☕️ STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL ☙ Wednesday, December 4, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Awful nominee out; Trump's strategic nominee now on the chessboard; Syria story starts leaking; personality journalism; Russian crackdown on Satanists raises eyebrows; Supremes consider trans; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! Your roundup today includes: conservatives’ least favorite Trump nomination withdraws from consideration after quiet pushback; the President-Elect plays rope-a-dope with an astonishing alternative nomination for Defense Secretary; NBC’s Syria story hints at the real cause of the conflict, and the evils of personality journalism; Russia cracks down on Satanists and clues emerge; and the US Supreme Court takes on its first major transgender case.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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The Washington Post ran a very gratifying story yesterday headlined, “Trump’s pick to head DEA withdraws after GOP criticism of his covid policies.” Womp, womp.

Unlike the highly publicized pressure campaign to cancel Matt Gaetz’s nomination, until now corporate media mostly ignored the conservative dissatisfaction over President Trump’s nominee for the DEA, Sheriff Chad “Covid” Chronister. So the pushback propogated on social media rather than through the headlines.

Evidently, the Trump team picked up the social media signal. “The backlash to Chronister,” the Journal reported, “was quieter, and its apparent effects swifter, than the opposition has been to some of Trump’s other picks.”

It is possible, barely, to understand the logic of Chronister’s nomination. He has a strong drug enforcement record. He enjoyed the support of Florida favorites like AG nominee Pam Bondi, who used to work with Chronister in Hillsborough County, and of Senator and former Governor Rick Scott, who called Chronister a “personal friend.” The Sheriff is the son-in-law of a major Trump donor, who presumably advocated for him. Perhaps most significant, the pastor who Chronister arrested in March 2020 for holding church services during lockdowns later befriended him and even supported Chronister’s nomination.

If all of that was the Trump Team’s calculus, they badly underestimated the nation’s mood. Conservatives are nowhere near ready to forgive public servants who, though they may only have been doing their duty and following the law, they still revealed much too much enthusiasm for pandemic authoritarianism. Like it or not, good or bad, the pandemic was, is, and forever will be a kind of litmus test. It’s partly an ideological test, but it’s mostly a test of character.

Chronister’s career evidenced all the hallmarks of a woke, lifelong Democrat who recently switched parties out of bare political calculus, so he could not pass an ideological test. In the final analysis, though, Sheriff Chronister failed the character test. It wasn’t just the pastor he arrested. Chronister exuberantly embraced all the obscene, anti-scientific, dictatorial tools supplied by the federal government and corporate media. He’s never apologized or even claimed to have changed his viewpoint.

If anything, Chronister seemed to stubbornly stick to his guns. Only yesterday did Chronister’s office finally delete from its Facebook stream the 2020 press release about arresting Pastor Howard-Browne for breaking covid quarantine. But it was far too late.

This story is important, not because Trump’s transition team withdrew a bad candidate and smartly yielded to quiet conservative pressure. Rather, this story is a morality tale about accountability and justice over people’s decisions during covid, with a side dish about how transformative social media has become, since Chronister’s offensive covid record would have been concealed by corporate media just a few years ago.

There’s zero appetite to let things go, forgive and forget, or Move On. The absence of any official accountability for pandemic excesses has created an abhorrent vacuum of intense frustration that nature has filled with a vast, informal army of volunteer enforcers, both individuals and conservative groups. It’s a kind of unorganized covid reconciliation movement.

For example, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association opposed Chronister’s nomination, saying it was “shocked and dismayed” by his selection because of his enforcement of covid mandates. Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and others tweeted their concerns about Chronister, calling him competely disqualified.

We bear Sheriff Chronister no ill will, and wish him the best in his future endeavors, but we aren’t sorry to see Sheriff Chronister’s name struck from the Cabinet. His covid chickens came home to roost, and hopefully this experience will spur some serious self-reflection. According to the New York Times’ story on Chronister’s withdrawal, some solid, more experienced candidates are now back in play for DEA.

Everyone placed their bets during covid. Some people, like the Sheriff, bet on the system and on name-brand Science. A few of us were compelled to bet on the Constitution, on doing the right thing under pressure, and on the principles of critical scientific examination.

Sheriff Chronister made a bad bet.

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The Wall Street Journal ran an exclusive breaking story this morning headlined, “Trump Mulls Replacing Pete Hegseth With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.” The sub-headline added, “President-elect is discussing replacing current Pentagon nominee as the former Fox News host faces mounting scrutiny over allegations about his personal life.”

There’s little substance to the story. The “exclusive” reveal was that Trump dropped DeSantis’ name at a recent Mar-a-Lago dinner to possibly replace Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary. Hegseth is currently navigating through a squall of stale “Me-Too” allegations.

Hegseth may be in turbulent waters, since rumors are circulating widely that six Senators staunchly oppose Hegseth’s nomination —potentially fatal to his nomination— but he’s not done yet. The Journal reported that “So far, no Republican senators have publicly said they would oppose Hegseth’s nomination, and Trump still publicly backs him.”

