☕️ LOCKDOWN 2023? ☙ Sunday, August 20, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Bonus Edition: Are new lockdowns coming, or something else?; London's Mayor shows the right way to do science; Ukraine's failure blamed on casualty aversion™; NYC collapsing; and bloopers and memes.
Good morning, loyal C&C subscribers, it’s Sunday! Your roundup today includes: a deep-dive into the question whether Biden is dumb enough to bring back 2020-style lockdowns, or might something else be going on?; an illuminating Ulez story showing how science really works these days; the Proxy War narrative is spinning like a two-ton top, and the folks being ground into the mud are the Ukrainians, of course; signs of imminent collapse in New York City; a telling CBS blooper; and a smart meme to tickle your funny bone.
🗞 THE C&C ARMY POST 🗞
🪖 Anticipating subscriber requests, the first segment of today’s bonus subscriber C&C roundup is open to all readers, since the issue is so important. Enjoy!
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
🔥 Yesterday, an alarmed Michelle asked me about an Alex Jones clip making the rounds on social media. I knew if Michelle was fretting about it, a lot of other people must be worrying too. So let’s dive in.
In the clip, Jones described a TSA insider and a Border Patrol agent who both claimed Bob Peters’ Administration, sorry, I mean the Biden Administration, issued secret guidance on the return of covid mandates next month in September.
https://twitter.com/TheRightMelissa/status/1692705115361161587
According to Jones, the TSA source claimed that airline masking would be re-implemented in September, and in December, the “full covid protocol” would be reinstated. It wasn’t just Michelle, a lot of folks are alarmed about the news, which seems especially possible because of the upcoming election season, mail in ballots, and so forth.
The Jones segment cascaded into dire headlines running all over conservative media, like this one from yesterday’s Daily Fetched:
Constant vigilance is critical, but we might want to dial it back a trifle. The actual news is that anonymous sources claimed covid protocols are planned for next month. That is quite different from any kind of official announcement. I’m not saying it can’t happen, and nobody trusts Bob Peters and his gang of merry handlers, but there are other feasible possibilities.
So let’s look at those.
Please note the other two breaking stories this week. I reported them both. First of all, there’s this new, even more transmissible variant that we are supposed to be worried about, dubbed “Eris.” From Reuters, yesterday:
These people sure do love their Neo-paganisms. The name "Eris" comes from Greek mythology. In Greek mythology, Eris was the goddess of strife, discord, and chaos. I am not making that up. The name’s etymology traces back to the Greek word "ἔρις" (eris), which literally translates to "strife" or "discord."
It’s not a big secret or anything. The “Goddess Eris” was the main antagonist in DreamWorks' seventh full-length animated feature film Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003). Sinbad's archenemy Eris was depicted as the beautiful, but wicked goddess of chaos whose plan was to make the world as chaotic as possible.
Ironically, chaos struck the movie instead, and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas was a box office disaster that nearly bankrupted Dreamworks. Anyway, “Eris” is what they named the new covid variant debuting in Establishment Media this week.
Eris’s rollout created a pretext for Establishment Media to terrify its zombiefied constituents using the same old tricks. From Lester Holt on NBC this week, behold: “Covid Cases Rising Again This Summer:”
https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1692658691357434307
NBC anchor Annie Thompson ended the segment looking straight into the camera and enthusiastically hawking Moderna’s new and improved bivalent booster shots:
“So until the new covid booster comes, get prepared. Stock up on at-home tests — they do cover that new strain — keep a mask handy in case you’re in a crowded place, and most of all, get your shots: covid, flu, and RSV, all by Halloween, to give yourself your best chance to stay healthy.”
Hold up. I have questions. First of all, why is anybody still testing? What difference does it make? I mean, really. I wish someone would explain that to me. Second, they say the new variant is more transmissible? I thought we’d already splashed through sixteen rounds of ever more transmissible variants. How transmissible can it get? Does it come through the radio now? Phone calls? Third, how do they know covid hospitalizations are up when most places have stopped reporting them?
But I digress. Let us focus.
