☕️ MORE URGENCY ☙ Saturday, November 4, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Corporate media says Ukraine must give stuff up; SBF convicted, all counts; SADS chef, hospital doctor, university doctor; Hezbollah speech blows up on launch pad; Gaetz defeats general; and more.

Good morning, C&C family, and welcome to the Weekend Edition! I’m incrementally better, taking all my vitamins, supplements, and off-label meds, and enjoying all the well-wishes. Mostly today it’s head-cold stuff (headache, congestion, fatigue, a little coughing, and pickled eyeballs). But I still managed to cobble together something resembling a regular roundup for your weekend reading pleasure: after the Time Magazine political torpedo, other media begins piling on Ukraine and telling Zelensky he needs to wrap things up with “more urgency”; human Q-tip Sam Bankman-Fried convicted on all counts; mystery massacre of my opposing counsels; SADS celebrity chef; SADS hospital doctor; SADS cancer doctor-professor; good Middle East War news as terrorist group’s major announcement falls on its turbaned face; Matt Gaetz runs rings around Air Force diversity general; and a spicy TikTok video that will teach you about real suffering.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🚀 It looks like time for the manipulated masses to move on, stumbling over all those dead Ukrainians in their deluded rush to embrace the next government-approved virtue signal. With up-front apologies to our diehard Proxy War supporters, and with only a little spirit of “we told you so,” NBC quietly ran a story yesterday headlined, “U.S., European officials broach topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine, sources say.”

The real news was jammed in the sub-headline, which explained, “The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal with Russia.”

They might need to give something up? That right there is news. Well, the fact media reported Ukraine might have to give something up is news. But what?

After a year of winning so massively and completely that we are all sick of hearing about how much winning Ukraine is doing, something seems to have gone suddenly and unexpectedly awry, and not for the better. Behold last year’s headline:

Not one inch! No way! Ukraine will be free from the Donbas to the Black Sea! Or something like that.

According to NBC, last month in talks described as “delicate” — haha! I bet — were held among the ‘Ukraine Defense Contact Group,’ which is a collection of around 50 countries that support Ukraine with money or materiel. (By the way, thanks for nothing, media, for taking a month to tell us about the meeting. Old but controversial news = psyop.)

Anyway, as I’ve long predicted, NBC basically conceded that Ukraine needs to get this war wrapped up before the end of the year, what with a primary coming, and what with the fact Ukraine’s leaky border problem is not a popular political issue in American these days. NBC says there no hope of winning now, given the realpolitik:

Some U.S. military officials have privately begun using the term “stalemate” to describe the current battle in Ukraine. Progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been very slow, and hope that Ukraine will make significant advances is fading. The lack of significant progress on the battlefield in Ukraine does not help with trying to reverse the downward trend in public support.

Administration officials expect Ukraine to want more time to fight on the battlefield, particularly with new, heavier equipment, “but there’s a growing sense that it’s too late, and it’s time to do a deal,” an official said. It is not certain that Ukraine would (or could) mount another spring offensive.

Officials have also said privately Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin.

Haha, “more urgent discussions.” Hurry up! But at the end of a long day in the trenches, the real problem is that, as the well-worn joke goes, the United States has just about fought the Proxy War down to the last Ukrainian:

Joe Biden has been intensely focused on Ukraine’s depleting military forces, according to two people familiar with the matter.  "Manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” one said. The U.S. and its allies can provide Ukraine with weaponry, this person said, “but if they don’t have competent forces to use them it doesn’t do a lot of good.”

It took me a second to stop laughing after reading “Joe Biden has been intensely focused.”

But ultimately they fooled me. I had scanned the article quickly with a certain degree of excited anticipation, looking forward to learning exactly what Ukraine “might need to give up.” But my Hades-low confidence in corporate media was still pegged too high. Even after using those exact words right in the article’s sub-headline, NBC never even hinted at what Ukraine “might need to give up.”

Which probably means whatever Zelensky “needs to give up” is something pretty ugly. Like maybe conceding all the territory the Russians already took and becoming a rump state. This NBC article — and Time’s article from earlier this week that torpedoed any last hope for Ukraine’s independence — are not just meant to manipulate the democrat masses. These new admissions — already a month stale, according to this article — are also public concessions to the Russians.

In other words, the negotiation has already started.

Sometimes I think the real Proxy War is reflected better in the manipulated corporate media headlines than in the flat, muddy, fire-glazed trenches where Ukraine’s old cow pastures and scenic farmlands used to be.

🔥 The Guardian UK ran a story Thursday headlined, “Dramatic fall for Sam Bankman-Fried and ‘unkempt visionary’ persona.” I think they must have intended the humor in the sub-headline: “Jury did not believe T-shirt, cargo shorts and messy hair could prevent someone defrauding people out of billions of dollars.”

Could this be the death knell for Fetterman chíc?

On Thursday, after a four-week trial, a jury found Sam Bankman-Fried — who must be Peter Hotez’s lost son, I mean, just look at him — guilty on all seven counts, after less than five hours of deliberation. It didn’t even take the jury a full day. Sentencing is set for March. If he gets the maximum sentence for each count, Sam will rot in prison for life.

