☕️ FLARING UP ☙ Friday, May 10, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Flare train incoming; secret recording rattles Stormy trial; Tucker interviews the undesirable accuser; catlike Zelensky down to one life; IRS battles the middle; Boeing news; Fani showdown; and more.

Good morning, C&Cers, it’s Friday! Everything you need to know today is neatly wrapped in today’s roundup: look to the skies as 2024 delivers a record solar flare train; Stormy trial updates and another blockbuster secret recording; Tucker compares Stormy Daniels’ celebrity treatment to another treasonous presidential sex assault survivor; Zelensky uses one of his nine lives to survive being assassinated by his own bodyguards; IRS auditors oddly seem focused on middle class taxpayers despite Biden promises; more detail on yesterday’s Boeing runway excursion which sounds a trifle more complicated than originally described; Facebook censorship cranks up; and more bad Fani Willis developments as Senate hears more misconduct allegations against her.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

😎 NBC Chicago ran a toasty space-weather story yesterday headlined, “First ‘severe geomagnetic storm watch’ issued in nearly 20 years. Here’s what it could mean.” The sub-headline added, “The storm could cause enhanced viewing opportunities for the Northern Lights in the U.S., but could also have impacts on radio communications, GPS satellites and more.”

There is widespread confusion over exactly what we’re looking at, but everyone agrees it’s highly unusual. Yesterday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which tracks ‘space weather’, announced that “at least” five significant solar flares — what one platform described as a “flare train” — are all heading toward Earth. ETA tonight.

NOAA has forecast a “G4” level of storm intensity (out of five), and “R3-R5” radio blackouts, a range that including the highest level of potential communication interference. So it’s not “the big one.” You can’t get a turbo tan. But it still could be pretty dramatic, with cell and internet outages possible, and projected visible auroras as far south as North Carolina.

So check the sky tonight! Earth weather permitting, you might get a once-in-a-lifetime view without having to don a parka.

As we’ve discussed before here at C&C, the Sun has now reached its 11-year solar maximum. And, as today’s record solar activity suggests, this year’s solar maximum is turning out to be a peak among solar maximums. So it will likely be another scorcher of a summer, and even though it’s really the Sun (aided by undersea volcanoes) heating up the world, you and your gas-guzzling SUV will probably get the blame.

I’m just a lawyer, not a sun scientist, but because today’s space weather is caused by a super-gigantic sunspot group and by daisy-chained solar flares, tonight’s storm might best resemble 1921’s “Great New York Storm,” which spontaneously set fires in many places and fried several undersea telegraph cables. Given how 2024 is going so far, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

🔥🔥 Yesterday was also a hot day in the Trump Trial. Among many other platforms, CBS live-updated yesterday’s proceedings in a story headlined, “At Trump trial, defense grills Stormy Daniels in her final day on the stand.” Apart from one fascinating evidence nugget, yesterday saw more of the same sordid “Stormy Daniels Sex Show,” punctuated by repeated motions from Trump’s team unsuccessfully begging libidinous Judge Merchan to declare a mistrial, since Stormy’s salacious testimony had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual charges.

But the most significant — and underreported — evidence came in when Trump’s lawyers played one of human hemorrhoid Michael Cohen’s paranoid audio recordings from 2018. In the call between Cohen and Stormy Daniels’ attorney Keith Davidson, unaware he was being recorded, Davidson pushed Cohen to hurry up and pay Stormey for an NDA or else.

On the call, Davidson warned Cohen that Daniels was getting impatient, and her publicist boyfriend was about to give her story to the press. Davidson advised, "I remember hearing her on the phone saying, you f-ing Keith Davidson. You better settle this g-damn story. Because if he loses this election, and he's going to lose, if he loses this election, we lose all f-ing leverage, this case is worth zero.”

Under questioning on the stand about the call, Daniels finally admitted that getting money for her story was important to her. 

In legal terms, we call that kind of thing ‘extortion.’ And, just who was trying to influence the election? Finally, I feel compelled to add: these morons are not representative of most lawyers. Even of bad ones.

🔥🔥 In stark contrast to the curious case of pottymouth porn star Daniels, on Wednesday, Tucker Carlson posted his interview with Tara Reid, who has credibly accused Joe Biden of sexual assault. Obviously, Tucker is comparing the remarkably similar cases and the wildly-different treatment of Stormy Daniels versus Tara Reid. Stormy is a celebrity witness in a case against the President. But Reid, who made claims against an alleged president, is currently being indicted by the DOJ in a sealed case for crimes they won’t even disclose to her lawyer.

CLIP: Tucker interviews sex assault survivor Tara Reid in Moscow (23:00).

