BROMANTIC ~ Friday, November 8, 2024 ~ C&C NEWS
An attempt to keep up with the geyser of good news. Ukraine, West Coast, East Coast, red shifts, immigration policy, and much, much, more. The good news keeps coming. JEFF CHILDERS
Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! We begin with the first of several morning monologues aimed at where we should focus our energies next. Then, in the roundup: surprising news about who Ukraine wanted to win the election; Trump’s shocking peace prospects; surprising election news from San Fransisco; New York City’s immigrant nightmare nearing an end; Biden’s immigration laws take another legal hit; and President Trump finds an encouraging staffing agency for his second term.
C&C MORNING MONOLOGUE
>> Could this week have possibly been any better? Let’s take another day to enjoy the sweet juices of victory (or words to that effect). Then let’s start preparing for the left’s inevitable response. The pattern is always the same; after a big political shock, whether losing the Civil War, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or Donald Trump’s first victory, the Democrat show runners always disappear for a week or two, leaving their media puppets shambolically thrashing around in search of a coherent thought.
Media puppets temporarily have no brains.
Don’t worry though. By the end of their shadowy regrouping conference, whoever runs the Democrat party will have worked out a new plan. (A fascinating aside: The secret conference was said to be held on Epstein Island, but that particular venue is no longer on Travel & Leisure’s Top 10 list.)
Soon the party managers shall return from whatever demonic pit produces their ideas, stinking of sulphur, and holding a fresh, steaming new narrative with which to instruct the media and Democrats, telling them how to think and what to be outraged about. Last time, it was Russiagate. This time it will probably be even more outrageous. Expect a Weekly World News-headline type of claim, maybe something involving Donald Trump’s Secret Alien Love Baby with Putin.
Yesterday, Obama speechwriter and national security advisor Ben Rhodes ran a soulful New York Times op-ed headlined, “Democrats Walked Into a Trap Republicans Set for Them.” Rhodes wrote far too much, vomiting his surging emotions onto digital paper, publicly soul-searching, passionately rending his rhetorical shirt in overwhelming grief and mortified frustration.
After about 800 rambling words, Rhodes finally got around to his humble prescription for the Democrats’ path forward:
Do. Not. Believe. It. Rhodes is playing a carefully scripted role. Ben’s fake prescription is a transition narrative, designed to avoid accountability (we have to stop blaming each other and look forwards), to set Democrats up as the victims again, and to shift the blame for losing so badly onto Republicans.
This stage is very short. Before very much longer, all this faux humility and promising to learn important lessons will evolve into the same tired mantra: We TRIED to get along with Trump but HE made it impossible!
The silly notion that the Democrats would undertake self-reflection, course correction, and de-woke their politics is laughable. Don’t be ridiculous. The modern Democrat party has no reverse gear. Partisan Democrats are Thelma and Louise. They’re going forward, not backward.
On Tuesday, the last sane Democrats got out of the car and voted for Trump. Just in time.
Republicans have always been like Charlie Brown, always willing to believe the Democrats will really hold the football this time, and so we always wind up on our backs, shocked and surprised after the predictable reversion to form.
So let’s not be surprised this time! Let’s prepare ourselves for their sudden and inevitable doubling down.
The Democrat Party will inevitably conclude that: we didn’t sell our message well enough to overcome the disinformation in rightwing media. We need to do it faster and harder.
Our job will be to stay calm and focused. Stay calm, and slice corporate media into ribbons. More on that soon.
WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY
>> Another surprise the media never saw coming. Ukraine’s national nightmare may also soon be over. The far-left, pro-war Economist ran a story yesterday headlined “Why Volodymyr Zelensky may welcome Donald Trump’s victory.” I am not making this up: “Disillusion with Joe Biden,” the subheadline quietly advised, “has reached deep levels.” Now they tell us.
The gist of the story was, Ukrainians wanted Trump to win (just like the rest of us). Not just any Ukrainians either: the ones with the most to lose, Ukraine’s top generals and soldiers.
