☕️ GOING ON OFFENSE ☙ Thursday, April 11, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

FISA renewal fails after Trump tweet; Brand interviews Ladapo about vaxx; Biden's inflation policy fails; Russia global pushback strategy comes clear; Florida fights grooming and porch pirates; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s already Thursday! Your roundup today includes: Freedom Caucus members defeat FISA renewal bill in the House with a little help from President Trump; Russel Brand interviews Surgeon General Joe Ladapo in wide-ranging “anti-vaxx” interview; Biden’s disastrous domestic policy produces soaring inflation, unexpectedly; his foreign policy is even worse, as the outlines of Russia’s anti-U.S. strategy begin to be clear; and Florida crushes grooming, shoplifting, and porch piracy.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 The New York Times ran a story reeking of angst outside the paywall yesterday headlined, “After Trump Broadside, FISA Surveillance Bill Collapses in the House.” The headline referred to the fact that hours before the vote, the 45th President tweeted a complex, multi-layered argument against renewal of FISA’s warrantless system of “national security” surveillance:

Earlier this year, Congress leaned against renewing FISA. Then security state-connected Republicans and Democrats inserted a carve out exempting Congress. Under the amendment, federal spooks and FBI agents must get a warrant and notify Congress before surveilling any Congressmen.

The amendment was a too-tiny fig leaf, since the whole point of surveilling people is for them not to know.

In other words, the carve out’s practical effect is to completely exempt Congress from FISA surveillance. Seems fair. Next, the Times’ article laboriously explained Trump is all mixed up again, because this bill isn’t the part of FISA that was used against Trump. This part only applies to foreigners, according to the article. But the Times never completed the loop by explaining why, if that was true, Congressional exemption would be required, since Congresspeople are all non-foreigner citizens.

Before you comment, reptilians and space aliens don’t count as foreigners as long as they have social security numbers.

But I digress. The Times believes that conservative opposition to FISA is just unprincipled sour grapes, because Trump’s “hard-right allies on Capitol Hill see blocking the extension of the law as a way to inflict pain on the intelligence community they regard as an enemy.”

That’s how the Times childishly views politics. A series of grudge-based revenge attacks.

Whatever the Times wants to call them, far-right, hard-right, or extreme-right, bless the 19 House Freedom caucus members who held the line, for their intentions if not their tactics. They joined democrats in voting against FISA renewal. (Democrats only voted against it since the bill included language about condeming Biden’s border policies.)

Proving the Times couldn’t find any credible Republican to defend FISA, it instead quoted former Trump Attorney General and TDS victim Bill Barr. Barr thinks FISA is urgently needed: “It’s our principal tool in protecting the homeland from terrorist threats committed here in the United States. We’re blinding ourselves at a critical juncture, and we’re also hurting our allies who rely on intelligence we collect this way.”

I’m glad Barr said “we’re” blinding ourselves, because if we do lose FISA, if that’s what’s really happening, it will be the deep state’s fault. For sure, we would all be much safer had they not so badly and so politically misused the powers the American people entrusted to them.

For several reasons.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has previously opposed renewing FISA in its current form and used to back a more sweeping overhaul, claimed yesterday’s bill included “the most significant set of intelligence reforms since FISA was originally enacted in 1978.”

Did it now? I couldn’t find any description of these wonderful reforms. The Times’ article apparently felt it was unimportant to enumerate or give an example of any reform.

I checked Johnson’s TwitterX account (@SpeakerJohnson — apparently renamed from his old Congressional account) and the Speaker last tweeted about FISA back in 2019. Nothing this year at all. So, he’s not exactly advertising all these terrific FISA reforms. I, for one, would like to know what they are.

The fight, such as it is, isn’t over. “We will regroup and reformulate another plan,” Mr. Johnson vowed after the vote. He added, “We cannot allow Section 702 of FISA to expire. It’s too important to national security. I think most of the members understand that.” Well. I think most members of Congress do believe that, thanks to intelligence agency lobbying. The security state just sends over a blonde analyst with big intelligence assets and a terrifying powerpoint about bomb-making terrorists who supposedly live two doors down from Congress and suddenly it’s another “yes” vote.

I hope Congress can kill FISA. But I don’t see how the deep state will hand over its favorite toys without a much bigger fight. But hope springs eternal!

