☕️ REVIVAL ☙ Saturday, March 2nd, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Media crying over collapsing Trump prosecution; more bad news from the NYT for Ukraine; CDC officially compares covid to flu; UF's DEI department yeeted; Fani surprise witness; revival; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! You know what that means, it’s the Weekend Edition, and this one is packed with great news. You’re going to love it. Today’s roundup includes: corporate media crestfallen as Trump prosecution efforts collapse; New York Times piles on Ukraine some more, pointing out its unimaginable defensive failure; CDC spreads misinformation, or inverts misinformation, or something, but covid is now the flu; Florida’s biggest university yeets its Diversity Department; Fani Willis trial wraps with a whimper of closing arguments and the judge takes it all under advisement; and unmistakable signs of religious revival provide hope for the country.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 Yesterday gifted good news to President Trump. But it was bad news for Axios, which ran its somber story under the morose headline, “Florida judge considers timing of Trump classified docs case, does not issue ruling.”

Axios has the sads because no trial date was set yesterday in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in South Florida. Judge Aileen Cannon said she was still considering when to schedule trial and did not schedule a date. Worse, Axios worries there are fewer and fewer options to get Trump! before the election, maybe none:

You have to give them credit, though, for trying to put a good face on things so their readers wouldn’t lose all hope. The article ended on a weakly-positive note, trying hard to stay positive, with what Axios labeled “Trump’s one loss this week.” The President’s “one loss” was that, since there won’t be any trials, Trump can’t give any more of his troop-rallying courthouse speeches.

I’ll take that loss, no problem. So, it’s win-win.

🚀 Surprisingly! The New York Times ran a narrative-bending story yesterday — outside the paywall! — headlined, “Surprisingly Weak Ukrainian Defenses Help Russian Advance.” It was surprising, all right. The article’s honesty was the most surprising part. We’re rapidly approaching the Proxy War stage where the media starts squaring its war reporting with reality, trying to rescue a few crumbs of credibility.

This important story blew a fatal hole in the “Ukraine was unfunded” argument.

As the Times’ article made abundantly clear, it is now incontestable that Ukraine — even aided by NATO war planners, free weapons, and a multi-billion-dollar blank check — failed miserably at the fundamentals. Ukraine’s culture of corruption, graft, and easy dishonesty proved suicidal. NATO’s unaccountable war-by-committee, in the face of a unified, organized, experienced enemy with a clear chain of command, proved disastrously incompetent.

First, recall last week’s war-shattering news. After a five-month siege, Russia finally captured Ukraine’s key strategic village of Avdiivka, which the Americans had transformed into a heavily defended military-industrial base ten years before.

Over a handful of days of bloody fighting following Russia’s capture of the fortress city, Ukrainian defenses sagged and quickly collapsed. You could call it a rout. The Russians are now flooding west. The obvious problem, ignored by corporate media until now, was immediately grasped by the war bloggers.

Ukraine never installed any real defenses behind Avdiivka.

As unbelievable as it sounds, it seems like Ukraine’s generals failed to anticipate Russia’s breakthrough. Now, nothing is stopping Putin’s forces except Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the open, who are being mercilessly mowed down. Meanwhile, invisible NATO war planners just throw more and more men at the Russians, desperately trying to slow their advance.

But did the generals really fail to foresee this development? According to various reports, Ukrainian parliament members are starting to ask some hard questions. Where did all the money go that was allocated for defensive perimeters? Many fabulously exorbitant, emergency-priced contracts to build defenses were awarded and paid. Unimaginable amounts of foreign aid — mostly from the U.S. — ebbed and flowed through the Ukrainian treasury.

Why weren’t defenses laid down?

In the most ominous sign for Ukraine of all, it looks like the blame-shifting has begun. The Times’ article quoted anonymous U.S. officials complaining Ukraine will have to “face the consequences” of its own bad decisions, as though the U.S. and NATO were hands-off or something:

Due to what could be euphemistically called an unfortunate confluence of events, Ukraine has no excuse. The Russians were in the exact same spot a year before, and handled it well, giving Ukraine a perfect example. In 2022, after the Russians withdrew from western Ukraine, they had a five or six month breather while Ukraine ploddingly prepared for its heavily-marketed but unsuccessful Glorious Spring Offensive. During that time, Russia built a massive north-south network of layered defenses running the length of the entire country. It was a gargantuan building project that may have set new records for speed, quality, and engineering.

But, despite having about the same amount of time to prepare while the Russians were busy with Avdiivka, the Ukrainians only dug a few ditches and put up some “Putin sucks” signs.

The Times included helpful satellite infographics crystallizing Ukraine’s failures. Below on the left, behold Russia’s famous — and 100% effective — triple-layer defense network. Remarkably, it runs for 600 miles or more including lines of deep ditches that tanks can’t cross (a downward barriers), then lines of concrete “Dragon’s teeth” fences that also stop tanks (an upward barrier), and behind that a system of concrete trenches, which stop tanks and also give Russian infantry excellent cover.

