☕️ FLYING GARBAGE ☙ Tuesday, June 4, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

WaPo's woke reporting leads to surprise shakeup; Biden critic rudely de-passported; Hunter trial starts; SADS congressional cancer; Russian warnings over Ukr; Fauci comes to Congress; and LOTS more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Tomorrow the Childers clan heads out for my speaking engagement at the National Association of Christian Lawmakers’ annual conference at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Then next week, we’ll be vacationing around historical Civil War sites. So prepare yourselves for the vacation schedule. But as for today, your essential news roundup includes: Washington Post consumes the rotten fruits of its woke programming in surprise shakeup; Biden critic pulled off plane to Russia and mysteriously de-passported; right on the heels of the Trump Trial, Hunter Biden trial begins this week; SADS story as another Congressperson gets difficult cancer diagnosis; Russia warns Biden about letting Ukraine run amok; Fauci finally testifies before Congress; North Koreans deploy new weapons technology against their southern neighbor after propaganda attack.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥🔥 Brokeness following wokeness darkened one of the the most elite doorsteps yet this week. The Associated Press quietly ran the article headlined, “With its top editor abruptly gone, The Washington Post grapples with a hastily announced restructure.” Sally Buzbee became the Washington Post’s becoming the paper's first female editor-in-chief on June 1, 2021. But she abruptly quit on Sunday, practically three years to the day, without notice.

Always with the crazy eyes. It never fails.

The Washington Post is one of the most prominent and influential left-leaning newspapers in the United States, perhaps second only to the New York Times. For most of its history, the WaPo was known for scrappy and aggressive investigative journalism, especially for taking out anti-communist Republican President Richard M. Nixon by breaking the “Watergate” story.

At this point, after Russiagate and the pee-pee dossier, you would probably laugh up a blood clot if I told you what they impeached Nixon over.

Anyway, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos bought the paper in 2013. Since then, and especially since the pandemic, the WaPo has become a reliable government mouthpiece, the poster-child for what insiders euphemistically call “access journalism,” where reporters trade favorable, pro-government reporting for access to anonymous government leakers, who fill WaPo reporters’ tender brains with mind-warping propaganda.

For some reason, even though it got woker and woker, the WaPo has steadily lost readers ever since President Trump left office. In a short four years, the Post has claimed the inglorious title of American Pravda.

In 2020, the Post’s website had 101 million unique visitors a month, which steadily declined by half, to only 50 million a month, by the end of last year. The Post also lost $77 million dollars last year. Margaret Sullivan, a former Post columnist and now Columbia ethics professor, uncontroversially told the AP, “Although Jeff Bezos is very rich, it has been my observation that billionaires don’t like to lose money.”

The Post’s recently hired publisher, Will Lewis, met with reporters and editors at the office yesterday, to explain the upcoming changes mentioned in a surprise Sunday night email. According to ‘a person who attended the meeting,’ Lewis scolded the staff, correctly observing that “people are not reading your stuff. We need to take decisive action.”

Lewis bluntly added, “I’m not interested in managing decline. I’m interested in growth.”

Lewis also announced that a bunch of undiverse white guys would be taking over, at least for the time being. Matt Murray, a former Wall Street Journal editor, assumes Buzbee’s job until after the election, when Robert  Winnett, a senior UK Telegraph editor who used to work with Lewis, will start managing the Post’s “core reporting functions.” Lewis also announced a whole new separate news division will be created, causing WaPo reporters to imagine the worst.

But Lewis assured anxious staff that the paper is still committed to diversity, which was, for some reason, their biggest concern at the meeting.

With its editor-in-chief abruptly gone, and a hastily announced major shakeup in the works, hemorrhaging cash, it certainly looks like the woke WaPo is crumbling into journalistic pieces. Will it veer away from wokeness, or drive directly into bankruptcy?

I’m not betting money either way. We’ll see.

🚀🚀 Russian state media platform Tass (their version of PBS) ran a story yesterday wordily headlined, “Former US intelligence officer says was not let leave US to attend forum in St. Petersburg.” Yesterday, Biden critic Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, a former UN weapons inspector, and a frequent Russia Today columnist, was intercepted by police in New York just after boarding a plane to St. Petersburg. The police pulled his passport.

