☕️ STILETTO ERA ☙ Wednesday, December 18, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

NeverTrumper sudden and unexpected about-face; Pelosi's high heels end an era; Ukraine terrorist assassinate Biden investigator; Biden joins useless feds dismissing drone story; and more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! It’s time to start getting your shopping done, stat. In today’s roundup: NeverTrumpers join progressives trying to get off the sinking SS Woke and throws élites under the boat; Pelosi’s unexpected tumble produces other unexpected results in House committee elections and the end of an era; Ukraine’s terrorists assassinate Russian general who investigated Biden’s connections to illegal US biolabs; and another forgettable drone story update as useless feds conscript the sundowner-in-chief.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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As progressives scurry down the bow lines and line up nose-to-tail to leap off the sinking aft railing to the safety of the dock, the New York Times’ pet NeverTrumper and sometimes bedbug Bret Stephens ran a tearful, apologetic op-ed yesterday headlined, unsurprisingly, “Done With Never Trump.”

Please take me back. I leave it to the good graces of my esteemed readers to reckon whether Brett is sincere this time, or whether he’s opportunistically evacuating a doomed planet. For purposes of this comment, I will presume Stephens means it, this time.

The article is not difficult to sum up. Self-labeled ‘conservative’ Stephens did everything humanly possible to undermine and frustrate President Trump’s election. He stumped for Nikki Haley. He endorsed the Cackling Candidate-slash-Border Czar. He sided with unhinged leftists who insisted that Trump would “destroy democracy.” And in yesterday’s piece, Bret further humiliated himself by admitting that he actually did it, he followed through with his wild threats and bubbled the ballot for Harris back on November 5th.

Bret says he voted for the worst Democrat candidate for President in our lifetimes because of January 6th and the (blah blah intellectual-sounding nonsense about threats to democracy blah). I note without comment that Stephens wrote in a column he ran six weeks ago, the day after the election, that he’d voted for Harris because of Ukraine and the “moral health of the conservative movement writ large.”

But now it’s January 6th. Maybe, with further reflection, Brett has obtained more clarity.

Two observations: first, like progressives, the NeverTrump movement is experiencing a bewildering identity crisis. NeverTrumpers like Stephens are frantically searching for an unused escape pod, looking to evacuate a dying starship, and hoping to come back home to the remade and newly ascendant Republican party.

Where else can they go?

Second, the recognition that progressivism is nothing more than a reprehensible ideology of unmerited arrogance appears to be slowly permeating the inch-thick craniums of the élite scribbling class, of which Brett Stephens will quickly admit he is a member. After Brett described MAGA as a “patriotic but angry movement” —the most charitable description he’s ever allowed— he admitted that, while MAGA is still a bunch of bigots, the bigots have a right to be angry at the elite class:

“If democracy means anything,” Stephens gushed, “it’s that ordinary people, not elites, get to decide how important an event like Jan. 6 is to them.” Now he tells us. I was with him to that point, but then Stephens made his biggest blunder, concluding January 6th “turns out, not so” important to MAGA.

But Brett still doesn’t get it. January 6th is intensely important, just not the way he thinks. We’re not finished with January 6th, not by a long shot. But I digress.

If the criticism that “smug, self-satisfied elites think they know better but often don’t” seems mild, remember that progressive self-identity is know-it-all-ism. They don’t mind being called self-satisfied, why would they, but calling them wrong cuts them to the core.

The nation appears to be having a kind of moment involving a gross, naked emperor and a bunch of people noticing this isn’t a nudist-friendly zone.

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Speaking of things happening differently, something else happened a lot differently this week as Democrats settled into their House minority roles. Axios quietly reported the story, headlined “Pelosi takes a hands-off role in House Democrats' internal fights.” More like a hip-off role. Usually, Nancy Pelosi hand-picks all the House committee assignments and whips the Democrats into line. You could almost feel sorry for them. But this time, the aging, day-drinking former Speaker, 106, was sidelined in Germany for hip replacement surgery (“hüftgelenkersatzoperation,” and I am not making that up).

During the House’s critical committee elections this week, Pelosi was persona absentia. “Pelosi,” Axios reported, “is charting a new, more detached course for working her will on the Democratic caucus she once ruled with an iron fist.”

That’s one way of saying it. Something was detached, that’s for sure. The article quoted a “Senior House Democrat” —too chicken to give his name— who admitted that "of course, Nancy was not in much of a position to make calls the last week."