🔥 Yesterday, in the latest remarkable combination of pro-sanity forces, mega-influencer Russell Brand (6 million subscribers) interviewed Florida’s standout Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo.

RUMBLE: Russel Brand | It SHOULDN’T Be Even On The Market!! - Dr Ladapo (1:13:00).

Dr. Ladapo came hot out of the gate by calling Fauci a “dishonest, self-serving political animal who happens to have scientific training.” That was pretty good, but I prefer the more scientific term blatta orientalis — colloquially “cockroach” — to describe the repulsive fake-doctor Fauci.

Next, Brand queried Ladapo about the government’s “fear and loathing, if not contempt” of ordinary Americans. Obviously, the two men quickly reached the topic of vaccines, and Ladapo described what we call the slow ‘drip, drip, dripping’ of information as facts “coming out into the foreground where people can see it.”

You won’t be surprised by many of his comments, but Dr. Ladapo raised some new, interesting points. At one point he wondered, “Can you think of any time in history when so many people have been so regretful” of taking a particular drug? Dr. Ladapo also briefly and tantalizingly discussed “spiritual energy” approaches to healing from the shots. Brand followed up and they engaged in an fascinating discussion about that, including details of Dr. Ladapo’s early childhood trauma I hadn’t heard before.

But the single most impressive thing about the interview was the full and frank discussion over vaccines between Brand and Dr. Ladapo — the surgeon general of one of the biggest states in America. Critically, if not somewhat ominously, Ladapo opined that while the science isn’t yet settled, he expects that we will ultimately find the dreaded DNA integration.

“These vaccines are just products from hell,” Dr. Ladapo said darkly.

This interview won’t be any good for public health business. Watch the whole thing when you have an hour.

📈 On nearly every front in domestic policy, Joe Biden is failing, especially the economy. In a rational world, that would be a terrible sign for his re-election. It’s the economy, stupid. Yesterday, media broadly covered a story that popped up in Yahoo Finance under the headline, “Inflation comes in hotter than expected in March.” Unexpectedly! Contrary to Biden’s many lies about the economy, inflation is blasting into orbit, even according to highly-manipulated official data.

Yahoo’s article, consistent with most corpriate media reports, downplayed the ‘surprising’ increase, reporting inflation as only increasing a modest +3.5%. But other headlines from yesterday easily put the lie to that awkward untruth, such as:

Biden’s main argument for domestic success has always been bragging about his perversely-named “Inflation Redution Act.” Like everything else Biden has sniffed, that sick joke of a bill failed too.

Name one domestic area where normal citizens are better off than they were in January 2020. I dare you.

For your amusement, here’s a fun compendium of Biden officials denying that inflation exists or calling it temporary or “transitory”, meaning oh, it’s just a transition. True. It’s a transition from bad to worse:

CLIP: Two minutes of Biden and his incompetent officials lying about inflation (1:50).

🚀 But Biden’s foreign policy, if you can call a foreign policy resembling a drunken bar fight a “policy,” is faring even worse than his domestic policy. Specifically, the broad outlines of Russia’s punchback strategy are beginning to emerge so clearly and so obviously they can now be seen from the International Space Station, nevermind by a lawyer like me, who never attended military college or took political science at Harvard.

Bloomberg ran a breaking story this morning with the understated headline, “Russia Targets Ukraine Power System With Ballistic Missiles.” It appears the Russians are in fact preparing for something big, a major offensive action, something bigger perhaps than we’ve ever seen before in the Proxy War. That’s what this looks like. Whatever it is, however big for Ukraine, it’s the tiniest part of Russia’s strategy, a tiny wooden doll in the middle of all the other dolls.

Bloomberg reported that last night Russia used over 40 of its top-end hypersonic missiles against at least five of Ukraine’s biggest cities, including its capitol Kiev, plus top cities Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporizhzhia, and even Lviv, which is far from the front lines in Western Ukraine. Russia’s attacks were carefully-planned, and despite reports that Ukraine’s biggest power plants have now been irreparably damaged, no deaths have been reported so far this morning.

For comparison, it was like someone permanently disabling the power in New York, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles in one night.

