☕️ UNCIVIL WARS ☙ Saturday, March 8, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Hackman double-death sparks skepticism; more Dem infighting erupts; Trump tightens on Kiev, praises Putin; HHS probes vax-autism link; Dems’ wildest corruption tale yet; and much more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Time for the Weekend Edition. In today’s roundup: Hackman double-death raises eyebrows with overly elaborate official explanation; more Democrat controlled demolition news raises spectre of irresolvable internecine conflicts; Trump clamps down harder on Kiev and praises Putin as new peace plan offered to Ukraine; HHS orders CDC to study the link between vaccines and autism; and the most twisted Democrat corruption story in ages.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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A story that, for most of last week, resembled the opening chapter of a mystery novel, resolved somewhat yesterday in a New York Times story headlined, “Hantavirus killed Gene Hackman’s wife, Betsy Arakawa. What is it?” The official explanation is incredibly unlikely. But who knows?

As you may have already heard, earlier this week, Hollywood icon Gene Hackman, 95, and his wife Betsy, 65, were both found dead in their Santa Fe, New Mexico home. One of their three dogs was also found dead. Discordantly, police reported no sign of foul play.

We who focus on covid vaccine injuries saw red flags. We’ve become used to the various explanations officials offer for group simultaneous deaths, deaths of people who live together and who probably all got their shots together at the same time.

The go-to official explanation has become: carbon monoxide. Yep, if two college kids living in the same room in a ten-story dormitory both die suddenly, the official cause of death will usually be ascribed to the odorless, invisible gas, which apparently can come and go, leaving no evidence, marks, or traces. It sometimes even evades detectors.

And so, carbon monoxide has become the final resting place for coroners diagnosing group deaths when there is no sign of violence.

So it was surprising when they didn’t take the carbon monoxide route this time. The facts became too complicated for CO. Instead, we were provided the following theory:

• Gene died suddenly from Alzheimer’s and heart failure, or possibly “broken heart syndrome.”

• Betsy died suddenly from complications from Hantavirus.

Here’s the tragic scenario officials offered: That fateful morning, Betsy went to the farmer’s market, ran some errands, and returned home. And that’s the last we know. Weeks later, police found her body laying on the bathroom floor, partially mummified.

According to the coronor, an invisible enemy, a rare, deer-mice-borne illness, slew her. They think it was Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome.

None of the reports I saw mentioned the gold-standard for confirming hanta, which is the presence of hantavirus antibodies in the deceased’s blood. But the stories referred to “clinical pathology” plus the presence of rodent activity in a backyard shed.

Hanta is ultra-rare, but deadly, with a 35% mortality rate after infection. There aren’t many cases. Between 2015-2023, the CDC reported 5-8 annual deaths from the virus.

It is even more rare for a hanta victim to remain asymptomatic until the terrible final stage when death occurs. HPS isn’t usually asymptomatic, and the disease progression normally takes weeks, with increasing levels of serious flu-like symptoms. But Betsy was running errands the day she apparently died. There was, however, a single 1993 study that documented a hanta outbreak near Four Corners, and included reports of some victims who died suddenly at home. But it is extremely rare.

How rare? I’m a lawyer, not a statistician, so I asked AI to calculate the odds. It figured that catching HPS in New Mexico (1 in 60,000) × Dying from it (0.35) × Dying Suddenly (0.15) = 1 in 1,142,857 against. That’s how rare.

But it can happen!

💉 Of course, if Betsy’s immune system were disregulated for some reason, ahem, the risk calculation might be much different. Hanta kills by attacking endothelial cells in the lungs (its blood capillaries) and through a resulting cytokine storm— familiar terms in vaccine injury cases.

In any case, after losing the lottery, the theory goes, poor Gene Hackman, addled with severe dementia, didn’t notice his wife was dead in the bathroom and he wandered around the property until he had a heart attack. His pacemaker showed his death came about a week after Betsy’s likely passing. They couldn’t find a specific cause of death, raising speculation about “broken-heart syndrome.”

The New York Post last interviewed Hackman in July, 2021, which was conducted over email due to covid concerns. The interview marked the 50th anniversary of Hackman’s award-winning role in The French Connection. In the interview, Hackman gave coherent, reflective answers about his career, his retirement in Santa Fe, and his novel-writing (even mentioning that his latest book took five years due to “procrastination and laziness”). He also shared personal details, like living with Betsy and their dogs, and, like the rest of us, avoiding the news on TV.

