Monday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables, it’s already Monday again.

Nancy Pelosi to Introduce Resolution Implying Pre-emptive Surrender to Iran

Via Breitbart News

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wrote a letter to her Democrat colleagues in the House on Sunday to reveal a new “War Powers Resolution” that amounts to a pre-emptive surrender to Iran in ongoing hostilities.

Pelosi’s letter begins with the declaration that President Donald Trump’s airstrike last week targeting Iranian General Qasem Suleimani, leader of the terrorist Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) Quds Force, responsible for the murders of hundreds of Americans and for recent attacks on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, was “provocative and disproportionate,” terms suggesting the attack was illegal under international law and could constitute a war crime.

Harvard Law School professor emeritus (and Democrat) Alan Dershowitz argued in Monday’s Wall Street Journal that the strike was not only lawful, but an “easy call”: “The president has the constitutional authority to take military actions, short of declaring war, that he and his advisers deem necessary to protect American citizens. This authority is extremely broad, especially when the actions must, by their nature, be kept secret from the intended target.”

Nonetheless, Pelosi’s letter indicates that the House will declare the president’s action illegal under international law.

The letter further claims that Trump’s action “endangered our service members, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran” — placing the responsibility for violence not on Iran, which recently attacked a U.S. Navy drone; a Saudi oil field; and, via proxies, Americans soldiers and civilians in Iraq; but on the United States, which had restrained itself until the recent assault by an Iranian-backed militia on the embassy.

The letter goes on to describe a new resolution that would “limit the President’s military actions regarding Iran,” essentially signaling a surrender in the potential conflict before the Iranian regime itself had managed to respond.

Read the entire article HERE.

Climate Change Protesters’ Traffic Tie-Ups Are No Way to Win Friends or Influence People

Via The Daily Signal

The environmental zealots who regularly take to the streets of the nation’s capital for climate change protests clearly have never read Dale Carnegie’s classic self-help bestseller “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

That’s evident from the demonstrations the global warming alarmists stage at downtown D.C. intersections during morning rush hours, unapologetically snarling traffic and creating commuter gridlock.

Causing motorists to be late for work and/or miss appointments is hardly the way to win friends among those they’ve seriously inconvenienced or to influence them to buy into the climate-calamity hysteria. It’s far more likely to alienate them.

For more than seven hours on Dec. 6, for example, hundreds of “Shut Down DC” coalition environmental activist demonstrators lived up to their billing, snaking through downtown Washington, blocking intersections with their bodies, banners, and other props, and forcing traffic to be diverted and detoured.

All the while, they beat on drums, chanted mindless left-wing couplets (“Hey, hey, ho, ho! / [Fill in the blank] has got to go!”) and barked calls and responses (“What do we want?” / “Climate justice!” / “When do we want it?” / “Now!”).

What the amorphous “climate justice” they “want now” entails is anyone’s guess, but it presumably tracks closely along the lines of the radical multitrillion-dollar Green New Deal scheme hatched by far-left freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.-N.Y.

This much is certain, however: The enormous taxes and spending the Green New Deal would mandate would do a grave injustice to the nation’s economic climate.

According to news accounts, the demonstration in early December began at about 7:30 a.m. with a march from George Washington University to World Bank headquarters along Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, with gridlock ensuing at the height of the morning rush.

Read the entire article HERE.

Cities move to ban dollar stores, blaming them for residents’ poor diets

Via The City Journal

About 20 years ago, academic researchers began describing poor urban neighborhoods without supermarkets as “food deserts.” The term captured the attention of elected officials, activists, and the media. They mapped these nutritional wastelands, blamed them on the rise of suburban shopping centers and the decline of mass transit, linked them to chronic health problems suffered by the poor, and encouraged government subsidies to lure food stores to these communities. Despite these efforts, which led to hundreds of new stores opening around the country, community health outcomes haven’t changed significantly, and activists think that they know why. The culprits, they say, are the dollar-discount stores in poor neighborhoods that—or so they claim—drive out supermarkets and sell junk food. Never mind that compelling research suggests a lack of supermarkets isn’t the problem—let alone the popularity of discount stores.

This latest front in the food wars has emerged over the last few years. Communities like Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Fort Worth, Birmingham, and Georgia’s DeKalb County have passed restrictions on dollar stores, prompting numerous other communities to consider similar curbs. New laws and zoning regulations limit how many of these stores can open, and some require those already in place to sell fresh food. Behind the sudden disdain for these retailers—typically discount variety stores smaller than 10,000 square feet—are claims by advocacy groups that they saturate poor neighborhoods with cheap, over-processed food, undercutting other retailers and lowering the quality of offerings in poorer communities. An analyst for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, for instance, argues that, “When you have so many dollar stores in one neighborhood, there’s no incentive for a full-service grocery store to come in.” Other critics, like the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, go further, contending that dollar stores, led by the giant Dollar Tree and Dollar General chains, sustain poverty by making neighborhoods seem run-down. “It’s a recipe for locking in poverty rather than reducing it,” an institute representative told the Washington Post early this year.

Such claims are like salty potato chips for reporters starved for a good angle on how big businesses exploit the poor. A Washington Post headline described how these stores “storm” into cities. A banner in Fast Company declared, “Why dollar stores are bad business for the neighborhoods they open in.” An Atlanta Journal-Constitution article on the stores highlighted a quote from a local official: “We don’t need them on every corner.”

The idea that dollar stores are invaders ignores the fact that these retailers are expanding in neighborhoods that want them. And the notion that the stores lower the quality of retailers in an area overlooks how they’ve become popular in prosperous neighborhoods, too. “What’s driving the growth [of dollar stores] is affluent households,” an expert with consumer-research outfit Nielsen Company told the New York Times Magazine, in a story entitled “The Dollar Store Economy,” published before these stores became the latest bête noire of activists.

