When I got there I laughed out loud. It was a somewhat twisting drive and, just from eyeballing it, I could see that, for Jack’s claim to have any verisimilitude, the owner would have had to intentionally cut through what would have been the densest area of woods entirely. Not a likely thing. I got to measuring and calculating. It turned out that, for Jack’s claim to be true, a “mature oak” would have to be defined as any having a circumference (NOT diameter) of 12 inches and have to be spaced no more than a foot apart in every direction. Even at that, they would have had to have been stacked five deep on top of each other for Jack’s claims to measure out.

I explained all this in my commentary and ended by saying, “I suppose it could be true. After all, those trees were never so well fertilized as when Jack started talking about them.”

The controversy that had raged for over a week came to a rather hilarious and abrupt end. Everyone (except some reporters) were laughing at my last line. I once accidentally stepped into an elevator at the county building with Jack and one of his key allies, a man who I had often gotten into very public disputes with. Jack started to bitterly argue with me. Before I said a word, his buddy (who was their factional leader), said, with a bit of a twinkle, “Charlie got you on this one, Jack. Leave it alone.”

The developer was able to finish his warehouse in peace. Reporters had more of a sense of shame and decency in those days, so though many competitors were irate with me, they made it a point to get off their rear ends and check easily verifiable claims after that, rather than lazy, “he said, he said” tropes.

Sometimes I feel like the whole modern world has degenerated into Jack and the indolent reporters, writ large. Only now, when confronted with the verifiable facts, the reporters will angrily retort, “He DID cut through the thickest part of the woods and they WERE stacked five deep on top of each other.” No absurdity is too shameless.

It is not just reporters, either. I read a woman on X who argued that Lindsay Clancy, the woman who sent her husband to the store so she could murder her three young children, was framed by that husband and the police.

“Seriously?!” I responded, “And the frame included getting her to confess to it?!” That response quickly garnered over 300 likes and counting. It gives me hope that facts, evidence, and logic still still count for more than the media would have you think. But it is horrifying to see so many of a certain type of woman expressing solidarity with Clancy and celebrating her as a hero.

We have entered into a time where many people think being informed is choosing which side of the partisan divide to parrot. Some fancy themselves intellectuals by mindlessly parroting whatever Jake Tapper tells them to, while others fancy themselves rebels by mindlessly parroting whatever Tucker Carlson says. Fortunately, it is not nearly so many as the establishment media would have us believe. But as the rallies for Clancy and the followers of Candace Owens show, it is far too many for comfort.

If you do not do the basic due diligence of checking easily verifiable facts, you are neither an intellectual nor a rebel. You are just some grifter’s tool. No matter how things improve otherwise, if we do not recommit, en masse, to serious critical thinking skills, we are headed off a cliff…and sooner than we think.

Oddly, Jack and I later became friends. He was a social studies and history teacher at a large high school in my home county. After I got firmly entrenched in statewide affairs, he contacted me and asked if I would come address an assembly of his classes. I did – and thoroughly enjoyed myself. He told me that his ally from the elevator advised him that he would be okay with me if he stuck to the facts, but that if he engaged in hyperbole to emphasize something, I would smack him down every time. And his friend told him not to feel too bad, because I had gotten him a couple of times, too.

There is great value to having the reputation of sticking to facts and honor. I often publicly defended even those with whom I often fought when they were under unjust attack. Once a too-slick candidate for the Republican nomination for mayor of a medium-sized city was sliming the incumbent Democrats with ugly nonsense. He wanted an interview on my show; I took him up on it. It wasn’t contentious; I just asked questions that would force him to prove or disprove his claims. He eviscerated himself, and his campaign virtually ended that day.

After the show, the city manager, a Democrat, called me to excitedly tell me he had had most of the staff listening to the whole show. “Why, Don,” I said to him, “you know I’m a Republican. How could you be sure it was going to turn out as it did?” “You don’t like BS,” he replied, “and you’ll chew up anyone who tries to peddle it to you. And there is a certain courtliness about you. You hate it when anyone engages in cheap smears against anyone, whether you agree with the one attacked or not.”

