☕️ ROBOT NAZIS ☙ Tuesday, April 16, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump trial going nowhere fast; Ukraine feels left out as Middle East hogs world's attention; fake war robots hide gross facts; FBI supports bridge theories; strong legal gains in trans battle; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup today includes: Trump trial updates; Ukraine feels unpopular since Israel is getting all the attention; story teasing robots shows new, more serious problems for Ukraine and … Nazis!; national traffic shutdown infrastructure attack fails in red states; FBI investigation shows conspiracy theorists smarter than corporate media reporters; and great legal developments in the culture war to protect kids from predatory transgender doctors and activists.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 The BBC reported on the glacial progress of the Trump trial yesterday in a story headlined, “Trump trial: Dozens of jurors rejected as they say they cannot be impartial.” More accurately, sixty of 96 potential jurors pulled the ripcord in Manhattan yesterday, saying they could not be impartial in Trump’s trial. Sadly, the sixty who bailed were the honest and sane ones. ‘Honest’ because no one can be impartial in this case. ‘Sane’ because who in their right mind wants to become a target for malicious media or angry Antifa goon squads if the state doesn’t prove its case?

In a marvelous example of what all sixty were probably thinking, reporters overheard one prospective juror saying as she left court, “I just couldn't do it.”

The 36 leftovers who swore they could be unbiased began answering questions from the lawyers during voire dire. One man said he listened to NPR in the shower. Another said his girlfriend worked at a bank, “but I have no idea what she does.” A third, when asked what she does in her spare time, responded that she sings, watches TV, goes shopping and goes “to the club.”

She also said she gets all her news from TikTok and Al Jazeera.  Then she was later struck from the jury pool anyway, after changing her mind about her ability to be fair and impartial (she decided she can’t).

Those are the leftovers. Absent a miracle, the selected jurors are likely to be crazy, or at least wildly reckless, because they are willing to walk into the political buzz saw this case will surely become. You can bet the selected jurors’ names will leak. And whoever remains is likely to be a liar. It is unbelievable they can be unbiased about a defendant the media has transformed into the most polarizing figure since the very first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.

If Lincoln had not been killed by an actor, but had survived the Civil War, could the 16th President possibly have gotten a fair jury of unbiased citizens? What about in South Carolina? Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Just imagine how easy it would have been for revenge-minded district attorneys in Southern states to come up with all sorts of creative crimes.

In many ways, Trump’s jury situation is remarkably similar to what Lincoln would have faced. Maybe this is yet another reason why we’ve never prosecuted presidents before. We can’t give them a fair jury.

Anyway, the BBC reported that at the current pace, jury selection could take two weeks. Those are two critical campaign weeks for Trump, now lost, since the judge ordered the President to attend trial every single day or be jailed. Trump asked for two exceptions: to be briefly excused for his son Barron’s high school graduation, and to be excused for his Presidential immunity arguments at the Supreme Court, which are both scheduled within the next few weeks.

Judge Juan Merchan denied both requests. The Judge didn’t say let’s wait to see how the trial is going or whether it might be a good day for a break anyway. So that’s how this is going to be.

It will be a little while before the interesting stuff happens.

🚀 The Washington Post ran a sad story yesterday headlined, “Ukraine, watching U.S. coalition protect Israel, feels alone”

🎵 All the lonely people… where do they all belong?

Ironically, Russia has been using many of the same Iranian drones and missiles against lonely Ukraine that Iran launched against Israel over the weekend. As Ukrainians see it, the key difference is that the United States and other allies instantly assisted Israel with shooting down the incoming missiles and drones, whereas Ukraine has to do all the work by itself.

Lately, Ukraine has been begging for more missile defense systems, having gotten the first ones we gave them blown up and completely wasted. But yesterday, pro-Ukraine Institute for the Study of War published a report distinguishing Ukraine from Israel geographically. Apparently, it makes a big difference whether your enemy is right next door as opposed to several hours of missile flight time away.

So far, Speaker Johnson has heroically resisted bringing a vote on Ukraine aid to the House floor, but at some point he’ll be forced by the ever-mounting political pressure to do it. Meanwhile corporate media runs breathless stories every single day about Ukraine’s dire circumstances, and a minute-by-minute analysis of every discussion Johnson has about the proposed aid package.

Send President Zelensky a quick note today letting him know you were thinking of him, since he’s feeling forsaken.

🚀 Speaking of the Proxy War, a bizarre and revealing war story launched yesterday. Forbes ran the article under the tantalizing and futuristic headline “Robots Reinforce Ukraine’s Most Vulnerable District As A Key Brigade Melts Down” Robots!

Forbes cover picture. It’s not a robot. It’s just a guy setting up a mortar. But doesn’t it LOOK robotic?

The main reason I called the article bizarre is that, in spite of the word’s prominent appearance in the headline, “robot” does not appear anywhere else in the article until the second to last sentence. But it’s even weirder than that; the article’s final sentence revealed that, when Forbes was talking about robots, it just meant drones. Do drones satisfy the intrigue and curiosity raised by the article’s dramatic, Terminator II-style headline?