Suddenly! Suddenly and unexpectedly! And surprisingly. “It comes as quite a surprise,” a surprised Economist reported, “to learn that many senior Ukrainian officials were hoping for a Donald Trump victory.” For some baffling reason the Economist could not quite grasp, the Ukrainians were “prepared to gamble” on “a wildcard president who would rip up the rules and almost certainly cut aid.”
You don’t say! That is just how we felt, too. As John F. Kennedy might have said, We are all Ukrainians now. (Or vice-versa. It works either way.)
President Trump promised to end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours.” When he said “24 hours,” it was obviously a metaphor for a very short time. But you can expect the media to go berserk on Day Two if the war isn’t over yet. (Trump’s first broken promise! Wheee)
As the surprised Economist described it, the battlefield situation looks dire for Ukraine. Literally nothing is going right. They are heading into the winter without electricity. Up to a fifth of the entire army has gone AWOL. Morale has collapsed along critical sections of the front line. Russia’s army is stronger and better supplied than ever. (Laughably, the Economist sneered at Russia’s inflation rate, which unlike ours is caused by their overheated economy.)
Why would senior Ukrainian military officials hope for Trump to win? It’s simple. Russia has only ever wanted one thing, which has been clear since before the Proxy War started. Russia does not want Ukraine’s land. Russia does not want Ukraine’s minerals. Russia definitely does not want Ukraine’s comedic former president.
Russia just wants Ukraine to stay out of NATO.
Of course there are other details, but that is pretty much it. Now, let me ask you something: How would that country’s joining NATO benefit the average Ukrainian? Answer: it wouldn’t. The average Ukrainian could care less about NATO. Only warmongering neocons care about Ukraine joining NATO.
Trump will soon control NATO. When Trump gets Ukraine to pledge not to join NATO, or gets NATO to pledge never to admit Ukraine, nobody will care except the deep state and its captured corporate media. After that critical problem is out of the way, the rest of the peace negotiation with Russia becomes much simpler.
Biden and his neocons would have never conceded Ukraine’s NATO admission, otherwise what was it all for? But it would be easy for Trump, who wants a leaner, more self-sufficient NATO anyway. That’s the core possibility that Trump sees for a quick resolution, along with other possibilities his Art-of-the-Deal brain recognizes that the rest of us can’t see.
Putin has not yet called the President-elect. And the Russian president was one of the last major world leaders to congratulate President Trump yesterday. But when he did, Putin did so graciously. “He turned out to be a courageous man,” the Russian leader announced at a conference yesterday. “He showed himself, in my opinion, in a very correct way: courageous, manly.”
Putin’s “courage” comment led Politico’s editors to craft what they thought was a very clever headline:
Putin was trying not to make the first move by not calling Trump. But by inviting Trump’s call, Putin made the first move anyway. Trump will accept the invitation and make the call, and things will start happening fast, since neither Trump nor Putin are chronic, dissembling liars like Biden’s bellicose neocons.
The only thing that remains unclear is how much Trump can accomplish before he’s sworn in. There are no legal impediments, but obviously Trump can’t order weapons shipments to Ukraine be stopped yet. In 2024, much depends on how well the various leaders trust Trump to keep his promises once he takes office.
My guess is they will trust Trump.
I don’t mean to overstate things, but I’m not sure this point could be overstated: When Trump makes the deal to end the Ukraine war, he will have single-handedly hauled the world back from the brink of global thermonuclear war, and will therefore have instantly succeeded as the 47th President — potentially before he even takes the oath.
And since Ukraine is the lynchpin for nearly all current world conflict, removing that constant irritant would yield a deposit of political currency with which Trump could negotiate other successful resolutions. It is not unreasonable to think we could be looking at an era of more global peace and security since … never.