I don’t much mind disagreements. Truth be told, I rather enjoy them. But I wish that everyone shared with me the commitment to facts, evidence and logic; the value of honor; and a passion for simple human decency. These are the prerequisites for liberty and actual justice to survive in the long run. And the long run is shorter than we think.

When you can take the 50,000-foot view, you can see that good things are happening at a centrifugal
pace. Check out the topics from the last week of Coffee & Covid:

August 24
Media manages to make Republicans a bigger story than Fauci lying and covering it up. One in ten California students suffered sexual misconduct in school. The state protects the teachers. Moderna enjoys stock market rampup upon announcing a cancer jab without any data.

August 22
Supreme Court greenlights continued work on the White House Military/Ballroom complex Canadian Prime Minister Carney reneged on trade negotiations, resulting in 50% tariffs on American whiskey

August 21
Six ActBlue (Democrat fundraising platform) officials have taken the Fifth to avoid testifying before Congress Evidence against ActBlue is being funneled to state attorneys general Search warrant was executed to seize Eric Swalwell’s electronic devices in probe of sexual misconduct

August 20
Fauci texts prove that CDCvofficials knew cloth masks didn’t work, but they continued to push them anyway. Earned Income Tax Credit is no longer available to non-citizens. Heroic teenage lifeguard who saved a child’s life in heavy surf was honored by Pres. Trump at the White House.

August 19
Socialist wins Florida Democrat primary over scoundrel Alexandr Vindman Fauci advisor pleads guilty to conspiring to conceal Covid records, appears poised to rat out others Swalwell’s bestie under investigation for illegal sexual relationship with aide

August 18
Mainstream media completely distorts health news in order to sell shots. What else is new? One of the covid triumvirate saw red flags but warned that VAERS masked the safety signal, so Fauci ghosted her. Senator Ron Johnson is a hero.

August 17
Louisiana posts Ten Commandments on schoolhouse walls. More (and more) Democrat officials busted for financial fraud, money laundering and trafficking.

I had a conversation last week with a decent, thoughtful physician friend. She expressed horror that the public was turning on Fauci based on one or two news stories. (I told her that most of us had been despising him for years.) She really didn’t get it at all. Ir seems that medical professionals are the most tightly protective of the fraud we were dragged through. She also maintained that no one knew much in 2021. Ha! We knew so much at that point that at least 30% of American adults refused the shot, some at great personal cost.

In 2021, I was writing a CORAC newsletter for Region 8. On June 11, 2021, we published a special edition focused exclusively on the vaxxx. That means, in early summer, 2021, we already knew it wasn’t safe for pregnant women, we knew the usual protocols for safety testing of a new drug had been neglected, we knew the adverse events of the c19 shot had already blown all prior vaxx safety signals out of the ocean. WE KNEW.

We even knew that the modified mRNA in the vaxx approximated the misfolding of proteins that was characteristic of autoimmune conditions such as Parkinson’s, ALS and Alzheimer’s. We knew that no one was giving authentic informed consent before the shot, and that even if a patient asked to read the package insert, the inserts were blank.

We knew that vaccines against similar viruses in the past had failed in the past due to antibody- dependent enhancement, a mechanism that caused the subject to get sicker when the virus was encountered in the real world. We know that ADE kept killing the animals in the animal trials.

That June 2021 newsletter is still on the website, here >

If you, like my doctor friend, think we didn’t know anything yet, take a look at what we actually did know, half a year into the big experiment on humanity.

A movie about Blessed Stanley Rother, the first American-born martyr who died in 1981, will be in theaters Tuesday and Wednesday, August 25-26.

Get tickets here >

My review of the movie is here >

Here’s a story about vaccines with danger, deception, and intrigue, like a thriller. It’s an important
piece of the vaccine puzzle. Produced by Del Bigtree, it’s essential for anyone still considering the
validity of vaccines.

Learn more >