CLIP: Russia Today interviews U.S. legal expert about Scott Ritter de-planing (6:24).

Scott has constantly been a painful thorn in the Biden Administration’s paw over the last couple years, as a vocal critic of the Ukraine Proxy War. In March, for example, in the aftermath of the Crokus City Hall attack, Scott told Judge Napolitano, “We have become the terrorists. I hope people understand that. We are a terrorist nation.”

Scott enjoys broad influence. His YouTube videos are among the most-watched commentaries on the war-by-proxy. He has 100,000 Telegram followers. And he was scheduled to speak at an economics forum in St. Petersburg, Russia this week.

Up until this week, the Administration ignored and marginalized Scott as a kooky conspiracy theorist and misinformation super-spreader.

But now, apparently, he’s on the list. What the list is, I’m not sure, but Big Daddy Biden has put Scott in time out and taken his traveling privileges away. Scott reported that police did not arrest him but would only say they acted on orders from the U.S. State Department, right before they kidnapped his passport.

Guys, don’t overreact. This kind of thing is necessary to save democracy* (*constitutional republic). We must squash autocracy whenever it rears its ugly head. Sometimes, autocratic means are necessary to achieve the ultimate good.

In ordinary times, we would hold off on the hot takes and wait for the official explanation, since we don’t know whether the government had a good reason or not. But it’s 2024, and after Mar-a-Lago, January 6th, and the over-prosecution of elderly abortion clinic protestors, we are entitled to assume bad faith until good faith is proven. The State Department bears the burden of quickly explaining what looks to many people like autocratic overreach.

Combining Ritter’s de-passporting, the government’s chokehold on corporate media and the universal narrative, the imprisonment of January 6th protestors for insurrection, and the Trump persecutions, the bigger picture starts to strikingly resemble the kind of thing Lincoln was accused of doing during the Civil War.

Lincoln’s image was tarnished by his infamous and controversial suspension of habeas corpus, which allowed the arrest of anyone suspected of aiding and abetting the Confederacy. White-hot opinions vary on whether anyone was actually unfairly arrested under the rule, but nevertheless it was a dangerous and dramatic departure from Constitutional due process.

Under Lincoln’s administration, over a dozen pro-Confederacy newspapers were regulated and throttled. Some argue the regulations amounted to shutdowns. In 1863, for example, the Union Army forcibly shut down the Chicago Times for three days (but it was quickly re-opened after democrat protests). Meanwhile, the Confederacy was doing the same thing. In one case, General Bragg jailed a salty Florida reporter for disclosing the locations of Bragg’s sand bunkers on a nearby island off the coast.

During war, you have to bend the constitutional rules a lot. And sometimes break them.

In other words, the Biden Administration is sloppily governing the country like we are at war. The difference this time, of course, is that there has not been any official declaration of war, not civil war nor any war with Russia, China, or anybody else.

With whom are we fighting? Russia? Or the Democrats, again?

The last time Biden let a journalist go to Russia, Tucker Carlson came back with beautiful images of Moscow subways, which ironically was the same kind of comparative propaganda the United States often deployed against the Soviet Union.

We don’t know. We’re still in the “hot take” phase, so we’ll see how this passport-napping story plays out.

🔥🔥 You cannot make this stuff up; it’s another crazy, 2024-style coincidence. Fox News ran the story yesterday headlined, “US v Hunter Biden: Opening arguments to begin in first son's federal gun trial after jury seated.” Here we are, mere days following the conclusion of the Trump Trial, and now Joe Biden’s son’s trial in Wilmington, Delaware is starting, on remarkably similar process charges.

Hunter is charged with buying a Colt Cobra revolver in 2018, and "knowingly making a false and fictitious written statement, intended and likely to deceive that dealer with respect to a fact material to the lawfulness of the sale of the firearm … certifying he was not an unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious." He’s also charged with possessing the gun, which was "shipped and transported in interstate commerce," for nearly a week despite being addicted to narcotics.

