☕️ WALKING BACKWARDS ☙ Thursday, November 21, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

NYT preps its resistance public-health narrative; House outlaws male ogling women in restrooms; arrogant Bucks County official walks back outrageous defiance, View ladies leashed in real time; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Things are running a little late here due to scheduled medical business related to the newest and eldest member of the household. Nevertheless, your terrific Thursday roundup includes: inisidious New York Times op-ed seductively offers public health spankings but delivers a dud of a limited hangout; House moves toward biological-sex restrictions on women’s only spaces in the Capitol; Pennsylvania insurrectionist and County Commissioner walks back defiant and apologies abjectly; and insta-walkback of Gaetz-assassination on the View.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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A seemingly thoughtful, honest, and perceptive feature op-ed ran in yesterday’s New York Times, decorated with high-production-value custom animated graphics, seductively titled, “In America, if Everything Is a Public Health Crisis, Nothing Is.” Despite its surprising suggestion of soul-searching honesty and its brutally honest headline, it turned out a dud. It was less about repairing the Grey Lady’s tattered reputation and was everything about vaccinating the deep state against an incoming Trump Administration.

Warming to its theme, and properly citing the pandemic as Exhibit “A”, the article correctly stated the fact that “The nation’s public health apparatus is reliant on panic and outrage as a tool for addressing basic problems.”  Indeed, without panic and outrage, what would remain of the nation’s public health apparatus, which staggers from one “crisis” to the next “emergency?” But that is only part of the problem. The bigger problem for public health is that during the pandemic, through excessive overuse, its minions exhausted its favorite tool, fear.

As the article simply explained, “the nation itself is spent from so much panic and outrage.”

In other words, they poisoned the golden goose. They kept increasing the dosage until we all overdosed on fear manipulation, and vomited up all our residual trust in the public health “establishment.” They turned our fear of invisible bogeymen and our outrage directed at each other into a united sense of fury directed at them.

So far, so good. But then the author lost the thread. Through a long, rambling essay that provided much useful historical context as raw material, such as the swine flu vaccination scandal, the author ultimately ended up in the rhetorical ditch, advocating as a solution just more consistent and higher funding for public health. The author assumed without evidence that, if better funded, public health would somehow transcend its addiction to fear manipulation, instead of just doing it more enthusiastically and with newer computers and swankier conferences.

Thus, despite an encouraging setup, the author never ultimately challenged the public health behemoth at all. The article never grappled with the ethics of fear manipulation as a public health tool at all. It never even mentioned the historic loss of trust in public health.

To be honest, though I should have known better, it was profoundly disconcerting. What I eagerly expected from the article’s early tone was a stinging rebuke of public health’s fascination with crisis-ism. But it wound up offering a boring, conventional, liberal prescription for repairing dysfunctional government by making it even bigger and giving it even more power. It never had enough funding to have a fair chance of working…

Then, another explanation became manifest. This op-ed, which defrauded its tantalized readers by first offering a well-researched takedown of why nobody trusts public health anymore, fizzled out long before it got to anything even slightly critical of the FDA or the CDC. It was really intended to be a carrier for a new anti-crisis narrative. With Trump —and especially Robert Kennedy— about to assume control of public health, now suddenly the New York Times has discovered the dangers of a perpetual, chimeric state of emergency.

In other words, this op-ed is the Times investment of a substantial effort into battlespace preparation, to de-legitimize future conservative claims of any crisis, whether seed oils, untested vaccines, or even stolen ballots and open borders. After four years of happily enjoying Democrats’ forever-crises, they are now scrambling to reset the board, gettin set to argue against any crisis President Trump identifies without sounding hypocritical. You’re abusing emergency powers!

Behold the face of the new anti-Trump resistance. Do not worry, this time we will deploy our own counter-resistance.

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Yesterday, the House of Representatives’ bathroom brouhaha developed a little more, as The Hill ran a late story headlined, “Speaker Johnson announces policy barring trans women from Capitol bathrooms.”

As Speaker, Mike Johnson (R-La.) makes the rules relating to House administration. Yesterday afternoon, possibly short-circuiting Nancy Mace’s pending resolution (which would have extended to all federal facilities), Johnson announced his office would soon publish new rules restricting private areas like bathrooms and locker rooms to designated biological sex.

In other words, only people born without a prostate gland can use the ladies’ rooms.

In his announcement, Speaker Johnson diplomatically explained that every Congressman has their own private restroom, and the House’s public areas include many “gender neutral” unisex bathrooms. So. But to his credit, Johnson refused to accommodate the left’s delusional gender theories, and added, “Women deserve women’s only spaces.”

Until about ten minutes ago in historical terms, the notion that women deserve women’s only spaces was considered a settled debate. Now, apparently, the situation is more fluid.

For his part, showing solid political acumen, newly elected Delaware Congressman Tim “Sarah” McBride (D-Del.) strategically retreated, saying, “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms, I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”

Nancy Mace claimed victory with this outcome, but suggested it was only “a step.” All right, but what’s the next step?

Progress, albeit slow, and in fits and starts.

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Yesterday, the useless New York Times roughly politicized a deeply tragic story under the headline, “Migrant Gets Life Sentence for Killing Laken Riley in Case Seized On by Trump.” It was odd that the expression on Jose Antonio Ibarra’s face when he heard the verdict suggests tragic disappointment, as though he somehow thought the judge might find him not guilty. Instead, Athens-Clarke County Judge H. Patrick Haggard found Ibarra, 26, guilty on all ten different murder counts.