By comparison, in spite of having around the same amount of time as the Russians to get their defenses ready, the Ukrainians inexplicably did almost nothing. Above right, you can see a couple useless Ukrainian dirt trenches, not carefully constructed like the Russians’, but rather hastily dug. The trenches are short and unconnected — the Russians can drive right around them — and easily bulldozed.

In other words, Ukraine’s pathetic trenches are utterly useless, an insult on top of their frittering away months of potential preparation. It was a fact the Times essentially admitted:

Ample time! But … where were the brilliant NATO war planners during this ample time? Compare Ukraine’s cute little ditches with this example of one area of the Russians’ intricate defensive network (again, courtesy of the Times). The Russians built complex, substantial defenses that the Times properly called “fortifications,” shown below in yellow lines:

Making all this even more humiliating, the Russians built their fortifications while they were laboring under U.S. sanctions — enduring terrific difficulty getting building materials. On the other hand, the Ukrainians enjoyed concierge-level access to NATO’s private supply closet and an infinite cash card.

For the cost of a single F16, the entire defensive perimeter could have been speedily built, but wasn’t.  And now, it’s too late.

Even worse, the Times let slip that they didn’t forget. They had the money. They allocated the money to defenses:

Oops! Where, oh where, did a billion dollars go? Where, oh where, could it be?

We will probably never know. Ukraine lost its password to Quickbooks and then the hard drive crashed. They think it might be a virus. Regardless, now ordinary, non-oligarchical Ukrainians are dying by the bucketloads. They are dying because the money was stolen. They are dying because nobody in charge — not Zelensky, not Jens Stoltenberg, not Lloyd Austin, not George Burns — ever audited the books. They never made sure the money was being properly spent building Dragon’s Teeth rather than building Italian villas, buying Gucci purses, gold chains, and Mercedes convertibles, and of course, lots and lots of blow.

Even by the most cynical estimates, Ukraine won’t run out of ammo and weapons until July. It’s not losing because of lack of ammo. It already got plenty of money to build fortifications but obviously used it for something else. It is losing because it failed to do the most basic, obvious thing in the world.

Sadly, it seems Ukraine must now face the deadly consequences.

But don’t worry! The unaccountable, invisible generals or CIA agents or MI6 spooks or whoever makes up NATO’s behind-the-scenes war planning group will completely avoid the exploding blame balloon. They’ll probably just get reassigned to the Middle East.

I think this intensely-critical article, combined with last week’s CIA exposé, means the New York Times has pulled the Proxy War’s plug. We’ll see.

🔥 More good news! I enjoyed a hearty laugh this morning reading the Wall Street Journal’s sidesplitting story headlined, “It’s Official: We Can Pretty Much Treat Covid Like the Flu Now. Here’s a Guide.” The sub-headline farcically explained, “New guidelines from the CDC Friday bring Covid precautions in line with those of other respiratory viruses.” Now that’s entertainment. That is value for money.

Why now? It’s election season! And Glorious Leader Biden needs a win. So yesterday’s misinformation that used to get you banned off social media and slapped on a Homeland Security list somewhere is now the CDC’s official guidance. Biden beat a virus.

Ah, the good old days. Back when C&C was just musings on Facebook, I assiduously avoided directly saying covid was like the flu. The censors and I played cat and mouse for months, while I used the word “So” to fill in the obvious blank. Eventually they caught on, and after two 7-day bans and then a 30-day account lockdown, C&C moved out of Meta.

But now the CDC says trust them, covid was a civilization-destroying virus for a few months. It totally justified the economy-destroying lockdowns and Constitution-shredding mandates. But now it’s just a seasonal flu! Don’t worry! Get extra fluids and rest at home! Never mind!

Science. Shut up!

But the lingering question remains: are hardcore zero-covid fanatics still screeching that covid is ten times worse than ebola … spreading misinformation? I mean, if the CDC is the gold standard, what about them?

How times change.

🔥 It’s been an awful week for Axios, which means it was a great week for the rest of us! Yesterday, a tearful Axios ran its lamenting headline, “University of Florida terminates all DEI positions.” With prejudice.

The University of Florida — the state’s largest, located in my hometown of Gainesville — became the first public university in Florida to comply with the Governor’s new guidance and the Legislature’s new law. What Axios called an attack on diversity, I call progress.

Here’s the gist:

A packed docket of lawsuits were filed against the new law and all of them failed. So.

🔥 The Hill ran another good-news story yesterday headlined, “Trump, Georgia attorneys clash in final Fani Willis disqualification arguments.”

After three hours of legal arguments yesterday afternoon — I heard about half of it — Judge Scott McAfee concluded the trial, saying he’ll issue a ruling in the next two weeks. Although the judge started the hearing signaling he was inclined to disqualify DA Fani Willis, her attorneys did a good job of muddying the waters. So the judge is thinking about it some more.

That said, Fani’s lawyer was fiesty, but not terribly persuasive. The young attorney was forced by circumstance to take wildly indefensible positions, such as claiming there was no evidence that Fani got any personal benefit, or that Terrance Bradley’s denials of his own text messages were perfectly normal speculation.

