Better in their words…

Supporter bonus roundup! Hard truths about California fires in LA Times; wild CIA lab-leak reversal signals more; new HomeSec confirmed in weekend vote; Trump’s war on Europe; Greenland; more.

Source: NOT KIDDING ☙ Sunday, January 26, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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Yesterday, the LA Times ran an accidentally revealing story headlined, “Edison says homeless encampment found near area where Eaton fire started; critics doubt it sparked fire.” By ‘doubting critics,’ the Times meant the attorneys who are suing the electrical utility alleging faulty equipment. Everyone else thinks it was probably the homeless encampment.

The Eaton Canyon fire started in a rural area near a giant SoCal Edison transmission tower. Lawyers who’ve already sued SoCal alleged witnesses saw “sparking” near the SoCal tower, right before the fires began. Photos and video from several residents confirmed that the first flames of the fire burned just below the tower.

But SoCal investigators have, coincidentally, discovered a homeless camp only ‘300 yards below the tower.’ Near where the fire started. They also found discarded bottles and scrap metal below the tower itself. Meaning, the homeless were hanging out around the tower itself.

First of all, either way, arcing tower or homeless firebugs, it’s not climate change. So. And second, given the ambiguous evidence between the two possibilities, I find it much more likely that the snap cold weather caused legions of chilly, drug-addled homeless people to start building campfires just outside of town, and some of their fires predictably got out of control.

But nobody wants to talk about that part of the problem. Still, the homeless couldn’t have created all this mayhem by themselves. They had a lot of help.

Here’s the recipe for burning down a major city. Mix two tons of poor forest management with a thousand missing gallons of certifiably insane water management, liberally fold legions of legally protected homeless folks, stir in a handpicked bunch of DEI hires, then chill the batter with ten cubes of unexpected cold weather — and a new fear is unlocked for California.

The fires will keep happening until they fix those problems. Californians, you know they will never, ever admit these fires are a byproduct of letting vast leagues of drug addicts build up in your cities. The only people this helps are the grifters running the NGOs.

But the good news is that, even though the paper didn’t come right out and say it, the LA Times is easing up to the problem, helped of course by SoCal, who doesn’t want to take the fall.

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BOOM! Remember, you saw it here first. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story recognizing the same record-crushing themes in Trump’s first week that we have already noticed. The Times’ story carried the headline, “ ‘People Will Be Shocked’: Trump Tests the Boundaries of the President.” The sub-headline was even more descriptive: “Even more than in his first term, President Trump has mounted a fundamental challenge to the norms and expectations of what a president can and should do.”

In its story, the Times reported —a week late— that after being sworn in on Monday, President Trump said “We’re going to do things that people will be shocked at.” They should have listened. But at the time, corporate media just thought Trump was exaggerating.

Instead, the President was just stating a fact. Shock and awe.

The Times repeatedly and correctly admitted that everything Trump has done has been legal. But progressives were unprepared for two things: Trump’s ferocity and worse, how little pushback he’s receiving. One cherry-picked government-affairs professor glumly noted, “the level of anticipatory obedience we’re seeing from business, universities and the media is unlike anything I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

Anticipatory obedience. In other words, lack of pushback.

A companion piece that also ran in yesterday’s Times started by admitting that in his first 100 hours, Trump has begun transforming the country. “Already,” the Times explained, “the United States is a different place than it was a week ago, before President Trump was sworn in for a second term.”

In other words, Trump is a transformative President.

The story elliptically recognized that during his first term, Trump was hamstrung by deep state moles, which the Times euphemistically called “establishment advisors.” But this time, it’s completely different. “Ideas that establishment advisers talked him out of the last time around,” the Times explained, “Trump is pursuing this time around with a new cast of more like-minded aides who share his willingness to disrupt the system.”

A Columbia University presidential historian cited for the story agreed with us that we’ve never seen a presidential week like this one. The historian explained, “Mr. Trump single-handedly altered the terms of the national conversation in less than a week in office in a way that none of his predecessors did.”

In other words, nothing like this has ever been done before. Even other transformative presidents took much longer to change the country’s course. For example, the Columbia historian said, while “F.D.R. made people feel better about banks reasonably fast, he didn’t alter the political culture in the first four days, and even after the first 100 days, it took a while.”

Unless I’m reading it wrong, the New York Times labeled Trump a more influential president than FDR.

