☕️ TRANSITIONING ☙ Saturday, April 8, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Twitter makes war on Substack; an Easter essay; Republicans subpoena the Biden Crime Family; more leaked secret Proxy war docs; AOC hopes for Constitutional crisis; and Biden strikes back on Title 9.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday — the day between Good Friday and Easter, which offers some hopeful lessons for us. In the roundup: A Twitter and Substack war; hopeful Easter thoughts; Republicans start issuing subpoenas and J6 democrats are freaking out; even MORE leaked top-secret Proxy War documents emerge; AOC says Biden should start ignoring the courts and just do whatever he wants; and Biden turns Title 9 inside out to form a neo-vagina.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞

🪖 The real reason Twitter links haven’t been working right for the last two days spilled into the public yesterday in a shower of explosive sparks. Twitter and Substack are having a spat.

The Wall Street Journal ran a pro-Twitter story briefly mentioning the dispute this morning, headlined “Why Elon Musk Contends Twitter Can Disrupt the Media Business.” The sub-headline explained most folks’ concerns: “Skeptics say he risks alienating a main constituency of the social-media platform.”

The Journal’s “constituency” appears to be Substack authors.

The social-media conflict erupted over the two firms’ competitive features. Substack is launching a short-form mode called “Substack Notes,” which to my untrained eye looks exactly like Twitter:

One reason the roundup is late this morning is that, when I tested the link shown on their example page (above), Substack invited me into the Notes Beta, and I spent an hour looking around. You might try it too, if you’re inclined and if they let you (substack.com/notes). Right now it seems to be a who’s-who of Substack authors mostly opining about how the new platform might impact Twitter and vice-versa.

Looking around Notes, it quickly became obvious why Twitter is a grumpy little blue-bird.

Unlike other wannabe Twitter competitors, who shall remain nameless, Substack has already shown three things: (1) it has successfully captured the long-form market, through a dogmatic commitment to free speech (despite pretty stiff opposition), (2) it’s proven it has the technical competence to pull off the engineering, and (3) it has all the best AUTHORS, meaning it has a metric ton of good content producers.

You might call that a realistic competitive threat to Twitter.

Back on the Twitter side, Twitter is punishing Substack every way it can think of. It’s not just that Twitter won’t allow its own links to be embedded in Substack posts anymore. Any tweets including links to Substack articles are being mercilessly locked down. They can’t be liked, forwarded, re-tweeted, or commented upon. The posts haven’t been deleted, but if someone is lucky enough to see a C&C post and click the link, they first must navigate a “this is a bad idea, are you REALLY sure you want to go there” warning.

I find the whole thing immensely curious. While, like everyone, I chafe at the inconvenience of being unable to advertise my posts on Twitter, I’m not rage quitting Twitter or anything. It’s not like back when C&C got suddenly deplatformed (thanks for nothing, Medium-dot-com) or unceremoniously thrown in Facebook jail or anything. Whew! Nobody needs THAT kind of excitement.

Of course, I never got past a deep distrust of the platform, so I’ve never completely depended on Twitter, like a lot of folks have. So it’s easy for me to say.

For his part, Musk claimed in a tweet that Substack was unfairly scraping public user IP addresses from tweets to get Notes off the ground. Who knows? Then Twitter announced its own long-form version, a new platform that would compete with Substack’s core product. So take that, Substack.

While many are understandably upset, I think it’s wrong-headed to be enraged at either Twitter or Substack. This is what we always wanted: the free market. Twitter and Substack are both customer-focused entrepreneurs and they are both currently battling for the top of the market, and while the fight is ugly, it will eventually be good for customers. I do NOT want them to “get along,” that’s not capitalism.

I prefer that they compete. Go for it. May the best man win, and so forth.

I so much prefer this kind of free market competition over the IRS showing up at the offices of a fledgling Facebook competitor, or FBI agents raiding their file servers or whatever.

Anyway, hang on for what is sure to be a wild ride. Just in case, I have a “secret” backup channel on Telegram, which is the other ultimate-free-speech alternative. If all else fails, you always find your daily C&C on my Telegram channel: t.me/coffeecovid.

🗞 *BLACK SATURDAY THOUGHTS* 🗞

✍️ The day between Good Friday and Easter should have a more well-known name. Some call it Black Saturday. It’s that horribly bad day when things have all gone inconceivably wrong and the situation could not possibly get any worse. Black Saturday offers a lesson for anyone feeling oppressed by the world’s realtime, reckless race toward repression and chaos.

If it’s possible, the lesson is even more pronounced for our secular friends.

The first century followers of the God-Man suffered under measureless government persecution. Not only were they oppressed by unbearable Roman taxation and the two-tiered Roman justice system — by law, Romans were treated as higher-class citizens — but they were also constantly harried by their own evil Jewish government that had weaponized their religious beliefs against them.

