MEDIA BRAIN FUNGUS ☙ Saturday, October 5, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS
Helene political fallout; Elon shames FAA out of the way; rapid-approved aid package rankles; two-ABCs-in-one; NIH fixer pleads the Fifth; mpox news; Trump price cap plan; Kamala foul-up; more. Attorney JEFF CHILDERS
Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! That means it’s a Weekend Edition roundup: media discovers political benefits for Democrats in Hurricane Helene, but can’t find any evidence of FEMA problems; space billionaire shames FAA into re-opening airspace for relief deliveries; media covers for disastrous aid failures; federal government fast-tracks another aid package for displaced citizens, just not the ones you think; VP debates are historical unless they don’t matter; two medias in one; NIH’s official email-disappearer invokes Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination; unexpected news about the latest monkeypox outbreak; Trump pushes price caps exposing more Democrat hypocrisy; and Kamala Harris hilarious teleprompter fail.
WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 
Yesterday, Politico ran a grotesque story headlined, The story breathlessly described how hurricane-fueled voting problems will hurt President Trump’s election chances. But Politico never once mentioned the political implications of the slow, defective federal response to the storm, or impeached Democrat Mayorkas, who heads FEMA.There is a nightmarish parasitic fungus called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, or ‘cordyceps’ for short. It invades the brains and central nervous systems of small insects, usually ants. Once installed, the fungus takes complete control of the victims’ actions, forcing them to act in ways that help spread the fungus. The victims’ bodies waste away as the fungus continues badly animating them in disturbing, herky-jerky movements. As the infected near death, the fungus forces them to climb as high as possible before exploding in a cloud of spores that rain down on other uninfected insects.
That’s the sanitized version of how cordyceps operates.
It’s debatable which cruel parasite, exactly, was responsible for destroying our once-free media. Maybe a corporate takeover by a handful of companies, all sharing the same globalist agenda? Occupation by deep-state psy-operators for national security? Chinese marxists? Or, instead of a complicated conspiracy theory like those, maybe the editors’ and reporters’ brains are growing cordyceps fungus. If you see them start climbing, run.
Regardless, we have a new hero to thank today for doing the media’s job and shaming the federal government into begrudging action. Yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted an update from one of his engineers deployed to the North Carolina disaster zone. The engineer, part of a team using private helicopters to deliver free satellite communications gear to stranded citizens, complained how FEMA and the FAA were shutting them down, part of “regulating the airspace.”
After Elon tweeted out the report from his own engineer, a known first-hand source, media accused the space billionaire of spreading misinformation and denied the feds were hampering aid delivery in any way. Then, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg chimed in:
Elon, an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, is experienced in solving this kind of bureaucratic whackamole. He called Mayor Pete. About five hours later, Elon posted a thank-you:
This happened because Elon has a giant public megaphone. Do you know who else has a giant public megaphone? The media. Except, for political reasons, since we are a month out of the election, the media has buried its megaphone under a toxic solar-panel graveyard. And people are literally dying because the media refuses to report anything that might embarrass the Biden Administration.
You can sort of understand how the far-left corporate media refuses to cover certain important stories due to politics, like the Hunter Biden laptop. It isn’t healthy. It erodes our democratic republic. But at least that kind of media malfeasance isn’t a direct threat to anyone’s well-being. But the hurricane coverage is completely different. In this case, the media’s malfeasance means many Americans in this country who might have been rescued will die instead.
Compare the media’s hyper-critical 2005 Hurricane Katrina coverage to its endless praise and knee-jerk defense of government during this hurricane. Media was all over the government’s response to the 2005 disaster. Local interviews with countless abandoned citizens pilloried slow-motion aid efforts, to the point President Bush was forced to deliver daily press briefings.
But yesterday, in an insectile frenzy, the media frantically fact-checked President Trump, accusing him of lying when he claimed FEMA gave nearly a billion dollars of disaster money to illegal immigrants — because that was a totally different Federal Emergency Management Agency budget category.
What FEMA could possibly have to do with relocating illegal aliens remains anybody’s guess. Here’s a link to the program on FEMA’s website. But yesterday, the media painted the emergency disaster agency’s money funnel to illegals as natural a phenomenon as breathing political air.
Meanwhile, reports from citizens in the disaster zone of widespread federal incompetence continued piling up yesterday. They are unverified, obviously, since the media refuses to look or listen. One compelling example was a report from the founder of Save Our Allies, formed initially to help rescue Americans and allies stranded in Afghanistan after Biden’s calamitous surrender. Now Save our Allies is working in North Carolina. Its founder complained that local hotels had been reserved for FEMA employees, who aren’t even there yet, and now there is nowhere left to house rescued civilians. FEMA people should be sleeping in a bus or a tent, not hotels.
Media’s take was largely complaints that angry, newly homeless Americans dared to accuse FEMA of politically slow-walking the disaster response. Misinformation! And then media ran triumphalist stories like Politico’s, crowing about how the hurricane helps Democrats.
You can donate to Save Our Allies at this link.
