Breakfast For The Brain Weekend Edition

And a Saturday good morning, happy holidays and Merry Christmas to all of you Deplorables on this most wonderful weekend of all.

God Raped Mary, And Other Insane Reactions To Christmas This Year

By Holly Scheer

It wouldn’t be the holiday season anymore without people badly mangling history and theology to create offensive narratives around traditional stories. What better way to bring 2018 to a close than by watching people mock, deliberately misinterpret, or demonstrate that they’re just plain ignorant about religion?

The first case is that of Eric Sprankle, an associate professor at the Minnesota State University at Mankato. He lists his specific interests on the university’s website as: “Understanding sex work stigma and barriers to sex workers’ rights. Conducting needs assessments for various sectors of the sex industry in Minneapolis. Combating moral panics in sexuality (e.g., sex trafficking, sex addiction).”

Sprankle’s on our list for statements about the Virgin Mary and God, specifically about the conception of Christ. Recently, he wrote: “The virgin birth story is about an all-knowing, all-powerful deity impregnating a human teen. There is no definition of consent that would include that scenario. Happy Holidays.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Washington Post Reporter Fails to End Vet’s Wall Funding Campaign

Via Breitbart News

A reporter with the left-wing Washington Post disapproves of a triple-amputee veteran’s Go Fund Me campaign to pay for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border that has raised more than $13 million. The reporter tried to shut it down, claiming the effort violated the fundraising website’s terms because it discriminated against mostly Latinos trying to get into the United States.

Tony Romm, who is a tech reporter for the Post and contributes to MSNBC and other leftist media outlets, announced his effort to shut down veteran Brian Kolfage’s wall funding campaign that has raised almost $14 million in five days.

“So there’s an effort on GoFundMe to raise cash money for a border wall. Has more than $5M in donations (seeking $1B) and claims to have contacts in the Trump admin (have asked for more). But it got me thinking: is that, like, allowed on the site?” Romm tweeted.

“GoFundMe terms prohibit attempts to raise cash money rooted in ‘intolerance of any kind relating to race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender or gender identity, or serious disabilities or diseases,’ among other limits,” Romm tweeted.

Read the entire article HERE.

Out Of Control: Baltimore On The Verge Of Hitting Homicides Record

Via Zero Hedge

Baltimore is on the verge of implosion. The city is an opioid hell-hole that has the most extensive wealth inequality in the country. Its millennial base is fleeing the city, headed to the suburbs to escape the out of control murders.

As of Tuesday, there have been 297 murders this year, said The Baltimore Sun.

The city had fewer than 300 homicides per year from 2000 to 2014.

However, the number of murders climbed in 2015 to 342, amid the 2015 Baltimore Riots, which civil unrest destroyed 285 to 350 businesses, 150 vehicle fires, 60 structure fires, and 27 drugstores looted.

The out of control homicides points to the need for more tools in the approach to curbing violent crime.

Mayor Catherine Pugh strengthened the city’s safe streets program, in which reformed criminals act as intermediaries in disputes to prevent widespread violence.

“What we’re experiencing on the streets of our city is about territorializing different parts of the city: if I’m going to sell drugs over here then you can’t come over here. If you come over here I’m going to shoot you here and then the next thing you know my sister my daughter my father my mother,” said Mayor Pugh. “Somebody gets caught up in the crossfire.”

Read the entire article HERE.

First Fallout Of Trump’s Decision To Withdraw From Syria

Via Moon Of Alabama

President Trump’s strategic decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria creates some significant fallout. The U.S. and international borg is enraged that Trump ends an occupation that is illegal under international as well as U.S. domestic law. “That’s un-American!”

Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis resigned from his position effective February 28. He disagreed with the president’s decision. It was the second time in five years that an elected commander in chief had a serious conflict with Mattis’ hawkishness. President Obama fired him as Central Command chief for urging a more aggressive Iran policy. Mattis is also extremely hawkish towards Russia and China.

President Trump campaigned on lessening U.S. involvement in wars abroad. He wants to get reelected. He does not need a Secretary of Defense that involves him in more wars that have little to none defined purpose.

