☕️ THREE WAYS ☙ Friday, March 29, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Good Friday thoughts; Kennedy VP pick rocks race; Trump 1st Amendment motion; DeSantis finally defeats Disney for good; Moderna combo jabs; SBF gets 25 years; conservative advice; Brand revival; more.

Happy Good Friday, C&C! As Easter looms large before us, our world seemingly continues shaking itself to its foundations. To keep you up to the rapid pace of events, your roundup includes: thoughts on Good Friday; Robert Kennedy VP pick is a game changer and democrats are wailing (again); Trump judge hears motion to dismiss on First Amendment Grounds; DeSantis defeats Disney and this time it looks like it’s finally for good; Moderna CEO blah blahs about combo jabs; more bad luck, this time with the Dali’s black box; SBF gets 25 years and good luck to him; uplifting video number one shows frontlines conservative counter-revolutionary success; and strange but wonderful revival is still happening behind the scenes and in front of the scenes.

🗞 HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY 🗞

Good Friday is a religious holiday, but it’s for everyone, whether you’re a believer, agnostic, skeptical, or even anti-religious. Good Friday serves as a wonderful metaphor for the times we’re living in. It’s a day when we celebrate how things can seem darkest right before the dawn; or how we may cry ourselves to sleep, but joy cometh in the morning; or how a victory beyond imagining can be unexpectedly snatched right out of the drooling jaws of defeat.

It surprises many people that even Wikipedia admits “virtually all scholars of ancient antiquity agree that Jesus existed.” So on this day, let’s pause a moment and reflect about how Jesus’ followers must have felt as their leader’s broken body was unceremoniously hauled down off a bloodied, splintering Roman cross.

Simply put, all was lost.

And worse, the injustice! A fiercely dictatorial Roman government, manipulated by corrupt, power-grabbing religious leaders, unleashed the most painful capital punishment ever devised in the dark imagination of the torturer’s mind. And unleashed it on a peaceful itinerant Galilean preacher, for prescribing a simple, non-violent lifestyle of love, forgiveness for enemies, and charity.

All was not just lost, but it seemed the world had truly gone insane. Up was down. Wrong was right. Evil was good.

Do you think they felt suicidal? How did Jesus’s followers feel? Can we, at this late date, still empathize with them, at all, from the relative security of our own topsy-turvy, increasingly insane and upside-down world?

But then! After two unendurable days of fierce anguish, something abruptly changed Jesus’ followers’ lives forever (not to mention the world). It awakened them to a new, vast possibility of victory literally beyond comprehension, and fueled them for a successful, worldwide, two-thousand-year religious mission. It had only taken two days to rescue them from the depths of absolute defeat and despair, and instead hand them the biggest win anyone could possibly imagine.

If salvation could happen for them, it can happen for us. Keep hope alive.

There are now some remastered versions of this classic Good Friday video, with “improved” graphics, but I still prefer the original. Enjoy:

CLIP: It's Friday... But Sunday's a Coming! (3:39)

Now on to the roundup!

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 Amidst yet another wild 2024 week packed with record-breaking news, we cannot omit independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s shocking, politically world-shaking pick for VP.  ABC covered the story under the muted headline, “Democrats sound alarm on RFK Jr. and new running mate, Shanahan.” How much alarm? This much alarm:

ABC’s story ran with this sub-headline: “"All he can do is take away votes from President Biden," one Democrat said.”

Indeed!

Kennedy’s curveball choice of billionaire divorcee Nicole Shanahan, 38, immediately accomplished three things. Nicole’s wealth flooded Kennedy’s campaign coffers. It tantalized Klaus Schwab-loving liberals leaning away from Biden. And most importantly, it instantly turned Kennedy into a scratched-for-violations-at-the-gate non-starter with any Republican anywhere for any reason, period.

And democrats freaked out.