🔥 Trump is also outworking his enemies. The Washington Post ran a similar story yesterday, observing that the rush of events is making Democrats feel woozy. “Republicans’ quick actions,” WaPo reported, “are so dizzying that Democrats haven’t had enough time to find consensus on a counternarrative.”

He’s not just outworking them. Trump also out-planned the Democrats. From another WaPo article yesterday:

Democrats are finally beginning to realize that knee-jerk opposition to every single thing Trump says is a mistake. “The resistance that sprang up when he was first inaugurated eight years ago has faded,” a depressed Grey Lady admitted, “with many progressives and anti-Trump conservatives deflated.”

The Democrats have caught on to Trump’s trolling strategy, and they are trying not to fall for it this time:

What can the Democrats do? What is the counter-narrative to this blitzkrieg of change? And isn’t there a bigger story about the man meeting the moment? I mean, Trump’s wilderness years perfectly prepared him. And miraculously, the conditions are just right.

🔥 But … what created the perfect conditions for a perfectly prepared Trump to run rings around the Democrats? I would argue that the perfect conditions should not have been surprising. They were totally predictable, they werepredicted, and we did predict them.

To wit: the Democrats badly overreached during the pandemic and the Biden Administration. Every time they took a shortcut, every time they rammed something else down our throats in some new unconstitutional way, we warned them. We warned them there would be a steep price to pay once Republicans got back in control. We warned them two can play at the same game.

We warned them over and over.

Trump’s furious velocity and the lack of meaningful pushback are the national response to the pandemic’s executive excesses. That is key to understanding what’s happening now. The country is experiencing a mutual conception of fairness, justice, and yes, a sort of revenge. In other words, you can force us to take shots we don’t want and lock us up on technicalities, but sooner or later you will pay a political price for it.

Looks like it will be sooner.

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Another long-held conspiracy theory headed toward becoming conspiracy fact yesterday. The Wall Street Journal ran the story headlined, “CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory on Origins of Covid-19.” It turned out this is another Trump Effect, since the agency’s reversed stance on Wuhan came right after Trump’s new CIA Director John Ratcliffe was confirmed this week.

Under Biden, the CIA took a “neutral” position, throwing its gloved hands up and claiming it was just too complicated. The Nation’s top spy agency had no idea whatsoever whether the virus leaked from a lab or came from pangolin stew. Who can say?

But right after Biden’s CIA Director Bill Burns vanished in a puff of acrid sulphur, the CIA’s diligent analysts suddenly discovered some new information that helped them conclude, like every other sane person, that the coronavirus must have come from that coronavirus lab in China. The lab where patient zero worked. Just saying.

It wasn’t just the CIA’s original “neutral” rating. Under Director Burns, the CIA was, shall we say, hell-bent on avoiding blaming the Chinese lab. Remember this?

So, it’s great. This CIA reversal under its new leadership is solid progress. The CIA has now joined the FBI and the Energy Department in favoring a lab origin. That means we’re closer to proving that the virus isn’t natural, but it’s a bioweapon.

But this development might signal something even better is in the works. Consider this: “In an interview with Breitbart published Friday,” the Journal reported, “Ratcliffe said investigating the issue was a top priority that he wanted to tackle on day one.”

A day-one top priority? Covid origins? Look, a whole lot is happening in the world right now. The CIA, as you may recall, was up to its oily neck in the Middle East, and former Director Burns has practically earned himself a free passenger jet with all the Skymiles from traveling to Ukraine. And I bet Taiwan is a covert hot mess, too.

Thus, it is not immediately obvious why brand-new Director Ratcliffe’s first, day-one priority was the lab leak which, relatively speaking, is ancient news. It seems like there might be more going on here than meets the eye.

And if so, the pandemic argument might be far from over. Strap in.

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Yesterday, CNN ran a story headlined, “Senate confirms Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary, a key role as Trump vows immigration crackdown.” Check off another one.

I once met South Dakota’s Governor, just before the last mid-terms. She is very tall. During the pandemic, Governor Noem refused to implement lockdowns or mandates, and somehow, South Dakota survived.

Working into this weekend, as promised, yesterday morning the Senate voted to confirm Governor Noem as the nation’s new Secretary of Homeland Security, replacing wormlike failure Alejandro Mayorkas. Immediately following the vote, without ceremony and wasting no time, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas swore Governor Noem into her new office, witnessed by Louisiana’s terrific Governor, Jeff Landry.

