☕️ EXCUSES ☙ Thursday, July 18, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump accepts nomination today, defying skeptics; Biden calls in covid sick; bad news for Ukraine; terrible news for Democrats; Vance gives rousing VP speech; House GOP explores options; and more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! It’s the day that Donald John Trump will, for the third time, accept the Republican Party’s Presidential nomination, blasting into smithereens last year’s dire predictions that it would be impossible for him to recover the entire Republican vote, nevermind recruit the types of independent voters who are terrified of removing their mattress tags. But he somehow managed to turn it all around, mostly thanks to diligent Democrats suing the pants off the former President, deploying the best DEI has to offer trying to lock him up, and shooting bullets at him while he was minding his own business trying to explain a chart.

Not to mention that President Trump might be the greatest marketing genius America has ever produced. We need that guy to fix America’s pathetic world image. Stat.

Anyway, in today’s terrific essential news roundup:  relentless, horrible news for Ukraine as money train starts last calls for the bar and high-tech wonder weapons stop working; Biden Campaign feebly grasps to hang on to the far left with a basket of bizarre policy proposals; Biden is sick, again, and can’t work until whenever he feels better; Vance optimistically accepts Republican nomination; House Republicans explore post-shooting options; and yesterday’s best meme.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🚀 Yesterday, the UK Independent ran this revealing headline: “Germany to slash military aid for Ukraine in deepening crisis for Zelensky.” ‘Slash’ is hardly fair; in point of fact, the article disclosed that Germany is not just slashing Ukraine aid, but halving it from a generous $8 billion in 2024 to a paltry $4 billion budgeted for 2025. What do the Germans know that corporate media doesn’t?

(Don’t start. Zelensky is not picking his nose in front of the Prime Minister. He’s just brushing off some excess cocaine.)

That isn’t nearly all the bad news for Ukraine. Ten days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article under a headline that could have been lifted from Coffee & Covid two years ago: “High-Tech American Weapons Work Against Russia—Until They Don’t.” The sub-headline added, “Moscow is learning how to defeat Western precision munitions in Ukraine.” By “learning how to defeat” Western weapons, the Journal meant “spanking us senseless.”

The U.S. Military, constantly drunk on champagne from the last Defense conference, which occur every six-point-three minutes, is laboring under two flawed philosophies: first, that “fewer, bigger, more expensive, higher-tech” weapons are the best types of weapons, rather than “more, cheaper, simpler.” The second intoxicated fallacy —outspend your enemy— is best explained in the context of historical narrative, but I’ll keep it brief so readers in Portland won’t doze off.

On the 4th of July, 1879, 5,000 British troops stared down a massive and terrifying army of 20,000 bloodthirsty Zulu warriors, brandishing razor-sharp spears that can be quite pointy at the business end and leave customers feeling quite depleted.  But by the battle’s end, the British had won, with only twelve lives lost, who were mostly Brits that were relieving themselves in the brush and never saw it coming. But within a very short time there were 1,500 dead Zulus.

The Zulus, warriors trained from birth, were defeated by the Gatling gun, a newfangled death machine invented by Samuel “Don’t Stand In Front of It” Gatling just ten years before, and only then entering military service in Africa.

Ever since, the Battle of Ulundi has become a textbook example of how a high-tech weapons advantage can turn the tide. It was so easy! Our military embraced that singular philosophy in the modern era, and American soldiers have been equipped with the best technology money can buy, such as sun-dried tomato lasagna MREs that taste exactly like a camel rectum. Some military experts even argue that Reagan single-handedly beat the Soviet Union merely by inventing “Star Wars” space-based missile defense satellites, which for some reason you never hear much about anymore because they were mostly made up.

But the high-technology theory of war has some fatal flaws:

1. In the same year of the Great Gatling Victory (1879), the Zulus also beat the British at the different, less textbooky Battle of Isandlwana, despite British Gatling guns. It turned out that traditional factors like geography, morale, and tactics can offset lopsided technological advantages.

2. The Zulus had zero technological or industrial capacity. It wasn’t even close. Zulus lived in huts. Their concept of manufacturing, honed through thousands of years of survival in harsh desert conditions, consisted mainly of hitting things with rocks until they stop moving. The Zulus were a hundred years away from making countermeasures against machine guns. The British-Zulu advantage might be true for America these days against some poorly-governed third-world countries like Iraq. But we lack that massive industrial offset against peer competitors like Russia and China, which both have manufacturing and industrial capacities arguably exceeding America’s.

3. The U.S. military’s primary defense contractors use lots of Chinese subcontractors for manufacturing US weapons, computer components, rare earth metals, uniforms, and Biden bobblehead dolls. Who will build our high-tech weapons if we are fighting against China?