Nobody saw this coming! Right up until the announcement, rumors swirling around Kennedy’s pick included names like Aaron Rodgers, Mike Rowe, and Jesse Ventura, which would have been perfectly logical if Kennedy were aiming for the middle.

Democrats mostly ignored Kennedy as a non-event, someone to keep a side-eye on, and they snorted merrily over their avocado toasts and champagne cocktails predicting that Kennedy would probably wind up stealing more votes from Trump than from Biden.

But democrats aren’t laughing now. Their avocado toast is mostly just toast and plus it tastes rancid in their now-dry mouths. Their champagne cocktails are totally watered down, and they think there’s a hair in it. They lack even the strength to demand to see a manager.

All the blood has drained from their nerveless, botoxed faces — because a horrifying possibility just occurred to them.

For years running up to the primaries, despairing conservatives of all stripes, colors, and positions have pressed me to answer a single overwhelming question: “Jeff, but how can Trump beat the steal?” I always answered, “I think Trump has a plan.” Then they logically would ask, “but what is Trump’s plan??”

I answered truthfully (but probably not super helpfully): “How would I know Trump’s plan? And if Trump does have a plan, he shouldn’t tell anybody until it’s go time anyway. Let’s not even speculate.”

The horrifying possibility presented to deep state democrats is that a viable, Ross Perot-like third party candidate aimed at democrats makes cheating more complicated. Not just a little more complicated. For lots of different reasons, a third-party Kennedy/Shanahan ticket makes cheating insanely more complicated.

And deep state democrats aren’t smart. They are ruthless. They are cunning. But they are not smart.

Am I saying Trump planned this all along with Kennedy’s help? How would I know? I’m only a lawyer. But, if Trump did plan this, then the plan is spectacular, and it was years in the making. Try to imagine the rest of the plan.

I apologize to our Kennedy fans. In truth, there’s everything to love about Kennedy’s stance on vaccines. Lifelong democrat Nicole Shanahan seems to share Kennedy’s distrust of all jabs, and she also thinks the regulatory agencies have been captured by pharma. Great stuff. But on every other conservative issue, Nicole is politically toxic. There’s just no way.

The bottom line is: plan or no, Trump’s electoral chances just miraculously improved.

🔥 Newsweek ran a story yesterday headlined, “Judge McAfee's behavior during Trump hearing leaves analysts in the dark.”

Yesterday was the first court hearing in the Trump case since Judge McAfee issued his Fani Willis non-disqualification order. The judge heard argument over Trump’s motion to dismiss the RICO counts on First Amendment grounds.

They argued the President’s words were protected speech and could not be made criminal.

Intelligently, the judge betrayed no sign of how he would rule. He did ask plenty of smart questions of both sides. He wisely appeared fair, impartial, and even-handed. And as usual, Judge McAfee declined to rule from the bench. We will just have to wait for an order.

It’s not easy to handicap how he might rule. In October, Judge McAfee rejected similar First Amendment challenges from Trump co-defendants Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell.

At that time, Judge McAfee explained the First Amendment arguments were “premature” and the factual record was “incomplete and vigorously disputed.”

If he still felt that way, I would have expected the judge would say so. There’s no reason to keep a pre-disposition like that hidden in a hatbox, or make the lawyers guess. It’s been six months, and the issue may no longer be “premature.”

Under the rules, the only automatic right to appeal a motion to dismiss is when it is granted. So, if Trump’s motion is denied, he may have to wait till after trial to appeal it.

🔥 Politico ran a story yesterday under the goofy headline, “The Disney-DeSantis détente is here.”  Haha! By “détante,” Politico meant “DeSantis beat Disney like a drum.” And by “is here,” Politico mean it is a fait accomplí.

As a reminder, the trouble began in 2021, when Disney officially supported pushing pornography in Florida’s classrooms. The entertainment giant also insisted that elementary-school kids should be taught about alternative sexual lifestyles. Florida’s legislature disagreed with all the mega-corporate activism, and responded censoriously by stripping Disney’s special tax status, taking away its own home-ruled company county, and setting up a Governor-appointed board to supervise the whole mess.

