Better in their words…

Source: THEIR OWN SIZE ☙ Sunday, October 29, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

🔥 Let’s start with some good news! Now, I don’t mean to take pleasure in other people’s misfortunes, but come on. Fortune Magazine ran the story Friday headlined, Facing 50,000-plus lawsuits linking Baby Powder to cancer, Johnson & Johnson mulls a third bankruptcy filing.

Johnson & Johnson faces at least 18 jury trials over the next twelve months and supposedly — although this figure is hotly debated — over 50,000 similar cases sifting through the courts. They’re all related to ‘tainted talc’ in J&J’s iconic, safe and effective baby powder.

Apparently it’s causing cancer. Imagine.

J&J first tried filing bankruptcy in January of this year, but its case was dismissed for “bad faith.” It then tried a second time and also failed. But according to statements on an investor call this week, the pharma and consumer-products giant is now ‘considering’ taking a run at a third bankruptcy filing, hoping to push together all the pending cases into a pennies-on-the-dollar global settlement of any current and future claims.

Since 2016, J&J has been hit with over $570 million in damage awards for talc-related cancer claims,  and the mega-corporation has also paid out at least $2.5 billion in pre-trial settlements.

I’m not sure a third bankruptcy will fly. Courts take a dim view of a third filing in the same year, especially after two previous ‘bad faith’ dismissals. In the bankruptcy community, we call that “frequent flying.” It’s certainly not impossible, but the bankruptcy option gets harder the more dismissals stack up. You can bet the trial lawyers will be screaming about J&J’s bad faith, which two courts have already officially determined.

Lost in most of the news was that last year the FDA removed J&J’s covid shots from the market after six reports of blood clots. Bankruptcy might not be a bad option. I’d be in favor of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, where court-appointed auctioneers liquidate the whole thing. My concept is, sell all J&J’s products and staff off to smaller, less evil companies, with the proceeds of the sales going to the various victims.

🔥 Yesterday, Mike Pence left the building. He exited, quit, said “vaya con Dios,” terminated, ixnay’d, and otherwise chickened out of the Republican presidential primary. Nobody noticed.

Well, somebody noticed:

CLIP: Trump, or somebody, responds to Mike Pence calling it quits.

💉 Another mysterious A-list Hollywood tragedy struck yesterday, with every major media outlet in the country leading with Matthew Perry’s sudden and unexpected death. Perry, 54, famously starred as “Chandler” on NBC’s hit TV series Friends.

The media doesn’t seem very interested in the mysterious nature of his death. But much was made in the various articles about Perry’s well-documented decades of drug and alcohol addiction (all during the Friendsyears) and his various surgeries, but the fact is Chandler “drowned” alone in a hot tub. There were no signs of foul play, and the police said no drugs were found on the scene.

First responders called it in as a ‘cardiac arrest.’

After getting sober, Perry created the Perry House in Malibu, a sober-living men’s facility. He told one reporter that because of his experience, if an alcoholic ever asked him for help, Perry stopped everything he was doing and did whatever he could. Perry had also just published his first book this year, a memoir describing his career, his alcoholism, his recovery to sobriety, and his coming to a saving faith.

Matthew also was showing a very positive outlook about the future.

Perry overcame his personal demons. But he couldn’t overcome the medical-industrial complex. As he asked in 2021 — in his iconic witty style — “Could I BE any more vaccinated?” And — I am not making this up — Perry was even selling a t-shirt with that tagline on his website:

Go with God, Matthew. We loved your wit and humor and we salute your good works. We’ll see you soon.

💉 Also back in 2021, Sierra Leone’s hit pop star Mos-B, 33, did not make a t-shirt but he recorded a popular single, “Vaccinate,” to help promote the jabs and reduce hesitancy in Africa:

Now, Mos-B is dead.

The hit musician had a sudden and unexpected heart attack while touring in France on October 21st. His music combined various styles including reggae, dancehall, and Afrobeats.

Ade go, Mos-B.

💉 Beloved Texas megachurch Pastor Bryan Dunagan, 44, died in his sleep AT HOME Thursday. He never even made it to the hospital.

Pastor Dunagan was the senior pastor at 5,500-member Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas.  He was also a marathon runner.

Coincidentally, courageous covid doc Dr. Paul Alexander attends Highland Park Church. Paul wondered yesterday on his Substack whether the young pastor might have died from the jabs. His death certainly fit the profile, and there’s no other reasonable explanation being offered by anybody. Dr. Alexander also said he was troubled by the congregation’s complete lack of curiosity over what caused Pastor Dunagan’s untimely death. The sentiment around the church seems to be “it just wasn’t the right time to inquire about the cause” of Bryan’s sudden and unexpected death.

When, I wonder, will it be the right time?

Bryan leaves behind his wife, Ali, and their three children. He is in his reward now. We pray for his bereaved, left-behind family, which is now fatherless.

In 2021, the federal government made a special effort to recruit pastors to “be a good example” to help hesitating congregations accept the shots. Right now we just don’t know about Bryan.

💉 Scientist, cell biology expert, marathon runner, and Professor of Biology at Virginia Commonwealth University Dr. Erich Damm, 39, died suddenly and unexpectedly this week of a freak pulmonary embolism — a blood clot.

According to his obituary, “There was no warning or rationale for what happened to Erich. A blood clot out of nowhere brought his extraordinary life to a premature end.”

Out of nowhere.