Having declared an emergency at the border, the Trump Administration is certainly acting like it’s an emergency.

Here’s what to watch out for. Certain Secretaries, like the Secretary of HHS and the Secretary of Homeland Security, have been given vast powers by Congress to issue lawlike declarations, especially during emergencies. Secretary Noem might do some very interesting things this week.

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Although most of Trump’s first week focused on solving domestic problems, like closing the border and draining the Swamp, enough international focus leaked through that Europe is reeling. First of all, on Friday the Financial Times ran a shocked story headlined, “Donald Trump in fiery call with Denmark’s prime minister over Greenland.” The Europeans thought he must be kidding, or posturing or something. But Trump was dead serious. He wants Greenland.

CLIP: Trump explains that America NEEDS to own Greenland (0:45).

Details were sparse, since the White House has oddly not issued any official readout of the call. But last week, “according to senior European officials” (i.e. Denmark), President Trump enjoyed a 45-minute, highly spirited call with Danish premier Mette Frederiksen (she/her).

Apparently, the call did not go well. At least, not from the Danish perspective. “The conversation,” the Times confirmed simply, “went very badly.” Ms. Fredericksen apparently started out nicely, trying to be conciliatory, making friends. She even offered the U.S. more land for military bases and mineral leases.

It quickly went downhill.

“It was horrendous,” one of the Danish officials described. Another official added, “He was very firm. It was a cold shower. Before, it was hard to take it seriously. But now I do think it is serious, and potentially very dangerous.”

Another offered, “The Danes are utterly freaked out by this.”

The news hit Europe hard. “Many European officials,” the Times explained, “had hoped his comments about seeking control of Greenland for national security reasons were a negotiating ploy to gain more influence over the NATO territory. But the call with Frederiksen has crushed such hopes.”

In other words, the Europeans hope to trick America into fighting Russia for them. But now, they are the ones who seem to be in Trump’s crosshairs. It wasn’t just Greenland. There was more. Headline from Newsweek, Thursday:

Trump has called for reducing the US’s military presence by twenty percent,reducing our 100,000 troops by bringing 20,000 of them home, where they can help with the border and so forth.

And it wasn’t just that Trump is shrinking our troops. He’s publicly wondering about the whole enchilada. Like FEMA, maybe we don’t even need NATO. Maybe we would be better off without NATO. From Reuters, also on Thursday:

During his first term, President Trump successfully coerced the stingy NATO countries, who previously had kicked in almost nothing, to cough up a bare 2% of their respective GDPs as a membership fee. But now Trump says he wants 5%.

Russia, Trump explained, is Europe’s problem, not ours. If Europe wants to fight Russia so badly, then they should pay for it. We’d be happy to help, around the margins, so long as we don’t have to pay for anything.

“I’m not sure we should be spending anything, but we should certainly be helping them,” Trump told reporters after signing an executive order in the Oval Office. “We’re protecting them. They’re not protecting us.” One gets the distinct sense that America’s new President might view the Europeans very dimly, as freeloaders, or as people who always forget their purse at home or left their wallet in their other sport coat.

But this one seems like a signal, too. It feels like there must be more than Trump’s well-known anti-NATO perspective. I’m still putting pieces together, but it seems to me that, over his hiatus, Trump became decidedly anti-European, not just anti-NATO.

Now, I can think of lots of good reasons to be anti-European, but I’m beginning to wonder if it might have something to do with how involved the Europeans were in RussiaGate and possibly in the stolen 2020 election?

Rumors swirl. In particular, rumors of European involvement swirl around the Crossfire Hurricane binder (which remains missing). The talk suggests the Europeans were very involved in the RussiaGate hoax — in which Russia, ironically, was not involved. Russia, like President Trump, was the target of what appears to have been a European intelligence operation working hand-in-glove with the Obama Administration.

Other rumors suggest the Europeans were involved in serious election interference in 2020.

If the rumors are right, then it could be that we haven’t seen anything yet. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to find out what comes next.

Have a blessed Sunday! And thank you again for your loyal support of the C&C mission. We have accomplished much together, now let’s defend what we’ve gained. Come on back tomorrow morning for more warm, delicious Coffee & Covid, in the Monday morning roundup.

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