But Disney’s super-sneaky lawyers executed a bunch of property transfers, and signed several binding contracts right before the new law took effect, trying to tie everything up in legal red tape and make the Governor’s newly-appointed board an instant nullity having nothing to supervise.

The legislature responded by voiding everything Disney’s ethically-questionable lawyers did. Touché, mon ami.

So last year, Disney sued the Governor, the legislature, and every other Florida official the Mouse thought might somehow be involved.  This week the parties settled that lawsuit. Here’s how Politico actually described the settlement that its headline called a ‘détente’:

Disney on Wednesday reached a settlement in Florida and will no longer seek to retain its self-governance of Walt Disney World, a stunning turn in a battle with DeSantis that stretched more than two years.

“This is moving forward,” DeSantis said. “I think that’s what the company wants to do.” Jeff Vahle, president of Walt Disney World Resort, said in a statement that the company was “pleased” to end the state court lawsuit.

To the extent it happened at all, any “détente” must have occurred outside the settlement agreement. Politico suggested that Disney got a win out of the deal because right before the settlement, DeSantis appointed a new board chairman that Disney probably likes better, because “she is seen as qualified for the job.”

Uh huh. Have some freedom fries.

Most corporate media described Disney’s spanking as a tie. But for a change, the Wall Street Journal played the story straight:

That’s better. DeSantis—100; Disney—0.

🔥 Great news! Pepé le Pew, I mean Moderna president Stephane Bancel, announced Moderna’s newest mRNA vaccine product this week. You’ll be happy to know it was (also) developed at warp speed, thanks to its “new platform.” I assume Bancel meant the new regulatory platform. Anyway, the terrific new jab product helpfully combines the risk of vaccine injury from the mRNA flu vaccine with the risk of vaccine injury from the mRNA covid vaccine — it’s two risks in one!

CLIP: Moderna announces combo flu/covid mrna shot (0:33).

“This is new,” Bancél gushed to CNBC hosts. Sacre bleu! “This is a new platform! The speed at which we can move is new.” Pepé said “new” three times in a row. I wonder what, exactly, he was trying to get across. I think what he meant was new was, instead of taking six or seven years to safety-test their new vaccine, the FDA just rubber stamped it, since it uses mRNA, which every good scientist knows is the safest medical product in human history.

Or maybe not that fast. Upon further research, Moderna’s combo flu/covid vaccine has not yet successfully emerged from Phase 3 trials, which were reported to have been going “well” six months ago. The fact is, Moderna has a handful of new mRNA jabs in its pipeline but still only has one single approved product.  And that one product — the covid jab — was approved under, let’s say, less than ideal circumstances.

The combo double-threat jab is not out yet, but I can confidently say no thank you. Add that to your marketing survey.

🔥 You’ll never believe it. There’s been more bad luck with the Dali and the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. The Maritime Executive ran the story yesterday headlined “NTSB Releases "Black Box" Timeline of Baltimore Bridge Strike.”

The news is, after the Biden Administration and the FBI conclusively ruled out any terrorist involvement, the NTSB received the Dali’s black box, analyzed it, and found that the data from the one key minute never got recorded. It’s kind of like Nixon’s missing cassette tape section, or like how the Jeffrey Epstein suicide video cut off. Here’s the story, note the highlighted sentence:

Oh well. Who needs that missing minute anyway? I suppose it doesn’t matter since they already know it wasn’t a cyberattack. And people, please, stop spreading misinformation that every time something bad happens it must be the result of a cyber attack. I don’t know how you guys could possibly get that idea.

Well, except for this (Wall Street Journal):

Or this (Reuters):

Or this (AP):

Or this (CPO Magazine):

Or this (Guardian):

Or this (right down the road!) (WESH-Orlando):

How could we possibly get the idea that the Dali’s tragic and mysterious loss of electrical power and its computer systems, which also shut down its electronic black box recorder, just at the right time to cause maximum damage, how could that possibly be a cyberattack?

