☕️ JILTED ☙ Friday, October 13, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

DeSantis rescues Americans while Biden explores options; Steve Scalise out as possible Speaker; Harvard's woke P.R. disaster; Middle East war briefing; bad news for Ukraine; SADS comedian; lots more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Your roundup today includes: Governor DeSantis does something practical to rescue Americans stranded in the war-torn Middle East; Steve Scalise drops out of Speaker’s race; Harvard’s woke president reels under Hamas controversy; Middle East war briefing; secret Hamas planning documents surface suggesting larger operation; world support for Israel is bad news for Ukraine; Putin calls for immediate ceasefire; Friday medical emergencies update; SADS comedian; and good counter-revolutionary news as ‘anti-racism’ begins to topple in the New York Times.

🗞 THE C&C ARMY POST 🗞

🪖 I was out late representing C&C last night at a local political function and met one of the best covid governors in the country, South Dakota’s very tall Kristi Noem.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (who never locked down), me, two good friends, and U.S. Representative Kat Cammack (R-Fl.). Michelle was there but skipped the photo, because reasons.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

✈️ Politico ran a very encouraging story yesterday headlined, “DeSantis orders Florida to organize charter flights for Americans stranded in Israel.”

For obvious reasons, most commercial airlines have indefinitely cancelled all flights to and from Israel. Politico’s sub-headline reported, “The governor estimates that 20,000 U.S. citizens, including Floridians, remain in Israel.”

I’ve mentioned that I know at least one stranded group of Floridians, now in Jordan, from a church in Fernandina Beach that the Childers family attends whenever we take a weekend beach holiday. According to Pastor Zach Terry’s most recent Twitter update, they are currently waiting around in Jordan, and the tour’s members are trickling home a couple at a time as seats open up on the few available flights.

Pastor Terry is characteristically stoic and remains optimistic, trusting in divine providence. But there is growing concern that Americans stranded in the area could be exposed to hostile activity, retaliation, or kidnapping, depending on what happens next in Gaza on a minute-to-minute basis.

So yesterday afternoon, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order directing Florida’s Division of Emergency Management to immediately charter planes to retrieve Americans who are stranded amidst the conflict — regardless of which state they’re from — and get them safely back home from Israel at no charge.

DeSantis’ administration reported that at least 35 Americans stranded in Israel have reached out to the Florida governor’s office for help so far, after being ghosted by the U.S.’s useless Embassy in Israel, which Biden and the State Department told them to call in their social media advisories.

Florida’s rescue planes will also haul emergency relief supplies to Israel on their inbound trips.

He didn’t say it directly, but it appears obvious the Governor’s rescue operation came after observing frustrating Biden bureaucratic buffoonery and general incompetence. Early yesterday, State Department spokesman John “Baghdad Bob” Kirby announced the federal government would immediately charter planes to rescue Americans. So far, so good. But then later in the day, Kirby backed off the “immediately” part, telling reporters he had no idea how many Americans were stranded in Israel, if any, and said the government was “still working out details” of how many flights to send and what their destinations would be.

Hours after that, Kirby suggested the government was running into turbulence finding any charters to hire, you know how it is, and said, “we’re exploring other options, whether it’s possible to help Americans leave by land and sea.”

What? Land or sea? Like walking across the desert or swimming the Suez Canal? And, exploring options? They’re exploring the options? Like Cortés or something? Do they plan to get back from the exploration before the holidays?

Kirby said there was no timeline yet.

So DeSantis, apparently fed up with Kirby’s moronic nonsense, and recognizing a Bidenic debacle shaping up on the scale of Afghanistan, said that’s it, enough was enough, and signed his own executive rescue order. Within hours the Governor tweeted “wheels up!”, signaling the first charter had already left, while the Biden Administration continued to explore other options.

Florida was ready to go, since it has already contracted with private air charters to help illegal migrants relocate to friendly sanctuary cities offering robust immigrant services up in the Northeast, like Martha’s Vineyard.

Come fly the freedom skies.

🔥 Also yesterday, Governor DeSantis — I have intel suggesting he got our letter — connected the dots between what’s happening in Israel and our own border problem. In an yesterday’s extended tweet expressing support for Israel, Governor DeSantis concluded with a three-part action plan ending with fixing America’s broken border:

It’s a start! It’s not enough though. Our elected leaders must start imagining the unimaginable — which Israel’s leaders failed to do — and must consider how to mitigate and respond to well-organized, well-equipped terrorist sneak attacks on soft civilian targets and infrastructure inside the United States.

We saw that Israel’s civilian population, well aware of the risks, was still largely unprepared to fight back, with horrifying consequences. In light of what happened last weekend in Israel, it seems entirely uncontroversial that we urgently need to get our own citizens ready to fight back if there’s a sneak attack here on soft targets with power knocked out and with local police somehow having been neutralized. If the power goes out, that should be a red alert for citizens to prepare for the worst.

