☕️ DRONING ON ☙ Saturday, December 14, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Pelosi topples downstairs and breaks her hip; tech leaders lining up to help transition; Trump advice on mystery drones; Mexico continues taming the caravans; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Welcome to the Weekend Edition. Your roundup today includes: the Wicked Witch of the West flies downstairs in Luxembourg; Trump weighs in on mystery drone story—says shoot ‘em down; tech moguls line up to support the President-Elect; and the Washington Post says Mexico solved the border problem a long time ago and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Trump Effect.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Literally one day after writing about Senate Majority Leader Humpty McConnell’s most recent fall, another Congressional antique took a tumble. The CNN’s watered-down version of the story ran under the headline, “Pelosi admitted to hospital after fall on stairs in Luxembourg.” Our geriatric leaders have become high fall risks.

Yesterday, former House Speaker, Day Trader, Day Drinker, and antique Democrat Nancy Pelosi, 84, tripped going down marble stairs at the Grand Ducal Palace in Luxembourg and took a hard fall. A source “close to Pelosi” told the Times that the superannuated Speaker fractured her hip. Either way, apparently not trusting local healthcare, or perhaps fearing leaks, the military medivaced Pelosi to a joint US military hospital in Germany.

Pelosi was not in Luxembourg on a taxpayer-funded junket to enjoy the Christmas markets. Don’t be silly. She was there to “commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.” After all, she was there. (JK)

Fortunately, there’s always some anniversary somewhere in Europe around this time of year. Bottom line, Pelosi was working hard for her San Fransisco constituents, who want Luxembourgian Bulge Battle Commemorations to be as well-attended as possible. So her broken hip is a worker’s comp issue. Now, don’t worry about Nancy, Congress enjoys excellent, non-Obamacare.

The Times’ story hinted, without coming out and saying it, that Nancy’s selection of 4-inch stiletto heels might not have been an ideal fashion choice for a great-grandmother. Just saying. There’s no evidence McConnell was wearing heels when he fell, so don’t spread that rumor around.

Nearly every story about Pelosi’s toss downstairs also mentioned McConnell. It is odd how both parties’ top pols, both octogenarians, both fell in the same work week. Seriously, what are the odds? But the reason those two falls made international news is because it is very dangerous for frail 80-year-olds to fall, and if McConnell or Pelosi were sidelined, it would, in fact, affect the entire world.

When a younger politician falls on a junket, it’s not serious, it’s a just brief joke story. Ford used to trip over stuff all the time. At least that’s what corporate media constantly said

Postscript—After publishing my McConnell-tumble story yesterday, I received some outraged reader mail pointing out that some of the older relics refusing to retire and grimly hanging onto power were Silent Generation members and not, in fact, Baby Boomers. If I understand that feedback, these alert readers wanted the Silent Generation folks to get rightful credit, be lumped in with, and receive equal opprobrium and blame as Boomers.

So, out of sensitivity to factually diligent readership (I never called them nitpickers): nevermind the Boomers! We’ve already covered them. Shame on the Silent Generation too, or maybe especially, for their members who stubbornly refuse to retire from politics, arrogantly hogging power, and thereby placing the nation’s stability and security at risk every time they enter a stairway wearing nonsensible shoes.

(Profound apologies to my esteemed Silent Generation readers, but what else could I do?)

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Yesterday, Forbes ran a breaking story headlined, “Trump Suggests Government Should Shoot Down Unidentified Drones On East Coast.” After all, the new Trump brand is common sense. If people won’t claim their own drones, well, maybe it should be fair game.

Shoot them down seems to be the consensus among most New Jerseyans, who are frankly getting sick and tired of all the nightly drama. They can’t get a moment’s peace. Every ten minutes, right as the game starts getting interesting, it’s “Alfred! Get out here! There’s two more!” or “Get the camera again! There’s a new one shaped like a pineapple!”

Frustrated New Jersey husbands rankle under their wives’ withering criticism. “Well? Is that all you’re planning to do? Just stand there looking at them?”

Yesterday, Trump posted an official message on Truth Social, helpfully suggesting the government should either fess up and claim its drones (if they are drones) — otherwise, let’s just shoot the damned things down for being a public nuisance:

Floridians have been bragging that the drones are too scared to come down here, and there may be something to that, since the firearm-to-citizen ratio here is 11.3-to-1. But one can spare some sympathy for New Jersey husbands and harried local Mayors, who’ve probably received so many complaints they feel like the proverbial toad ‘neath the harrow.

