Breakfast For The Brain Weekend Edition

Enjoy the weekend Deplorables, it won’t last long…

Jeff Bezos Protests the Invasion of His Privacy, as Amazon Builds a Sprawling Surveillance State for Everyone Else

By Glenn Greenwald

All of this raises serious questions, which thus far are limited to pure speculation, about how the National Enquirer obtained the intimate photos exchanged between Bezos and his mistress. Despite a lack of evidence, MSNBC is already doing what it exists to do – implying with no evidence that Trump is to blame (in this case, by abusing the powers of the NSA or FBI to spy on Bezos). But, under the circumstances, those are legitimate questions to be probing (though responsible news agencies would wait for evidence before airing innuendo of that sort).

If the surveillance powers of the NSA, FBI or other agencies were used to obtain incriminating information about Bezos due to their view of him as a political enemy – and, again, there is no evidence this has happened – it certainly would not be the first time. Those agencies have a long and shameful history of doing exactly that, which is why the Democratic adoration for those agencies, and the recent bipartisan further empowerment of them, was so disturbing.

Indeed, one of the stories we were able to report using the Snowden documents, one that received less attention that it should have, is an active NSA program to collect the online sex activities, including browsing records of porn site and sex chats, of people regarded by the U.S. Government as radical or radicalizing in order to use their online sex habits to destroy their reputations. This is what and who the NSA, CIA and FBI are and long have been.

If Bezos were the political victim of surveillance state abuses, it would be scandalous and dangerous. It would also be deeply ironic.

That’s because Amazon, the company that has made Bezos the planet’s richest human being, is a critical partner for the U.S. Government in building an ever-more invasive, militarized and sprawling surveillance state. Indeed, one of the largest components of Amazon’s business, and thus one of the most important sources of Bezos’ vast wealth and power, is working with the Pentagon and the NSA to empower the U.S. Government with more potent and more sophisticated weapons, including surveillance weapons.

Read the entire article HERE.

The Biggest Threat To Press Freedom Is The Media Itself

Via The Federalist

While the outrage over the Covington high school kids in MAGA hats may have blown over online, the story is far from over. On February 1, an attorney retained by the family of Nicholas Sandmann, the 16-year-old who allegedly “smirked” at the Native American activist banging a drum in his face, released a video that succinctly explained the broader context of what happened. Suffice to say, the video is a damning indictment of how many media outlets and personalities led a social media-fueled outrage mob and wrongly rushed to smear Sandmann and his fellow students.

On Monday, Sandmann’s legal team told the Cincinnati Enquirer that more than 50 letters had been sent to various organizations and people that are likely to precede defamation and libel lawsuits. A host of elite media outlets received some of these letters, including The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, The Atlantic, TMZ, National Public Radio, The Guardian, and Conde Nast. A number of prominent reporters also received letters individually, such as Maggie Haberman, Chuck Todd, Savannah Guthrie, Erin Burnett, David Brooks, and Andrea Mitchell, among others.

Read the entire article HERE.

The State of the Union: These Are Dangerous Times, and the Government Is To Blame

By John W. Whitehead

These are dangerous times.

Mind you, when I say that these are dangerous times, it is not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because our borders are being invaded by armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute.

No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing army to steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill.

The danger “we the people” face comes from masked invaders on the government payroll who crash through our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and terrorize our families.

This danger comes from militarized henchmen on the government payroll who demand absolute obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and ask questions later.

This danger comes from power-hungry bureaucrats on the government payroll who have little to no understanding of their constitutional limits.

This danger comes from greedy politicians and corporations for whom profit trumps principle.

You want to know about the state of our union? It’s downright scary.

Read the entire article HERE.

The Left’s War On Normal

Via Taki’s Magazine

Hardcore leftists have never been shy about explaining why tranny advocacy is so important to them. The ultimate goal is to “liberate” the world from traditional values and, in the words of The Guardian’s Yvonne Roberts, “reshape society.” But Roberts is quick to add that “we can’t leave change to osmosis.” Indeed not; the left always needs to resort to whatever level of force it can get away with. Here in California, we don’t have gulags (much to our state Democrats’ dismay), but we do now have a ban on saying “he” and “she” in the State Senate.

It’s very easy to think that the left is winning its war against those who refuse to accept that donning lipstick magically makes a man a woman in not only the legal but the biological sense. Academic papers arguing that “gender fluidity” is either a fad or a pathology (as opposed to a biological constant) are censored, and opposition to the tranny agenda is quashed online. And sure, there is more than a little “osmosis” going on. The number of kids who think it’s cool to identify as “fluid” is exploding, and most Americans think there are six times more trans people in the U.S. than there actually are (funny enough, although Americans think this nation is swarming with trannies, a 2013 survey found that, when asked if they’d ever met one, 89% of the respondents answered “no,” and 2% answered “I don’t know,” leaving only 9% who’d ever actually seen one of these supposedly commonplace beings). But I’m not overly pessimistic. As I wrote in a column three years ago, “Reality doesn’t care if you acknowledge it or not; reality always wins in the end.”

If I could sum up why I think the left will eventually lose this one, I’d utter two words: GameStop tranny.

Read the entire article HERE.

‘Blazing Saddles’ at 45: The Movie That Couldn’t Get Made Today

Via P.J. Media

Ethnic jokes abound. There is enough juvenile sexual humor to keep a thousand generations of pubescent boys entertained. The movie also has the most memorable fart joke scene ever.

Throughout, the what would now be taboo humor is used to lampoon racism, politicians, entertainers, and too many more things to remember offhand. It is brilliantly done, but only if one is from an era when the majority of the population wasn’t perpetually seeking to be aggrieved.

There probably isn’t a scene in Blazing Saddles that wouldn’t grievously offend the modern snowflake. The SJWs will tell you that’s because we’ve (they’ve) evolved, and they would be wrong.

When everything is offensive, nothing is offensive. That has a double meaning that applies to both sides here. It is difficult to take the present-day SJWs seriously when they complain, because they complain about virtually everything. What Brooks and Co. did is make sure that they offended everyone, which made it funny.

When everything is offensive, nothing is offensive.

It’s almost sickening to think of the fact that we’ve gone from a society capable of creating and supporting something as masterful as Blazing Saddles to one filled with humorless youth who would protest it to death before it could get released in just forty-five years.

A humorless society that seeks to make words criminally offensive is a society in severe decline. Hopefully, we’re just in a phase from which we’ll soon emerge.

Should we be that lucky, maybe movie comedies will one day again be funny.

Read the entire article HERE.

College scraps Pledge of Allegiance over ‘white nationalism,’ then reinstates

Via Campus Reform

The President of the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees has reinstated the Pledge of Allegiance at board meetings following fierce public backlash.

Previously, Robert Miller, the president of the SBCC Board of Trustees, “decided to discontinue use of the Pledge of Allegiance for reasons related to its history and symbolism,” according to an email obtained exclusively by Campus Reform.

However, according to a statement by Miller on Tuesday, he has reversed course on his decision.

“Effective immediately, the Pledge of Allegiance will be recited at Board of Trustee meetings until some future date when the matter may be considered by the Board. This decision, which restores the status quo, follows an appeal for reinstatement from members of the public who raised important issues at the January 24 board meeting,” Miller said in a statement on Facebook.

Read the entire article HERE.

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