And … yep:

💉 Conservative influencers are hotly discussing the recent completely tone-deaf tweet from bowtied wonder Peter Hotez. In the tweet, Hotez wonders about all his working-aged public-health colleagues who’ve died suddenly lately. The October 28th tweet was prompted by the sudden death of Hotez’s friend, Brazilian scientist Rodrigo Oliviera, a Johns Hopkins grad and vice-president of research at a large Brazilian biomedical firm. Here’s Petie’s tweet:

You’d think that someone in Peter Hotez’s position, given everything going on these days, would word a tweet like that a little more carefully. It is almost like there’s a single rebellious neuron deep in the back of Peter’s brain pan somewhere that is firing on all cylinders, working overtime, doing its very best to get the message out.

Hotez’s laughable suggestion that the causes of these sudden deaths could be “overwork” or “exhaustion” is also a horrifying illustration of both elitist hubris and a shocking lack of awareness. More than anywhere else, the pandemic built these public health characters up in their own minds, as selfless heroes — nevermind a little grant grasping, a man has to make a living somehow — thanklessly toiling away for the Good of Mankind.

Okay, maybe they’re not toiling completely thanklessly, actually they’re going pretty well financially and getting to rub elbows with politicians and celebrities, but those pesky anti-scientific anti-vaxxers are always on their backs these days.

This random tweet and Peter’s reply is a perfect illustration of the problem:

How wonderful it must be, to be Peter Hotez these days! A “real hero.” (Let us not quibble over semantics.)

Well. Peter wasn’t completely unaware of how the tweet would land. He marked his “overwork” tweet so as only to allow replies from people he follows — in this case six of them — otherwise the public’s massive response might have crashed Twitter’s file servers.

Ultimately, what I think this most shows about Peter’s state of mind is these public health characters must live in a well-protected echo chamber, a thick bubble of samethink. They only talk to each other, about work, their common anxiety disorders, which they believe make them better at their jobs, or about the awful unfairness of anti-science people criticizing them all the time.

Peter and his friends are cognitively blind to what is happening in the real world all around them. Probably when they talk to each other about the rash of sudden deaths in their own peer group, they must muse about the awful cost of being a selfless hero all the time.

Or, maybe it could be the jabs? Just saying, Peter.

🔥 Fox News ran an awful story yesterday headlined, “Hurricane Otis death toll rises but number of missing in Acapulco remains unclear.” Mexican authorities are estimating that at lest eighty percent of resorts and hotels have been damaged. There have only been around 40 death reports so far, but there is still a lot of rubble left to sift through.

For whatever reason, it is kind of hard to find reports about the awful time that Acapulco had this week after the record-shattering, 24-hour turbo hurricane this week. You’d think this one would be tailor-made for climate fearmongering, not to mention the weather and disaster reporting industry.

CLIP: MTG wonders about media silence, and scenes from Acapulco (2:20)

Why is the media largely ignoring this story?

🔥 OutKick ran an uplifting story yesterday headlined, “Women Quit Jiu-Jitsu Tournament After Being Forced To Fight Men, Prompting Association To Change Its Rules.

In a North American Grappling Association (NAGA) competition this week, every single female athlete quit the tournament, in protest over men who dress like women fighting in the women’s categories.  The Georgia Grappling Championship awarded women’s medals to an all-male podium on October 21st, when trans women (i.e. men) ‘Cordelia’ Gregory and ‘Corissa’ Griffith, pictured above, took first and second place. Griffith, a standout, won four total gold medals in women’s events that day.

In fact, during the Georgia tournament, there were more men participating than women in most of the women’s divisions.

The women were right to quit. They could have been killed. Or worse.

The good news started last week when a video clip went viral from the week’s prior California tournament, showing a fight between a trans-male (200 lbs) and a female athlete (135 lbs). She won, but it was ugly. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Women’s sports commenters like swimmer Riley Gaines raised a stink, pointing out some of the obvious problems with handing violent men medals for beating up girls:

Very quickly, NAGA was forced to “clarify” its policies over ‘trans-identified males’ and them fighting girls in the women’s categories. The “clarification” was that women don’t have to fight trans women (men) anymore. Transgender females — biological men — will now have to fight with the boys:

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the numbers of trans entrants will soon drop sharply, since it’s nowhere near as much fun to pick on someone your own size.

🔥 Finally, I was musing yesterday about new Speaker Johnson’s comments where he’d said if you want to know what he thinks about anything, you just need to read the Bible. Check this out: his full name is James Michael Johnson. James was Jesus’ brother. Michael is an Archangel. And his last name derives from “John’s son.” John was Jesus’ favorite Apostle.

Make of that what you will. Certainly Speaker Johnson is a man for the season.

On Friday, the Hill ran a story about the terrific new Speaker headlined, “Johnson throws down gauntlet on Israel-Ukraine spending battle.” At last! The Hill gloomily predicted that Ukraine funding now faces an “increasingly complicated road ahead.”

Hopefully!

On Thursday, Speaker Johnson (R-La.) told Sean Hannity that Ukraine funding would only be considered in the House after certain conditions are satisfied by the White House:

“We have a stewardship responsibility to the precious treasure of the American people. We want to know: what is the objective here? What is the end game? (Republicans) came up with a document that presents twelve critical questions for the White House to answer as a condition of our supplying more support. These are not hard questions, Sean. I delivered it myself to Jake Sullivan.”

Johnson also remarked that any more Ukraine funding would have to be paid for by cuts in other areas, and that Republicans would not consider borrowing or printing money to fund the struggling country’s border defense. Good luck finding $100 billion from other porcine parts of the budget.

RUMBLE: Here’s the entire Sean Hannity interview with House Speaker Mike Johnson (40:04). It’s worth a listen.

I sure like the ways things are going in the House. It looks a whole lot like more progress.

Have a very blessed Sunday! And thank you for your continuing support — together we are making a huge difference. Tomorrow we’ll kick off the week with another terrific C&C roundup as we had into the throes of the holiday season.

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