Officially, Nancy’s surgery last Friday was an absolute success, she’s ready to take on the world again, looking to get back to her stock portfolio, she’s never felt better — according to a spokesman. Nancy hasn’t said anything herself, because nobody outside her circle has seen or heard from the Speaker since she fell in Luxembourg.

But the surgery was definitely bad timing what with Democrat committee elections this week, and the result was chaotic. Without her withered hand guiding the tiller, Pelosi’s preferred picks plunged into obscurity.

Progressive darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 35, lost to less photogenic but more moderate Representative Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), 74, for Oversight Committee ranking member. Pelosi pick and California Representative Jim Costa, 72, lost to Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig, 52, to lead the Agriculture Committee. Remarkably egg-shaped Representative Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), 77, stepped down to avoid losing to Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), 61, for ranking member on the critical Judiciary Committee.

And so it went, on down the line. Just as Pelosi’s fractured hip was replaced with a new and improved hip, House democrats replaced their fractured, aging party leadership with new blood, across the board. With Pelosi’s haggard shadow laying across Europe instead of falling on House Democrats, with one exception (AOC), House Democrats preferred younger candidates. Indeed, the New York Times predicted this result back on November 30th:

Did Pelosi’s choice of four-inch heels create a saner Democrat party in the House? And people say stilettos aren’t good for anything. We should be thanking them.

As far as I know, patients recovering from hip replacement surgery these days can get back on the phone a few hours following surgery. Is she in hiding? Was she sidelined? The entire party is painfully aware that Pelosi just stage-managed the Democrats’ direst defeat in living memory. They just don’t want to make Nancy’s banishment into a public spectacle.

The overextended, superannuated Pelosi era is over.

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Talk is cheap, which is why I almost skipped this non-story, but social media was buzzing about it all day yesterday. NBC’s article was headlined, “Biden says he supports a congressional stock trading ban.” You have got to be kidding me. You could cut the irony with a knife.

CLIP: Biden whispers criticism of Congressional stock trading (1:21).

In an interview with the obsequious, far-left progressive blog More Perfect Union, Biden answered a softball question about how he, Joe “Ten Percent for the Big Guy” Biden, never traded stocks while he was in Congress, and let him explain how he, Burisma Biden, thinks there should be a law against Congressional stock trading. People should make their money the honest way, like forcing Ukrainian gas companies to hire your son as a “Board Member,” or shaking down Chinese oligarchs for kickbacks.

Anyway, Joe said, “I think we should be changing the law that we have to abide by at the federal level—that nobody, nobody in the Congress should be able to make money in the stock market while they’re in the Congress. Not a joke.”

Nancy Pelosi, one of the House’s biggest traders, who helped overthrow Joe for Kamala, was unavailable for comment. Something about her hip.

In fairness, Joe never needed to play the market. He had lots of other ways to grift his and his crime family’s way through his political career. Hunter’s hand-painted (mostly) portraits, which are not stocks, have been very lucrative, for example.

NBC covered a non-story. It’s going nowhere. It was just something snarky Joe said. And it helpfully came up right as Congress is debating a last-minute budget to fund a bunch of progressive priorities. This issue usually surfaces somewhere in corporate media whenever the deep state wants something. (For a much better story, research how after the Edward Snowden disclosures in 2013, Adam Schiff —yes, that one— concluded the intelligence agencies needed reform and started proposing various possible laws reining them in. After Democrats put him on the Intelligence Committee, CBS ran a “breaking” story about “insider trading” in Congress, and just like that, the story went away —poof!— and Adam got on the reservation.)

In 2011, Congress passed the STOCK Act, designed to prevent insider trading in Congress, and requires “timely” disclosures of trades. So we already have a law, as Biden well knows, since he was Vice-President when Obama signed the Stock Act into law. The problem is that nobody enforces the Act, except through insignificant fines ($200).

In truth, the Act is a little murky on enforcement.

No member of Congress has ever been prosecuted under the STOCK Act, despite what you might call a “target-rich environment.” There is not even any public record of payments of the $200 fines for late reporting trades. Some watchdogs think public officials are ignoring even these insignificant fines. To be fair, the STOCK Act’s main focus was to require disclosure of trades, to disinfect things with sunlight, and to let an informed public do the rest.