Read the entire article HERE.

Lindsey Graham Torches America Hating ‘Loser’ Kaepernick: ‘He’s A Racist’

Via Trending Politics

Senator Lindsey Graham lowered the boom on former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick on Sunday, ripping him as a “loser” and in a refreshing change, called him out for being a racist.

The South Carolina Republican will be deluged with Twitter hate for daring to defy the cult of the woke by having the backbone to tell it like it is but it is about damn time that someone did.

At issue was Kaepernick’s latest Twitter missive after the killing of Iranian terrorist mastermind General Qasem Soleimani in which the ex-San Francisco 49er turned messianic figure accused the U.S. military of racial terrorism.

According to Kaepernick:

There is nothing new about American terrorist attacks against Black and Brown people for the expansion of American imperialism.

And

America has always sanctioned and besieged Black and Brown bodies both at home and abroad. America militarism is the weapon wielded by American imperialism, to enforce its policing and plundering of the non white world.

While nearly every major figure with the exception of President Trump has been too timid and terrified of the social media mob when it comes to criticism of Kaepernick, Graham went there.

In comments that will trigger a cavalcade of exploding socialist heads, Graham went on Fox News this morning and blasted the man who he called a “loser on and off the field” as well as a racist.

Via The Washington Examiner, “‘He’s a racist’: Graham rips ‘loser’ Kaepernick for ‘un-American’ criticism of Soleimani strike”:

Sen. Lindsey Graham tore into former NFL star Colin Kaepernick, calling him a racist for comments the quarterback made after a U.S. airstrike killed a top Iranian general.

“He’s a loser on and off the field,” Graham said this weekend on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures. “He has no idea what the Iranian regime has done to the region.”

Kaepernick on Saturday called the strike “nothing new” because “American terrorist attacks against Black and Brown people” are a routine byproduct of “the expansion of American imperialism.” Graham called Kaepernick’s comments “un-American.”

“He’s a racist,” Graham said of the former NFL player-turned-Black Lives Matter activist. “If you’re looking for racism in America, Mr. Kaepernick, look in the mirror.”

As chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham may take a lot of flak for many of his decisions including his refusal to issue a flurry of subpoenas to the plotters of the coup against President Trump but he has his moments.

And this is one of them.

Kaepernick squandered a once-promising NFL career when he chose to spit on the troops and dishonor the flag by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem at football games to protest against social injustice or something.

But it soon became apparent that Kaepernick’s real problem was with the police and sadly, with America in general which he like so many other angry but clueless social justice warriors mistakenly believe was created by racists for the benefit of white supremacy.

But it is Kaepernick who has often revealed that it was he himself who is the racist with such inflammatory tweets such as one where he compared the police to the “runaway slave patrol” which while celebrated by his legions of followers, made him radioactive to NFL owners.

He managed to parlay his being a patron saint for the ignorant and bigoted into a second career as a martyr figure who has been repeatedly honored by the woke media but he recently blew his last chance at an NFL career when he shafted over two dozen teams by moving a workout and then showing up in a Kunta Kinte shirt.

His unwise decision to support Iran while at the same time making yet another of his misguided racist political statements about perceived systemic oppression despite his being a multi-millionaire may finally be a bridge to far.

It certainly was for Senator Graham who at this early stage, is already in the running for 2020 truth-teller of the year.

Read the entire article HERE.

Inside the secretive Black Hebrew Israelite sect of Harlem, linked to Hanukkah Machete Attack

Via The New York Post

The couple who shot up a kosher market in Jersey City last month and the suspect in the Hanukkah stabbings in upstate Monsey had connections to the Black Hebrew Israelites, a secretive sect with some members preaching hate against Jews. David Anderson, one of the shooters killed in the Dec. 10 firefight which resulted in six dead, published rabid anti-Semitic screeds on social media and was inspired by the group. Grafton Thomas, the accused stabber who injured five Hanukkah celebrants inside a rabbi’s home last week, had attended the sect’s house of worship in East Harlem. Months before the two attacks, in early February, Post reporter Princess Jones attended a service at the storefront temple. This is her story.

Read the entire article HERE.

Democrats Call For Flags To Be Flown At Half-Mast To Grieve Death Of Soleimani

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

WASHINGTON, D.C.—At a press conference held on Capitol Hill Friday, mourning Democrat leaders called for flags to be flown half-mast to honor the death of Qasem Soleimani.

Flags were spotted flying at half-mast around the country, notably at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and in front of several celebrities’ homes. The celebrities went out and bought an American flag for the first time just to fly it at half-mast for this important time of grief.

“The grieving process is painful but necessary,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar. “As a nation, we need to stop and grieve this great, austere, revered religious scholar. He was one of the good ones.”

In a rare moment of unity with The Squad, Pelosi gave each of the girls a hug, telling them to just “let it all out” in their time of sadness.

Ocasio-Cortez didn’t seem to know what was happening but adjusted her glasses to look smart.

A teary-eyed Barack Obama was also seen solemnly lowering the flag in front of his seaside mansion. “To think, this all could have been prevented with a few pallets of cash.” He sighed and stared off into the distance, a look of pain and regret on his face. “If only Trump had targeted a U.S. citizen with a drone strike instead.”

Later, Democrats clarified they meant we should fly the Iranian flag at half-mast, not the “offensive and problematic” American flag.

Check out all of the Bee’s great takes on politics and culture HERE.

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