For full disclosure, I am not a military expert, although I once watched a “based on true events” Netflix movie about World War II. Saving Private Somebody, or something. Nevertheless, I have often argued on this blog that the U.S. military is overly obsessed with expensive high technology as a surefire panacea for every conflict. I don’t need to be an expert; the headlines give it away. Our DEI-selected generals often brag about high technology they don’t understand and that we don’t even have yet. For example, headline from Bloomberg, also last week:

Ahem. Russia has been deploying drones in active combat in Ukraine for over two years now. They are miles ahead of the US. Russia’s chief ally, China, which shares a common border with Russia, is the world’s manufacturing superpower. It’s ludicrous to think we can out-drone the Chinese, which can launch their drones right from the beach, and we’d have to send our drone by Amazon Express from 5,000 miles across the ocean.

Between Bloomberg’s “Hellscape” article and the Journal’s “rapid obsolescence” article lies a grand canyon of difference. Even if Admiral Paparo’s Hellscape boasts are simply “strategic messaging” —lying— having to resort to exaggerated or false claims about potential future capabilities is a sign of weakness, broadcasting the U.S.’s lack of confidence in its current deterrent capabilities.

Our politically correct generals are mired back in 1879, or generously in the era of “Star Wars,” and depend on private military contractors to invent a way for them to beat China in Taiwan. Something has to change.

But any way you slice it, it’s been nothing but bad news for martial law commander and former comedian V. Zelensky.

🔥🔥 Biden’s flailing campaign tried to shore up the collapsing political dam this week by tacking hard left, proving President Lettuce is losing the base. At this point, Democrats need to be selling to the middle, like President Trump. Yesterday, Bloomberg ran a telling story headlined, “Biden, Grasping to Stabilize Beleaguered Campaign, Lurches Left.” The sub-headline explained, “President embraces rent control, debt erasure, and court reform.”

Biden’s brand-new policy proposals included laughable prescriptions like limiting increases on rental rates to no more than 5% per year, and —I am not making this up— somehow forgiving Americans’ medical debts. (Unlike student loans, medical debt is already dischargeable in bankruptcy.) These terrible ideas are almost too dumb to discuss, except perhaps for Biden’s proposals to punish the Supreme Court.

The Associated Press announced Biden’s Court-wrangling scheme in an article headlined, “Biden seriously considering proposals on Supreme Court term limits, ethics code, AP sources say.” The Vegetable-in-Chief said he was “seriously considering” the following ideas:

1. A judicial ethics code enforceable by the Executive Branch.

2. Term limits for Justices.

3. A Constitutional Amendment to eliminate Presidential immunity.

4. Requiring fifty percent of Supreme Court employees to be persons identifying as bisexual tree frogs.

Just kidding about that last one. I think. But as for the rest, to be clear: Biden can’t deliver any of these far-fetched promises. Not even if he were somehow re-elected, which seems about as likely as North Korea building a Moon Base. He will never even try; it’s just words, a too-obvious effort to tantalize Democrat marxists. Even the marxists aren’t falling for it.

In short, the Supreme Court could easily overrule any law Biden managed to push through Congress. And calling for a Constitutional Convention would backfire on the Democrats in a thousand different ways. Please call for a Constitutional Convention. These kinds of ideas sit at the top of a two percent grade that even Secret Service Director Cheatle would fear to navigate.

Do not worry about Biden’s threats against the Supreme Court. It’s all smoke and funhouse mirrors, and smacks of a kind of frantic desperation even worse than Admiral Paparo’s panicked ‘hellscape drones’ threat.

💉 Biden is sick again. Yesterday afternoon, the New York Times ran an unintentionally hilarious and potentially historic story headlined, “Biden Tests Positive for Covid.” The sub-headline explained, “President Biden will 'self-isolate and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time,’ a White House spokeswoman said.” Continue to carry out his duties? When did he start?

CLIP: Las Vegas UNIDOS audience silent after hearing Biden deployed Covid excuse (0:45).

After keeping a Unidos-US audience waiting for over an hour in Las Vegas yesterday, Biden called in his “I got Covid” excuse and got out of Dodge faster than a coffeeshop barista calling in sick before a holiday weekend. Maskless, surrounded by an all male Secret Security detail, ahem, Biden carefully mounted Air Force One’s short staircase, taking only thirteen minutes to get tot the top, and only once stopping briefly to rest on the third step, and then he fluttered away safely out of sight for the foreseeable future.

Biden has been jabbed at least four times. This is his third covid diagnosis. The shots are working great. Biden also famously told Americans if we got the shot, we wouldn’t catch covid, and warned jabbed Americans to avoid their dangerous, unvaccinated co-workers.