This was literally the only place robots were even discussed in the article, and it turned out to be drones:

Syrskyi seems to appreciate the risk. It’s not for no reason that he singled out Chasiv Yar for a major robotic reinforcement… One obvious advantage of drones over human soldiers: they don’t have politics.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but drones aren’t robots. Not proper ones, anyway.

Weird. If not robots, what was the article really about? Remember how much media coverage they gave the Russian Wagner Group mini-mutiny?  I think that’s what this article is kind of describing, except from the Ukrainian side, and buried under a journalistic chicken coop of distraction.  Let’s dig it up and see what we find.

First of all, to make Ukraine’s setback sound less bad, Forbes was forced to admit the Nazi thing. If you ever needed a link to send people who refuse to believe that the Ukrainian army is packed with literal Nazis, this Forbes robot article should do the trick.  It tuned out that Ukraine, the world’s last hope to save democracy, is silly with National Socialists:

The Ukrainian military has labored, for years, to root out far-right extremists in its ranks. The latest clash between the extremists and the defense ministry in Kyiv couldn’t have come at a worse time—or in a worse place. The terrible task of defending the critically important district initially fell to the 67th Brigade, a 2,000-strong all-volunteer unit that formed around the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, which is part of the far-right Right Sector political group.

The Right Sector’s former leader, Dmytro Yarosh, said he draws inspiration from Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist considered a Nazi collaborator. But there were enough extremists in the brigade that it became a problem.

Forbes was shooting for a narrative that the battle setbacks are actually good because it’s part of “rooting out” Nazis. (When Forbes describes the Right Sector political group as being “far-right,” it means Nazi. It’s funny how corporate media so easily finds Nazis here in America, but has too much difficulty locating them in Ukraine. I wonder how Ukraine’s Nazis feel about cross dressing.)

The most troubling report was, well, look at what these Nazis were doing to unsuspecting new recruits:

Kyiv discovered, among other scandals, that the 67th Brigade’s officers were sending new volunteers—those without ties to the Right Sector—into combat with inadequate training and support. The officers derisively called the new volunteers “pixels” after the pixelated pattern on their newly-issued uniforms. As bad as the Right Sector troops’ attitude was toward apolitical troops, “the attitude toward the ‘pixels’ was even worse,” Ukrainian Pravda reported. “They were the first to be sent into combat.”

It might be amoral, but those Ukrainian Nazis aren’t dumb. Let the new guys give the Russians target practice. They’re pretty much useless for anything else, anyway.

The problem is though, that kind of practical thinking is bad for the recruiting effort. So Forbes explained that, in response to this shocking situation of pixelated soldiers, Ukraine dissolved the Nazi 67th Brigade and merged it with other units. On purpose.

The article then ambiguously reported, “In losing the 67th Brigade, defenders also lost the 67th Brigade’s tanks and artillery.” Why? Was it because the tanks and artillery were re-assigned to other units not on the front? Why not keep the tanks and artillery at the front?  It wasn’t completely clear from the article.

But several war bloggers claimed the veteran 67th Nazi Brigade was mad because Kiev kept sending it straight to the front. So it got fed up and yesterday dramatically abandoned its position on the line — fleeing, in protest — and leaving behind for the Russians the 67th’s tanks and artillery and other equipment.

If the story is true, it would be a major military failure, at a key strategic location, at a very bad time for the war, and it deserved much more fulsome coverage than being buried inside a fake story about Nazi war robots.

💉 Robots appeared again in a totally unrelated article that didn’t even advertise “robots” in the headline. MedPage today ran the story late last week headlined, “Francis Collins Discloses His 'Aggressive' Prostate Cancer Diagnosis.”

As you may know, Francis Collins was the former NIH director who during the pandemic organized a secret, vicious “takedown” of good, honest scientists that Collins and that cockroach Fauci laughably called “fringe epidemiologists.” Beyond that, the evidence — which keeps trickling out — strongly suggests Collins also helped organize a broad coverup of covid’s lab origins.

Collins, 73, told MedPage last week that about a month ago his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) score shot up. Also a long-benign tumor had grown, quickly and aggressively, you might say in a sort of turbo fashion, smack dab in his prostate, causing his doctors to assign a Gleason Score of severity of 9 out of 10.

That was all bad news. The one bright spot for Collins was the lack of any evidence of metastasis, so the tumor is still operable. Dr. Collins is now scheduled for a high-tech, robotic (not a drone), radical prostatectomy.  We pray for a successful surgery.

Encouragingly, King Charles and Lloyd Austin are both said to be doing well with their prostate cancers. Technically, the King has a “non-prostate” prostate cancer; it’s complicated, but his mystery cancer related to an enlarged prostate was described this week as responsive to treatment. Meanwhile, Secretary Austin’s cancer prognosis was said to be “excellent” back in January.

I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying. But prostate cancer is one of the more common types of post-jab turbo cancer that we’ve seen.