Maybe, and I’m just spitballing here, maybe it’s because they’ve been crying about cyberattacks every ten seconds for the last year? Could that have anything to do with it? Hmm?

Yet somehow, in spite of a year’s worth of intel about myriads of potential cyberattacks, within just five or six hours after the collision, before looking at the black box or even knowing who the crew was, nevermind interviewing them, the entire federal government was 100% sure that it was a complete accident.

Here’s the best description I’ve seen describing what might have happened on board. I bet this is what we’ll probably hear whenever they finally release a meaningful report. Note that I can’t confirm that Mr. Buckely is what or who he says he is (nor do I have reason to question it):

Buckley’s explanation, while illuminating, does not shed any light on the crucial question of what caused the ship to lose power at that precise moment? We will probably never know for sure. Cyberattacks don’t leave marks or fingerprints. If it was a cyberattack, it may not be detectable at all. Nor would they tell us anyway, since official lying seems justified because claiming these incidents were accidents allegedly defeats the terrorists’ goals of causing fear and panic.

But still. I am reminded that, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” — Ian Fleming, the British author who created James Bond.

One happenstance infrastructure:

Two coincidental infrastructures:

Three infrastructures…:

Just saying.

🔥 NBC ran an expectation-shattering story yesterday headlined, “Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating FTX fraud.”

My first question was, how did Sam manage to do up his afro like that in prison? Or was he allowed to primp for his sentencing hearing? Anyway, the judge gave the untidy, drug-addled, high-living crypto-nerd twenty-five years in the slammer. Sam’s sentence compared favorably to WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers (25 years), Enron CEO Jeff Skilling (24 years), Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes (11 years), and Bernie Madoff, king of white-collar-crime, who got a whopping 150 years and died in prison aged 82.

We’ll see whether Sam serves the whole sentence.

At trial, Sam told the jury he “made a number of small mistakes and a number of larger mistakes." You don’t say. Most legal experts agreed the jury found the hobbitlike crypto-entrepreneur unsympathetic. Former federal prosecutor Paul Tuchmann told CNBC that Sam’s testimony was "unpersuasive,” and noted it only took the jury three hours to convict him on every count.

Three hours is about how long it takes the jury to get settled, take an initial test vote, then figure out how to properly fill out and submit the verdict form. So.

🔥 There’s something wonderful about fired-up, fast-talking black ladies ranting about things. You’ll enjoy this clip, wherein a conservative young lady dishes some hard truths to liberal women in New York complaining about being attacked on the street:

CLIP: So You’ve Been Punched-in-the-face Rant (9:46).

The conservative counter-revolution just won another battle. Progress.

🔥 Finally, revival has claimed another mega-influencer! This time it is Russel Brand, the English comedian with the checkered past who has nearly seven million subscribers on YouTube. Check this out:

CLIP: Russell Brand describes his difficult decisions (1:39).

While Brand has been drifting this way for a while, in the clip he finally told his followers he’s been trying out churches, and now he’s ready to get baptized. “I feel that at the moment I’m moving towards a kind of moment of baptism… I want River Jordan, or River Thames at worst. I want proper plungin’ — arrrrrgh!”

He ended the clip “In the holy name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen.”  Watch it a couple times. There’s more theology packed in the short segment than first appears.

Including Joe Rogan, we now have converted both of the two biggest social media influencers in the world. It’s hard to imagine two less likely candidates for conversion, especially considering the mens’ access to wealth and the privileges of their celebrity. But both men are now showing strong signs of conversion. What do you think explains this?

You might even call Rogan and Brand … two witnesses. Just saying.

Have a fabulous Good Friday! I’ll be back tomorrow morning with a quick holiday-weekend edition for you.

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