Tucker interviewed Tara while in Moscow recently to interview Russian president Putin. Ironically, former democrat and political professional Tara Reid has fled to Russia seeking political asylum. (In the interview, Tara explained the only two countries that refuse to extradite people to America are Iran and Russia.) Tara told Tucker the Biden Administration has never denied her allegations, but instead has accused her of being a Russian asset.

In other words: treason.

Meanwhile, Stormy Daniels — a known liar who has sex with strangers for money — is enjoying wall-to-wall corporate media coverage celebrating her as some kind of postmodern folk heroine. They literally gave the aging porn star the keys to the city:

The New York Times has called Stormy a “feminist hero:”

But Tara Reid — who is not any kind of prostitute but worked for Joe Biden, Leon Panetta, and on many democrat campaigns — is now an international fugitive from secret state charges. Watch the whole thing.

You’d think democrats would eventually notice that the two-tiered justice system does not protect democrats, but only protects people who aren’t sitting in the Biden DOJ’s crosshairs.

🚀🚀 Like the surface of the Sun, something is flaring up in Ukraine. For obvious reasons, they aren’t providing much detail about this bad Ukraine news. Time Magazine ran the story yesterday, headlined “Zelensky Fires Bodyguard Chief After Officers Arrested Over Assassination Attempt.”  Is this an Emperor’s New Clothes moment?

Yesterday Zelensky fired Serhiy Rud, a military security expert who since 2019 has long led the country’s version of its Secret Service. All we know for sure is Serhiy’s firing follows the arrest of two high-ranking Ukrainian secret service agents, both colonels in the Ukraine military, both accused of plotting to put Zelensky on ice.

It getting so bad that these days, Zelensky feels like he’s being attacked by a swarm of slavic bees. It seems everybody wants to kill him; he simply can’t keep track of it all. “Intelligence said there were already ten attempts,” Zelensky told Italian media in broken English. “I don’t count.”

The clock is ticking on Zelensky, not figuratively in the sense that even his own personal bodyguards seem mortally offended by the former comedian, but the clock is literally running out because his constitutional term expires in a few days on May 21st.

Despite continuity of government in wartime being an insanely critical issue to just about everybody, in and out of country, Ukraine has still not announced any definite plan for what will happen on that date. Will he stay, or will he go? (Assuming he lives that long.)

Never mind — it’s going to be a surprise! Biden hasn’t told them yet what happens after May 21st. People love surprises.

A Guardian article about the thwarted assassination story recited a long laundry list of other sackings, amounting to something like a good old Soviet purge. First of all, secret police arrested the two previously referenced bodyguards, for scheming to assassinate the nation’s top pianist.  Then, as mentioned, and demonstrating Stalinist levels of paranoia, Zelensky fired his own chief of personal security, presumably for letting two assassins sneak into the royal guard or something.

The same day, Zelensky also fired and replaced the sub-par commander of Ukraine’s special forces. It’s not a very secure job; the previous commander only lasted six months.

Just as busy as their president, the Ukrainian parliament voted this week to fire two top ministers — the ministers of infrastructure and of agriculture — for corruption. Or perhaps, too much corruption. As the saying goes, “svyni hoduyut'sya, a kabany ydut' na biynyu,” or, “pigs get fed, but hogs go to the slaughterhouse.”

Unless that is, they can escape. Which is what a lot of young Ukrainian men are trying to do. So the parliament also approved more crackdowns on young men wishing to opt-out of the increasingly unpopular war. It also authorized the forcible conscription of prisoners. “Where am I going?” “Shut up, you’ll love it there.”

Remind me not to get a ticket for failing to abate a smokey chimney in Ukraine.

Predictably, Ukraine has reflexively blamed the foiled internal assassination attempt on … wait for it … Russia! The author of all its ills. That claims must, however, be taken with at least a dash of salt, since Ukraine also blames Russia for the Nordstream bombing, the Crokus City Hall massacre, and rap music. But the more likely culprit is Ukraine’s neo-nazi Right Sector party, which might want to rub Zelensky out before he retires to his Italian villa after his term expires at the end of the month.

Zelensky and the various neo-nazi brigades, including the infamous Azov Brigade, have been sparring lately. Apparently Azov suspects Zelensky is trying to get them killed, and has repeatedly refused orders lately. Oh! And I almost forgot. Two weeks ago, Zelensky tried to cut Azov out of the money:

Just saying.

🔥 There’s always some good news with the bad news. Let’s start with the bad. Remember back when Biden ordered up eighty-seven thousand new auditors for the IRS — roughly thirty new auditors for every single county in the United States — and everybody freaked out? And then the IRS said it was mainly just to replace existing empty positions? And then Biden mumbled something about it was just to make sure the “One Percent” paid their fair share? Behold the liar in chief, whose pants are on fire. It was probably the solar flares.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed with the entirely predictable headline, “IRS’s Most Wanted: The $200,000 Man.” The sub-head glumly noted, “Sixty-three percent of new audits last year were aimed at middle-class filers.”