It’s safe to say Hackman’s Alzheimer’s began to progress after July, 2021. We don’t know when he got his pacemaker, but it was never mentioned in media before now. True, he was aging, and his conditions are all-too familiar to those of us with relatives of his age.

But both his (new) heart issues and the (new) Alzheimer’s are also consistent with vaccine injury.

The official explanation — hanta, dementia, heart disease, broken heart — for the Hackmans’ tragic joint sudden deaths is plausible. Plausible but extremely coincidental. Are the chances of the chain of rare circumstances leading to their joint, sudden deaths actually higher than an explanation of a common cause from vaccine injury? Given the paucity of study data on vaccine injury, there’s no way to tell.

But it is weird.

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Behold, the latest delightful headline from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about the controlled demolition of the Democrat party. Is it too soon to call it an intra-party civil war?:

The Journal framed the dispute as the Democrats’ disagreement over whether and how forcefully to protest every single thing Trump does and says. On one hand, progressives — brilliantly illustrated by cane-shaking moron Rep. Al Green (now censured) — want to obstruct Trump’s official proceedings and chain themselves to the wheels of Washington.

🔥 This lunatic branch birthed this week’s barely watchable, cringetastic “choose your fighter” video, which featured kooky, non-threatening female progressive politicians badly imitating a 20-year-old video game. It was almost like they were mocking themselves. The description-defying captions, meant to highlight political fighting skills, included non-terrifying ‘strengths’ composing an extended DEI checklist (‘first Chinese-American congresswoman’) and farcical ‘weaknesses’ like ‘too sweet’ and ’not into hair dye.’

CLIP: Worst political ad, ever (0:19).

Trump’s undaunted media team instantly responded with a devastating rejoinder, including actual warriors. It was easier than shooting DEI ducks in a barrel, and highlighted that, in under two months, reversing years of decline, military recruitment under Trump has surged to an all-time record high:

CLIP: Trump’s “pick your fighter” response (0:31).

Unlike the progressive wing, sane Democrats insist their party should focus “on protecting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare,” and “stand up for the little guy,” in what interviewees called a “center-left” position.

The Journal didn’t mention this, but “center-left” is synonymous with “move rightwards.”

Tellingly, Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith, heavily quoted for the story, explained, “No one has any idea what the Democratic Party stands for anymore, other than opposing Donald Trump.” So, he advised, “Be center-left. Don’t be a spectacle.”

The article moved into examples, making the fracture more evident. As we saw yesterday, Governor Newsom triggered progressives by agreeing with Charlie Kirk about trans athletes. “Other Democrats,” the Journal reported, “have argued that voters won’t trust the party unless it proves it is serious about border security.”

The Journal’s article ineptly missing the bigger story, as evidenced by its conclusion, which called for Democrats to improve their messaging. In other words, more narrative manipulation.

For decades, Democrats’ greatest risk, which they skillfully managed to avoid, was internal conflict. To maintain peace inside the party, progressives were allowed free rein, and the Democrat party sped ever leftwards, ignoring political speed limits, and embracing ever more transgressive liberal policies, like open borders, ubiquitous, coercive DEI, kindergarten porn, and 6-foot boys playing on the girls’ badminton team.

That ideological divide — not any silly disagreement over ‘how to respond’ — is the unsolvable problem splitting the Democrat party into the new civil war’s North and South. Their current, metastasizing problem is that progressives want to keep their far-left policies and just argue them harder.

But sane Democrats who realize they just got shellacked want to move the party back to the center. Close borders, jettison DEI, dump transgender athletes. Stop losing.

It is becoming painfully obvious that this widening schism can only be resolved when one of the factions wins the battle to define the party’s future identity. The irony was that the WSJ framed this as a disagreement over Trump—when the real fight is over whether the Democrats can remain a viable, competitive party, or whether they will collapse under the weight of their ideological excesses.

It’s about whether the Democratic Party can still function at all as a broad coalition, or if it has now become a fractured ideological monoculture dominated by an activist minority.

They have little time to figure it out. Midterms loom like an oncoming Peterbilt. They lack the luxury of a long, drawn-out identity crisis. And they face other massively difficult, structural problems also desperately needing attention, like the imminent collapse of their ActBlue fund-raising platform.

On one side of the political highway, they’re hemorrhaging working-class and independent voters. In the oncoming lane, they’re staring down a rampaging financial crisis. Moderates want to turn right, but progressives, addicted to their woke rhetoric, are slamming down the gas pedal. It’s a recipe for a spectacular pileup— unless someone in the party grabs the wheel, fast.

But who? Joe? Kamala? Tim?