Now that we’ve been warned by what happened in Israel, this kind of thing should not take us by surprise. Since the federal government will never do it, if for no other reason than that it makes their wide-open border policy look bad, the States must start preparing their citizens.

I’ll end by noting that at last night’s event, both Governor Noem and Representative Cammack made remarks suggesting they both recognize the potential for real terrorism on account of the broken border. I think the message is out. The question now is what to do about it.

🔥 Last night the Hill ran a story simply headlined, Steve Scalise drops out of Speaker’s race.

Republican Majority leader Steve Scalise, who is currently battling multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer, and is an assassination survivor, withdrew from the race for Speaker after a secret ballot showed strong support but not enough to get him over the hump. “It’s been quite a journey. And there’s still a long way to go. I just shared with my colleagues that I’m withdrawing my name as a candidate for the speaker designee,” Scalise said while leaving a GOP conference meeting last evening.

No other nominees are currently pending. Someone else will have to run, or Jim Jordan will have to throw his hat back in. House GOP members will meet at 10am this morning to discuss all the possibilities including changing the rules to select a Speaker rather than elect him, which would be wildly unpopular.

According to Fox’s Dr. Marc Seigel, with new monoclonal antibody and stem cell treatments, multiple myeloma has a five-year survival rate of around 60%. Symptoms of multiple myeloma include bone pain, fractures, fatigue, weight loss, and frequent infections. We pray for Steve’s complete recovery and a great report.

🔥 The Harvard Crimson ran a breaking story yesterday headlined, “Harvard President Claudine Gay Fiercely Condemns Hamas, Rejects Calls to Punish Students for Israel Statement.” I’ll show you Harvard President Claudine Gay, I am not making that name up, and you will understand everything you need to know about this story. Ready? Here:

I can’t make this stuff up. Harvard is paying this woman, if it is a woman, millions to run the school. Run it into the ground, one supposes.

The articles describing Gay often include odd liberal dog-whistles. For example, they describe her marriage and say she is “co-parenting a boy.” What does ‘co-parenting a boy’ mean? Are they trying to say it’s not her son? Is it to suggest ‘she’ is a trans woman?

Anyway, the current fracas began after 37 Harvard student groups anonymously signed an open letter condemning Israel and essentially congratulating Hamas for fighting back against its evil oppressors. Their timing was horrible to say the least, and it ignited a firestorm of criticism that Harvard’s woke president has been trying her darnedest to extinguish by smothering it in the entire woke buzzword dictionary.

After the anti-Israel letter went viral, major donors demanded that Harvard identify the students who signed the letter. Former presidents and high-profile alumni denounced the letter. An LCD panel truck drove around Cambridge yesterday displaying the names and photos of alleged student signers of the letter.

Meanwhile, the brave students who anonymously signed the letter have turned chicken in the face of potential cancellation. Well, they should know.

As the Crimson’s article reported, Gay — who is so unqualified to run Harvard that it insults unqualified people — is on her fourth try in four days to condemn Hamas in sufficiently strong terms to placate offended stakeholders. When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Gay steadfastly refuses to disclose any student names though, patriotically but ironically calling for — I promise I am not making this up — everyone to appreciate the Founding Fathers’ values of freedom of speech and free expression.

Based solely on the photo, above, I probably don’t need to tell you that Gay’s entire academically-uninspiring career is 100% pure racial grievance politics, and the words “freedom of speech” are painfully difficult for her to pronounce since she’s never uttered them before. It’s currently coming out more like “fweedern of swiss,” but she’ll get the hang of it if she keeps trying. Try, try again.

🚀 The Israeli war has not progressed much since yesterday. The biggest news yesterday was Israel issued its largest evacuation notice yet, affecting around a million Palestinians in north Gaza, which suggests an imminent ground action.

The United Nations immediately demanded that Israel revoke the evacuation notice, arguing a mass relocation “would be calamitous.”

Israel’s opponents are scoffing just where are the Palestinians supposed to go?, since it appears nobody wants them. At least, none of the otherwise outraged Muslim countries in the area have so far offered to shelter any Palestinian refugees.

If you like, contrast that fact with Western Europe’s open door policy for Ukrainian refugees when that war began. So.

🚀 The Wall Street Journal ran an intriguing story yesterday headlined, “Hamas Militants Had Detailed Maps of Israeli Towns, Military Bases and Infiltration Routes.” The sub-headline added, “Documents found on Hamas militants show scale of planning behind deadly attack.”

Nothing like this has ever happened before. Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and head of Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University, confirmed “There is nothing close to this level of planning in any steps Hamas had done in the past.”

The newly-discovered plans suggest more sophisticated actors must have been involved. One 14-page document described in the article was labeled “top secret” in Arabic and dated June 15, 2023. It described a detailed plan for infiltrating Mefalsim, one of the small collective communities near Gaza (called a kibbutz), and taking its residents hostage. The document included maps and aerial pictures of the town, and disclosed intel that the kibbutz held 1,000 “civilians” guarded by a volunteer security force.