Just as husbands in New Jersey were getting fired up enough to start firing wildly into the sky, news from the Sunshine State landed with a thud. After all, it was a Florida man who produced this sobering headline, right as the New Jersey mystery drone story really got off the ground this week. From Florida First Coast News, Wednesday:

He was also arrested. They soaked him on that fine but it could have been worse. At least he’s not doing time. In some ways, five grand feels like a small price to pay. It’s a good bet Walmart won’t fly anymore drones over his house.

As a lawyer, ethically speaking, I cannot encourage anyone to commit crimes like shooting down mystery drones inside city limits. But I bet if someone did, well, GoFundMe.

Actually, I find the constant media coverage fascinating and in some ways, contrary to the most likely explanation that the flyers belong to one government agency or another. If the mystery drone swarms were related to military or intelligence, I’d expect less coverage.

On the other hand, I found something missing from all the drone coverage: interviews with drone experts. The stories quote resident witnesses, local officials, state officials, and federal officials. But I’d expect a lot more discussion from drone designers and manufacturers — who could probably add a lot to the discussion — but there is almost none. Radio silence.

Could corporate media’s disinterest in drone builders betray a fake-news “mystery drone” narrative? Think we’ll ever find out who owns the annoying devices?

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Liberal heads exploded in helpless outrage yesterday when NPR ran a surprising story yesterday headlined, “Tech moguls Altman, Bezos and Zuckerberg donate to Trump's inauguration fund.”

Three tech titans —OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon/WaPo CEO Jeff Bezos— each pledged a million dollars toward Trump’s inauguration. The story also reported that Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai will soon meet with Trump, and Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff recently said “we are turning the page” with President Trump.

Benioff also owns Time Magazine, which yesterday declared Trump Man of the Year.

NPR blandly reported these tech leaders are courting the President-Elect, hoping for a favorable regulatory climate under the incoming Administration. “The tech industry wants to get the regulatory threat off their backs,” explained Margaret O'Mara, a ‘Silicon Valley historian’ at the overstaffed University of Washington.

But nobody believes that. At least, not as the entire explanation.

Doesn’t it seem more likely the tech leaders are painfully aware that Trump knows they all helped Biden cheat his way into office in 2020, and then spent four years trashing the President? What’s that old Ralph Waldo Emerson gag? Something like, “if you strike at the King, you must kill him.” Or words to that effect.

NPR admitted that inauguration donations are not uncommon. But NPR observed that it was the publicity —the coverage — that was unusual this time.

NPR completely missed the irony that it controls how much coverage inaugural donations receive.

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The media sure hates the Trump Effect. Yesterday, the far-left Washington Post ran a story headlined, “A migrant caravan just set out from Mexico. Why that’s no longer a crisis.” The sub-headline added, “Another migrant caravan has formed in southern Mexico. It will likely never reach the United States. Here’s how Mexico has been dismantling caravans for years.” For years! Now they tell us.

As if a distant afterthought, WaPo’s story ended by acknowledging Trump’s recent tariff threat toward Mexico. “Trump’s proposed 25-percent tariffs,” the paper explained, “would probably push export-dependent Mexico into a recession.” That’s not good. Thus, photogenic Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum “is eager to avoid an economic downturn,” and it is unlikely “she would allow a major caravan to cross Mexico at this sensitive time.”

The earlier part of the story was a jumbled mess of unavoidable contradictions, as the WaPo tried valiently but unsuccessfully to claim that Mexico already had the border situation well under control, “Mexico has tamed the caravans,” since long before Trump began his campaign —since 2019! But no matter how well tamed, the caravans clearly continue, so WaPo had to admit inconvenient facts like: “Lately, the caravans have grown in size — perhaps because of a sense of urgency in reaching the border before Trump takes office.”

Indeed, the story started by announcing the latest large caravan that, as if it had been a carefully organized witches coven instead of a caravan, formed at the “stroke of midnight Wednesday.” The migrants are, apparently, rushing to seize the advantage of Biden’s loose border before January 20th:

It’s been asked a thousand times, and we still have no good answer: Who organizes these midnight caravans? Could it be the same people plaguing innocent New Jerseyites with mystery drones? I’m not even joking.

Underneath the layers of insincerity and deception, the WaPo’s story was more good news. The migrant caravans are getting desperate; they are running out of time. And Mexico is, at least, pretending to try harder to stop them. Perhaps best of all, WaPo wasn’t pushing its overtired narrative about mean Republicans, humanitarian crises, and tired but well-meaning migrants yearning to be free, as though mass illegal migration were all happening in a Mexican political vacuum instead of across every Western country in the world.

Instead, the story’s tone conceded that change is coming. “When Donald takes office, it’s going to be more complicated,” one of the migrants told the WaPo. That isn’t true. When Donald Trump takes office, it’s going to get a lot simpler.

Have a wonderful weekend! C&C shall return on Monday morning, for more essential news and commentary, and to help kick off the week right.

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