Better in their words…

Source: EXEMPTIONS ☙ Sunday, October 8, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

🚀 A day after its horrific southern border collapse, as Israel’s army finishes recapturing 22 townships from armed Hamas migrants and re-sealing 29 different broken border barriers, the latest casualty figures reported by The Jerusalem Post this morning have soared to nearly 2,000 injured, almost 400 dead, and over 100 captured as hostages, including soldiers, women, and small children, easily making yesterday’s surprise raid the single deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s modern history.

Those are just the casualty figures for Israel. And there are hundreds more reports of people who remain missing, so those figures will almost certainly increase. As of this morning’s report, small-arms fighting continues in several places inside Israel.

After officially declaring war, and warning civilians to clear out of Gaza for most of the day yesterday, the Israeli Defense Forces have begun targeted strikes, but have not commenced what is being called the Gaza counteroffensive yet. They are still calling up reserves and organizing their equipment for an eventual ground invasion.

My morning report yesterday suffered in a couple minor particulars — for example, the IDF commander’s capture turned out to be a hoax — but most of the post held up well through the long news day, and the questions I posed remain open, such as whether any other major players like Hezbollah or Iran will try to take advantage of the chaos or may ultimately be linked to the attack.

So far, no. Aljazeera reported that while Lebanon-based Hezbollah has been lobbing some mortars into the north of Israel, and even though Iran issued several provocative social media statements yesterday, otherwise nobody blinked.

Meanwhile, ordinary Israelis were starting to ask some pretty hard questions. Like, how could this have possibly happened? In one article, the Wall Street Journal posed the question everyone is asking:

Unofficial statements suggest that, for some unstated security reason, 70% to 80% of IDF soldiers may have been temporarily relocated from their normal Gaza duty stations to the West Bank, leaving terrified citizens in the Gaza area mostly undefended. The WSJ reported that even military experts are baffled:

Last month, the Israeli military confidently characterized Gaza as being in a state of “stable instability,” suggesting that the dangers posed by Hamas militants were largely contained…

(But) Palestinian militants armed with machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and pistols were able to stream into Israeli towns and military bases with surprising ease…

“Clearly this was a well-planned operation that didn’t just emerge overnight and it’s surprising it was not detected by Israel or any of its security partners,” said Brian Katulis, vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington. “It’s hard to think of a security failure of this magnitude in Israel’s recent history.”

Even official mouthpieces like The Jerusalem Post were starting to wonder how the country can possibly live up to its promise to “utterly destroy Hamas” and “extract vengeance.” A cell-based terrorist network like Hamas is hard to attack straight on. The unstated strategy seems to be to trap Hamas’ militants in Gaza, while letting the civilians out, then fighting door-to-door until the job is finished.

From a political perspective, it appears that Israel’s political battle with its left wing is over for the time being. Regardless of the unanswered — unanswerable — questions, the situation will almost certainly rally Israelis around the conservative government. Things will be possible now for Israel that were politically impossible before.

The story continues developing. I’ll keep you posted.

💉 In a sign of the times, yesterday UK covid expert, University of Birmingham professor, and president of the British Humanist Association Alice Roberts tweeted her gratitude not for her health, not for her station, not for her blessings … but for her latest safe and effective covid booster:

741,000 views! You have to give these paranoid hypochondriacs credit for hanging in there. They really trust big pharma, and they don’t trust their own immune system at all. Professor Roberts just feels better knowing she had her booster, even if she gets covid a fourth time, because it could have been so much worse … in her feverish imagination.

💉 There is some terrible news for employers who denied religious exemptions to their employees. Yesterday, the Miami Herald ran a fascinating story headlined, “Florida worker wanted religious exemption from COVID shot. She was fired instead, feds say.”

Generally speaking, any employee who wants to sue their employer for violating their federal rights, such as their religious liberty rights guaranteed by Title VII, must first submit their claim to the EEOC. The EEOC has three options: it can file its own suits against the employer, it can deny the employee’s right to sue as frivolous, or it can issue a “right to sue” letter allowing the employee to file her own lawsuit.

