☕️ DESPERATE AND DISORGANIZED ☙ Saturday, April 6, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

More coincidences in NY quake; Ukraine narrative spiraling down; Biden admin has a desperate, disorganized week; odd, urgent calls to world leaders; Florida leads with anti-tent-city law; and more.

Good morning, C&C, and welcome to the Weekend Edition! Your roundup today includes: more weirdness with super coincidental earthquakes yesterday after C&C earthquake story; media narrative depressingly shifting to Ukraine’s hopelessness; Biden Administration collapses in contradictions as Houthis offered a generous bribe to stop attacking US warships; Biden makes urgent call to Chinese president Xi about Ukraine; France makes urgent call to Russian defense minister about Ukraine; and a heartwarming story about a new Florida law punishing cities for not doing their one job.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🤯 That was so weird! I had to take a moment after hearing the news. CNN ran the story this morning headlined, “Aftershocks rattle Northeast after rare 4.8 magnitude earthquake hits region.” New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters, “New Yorkers are not accustomed to having earthquakes in our state.” No, they’re not.

Devastation in New York following 4.8 magnitude earthquake.

In other words, hours after I wrote a post about coincidences and earthquakes related to the upcoming eclipse on April 8th — “4/8” — New York experienced a once-in-a-lifetime 4.8 magnitude shaker. For context, the next strongest quake New York City folk have experienced was a 4.2 magnitude rumble in the late 1890’s.

Monday’s eclipse will pass right by and right over New York City. The coincidences suggest a famous Biblical verse: Exodus 4:8 warns, and I am not making this up:

Then the Lord said, “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second.”

So.

Fortunately, coincidences and weirdness were the worst of it yesterday. Magnitude 4.8 is considered strong, a serious shake, staggering right on the cusp of real risk to home and hearth. Which is not to downplay the threat, since a 4.8-er could certainly cause some unsteady elderly people (like Joe Biden, say) to experience a nasty tumble.

But for most New Yorkers the quake was just a startling shot of adrenaline.

It involved another amusing coincidence. Liberals enjoyed a mocking field day yesterday, since the precise epicenter of yesterday’s rumble was seven miles from President Trump’s National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. From the Huffington Post:

Given all the weird coincidences, you can’t blame conspiracy minded folks who immediately suspected some kind of villainous earthquake weapon was involved, targeting President Trump. But if so, it wasn’t a very good weapon, since it missed by seven miles and failed to damage the chic golf course.

Nevertheless, we should pause to remember the victims. One unlucky Bedminster player — poised to finish strong on the 18th — missed an easy putt to the cup right as the quake hit, and then, rattled, made a humiliating three-putt finish, two over par, including a penalty stroke for swearing.

Maybe Trump’s golf course was the target. Who knows? But in an even more suggestive coincidence (to me), the quake’s epicenter or “target” was actually closer to a little spot named Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. Whitehouse. White House.

I know, I know. But if you’re still in the mood for more coincidences, this one also happened yesterday, but wasn’t widely reported because the shakes were small:

So. And then this, all the way from the West Coast, making 4.8-magnitude national bookends yesterday:

The California 4.8 quake was not widely reported because it didn’t affect any densely-populated areas like the New York quake did. But still.

🚀 Consider yesterday’s noteworthy headline published in one of the corporate media’s crown jewels, the Washington Post:

Or worse. Consider the narrative implications of this long-form, straight news piece that essentially conceded there is no strategy for Ukraine to win the war. Nobody really knows how to rescue Ukraine from its current quagmire:

Ukrainian and Western officials view Zelensky as largely stuck. As Russia steps up airstrikes and once again advances on the battlefield in Ukraine more than two years into its bloody invasion, there is no end to the fighting in sight. The status quo is awful. With the fight now a grinding stalemate, Ukrainians are dying on the battlefield daily.

How long can Ukraine withstand being at war? An anonymous Ukrainian lawmaker said the country will not survive the status quo for another 10 years. Others, however, think the fight could go on even longer.

“No one will concede territory, but people understand that getting it back might take a long time,” Professor Mylovanov said. “What form can that take? Views differ here. A long war with eventually a victory? A sudden collapse in the Russian power structure? A successful counteroffensive? But that requires a very different type of support than what Ukraine has now.”