But suddenly yesterday afternoon, things got worse. Much worse. Someone leaked the audio of a voice message left for terrific defense lawyer Ashleigh Merchant. You’ll recall Merchant, who filed the original disqualification motion and kept all her texts with witness Terrance Bradley. The surprise new witness is a waiter, who claimed to have served Nathan Wade and Terrance Bradley at lunch five weeks ago.

CLIP: Witness volunteers to contradict Nathan Wade’s sworn testimony; witness tampering. (0:28).

Boom! The first problem is, Nathan Wade testified under oath that he hadn’t seen or talked to Bradley in two years. Sounds like perjury. The trial is closed, but even if Judge MaCafee rules against the defendants, they can now file motion for reconsideration based on the newly-discovered evidence, and open the whole thing up again.

But there’s an even bigger problem. The Wade-Bradley lunch happened after Bradley texted attorney Merchant with one version of his testimony, and before Bradley changed to a new story at trial. It seems to me this evidences classic witness tampering — a very serious crime, much more serious even than perjury.

Our entire judicial system rests on the notion that witnesses may not be influenced, bribed, or threatened before they testify. Absent that rule, the whole system fails.

If Nathan Wade even had a shred of the prosecutorial experience he claims to have, he should’ve kept far from Terrance. Farther away than he’d have kept from a maskless, covid-positive person on an airplane. With an uncontrollable cough. At the very least, Nathan should never have met with Terrance in public. What a maroon.

Witness tampering is a serious problem and provides a second avenue for the defendants to re-open an adverse ruling by Judge MaCafee. The lunch meeting, combined with Terrance’s testimonial reversal, could easily be enough to turn the S.S. Fani Willis into an environmentally-friendly artificial reef.

Thank you, 2024.

🔥 Finally, in the best news of all, last week the Hill ran a outraged story headlined, “House Democrats question Johnson’s invitation of far-right preacher known for anti-LGBTQ views.”

The trouble started after House Speaker Mike Johnson invited evangelical pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills to deliver the House’s opening prayer on January 30th. Pursuant to House rules, Pastor Hibbs was required to submit his opening prayer in writing to the House Chaplain, in advance, to ensure it was bland, unoffensive, and sufficiently diverse. Hibbs reluctantly drafted and submitted a non-denominational, diverse, and inclusive prayer.

But then, on the day of the opening, Hibbs felt the ineluctable grip of the Holy Spirit and to the amazement of Congress, he delivered instead a passionate, completely-different, full-on Christian prayer. Rules broken.

Hibbs’s prayer was not offensive. It did not single out any group. It did not condemn LGBT people or muslims or atheists or flying-spaghetti-monster worshippers. It just invoked the name of Jesus Christ — multiple times — and prayed for repentance, renewal, and wisdom in the name of the God of the Bible. It’s nearly impossible to find, but here is CSPAN’s video of the full opening session, with Jack Hibbs’ dramatic prayer at the beginning of the clip.

The Hill’s article unaccountably omits the video or even a transcript of the prayer itself. But it reported that some cantankerous democrats reacted to the prayer like demonic vampires rudely tossed into the noonday sunlight. Twenty-six of them sent a strongly-worded letter of bitter complaint to Speaker Johnson. To them, Hibbs is a racist, sexist, Islamophobic, homophobic, Trump-supporting, kitten-murdering election denier and worse, a Christian Nationalist, who should never ever have been invited to the hallowed halls of Congress in the first place.

How dare he.

The democrats are also now demanding the IRS investigate Calvary Chapel and revoke its tax-exempt status. If we need to have that fight, now is as good a time as any.

Oddly, it wasn’t the first time Hibbs offered prayer in Congress. Here is a clip from Hibbs’s 2013 prayer in Congress (1:21). No similar controversy erupted before. Just saying.

What was even more surprising — and ultimately encouraging — was that only 26 democrats objected. Noteworthy signers unsurprisingly included Jamie Raskin, Jerry Nadler, and Ilhan Omar. So.

That Pastor Hibbs delivered a real prayer in Congress is uplifting and hopeful. But that’s not all! Maybe even more remarkably, on his recent interview with black comedian Katt Williams, influential super-podcaster Joe Rogan (11 million regular listeners) — a committed pre-pandemic atheist — invoked the divine name of Jesus Christ.

CLIP: Joe Rogan invokes the name of Jesus during interview (1:04).

Even better, here is the link to the entire interview on Spotify (3:05:00). Look no further for weekend listening material. Katt and Joe started talking religion around the 13-minute mark and never really stopped.

As noted, Rogan was a hardcore atheist before covid. He hosted any number of prominent atheists and often yukked it up about those silly Christians and Noah’s Ark and stuff. But something amazing has happened to Joe Rogan — one of the decade’s most influential media personalities. I think what happened to him was the trials and tribulations of the pandemic, but that’s a subject for another post.

Something big and exciting is happening. It looks like revival. We shall see. But the bottom line for today is, it’s not too late for any of us.  Don’t get left out.

Have a wonderful weekend! I hope you enjoyed all today’s good news and that you’ll get back here Monday morning as we pick up the threads of a new astounding week of Coffee & Covid. See you then.

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