☕️ SWEET UNCLE BOSEY ☙ Saturday, April 20, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump trial update and strategy talk; fiery pre-trial show; indigestible Biden gaffe rankles natives; Ukraine aid and unlikely Johnson defender; Bill Maher goes after the Mouse; new NASA risks; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Time for the weekend roundup, which is a doozy: Trump trial jury selected, fiery trial events, opening statements set for Monday morning, and trial strategy comments; the most delectable 2024 story to eat up yet, and I know I keep saying that; Ukraine aid package set to pass in the House and Speaker Johnson receives an unlikely defense from an unlikely defender; Bill Maher takes it up a notch, this time going after some liberal sacred drag cows; and NASA solves a baffling but dangerous space mystery.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥🔥 The New York Times ran a story late yesterday afternoon headlined, “Full Jury Is Chosen in Trump Criminal Trial.” Inside the Manhattan courthouse, eighteen jurors were selected — twelve seated jurors and six alternates. Opening statements should begin first thing Monday morning. The Times included a helpful infographic summarizing the eighteen juror’s survey responses to the question of where they get their news:

Make of that what you will.

Meanwhile, just outside the courthouse, Max Azzarello, 37, a mentally-ill, former Bernie Sanders supporter (but I repeat myself), a former staffer for two democrat Congressmen, and a Florida man, died dramatically when he lit himself on fire in a sensational and terminal political protest. Max’s reasons remain enigmatic.  His motives appear related to some kind of ‘uni-party’ conspiracy theory involving cryptocurrency and the covid pandemic that nobody seems able to fully explain, despite the angry young man’s manifesto and TikTok rantings immediately circulating widely on social media.

Max Azzarello, during a happier progressive period

Max briefly survived his self-immolation. He was rushed to the hospital as soon as the flames died down. But unfortunately, the disturbed young man died a few hours later, succumbing to his self-inflicted injuries. However dreadful one imagines the global conspiracy to be, setting oneself on fire is unlikely to hurt the conspirators as much as the protestor, unless I am missing something. But it is likely to result in an impressive degree of discomfort, not to mention pretty poor prospects of seeing the protest project all the way through to the end.

Not recommended.

In other trial news, I found Maggie Haberman’s comment from the New York Times’ live stream to be professionally fascinating. Trump’s lawyers are creating a very detailed record of all Judge Merchan’s decisions, even small ones:

But legally speaking, Judge Merchan is wrong. There isn’t really any point where Trump must “accept his rulings.” The defense’s ability to draft motions for reconsideration is limited only by available time and available lawyers.

When a case is particularly important, and when the defendant is very well-funded, there will usually be two teams of lawyers in the courtroom at all times. The team we see is the litigation team. But the other team, a team of lawyers not seated at counsel table, is a team of appellate lawyers. Their job is to watch the case like hawks, and advise the litigation team in real time about how to help trap the judge into a legally fatal mistake, and about how to preserve any such errors for the appeal when they do happen.

The tobacco companies perfected this technique during the cigarette trials.

The reason a defendant might file motions challenging every little decision the judge makes would be to get the judge to talk more. Whenever a judge is officially talking, he might make an error. So the more a defendant can get the judge to talk and rule on things, the greater the chance he’ll make some kind of useful mistake.

Plus, all human beings are susceptible to a syndrome called “decision fatigue.” You’ve surely experienced it. The simple process of making repetitive decisions is mentally draining. Having to make many decisions in a row — like when you’re building a house, planning a wedding, or plotting a Ukrainian coup — can be taxing and exhausting.

Judges must make decisions all day long, every day. Often the decisions are important, hard, and contentious, and there are consequences for getting it wrong, because there’s an appellate court potentially peeking over the judge’s shoulder. By forcing the judge to reconsider every little decision, Trump’s lawyers are effectively doubling the normal decision fatigue the judge is experiencing. Being forced to make every decision twice doubles the odds he’ll make a mistake.

In light of these dynamics, I found Maggie’s next comment from the Times’ live stream to be a sign the judge may be starting to wear out a little:

Judge Merchan has a weekend to recover. But if this week was crazy, next week will be crazy times infinity.

🔥🔥 Well, maybe we shouldn’t try to rate ‘crazy’ on a scale. I’ve often remarked  how 2024 is, well, a unique year, a year of unexpected and unpredictable disclosures. But, even though I thought I was prepared for anything, I didn’t see this coming. I am not making this story up.