But … there is no war on the middle class! That’s just a conspiracy theory.

The article wasn’t just somebody’s opinion. Unreported elsewhere, the Treasury Inspector General issued a report this week about the IRS, and it was a stinker. The report examined the IRS’s progress on mandates from Biden’s Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act backed by tens of billions in new funding. The original stated goal was to audit more ultra-wealthy people and fewer middle class people.

Unexpectedly, it’s not going so well. The IRS got an ‘F.’ Maybe an F-minus.

As of last summer, well over half (63%) of all new audits targeted hapless middle-class taxpayers with incomes under $200,000 — coincidentally the group least able to hire tax professionals to help defend them. Only a tiny overall share of new audits reached the very highest earners, and most audited (80%) were filers earning under $1 million. Suckers.

But as I said, there was also good news. The good news was the IRS is having profound recruitment problems. For some reason, accountants aren’t exactly sprinting to join the tax-collecting agency. Out of its goal of hiring 3,700 new agents in Year One, the IRS hired only 34 in the first six months.

The low response to its job postings comes even though IRS audit agents receive a generous average salary of $125,000, which also comes loaded up with massive public-employee perks like $60,000 in student-loan forgiveness.

Well. It’s not all bad for the IRS, which is still enjoying its bigger budget even though it hasn’t hired all those new auditors. I’m strangely okay with that.

✈️✈️ Boeing Update! That late-breaking, Boeing-related accident yesterday in Senegal, where the plane suddenly and unexpectedly experienced an unscheduled excursion from the runway, was apparently a little more serious than originally reported. Fox ran a much more informative story yesterday headlined, “Boeing jet skids off runway, injuring at least 10.” Ten people were injured — out of 79 passengers. And the plane caught fire. So it was a teensy bit more serious than just an unscheduled excursion into the weeds.

Boeing responded by slyly blaming the Romanian airline. "Carriers operate and maintain their airplanes for upwards of 30 to 40 years," Boeing said in a statement to FOX Business. They might have a point. What are they supposed to do? It was an old airplane. Just more bad luck.

🔥🔥 Speaking of yesterday’s post, right on schedule for election season, it appears Facebook has resumed its aggressive censorship regime. My well-written post yesterday was ironically deleted — not as dangerous misinformation like last cycle — but as “spam:”

I didn’t even report on any covid issues yesterday. It must have been the brain worm thing. Facebook notoriously cannot take a joke. Facebookers, remember that you can always get your daily C&C posts by email or worst come to worst, at www.coffeeandcovid.com.

🔥 Following yesterday’s news that the Court of Appeals agreed to reconsider her disqualification; more bad news flared up for struggling but romantic Atlanta District Attorney and cruising aficionado Fani Willis. Fox Atlanta ran the story headlined, “Fulton County DA Fani Willis: Senate Special Committee holding 3rd meeting Friday.” The sub-headline explained, “The Senate Special Committee on Investigations is set to convene its third meeting this Friday to hear testimony concerning potential misconduct by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.”

Fani Willis, oleaginous mastermind of the Trump RICO election interference case in Georgia, currently finds herself under investigation by the Republican-majority Georgia Senate, which is looking for conflicts of interest and misuse of public funds.

The huntress became the hunted.

Today, in its third hearing since February, the special committee plans to interview Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts and Fulton County Chief Financial Officer Sharon Whittmore. Like the previous two committee hearings, this one will also be live-streamed.

Yesterday Fani got some support from a surprising source, at least allegedly. Someday I’d really love to understand where many black churches made their unscheduled excursions off the theological runway.

CLIP: Fulton county preacher says G-d hand-picked Fani to represent Him and go down in the Annals of Heaven (4:12).

“G-d is with you!” the unidentified, over-the-top preacher shouted at Willis in the clip. “The angelic army is with you!…Your name will go down in the annals of history, both in Heaven and on earth!”

Well. Adulteress Fani Willis has already plumbed the annals of history by prosecuting a former President and presidential candidate for RICO crimes. Her name might also go down in the annals of the Georgia Bar’s disciplinary records as a disgraced lawyer. I’m not so sure about the angel armies and all the rest of that stuff.

Have a fabulous Friday! And, assuming the Internet hasn’t been fried to a crisp, get back here tomorrow morning for the Weekend Edition, where we’ll cover more astonishing 2024-style news, as the covid conspiracy continues to unravel.

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