A former prosecutor Bloomberg interviewed for its story pointed out that Sam will be punished for not taking a deal earlier. “He has lost a lot of his arguments for a reduced sentence by taking the case to trial, by not accepting responsibility, and by essentially arguing at every turn that he at least did not commit fraud,” the former prosecutor explained. “Those are the kinds of factors that cause prosecutors to ask for very, very high sentences.”

Like his digital investments, Sam’s trial strategy was risky. For example, he gambled on agreeing to testify, a high-stakes call in a criminal case. At one point during his testimony, channeling the spirit of John Fetterman, Sam explained to the jury why he always dressed like a slob and wore gym clothes instead of dress suits: “I found them comfortable,” Bankman-Fried said. Why didn’t he cut his hair? “I was kind of busy and lazy.”

At least he was honest about that.

His lawyers’ efforts to sell Sam as a sympathetic “math nerd” went down in flames. As the foreman read out the guilty verdicts, Sam’s father doubled over and put his head down. Two marshals escorted an emotionless Sam out of the courtroom, who gave no sign except briefly glancing back at his distraught parents and nodding.

Sam’s lawyers say they plan to appeal. That will be a tough job. It is well known in appellate practice that the most difficult decisions to overturn are jury verdicts. Plus, this is a high-profile jury verdict that looks a lot like justice. Appellate courts have a giant toolbox they can use to achieve any necessary result. Take, for example, the “Tipsy Coachman” doctrine, which holds that, even if the lower court committed error (the coachman was drinking on the job), as long as it finally got to the right answer (but he got everyone home safely), the lower court’s decision will be upheld.

In the meantime, Sam will continue his free vacation without video games, blow, girls, or private jets.

💉 I haven’t officially confirmed this yet, but I was informed by a reliable source on Wednesday that another one of the opposing counsels in one of my cases is suddenly no longer working. I spoke to him several times while he was picking his young kids up from school. Apparently, he died suddenly and unexpectedly this week. Probably early 40’s.

Regular readers will recall that I also lost a different opposing counsel earlier this summer, in that case to sudden blindness (while he was driving) resulting in total disability (turbo-migraines caused by light flashes). Needless to say, nothing like this opposing counsel massacre has ever happened in my legal career before.

I mean, I like winning, a lot, but not like this.

Fortunately it’s all just anecdotal though!

💉 Here’s another anecdote for you. The UK Daily Mail ran a story Thursday headlined, “Top chef who cooked for U2, Drake and the Spice Girls dies 'suddenly’.”

Called a “jet-setting personal chef to the stars,” Lee Holland, 40, died suddenly and unexpectedly this week. And mysteriously.

Apparently Lee burst with flavor and energy. In addition to cooking for U2, Drake, and the Spice Girls, Lee also worked for Pink and Roger Waters, and recently opened a four-star restaurant in Plymouth called ‘The Catch.’  His staff posted the following announcement on social media this week:

It is with deep sadness that we announce the sudden and unexpected passing of our brilliant head chef, manager and driving force behind The Catch, Lee Holland.

Our thoughts are with his family at this difficult time. The restaurant is closed for now and we kindly ask for privacy as our staff mourn the loss of a dear friend and colleague.

None of the articles expressed the slightest bit of curiosity about the mysterious cause of Lee’s untimely, sudden, and unexpected death. I’ve been trying to think up a decent analogy for this lately. It’s kind of like if the media were entirely uncurious about electric cars suddenly and unexpectedly exploding for no reason and shredding the occupants. Say that kept happening over and over and over, with the media dutifully reporting the explosions and deaths, but never once quoting an ‘expert’ about why the cars might suddenly be blowing up all over the place.

I’m sure they’d say there’s ‘no evidence’ car explosions are increasing. Because nobody they’ll quote is looking for the evidence. And occasionally the media might sprinkle in some sly innuendo like, the owner reported three flat tires in the last year, or neighbors said the owner often failed to park the car in the garage. But the media would never ever get close to the heart of what on Earth is really going on?

It’s just another electric car explosion! Happens all the time.

💉  Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla OB/GYN Dr. Kelly Harkey died suddenly and unexpectedly Wednesday in his sleep AT HOME. Never made it to his hospital. Or any other hospital, for that matter. Just bang. Gone like that. Like he exploded.

His sister announced Kelly’s sudden death on Facebook:

As a hospital doctor, Kelly had access to free, immediate healthcare, including any kind of test you could think of. Kelly could just ‘go downstairs’ and get a cardiac evaluation any time he wanted. He was trained in identifying signs of illness. So it’s fair to say that Kelly never even saw it coming.

Subclinical myocarditis. The silent killer.

Widely-published cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough has explained that folks dying in their sleep between 1am and 3am is one of two ‘patterns’ of death from mRNA injury:

CLIP: Dr. McCullough explains two patterns of death from mRNA-induced subclinical myocarditis (1:25).

So.

💉 Early this week, Quinnipiac University Professor of Medical Sciences, hematologist/oncologist, and Chief Internal Medicine Fellow Dr. Karen Hook, 44, died suddenly and unexpectedly from a ‘cardiac event.’