According to the Post, a diplomatic solution is not an option. This is evident madness to all sane people. So it appears the narrative crafters are setting up a new, pugnacious, blameable Zelensky character as a resolute impediment to any kind of diplomatic solution:

Negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war — something Zelensky has rejected as long as Russian troops remain on Ukrainian land — is politically toxic.  Zelensky has said Ukraine will accept nothing less than the return of all its territory, including land that Russia has controlled since 2014.

Zelensky will also have to live up to his own promise — which he restates regularly — of returning Ukraine to its 1991 borders, including Crimea.

“How will Zelensky get out of this situation? I have no idea,” said a Ukrainian lawmaker, who spoke anonymously like other sources for this article.

About ten minutes ago, bad Ukraine news was either embargoed or minimized. If it did make print, bad Ukraine news was always intended to pressure Congress to cough up more war bucks to save Ukraine before it’s too late. But this story was different, mostly because it was missing the part where they assure us that, if Ukraine just gets a couple hundred more billion, then it will drive the Russians back to Moscow.

The narrative seems to be shifting.

🚀 A couple days before that, on Wednesday Politico ran a similarly remarkable story headlined, “Ukraine is at great risk of its front lines collapsing.”

Once again, a story like this would have been intended to apply painful political pressure on Congress to whip out the taxpayers’ collective checkbook again. But behold the following paragraph from the story, which admitted that even the much-discussed billions can’t help Ukraine:

The sad truth is that even if the package is approved by the U.S. Congress, a massive resupply may not be enough to prevent a major battlefield upset. Essentially, everything now depends on where Russia will decide to target its strength in an offensive that’s expected to launch this summer.

And who said this? Not Biden or Blinken or Jake Sullivan. The sad truth that more money can no longer help Ukraine is, according to Politico, coming from high-ranking Ukrainian officers who are literally saying nothing can help us now:

According to high-ranking Ukrainian military officers … the military picture is grim. The officers said there’s a great risk of the front lines collapsing wherever Russian generals decide to focus their offensive.

“There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us. We don’t have those technologies, and the West doesn’t have them as well in sufficient numbers,” one of the top-ranking military sources said.

The article began and ended with a goofy reference to Elon Musk, who has nothing whatsoever to do with the war except occasionally he tweets about it like the rest of us. According to Politico, Musk enraged squadrons of easily-offended Ukraine armchair warriors last week by tweeting, “if the war lasts long enough, Odesa will fall too.”

For a variety of good reasons, if Odessa falls, Ukraine is a dead duck. Although the article started by mocking Musk’s tweet, take a look at the article’s final words of concession:

… So, Musk may not be too wide of the mark after all.

Haha, they couldn’t bring themselves to just say “Musk could be right.”

Again, U.S. and NATO war planners continue publicly insisting Ukraine is right on the brink of a definitive victory; if only stingy, nitpicky Congressmen could get off their butts and quit whining about the United States’ border problem for five minutes, then warplanners can turn this whole thing around, they promise. “Not one inch,” Biden always says.

But now, high level Ukrainian military officers are saying that no amount of money can win the war. To whom should we listen? Ukrainians who are actually doing the day to day fighting? Or NATO war planners, sitting safely in their leather chairs far from the front lines in Washington and Brussels?

But wait. There’s more.

🚀 This week we got an odiferous whiff of shambolic Biden Administration desperation, if not an outright sign the Administration is at risk of completely collapsing. Let’s begin with the Yemenese Houthis, who are currently a thorn in Joe Biden’s side, because their scrappy desert fighting forces have effectively bottled up cargo ships in the Red Sea:

Following a few months of relentless U.S. military air and sea attacks against Houthi targets, absolutely nothing has changed.  Yesterday the Biden Administration appeared to throw in the towel and, whereas there’s no way in Hades we’ll ever negotiate with that rascal Putin since the Ukrainians would rather die first, but when it comes to desert terrorists, Biden called for diplomacy:

Most corporate media sources reported this week that the Biden Administration — communicating through the papers — offered the Houthis a bribe, I mean an olive branch: removing them from the designated terrorist list. Bloomberg:

The Bloomberg article set the table pretty well:

The comments suggest Washington is once more leaning on diplomacy after a nearly three-month-long campaign of airstrikes against Houthi facilities in Yemen. Those have failed to stop the group’s missile and drone attacks against merchant vessels and warships, though the US says it has managed to degrade the Houthis’ military capabilities.

