☕️ IT’S COMPLICATED ☙ Friday, August 2, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Joe Biden claims credit for indescribably complicated prisoner swap; no death penalty for 9/11 mastermind; SpaceX rescues Boeing-stranded astronauts; NYC real estate, Moderna stock collapse; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Your week-ending roundup of essential news and commentary includes: Biden’s legacy cemented by indescribably complicated prisoner exchange with Russia; US drops death penalty for 9/11 ‘mastermind’ Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Boeing Starliner defies recent trends for the embattled corporation and strands fearful astronauts who want to go home on a different starline; NYC downtown controlled demolition continues apace with eye-popping discounts on commercial real estate; and Moderna stock suddenly and unexpectedly has a seizure, plummeting 20% in a single day.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥🔥 The New York Times ran several dramatic articles about a story that eclipsed the Middle East wars yesterday, the latest one thrillingly headlined, “Behind the Prisoner Swap: Spies, a Killer, Secret Messages and Unseen Diplomacy.” Unseen diplomacy is this Administration’s calling card.

Wall Street Reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested by Russian police in Yekaterinburg in March 2023, while working on a story about the Wagner Group, Russia’s private military force, its version of our Blackwater (now rebranded as ‘Academi’). Yesterday Evan was released in a multi-country, multi-prisoner exchange, as part of what the mockingbird media chirped in concert was a very “complicated” deal.

Indeed, the Times “Prisoner Swap” article was complicated. Among the longest NYT news articles I’ve ever seen, it tediously ran for page after page of disjointed detail. Maybe it makes more sense if read slowly and carefully, but that remains to be established. The bottom line was readers of this and the blizzard of other articles on the story were only told names of two American releasees: Gershkovich and US Marine Paul Whelan.

Call me cynical, but swimming in the ocean of text was this circuitous and ambiguous description of the released prisoners:

So … how many were Americans? And who were they? Was any money involved? What were the other terms? Who did Russia get? Those facts, perhaps unimportant to Whelan’s and Gershkovich’s relatives, were obscured under lasagna-like layers of corporate media complexity.

But the obsequious narrative running like a silver thread through all the stories, including this story, was that Joe Biden personally effectuated this complicated multi-country prisoner exchange. One WaPo story quoted national security advisor Jake Sullivan, who glowingly opined it “honestly could only be achieved by a leader like Joe Biden.”  The headlines echoed Sullivan’s sycophantic sentiment. For example, the Beeb:

Politico:

Reuters:

Let me know in the comments whether or not you believe President Cabbage engineered this indescribably complicated prisoner exchange with the Russians.

Bringing Americans home is good, regardless of what they did to get there. But the deal was, evidently, too complicated for us dummies to understand. Or so the media says.

The development was good news in at least one other way. Whatever else it might have been, however bad the deal was (or wasn’t) for the U.S., it did involve diplomacy, a dusty tool long unexercised by the Biden Administration, especially when it comes to Russia. This deal could serve as a stepping stone to a larger deal to resolve the Proxy War.

🔥🔥 Yesterday, in completely unrelated news, CNN ran a story headlined, “US reaches plea deal with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.” It has been 21 years since Mohammed’s dramatic capture in Pakistan for his alleged involvement in the terror attacks. Yesterday, prosecutors announced that Mohammed and two co-defendants agreed to plead guilty, and the US agreed not to seek the death penalty.

Mohammed was charged in 2008 with a long list of crimes, including conspiracy, murder, war crimes, attacking civilians, attacking civilian infrastructure, serious bodily injury, property destruction, terrorism, and support of terrorism. Learning of the US decision, relatives and other 9/11 groups were understandably outraged.

But, you see, it’s complicated. CNN quoted its cherry-picked expert who called the agreement the “least bad deal:”

I am not saying the decision to make the Mohammed deal had anything to do with Biden’s insanely complicated prisoner swap. How would I know? I’m just noting the curious coincidental timing. And how this particular story was not used to burnish Biden’s legacy.

🔥🔥 Boeing, Boeing. Yesterday, ArsTechnica ran an embarrassing science story headlined, “NASA says it is ‘evaluating all options’ for the safe return of Starliner crew.” The sub-headline added, “SpaceX is actively working on a plan to fly Starliner's crew home.”

It has now been eight weeks since Boeing's Starliner spacecraft launched on an eight-day mission to the International Space Station. The problems started on the way up, when they landing gear fell off and the engine caught fire. Wait, that was a different Boeing aircraft.