There was a short period back at the beginning of the war when I was skeptical the Russians were serious, since they didn’t wipe out Ukraine’s power infrastructure — something that was obviously within Russia’s power. It seemed to me that if Russia really wanted to win, it would first switch off the lights.

Well. That predictable strategy now seems finally to be the strategy the Russians are employing. But that’s not even close to all. The strategy that is emerging is breathtaking and hideous. Let’s dig in.

First, in an otherwise poorly-covered story, on Monday Bloomberg published this headline:

It was a big deal. Putin signed an executive order nationalizing a US-based conglomeration that had bought up 650,000 acres of Russian farmland. Russia just took it all, placing all that acreage under the “temporary management” of Rosimushchestvo, Russia’s federal property management agency.

Setting aside the obvious wisdom of reclaiming Russia’s strategically-critical farmland from their murky, opaque U.S. corporate owners, it was an entirely predictable response, one that Russia waited two long years to trigger. As you may recall, the U.S. sanctions war against Russia began with America seizing the personal property of “Russian oligarchs,” like their yachts and houses.

Biden stupidly bragged the seizures would lead to regime change, since the Russian billionaires would thow out Putin to placate America and get all their stuff back.

Not only did that not happen, but on Monday Putin began doing it back to us. Corporate media, which celebrated the seizures of Russia assets at the sanction war’s beginning, pretty much had nothing to say about the much bigger and more meaningful nationalization of 650,000 acres of U.S.-owned property in Russia. But it was a totally predictable tit-for-tat response.

What did Biden think would happen?

Biden’s plan was even dumber than it looks. It’s costing us a fortune to maintain all the seized Russian property, which is not easy to sell:

In other words, after two patient years, Russia has just begun to fight back economically. And Putin is fighting against DEI-promoted morons.

The military part of Russia’s emerging strategy is its — again, predictable — strengthening of America’s enemies. Also on Monday, in the Eurasian Times, we learned Russia has given nuclear North Korea access to hypersonic technology:

Remember: the U.S. currently lacks any effective answer to hypersonic missile technology. The missiles are so fast they defeat our air defenses. The hypersonics can easily take out an aircraft carrier. They could also be used effectively in a first strike. Now North Korea has them, since North Korea has been supplying Russia with artillary shells.

Thanks, Joe Biden!

Also Monday, the Chatham House published a story about Russia which for the first time used its Security Council veto to stop sanctions against North Korea:

Our ally South Korea is freaking out, creating a whole new major strategic demand on U.S. military resources, spreading our efforts and forces even more thinly.

Last month, media quietly informed us that somehow, the pesky Houthis — who Biden have given up trying to beat and is now trying to bribe — have also acquired indefensible hypersonic technology. Somehow.

Five months ago in November, Iran — which has been supplying Russia with drones for Ukraine — announced it had also acquired hypersonic missile technology:

Hypersonic missiles could defeat Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. Like South Korea, our ally Israel is also freaking out, requiring — as we’ve seen — massive amounts of U.S. military resources staged in the Middle East. Where’d Iran get that hypersonic technology? Russia, obviously.

Yesterday — yesterday! — the Biden Administration seemed to finally awaken to the awful possiblity that, instead of being isolated by sanctions, Russia had created a massive military alliance instead, composed of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea:

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that China has just sent its highest-ranking diplomat to North Korea since before the pandemic:

So that’s what we know. Now I will speculate some. What I think is happening is that Russia has been carefully preparing a global anti-NATO strategy for two years now, and it is now begining to pull the trigger. The tragedy is that the Russian strategy was completely obvious and utterly predictable, unless your pugnacious president has dementia and always wants to challenge everyone to pathetic push-up contests.

Russia began this war with one obvious advantage. It had developed a game-changing military technology, hypersonic missiles, which surpassed U.S. military technology — even though America’s woke generals pridefully believed they owned the category of high-tech weaponry. But in the face of existential threats from Biden’s reckless administration and escalatory rhetoric, Russia responded by arming all the U.S.’s biggest enemies, trading its high-tech missile system for other, more mundane war material that it needed in Ukraine.

Biden, Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan — without even an hour of real military experience between them — were drunk on their own self-esteem but were too stupid to envision this perfectly predictable eventuality.

