☕️ WEATHER OR NOT ☙ Tuesday, June 17, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Gene therapy setback after MD drug pulled for deaths; Jerry Lewis and the charity-medical cartel; Trump’s deportation plan boosts wages; UK admits “conspiracies”; hopeful signs in Israel-Iran war.
Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! I’m ‘enjoying’ in-room coffee this morning (blegh; first-world problem) at the Nation’s Capital, preparatory to donning the court suit and heading for ground zero where progressive bugbear ‘Project 2025’ was conceived. I wound up making a lot more notes for my presentation than I expected, and am considering cleaning them up for you. We’ll see. In today’s hastily-drafted (excuse typos) roundup: ‘gene therapy’ scores another loss as MD drug pulled after two deaths, providing helpful contrast to pandemic drug policies; Jerry Lewis and the medical-charity industrial complex; Trump self-deportation plan appears to be working and low-income workers benefit most; the United Kingdom becomes the latest to admit what you’ve been called a conspiracy theorist for even asking questions about; and a quick war update offers hope for something much bigger and better to emerge.
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍
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Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a story headlined, “Biotech pauses trial after second patient death linked to gene therapy.”
Sarepta Therapeutics of Boston, Mass., lost 40% of its stock value yesterday, after it disclosed a second death among its pediatric patients treated for muscular dystrophy with its gene-editing drug Elevidys. Both deaths were from liver failure. Remember iatrogenic liver failure? That is exactly what killed hundreds or thousands who were given Remdesivir by hospitals during the pandemic, often against their will, and whether they wanted it or not. Science! Shut up!
In any case, the suspension of Elevidy’s post-marketing trial after just two deaths is tragic for two reasons. Obviously, it is tragic for the deceased patient’s parents and family. But it is also tragic for kids suffering from muscular dystrophy, a wasting disease that seems to prefer boys, for which there are few effective treatment options and no cure.
Maybe Sarepta will find an answer.
Some will remember the Jerry Lewis telethons for MD— some of the wildest, weirdest, and emotionally charged television ever streamed across the nation’s airwaves. It was controlled chaos, an annual live variety show that ran for 21 straight hours starting Sunday night and running through Labor Day Monday. It was vaudeville meets telethon meets celebrity Alice-in-Wonderland. You could see Frank Sinatra, the Harlem Globetrotters, Ed McMahon, Dean Martin, BB King, Rachel Welch, a drunk Joan Crawford, and random Vegas strip magicians all sandwiched between heart-breaking clips of kids with MD.
It was, perhaps, best described as a streaming fever dream of philanthropy, hosted by the King of Comedy, who chain-smoked packs of unfiltered cigarettes and waved fistfuls of donor pledge cards.
Jerry was known for ad-libbing. He often veered off script in crazy directions, sometimes ranting about union rules, critics, or what he called “the suits at MDA.” He once announced with great fanfare —live, on-air— “my critics can kiss my ass.” That was during a fundraising pitch. Another time, also live, he blamed anemic donations on that year’s disabled kids for not being cute enough.
Over the years, though, Lewis raised over $2 billion for MD — more than any other fundraiser in US television history, mostly in $1-$5 donations, long before any college kid ever dreamed of GoFundMe after a jolt cola-induced nightmare.
Jerry’s Telethon arrived at its unceremonious end in 2011, when the host, the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), pulled Lewis’ plug without explanation. To this day, no one knows why. It remains another Hollywood unsolved mystery. Lewis never spoke to anyone at MDA ever again. He passed away six years later in 2017, aged 91, and just in time to avoid the jabs.
Despite a constant refrain of reassurances in every show that “we are closer than ever to a cure,” all that effort, and all that money —in costly pre-pandemic dollars, mind you— vanished with nothing lasting to show for it, without any cure being found, despite an empire of medical bureaucracy built on hope and sympathy. Adjusted for Biden-flation, that is closer to $4–5 billion today.
The MDA’s CEO pulls in between $500k–$800k a year. And before you judge too harshly, that’s one of the more modest executive charity gigs. ‘Charities’ like the American Cancer Society or the ALS Association pay their executives much more.