To give you an idea how fast the pieces are falling into place, behold this highly suggestive op-ed from yesterday’s entire WSJ Editorial Board:
>> In other words, the Middle East negotiation is already starting. Biden failed at every attempt to negotiate even a single cease-fire. But Trump is not using Biden’s pugilistic formula. Yesterday, for example, President Trump said he is not interested in regime change in Iran, and the Iranian people should pick their own leaders.
In other words, Trump just promised fewer deep-state color revolutions and more democracy. Some dictator.
By the way … what did I tell you about 2024?
>> San Fransisco’s nightmarish controlled demolition might be over. Yesterday, the Washington Post ran another shocking election story headlined, “San Francisco rejects incumbent mayor London Breed, elects Daniel Lurie.” Daniel Lurie is a democrat, but he is a conservative, anti-crime democrat. “We need to enforce the laws,” Lurie told WaPo last month. “We can be compassionate, but we have to be tough.”
Behold California’s red shift:
Conservatives in California: you’ve got this. Bring it home.
>> More surprising progress. New York City may be waking from its long migrant-fueld nightmare. Yesterday, the UK Daily Mail ran a story headlined, “NYC to stop giving migrants FREE pre-paid cards worth $18,500 a year.” It seems so simple: Cut off the magnets, and the migrants will be pulled elsewhere.
The Daily Mail did not connect this dot, but I wonder how much New York’s newfound budgetary wisdom has to do with its rational expectation the Trump Administration will soon cut off the federal money spigot.
Plus, Mayor Adams has at times shown sparks of resistance to the Biden migrant scheme, and is under DOJ investigation. Maybe Mayor Adams’s legal problems may soon get some much-needed clarity.
>> In another exciting development, yesterday the Daily Mail ran another terrific immigration story headlined, “Judge slashes Biden administration policy for undocumented immigrants.”
Yesterday, a U.S. District Court in Texas struck down one of Biden’s most liberal immigration schemes. The so-called 'Keeping Families Together' program allowed illegal spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens to apply for a green card without first having to leave the country, creating a greased naturalization skid.
But federal judge Campbell Barker, a Trump appointee, ruled yesterday that the Biden Administration overstepped its authority and stretched the legal interpretation of relevant immigration law “past its breaking point.” No dice.
Progress.
>> Finally, and also encouragingly, yesterday Politico ran a story with the very encouraging headline, “Florida looks like a Trump administration staffing agency.”
It’s still early. But during the pandemic, under the leadership of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida emerged as the nation’s conservative government in exile. Florida resisted the Biden Agenda early, consistently, and often, and ignored corporate media’s nonstop cancellation attempts. Florida is packed with battle-hardened political veterans with years of experience warring with Biden’s agenda.
Forget about the Fountain of Youth. The Sunshine State is poised to become a wellspring of talent for staffing Trump’s second term with reliable conservatives.
As Politico correctly noted, and as Trump seemed to admit during his extended interview with Joe Rogan, President Trump’s mistake during his first Administration was hiring people who wanted to control him and the bureaucracy rather than hiring folks on board with his agenda.
The article’s only real ‘news’ was Trump’s pick of his campaign co-chair Susie Wiles as White House Chief of Staff. Susie, who has deep Florida roots, previously led successful gubernatorial campaigns for both Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis. She will become the first female Chief of Staff in American history, but don’t hold your breath waiting for any “glass ceiling” headlines.
The rest of Politico’s article was guesswork and supposition, but encouragingly so, and it might be an article to read in full. But I found one paragraph particularly exciting, a possibility I’d imagined but kept to myself out of fear of jinxing the chance. Behold, and get your hopes up as high as mine are:
Yes, please! As you probably know, Dr. Ladapo was the only state surgeon general to advise against taking the unsafe and ineffective covid shots. On top of that, he also issued the strongest state guidance in the country against trans medicines and surgeries. Corporate media hates Dr. Ladapo. If Trump does pick him, the Harvard-educated critical thinker would become the second black HHS Secretary in American history.
These surely are exciting days. Let’s ride them as fast and as far as we can.
Have a fabulous Friday! And rejoin the C&C community tomorrow morning for another healthy and bracing does of essential news and commentary.