During yesterday’s White House Press Briefing, Fox News’ Peter Doocey got to ask a question he’d probably been waiting to ask for his entire career:

“Why is President Biden saying that his uncle was eaten by cannibals?”

The overused descriptor “clown world” is wretchedly insufficient to adequately depict the shocking reality of questions like Peter’s cannibal inquiry being relevant in any way to the most powerful empire in Earth history.

But it’s so much worse than that. Allow me to explain.

It all started on Wednesday. Joe Biden was speaking — or more accurately, mumbling — at a campaign event in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He had just come from a photo-op stop at the Scranton Veterans Memorial Park, where his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr.’s name is reported to be listed on a memorial wall.

So Joe disclosed — for the first time anywhere, ever — the tasteless story of his Uncle Finnegan’s tragic last meal. I’ll let Joe tell his own story in this clip, while he was also giving his best impression of a recently-exhumed talking corpse:

CLIP: Joe Biden tells the sad culinary story of Uncle Bosey (0:32).

Since Joe’s mumbling can be hard to stomach, here’s the story’s short recipe:

“And my uncle, they called him Ambrose, then Brosey. They called him Bosey. My Uncle Bosey. He’s a hell of an athlete, they tell me, when he was a kid.

And he became an Army Air Corps, before the Air Force came along. He flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones. And he got shot down in New Guinea. And, uh, they never found the body, because there used to be, there are a lot of cannibals — for real — in that part of New Guinea.”

For real. Let us pause to momentarily recall Air Corps pilot Uncle Bosey’s selfless sacrifice. He literally gave it all for his country, life and limb. Or, limbs. Apparently.

The headlines generated by this tasteless new Biden family anecdote are, well, indescribable. Not to mention unbelievable. Only in 2024. Some enterprising reporters thought to ring the New Guineans, to find out what they thought about being accused of chowing down on the Leader of the Free World’s maternal relative. The gastronomic headline from yesterday’s UK Daily Mail pushed back:

Maybe they were just hungry? Here in the states, the compliant U.S. corporate media seasoned Biden’s esculent family history with a soupçon of delicate, or delectable, skepticism:

According to the Intelligencer’s article, the U.S. Army’s official records on Uncle Bosey’s final flight don’t precisely match up with President Robert L. Peters’ newfound culinary recollections:

Returning now to Peter Doocey’s question, posed to ultra-diverse Press Secretary Karine Von Damme, who answered by snapping hungrily at Doocey while refusing to address the meat of the reporter’s savory inquiry:

Well, what should we expect her to say? A Biden divided against itself cannot stand. Even if served with spicy collard greens.

Much could be said — and is being said — about Uncle Bosey’s unfortunate terminal destination in a crock pot. Biden defenders gamely suggested the Resident was merely regurgitating long-standing family lore, passed at the kitchen table, which was heretofore concealed under the gravy of history.

Why are we only hearing about this historically delicious story now?

AP File Photo (not Uncle Bosey)

I hope that one day, after he is no longer using it, there are plans to study Biden’s brain. Which arguably could begin anytime.

🔥 Later today, on the weekend, the House votes on the deeply-unpopular Ukraine aid bill, which has been conveniently packaged with aid for Israel and the anti-TikTok bill, since those things obviously go together. The entire Republican base is as outraged as a pack of wrongly-accused New Guinea cannibals. Their ire is directed at most Congressional Republicans and the Speaker, Mike Johnson, who until five minutes ago repeatedly pledged never to take up Ukraine aid until the border had first and fully been addressed.

Corporate media quickly took up the flag to defend the newly-elected replacement Speaker, in an op-ed titled, This week exposed the true fragility of Mike Johnson's House — and the entire GOP.

Corporate media’s help is not helpful for the Speaker.

The Ukraine package will pass. It will be a terrific windfall for the military-industrial complex, from whom $61 billion of deadly new weapons will be bought, whether to ship now to Ukraine or to replace weapons previously provided. The aid might help Ukraine hang on until after the election. But it won’t make any difference in the long run — and nobody is even claiming it will.

I have been reluctantly critical of Speaker Johnson recently. But I would be remiss were I to omit this impassioned defense of the embattled Speaker by none less than Pastor Jack Hibbs, who recently endured a vast leftwing cancellation effort for delivering a real opening prayer in Congress.

  YOUTUBE: Pastor Jack Hibbs defends Speaker Mike Johnson (14:20).

