Better in their words…

Narrative shifting shows emerging Fani defense; CDC triggers covidians; fake news primer; Mayorkas impeached; now CBS sheds reporters; house squatting epidemic; Fla. cracks down on thieves; more.

Source: TRADING DOWN ☙ Wednesday, February 14, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

🔥 Sometime last week, corporate media must have got its new marching orders to defend disgraced Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Clearly, the Fani narrative has shifted, the ranks have closed, and like a flock or ‘gang’ of lemmings, corporate media also reversed course. Behold the remarkable headline from this morning’s New York Times:

Does it. What, exactly, is the New York Times implying about black women?

I won’t bother describing the rubbish article. You can imagine it well enough. Times reporters blamed Fani’s problems mainly on racism raised to the power of sexism, and excused her reprehensible personal and professional conduct because whatever Trump did was worse. Apparently that’s the standard now in First Class.

The new tone has been all over corporate media, starting from last week’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, where it seems to have started, with this headline:

They ginned up 17 totally fair and unbiased “legal ethics experts” whose job was to pressure the judge in the Fani Willis case, and to give the judge a little help, throwing out some bones of ideas he may not have chewed over yet, ideas for how to let Fani off the harpoon and still save judicial face. It’s a race to the legal bottom.

The so-called experts included every argument they could think of in their brief. Like, Fani didn’t target any specific defendant with her public comments, the defendants haven’t shown any Constitutional violations, and Nathan Wade probably just has a thing for hefty gals. But it seems to me they failed even to convince themselves.

At the end of the day, still stressing there was nothing — in their view — requiring disqualification they allowed, okay, but if Judge McAfee disagrees, Willis should still be allowed to resolve the conflict by reimbursing her love bunny for any “shared expenses,” or maybe just tweaking Nathan’s job description so the prosecution can keep advancing in a timely manner, meaning before the election.

Lawyers include the “but if the Court disagrees” section in their briefs when they know they’re wrong and are trying to blunt the inevitable blow.

In other Willis news, as we predicted, Nathan Wade quickly settled his divorce case last week to avoid testifying about the affair. My guess is: Jocelyn is getting everything she’s asking for. Every. Little. Thing. And, don’t cancel me, but Nathan traded down:

Just saying.

😷 The New York Times ran a time-warping story yesterday headlined, “C.D.C. Considers Ending 5-Day Isolation Period for Covid.” The sub-headline added, “Americans may be advised that it’s safe to return to regular routines after one day without a fever.”

You probably didn’t even know quarantines were still a thing. That’s because you aren’t a New York Times reporter who gets a week of paid vacation every time they can get that little line to show up in the right place on a PCR test. You’ve wondered who’s buying all those covid tests?

Employees of big corporations that “follow” the CDC are buying rapid tests in bulk lots. Each one is a little plastic ticket, a ticket to a week off work. As long as the CDC keeps that policy.

The article is about as silly as you probably imagine; the reporter, Apoorva Mandavilli, is clearly one of the same slackers who stands to lose weeks of free vacation time and will have to start working on a normal schedule. Even when she doesn’t feel good. Unfortunately, Apoorva’s not a very good journalist, and she might not survive the next round of cuts anyway.

Her story wasn’t worth reading except as an example of how to spot fake news. And it was great for that purpose.

Sadly, an editor could have prevented this embarrassing and emotionally manipulative journalistic failure. Here’s what fake news looks like: an article citing a bunch of “experts” responding to a little bit of “news.” That describes this article. It had about 150 words describing a proposal — not even a policy change — to drop the 5-days-of-quarantine recommendation. That was it for “news.” Then the rest of the article was a bunch of “experts responding” with their opinions.

A non-fake news article would cite experts on both sides. But in fake newsworld, all the experts always agree with each other, and the reporter can make sweeping generalizations about experts’ opinions. Let’s see how it works. Here are all the experts quoted in Apoorva’s article, with comments she got by phone or text or DM or whatever, probably while working from home on a covid break:

• “Several experts” said “the agency is squandering an opportunity to foster better public health policies.”
• Dr. Syra Madad said “I think this [CDC revised policy] sets really an unfortunate precedent.”
• “Some researchers” said they “worried that Americans would interpret the new advice to mean that Covid was no longer a threat.”
• Dr. Boghuma Titanji said “There’s still a lot of people getting Covid and dying from Covid in the U.S.; and even people who have only a mild illness may go on to develop long Covid, for which there is no treatment.”
• Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo said “At the very least, the C.D.C. should advise that people who end isolation after one fever-free day also wear N95 masks when leaving their homes.”
• Dr. Jay Varma said “Over time, sick people wearing masks could become the norm, like wearing condoms or helmets.”

Well, Apoorva’s handpicked experts pretty much summarized every opinion on the Zero Covid subreddit. What do you want to bet she’s a regular there?

Apoorva is really the one who disagreed with the CDC. Somehow — in 2024! — she still wants to keep the five-day quarantine rule, whether it’s to collect unearned benefits like a week off each time she has a sniffle, or because she’s a hypochondriacal germaphobe. Either way.

This is an opinion piece masquerading as news by using cherry-picked “experts” to speak for the reporter. In other words, its fake news.  See how easy it is to tell?