An attempt to keep up with the geyser of good news. Ukraine, West Coast, East Coast, red shifts, immigration policy, and much, much, more. The good news keeps coming. JEFF CHILDERS
Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! We begin with the first of several morning monologues aimed at where we should focus our energies next. Then, in the roundup: surprising news about who Ukraine wanted to win the election; Trump’s shocking peace prospects; surprising election news from San Fransisco; New York City’s immigrant nightmare nearing an end; Biden’s immigration laws take another legal hit; and President Trump finds an encouraging staffing agency for his second term.
C&C MORNING MONOLOGUE
>> Could this week have possibly been any better? Let’s take another day to enjoy the sweet juices of victory (or words to that effect). Then let’s start preparing for the left’s inevitable response. The pattern is always the same; after a big political shock, whether losing the Civil War, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or Donald Trump’s first victory, the Democrat show runners always disappear for a week or two, leaving their media puppets shambolically thrashing around in search of a coherent thought.
Media puppets temporarily have no brains.
Don’t worry though. By the end of their shadowy regrouping conference, whoever runs the Democrat party will have worked out a new plan. (A fascinating aside: The secret conference was said to be held on Epstein Island, but that particular venue is no longer on Travel & Leisure’s Top 10 list.)
Soon the party managers shall return from whatever demonic pit produces their ideas, stinking of sulphur, and holding a fresh, steaming new narrative with which to instruct the media and Democrats, telling them how to think and what to be outraged about. Last time, it was Russiagate. This time it will probably be even more outrageous. Expect a Weekly World News-headline type of claim, maybe something involving Donald Trump’s Secret Alien Love Baby with Putin.
Yesterday, Obama speechwriter and national security advisor Ben Rhodes ran a soulful New York Times op-ed headlined, “Democrats Walked Into a Trap Republicans Set for Them.” Rhodes wrote far too much, vomiting his surging emotions onto digital paper, publicly soul-searching, passionately rending his rhetorical shirt in overwhelming grief and mortified frustration.
After about 800 rambling words, Rhodes finally got around to his humble prescription for the Democrats’ path forward:
Do. Not. Believe. It. Rhodes is playing a carefully scripted role. Ben’s fake prescription is a transition narrative, designed to avoid accountability (we have to stop blaming each other and look forwards), to set Democrats up as the victims again, and to shift the blame for losing so badly onto Republicans.
This stage is very short. Before very much longer, all this faux humility and promising to learn important lessons will evolve into the same tired mantra: We TRIED to get along with Trump but HE made it impossible!
The silly notion that the Democrats would undertake self-reflection, course correction, and de-woke their politics is laughable. Don’t be ridiculous. The modern Democrat party has no reverse gear. Partisan Democrats are Thelma and Louise. They’re going forward, not backward.
On Tuesday, the last sane Democrats got out of the car and voted for Trump. Just in time.
Republicans have always been like Charlie Brown, always willing to believe the Democrats will really hold the football this time, and so we always wind up on our backs, shocked and surprised after the predictable reversion to form.
So let’s not be surprised this time! Let’s prepare ourselves for their sudden and inevitable doubling down.
The Democrat Party will inevitably conclude that: we didn’t sell our message well enough to overcome the disinformation in rightwing media. We need to do it faster and harder.
Our job will be to stay calm and focused. Stay calm, and slice corporate media into ribbons. More on that soon.
WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY
>> Another surprise the media never saw coming. Ukraine’s national nightmare may also soon be over. The far-left, pro-war Economist ran a story yesterday headlined “Why Volodymyr Zelensky may welcome Donald Trump’s victory.” I am not making this up: “Disillusion with Joe Biden,” the subheadline quietly advised, “has reached deep levels.” Now they tell us.
The gist of the story was, Ukrainians wanted Trump to win (just like the rest of us). Not just any Ukrainians either: the ones with the most to lose, Ukraine’s top generals and soldiers.