🔥 Yesterday there was an organized, low-intensity, national domestic terror attack in most major cities. Fox News (and only Fox) ran the story, headlined “Anti-Israel agitators shut down traffic, disrupt cities all across US in demand for Gaza ceasefire.”

Other platforms mostly covered the story as purely local interest. For example, San Fransisco:

Or Chicago:

Similar reports of activist-fueled traffic jams flooded in from New York City, Oakland, Washington DC, San Antonio, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and more. In blue states, it was mostly bedlam, inconvenience, and highly irritated commuters, while police stood by and allowed the ‘protests’ to continue:

Blue states are funny. Had these protestors been blocking the sidewalk to an abortion clinic, they would be cooling off in federal prison right now. Weird.

Meanwhile, in Florida, highway-blocking activists were quickly removed and arrested in Tampa and Miami.

Allegedly, these nationwide, infrastructure-related ‘protests’ were organized by people who oppose Israel’s war against Hamas. I can’t say for sure, but having watched lots of video, yesterday’s protestors remarkably resembled the very same people who block roads protesting for climate change or transgender rights or Ukraine or whatever is the current thing.

🔥 It used to take about six months for conspiracy theories to become conspiracy facts, but the cycle time seems to be shortening up. You may recall that, after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed following a container ship’s unexplained power loss, some people suspected there might be more to the story than just a coincidental accident.

But corporate media laughed like hyenas at all the silly conspiracy theories.

For instance, MSNBC prominently ran an op-ed titled, “The MAGA world's bridge conspiracies highlight an incredibly dark reality. Somehow that wasn’t perfectly clear, the article somehow conflated questioning the cause of the container ship’s loss of power with MAGA politics. I don’t really understand the author’s reasoning (I blame the public school system), but this is how he explained it:

For most Americans it was a breathtaking disaster and human tragedy. But far-right conspiracy theorists saw it as an opportunity. In a rapid flood of social media posts, politicians and “pundits” insisted that the disaster could not have simply been an accident.

“Far-right” conspiracy theorists. They’re probably Ukrainian Nazis. Or robots. Or both — far-right robot Nazis! But I digress.

Guess what happened next? Yesterday, mere weeks after the collapse, The Washington Post ran a curious story headlined, Federal criminal investigation opened into Key Bridge crash. The FBI is now investigating the “simple accident.”

The FBI, of course, is not saying anything about the pending criminal investigation. But that didn’t stop the Washington Post from quoting several ‘experts’ opining that it doesn’t mean anything serious, the FBI is probably just looking into some paperwork problem, or a minor failure to comply with port regulations, or some transgression of admiralty law, or — and I am not making this up — vessels being “unseaworthy.”

I never realized seaworthiness was within the FBI’s salty jurisdiction. You learn something new every day. Now I know who to call when the rental boat’s ice chest is empty.

The fact is, nobody knows what the FBI is up to, since the feds aren’t talking. But if it were “simply an accident,” there would be nothing to criminally investigate. Therefore, the investigation, just by existing, confirms the suspicions of the conspiracy theorists who thought there must be more to the story. It also, once again, revealed the useless corporate media as obsequious government puppies who enjoy being humiliated.

🔥 There was plenty of good legal news yesterday about protecting kids from deranged transgender doctors. First up was an article in Fox News, headlined “Tennessee lawmakers pass bill criminalizing adults who help minors get transgender procedures.” The sub-headline added, “Adults who break the proposed law could face 3 to 15 years behind bars.” Now, we’re talking.

It wasn’t even close. The bill passed the state's Senate on Thursday on a 25-4 vote. If passed though the House, it would create a felony for any adult aiding a minor in seeking gender transition procedures. Adults breaking the law will face prison time of three to 15 years and fines of up to $10,000.

Next up was a terrific story in the New York Times that was also encouraging news for Tennessee’s bill, headlined “Supreme Court Clears Way, for Now, for Idaho to Ban Transgender Treatment for Minors.”

In yesterday’s 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court temporarily allowed Idaho to enforce its recent law banning gender-affirming treatment for minors. Like Tennessee’s bill, the Idaho law, called the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature. The law makes it a felony for doctors to provide “transgender medical care” to minors, even so-called hormone treatments.

The basis for the Supreme Court’s decision did not address the law’s merits, but rather was aimed at so-called “universal injunctions,” where a court bans enforcement of a law for everyone, not just the parties to the lawsuit. That’s what happened to Idaho’s law, and yesterday the Supremes held the injunction stopping the law should have been limited to the four anonymous plaintiffs (two parents and two kids).

In other words, there were only four plaintiffs but the lower court’s injunction of the law extended to two million Idahoans — none of whom were parties to the lawsuit. This might seem like a technical issue, but it was a highly interesting development for lawyers who practice in this area. It’s good and bad.

Now, doctors in Idaho who perform these shocking and harmful procedures on kids can be arrested and criminally charged. That’s progress.

Have a terrific Tuesday! Roll on back here tomorrow morning for more hot and tasty Coffee & Covid.

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