If no leader emerges before it is too late, the 2026 midterms could become a bloodbath, with Republicans picking up a filibuster-proof Senate and a solid House majority. At that point, the Democrat party won’t just be in crisis—it will be in ruins.

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Late last night, the BBC ran an ominous story headlined, “Trump says Ukraine 'more difficult' to deal with than Russia.” No kidding.

In an Oval Office presser yesterday afternoon, President Trump told reporters he was finding it "more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine" than Russia. Terrifying neocons and Old Europe, Trump even said, “it may be easier to deal with" Moscow than Kyiv.

Yesterday, America clamped down harder on the green sweatshirt team. After having suspended all direct aid, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. has now also told its military contractors to stop helping Ukraine:

Trump warned them. They don’t have any cards. Trump holds all the cards.

“Putin wants to get it ended,” the President said. “I think Ukraine wants to get it ended, but I don’t see it. It’s crazy! They’re taking tremendous punishment, I don’t quite get it.”

It’s becoming ever clearer that what Zelensky really wants is for the United States to go fight Russia directly on Ukraine’s behalf. Yesterday, referring to Russia’s recent missile attacks, the former comedian posted on Telegram, “The first steps to establishing real peace should be forcing the sole source of this war, Russia, to stop such attacks.”

Forcing? Who is going to force them? You and whose army? Ours?

What’s also becoming increasingly obvious is Europe’s insignificance. First of all, only two of 28 EU countries have been convening all the emergency jibber-jabber summits (France and Britain). Second, now that Trump has withdrawn US military aid, Zelensky has quit pretending that Old Europe is going to somehow step in and save him.

But the final continental insult was delivered yesterday. Trump’s team has generously agreed to try restarting peace talks with panicked Ukraine. But on our terms this time.

Last time, the little dictator insisted on meeting President Trump at the White House to (not) sign the minerals deal. A new meeting will reconvene next Monday, between the US and Ukraine, and not Europe. But this time, it’s not happening in the White House. This time, it’s not happening in Ukraine. This time, it’s not even happening anywhere in London or Brussels.

We’re forcing the Ukrainians to go to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And President Trump’s not coming.

This time, Zelensky can’t huddle with friendly Democrat senators before the meeting. This time, he can’t meet with obseqious reporters afterwards. The Saudis run a very tight ship of state.

According to unofficial reports, the first thing Zelensky must do, this time, is sign the minerals deal like he promised. Then he must leave, and for the remainder of the week, the two diplomatic teams will work on a peace deal to later propose to the Russians.

Meanwhile, absent U.S. intel and equipment, the Ukrainian army is quickly turning into a carnival shooting-gallery target. The Russians are not letting that opportunity go to waste. Yesterday’s headline from the UK Independent:

Politico said the withdrawal of US intelligence has “an immediate effect.” Reuters ran a dire story yesterday headlined:

Yesterday, media widely reported Trump’ Truth Social post. He said he wants the Russians to quit pummeling defenseless Ukraine, right away, and said he was considering more sanctions. It was genius, politically, proving Trump’s even-handedness between the two sides. But it remains murky just how much more Russia can be sanctioned— and Biden’s sanctions so far have only helped Russia’s economy, which is getting along just fine, thank you.

For the handful of folks still sporting blue and yellow biopics, at least one corporate media headline remained optimistic. The Atlantic ran this rosy headline yesterday:

It was a very silly article and I won’t bother rebutting it. The Atlantic’s take was, to say the least, an outlier. Although it touted the plucky Ukrainians’ courage and willingness to fight to the last retiree, it ended, as ever, with a call for America to force the Russians to give up. Let’s you and him fight.

Trump has explained his goal about a thousand times now: end the war on his terms, not Kiev’s, cut Ukraine loose, and pivot toward China. Ukraine (along with France and Britain) can resist, but with aid dried up, satellites gone dark, and battlefield losses piling up, Ukraine is being surrounded by reality’s gathering troops.

The war’s endgame is now in sight. And its predictable shape looks just like what many of us predicted for years would eventually happen. The only remaining question is how much Ukraine will lose in the final deal.

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My advice to slow our roll on instigated attacks against our own team continues to be proven out. Yesterday, CNN ran a terrific story headlined, “HHS said to have asked CDC to study vaccines and autism, despite robust evidence showing no link.” Let’s freaking go.

Promise kept. An anonymous source reported that HHS has now asked the CDC “to study vaccines and autism, despite” CNN snarled, “strong evidence that vaccines do not cause autism.”