Suddenly! Suddenly and unexpectedly! And surprisingly. “It comes as quite a surprise,” a surprised Economist reported, “to learn that many senior Ukrainian officials were hoping for a Donald Trump victory.” For some baffling reason the Economist could not quite grasp, the Ukrainians were “prepared to gamble” on “a wildcard president who would rip up the rules and almost certainly cut aid.”
You don’t say! That is just how we felt, too. As John F. Kennedy might have said, We are all Ukrainians now. (Or vice-versa. It works either way.)
President Trump promised to end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours.” When he said “24 hours,” it was obviously a metaphor for a very short time. But you can expect the media to go berserk on Day Two if the war isn’t over yet. (Trump’s first broken promise! Wheee)
As the surprised Economist described it, the battlefield situation looks dire for Ukraine. Literally nothing is going right. They are heading into the winter without electricity. Up to a fifth of the entire army has gone AWOL. Morale has collapsed along critical sections of the front line. Russia’s army is stronger and better supplied than ever. (Laughably, the Economist sneered at Russia’s inflation rate, which unlike ours is caused by their overheated economy.)
Why would senior Ukrainian military officials hope for Trump to win? It’s simple. Russia has only ever wanted one thing, which has been clear since before the Proxy War started. Russia does not want Ukraine’s land. Russia does not want Ukraine’s minerals. Russia definitely does not want Ukraine’s comedic former president.
Russia just wants Ukraine to stay out of NATO.
Of course there are other details, but that is pretty much it. Now, let me ask you something: How would that country’s joining NATO benefit the average Ukrainian? Answer: it wouldn’t. The average Ukrainian could care less about NATO. Only warmongering neocons care about Ukraine joining NATO.
Trump will soon control NATO. When Trump gets Ukraine to pledge not to join NATO, or gets NATO to pledge never to admit Ukraine, nobody will care except the deep state and its captured corporate media. After that critical problem is out of the way, the rest of the peace negotiation with Russia becomes much simpler.
Biden and his neocons would have never conceded Ukraine’s NATO admission, otherwise what was it all for? But it would be easy for Trump, who wants a leaner, more self-sufficient NATO anyway. That’s the core possibility that Trump sees for a quick resolution, along with other possibilities his Art-of-the-Deal brain recognizes that the rest of us can’t see.
Putin has not yet called the President-elect. And the Russian president was one of the last major world leaders to congratulate President Trump yesterday. But when he did, Putin did so graciously. “He turned out to be a courageous man,” the Russian leader announced at a conference yesterday. “He showed himself, in my opinion, in a very correct way: courageous, manly.”
Putin’s “courage” comment led Politico’s editors to craft what they thought was a very clever headline:
Putin was trying not to make the first move by not calling Trump. But by inviting Trump’s call, Putin made the first move anyway. Trump will accept the invitation and make the call, and things will start happening fast, since neither Trump nor Putin are chronic, dissembling liars like Biden’s bellicose neocons.
The only thing that remains unclear is how much Trump can accomplish before he’s sworn in. There are no legal impediments, but obviously Trump can’t order weapons shipments to Ukraine be stopped yet. In 2024, much depends on how well the various leaders trust Trump to keep his promises once he takes office.
My guess is they will trust Trump.
I don’t mean to overstate things, but I’m not sure this point could be overstated: When Trump makes the deal to end the Ukraine war, he will have single-handedly hauled the world back from the brink of global thermonuclear war, and will therefore have instantly succeeded as the 47th President — potentially before he even takes the oath.
And since Ukraine is the lynchpin for nearly all current world conflict, removing that constant irritant would yield a deposit of political currency with which Trump could negotiate other successful resolutions. It is not unreasonable to think we could be looking at an era of more global peace and security since … never.
To give you an idea how fast the pieces are falling into place, behold this highly suggestive op-ed from yesterday’s entire WSJ Editorial Board:
>> In other words, the Middle East negotiation is already starting. Biden failed at every attempt to negotiate even a single cease-fire. But Trump is not using Biden’s pugilistic formula. Yesterday, for example, President Trump said he is not interested in regime change in Iran, and the Iranian people should pick their own leaders.