Does any of that sound familiar? There’s nothing new under the Sun.

Anyway, the disciples, convinced they were doing the right thing, had thrown in with someone who was CLEARLY the Jews’ long-awaited Messiah — the prophesied appearance of the one who would settle all scores, right all wrongs, and restore peace and justice once and for all. They’d watched Jesus perform miracle after supernatural miracle, so they felt pretty sure they were on the winning side.

But then yesterday, Good Friday, the unthinkable occurred. The government had arrested and then executed their Messiah in the lowest, most detestable form of punishment reserved for heinous criminals and traitors — and no legion of angels had appeared at the last minute to teach the bad actors a lesson they’d never forget.

Instead, their Messiah quietly gave up the ghost and that was that.

To put it mildly, the now leaderless disciples were feeling pretty low. Their personal situations looked especially grim. Their only hope had winked out faster than a central bank digital currency account being suspended for a low social credit score. Their account balance of hope for peace, justice, and restoration had vanished forever, and there was no other currency. Buh bye.

You might be worrying about where the world’s headed these days. Stop for a second, and give a moment’s thought to the dispirited disciples’ tragic plight back in 30 AD.

But in spite of how awful things look now, how utterly hopeless you think it is, everything can change for the better in one day. In Jesus’ case, it’s a historical fact and a hope even for non-believers: Jesus either rose from the dead, or SOMETHING ELSE happened that caused Christianity to unstoppably march into place as the dominant faith in the Roman Empire, until it ultimately even became the default state religion.

You could say it was a miracle.

You might disbelieve in the Resurrection, and doubt whether the rise of Christianity was good thing for humanity or not, but that’s not the point. The point is, in this crazy world of ours, under the right conditions, the defeated underdog can beat all the odds and become the victorious top dog in 24 hours.

So now matter how dark things look, no matter how completely dystopian or fantastically irrational things appear, a total turnaround could be right around the corner at any moment. Happy Black Saturday!

🗞💬 *WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 💬🗞

🔥 The New York Post ran an eye-popping headline yesterday: “House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Big Banks for Biden Financial Records.” Neither the Wall Street Journal nor the New York Times reported the story on their home pages. So.

Wielding their newly-acquired January 6th-style subpoena powers, House Republicans launched their first major missile against the Biden Crime Family, subpoenaing bank records for family members and their sketchy associates yesterday, and right before the holiday weekend, too.

It’s SO unfair.

Foul democrat Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who co-chaired the dems’ squalid January 6th Committee and issued thousands of subpoenas of his own, is squealing in protest. He complained bitterly and publicly Thursday that Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) is trying to “hide information” from democrat committee democrats.

Comer responded hotly that — for perfectly understandable reasons — whistleblowers don’t trust Raskin as far as they could throw Alvin Bragg, and have required Raskin to be kept out of the loop.

The newly-issued subpoenas target banks including Bank of America, Cathay Bank, HSBC, and JPMorgan Chase (which is currently embroiled in its own Jeffrey Epstein controversy). They include records for most of the Biden family plus a hitherto-unknown fellow named Marvin Yan, generating all sorts of wild speculation.

Who is Marvin Yan? What does the House Committee know? Who told them?

Between the January 6th subpoena barrage — and all the leaking worse than a Roman-era lead pipe system — plus DA Bragg’s process crime prosecution of President Trump — the democrats have created the new rules and they’ll have to live with them.

Let’s go, Brandon!

🔥 Uh-oh! It happened again. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined, “Pentagon Investigates More Social-Media Posts Purporting to Include Secret U.S. Documents.”

By “purporting to include,” the Journal meant, “including.”

You’ll recall that yesterday C&C reported on the FIRST top-secret Proxy War document leak. Now, it seems, there’s even more.

Well over 100 images marked with “Top Secret” and similar classifications were posted on the Discord message board used by fans of the Minecraft computer game around March 1st.

Minecraft is a popular children’s game.

The documents seemingly come straight from the darkest corners of U.S. military and intelligence agencies. They include secret details about Ukrainian forces, air defenses and military equipment; arms and support the U.S. has provided to Kiev; classified intelligence on a variety of other allies’ internal affairs, including Israel and South Korea; and “sobering predictions of when Ukrainian forces would run out of each kind of munition.”

Not too good.

The leaked documents also chart out the schedules and routes of U.S. and allied spy planes over the Black Sea, the vulnerabilities of some of the American weapons provided to Ukraine, and the composition and weaponry assigned to the nine Ukrainian army brigades being trained by the NATO for the upcoming gala spring offensive.

Coincidentally, Russian jets crashed a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper into the Black Sea on March 14th — just two weeks after the files were posted.