Finally, and most ironically, the current crop of hoped-for cures came after the telethon’s finale, outside the medical-charity complex, from for-profit companies like Sarepta pursuing genetic therapies. The clinical results are all promising, mostly in showing improved gene markers, but no magic bullets have yet emerged.
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More winning. On Sunday, amidst the Weekend of Protest, the New York Post ran an encouraging story headlined, “Nearly 1 million illegal immigrants have ‘self-deported’ under Trump, which has led to higher wages.” MSNBC viewers have no idea.
Alongside all the arrests and high-profile deportations, the Trump Administration is also quietly running a voluntary self-deportation program that encourages illegals to leave with cash benefits and free plane tickets. DHS has also revived what corporate media is calling an “archaic law” requiring foreign nationals in the U.S. to register with the federal government and provide their fingerprints.
Under the 1950s law, failing to register is a separate and sufficient ground for instant deportation. Judges in lower courts facing these cases have been quibbling about whether illegals “actually knew” they were violating the law— a newly-discovered and careful type of judicial scrutiny that J6 Capitol tourists did not enjoy. For some reason. (It’s definitely not politics, how dare you.)
The article quoted a Washington Post story that reported “a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March.” WaPo framed that news as “a sign of the weakening labor supply.” Yet the paper also noted, “Average hourly wages accelerated, rising by 0.4 percent over the month, to $36.24 in May, as earnings continue to beat inflation in a boost to workers’ spending power.”
As the NY Post correctly pointed out, the statistics show that, with fewer illegal immigrants, businesses are having to raise wages to attract workers. In other words, it’s helping Main Street instead of Wall Street. That’s just what the President promised, and it is called winning.
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Welp, I probably don’t even need to tell you, but yet another “misinformation” conspiracy theory appears to be emerging into the fact-checkers “allowed” category. Yesterday, the UK Times ran a story breathlessly headlined, “Enemies could weaponise new weather technologies against UK.” I wonder how they can tell through the hazy smog of gaslighting?
Weather technologies? Wait. You mean … chemtrails? If you feel puzzled, because you’ve been assured many times by compliant corporate media that people who believe in weather manipulation are seditious kooks and social media trolls, think again.
“Ministers,” the Times explained, “are examining how technologies designed to combat global warming could be weaponised by hostile foreign powers.” Hahahaha! It’s two admissions in one! Let me translate: atmospheric global warming technologies are weather weapons.
They are fretting about so-called “solar radiation modification” (SRM), which is alleged to help “cool the earth” by “artificially” reflecting sunlight away from the Earth’s surface. The Simpsons tried to warn them back in 1995:
Ministers needn’t search very far for a suspect. The UK Independent fingered a potential culprit in April of this year:
What will those kooky scientists come up with next?
Late in the story, we discover that Aria, the British government’s own advanced research and invention agency (think DARPA), is pumping £57 million into funding for 21 projects, which include outdoor field trials into “brightening clouds” to reflect sunshine.
Alas, the Brits are not worrying about their own weather-weapons tests. “The government,” the Times soberly informed its readers, “is working to understand the risks associated with an independent or third-party actors carrying out so-called solar geoengineering.” Paging Bill Gates.
Lest you be tempted to think that they are talking about something besides chemtrails, think again. Oh, they don’t want to say it*,* of course, but there it was anyway, like your best frenemy popping up at a high school house party you were sure they didn’t know about:
The story’s expert, Dan Marks, an “energy security” researcher at the Royal Institute, drolly observed (cue British accent), “Almost every country is vulnerable to some type of extreme weather, so if you can make that weather better with the technology, you can likely make it worse by deploying the technology at the opposite time.” Now they tell us.
But beyond vague references to “independent actors,” the story never mentioned Gates at all, or any other deep-state-owned billionaire. The only possibilities referenced in the story were Elon Musk and the UK’s evergreen enemy: Russia. Putin!
It’s chemtrails, dummies! Mr. Marks wondered, “What if an Elon Musk or an activist group decided to do it, and decided to do it in the middle of the ocean?” As a highly informed C&C reader, you already know about the thousands of private aerosol testers that can be found in the FAA’s registration database— just in the U.S.