In other words, Trump just promised fewer deep-state color revolutions and more democracy. Some dictator.
By the way … what did I tell you about 2024?
>> San Fransisco’s nightmarish controlled demolition might be over. Yesterday, the Washington Post ran another shocking election story headlined, “San Francisco rejects incumbent mayor London Breed, elects Daniel Lurie.” Daniel Lurie is a democrat, but he is a conservative, anti-crime democrat. “We need to enforce the laws,” Lurie told WaPo last month. “We can be compassionate, but we have to be tough.”
Behold California’s red shift:
Conservatives in California: you’ve got this. Bring it home.
>> More surprising progress. New York City may be waking from its long migrant-fueld nightmare. Yesterday, the UK Daily Mail ran a story headlined, “NYC to stop giving migrants FREE pre-paid cards worth $18,500 a year.” It seems so simple: Cut off the magnets, and the migrants will be pulled elsewhere.
The Daily Mail did not connect this dot, but I wonder how much New York’s newfound budgetary wisdom has to do with its rational expectation the Trump Administration will soon cut off the federal money spigot.
Plus, Mayor Adams has at times shown sparks of resistance to the Biden migrant scheme, and is under DOJ investigation. Maybe Mayor Adams’s legal problems may soon get some much-needed clarity.
>> In another exciting development, yesterday the Daily Mail ran another terrific immigration story headlined, “Judge slashes Biden administration policy for undocumented immigrants.”
Yesterday, a U.S. District Court in Texas struck down one of Biden’s most liberal immigration schemes. The so-called 'Keeping Families Together' program allowed illegal spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens to apply for a green card without first having to leave the country, creating a greased naturalization skid.
But federal judge Campbell Barker, a Trump appointee, ruled yesterday that the Biden Administration overstepped its authority and stretched the legal interpretation of relevant immigration law “past its breaking point.” No dice.
Progress.
>> Finally, and also encouragingly, yesterday Politico ran a story with the very encouraging headline, “Florida looks like a Trump administration staffing agency.”
It’s still early. But during the pandemic, under the leadership of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida emerged as the nation’s conservative government in exile. Florida resisted the Biden Agenda early, consistently, and often, and ignored corporate media’s nonstop cancellation attempts. Florida is packed with battle-hardened political veterans with years of experience warring with Biden’s agenda.
Forget about the Fountain of Youth. The Sunshine State is poised to become a wellspring of talent for staffing Trump’s second term with reliable conservatives.
As Politico correctly noted, and as Trump seemed to admit during his extended interview with Joe Rogan, President Trump’s mistake during his first Administration was hiring people who wanted to control him and the bureaucracy rather than hiring folks on board with his agenda.
The article’s only real ‘news’ was Trump’s pick of his campaign co-chair Susie Wiles as White House Chief of Staff. Susie, who has deep Florida roots, previously led successful gubernatorial campaigns for both Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis. She will become the first female Chief of Staff in American history, but don’t hold your breath waiting for any “glass ceiling” headlines.
The rest of Politico’s article was guesswork and supposition, but encouragingly so, and it might be an article to read in full. But I found one paragraph particularly exciting, a possibility I’d imagined but kept to myself out of fear of jinxing the chance. Behold, and get your hopes up as high as mine are:
Yes, please! As you probably know, Dr. Ladapo was the only state surgeon general to advise against taking the unsafe and ineffective covid shots. On top of that, he also issued the strongest state guidance in the country against trans medicines and surgeries. Corporate media hates Dr. Ladapo. If Trump does pick him, the Harvard-educated critical thinker would become the second black HHS Secretary in American history.
These surely are exciting days. Let’s ride them as fast and as far as we can.
Have a fabulous Friday! And rejoin the C&C community tomorrow morning for another healthy and bracing does of essential news and commentary.