Meanwhile, ignoring the human tragedy along with the most important part of the political calculus, Politico cluelessly reported that Hurricane Helene ravaged “conservative strongholds” in Georgia and North Carolina, but Democrat areas are doing well:
Yesterday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted about a massive, new, fast-tracked aid package for surging essential aid to the unfortunate displaced residents of Lebanon. Not Lebanon, North Carolina. Lebanon, the war-torn country in the Middle East:As Blinkey’s tweet ratio suggests, the comments were lit. I would add only that Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, which is what has displaced Lebanese civilians in the first place, began on Monday — after Hurricane Helene tore through American states. So … they can rapidly surge hundreds of millions in aid to unfortunate, displaced citizens in Lebanon, but struggle to find a few dollars for unfortunate Americans displaced by the storm.
You could argue that the very same people surging aid to Lebanon created the crisis they are now surging the aid towards. Well, you don’t need to argue that. Let’s let the headline from Wednesday’s Politico handle the heavy lifting:
Someday, I hope to understand the Democrat strategy of funding both sides of a potentially nuclear conflict at the same time. I’m sure it must be a very good reason, even if they aren’t telling us what that reason is. Right? Something to do with compassion?
How much longer must we be afflicted by these compassionate bureaucrats?
Speaking of media malfeasance, I told you so. Two medias in one! Hey, a lot can change in three days:It’s like they aren’t even trying to hide it at this point.
More impressive is the fact that half the country, apparently, finds this kind of media flip-flopping totally reasonable.
Fox News ran a fascinating story yesterday headlined, “Former NIH official accused of making emails 'disappear' pleads Fifth to COVID subcommittee.” Ironically, pandemic-era NIH emails obtained through FOIA described NIH public records employee Margaret Moore as “the lady who helps make emails disappear.” She was subpoenaed to testify to the House Pandemic Committee and decided (wisely) to plead her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.The NIH covid expert who mentioned Ms. Moore’s email disappearing skills, Dr. David Morens, later claimed he was just joking. Haha! Good one!
Like many pandemic-era officials, Margaret has now retired, so she can’t be compelled to testify in her official capacity, making it harder for the committee to get her to talk. But in order to successfully assert a Fifth Amendment defense, at some point the witness is required to identify what crime they believe they could be incriminated for. I can’t wait.
Unexpectedly! Yesterday’s headline from Voice of America:If you often attend European leather festivals or frequent third-world prostitutes, you might want to consider that safe and effective, emergency-use authorized monkeypox vaccine.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined, “Trump Floats Long-Shot Proposal for 10% Cap on Credit-Card Rates.” At a rally this week, the former President announced a platform proposal to temporarily cap credit card interest rates. Combined with his proposals to eliminate taxes on tips, social security, and overtime pay, it is the strongest working-class package proposed by any major candidate in a generation.“While working Americans catch up, we’re going to put a temporary cap on credit-card interest rates,” Trump said at the rally in New York. “We can’t let them pay 25 and 30 percent.”
It’s a practical and timely proposal. Last month, Fortune Magazine ran this alarming headline:
Critics, who gave Kamala a pass on her idiotic idea for grocery-store price caps, pointed out the obvious issue that fabulously wealthy credit card companies’ interest rates are intended to account for the risk of not being paid back. Capping rates would probably reduce the amount credit card companies are willing to loan to low-income borrowers with limited prospects of paying those loans back.
Almost everyone is missing the point. It’s not about the wisdom of price caps. The market for loans is nothing like the markets for commodities or services.
Since recorded history, under common law excessive interest rates have been criminal offenses. Unsurprisingly, until relatively recently, all 50 states had serious criminal laws on their books for usury, which is the crime of charging someone too much interest. If you loaned me money in Florida at credit card rates, I could file a police report against you and you would be arrested, charged, and potentially imprisoned.
Last century, two states —Delaware and South Dakota— rescinded their usury laws. Because banks are subject to the laws of their states of incorporation, all credit card companies are incorporated in either Delaware or South Dakota. In other words, due to a legal loophole, credit card companies get away with criminal conduct. Don’t take my word for it. Headline from the Florida Times-Union, 2009:
Again, usury has been a crime since the Code of Hammurabi and remains a crime in 48 states. Usurious credit card interest rates are literally criminal. They can only get away with it because of a legal loophole. Using loopholes to escape criminal liability for something that civilization has always considered an immoral crime is not ethical or even defensible.
Argue about self-responsibility all you want, but the bottom line is: banks do not occupy the moral high ground this time.
Trump’s credit card cap proposal rips the mask off Democrats’ faux compassion for low-income Americans. They are literally victims of a crime that isn’t enforced by two states. Love it or hate it, Trump’s proposal shows the Democrat party is the amoral, uncompassionate party of the big banks.
Finally, Kamala Harris’ teleprompter froze up at a rally in Michigan yesterday, and then this happened:CLIP: Kamala teleprompter malfunction (0:49).
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Democrats’s last, best hope. Plus the Coach.
Have a wonderful weekend! Return on Monday, as we collide with the middle of the last month leading to the election.