You aren’t the only Faraday-cage-capped lunatics concerned about chemtrails. “More than 560 academics,” the Times reported, “have signed an open letter calling for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering.” Read it for yourself.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone to admit they’ve been lying about chemtrails for decades, and now they can’t hide it anymore. I really cannot understand how these media people can live with themselves. Which is worse? The chemtrail sprayers or the gaslighting media?
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Today’s quick war update contains hopeful signs of good news, which appeared in a trio of stories this morning. The first article, from the Wall Street Journal, was headlined, “Trump Says Not Working on Cease-Fire—but Something Bigger.”
After Trump decamped early from the G-7 Summit, French President Emmanuel Macron couldn’t resist a swipe, not minding his own business but claiming Trump had bailed to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Iran. Naturally, Trump didn’t let that moronic comment go unanswered:
Whatever he’s doing, Trump says it’s “much bigger” than a cease-fire. Which elicits the question: what is bigger than halting a potentially nuclear Middle East war? With Trump, it could be anything from a surprise peace framework to a geopolitical branding play (“Trump Peace Tower: Tehran”). But the possibility of a broader regional deal is suddenly not off the table.
Before jetting off, Trump reportedly demanded that the G-7’s joint statement include language affirming Israel’s right to self-defense—a sticking point for some members. Once that was secured, he was gone. Zelensky, Ukraine’s piano-playing headliner, hadn’t arrived yet despite scurrying as fast as he could, so he missed his window for a Trump photo op.
The second story appeared in the Journal below the headline, “Trump May Send Vance, Witkoff to Speak With Iranians.” Trump is using strong language befitting Iranian tough guys, but didn’t completely rule out negotiating with Iran. “They should have done the deal,” the President told reporters. “I told them do the deal, so I don't know. I'm not too much in the mood to negotiate."
But more optimistically, Trump also said he is considering sending both Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff to negotiate with the Iranian government. Previously, only Witkoff was talking to the mullahs, so adding Vance might boost the dickering horsepower. But Trump remained cagey and didn’t commit. “Not sure yet, I may. Depends on what happens when I get back,” he told reporters on Air Force One.
Meanwhile in the Middle East, missiles continued flying like fur in a stray cat kennel, and the propaganda war was just as thick. A helpful reminder came this morning courtesy of the Jerusalem Post and its backtracking headline: “IDF reversal: IAEA may be right that Natanz centrifuges not destroyed, only site above damaged.”
Apparently, the IDF has now discreetly walked back two earlier claims that they’d destroyed Iran’s entire underground nuclear base. The sub-headline explained, “The IDF had said twice that the underground site beneath Natanz was also destroyed by a military strike.”
After four years of fake Ukrainian coverage, we’re becoming familiar with some of the war propagandists’ modern techniques. This particular type involves a huge, dramatic claim of success, followed a few days later with a quiet “recalibration.” Thanks to assists from helpful corporate media, the initial claim always makes international front-page news, but the retraction languishes in local reporting on page 26.
I’ve come to terms with it. Propaganda has been a staple of war news since The 300 fought off the entire Persian Army. It is what it is. But we folks breathing the thin air of information up in the cheap seats must remain skeptical of whatever they claim is happening down on the field. Results, as they say, may vary.
Anyway, unlike a certain former (alleged) president with an Autopen, Trump is fully engaged. That is all we can ask for. Biden would have shut the lid around 10am yesterday and would still be “resting” on the beach in Delaware.
Have a terrific Tuesday! C&C will be back with the latest essential news and skeptical commentary tomorrow morning, as I prepare to return to the fiery summer depths of my beloved Sunshine State.
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My question regarding the UK’s enemies using weather technology against them is, how could the weather in the UK get any worse?
—“Judges in lower courts facing these cases have been quibbling about whether illegals “actually knew” they were violating the law”
Wait, I was always told ignorance of the law is no excuse, “Ignorantia juris non excusat” 🤔 Oh but these are “migrants” so they are allowed privileges actual American citizens don’t have 😑🙄