Obviously, that failed. This summer some good people tried again, filing a tougher, bipartisan bill titled ‘Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks,’ or the ETHICS Act. The ETHICS Act would ban stock trading altogether by lawmakers and some family members. But the bill remains stalled, locked in a committee dog cage, where it is slowly starving to death.

Yesterday, when making his anti-trading comments, Joe never mentioned the ETHICS Act.

The problem is that there is zero incentive in Washington, DC, to change the current system, apart from humility and morality, which are both in short supply. Congressmen are clearly conflicted; voting for ETHICS means voting against their own self-interest and against the most financially lucrative perk that federal public service can offer.

The President also has a conflict; Congressional trades and the prospect of DOJ enforcement is very useful, as blackmail, as the cyclical every-few-years “insider trading” “breaking” media event shows. If the President ever signed an ETHICS law with teeth, he (and the executive-branch deep state) would lose a lot of leverage over Congress.

It will take a miracle to end this incredibly destructive practice. Fortunately, God has been delivering miracles lately. So who knows?

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Is a deep state cleanup underway? The Wall Street Journal ran a suspicious story yesterday headlined, “Ukraine Says It Killed Senior Russian General in Moscow Scooter Bombing.”

According to its own spokesman, Ukraine assassinated a top Russian general in Moscow using an IED attached to a parked electric scooter. Until yesterday when he was involuntarily relieved from duty, General Igor Kirillov headed Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops, charged to protect Russian soldiers from any of those weapons.

We’ve encountered General Kirillov before, remember? He’s the Russian general who investigated the Ukrainian biolabs. He unsuccessfully tried to convince the United Nations —thrice— to focus on what the United States was doing in Ukraine and in other third-world countries. Specifically, Kirillov once said "The Rosemont Seneca Investment Fund, headed by Hunter Biden, and the Soros Foundation are involved in financing biological laboratories in Ukraine."

Here’s a short clip from Kirillov’s presentation on the Ukrainian biolabs (1:29), which I personally believe were the real reason, or maybe the last straw, explaining Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Is it a coincidence that the Ukrainians would target this general, who knew more than anyone on the planet about the Bidens’ and the deep state’s illegal bio-tinkering? The Ukrainians offered a thin cover story they “suspect” Kirillov was involved in an illegal chemical weapons attack in Ukraine, which the Ukrainians never reported to the United Nations, or anybody else, and for which there is no evidence, even though the Ukrainians always start bleating like sheared lambs whenever an apartment building window gets blown out.

Meanwhile, in related news, yesterday Reuters ran a story headlined, “NATO takes over coordination of military aid to Kyiv from US, source says.” Reuters explained it was “ a move widely seen as aiming to safeguard the support mechanism against NATO skeptic U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.”

Don’t let them fool you. They are hard at work trying to frustrate Trump’s second term. The question is, will it work?

Personally, I don’t think Kirillov’s assassination was a coincidence or retaliation for “suspected” involvement in chemical attacks. Instead, I think some people are trying to tie up the loose ends before the new Administration takes over.

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Thank heavens! The New York Post ran a relieving story yesterday headlined, “Biden insists drones pose ‘no sense of danger’ in first comments on mysterious sightings.” So you can relax now.

For the first time, Presidential Cabbage and White House termite Joe Biden mumbled through an answer to reporters’ questions about the New Jersey mystery drones. Fortunately, the leader of the free world cleared up the whole misunderstanding and clarified exactly what has caused all this commotion. Haha, just kidding. Biden didn’t deliver anything except a side of world salad.

Actually, Biden has no idea what the drones are, but like other Executive-branch officials, he is perfectly content not to know. He thinks it is nothing to worry about. What confuses him is why everybody else seems so worked up about it all of a sudden.

Yesterday, in a joint statement, the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration, and the FBI all said their assessment is the drone sightings “include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones.”

It’s all clear now. There you go. You guys need to calling 911 with all these crazy UFO reports. I mean, please. The feds have lots more important things to do than running down weather balloons floating over U.S. military bases.

Of course, the so-called “stars” have been spotted by public officials, local police, and countless reliable citizens who never reported seeing stars as UFOs before. But who knows. Maybe it’s mass hysteria caused by bad clams or something.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! Stay away from strange drones and focus on your Christmas shopping. We’ll pick up the threads again tomorrow, with another delicious and intellectually nutritious C&C roundup.

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