It is increasingly difficult to imagine that Hamas coordinate the attack by itself.

🚀 Speaking of the late, great Ukraine war, which you’ll be forgiven to have forgotten, and in what may be a poignant allegory for the vexing pace of world events, the Bloomberg building in New York City switched off its digital Ukraine flag yesterday — which has been flickering on the building’s top six floors ever since the invasion began — and replaced it with the digital flag of Israel.

Oddly, it has apparently never occurred to Bloomberg to switch on the American flag. Where’s the fun in that?

Ukraine is having an uh-oh moment. Observe this headline from the UK Independent yesterday:

Officious State Department spokesman John Kirby officially told reporters Wednesday that “on the Ukraine funding, we’re coming near to the end of the rope … we’re ... certainly running out of runway.”  What happens when you get to the end of a rope? That’s when you fall off, right?

Ukraine thought it was America’s fiancé, but it turns out America never planned to get married in the first place. Ukraine is only America’s mistress, or maybe just its little side hustle.

🚀 Even worse, Russia is predictably paying attention to current events. The UK Guardian ran a story yesterday headlined, “Russia-Ukraine war live: Fighting intensifying around Avdiivka, officials say, as Russia launches biggest offensive in months.”

Although Russia — apparently undaunted from a year’s worth of Glorious Counteroffensive — appears to now be going on the offense in Ukraine.

🔥 Ironically, Al Jazeera ran a story late Wednesday headlined “Putin concerned over ‘catastrophic’ civilian deaths in Israel-Gaza war.” The article reported Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was concerned about the “catastrophic increase” in civilian deaths in both Israel and the Gaza Strip.

During a call with Turkey’s President Tuesday, President Putin reiterated his calls for “an immediate ceasefire” and for “the resumption of the negotiation process.” A Kremlin statement also reported that President Erdogan noted it was “regrettable to target civilian installations and that Turkey doesn’t welcome such acts.” President Putin stressed the most important thing is to stop the bloodshed.

Putin blames Biden for the conflict. “I think that many people will agree with me that this is a vivid example of the failure of United States policy in the Middle East,” Putin said at the start of a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani on Tuesday. The Russian President’s rationale was expressed in an official tweet:

It’s an odd contrast how the Biden Administration is pushing for more hostilities and sending American military assets to the region, while Putin is calling for an immediate stop to the violence and a diplomatic solution. Make of that what you will.

💉 Here’s your Friday Medical Emergencies update:

Plus cardiac arrest news:

💉 The world got a little less funny this week, after New Zealand comedian and TV host Cal Wilson, 52, died suddenly “after a short illness.”

On Thursday, Token Artists confirmed that Wilson died of an unidentified “rare and aggressive form of cancer.” It’s a mystery. She got great medical care, having been treated in hospital for four weeks before she died, but to no avail.

Or maybe she died because she was in the hospital for four week. Just saying.

Anyway, the good news is she was jabbed, or it could have been so much worse:

Safe travels, Cal. We’ll see you on the other side.

🔥 Finally, in more good news from the counter-revolution, the New York Times ran an op-ed last week headlined, “’Antiracism’ Was Never the Right Answer.”

Who knew? The opinion piece focused on the recent meltdown of Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Center for Antiracist Research’ at Boston University. More than half its staff was laid off and half its budget was cut amidst difficult questions over what it did with nearly $55 million dollars raised.

But it’s not about the money. It’s never about the money.

Despite a mediocre academic record, ‘professor’ Ibram X. Kendi rose to national prominence after writing a book popularizing the concept of “anti-racism,” which holds that it is not enough to be race-neutral anymore. According to Kendi, to avoid being racist, you have to be a pro-black activist, or “anti-racist.”

Kendi isn’t interested in half-measures. He infamously wrote, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.”

As a result, Kendi was feted by big corporations and fawned over by scads of race baiting activists. His bizarre slogan minted an entire anti-racism industry. For example, employees at Penguin Random House were required to read his book as the publishing house’s first “true companywide read,” to begin “antiracism training mandatory for all employees.” The bizarre ideology metastasized, as exemplified by this kids’ book found in nearly all U.S. public school libraries:

Last month, the Washington Post reported, “No longer a mere ambassador for academic antiracism, Kendi became a brand.” But now, after Kendi’s money scandal, the anti-racism ‘brand’ may be becoming passé.

After many mind-numbing paragraphs of hand-wringing and grievance-based word salad, the op-ed concluded that maybe — just maybe — Kendi went a little too far:

In short, a person can oppose racism on firm ethical or philosophical or pragmatic grounds without embracing Kendi’s conception of antiracism. No organization can expect all employees or students to adhere to a single view on how to combat racism.

How about that? More progress. Keep the faith, it’s working.

Have a fabulous Friday! We shall return tomorrow morning, with your exciting and entertaining Weekend Edition roundup.

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