Better in their words…

Eeyore sighs at cheap gas; federal judges are fearful; MAHA breaks media brains; net-zero goes out with the tide in NZ; and Florida’s gold bill follows other states. mrossol

Source:  SICK-CARE SYSTEMS ☙ Sunday, May 25, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

😥😥😥

Yesterday, TribLive reported the grey cloud in the silver lining under the gloomy headline, “Summer gas prices drop, but economic uncertainty remains as travel season begins.” Now you can be disappointed even farther from home.

The story began with a human interest anecdote. Davon Magwood (assuming he actually exists) is the kind of guy who can always find opportunities for improvement everywhere he looks. “After paying nearly forty dollars to fill his tank at a Springdale gas station,” the Trib dourly reported, “Davon will cancel his East Coast trip this summer if he has to.”

This holiday weekend launches the nation’s annual travel season, when gas prices usually peak. But this year, prices have plumbed record post-pandemic lows. Memorial Day gas prices are projected to average only $3.08 per gallon. It shattered a long-standing trend— for the last 10 years (excepting only locked-down 2020), gas prices have steadily increased at an average of +19% per year.

But this year’s pump prices are -11% lower than last year’s, even though pre-election Biden was flooding the market with Strategic Petroleum from our Reserves. And, 11% is an average; in many states, the price drop is even bigger.

In an article about the unexpected fuel windfall to holiday travelers, the Trib dourly reminded readers of all the things they should worry about instead, a sour catalogue of pessimism and despair, including: “a recent spate of airline crashes and mishaps, recent U.S. tariffs, low minimum wages and job insecurity.“

And, even if it is good news, it probably won’t last. “The 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada issued by President Donald Trump in February,” the Trib reminded us, “alongside an additional 10% tariff on Canada’s energy resources, may up gas prices in the short term.”

It may up gas prices. “May.” You never know. Probably.

Davon remains anxiously pessimistic. He is experiencing a profound trust problem. A trust problem in one man. “It’s inconsistent. I don’t trust what’s been going on — everything from his cuts when Elon was in charge. Basically, I’m at the whims of whatever the president is doing that day,” the depressed holiday-canceler said.

If it weren’t for bad news, there’d be no news at all. But wait, it gets worse.

😥😥😥

Totally unbiased and absolutely apolitical judges are now fretting over their personal security. The Wall Street Journal ran the story this morning below the headline, “Exclusive — Judges Weigh Taking Control of Their Own Security Amid Threats.” It’s not a war between the judicial and executives branches, not really, no, but … after all, the Marshals Service works for the Bad Orange Man.

“Amid rising tensions between the Trump administration and the judiciary,” the Journal grimly reported, “some federal judges are beginning to discuss the idea of managing their own armed security force.”

Like gas-guzzler Davon Magood, federal judges are having their doubts about the Commander in Chief.

The Judicial Conference is a group of fifty “non-partisan” judges who meet several times a year in Washington, DC, to discuss Judicial Branch policy and swank around fancy hotels. At their most recent semiannual meeting in March, between sips of champagne, the Security Committee enthusiastically discussed what the Journal euphemistically called a “provocative solution”— what if they commanded their own private security force?

The US Marshals Service has always protected federal judges. Armed Marshals line the entryways to federal courthouses, man the X-ray scanners, and search citizens’ bags. They are stationed in courtrooms. They escort judges to and from their cars in secured parking areas. They investigate threats against the judiciary. They enforce judges’ orders, like arresting witnesses who stubbornly refuse to show up while under subpoenas.

The judges have Democrat friends in Congress. On Thursday, Senator Corey Booker (D-N.J.), filed a new bill that, if passed (it won’t be), would let the U.S. Supreme Court pick the head of the Marshals Service instead of the President. Gloomy Senator Booker explained that the Marshals’ “dual accountability to the executive branch and the judicial branch paves the way toward a constitutional crisis.”

Or other things, like staying every single one of Trump’s executive orders, might be what’s paving the way toward a constitutional crisis. Just saying.

The Journal quoted federal Judge John Coughenour (Western District of Washington), who thinks the notion of moving the Marshals under judiciary control is a “wonderful idea.” Judge Coughenour is a very worried man. “In the 43 years that I’ve been on the bench, there’s never been any reason to worry that the Marshals Service would do whatever was appropriate—until recent years,” Coughenour melancholically said.