Hallie Biden, Hunter’s sister-in-law and lover, threw Hunter’s gun into a garbage can outside a Wilmington grocery. I guess he didn’t need it anymore.

The comparisons to Trump’s trial are not going very well so far. Judge Noreika, presiding over the trial, has already ruled that, unlike in Trump’s case, Hunter’s prosecutors cannot use salacious evidence, like Hunter’s dishonorable Navy discharge, his pending tax evasion trial, or his deadbeat-dad child support case for his out-of-wedlock daughter in Arkansas.  

They must only focus on the relevant facts.

Judge Noreika also ruled that, to prove the charges, prosecutor David Weiss must also prove Hunter Biden was addicted to drugs, which he denies, despite extensively discussing his addiction in his poorly received but highly profitable biography, and despite the many distressing pictures on Hunter’s laptop of the Resident’s son covered in cocaine like a piece of raw chicken rolled in flour.

But of course, we have been assured the laptop is just Russian disinformation. We’ll see what the jury thinks.

What do you want to bet the sitting president’s son’s trial gets a tiny fraction of the coverage that Trump’s trial got? We will find out soon.

💉💉 Another one. CBS ran a SADS story yesterday headlined, “Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee announces pancreatic cancer diagnosis.”

Nothing to see here! Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) announced yesterday that, “My doctors have confirmed my diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and I am currently undergoing treatment to battle this disease that impacts tens of thousands of Americans every year."

It’s been going around. Maria Menounos and King Charles are just two public figures recently diagnosed with the same difficult disease.

The article circuitously hinted that it might have something to do with Ms. Jackson Lee’s 2012 breast cancer, from which she has fully recovered. But various headlines suggest a different story. The January headline from MedScape:

A February headline from Women’s Health Magazine:

And most informative of all, in April, the Cureus Journal published this peer-reviewed study from Japan on cancer following the jabs:

One of the study’s main findings was that mortality from pancreatic cancer was one of the top five most common causes of cancer death following a third dose of mRNA ‘vaccines’:

But remember, correlation doesn’t prove causation! It could have been the other way around. The cancer could have caused people to take the vaccine. You never know.

And Representative Jackson Lee is sure the vaccines saved her life:

The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is only thirteen percent. We pray for Congresswoman Lee’s full recovery.

🚀 Reuters ran a cautionary story yesterday headlined, “Russia warns US against 'fatal' miscalculation in Ukraine.” Not that anyone is listening, mind you. In saner days, this would have been the week’s top story.

Last week, without any public comment, without any public debate, without any Congressional involvement — but after “extensive debate” among anonymous aides — former Vice-President Joe Biden quietly authorized Ukraine to use U.S. missiles to strike at targets inside Russian territory.

No U.S. President has ever authorized missile strikes on the territory of a nuclear peer country, ever. You wouldn’t know how historic Biden’s decision was from reading corporate media though, which “informs” its readers the same way a worm “informs” a cabbage.

Yesterday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov starkly said the United States could face "fatal consequences" if it ignores Moscow's warnings not to let Ukraine target Russian territory with Washington’s weapons. "I would like to warn American leaders against miscalculations that could have fatal consequences. For unknown reasons, they underestimate the seriousness of the rebuff they may receive," Ryabkov advised.

For some reason, Minister Ryabokov takes a dim view of U.S. officials. He suspects Washington thinks it is playing Call of Duty or something. “I urge these figures to spend some of their time, which they apparently spend on video games, judging by the lightness of their approach, on studying what was said in detail by President Putin," Ryabkov said.

I’ve been trying to warn them. Russia has been trying to warn them. Scott Ritter has been trying to warn them. But Biden’s hearing aids are out of batteries.

🪳🪳 Yesterday, at long last, proving he does in fact have no shame, former Covid Czar, bureaucrat-entrepreneur, evil mastermind, and human cockroach Anthony Fauci testified before Congress on covid origins and coverups. The day’s video was simultaneously exhilarating and exasperating. The Daily Mail ran its report on the story headlined, “Dr. Anthony Fauci tears into mystery person who sat behind him.”