Mattis is an ingrained imperialist. He always asked for more money for the military and for more meddling abroad.

Read the entire article HERE.

Washington Melts Down Over Trump’s Syria Withdrawal

Via The American Conservative

We’ve heard a lot this week about the capital we’re sacrificing by pulling out of Syria: in power, in allies, in something called “credibility” that hawks seem to think functions like Monopoly money. But what about those two resources I just mentioned: dollars and lives? Why do those get so little attention? The United States since 2001 has spent nearly $6 trillion on wars in the Middle East, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs. In Syria, that money has often gone towards gilded banana peels that we then promptly trip over, including two plans to arm rebels that ended up feeding weapons to jihadists and a $500 million program to train fighters that produced about five graduates before being shut down. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure crumbles. Why shifting money into domestic needs at times such as this is considered “populist” rather than just commonsense, I will never understand.

Then there’s the toll in blood. American soldiers have been killed in Syria, have been put in harm’s way, all for a mission that is both unclear and undeclared. So stark is the contrast between the vague purpose of our wars and their real human losses that it’s become a paramount political issue. Don’t forget what J.D. Vance said to our own Rod Dreher back in 2016 about why working-class voters were swooning for Trump: “Unsurprisingly, southern, rural whites enlist in the military at a disproportionate rate. Can you imagine the humiliation these people feel at the successive failures of Bush/Obama foreign policy?” We can’t be sure how great a role our failed wars played in Trump’s election but they were certainly a factor. I’ll never call it “war weariness,” which has always seemed to me to contain a grain of condescension: just take a nap, dear, and you’ll be ready to nation-build again. But certainly we are fed up with a foreign policy elite that never accomplishes its missions yet whose appetite for military action seems only to grow.

Read the entire article HERE.

What Makes ‘Die Hard’ A Christmas Movie

Via The Federalist

The 1988 action classic “Die Hard,“ starring Bruce Willis and the late Alan Rickman, has become standard holiday season viewing in the 30 years since its release, but the debate remains: Is it really a “Christmas movie,” or just a movie that happens to be set at Christmas?

Of course, that question ultimately doesn’t matter much. It’s only a matter of genre, which has really no bearing on either our enjoyment or understanding of a film. That said, as far as there can be an objective qualification for “Christmas movie,” I’d say “Die Hard” meets the requirements.

Read the entire article HERE.

Farewell Bread & Circuses! NFL Fans Latest Victims of America’s Politicization of Everything

By Robert Bridge

Today, escapism through sporting events is threatened as increasingly frustrated fans have become a captive audience to the players’ politically tainted exploits, like ‘taking a knee’ during the national anthem. If these well-paid athletes wished to alienate people from the very issues they are attempting to make public – in this case, excessive police abuse of unarmed Black men – they could not have found a worse way.

NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, the athlete- activist who in August 2016 started the trend of ‘taking a knee’ during the singing of the national anthem, arguably had far better ways to promote his activist agenda off the field, and without alienating so many people, not least of all those who support the game with their hard-earned dollars – the fans.

Read the entire article HERE.

Now The Collusion Narrative Is Deflating, The Left Is Shifting Goalposts

Via The Federalist

Nate Silver, of all people, recently tweeted that the scale of Russian involvement in the 2016 election was quite small, and its effect was not visible. Silver is of course not a Russian agent, nor should this sentiment be out of place.

After all, it seems so obvious that it shouldn’t even need mentioning in analytical circles. But it’s not often that we see an otherwise shrill and religiously anti-Republican national publication write a normal analytical opinion. It’s a signal of the scaling down of the Russian influence narrative that has been pushed for the last two years.

NPR’s essay on Russia collusion being unproven was a surprise: “Prosecutors say that [Paul] Manafort shouldn’t get any consideration for the information he has given the feds because he has been lying to them; Manafort’s lawyers say he gave the government valuable information. Nonetheless, the crimes for which the feds want Manafort to be locked up aren’t a Russian conspiracy to throw the election.”

Read the entire article HERE.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This will be the last edition of BFTB until after Christmas.