So unlike Chronister, Hegseth remains in the race. For his part, DeSantis’ office declined to comment on the rumor Trump may be considering him, which just fueled the fires of speculation.

Just below the surface, a fascinating political dance is unfolding. Here’s the timeline: First, Trump nominated Pete Hegseth. Then Trump’s deep state enemies, probably including Pentagon brass and the military-industrial lobby, deployed “military grade” background research, dragging out some old allegations of sexual abuse (never prosecuted) to undermine Hegseth’s nomination. So Trump responded yesterday by casually suggesting Ron DeSantis who, as a former Navy JAG and a top governor, is clearly qualified.

The prospect of Ron DeSantis as Defense Secretary might terrify the deep staters even more than Pete Hegseth. DeSantis’ scorn for the Ukraine war is well known. His hatred for the deep state, fine-tuned during the pandemic, is on display in dozens of public rants. At minumum, DeSantis is equally dangerous a pick as Hegseth.

After Trump’s dinner comment, those opposing Hegseth must now consider the possibility they could win their war against Hegseth only to face a sure-to-be-approved DeSantis. So, what will they do? Should they back down on Hegseth and deal with him, or take the chance it could be DeSantis?

It was another brilliant move; Trump has boxed them in.

For the record, I’d prefer to keep our Governor in Florida, thank you.

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Ha! I told you so. Buried in yesterday’s NBC News article headlined, “Syria thrust back into civil war as its allies focus on other fronts,” was this nugget about the weekend’s surprise attack by rebels in Syria, which I have called the new front in the Proxy War. First, look at this surprising question NBC just slipped into the middle of the paragraph:

There it was! Like an overnight Amazon Prime package, a new narrative, delivered right on schedule. But … why should the U.S. get involved? Amongst all the various byzantine explanations for the new Syrian conflict, what suggests any possible U.S. interest?

When I first reported this story, I speculated that the U.S. had secretly started the conflict using its captive Muslim terrorist groups. I guessed it was the latest front in the Proxy War, since plans to let Ukraine launch missiles deep into Russian territory have abruptly fallen through. (Russia’s new super-weapon makes direct U.S. involvement too risky. The U.S. is directly involved in Ukraine’s missile launches since America must provide the launch codes and satellite guidance coordinates.)

For full disclosure, the warbloggers I normally follow have not connected Syria to the Proxy War. They seem to think the dispute is related to some kind of grudge between Turkey’s President Erdogan and Syria’s President Assad. But to me, this kind of overly-simplistic, personality-centric conflict analysis is another red flag for deep-state narrative hijinx.

🚀 Has it ever troubled you how the media always reduces the Ukraine Proxy War to a battle of wills between two men? President Putin on one side of the ‘v’, and an actual actor, Zelensky, on the other side. Zelensky isn’t even the President of Ukraine anymore yet, frozen in political amber, he remains the centerpiece of this “Wag the Dog” narrative of competing personalities, good cops, bad cops, villains and heroes.

Anyone who studies the history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict for more than five seconds finds a rich tapestry of intrigue and geopolitical betrayal, drawn out over decades back to the Soviet Union days, and long pre-dating Zelensky. Not only that, but the populations of both Ukraine and Russia maintain intense feelings about the war, levels of chronic bilateral dislike bordering on hatred for each other, inflamed passions marinated in generations of hard feelings, held grudges, and mutual blame.

With all the depth and richness of the conflict, what does corporate media feed us? A kindergarten bedtime story about the black knight, Putin, who wants to conquer the world, and the white knight, Zelensky, the unlikely but plucky underdog in the right place at the wrong time, struggling heroically to save us all from the dark night of … fascism or something.

(Fine, Zelensky can’t be the white knight; he is the avocado knight. They literally plastered a storybook pastel on him as soon as the war started. Green is Zelensky’s brand.)

Here is ChatGPT’s summary of Zelensky’s political qualifications. Does it more describe someone who could actually lead a country through a war against a near-superpower, or more like someone hired to pretend to lead a country through the war? ChatGPT:

It’s kind of hard to overstate Zelensky’s inherent absurdity. He played the president on a TV show. They are literally making Wag the Dog into predictive programming.

As an actor, Zelensky performed from scripts written by anonymous scriptwriters. Zelensky came to the job with zero experience helpful for leading a country, much less leading a country in wartime. He’s not even a real history teacher. How does he successfully navigate Ukrainian politics? How did he learn what all the Cabinet positions do? How did this true outsider build constructive relationships with the established political actors and prevent opposition from arising?

Maybe Zelensky is an unrecognized prodigy or genius whose buried talents blossomed in a shock election just as absurd as his scripted election on Servant of the People. That could be. But it seems much more reasonable to believe Zelensky is a Biden-like puppet. Who’s writing his scripts now?

