☕️ KAMALA CHAMELEON ☙ Friday, August 30, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Dem donors push back on tax plan; first VP interview falls hilariously flat; mile-high Colorado suburb finds new neighbors difficult; Time flip-flop on junk food; 2nd Circuit boosts Sarah Palin; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s August! It seems like just the other day when I was warning you we were closing in on the end of July. Now, another month of 2024 is being rolled up like a scroll and the critical month of September is soon beginning. In today’s roundup: Democrat donor class uncomfortable about Kamala tax plan but hopeful it’s not real; lackluster reviews on Kamala’s first unscripted, softball interview cast her as a participant-trophy winner; scenic Colorado town receives gun-toting Venezuelan social club; Time Magazine about-face on healthy ultra-processed foods draws major mocking on social media; and Second Circuit decision puts New York Times back in Sarah Palin’s crosshairs.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥🔥 The cackling chickens are coming home to roost! Only one day after I suggested Kamala’s unearned gains tax would fluster the Democrat donor class, the New York Times ran a back-walking story this morning headlined, “Donors Quietly Push Harris to Drop Tax on Ultrawealthy.” Well! But they’re not pushing that quietly, apparently, since the story made the top of the Times’ website. As Rush Limbaugh would have said: see? I told you so.

The article included some accidental hilarity. Kamala insider and billionaire Mark Cuban told reporters, “From what I’ve been told, everything is on the table, nothing’s been decided yet.” Haha, if no policies have been decided on yet, and everything is on the table, then what platform are Democrats voting for?

Who cares! Wheeeeeeee

Cuban also basically called Kamala an emotionally-based professional flip-flopper with no ideas of her own: “The key is she focuses on her values and is not an ideologue about any particular program,” he lamely explained.

The CEO of cloud storage startup Box.com, who’s already given Kamala’s campaign $30,000, told the Times he and other tech CEO’s are living in a cloud-cuckoo-like state of denial. “There’s optimism that this can’t possibly be real,” Mr. Levie hopefully suggested. Another optimistic CEO of an international investment company, Charles Myers, is hanging on to a firewall of belief that, even if it can possibly be real, then even a Democrat-controlled Congress would never pass the new tax. Probably.

Welp, at least they are optimistic about something. Practically joyful.

🔥🔥 In another media slip-up, NYT opinion editor Michelle Cottle wrote an overly-optimistic piece about Kamala’s very first (softball) interview on CNN last night, with a headline that is a lesson in being damned by faint praise: “Kamala Harris’s TV Interview Was a Solid First Effort.

A first effort? A first effort at what? Kamala has been taking up space in the White House as the Nation’s second-highest official for almost four years now, and before that, she spent five years in the Senate. Before that, she served as California’s state Attorney General. If you’re praising someone with Kamala Devi Harris’s resume as delivering a “solid first effort” at handling a short, softball interview with Dana Bash, well, you’re really saying something else.

Calling it “solid” implies there’s significant room for improvement, which is not exactly a quality you want in a President. Framing her interview as a “first effort” erased Kamala’s professional achievements and expertise, and would be unthinkably disrespectful if applied to a man.

We should also note Kamala’s insistence on having Tim Walz attend the 18-minute interview. She needed a man? (I assume that’s how Tim identifies, but you never know these days.)

This dumbing-down is so like Democrats. The op-ed’s condescending tone and infantilizing low expectations are what Democrats always wheel out for women and black people. They can’t help themselves. It’s not just me saying that. It’s science. From the Washington Post, 2018:

During the interview, Kamala gamely defended her flip-flopping, insisting that, even if her policy positions have reversed, her underlying values have not changed, which is also exactly what billionaire Mark Cuban said, so it’s just a nonsense line they fed her with a silver spoon. What does that even mean?

Not to strain the point, but what's the big dichotomy supposed to be? Something between Kamala’s ‘underlying values’ and what? Her gut versus her intellectual mind? I don't get it. She didn’t say her position changed through learning any new facts.

Of course, everybody knows Kamala’s “values” blather wasn’t meant to be meaningful, it was just more politically expedient babble. So today I’m officially suggesting another possible nickname for President Trump to consider: Kamala Chameleon.

It might not have been such a good idea to bring Walz. The Times’ token ‘conservative’ commenter Bret Stephens found Walz’s part of the interview to be even worse than Kamala’s, since the vice-presidential candidate “was transparently evasive in answering Dana Bash’s questions about his misstatement about his military service, false claims about a D.U.I. arrest and misleading statements about his family’s fertility treatments.”

Can a horrible candidate selected at the last minute be successfully ‘re-introduced to the American people’ through heavy propaganda and media lifting? We shall see.

🔥🔥 Yesterday, Fox News ran an astonishing story headlined, “Colorado mayor speaks out after video of armed Venezuelan gang in apartment goes viral: 'Failed policy.’” Aurora, Colorado, Mayor Mike Coffman cautiously blamed the Biden Administration.

CLIP: Aurora, Co. Mayor describes gang superspreader in his city (3:57).

Aurora is Colorado’s third-largest city, with about 400,000 permanent residents. It is a picturesque suburban community favored by young professionals and families looking for more space, situated ten miles east of Denver, at an average elevation of 5,400 feet. Residents enjoy panoramic mountain views, easy access to spectacular Rocky Mountain recreational areas, and now, thrilling nightly gunfights between rival gangs in the Target parking lot:

According to the story, a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Agua has “taken over” two apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, changed the locks, put up ‘signs’ of ownership, and is now collecting residents’ rents as ‘protection money.’