The article revolved around the April 25th arrest of plump state (not federal) judge Hannah Dugan, for her aiding and abetting a criminal illegal alien to flee ICE custody. The Marshals have nothing at all to do with her— but who cares? The reporter really just wanted to include a saucy quote from Attorney General Pam Bondi: “What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi told Fox News recently, speaking about the Dugan case. “They are deranged, is all I can think of. Some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not.”

Not only were state judges completely unrelated to the discussion, but the DC meeting where judges discussed building a private army happened a month before Judge Dugan’s arrest. So what does Dugan really have to do with anything? Oh well. Let us not quibble over facts.

According to the story, the handwringing judges fretted about all the public anger directed at them, and the fomenting: “fomenting public anger at the judiciary and in particular individual judges.” That kind of keen judicial reasoning would have been super helpful back when Biden’s Executive Branch was fomenting public anger at soccer moms, unvaccinated people, and January 6th Capitol tourists.

But sometimes it takes personal experience to truly grasp the law’s more delicate nuances.

Nor was the Judicial Conference troubled about the 2021 documents which showed that, under Biden, Marshals were ordered not to remove mobs of unhinged abortion activists from outside conservative Supreme Court Justices’ homes following the leak of the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1507, it is illegal to picket or parade near a judge’s residence with the intent of influencing their decision. You can’t imagine the kinds of threats the conservative members of SCOTUS received. But Biden’s Marshals stood down.

Meh, the judges stoically said at the time. You have to take the rough with the smooth.

But they’re not so sanguine now, since Biden is gone.

😥 Following the WSJ’s standard of journalistic malpractice, the story’s final six paragraphs gloomily described a deranged Maryland man, who was convicted of threatening to assault and murder federal judges, after he mailed off several heated letters threatening to kill five federal judges and a clerk in Pennsylvania. Diligent readers who somehow stuck with the story till the bitter end discovered the man’s case was about child custody and not anything related to President Trump’s policies after all. Sigh.

A private judicial army is about the most deranged idea that black-robed people with lifetime appointments could have possibly come up with. But it is, after all, the Year of Weirdness.

😥😥😥

Yesterday, the Washington Post found nothing to like in a story headlined, “The findings — and scientific problems — in White House ‘MAHA Report.’” The sub-headline sneered, “Parts of the MAHA Report contradict scientific consensus.” Weasel word alert: Parts, consensus.

On February 13th, President Trump signed an executive order requiring HHS to prepare two reports. The first, due within 100 days, was a MAHA Assessment of the childhood chronic disease epidemic. The second, due within 180 days, was a MAHA Strategy based on the assessment’s findings. This week, on schedule, HHS released the Assessment.

It was a stinker. Over 40% of U.S. children have at least one chronic condition (asthma, obesity, ADHD, etc.)— and the rates of childhood obesity, diabetes, mental illness, allergies, and autoimmune disorders are sharply rising. It is also a national security issue, since 75% of young people aged 17–24 are ineligible for military service due to health and fitness issues. And life expectancies are now worse in the U.S. than in any other developed country and even most s-hole countries.

Despite spending far more on health than anybody else, we are getting much worse results.

“Today’s children are the sickest generation in American history in terms of chronic disease,” the report starkly concluded. Despite quibbling over nearly everything else, the Post never contested that stunning statistic.

You would think corporate media —which never misses a chance to ask how anything affects the children— would find something to like in a MAHA Assessment that was at least trying to save kids. Sadly, no.

The MAHA Report identified four major drivers of poor-health: Ultra-processed foods (UPFs), environmental chemical exposure (like pesticides and fluoride), lifestyle and digital entertainment (scrolling and video games), and over-medicalization. “The report,” WaPo sneered, “also casts doubt on the current vaccine schedule and medications deemed safe by mainstream medicine.”

🔥 At a MAHA press conference on Friday, President Trump leaned into corporate capture. “Unlike other administrations, we will not be silenced or intimidated by the corporate lobbyists or special interests, and I want this group to do what they have to do,” he said. “It won’t be nice or won’t be pretty, but we have to do it.”