Throughout the pandemic, the EEOC — headed by Biden-appointed officials — was remarkably neutral. In most cases, the EEOC relatively quickly issued “right to sue” letters for nearly all the employees we filed claims for. This was in stark contrast to the alternative, Florida-based Human Rights Commission, which usually denied employees’ rights to sue, so we stopped submitting claims to them.

Neither agency ever pursued a case itself, until now.

In what might be the very first federal case, the EEOC sued Hank’s Furniture, a small Arkansas retailer with stores in four states including Florida. The EEOC’s lawsuit alleged that a Pensacola employee submitted her religious exemption request for the shots, but Hank’s managers just sent her some pro-jab web links and told her that nobody was getting a religious exemption, period.

Hank’s later fired the employee after she refused to be vaccinated.

Now Hank’s finds itself squarely in the federal government’s crosshairs. EEOC attorney Marsha Rucker said the suit against the furniture seller “should remind employers they must communicate with employees requesting accommodation for religious beliefs and try to accommodate those beliefs whenever reasonably possible.”

For a five-location furniture retailer, a federal lawsuit like this probably feels worse than long monkeypox. This is only going to hurt for a long time.

In a second EEOC lawsuit, the agency sued insurance giant United Healthcare on behalf of a remote employee whose religious exemption request was also denied, without any reason given. After being put on leave without pay, she was finally fired in January, 2022, for not getting the shot.

Ruh-roh. It’s almost 100% certain United will cave and pay her in a quick settlement. The insurance carrier can’t afford to make precedent, and probably will do anything to avoid letting the feds get into their emails.

It’s remarkable that the EEOC’s lawyers are now prosecuting these lawsuits. It also opens the floodgates for private attorneys to do the same thing. I’ve long predicted the covid lawsuits would dwarf the tobacco suits and this could be the first wave. Small businesses who thought they’d be protected by the feds are about to learn the hard way what fickle allies the political agencies can be.

💉 Meanwhile, over in the great state of Texas, arriving late but not out, Governor Abbott signed a declaration Thursday calling a special legislative session, to criminalize illegal entry from a foreign nation, authorize police officers to arrest and “remove” aliens, and to ban private employer vaccine mandates.

Texas already banned state mandates last year. So, assuming it passes (very likely), the new law will clean up any remaining jab mandates from vile civilian companies. Progress!

🔥 A bizarre story emerged a couple weeks ago and I don’t know quite what to think about it. It got much less coverage than it seems was warranted, even allowing for all the other distracting big news lately. Malaysia Today ran the story, headlined “What’s happened to hundreds of Elon Musk’s satellites?” The sub-headline explained “212 satellites belonging to internet service provider Starlink strangely disappeared; most likely due to electromagnetic storms.”

While satellites go missing from time to time, a mass disappearance event like this has never happened before. SpaceX did not comment on the story apart from acknowledging they are missing. For example, they didn’t say if they were going to put a picture of the missing satellites on milk cartons or put up some posters around the neighborhood or anything.

The “electromagnetic storms” theory is just a wild guess. What do you think happened to the satellites? Did the Chinese steal them? The aliens’ mother ship? Sunspots? Did they commit suicide after too much Taylor Swift content flowed through them? Weird. It’s even weirder the media is ignoring this intriguing story.

🔥 Matt Gaetz is keeping himself busy after successfully pulling the plug on Kevin McCarthy’s speakership, but he’s not mending any fences. On Friday, the Floridian ran two stories about Matt headlined, “Gaetz Introduces Security Clearance Revolving Door Act,” and “Gaetz Calls for Term Limits, Prohibition of Reps. Trading Stocks, to Negotiate Motion to Vacate Threshold.”

On Thursday, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) took aim at the 51 mendacious intelligence experts who falsely signed a public letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was fake Russian disinformation. Gaetz’s bill would criminalize any federal official disclosing their national security status during an investigation.

Gaetz explained, “These intel officers used their national security clearances as the imprimatur of legitimacy for their lies in order to influence the 2020 presidential election. In order to ensure that this never happens again, we must pass the Security Clearance Revolving Door Act.”