“My hope is that we can find diplomatic off-ramps,” Tim Lenderking, President Joe Biden’s special envoy for Yemen, told reporters in an online press briefing on Wednesday. “To find ways to deescalate and allow us to pull back, eventually, the designation and of course to end the military strikes on Houthis’ military capability.”

So, in Ukraine, we must fight to the last Ukrainian. No diplomacy. Never! But in Yemen, after a short three-month try — only airstrikes, no troops — America is prepared to cave, offering to bribe the terrorists by removing their terrorist label even though they are terrorists.

In other words, it’s a “quid pro quo,” which you’ll recall was an impeachable offense when Trump did it, but is now supposed to be masterful leadership or something:

Asked by Bloomberg News after the briefing if the US was offering the Houthis a quid pro quo to end their attacks on ships in return for revoking the designation, Lenderking said: “We would certainly study that but not assume it’s an automatic thing.”

It is a humiliating defeat for the increasingly-desperate Biden, not least because he began his term in office by revoking Trump’s original declaration that the Houthis were terrorists. It was one of the very first things Biden did in February of 2021:

In other words, Biden is a moron. The Houthis were so grateful to Biden they repaid his unsolicited generosity by terrorizing the Red Sea and attacking U.S. warships with cheap underwater drones. In January, a frustrated Team Biden jammed the Houthis back on the terror list, presumably as punishment for jamming up the Red Sea:

But the Houthis apparently found this re-labeling especially humorous, and responded by increasing their water-drone attacks:

Lest we lose the thread, Biden’s much ballyhooed “Operation Prosperity Guardian” has failed. A bunch of wild Arabs in motorboats have defeated the U.S. Navy and Air Force, or at least held them to a standstill.

So now, three months after re-designating the Houthis as a terror group — which Trump had already done four years ago until Biden flipped it — now Biden is offering to re-un-designate the Houthis, or however you say it.

Joe Biden fails at everything he does, except failing. He’s wildly successful at failing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for diplomacy. But all this flip-flopping, shilly-shallying, political back-and-forth-ism, one day you’re a terrorist and the next day you’re not, not only looks disorganized, reactive, and desperate, but it fails to withstand even meagre analysis that someone like Joe, well maybe not Joe, but even someone like Tony Blinken should be able to perform.

Explain this: Biden is sending a message to all terrorists that, hey, if you’re successful enough as a terrorist then we will reward you and pretend you’re not a terrorist.

How does that possibly makes sense? What is Biden’s foreign policy? Is it encouraging terrorism? I wish that sometime, one of the White House reporters would ask Karine whatshername to explain his “foreign policy.” Is it on the website somewhere?

Biden lost Afghanistan. Biden lost against the Houthis. Biden lost the sanctions war against Russia. Biden’s losing Ukraine. The best we can say is Joe Biden is not a winner. “Winning is overrated,” he’d be likely to quip, if he could quip anymore.

But Biden and his Administration got even more disorganized, reactive, and desperate this week.

🚀 Let’s glance back at that remarkable Politico article from Wednesday that quoted high ranking Ukrainian officers. In the part I quoted for you, the officer essentially forecast that the Russians could win not in ten years, but as soon as this summer:

The sad truth is that even if the package is approved by the U.S. Congress, a massive resupply may not be enough to prevent a major battlefield upset. Essentially, everything now depends on where Russia will decide to target its strength in an offensive that’s expected to launch this summer.

Summer? Like, July? Or August? In other words, just before the elections?

Coincidentally this week, urgent calls ensued to both Russia and China.

The Hill reported the first urgent call in a story mind-numbingly headlined,  “Biden holds call with China’s Xi ahead of Japan, Philippines meetings.” The first thing to note is Biden is not apparently big on phone calls. According to the Hill, the last time the two leaders spoke by phone was in July 2022. 

Think about that. Biden hasn’t called Xi in nearly two years. Hilariously, the Hill quoted a senior administration official who pathetically explained, “Both President Biden and President Xi agreed to try to pick up the phone a bit more, use that tool as a means of responsibly managing the relationship, of being in closer touch at the leader level on a more regular basis.”