Tren de Agua is a ‘criminal megagang’ based in a prison called Tocorón, which like the Auroroa apartment buildings, the gang has also taken over for use as its international headquarters. Allegedly, the megagang’s president, or jéfe, is the notorious Héctor “Niño” Guerrero, a particularly disagreeable and not-baby-like fellow who hapless Aurorans never had to worry about before 2024.

After diligent study and a municipal committee review, Mayor Coffman has concluded Tren de Agua’s new Aurora base of operations is the result of, wait for it, illegal immigration. He explained, “these massive waves of migrants coming across the border that many of them crossed the border illegally, were arrested, asked for a political asylum, were not adequately vetted, were released into the country, the city of Aurora.”

It’s not easy to locate Mayor Coffman’s political affiliation, but Ballotpedia described him as a “former Republican,” whatever that means. In any case, Coffman is a Mayor dealing with difficult new megagangs he probably never saw coming back when he took office in 2019. Coffman, and who can blame him, seems to be verging into rank conspiracy theory, believing that “somebody” paid the Venezuelan gangs to infest his once-scenic city:

These poor Aurorans need some assistance. Wait! I have an idea. Mayor Coffman should call the Border Czar for help. I mean, that’s her job, right?

I know who Mayor Coffman shouldn’t call:

So!

🔥🔥 You really don’t hate the corporate media enough. Yesterday, Evie Magazine ran a story headlined, “Time Magazine Suggests Ultra-Processed Foods Really Aren't That Bad, And The Comments Are Hilarious.”

Last year, Time Magazine ran a common-sense story headlined, “Why Ultra-Processed Foods Are So Bad For You.” Then on Wednesday —one day after RFK’s campaign officially announced its ‘American health’ theme— Time ran the exact opposite story headlined, “What if Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?”

Even more hilarious, yesterday following a tsunami of social media backlash, Time backpedaled, stealth-editing its terrific 2024 headline to now read: “Why One Dietician is Speaking Up for ‘Ultra-Processed’ Foods.”

Haha, so now it’s just ‘one dietician.’ Not Time.

Time’s 2024 article gamely tried to defend ultra-processed foods (UDFs) by invoking the dark specter of, wait for it, systemic racism. It mostly cited a single expert, a ‘dietician,’ who argued that since UDFs are cheaper, they are good for low-income black people who can’t afford healthier foods. I did not make that up.

The so-called ‘dietician,’ Jessica Wilson, who “specializes in working with clients from marginalized groups,” ahem, claimed that for a month she ate a diet consisting of 80% UDFs. Get this, Jessica’s anecdotal, non-scientific, junk-food diet report: “she had more energy and less anxiety. She didn’t need as much coffee to get through the day and felt more motivated. She felt better eating an ultra-processed diet than she had before.”

To be fair, the article did mention several solid studies showing serious health problems connected to the consumption of UDFs. But the article ended as it started, quoting dietician Jessica, who waved away all the negative research and said it was better not to be hungry than to be completely healthy. “For some people, ultra-processed foods may be the difference between going to bed hungry or full, and Wilson would pick full every time.”

Ms. Wilson is certainly full of something.

Time Magazine had it right back in 2023, before Robert Kennedy joined up with President Trump. Here are a few headlines to give you the idea:

UK Guardian, June 2024:

CNN, February 2024:

The Harvard Gazette, December 2023:

PBS, November 2023:

And perhaps most informative, the UK Guardian, September 2023:

Sometimes one feels a wave of tremendous sympathy for Democrats. What must it be like to have your core beliefs shaped by the whimsical and chimeric corporate media, turning on a dime from day to day, never settled, just based on whatever is momentarily politically expedient? It’s Kamala Chameleonism.

So. Here’s the clip from RFK’s endorsement speech that probably triggered this new corporate media narrative reversal:

CLIP: Robert Kennedy on what’s happening to our children thanks to UDFs (2:53).

Healthy food is now like ivermectin. Come on, y’all, you’re not horses.

🔥🔥 On Wednesday, CNN ran a terrific story headlined, “Sarah Palin granted new trial in defamation lawsuit against the New York Times.” On Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals revived Palin’s case, which was oddly dismissed in 2022 during jury deliberations. The judge wasn’t taking any chances.

Palin and her lawyers sued the Times for defamation, over its false implication that Sarah had been responsible for the 2011 shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-Az.) and 18 other people (six people were killed, including a federal judge). After Palin had gone through the whole case and her lawyers put on the entire trial, and after the jury went back to deliberate, only then did federal Judge Jed Rakoff rule that “no reasonable jury would find that the newspaper and editor acted with actual malice in publishing the article.”

While they were still deliberating, many of the jurors got push alerts on their phones about the judge’s decision, as joyful corporate media rushed to announce the happy news. Unsurprisingly, the jury, having been told how to vote, returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict for the Times.

On Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the case and ordered a new trial The decision is a fascinating read, carefully describing the media’s disgusting sausage-making and editorial character assassination. This is the second time the appellate court overruled Judge Rakoff and reinstated Sarah’s case.

The bungled dismissal and the poisoning of the jury were only two of the many problems the Court of Appeals noticed:

Not only that, but the Court of Appeals essentially found Sarah had proven her defamation case at the sky-high clear and convincing standard. “After reviewing the record and making all reasonable inferences in Palin’s favor,” the Court noted, “we conclude that there exists sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find actual malice by clear and convincing evidence.”

In legal terms, that’s what we call a “burn” on the trial judge.

The New York Times would be well advised to settle at this point. They say justice delayed is justice denied, but Sarah Palin may finally be about to get paid for the Times’ horrible reporting.

Have a fabulous Friday! Return here tomorrow morning for a wonderful Weekend Edition roundup of all the essential news you need to know so you can safely ignore the corporate media and enjoy your day today.

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