On top of the Proxy War documents, the newly-leaked files included copies of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s daily intelligence report for General Milley, CIA reports on leaders of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, and intelligence about discussions within South Korea about sales of artillery ammunition to Kyiv. Most of the documents are dated in February and were posted online shortly thereafter. Many describe details of future operations.

The documents weren’t just from one source, either. They came from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes data from spy satellites; the eavesdropping National Security Agency; and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

This suggests the leaker has the highest level of access.

The Journal understatedly explained “the leak has rattled Pentagon officials.” I bet it has. This week, the government quickly tightened down how military staff can access such documents, but Pentagon officials remain baffled as to how the documents appeared online in the first place, or even which military installation they could possibly have come from.

The Journal said it had reviewed “dozens of newly discovered images” that “contained highly valuable information for America’s adversaries, particularly Russia.”

You don’t say.

Between trying to figure out whose ladies luggage they just liberated from the airport, what to do about all the Chinese war blimps, and now THIS, our top generals have a full plate for Easter dinner.

🔥 After a Texas judge suspended approval of an abortion drug, execrable representative AOC went on CNN and told Anderson Cooper that she thinks it’s time for the Biden Administration to start ignoring court rulings and only enforcing the laws that Joe Biden thinks are the right ones.

I am not making that up. Specifically, Ms. Cortez said:

I believe that The Biden Administration should ignore this ruling. The courts rely on the legitimacy of their rulings and what they are currently doing is engaging in an unprecedented erosion of their legitimacy … the interesting thing when it comes to a ruling is that it relies on enforcement — and it is up to the Biden Administration to enforce, to choose, whether or not to enforce such a ruling.

Anyone up for a Constitutional crisis?

If only we could expel poor, deluded AOC from the Legislature.

🔥 I’m getting kind of sick of everybody else getting a trans- label. Where’s mine? The newest one you should watch out for is “trans-age,” which as far as I can tell is the latest euphemism for Minor Attracted Persons, or in oldspeak, “Pedos.”

Yeah, okay. So a 38-year-old who has sex with a 12-year-old — but “identifies” as twelve himself — does not actually commit statutory rape, because that would be totally transphobic and is just how the heterosexual patriarchy has been oppressing misunderstood trans people since the Stone Age.

Where’s the social justice?

Last week, Canadian lawmakers filed an exciting new bill that would make it a felony to hatefully “mis-age” anybody. Haha, just kidding. Mostly. I mean, it could have happened, who knows. I bet you believed it for a second.

Anyway, nobody could have seen THIS coming, right?

In fact, trans-age-ism is not yet in vogue; most transgender activists still deny that age is a malleable characteristic like gender. But every single argument for transgenderism can be easily flipped to make the exact same argument for transage-ism. If we can’t squash the insane, anti-scientific idea of transgenderism, transageism will be right behind it.

There are lots of optimistic reasons to believe that transgenderism is peaking. But it’s not over by a long shot; you should anticipate the pushback. Like the next story.

🔥 On Thursday, Biden’s Department of Education posted new Title 9 guidelines that would condition federal assistance to universities on whether they recognize gender identity on women’s sports. In other words, feminist logic has come full circle: it will be illegal not to let men dominate women’s sports.

Biden is surgically transitioning Title 9 inside out, to form a political neo-vagina.

Here’s the government’s description of the proposed new rule:

[T]he Department proposes amending § 106.41(b) of its Title IX regulations to provide that, if a recipient adopts or applies sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female athletic team consistent with their gender identity, those criteria must, for each sport, level of competition, and grade or education level: (i) be substantially related to the achievement of an important educational objective, and (ii) minimize harms to students whose opportunity to participate on a male or female team consistent with their gender identity would be limited or denied.

Haha women! Don’t like it? Form your own teams. Then the men will put on your silly uniforms and show you how it’s really done.

This is the Biden Administration’s latest response to all the new laws sprouting up in red states prohibiting boys from playing on girls’ teams — the exact reason Title 9 was created in the first place! Instead of promoting “women’s sports,” Title 9 is now being changed to ensure that its original purpose can never be accomplished: all sports will be mens’ sports.

Title 9 was originally passed because democrats felt like it was unfair people didn’t enjoy watching girls’ sports as much as mens’ sports. I wonder if people will enjoy watching girls’ sports more now once gaily-dressed men are dominating the girls.

This is what you get when you mandate things. Mandates go both ways. I hate to say this, and I’m not sure who needs to hear it, but mandates were never the answer. If you have to mandate common sense, then you have a more fundamental problem that needs to be addressed.

Let’s address the fundamental problems.

Have a spectacular Saturday! And a very blessed, joyful and rewarding Easter, regardless of your personal beliefs. I’ll see you guys back here on Monday to start off a new, exciting week the right way, with a full serving of C&C.

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