We used to talk about America’s woke, diminished military needing the ability to fight wars on two fronts or three fronts. Well, how about four fronts? Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and South Korea — each an ally the U.S. has committed to defending. How about that? Are we prepared for four fronts?

I think we will soon find out, at least if Biden and his team of incompetent neocons are stupid enough to continue pushing the Russians. Give them Ukraine before you get us all killed, morons.

Meanwhile, back in Ukraine, as described in yesterday’s UK Times headline, they are running out of irreplaceable Ukrainians:

They are going to make an army of Amazonian female fighters! That’s the plan! I bet Russia is terrified.

According to democrats, if only the Republicans would get out of the way and approve that $61 billion, it would solve everything. It would solve everything, if by “everything” they mean “nothing at all.” The Russians have outfoxed us. We can’t possibly fight a four-front war, never mind a kinetic war against a China-Russia-North Korean nuclear axis.

Now what, Joe?

Don’t take this as defeatist. We can come out of this fine. The proper path through this treacherous quagmire is the path of humility and standing down. Get NATO and the CIA out of Ukraine. Quit poking the Russian bear.

🔥 Florida Governor DeSantis signed several terrific bills this week. Yesterday, the Nation’s Governor signed what I believe to be the country’s first “anti-grooming” bill. Corproate media ignored the story, of course, so I’ll cite the Florida Daily, which ran the article under the headline, “DeSantis Signs Five Pieces of Legislation to Protect Children from Predatory Grooming, Sexual Offenses.”

DeSantis signed all five of these terrific bills into law yesterday:

• HB 1545 protects children from grooming and other sexual offenses.

• HB 1131 establishes a grant program to create online sting operations targeting sexual predators.

• HB 1235 creates stricter guidelines for registering sex offenders.

• SB 1224 strengthens the Guardian ad Litem Office and implements new training requirements to ensure law enforcement properly assesses a domestic violence situation involving kids.

• HB 305 expands evidence that can be presented to a jury in sex-abuse cases where the victim is a minor and increases penalties on those who take part in sex trafficking of minors.

The most controversial of those five was the anti-grooming bill, which for some reason transexxuals think targets them, even though transsexxuals are mentioned nowhere in the new law. The law criminalizes sexualized communications harmful to minors. Here’s the operative language, or you can click this link to read it for yourself:

An adult who engages in a pattern of communication to a minor that includes explicit and detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual activity, sexual conduct, or sexual excitement and that is harmful to minors commits a felony of the third degree.

The law clearly applies regardless of anyone’s sexual orientation, unless you think transsexuals are more likely to run afoul of the new crime. Unlike previous versions of this bill, teachers are not excluded. Nor are drag story hours.

🔥 DeSantis also signed a bill tackling small retail theft, which obviously demolish downtowns and collectively undermine civilization. Forget useless corproate media. Click Orlando covered the story under the headline, “‘Hell to pay:’ New Florida law cracks down on retail theft, porch pirates.”

Unlike blue states, Florida is cracking down on small-dollar crimes, under the “broken windows” theory pioneered by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, which correctly posits that ignoring small crimes emboldens criminals to commit more serious crimes.

Florida’s new law expands penalties for retail theft including:

• “Gangs of thieves,” where criminals shoplift in groups of five or more people (third-degree felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison).

• Gangs of five or more who use social media to solicit others to join in shoplifting sprees (second-degree felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison).

• Shoplifting with a firearm or with two or more prior shoplifting convictions (first-degree felony, punishable by up to 30 years in prison).

• Applying felony charges to multiple shoplifting crimes committed within a four-month period (increased from 30 days).

• “Porch piracy,” or the theft of property worth less than $40 (first-degree misdemeanor, increasing to a third-degree felony on the second occurrence). Theft of property worth over $40 or more is now a third-degree felony.

It seems like it might already be working:

Maybe that kind of thing works in San Fransisco or Chicago, but not in Florida. In Florida, lax shoplifting laws are not any kind of stealth reparations.

As unlikely as this seemed in 2019, Florida — now dark red with a +1 million Republican voter advantage — continues leading the nation in preserving freedom, honor, and perhaps civilization itself.

Have a tremendous Thursday! Virtually visit Florida tomorrow by heading back here for another optimistic and mind-expanding roundup.

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