The report stated that government’s big regulatory bodies like the FDA, NIH, and CDC are deeply compromised, with former officials regularly moving into industry jobs (the infamous “revolving door”). Many, if not most —over 70%— of FDA officials and advisory board members exit into the vaccine industry. Some statistics were even worse. The report said that 95% of 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee members had financial ties to food and pharma companies.

Unaccountably, the FDA’s most current Dietary Guidelines don’t even mention UPFs.

🔥 Astonishingly, but maybe not any real surprise, only 4–5% of NIH’s budget goes to nutrition research. Meanwhile, Big Food spends over $60 billion each year shaping “the science” in its favor.

SNAP (food stamps) and school lunches flood kids and welfare takers with UPFs. Antidepressant prescriptions for teens rose an eye-watering 1,400% since the 1980s.

The report concluded that the federal government’s current health policies are a “sick-care system” not designed to prevent disease, but to “manage” illnesses. The current policies are not merely ineffective— they are structurally compromised. Driven by special interests, blind to environmental and dietary realities, and obsessed with pharmaceuticals, the sick-care system has produced the sickest generation of American children in history.

The report was, perhaps predictably, extremely cautious about vaccines. But they showed up. The report criticized the massive expansion of the childhood vaccination schedule, poor testing requirements and supervision, silencing of debate, and a blinded “trust the science” standard that prioritizes mass compliance over individual patient needs. It consistently framed its jab position as “pro-transparency” and “pro-safety,” rather than traditionally “anti-vaccine.”

In spite of the report’s cautious approach, WaPo still smelled a rat. “The language echoes the positions of anti-vaccine activists, including Kennedy,” it reported, “who have focused on the cumulative effects of the immunization schedule to cast doubt on vaccination.”

Doubt! Doubt and hesitation!

🔥 You will also be unsurprised that the malcontented Post reporters rounded up a baker’s dozen of halfbaked experts who all —to a man, women, and gender-binary— found something in the report to criticize. Not onebellyaching WaPo expert cited a single thing to like in the 73-page report, not even its general intent.

The absence of any positive quote was one of the article’s most glaring tells. In a 2,000+ word piece ostensibly evaluating a sprawling 70-page federal report with contributions from credentialed physicians, NIH leadership, and agency heads, the WaPo failed to quote even a single supportive expert on any of the report’s core claims beyond a quick nutrition aside. That is morethan bias.

WaPo’s story was a classic example of fake news. It wasn’t even news. It was a carefully curated chorus of consensus compliance. WaPo opened its article by quoting the MAHA Report’s central claim —that today’s kids are the sickest generation in American history— and then never refuted it. Instead of exploring how and why the crisis occurred, they just spent the rest of the article lobbing rhetorical hand grenades at the people trying to answer the question.

🔥 The moronic counter-arguments WaPo mustered must be seen to be believed.

For example, to cast doubt on the report’s diagnosis of too much screen time, the article quoted a PEW survey of teenagers, of whom only 14% agreed that too much screen time was a problem. That is how the WaPo editors “follow the science.” Let’s just ask the teenagers! Brilliant.

And the article quoted the useless American Academy of Pediatrics, which advises parents to focus on the purpose of screen time rather than the amount. What does that even mean?

At bottom, WaPo and its cadre of experts never disagreed with the report’s primary premise, never offered alternative explanations, and never suggested what else Trump should be doing to address the civilizational threat we are facing. WaPo’s unspoken message was: there shouldn’t even be a debate. Just preserve the status quo. Keep following the science.

Corporate media’s sourness about delving into the causes of the sickest generation of kids in history showed the silver lining. Trump appears poised to disrupt the biggest and most destructive scam in human history.

The MAHA Report —and the progressive establishment’s panicked reaction to it— marks a stunning inversion of traditional political roles, maybe one of the most profound in modern memory. Donald Trump, of all people, is now leading the charge against sugar, seed oils, and synthetic poisons— issues once championed by Whole Foods liberals in yoga pants.

Pre-pandemic, Democrats were the champions of environmental protection, anti-corporate regulation, holistic health, and bodily autonomy. Republicans were the defenders of Big Ag, Big Pharma, industrial deregulation, and “shut up and take your pills” medicine. Then came covid, and the political polarities shifted faster than the Earth’s meandering magnetic compass.