Actually, while en route to the space station, Boeing reported some “really small” helium leaks and “relatively minor” thruster failures. Ever since then, Boeing and NASA have offered one “minor” and “pretty small” excuse after another, and reported on one exciting test or repair that never went anywhere.

Nobody seems to know exactly what the problem is. It’s complicated! Meanwhile, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have literally been hanging in limbo, eating liquified tube protein, and going to the bathroom in something that looks like the business end of a vacuum cleaner.

NASA and Boeing have repeatedly denied the astronauts are “stuck” on the Space Station, or anywhere for that matter, and keep saying the astronauts are just working remotely, in space. They have described the deferred return decisions as being solely related to an abundance of caution. You can’t be too careful.

As of early last month, NASA couldn’t say for certain when the crew can come home, and over a month later it still isn’t saying. Space.com headline:

Elon has really been having a moment lately. ArsTechnica’s article yesterday reported rumors that Elon Musk’s SpaceX team in Florida is hurriedly working on a project to rescue the definitely-not-stranded astronauts in one of its own Dragon spaceships, a development that would further humiliate Boeing and smother its shuttling contract along with its new Starliner series.

NASA, taking cues on transparency from the FBI and the CDC, refused to confirm whether or not it asked SpaceX to come to the rescue, saying only that it was “evaluating all options.”

If Space X does make a heroic airport run to pick up Wilmore and Williams, things could get really embarassing. Two days ago, SatNews reported that all six of the ISS’s docking ports are full.  Do the math. Something will have to go to let a SpaceX Dragon ship dock. They could temporarily fly one of the five working ships out of the way, consuming fuel and adding risk. Or, they could cut Boeing’s Starliner loose, maybe dropping it on China, or on Putin’s house or something.

It’s a problem.

🔥🔥 The controlled demolition of downtown New York City continues. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a sobering real-estate story headlined, “This 23-Floor Manhattan Office Building Just Sold at a 97.5% Discount.” Apparently, inflation hit everything else but missed big-city commercial real estate. The building in the story, which used to headquarter Sports Illustrated, last sold in 2006 —admittedly at peak market— for $332 million dollars. On Wednesday, it sold at auction for only $8 million, a stunning 98% discount.

The sellers accepted such a low price because 135 West 50th Street is two-thirds empty, and the rents from the remaining tenants aren’t even enough to cover the ground lease, which the building’s owner must pay to a different party that owns the underlying land. So when you add up the ground lease, the taxes, upkeep, and financing costs, 135 West 50th is losing money faster than a Boeing Starliner with a helium leak.

The Times grimly noted that New York’s real estate market has yet to hit bottom. It’s still falling from orbit, somewhere over Nebraska.

The City is also a big loser. Property taxes on an $8 million building are 98% less than taxes on a $332 million building. But the good news is that capitalism and free markets, if allowed to function, could easily cure this problem. A new owner with a much smaller mortgage would have the flexibility to find the building’s highest and best use.

But will capitalism and free markets be allowed to function? Let me know what you think in the comments.

💉💉 Look out below! Yesterday, CNBC ran a financial story headlined, “Moderna stock falls 20% as it slashes guidance on low EU sales, tough U.S. vaccine market.” Haha, a tough vaccine market. Good one. Anyway, the single-product vaccine company’s share price plunged -20% in one day yesterday following a disappointing earnings report.

In September, 2021, Moderna (ticker MRNA) traded at its peak of $464 dollars a share. Yesterday it closed at $92. I sense a trend. Moderna CEO Stephan Bancel, who is French, blamed the company’s sudden and unexpectedly poor performance on miserly Europeans and —I am not making this up— Ukraine:

Sacrebleu! How could this happen? On top of its covid jab, the FDA recently rubber-stamped its approval for Moderna’s brand-new, mRNA-based respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine, which corporate media is doing its level best to hawk, despite nobody ever even considering getting an annual RSV shot before. Headline from this morning in the Miami Herald:

You really don’t hate the media nearly enough. According to the Herald, the CDC recommends the hastily-approved, untested mRNA-RSV shot for pregnant women:

No thanks. I say good luck to them. You couldn’t get me near an RSV shot even if you offered me a free ticket to Fauci’s sentencing hearing. Tempting, but hard pass.

I’m just a lawyer, not a doctor, so I’m not giving anybody medical advice. But I plan to sit this one out. I never even heard of RSV until the covid bucks began drying up. I bet they just made it up. So I’ll take my own chances.

Have a fabulous Friday! And scoot back here tomorrow morning for a wonderful Weekend Edition roundup of all the essential news to which you need to pay any attention.

We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds.  I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:  ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid
Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com