The strategically placed mystery man who so annoyed Doctor Frankenstein, I mean Doctor Fauci, was none other than Brandon Fellows, now 29, a convicted felon who just got out of federal prison last week, after a three year sentence for smoking pot in Senator Jeff Merckel’s office during “the insurrection.”

Funny-face Brandon was ultimately hauled out of the hearing, and used the opportunity to yell that Fauci should be the one in prison. Let’s go, Brandon!

Fauci, blanketed with personal security, cried a river about all the threats he says he still receives from people he has no idea what they are so upset about. At least, he cried about that whenever democrats were giving him a chance to make speeches, sorry, I mean when they were asking him questions.

Here’s Fox News’ Guy Benson quickly recapping the day’s hearing on Fox last night:

CLIP: Fox News recaps Fauci testimony (1:02).

It was a full day. Here are a couple high-points (or low-points, depending on how you look at it). First, enjoy this clip of Congressman Dr. Rich McCormack (R-Ga), who treated covid patients through the pandemic and then ran for Congress, delivered a stirring speech and throwing Fauci’s words on vaccine mandates right in his ugly rat face:

CLIP: Congressman McCormack grills Fauci over mandates (5:33).

Here is the always entertaining Southern Belle, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga), who disrupted the session by refusing to call Fauci, “Dr. Fauci,” and plowed ahead with her five-minute excoriation of the career bureaucrat:

CLIP: MTG burns Fauci at the rhetorical stake (4:43).

Republicans on the Committee more or less tore Fauci a new one, while democrats praised him to Holy Hades and prompted him with delicate, deferential softball questions.

It quickly became obvious that asking Fauci questions and expecting any kind of satisfactory answer was a vexing exercise in futility. He denied everything, always offering a complicated or convoluted explanation. He is a skilled and slippery top bureaucrat who has survived multiple rounds of this very kind of questioning (though this one was admittedly the worst ever).

Ordinary citizens like Brandon and Dr. Azadeh Khatibi, MD, MS, MPH, helped Republicans on the Committee to bring the heat and get under Fauci’s collar. Like young Brandon, Dr. Khatibi was also chucked out of the hearing for giving Fauci the business about his steamrolling of medical ethics:

CLIP: Dr. Khatibi’s remarks after being thrown out of the Fauci hearing (0:51).

There’s as much of the hearing floating around social media as you can stomach. But as a first impression, I was struck by the relative levels of passion. The Republicans were (or at least acted) infuriated. The citizen objectors were even more angry. Whereas the democrats were pitifully deferential and defensive.

There is tremendous residual anger over how the pandemic was handled. This thing ain’t over, not by a long shot.

🔥 Finally, in a candidate for the most hilarious headline yet this year, ABC News submitted a most remarkable entry entitled, “North Korea vows to pause trash-balloon campaign after floating 3,500 into South Korea.” Like China’s robot assault dogs, another novel World War III technology has emerged, this one from deep in the depths of communist landfills.

Trash balloons! South Korea started it. Last week they floated 260 “pro-democracy” propaganda pamphlet balloons into North Korea on favorable winds.

But the winds shifted, as they always do.

In a response that Nork officials called “North Korean Free Speech,” they sent 3,500 balloons loaded up with 15 tons of trash floating back, freaking out fussy South Koreans who deployed brigades of hazmat engineers to manage the airborne garbage wherever it messily came to ground.

Kim Kang Il, the DPRK’s vice minister of National Defense, warned that the communist country has even more trash bombs where those came from. "We will respond by intensively scattering wastepaper and rubbish a hundred times the amount of scattered leaflets, as we have already warned," Kim angrily advised.

I think what the North Koreans are trying to say is, quit sending your trashy propaganda up here.

The moral of this messy story is: Those who live in trash houses shouldn’t throw propaganda pamphlets, or words to that effect.

Have a tremendous Tuesday! And float back here tomorrow morning for more essential, addictive Coffee & Covid.

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