Gaetz is fearless. Hopefully he’s not reckless. Chuck Schumer once famously said, the intelligence agencies have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.

Also on Thursday, Gaetz generously announced on Twitter that he was willing to compromise on the Motion to Vacate rule (the rule he used to unplug McCarthy). He’ll compromise if Republicans will agree to a bipartisan package proposed last month by Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA). The package would ban U.S. Representatives from trading stocks, provide a 12-year term limit for representatives, ban political donations from lobbyists or PACs, provide term limits for Supreme Court Justices, and create an ethics code for Supreme Court Justices.

Haha, good one Matt; it will never happen. Insider trading is how you get rich as a Congressman. And what would they do without PAC money? Never mind terms limits that would cancel 90-year congressional careers. Please.

🔥 In more news that will shock you to your core, award-winning journalist and former environmentalist liberal Michael Shellenberger published a significant new Substack article this week headlined, “Democrats’ Green Energy Agenda Behind Biden Family Influence-Peddling Racket.”

Say it isn’t so! And here I thought the green energy agenda was purely motivated by a virtuous desire to save the planet, and not just loot the treasury.

The article began by summarizing the Biden Bribery evidence to date showing that Joe was in fact involved in Hunter’s “businesses:”

• There is a photograph of President Biden golfing with Hunter and Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer;
• Hunter Biden’s business partners said Joe Biden was sometimes on speaker phone as they discussed business;
• Then-Vice President Biden dined and drank coffee with his son’s foreign business partners;
• A Biden family associate said President Biden attended a meeting about CEFC, a Chinese energy company;
• Hunter Biden recently said his father was in the room when he demanded payment from someone at CEFC.
• And now it turns out that a Chinese investment company wired $250,000 to Hunter Biden in July and August of 2019 and that the bank wires named President Biden’s Delaware home as the beneficiary address.

Shellenberger then made a fascinating observation: all Hunter’s business deals involved energy, and most of them involved so-called “green” energy firms, such as firms that stood to gain from the transition to natural gas and renewables and from electric cars. The article recounts a number of examples, all evidencing that the Bidens and their donors profited from insider knowledge of federal “subsidies” for so-called green tech.

For example, Hunter Biden and George Soros both invested in an energy company called Fisker. Later that fall, “then-Vice President Joe Biden announced that the US Department of Energy had approved an application for a massive federal loan to Fisker that would give the electric vehicle company access to more than a half-billion dollars – so long as it met production goals.”

Fisker went bankrupt after getting millions of federal dollars.

Meanwhile, profiting donors like George Soros also gave democrat politicianstons of money. It’s a circular money laundry scheme spinning through green energy and climate hysteria.

Michael made the inarguable point that drug-addled Hunter, mostly occupied with getting high and chasing new sexual experiences, could hardly have learned by himself the ins-and-outs of complicated federal environmental regulations and how to make money off them.

Successfully navigating that ever-changing world would seem to require someone, say, better positioned in government than Hunter. Joe’s problem now is that a lot of people are focused on his family business. It’s just a matter of time.

It’s too bad. You can’t make millions off the democrats’ bizarre climate schemes. Those are opportunities for liberal billionaires and connected democrat donors. It’s science, so shut up.

💉 Finally, Michelle and I laughed till we cried when we saw this meme online yesterday. Keep in mind, this follows a harrowing incident from earlier this week when we had another family over for dinner. Everything was going great, all having a good time, until one of them casually remarked, we just got our boosters.

It was horrifying. It was the closest thing to myocarditis that I ever felt. Later, after our guests left, Michelle stayed up till the wee hours searching for anti-shedding protocols and I gobbled supplements like they were tic-tacs.

Michelle and I obviously didn’t say anything at the time, but later when we compared notes, we admitted we each had the same exact thought: how dare you come over without telling us!  It’s odd how quickly times have changed, isn’t it?

So, as you can imagine, this meme was a perfect visual for how we felt on the inside when our guests uttered those fateful words:

Have a very blessed Sunday, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning for another delicious mug of Coffee & Covid.

Share

We can’t do it without you. Consider joining with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds.  I could use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:  ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com