission Launches to Explore Icy Worlds.” Whoops, wait. Sorry, that was a different top headline. The Journal DIDN’T run any story about the illegal troop deployment, I got mixed up for a minute.

In the U.S., the story has been embargoed. For your safety!

🚀 In another corporate-media-embargoed story, the Indian Firstpost ran an article yesterday headlined, “Xi Jinping effect? Macron Blocks EU Decision to Finance Ammunition Supply to Ukraine.”

How could this happen?

In a story more layered than a croissant, France reportedly blocked a European Union vote to finance and send a million artillery shells to Ukraine. And right when Ukraine is preparing for its widely-publicized, not secret at all Gala Spring Offensive, too.

Tell me if this story makes any sense: Back on March 20th, the specially-abled EU parliament voted like a pack of drunken sailors on shore leave to supply two more billion Euros worth of ammo to Ukraine. Apparently, two billion sounded like a good number. Member states were to be “reimbursed” from this common fund as they each kicked in some rockets to make up the total aid package.

But then — AFTER the vote — the ministers realized they didn’t actually know how much artillery they all had in inventory, and when the counting started they found out that, whoopsie daisy, there weren’t enough artillery shells in all of Europe to satisfy the vote.

Europe doesn’t even HAVE two billion Euros worth of artillery combined.

So yesterday they voted again — the vote France successfully opposed — to buy the shells from non-EU countries — like America! — which would’ve sent all those sweet, sweet Euros off-continent. There was some talk of trading weapons for the shells, which would further draw down Europe’s already-depleted military inventories, assuming anyone even wants Italian-made tanks and stuff:

Officials familiar with the matter said that the plan is being held up as member states argue over how far spending for the plan will stay within the EU.

Finally, the Firstpost connected the painfully-obvious dots that our worthless U.S. corporate media can’t draw. I blame the public school system:

The French President’s remarks came after his China visit where he was given a full red-carpet welcome in China despite his tough stand against Beijing over its support to Russia in the Ukraine war. This unusually lavish hospitality was seen as a sign of Beijing’s attempt to wean away allies from the United States.

If Germany flips like France, the entire EU will be out of the action.

🚀 Award-winning independent investigative muckraker Seymour Hersh launched another Patriot missile at The Narrative yesterday, in a Substack piece provocatively titled “Trading With The Enemy.” The sub-headline pondered, “Amid rampant corruption in Kiev and as US troops gather at the Ukrainian border, does the Biden administration have an endgame to the conflict?”

According to Hersh, Zelenskyy has been using Uncle Sam’s war bucks to buy diesel fuel, which is critical to keeping the tanks and trucks and launchers chugging along Eastern Europe’s muddy roads. That much is unsurprising. Apparently diesel can fetch a pretty price in a war zone, and Hersh reminded us that the DoD previously shelled out over $400 a gallon in Afghanistan to keep that war’s machines humming.

Here’s the narrative-bending plot twist: according to Hersh’s sources, Zelenskyy has been buying diesel at massively-inflated wartime prices … from the RUSSIANS.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

This wacky twist raises a myriad of answerless questions. Why would Zelenskyy trade with the same evil empire and the war criminals besieging “his” country? Why would Russia sell diesel to the Ukrainians when it would be better to let them to run dry?

It’s almost like this whole thing is a big fat “Wag the Dog” charade or something.

But wait, there’s more. I doubt you’re surprised, but Hersh says his sources in the intelligence community say it is well known that Zelenskyy has — in one year — skimmed off $400 MILLION DOLLARS for himself by doing the old invoice switcheroo with the diesel payments — a classic creative accounting tactic going back to the Civil War — and peddling US weapons to terrorists on the dark web’s version of eBay.

“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions.”

Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally “competing,” I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks.

Another whistleblower described a clandestine January rendezvous between CIA Director William Burns and President Zelenskyy — to better coordinate the grifting. Like a 1950’s mob boss, Burns whined that Zelenskyy was pocketing more than his fair share, angering a pack of Zelenskyy’s generals, who feel like all the president’s greedy grasping was reducing their own shares. Burns specifically griped about three dozen generals who were being way too obvious about the scam, cruising around Kiev in swanky high-end luxury sports cars, hanging around with bikini models, and flaunting ridiculous fur coats and ostentatious gold neck chains.

Zelenskyy quieted the controversy by publicly firing the top ten worst offenders, which also conveniently resolved his problem of their complaints about his own avarice.

Top to bottom, the whole thing is a gigantic sunglassed, track-suited criminal enterprise robbing the U.S. taxpayer blind and greatly inconveniencing millions of average Ukrainians.

In case you think I’ve been a lone voice crying in the wilderness about the opaque, mendacious Biden Administration, apparently there are signs of life in our intelligence community who’ve noticed the same thing. And they know a LOT more than I do. Hersh reported on internal agency disgust about Biden’s lying officials:

Another divisive issue, I have been repeatedly told in my recent reporting, is the strident ideology and lack of political skill shown by Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. The president and his two main foreign policy advisers “live in different worlds” than the experienced diplomats and military and intelligence officers assigned to the White House;. “They have no experience, judgment, and moral integrity. They just tell lies, make up stories.”