The second story breaking this week was the FDA’s torrid preparations to fast-track approval of Moderna’s new annual mRNA covid booster shot, which coincidentally and propitiously turned out to be specially designed for the super-duper transmissible Eris variant. From the Hill on Thursday:
Whew. Thank goodness for Moderna. What would we do without them?
To recap, all in one week, look at what all rolled out: (1) announcement of a scary, chaotic new even more transmissible variant, and (2) the announcement that the government is getting ready to buy billions of dollars of more doses, for our safety, plus (3) anonymous rumors that covid lockdowns are coming back.
Now let’s add one more variable to consider: that government-affiliated Moderna, which only has one successful product, one whose patents benefit dozens of highly-placed NIH employees, is — sadly — struggling financially. From Forbes, two weeks ago:
Gosh. Wouldn’t it be horrible if all those government employees stopped getting all those windfall payments from their Moderna jab royalties, wouldn’t it? What can be done?
You know what.
So. Here’s what I think. Rather than actual new lockdowns, I think what we’re seeing is more likely to be an Establishment psyop justifying buying billions of dollars of useless mRNA shots. Jab-happy people will be grateful to get the newest pokes, although I suspect uptake will remain poor, but who cares, since the U.S. government is the paying customer. Conservatives will be satisfied when lockdowns are ‘averted’ by popular outcry.
And nobody will ask why we’re spending so much money on useless and dangerous experimental jabs. It’s win-win-win.
Now here’s why I don’t think they’re preparing for new lockdowns.
🔥 They might try airline masking again, to frighten the covid maniacs, but there are several reasons why I doubt full-on lockdowns are on the calendar: (1) the legislative environment is completely different, (2) the social and legal environment is completely different, (3) they don’t have “an emergency” to justify bypassing legislation and ramming things through, and (4) they lack the tools they had the first time around.
You’ll recall, I’m sure, all the covid lawsuits over the last two years. One happy result was that there are now a lot fewer ways the government can mandate pandemic protocols. The CDC is enjoined from any more transportation mandates, such as masks. Congress won’t do it. So, if masks return to planes this fall, it could only be through a Biden executive order, which will instantly be challenged in court.
When they first slipped all these odious mandates over on us, it was during an atmosphere of total panic, with sketchy videos of Chinese people collapsing on the streets and fake Establishment Media shots of hospital corridors packed with bloody gurneys and stacks of body bags. They can’t do that now. Nobody will believe that nonsense, not even Branch Covidians.
Socially, people won’t stand for lockdowns. Just imagine the uproar from parents at the barest suggestion of closing schools again.
Next, all the mandates over the last three years were passed using emergency executive authority. None of them were passed by legislatures, by the peoples’ voting representatives, after debate and evidence. I’m not saying Bob Peters couldn’t declare another covid emergency, but the courts are not going to give the executive branch a pass like they did last time, back when most judges actually believed there might be some kind of real emergency.
Finally, in my opinion (even at the time) the 2020 lockdowns violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, because they constituted a “taking” of private property, namely small business revenues. Last time, the government avoided this thorny Constitutional problem by delivering rafts of cash to everyone, in the form of forgivable Paycheck Protection loans. In legal terms, the government provided value for the takings, which is what the Constitution requires.
Biden can’t repeat that “stimulus” technique without a Congressional appropriation, and the Republican-majority House of Representatives would almost certainly not agree.
Having said all that, I am humble enough to admit I could be wrong. This Fall could be when they deploy the WHO’s international pandemic authority and shoot for the whole enchilada. Or, Geert Vanden Bossche’s apocalyptic predictions could be right, and the jabbed will start dying in droves this Fall from vaccine-escaped viral covid strains, and what we’re seeing now is just the warmup for the government’s response to help cover up its role in creating the disaster in the first place.
But, evaluating all the evidence that we do have, setting aside apocalyptic speculation, what we can see looks a lot more like ordinary late-stage-capitalism, looting-of-the-treasury stuff, rather than preparations to return to 2020 covid lockdowns. So I do not think there’s any reason to panic.
Feel free to express your different take in the comments. All opinions respected.
Now that we’ve given some perspective to the recent concerns about new lockdowns, we’ll now continue with the normal Sunday subscriber bonus edition.