Talking to the president of China is Biden’s job.

Tellingly, neither the Hill article, nor the official summary of the 90-minute call mentioned Ukraine. Instead the U.S. reports focusing on a giant menu of distracting non-emergencies like artificial intelligence, fentanyl, trade, TikTok, and Taiwan. But the Chinese issued their own official summary, and guess what?

According to the Wall Street Journal— based on the Chinese call summary — the call was really about Biden threatening China to stop helping Russia in Ukraine:

So right around the same time Politico got intel direct from high-ranking Ukrainian military officials expecting the Russian offensive this summer — the worst possible political time for Biden — intel presumably shared with the White House — Biden suddenly decided to ring up President Xi and tell the Chinese leader to back off.

The WSJ noted, “the Biden administration is preparing to raise some Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods, including electric vehicles.” So, again, like with the Houthis, Biden is embarrassingly falling back to Trump’s China policies, which Biden had promptly reversed after getting hold of the office.

But that wasn’t all. Enter the French.

🚀 The next day after Joe’s call to President Xi, the French called the Russians — also for the first time in years. France24 ran the story Wednesday with a remarkably similar-sounding headline:

According to French reports, the call was merely to convey the country’s sympathies over the recent Moscow terror attack. But the official Russian report described the call quite differently. The Russian report said the French had called “urgently.” And one of the topics discussed was a peace dialog for Ukraine:

Like Biden’s official report about the Xi call, the French official report completely failed to mention the Ukraine discussion. And in another astounding coincidence, on Tuesday U.S. neocon mastermind Secretary of State Anthony Blinken happened to be in France, right before this call.

Now, we don’t know anything beyond the scraps I’ve reported. So we can only guess at the “plan,” if there is a plan. But, especially combined with the Houthi debacle, Biden’s Ukraine “strategy” looks to everyone watching like something totally disorganized, reactive, and desperate.

Biden doesn’t talk to President Putin. He barely talks to President Xi. Could the explanation really be that Biden isn’t cognitively capable of those kinds of conversations anymore?

🔥 Our final, unintentionally encouraging story popped up outside the paywall in my own NYT-affiliated hometown newspaper, headlined “New Florida law may force Gainesville to forbid sleeping and camping on public property.” The headline referred to my little city’s grotesque downtown, which nowadays resembles one of President Trump’s infamous third-world s—holes:

The story was that two weeks ago, Governor DeSantis signed a creative new “anti-public camping” law, to take effect on October 1st. The law compassionately requires cities with homeless problems to provide places for homeless to sleep and get mental healthcare.

And it will fine Florida cities like Gainesville for letting people “sleep outside” on public property.

Gainesville’s Mayor, who just spent a million unaffordable dollars unsuccessfully suing the state over loss of management of the local electric utility, is taking a different tone this time, suggesting that there must have been some kind of misunderstanding.

The new law shows good old-fashioned conservative creativity. Well-organized and well-funded “homeless activists” have successfully argued for years that fining homeless people for sleeping outside is unconstitutional. But this new law doesn’t punish the homeless at all. The fines are directed at cities.

Governor DeSantis explained the law was Florida's way of preventing cities from looking like San Francisco, a city whose leftist policies allowed its parks and sidewalks "to be overwhelmed with tent cities and homeless encampments." At a signing-ceremony press conference, DeSantis explained “you should not be accosted by a homeless person. You should be able to walk down the street and live your life."

In January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case where the Ninth Circuit held it unconstitutional for Oregon to fine the homeless for sleeping on public streets. If it agreed, the Supreme Court could have just rejected hearing the case, letting the Ninth’s decision stand. So court watchers are hopeful that the Supreme Court will uphold Oregon’s no-public-sleeping law. But Florida’s law cleverly bypasses that issue altogether by focusing on cities, whose job it is to maintain public order in the first place.

And, who gives the homeless all these tents in the first place? It remains a mystery why so many leftists love tent cities fouling the streets of their cities and demolishing their downtowns.

In any case, once again, Florida is leading the way. Progress!

Have a wonderful weekend! Plan to camp out here on Monday morning — no fines! — for another terrific installment of Coffee & Covid.

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