But now, the GOP —long branded as corporate shills— is kicking over some of the most profitable apple carts in human history. And the institutional defenders of the old regime, like the WaPo, cannot possibly win this battle with no plan. But that’s all they have.

🔥🔥🔥

Shoots of sanity are popping up all over the planet. The first of two examples popped up this week in the UK Telegraph, headlined “New Zealand abandons Jacinda Ardern’s net zero push.” The sub-headline explained, “Country plans to expand offshore gas fields following ‘disastrous’ ban on oil drilling.”

In 2018, New Zealand’s horse-faced former Prime Minister and Lockdown Maven infamously declared, with no hesitation, “the world has moved on from fossil fuels.” Apparently not, though. What followed were seven years of steadily rising energy prices, rolling blackouts, and a massive expansion of the domestic sweater industry.

But this week, in what the Telegraph called a ‘stunning reversal,’ the beautiful island nation nixed Ardern’s 2018 drilling ban and announced it is now ready and willing to service all comers for international exploitation. Drill us! Harder!

Ardern’s 2018 remark echoed President Obama, when in 2012 he famously forecast, “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.” Barack Hussein was spectacularly wrong. Drill, baby, drill.

Buh-bye, net zero. Buh-bye, climate lunacy.

🔥 Next, much closer to home, Florida Politics ran a shiny story yesterday headlined, “Gov. DeSantis set to approve path to making silver and gold legal tender.” On Tuesday, Governor DeSantis will sign HB999, which “recognizes gold and silver coin as legal tender for payment of debts,” and mandates “additional requirements regarding privately ensuring deposits’ security, record keeping, and maintaining separate ledger accounts for money services that effectuate transactions involving gold or silver coin.”

The new law treats gold and silver coins as currency instead of property, exempting them from sales tax and personal property tax, which is the first and most important hurdle. Next, it allows state government entities to accept them as legal tender, and will establish guidelines for custodians and consumer protections. The Sunshine State’s CFO must create rules and submit proposed regulations for legislative approval before November 1st.

Florida isn’t the first. In 2011, Utah became the first state to re-introduce gold and silver coins as alternative legal tender. Since then, 10 other red states have passed legislation recognizing gold and silver as legal tender. It is 100% constitutional. Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution provides that, “No State shall… make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

This March, Utah —on the frontier of gold-based currency— passed a new law that would have created an electronic currency backed by gold, but Governor Spencer Cox vetoed the bill. Still, the digital initiative is far from dead. Texas is currently considering its own gold-backed digital currency.

Appropos to 2025, the politics over hard currency are very weird. The desire for gold-backed money is almost completely conservative, opposed by techocratic liberals who view specie as a quaint but dangerous notion ranking somewhere between the horse and buggy and the phonograph. You’d think, given liberal love of technology, they would embrace a digital coinage based on precious metals. But no.

The clamor for hard currency reflects deep conservative pessimism over government. I think the reason liberals oppose it is because fiat currency (bucks not backed by precious metals) includes about ten levels of meddlesome government supervision and control. A gold-backed currency, digital or tangible, would offend liberals by cutting out of the loop a brothel’s worth of progressive darlings, like central banks, sneaky inflation-as-tax schemes, and “quantitative easing” (money printing).

Florida’s new bill, scheduled to be signed into law this Tuesday, is a quiet revolution unfolding across conservatism. The issue gets very little media attention, which is probably why we should pay close attention to it. Serious, gold-backed monetary reform efforts are underway in mega-red states like Texas and Florida, pioneered in conservative Utah, supported by top Trump-aligned officials, and yet get virtually no national media coverage. Media silence is not accidental. It’s strategic.

So we will keep an eye on these developments. So far, the Trump Administration hasn’t even hinted about hard money on the national scene, but there are reasons to think it might happen. For instance, BRICS nations often muse about minting a metal-based dollar alternative. The easiest way to prevent that unfortunate outcome from becoming reality is to make one of our own.

Stay tuned. It’s the year of weirdness. Anything can happen, and the most improbable things probably will.

Have a blessed Sunday! Thank you deeply for your continuing loyal support. I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning, to meditate together over Memorial Day.

Share

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid

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