🔥 The BBC ran a heartwarming story yesterday headlined, “Alejandro Mayorkas: House votes to impeach homeland security secretary.” They finally did it! By one vote, the House of Representatives voted yesterday to impeach Secretary of Defense Alejandro Mayorkas, 214-213.

You have to give Speaker Johnson credit. This was the House’s second try — they couldn’t get impeachment over the finish line the first time. But if at first you don’t succeed in impeaching the country’s worst Secretary of Homeland Security, try, try again.

Among other things, Mayorkas is responsible for securing the border. He is utterly clueless and so disconnected from reality that one feels compelled to request him a wellness check. He has no idea what’s going on. Last April, Mayorkas testified before Congress, under oath, that “the border is secure.” That was enough to impeach him right there. Just this week, Mayorkas told Meet the Press that the hardest part of meeting with Joe Biden is preparing for it, because the former Vice President “is sharp, intensely probing, detail oriented, and focused.”

Think about that. Mayorkas’s brain is working so badly that it finds Biden’s brain sharp and intensely probing. Mayorkas is indescribably incompetent.

Sadly, this impeachment is largely symbolic. While Mayorkas now stands impeached, that part is done, the case must now go to the Democrat-controlled Senate, where it seems hard to imagine it will get the two-thirds majority required to remove the poorly-performing Secretary. But you never know.

🔥 The Hill ran a story yesterday showcasing more bad news for corporate media headlined, “CBS owner Paramount cuts 800 jobs two days after record-setting Super Bowl.” Included in the bloodbath was top national security reporter Catherine Herridge, who was just recently breaking some Biden Bribery news.

Yesterday, Paramount Global announced a worldwide three-percent reduction in force, including about 20 people who worked at the news network. Three of the cut were on-air personalities, including Herridge. A CBS News insider said employees at the network felt “shock” and “devastation” after yesterday’s cuts. “It’s going to put a lot of work on the correspondents who remain at CBS — during an election year,” he observed.

The CBS layoffs weren’t particularly surprising, since the whole media industry has lately been in utter disarray as Bidenomics continues to do its work. Layoffs have recently been a feature at the big corporate media players, from the Wall Street Journal to the LA Times, TIME Magazine, Business Insider, NBC, Washington Post, the New Yorker, and others.

🔥 Last week, Fox ran a story headlined, “Squatter crisis hits Atlanta as property owners see homes morph into drug and prostitution dens.” This newest crisis has been quietly exploding around the country, as amoral illegals and their fellow travelers continue testing the U.S. legal system’s weaknesses. The best way to explain this one is this short but terrifyingly-realistic spoof video, published yesterday, although you could be forgiven for being fooled into thinking it is horrifyingly real. It is real. You could title the video, “How I Stole a House in Portland.”

CLIP: How I Stole a House in Portland video (1:27).

As a lawyer, I can say everything in that video was accurate, and even more likely to happen in places like Portland where they have ridiculous “squatter’s rights” laws.

The good news is that, outside Portland (and the Blue States), legislators are already reacting. News 4 Jacksonville ran a story last week headlined, “Florida bill to address squatting approved by Senate committee but not without opposition.” (As it happens, I helped some with drafting this bill.) The bill would allow police to remove squatters even though they claim to have leases (with treble damages against landlords that lie).

Although hysterically opposed by shrieking leftwing activist groups, the squatters bill passed a Florida Senate committee last week 7-1.

Back in Georgia, the squatter situation in Atlanta is so bad that Local News WBTV-2 found a $500 Instagram “service” that said it would get you the keys and a fake lease for any rental house in Atlanta. They reported the illegal service last week in a story headlined, “‘This is stealing’ Channel 2 goes undercover as Instagram account lets you squat in metro homes.”

But, like Florida, Georgia already has a bill working its way through this year’s legislative session that would give cops tools to use against squatters, and would make falsifying a lease a separate criminal charge.

Blue States actually have laws going the other way: protecting the rights of people squatting in other folks’ houses. Fixing ‘squatters rights’ laws is going to take a lot longer and be much more difficult in those Blue States. In other words, the self-inflicted punishment of the Blue States is only getting started.

🔥 A trend to watch is this year’s state legislative session, which is shaping up to focus on problems related to the army of illegal immigrants flowing across the country’s borders. Yesterday, Governor DeSantis held a presser discussing legislative package ostensibly targeting retail theft, but the giveaway is its focused particularly on organized gangs of shoplifters.

CLIP: Governor DeSantis announces legislative package addressing organized shoplifting (1:05).

In the clip, DeSantis explained, “You need to make sure that prosecutors do their job — and we’ve shown we’ve been willing to suspend prosecutors when they haven’t enforced the law, but part of it is to make sure that the penalties are severe enough to deter people from doing this.”

In what seems like a purely organic movement, the Red States seem to be starting to pass laws that will make it very difficult for bad-acting illegals to stay here. Which means the hardest criminals will have a field day in the Alice-in-Wonderland Blue States, where laws protect lawlessness. U-Haul may have another couple of great years, as citizens flee Blue-State hellholes.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Don’t eat too much sugar, it’s not good for you. And come on back here tomorrow for more snarky and optimistic Coffee & Covid.

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