In Pastor Hibbs’s message, uploaded yesterday, he referenced confidential discussions he’s had with various Congressmen, presumably including Speaker Johnson himself. Given the Pastor’s close relationship with Republicans in Congress, it is credible that he could have access to that information.

In short, Pastor Hibbs unequivocally defended Johnson. He referred to behind-the-scenes issues — issues he was not at liberty to share — that the Pastor assured were sufficient justification for Johnson’s actions. Pastor Hibbs attested to Johnson’s good faith and described his decisions as made in the country’s best interest.

It’s not beyond believability. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about politics, it is that votes and support for unpopular bills are often not what they appear. Circumstances frequently require lawmakers to take public positions that seem inexplicable without missing backroom, strategic context, which often must remain inaccessible to public scrutiny.

To be clear, I am not sticking up for Speaker Johnson. I don’t have access to the information and discussions to which Pastor Hibbs says he was privy. But I believe that Pastor Hibbs believes it. If, given his long, impeccable record, Pastor Hibbs is unreliable, then nobody can be trusted.

The most we can make of this is that unsurprisingly, there may be more to the Ukraine aid story than we have been told. Which of course is the problem; it’s a lot to ask us all to “trust the process” when we aren’t given any information with which to establish that trust.

We can only wait and watch to see how this plays out.

🔥 In more Year-of-Disclosure news, Elon Musk (181 million followers) just promoted Bill Maher’s recent segment on pedophiles in Hollywood:

CLIP: Bill Maher exposes pedophiles in Hollywood and Disney (8:23).

It wasn’t just Hollywood. Maher quickly focused on Disney, citing among other evidence Disney’s recent hiring of a producer just out of prison for sexually assaulting a child. Maher even defended Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, albeit reluctantly. He also risked cancellation by courageously condemning drag queen story hours.

I can easily recall that, up to just before the pandemic, people claiming Disney had an unhealthy interest in children were just obsessive nutjobs who spent their free time trying to find phallic symbols in single frames clipped from Disney cartoons.

But now Disney’s pedophilic instincts have gone completely mainstream.

Even though Maher has been trending conservative for a while, he still speaks to a liberal audience, calls himself a liberal, rails against President Trump, and carefully distinguishes classical, ‘compassionate’ liberalism from wokeism. In other words, Bill Maher is building a socially acceptable narrative framework that would permit sane liberals a safe path to retreat from the wild excesses of post-pandemic wokeness.

If Disney were a real corporation instead of a sold-out, ideological narrative factory, the frantic sackings and reorganizations would have begun in earnest long ago. Disney, unfortunately, can no longer be saved.

🔥 You’ll be pleased, I’m sure, to know that at least one discomfiting mystery so far baffling experts has now been solved. Science Daily ran a troubling story this week headlined, “NASA Solves Mystery: Identifies Object That Crashed Into Florida Home.”

NASA garbage bullet, to scale

In March 2021, unsuspecting Naples homeowners were relaxing peacefully at home, minding their own business and lawfully using their residence for their own private purposes, when their peaceful reveries were suddenly and unexpectedly demolished by a piece of space debris that in the dry, delicate euphemism of Science Daily, “impacted” their home.

Impacted. In other words, it crashed right through unsuspecting Alejandro Otero’s roof and his second-story floor, before coming to a smoking rest in the downstairs living room.

On Monday, NASA finally announced that the mysterious destructive debris was actually a ‘stanchion’ — whatever that is — from some discarded flight support equipment on the International Space Station. The space-garbage projectile was made of Inconel, a nickel-chromium-based superalloy, that weighed 1.6 pounds, was 4 inches in height, and 1.6 inches in diameter.

In other words, the ISS tossed the super stanchion into Earth’s gravity disposal, after which the space slug crashed right into unlucky Mr. Otero’s house. They promise to try to do better. "NASA remains committed to responsibly operating in low Earth orbit, and mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware must be released," the space agency said in a statement.

So much for recycling. Where are the environmentalists? They are using the Earth as a giant garbage can.

Experts were quick to assure the public that the International Space Station’s garbage disposal procedures are safe and effective. Risks of injury are rare. The chances you could be suddenly vaporized by a piece of science garbage are low, so they say, if that reassures you any.

Sheesh. Like we needed something else to worry about right now. If it seems like it’s been one damned thing after another this year, that’s because it has been.

There’s no word yet on whether painting your roof blue would help. So.

Have a wonderful weekend! Keep an eye on the skies, and get back here on Monday morning to kick the week off right.

We can’t do it without you. Consider joining with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds.  I could use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:  ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid
Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com