Despite calling her death “untimely” in the obituary’s first sentence, and using words like “shock and disbelief,” and “we do not understand it,” the obituary never even hinted at her cause of death. In pre-pandemic days, that would have meant she died from suicide, some kind of weird sex thing, or something similarly-indescribably shameful. But these days it means: they know.

In other words, they know exactly what killed Karen. They just aren’t saying.

🚀 There was rare good news from the Middle East War yesterday in the form of the big Hezbollah announcement’s abject failure. I’d previously reported that, all week long, the bigger and meaner Hezbollah terrorist group had advertised a “major announcement,” including releasing a theatrical trailer that showed someone pushing a “launch” button (labeled in English). I’m not making that up.

The speech failed to launch. I guess they couldn’t find the button again.

My conclusion was the heavily-marketed speech was a kind of inflection point, signaling either regional military escalation or that cooler heads were in control. The doombloggers all predicted escalation.

But nope. It was a long, rambling, boring speech in Farsi or Lebanese or something. In summary, Hezbollah said Israel is the worst, et cetera, and Hamas’ October 7th massacre was totally justified.

Hezbollah did not declare war or even anything like war.

Instead, buried plumb spang in the middle of Hezbollah’s “major announcement” was an express denial that either Hezbollah or Iran were involved on October 7th. The denial was so jarring and out of place, so different from the rest of the angry rhetoric, it jumped out like it was the speech’s real purpose: to deny any involvement. Kind of like the rest of the rambling, meaningless rhetoric was just violent window dressing for the Arab street to make that one express denial go down easier.

Here’s how Hezbollah’s grand poobah (or whatever) Somethingsomething Nazrallah put it:

“The operation was 100 percent Palestinian in terms of both decision and execution. That element of secrecy was the linchpin to this emphatic success of the operation, it came as a surprise, shocking surprise, unlike what’s assumed by many.

Since the Iranian revolution … (Iran has) always been openly adopting and supporting resistance factions in Lebanon, Palestine and in the region. However, they do not exercise any form of authority or control over these factions or in their leadership. And what happened … proves this fact.”

In other words, we had nothing to do with it and neither did Iran. We didn’t even know it was coming. So don’t blame US.

Remember that old saw, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan? Hezbollah clearly just distanced itself from the October 7th Massacre. It’s clearly not being seen as a winning event by the muslims.

To me, the denial sounded like something Hezbollah was forced to say against its will. Probably by the Iranians. To call the speech ‘anticlimactic’ seriously understates the case. The denial of involvement was so direct and so unexpected it made me suspect the Iranians are fretting the October 7th attacks will become a pretext to take them off the board for good.

Bottom line: this was an embarrassing, if not humiliating concession by Hezbollah, and it also strongly signals Iran is backing down. While Israel can surely expect more face-saving attacks along its Northern border, for now, the risk of a wider regional conflict appears to have been drastically reduced.

That’s great news for everybody.

🔥 Enjoy this delightful clip of Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) running intellectual rings around a three-star Air Force general who was trying to defend diversity.

CLIP: Matt Gaetz roasts diversity-promoting general (2:26).

The general hung in there at first, weathering withering incoming fire in the form of Goetz’s questions as to whether the Ukrainian or Russian armies are diverse. Then Representative Gaetz got the general in a kill box, after the general fired off the weak argument that a country’s army should resemble its population. Gaetz sprang the ambush trap!

If it’s true the army should look like the population, then the armed forces should be trying hardest to recruit heterosexual white men. Case closed. General confounded.

But my very favorite bit was toward the end of the clip (although it’s all good):

GAETZ: Do you know what ‘demigender’ really means?

GENERAL: Uh, I’m not really sure, sir.

GAETZ: Right. So do you know what agender means? All one word. Not a-space-gender, but ‘agender.’

GENERAL: Sir, I don't.

GAETZ: Right.

Yeah. None of us know what those stupid words mean either. What a great way to run the military, what with World War III looming over the horizon. Whatever. I think the general must be demigender. If he were a legit man, he would have just told Gaetz, “this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever been forced to do but I’m doing my best to follow orders.”

Can we please flush out these diversity simps and put some real warriors in charge, before it’s too late? Asking for a friend.

🔥 Finally, forget about the poor Ukrainians. This guy has a real problem. I mean this trans woman. It’s bad enough all these mean conservatives are running around refusing to use his pronouns. They told us A.I. was going to be a problem. Behold the profound technological suffering he, sorry, ‘she,’ is now forced to endure: being misgendered by a  machine:

CLIP: Trans guy gets some bad news from TikTok’s A.I. (0:30) (warning, multiple outraged f-bombs).

So. Whenever you’re feeling down, just imagine how incredibly difficult is this young man’s life. I’m not even joking! He went to all that effort and who knows how many painful surgeries in tender spots and he still can’t even fool a basic TikTok filter.

That’s got to be a very hard hormone pill to swallow.

Have a wonderful weekend! I’ll be back on Monday to kick off the new week with a rhetorical bang and hopefully clear nasal passages. Till then 👋

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