“As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in an emailed statement late yesterday. “CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening. The American people expect high-quality research and transparency, and that is what CDC is delivering.”

Triggered! “Even just the notion that the government needs to study this is harmful,” whined Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation and pro-vaccine activist. “It will plant seeds of fear, particularly for new parents who may not be aware of the history of research on this,” she wailed. “Children will die.”

But … if the “robust evidence” of vaccine safety were so overwhelming, why are they be afraid of another study? Science is supposed to be about constantly re-evaluating data, not shutting down inquiry to protect sacred cows.

Most remarkably, both Kennedy and President Trump have previously cited the autism epidemic without specifically tying it to vaccines, saying instead that we have to figure out the cause, talking about toxins and the environment, and promising to discover whatever the cause might be.

But Kennedy’s very first study aimed the CDC right at the source, vaccines, slammed on the gas and shifting the Overton Window forever, ending decades of official resistance to studying the potential problem.

Unsurprisingly, CNN could not find a single person to quote who thought the new CDC study was a good idea, a red flag betraying CNN’s bias and journalistic malpractice. It’s proof that they’re operating as activists, not journalists. A real news report would have at least included a quote from someone arguing that more research is always a good thing, or it’s a good start, or that transparency builds trust. But CNN couldn’t risk that. Instead, they went full propaganda mode, presenting the study as a danger rather than a scientific inquiry.

Read critically. Notice how CNN’s article never even cited the explosive statistics about the autism epidemic, even though that is the real story. Instead, they framed the CDC study story as “dangerous misinformation”— without ever confronting the underlying reality that autism rates have skyrocketed and nobody has adequately explained why or even seriously grappled with it.

In other words, CNN pretended the epidemic wasn’t worth mentioning, and focused entirely on motive imputation and smearing the idea of even studying the problem. This story was a ham-handed example of narrative shaping.

CNN didn’t just fail to report the facts; it actively avoided them. Fake news CNN can sneer all it wants, but this is a remarkable win.

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This week’s most bizarre political corruption story appeared in the Denver Post, headlined “Ex-Arapahoe County social worker Robin Niceta sentenced to probation in fake brain cancer case.”

Yesterday, former Arapahoe County social worker Robin Niceta got probation and a suspended prison sentence, having faked brain cancer to avoid prosecution for filing a false child abuse report against an Aurora city councilwoman.

Recall that Aurora, Colorado, was in the news in January after a Venezualan gang “took over” some apartment buildings.

Anyway, back in January 2022, Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky criticized Robin’s then-girlfriend, Vanessa Wilson, on a conservative talk radio show. Wilson was Aurora’s embattled police chief at that time. So, to pay her back, Robin filed a fraudulent report accusing Danielle of child abuse.

When things went sideways, Robin’s lawyer tried to delay her trial to have her competency assessed, claiming Robin was terminally ill. Her court filings included written medical reports from a New Mexico oncologist who allegedly diagnosed her with glioblastoma.

But she was not, in fact, terminally ill. She was fine.

The medical records were fake, too. There was no oncologist. The medical report was also a forgery. Police found that the doctor’s fake Facebook page and phone number were linked to Robin. And the MRI scans attached to her fake medical report were copies of MRI’s found online.

The victim, councilwoman Danielle, told the Denver Post she was ‘completely disheartened’ by serial forger Robin’s probation sentence, since Robin received no prison time. I don’t blame Danielle for feeling that way.

That Robin Niceta got zero prison time, despite filing a fraudulent child abuse report, falsifying medical records, forging an oncologist’s identity, and faking a terminal illness is totally bizarre. It wasn’t just some petty first-time offense—it’s systemic corruption, abuse of power, and obstruction of justice all rolled into one grim ball of blue-city malfeasance.

Consider the larger pattern—this happened in the same town recently overrun by a Venezuelan crime syndicate while its feckless Democrat police chief claimed it wasn’t happening. Clearly, law enforcement and local governance in Aurora are in a shambles. If its justice system won’t even punish someone for an elaborate and malicious scheme like this, it’s no wonder criminal gangs feel comfortable taking over entire apartment complexes.

Councilwoman Jurinsky’s frustration is completely justified. If filing false police reports, faking medical diagnoses, and impersonating doctors gets you nothing more than probation, what, exactly, does it take to get actual accountability in Aurora?

What say you, Coloradans?

Have a wonderful weekend! I’m off on my birthday trip to the car show. I hope you guys have a terrific time, too. I’ll see you all back here on Monday for the regular roundup.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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