Yet the media never explains any of this or even mentions it at all. And that’s the point. It’s not our job to try to figure out what’s really going on in Eastern Europe and who’s pulling the strings behind the scenes. That’s the media’s job. Or at least it was the media’s job, until they sold out for easy government money and surrendered in cowardice after a few sly threats from the FBI.

Anyway, the point is you should be very suspicious, if not outright unbelieving, when the media boils complicated geopolitical events down into childlike, simplistic personality contrasts. It is not Putin versus Zelensky in Ukraine, don’t make me laugh. And it is just as much not Erdogan versus Assad in Syria.

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Yesterday, Novaya Gazeta Europe ran a story headlined, “Anti-authoritarian group The Satanic Temple deemed ‘undesirable’ in Russia.” At the risk of offending Satanists, I would have said they are pretty much undesirable everywhere, but I digress.

Russia, with a constitution quite different from ours, has a system where a particular group or ideology can be deemed officially undesirable, which then creates a network of legal impediments frustrating the group’s operation in Russia. For instance, Novaya Gazeta reported that when groups like the Satanic Temple are declared undesirable, they must dissolve.

Anyway, this was just a quirky religious interest story until I reached the paragraph explaining why exactly Russian prosecutors finally decided to ban the Satanic Temple. It wasn’t for being Satanists. Or at least, not just for being Satanists. No, Russia banned the Satanic Temple for being a United States dirty-tricks front group:

In a statement, the Prosecutor General’s Office accused members of The Satanic Temple of “promoting occult ideology” by using Satanic symbols to “discredit traditional spiritual and moral values” as well as “spreading destructive pseudo-theological ideas and justifying violence … with the support of US government agencies.”

Four years ago, I would have never even considered that the Satanic Temple, a demonic deception masquerading as an anti-religion religion, might actually have been started and controlled by the United States government. But after covid, the Twitter files, and after witnessing the Whitmer Fednapping Hoax, I’m pretty much prepared to consider just about anything.

The Satanic Temple started its dark operations in 2012 — three years into Obama’s first term. Coincidentally, that was the same year Obama signed the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, which lifted the ban on government use of propaganda against Americans. Also that year, Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which first authorized the President to sanction individuals without Congressional approval — at that time, targeting Russia’s oligarchs and politicians.

Now we discover the Satanic Temple having spread like a virus in a few short years to Russia, working to undermine the Ukraine war. Weird. It’s difficult to imagine a less likely group to achieve international success. Who’s funding the Satanic Temple?

The Satanic Temple is an inherently political organization. They are involved in many other issues besides forcing state capitols to host Baphomet statues at Christmas time. For instance, the Temple is very active in promoting abortion. Consider that in September, 2020, the Huffington Post ran a bizarre story by “guest writer” Jamie Smith headlined, “The Death Of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Pushed Me To Join The Satanic Temple.” (Author ‘Jamie Smith’ has never published anything else in the HuffPo, neither before nor after.)

But possibly most suspicious of all are the Satanic Temple’s many lawsuits and campaigns supporting its ‘anti-religious’ activism. Our government cannot sue itself. Government agencies may not directly oppose pro-religious movements; that would violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.

But the government, or one of its innumerable, unaccountable agencies, could secretly fund a group devoted to opposing traditional Christianity.

For instance, here’s the web page where the Temple bragged about bullying Florida’s Osceola County School Board to cancel its new chaplain program. After they threatened to supply the county with Satanic chaplains, and sue if their chaplains weren’t provided equal access, the school board backed down. Mission accomplished.

What do you think? Is the Satanic Temple, as the Russians claim, a U.S.-government-funded and controlled NGO?

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The Washington Post ran a story yesterday headlined, “Supreme Court to weigh bans on puberty blockers, hormones for trans teens.” And so it begins.

It was always in the cards. Today, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments over whether Tennessee and more than 20 other states can ban genital mutilation and sterilization procedures for minors.

The states argue that states have always held police power authority to legislate the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens by regulating state medical associations and treatments. The Biden Administration argues that the new laws clearly target transgender kids, and so violate equal protection, since their ‘gender’ is equivalent to sex.

Amusingly, in every other context the trans lobby insists that gender and sex are completely separate and unrelated. But in court, they always argue gender and sex are synonymous, and they want the same constitutional protection provided to biological women.

The government’s equal-protection argument in this case will make your brain ache:

Haha, “put simply.” In other words, they argue that boys “receive” testosterone naturally, which allows the boys to later live as men. But girls aren’t allowed to receive testosterone from doctors, and so they can’t live as men when they grow up. (The reference to puberty blockers was jarringly out of place, since boys who grow up to be men never “receive” puberty blockers, naturally or any other way.)

My friends, that is the kind of incisive legal argument our tax dollars are paying for these days.

As compelling as the government’s tortured argument may be, the Times lacked confidence about the Biden Administration’s chances:

I’m not confident in the government’s chances either. I expect the Supreme Court to do the right thing.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! Coffee & Covid will return tomorrow morning with more essential news and commentary.

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