But now Biden is using the same, pathetic excuse he deployed for his horrifying debate performance: I had a cold.

Though corporate media reporters did their level best to defend Biden’s disappearing act, nobody misses the obvious comparison between the two candidates. On Saturday, President Trump got shot, stood up and reassured the crowd, enjoyed a terrific photo op, and the very next day got up and flew to Milwaukee to supervise the triumphant Republican National Convention.

On the other hand, yesterday Biden caught a mild cold that will “likely sideline him for days,” according to the Times. A mild cold. It’s not like Biden can afford to hide out in his basement this time.

Also, Biden could have, but didn’t appear at the Las Vegas event by Zoom or even phone it in.

Biden’s covid diagnosis landed like a ton of Antifa bricks. It was a political catastrophe. The betting markets immediately responded by pegging Biden’s electoral chances below jailed ‘Tiger King’ third-party candidate Joe Exotic. Headline from Coindesk:

Coindesk’s article reported that Biden’s dropout chances had peaked at 70% the day after the Debate Debacle, but now they have risen back nearly to that pinnacle of disgrace. Things quickly went from bad to worse for President Generic Vegetable. With Joe out of action and unable to respond, late last night CNN ran this punchy headline:

Yesterday’s New York Times reported that liberal darling and January 6th Committee Superstar Adam Schiff has joined the Anti-Cabbage camp:

Last night, ABC’s Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl reported on Twitter that Senate Majority Leader Chuck “Chuckie” Schumer is also now Anti-Cabbage:

Right after that, far-left New York Times Columnist Ezra Klein tweeted that the Schumer news was a deliberate leak intended to undermine covid-stricken President Rutabaga:

Finally, at 1am this morning, CNN published this alliterative whopper, capping off the day’s extraordinary events:

The Most Trusted Name in News did not miss the historic nature of this year’s political events. You must read this astonishing paragraph from CNN’s article to believe it:

All the while yesterday, the Republican National Convention thundered on.

🔥🔥 Speaking of the thunderous Republican Convention, the New York Times ran a terrific story yesterday headlined, “J.D. Vance Plants His Appalachian Roots in the 2024 Race.” Last night, Senator Vance accepted the Republican Nomination for Vice-President and delivered a wonderfully optimistic speech.

Vance expressed optimism about the ticket’s ability to capture the key Rust-belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. He was upbeat about the Country’s potential for revival, and about the party’s chances of defeating an opponent with the intellectual capacity of a dirty dish sponge. His palpable sense of optimism for the future was so positive and pervasive that even the New York Times noticed:

The Times also noted that this is the first national convention Vance has ever attended, and he is the first Millennial to appear on a Presidential ticket. Youth and vigor.

🔥 The Hill ran a helpful story yesterday headlined, “Speaker Johnson says he’s looking at options if Secret Service director doesn’t resign.” We’ll need options, since Director Cheatle defiantly insists she’s not going anywhere, even though a responsible bureaucrat would have already submitted her resignation and allowed the President to make the call.

Perhaps most encouraging, the Hill’s article reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced the formation of a special bipartisan task force with subpoena powers to be created on Monday. Plus, the article also reported that at least six existing Congressional committees are already investigating the weekend’s assassination attempt on President Trump.

It’s time for a new “January 13th” Commission and lots of prosecutions.

🔥 Finally, enjoy the meme that won the Internet yesterday:

To be fair to handicapped people, a wheelchair ramp has a steeper slope than the sniper’s roof in Butler, PA. Despite the widespread, frantic mockery of Director Cheatle’s “slope excuse” on social media yesterday, a quick search of Google News this morning revealed that not one single corporate media headline included the word, “slope.” Which was sufficient evidence to prove that President Trump was right when he called self-censoring corporate media “Fake News” and said they are the enemies of the country.

Tear up the maps. We are now adventuring into wholly uncharted territory. We left Lewis and Clarke behind about 500 miles back. This year, 2024, can only be compared to previous election years in history in thin slices; no other period even comes close to matching the totality of what we are living through now. After years of conservatives playing desperate defense during all the pandemic and post-pandemic travails, we are currently enjoying an unparalleled bloom of hope. Take hold of this historic moment.

Months remain until the election, which is like a decade in a normal political period. Much can, and will, yet change. The war is not over. But it does feel like the momentum is reaching a kind of critical crescendo, an unstoppable and optimistic bull run. No excuses! Let’s go.

Have a terrific Thursday! Navigate today’s slopes like a wheelchair Olympian going up a mild ramp, and get back here tomorrow for the C&C report on Trump’s presidential nomination acceptance speech, along with the rest of the day’s essential news and commentary.

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