Tell lies and make up stories? Sounds like a snarky comment in C&C. Apparently some of the intelligence community is also chaffed about the whole Nordstream Pipeline Bombing thing and Biden’s lazy denials of having anything to do with it:

“There is a total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community,” the intelligence official said. The rift dates back to the fall, when, as I reported in early February, Biden ordered the covert destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. “Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance, by the community,” the official told me.

Now, what happens when you get sideways with the intelligence community? Chuck Schumer famously said they have a million ways of getting back at you. Like, say, leaking highly sensitive top-secret documents showing your so-called Proxy War isn’t going too well, for one example.

Finally, Hersh brought up the mysterious deployment of two U.S. brigades — over 20,000 soldiers and support staff from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions — stationed in Poland just two miles from the Ukraine border. That’s the distance from my house to the nearest Publix. Nobody Hersh spoke to seems to know why our troops are there, or what they are doing, and the spooks don’t think the White House knows either:

The intelligence officials told me that “there is no evidence that any senior official in the White House really knows what’s going on in the 82nd and 101st. Are they there as part of a NATO exercise or to serve with NATO combat units if the West decides to engage Russians units inside Ukraine? Are they there to train or to be a trigger? The rules of engagement say they can’t attack Russians unless our boys are getting attacked.”

… “This is not just bad leadership. There is none. Zero.”

Hersh has a long career of reliable reporting. On the other hand, when the intelligence community is talking and leaking, you can’t always be sure about what you’re getting. But I trust Hersh, who hasn’t been proven wrong yet, way more than I trust the official White House narrative, which has been proven false over and over and over again.

All this bad news will make it harder to get Congress to cough up the next round of war cash, and might even be signaling an imminent narrative shift. Ukraine supporters might want to give a moment’s thought to how Biden ended things in Afghanistan. Just saying.

🔥 Yesterday, American Greatness ran an encouraging story headlined, “17 State Attorneys General Declare Support for Florida Trans Guidance.”

Earlier this year, a bunch of pro-trans organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, sued the State of Florida over its law providing that Medicaid funds may not be used to genitally mutilate children or for any other “affirmation” procedures for kids, including sex change surgery, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers.

Yesterday, 17 states rallied to Florida’s aid, filing a brief supporting Florida’s commonsense law, including: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. The brief stated, “The amici States submit this brief in support of Florida’s right to regulate medicine and determine appropriate treatments for Medicaid coverage. Moreover, there is particular reason to be suspicious of the interest groups in this case.”

You don’t say.

Florida has also punched back, filing aggressive discovery requests against the pro-mutilation plaintiffs and spicily seeking pointed discovery from the Biden Administration. Recently the judge overruled the plaintiffs’ objections and ordered them to produce the requested documents.

So.

🔥 It’s spreading. First Portland, now yesterday the Chicago Sun-Times ran a griping story headlined, “Walmart Plan to Shut 4 Stores by Sunday Leaves Customers Perplexed: ‘You Came in and Filled a Void — Now You’re Taking It Away’.”

The controversy burst into flames after Walmart announced on short notice that it was immediately closing four unprofitable stores located in crime-ridden Chicago. City officials, including lame-duck mayor Lori Lightfoot, bleated like sheared sheep, said it was all Walmart’s fault, not theirs, no, never, and accused the for-profit retailer of a lack of charitable instincts.

Local resident Regina Dickey, 38, told a Sun-Times reporter she regularly shopped at the Kenwood Walmart. Regina doesn’t think closing the story is fair. “It’s like they didn’t even give a thought to the people in these communities,” she complained bitterly.

Regina had no complaints about city governance, apparently, which is why she probably voted for incoming marxist mayor Brandon Johnson, who will surely make things worse, I mean better. Or something.

“Unceremoniously abandoning these neighborhoods will create barriers to basic needs for thousands of residents,” soon-to-be Former-Mayor Lightfoot said in a statement. “Walmart also needs to ensure that our residents in these communities that have been left behind will continue to have a reliable source for their everyday necessities.”

Makes sense. WALMART — not the City — needs to make sure that residents live in an environment that provides a reliable source of everyday necessities. Okay, then what’s the GOVERNMENT for? And, will they let Walmart manage the police and set the zoning regulations?

Maybe — and I’m just spitballing here — maybe the CITY OF CHICAGO needs to make sure that retailers can operate without being robbed blind by criminals that will be released the same day they’re arrested. But what do I know, I’m just a lawyer, not a mayor.

🔥 James O’Keefe’s ActBlue exposé continues to bear fruit, as Florida Representative Marco Rubio sent a strongly-worded demand letter to the Federal Election Commission, demanding an investigation:

Who knows whether the FEC will actually investigate ActBlue? I wouldn’t bet on it. But O’Keefe is doing a pretty terrific job, considering he’s had to start over from scratch.

🔥 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held another press conference this week announcing a new package of proposed laws intended to hamstring any Central Bank Digital Currency. DeSantis also called on other red states to adopt similar laws. Here’s the Governor’s descriptive flyer about the bill:

Progress!

🔥 Finally, some mask advice you will promptly ignore. Is it just me, or can you always see it in the eyes…

Don’t stare into them for too long! There’s definitely something going on with the eyes. Those are some bona fide crazy-lady eyes. They kind of eyes that, when you see them coming, you tell your kids to get behind you.

I’m not saying the inmates are in charge of the doctor’s office, but… well, you know.

Have a terrific Thursday! Meet me back here tomorrow for more.

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