Why anyone reads the Times remains a mystery. In its story, the NYT never mentioned Ibarra’s country of origin: Venezuela. Nor did it mention important evidence from the trial proving the gruesome rape and hideous murder of young nursing student Laken Riley, 22, was part of Ibarra’s gang initiation. Nor did the Times describe critical testimony, like when Ibarra’s roommate testified how the pair had been flown around the country with free government-funded plane tickets, first going to New York, where they enjoyed taxpayer largesse in their free room at the Roosevelt Hotel,  before flying to Atlanta.

Jose and his female roommate had to jet out of New York after Jose had been arrested and then released. They moved to Athens since it was a “sanctuary city.”

Ibarra’s publicly funded defense lawyer first moved to transfer Ibarra’s case out of the county, arguing the illegal immigrant could never receive a fair trial in Athens. When the court denied his venue change request, Ibarra’s attorneys waived his right to a jury trial, and the case proceeded with the judge determining the verdict. During trial, Ibarra’s lawyers tried to shift the blame arguing, I’m not making this up, it could have been Jose’s brother, arguing that his illegal immigrant brother was more fit and thus better able to accomplish the rape and murder than Jose.

Don’t blame Jose’s public defender. She was just walking through the normal murder defense flow-chart. I prefer to believe his lawyer did a workmanlike but unenthusiastic job, providing him with just enough of a defense to avoid gifting him any Sixth Amendment “ineffective assistance of counsel” argument on appeal.

In a separate hearing later in the day yesterday, the judge sentenced Ibarra to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The County’s liberal District Attorney, Deborah Gonzalez, did not seek the death penalty, out of concern for “collateral consequences” to other illegal immigrants.

Never mind the collateral consequences of teaching murderous Venezuelan gang members they won’t face the death penalty in Athens-Clarke County.

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Ruh roh! In this morning’s first “great moments in walking it back” story, CNN ran an article yesterday headlined, “Pennsylvania Democratic official apologizes for comments about ignoring election laws.” She must have realized it’s not the pre-2020 world anymore.

I am sure you will recall Bucks County, Pennsylvania’s arrogant, hyphenated Democrat Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia who, while counting illegal votes that the state’s Supreme Court forbade be counted, infamously sneered “People violate laws any time they want.” To drive the stake deeper into her own shriveled heart, she pompously added, for absolute clarity, as though she were the center of the universe, “For me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.” Then, to clamp shut her own coffin lid, she snidely tossed in for good measure, “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country.”

The feckless county commissioner was practically daring Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court to do something about it.

Ms. Ellis-Marseglia rapidly became a woman on a deserted political island. On Monday, following national fury, Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro distanced himself from the debacle saying, “to be clear: any insinuation that our laws can be ignored or do not matter is irresponsible and does damage to faith in our electoral process.” The same day, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered all counties (meaning Bucks County) to comply with its previous rulings over undated ballots. Some of the justices blasted Bucks officials for “upending the rule of law.”

In Sunday’s C&C, I observed that Ms. Ellis-Marseglia had placed herself in the crosshairs of potential criminal prosecution as an insurrectionist or worse, an election interferer. There’s no evidence she’s yet been charged but apparently, for some reason, Ms. Ellis-Marseglia has experienced a significant heart change.

At yesterday’s board meeting, Ellis-Marseglia faced a fiery crowd and international news coverage. She began by apologizing. She first apologized that people misunderstood her comment and took it out of context. When that non-apology landed with a thud, Ellis-Marseglia groveled a little further, seeking empathy and blaming her controversial comments on her passion for public service. “The passion in my heart got the best of me, and I apologize again for that," she said.

Internet: 1, Rebellious County Commissioners: 0.

🔥🔥🔥 The Times of India ran another back-walking story yesterday, headlined “Matt Gaetz: Sunny Hostin reads Matt Gaetz's legal note on 'The View' amid allegations.” This might set the record for the fastest walkback ever. Monday’s far-left The View included a short segment where Sonny Hostin ranted about Trump’s nomination of Florida Representative Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. Hostin exclaimed in outrage, “how could you nominate someone who had sex with a 17-year-old … (and) once he found out she was 17, he stopped having sex with her??”

CLIP: The View’s Sonny Hostin forced at figurative gunpoint to issue a hilariously unenthusiastic legal correction of her latest Matt Gaetz tirade (0:29).

A three-minute commercial break followed. Then, the very next heartwarming segment began with Whoopi Goldberg, who started the fun off by cheerily saying, “Sonny! You have a legal note.” Sonny Hostin, with the blood drained so far out of her face she almost changed races, and with the voice of a grown woman forced to utter something so appalling that she wished she had the courage to quit instead, answered, “I do have a legal note, thank you Whoopi,” in a tone that was clearly anything but thankful.

Just look at that face. That face is the reverse-opposite of “Sunny.”

A lot must have happened over that short three-minute commercial break. Someone explained to the View’s harridans they crossed the actionable-defamation line; they discussed handling the ‘legal note’ in the next segment; somebody rapidly drafted a statement for Hostin to read; and Hostin herself, fuming, must have practiced at least once.

To say ABC’s lawyers are on a hair-trigger is a bit of an understatement. Another way to view what happened is the View ladies are now on a very short leash, a leash against which Sonny Hostin is obviously straining, but a leash that quickly brought her to heel.

Between Butler County’s law-defying Commission Chair, and not-so-Sonny on the View, that makes two high-profile leftie walkbacks in one week. What may we thank for this irresistable pressure against loony leftwing chatter? I humbly suggest to you the answer is: us, the people, exercising our free speech on Twitter.

Thanks to the First Amendment and Twitter’s disintermediation of mainstream news, the cycle time from babble to walkback is now measured in minutes. Or, maybe I’ve missed something. What do you think explains this wonderful development?

Have a tremendous Thursday! C&C will round up another serving of essential news and commentary for you right here, tomorrow morning. See you then.

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