Breakfast For The Brain Weekend Edition

Have a nice weekend Deplorables and remember to wash your hands.

Instead of Bracing for Coronavirus, Democrats Focused on Impeachment

Via American Greatness

Now all of us are paying the price for the Democrats’ shortsighted and destructive campaign against the president.

On January 15, House Democrats delivered two articles of impeachment to the United States Senate. Democrats knew the Republican-controlled Senate would not have enough votes to convict President Trump. But that didn’t deter House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from wasting government time, resources, and attention for months in a doomed effort to remove Donald Trump from the White House.

Six days later, on January 21, the first known case of novel coronavirus (COVID-19, or the Wuhan virus) was reported in the United States.

While the Left and NeverTrump Right predictably gather steam to condemn Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, congressional Democrats have escaped any accountability for ignoring the early stages of the outbreak. And, with no sense of irony, the very journalists and pundits who cheered impeachment are the same folks now blasting the president for “not doing enough” to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Let’s back up for a moment: Since before Donald Trump took the oath of office, the Left and NeverTrump Right have been on a destructive crusade to crush his presidency. It is unlike anything in recent political history—no tactic has been considered too beyond-the-pale or in violation of sacred limits. The Russian collusion farce and ensuing special counsel investigation into an imaginary crime monopolized the White House’s attention for more than two years. When that failed, House Democrats and their administrative toadies in government concocted the Ukrainegate scandal that began the month after Robert Mueller’s disastrous testimony on Capitol Hill.

As the impeachment inquiry got underway in late 2019, the coronavirus was devastating parts of China. Even though his White House was under siege, President Trump took action: On January 29, the president announced the formation of a special task force and declared coronavirus a “public health emergency.” A few days later, on January 31, Trump halted travel from China, a move largely viewed as a pivotal step to minimize the disease’s spread here.

Democrats, including several presidential candidates, accused the president of “fearmongering” and xenophobia. Joe Biden opposed the travel ban. “This is a virus that happened to pop up in China. But the virus doesn’t discriminate between Asian versus non-Asian,” Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) dimly told Politico. “In our response, we can’t create prejudices and harbor anxieties toward one population.”

On the same day that Trump announced the travel stop and mandatory quarantine of Americans coming back from afflicted regions, Democrats, rather than address the legitimate threat to the nation, instead pushed to extend their impeachment charade by demanding more witness testimony.

Read the entire article HERE.

US Intel Agencies Played Unsettling Role in Classified and “9/11-like” Coronavirus Response Plan

By Whitney Webb

As the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis comes to dominate headlines, little media attention has been given to the federal government’s decision to classify top-level meetings on domestic coronavirus response and lean heavily “behind the scenes” on U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon in planning for an allegedly imminent explosion of cases.

The classification of coronavirus planning meetings was first covered by Reuters, which noted that the decision to classify was “an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion.” Reuters further noted that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, and his chief of staff had “resisted” the classification order, which was made in mid-January by the National Security Council (NSC), led by Robert O’Brien — a longtime friend and colleague of his predecessor John Bolton.

Following this order, HHS officials with the appropriate security clearances held meetings on coronavirus response at the department’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF), which are facilities “usually reserved for intelligence and military operations” and — in HHS’ case — for responses to “biowarfare or chemical attacks.” Several officials who spoke to Reuters noted that the classification decision prevented key experts from participating in meetings and slowed down the ability of HHS and the agencies it oversees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to respond to the crisis by limiting participation and information sharing.
It has since been speculated that the decision was made to prevent potential leaks of information by stifling participation and that aspects of the planned response would cause controversy if made public, especially given that the decision to classify government meetings on coronavirus response negatively impacted HHS’ ability to respond to the crisis.

After the classification decision was made public, a subsequent report in Politico revealed that not only is the National Security Council managing the federal government’s overall response but that they are doing so in close coordination with the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. military. It states specifically that “NSC officials have been coordinating behind the scenes with the intelligence and defense communities to gauge the threat and prepare for the possibility that the U.S. government will have to respond to much bigger numbers—and soon.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Man Who OD’d in Hotel Room With Democrat Andrew Gillum Is a Well-Known Homosexual Escort

Via Red State

Early Friday morning, former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum’s “friend,” Travis Dyson, overdosed on crystal meth in a Miami Beach hotel room and was rushed to the hospital by rescue personnel. Gillum was too intoxicated to communicate with investigators at the time, but later returned to “his residence” on his own accord. Fortunately Dyson was on the mend as of Friday afternoon, as our Brad Slager reported.

Gillum released a statement saying that he was in Miami for a wedding (without his wife), and when Dyson was reached at the hospital by a reporter for the Miami New Times he confirmed that the two had been friends “for a while” but that Gillum hadn’t mentioned anything about a wedding.

Well, what was going on? We’ve found a few clues. As reported initially, Dyson rented the hotel room for himself and Aldo Mejias, who resides in Miami Beach. Gillum was reportedly staying at the Kimpton Epic in Miami, which is essentially across the street from the address in Brickell reported as Dyson’s apartment in the police report. Why did they need another hotel room?

The Miami Herald confirmed that an Instagram profile reported to RedState as belonging to the Travis Dyson who had been in the hotel room with Gillum indeed belonged to that Travis Dyson.

According to public records, Dyson is a registered nurse who lives in Brickell. His Instagram account features selfies in scrubs and a medical coat. The page also features numerous photos of Dyson, clearly a body builder, posing on the beach, on boats or at night spots with friends, including his fiance. His public Instagram account was turned private sometime Friday afternoon.

Dyson’s Instagram handle is also linked to a profile on Rent Men, where he described himself as “Brodie Scott,” “pornstar performer” who offered “gay massage.” Multiple pornographic videos of Dyson and his boyfriend/fiance, (Instagram handle @lvbrazil), were posted to that site and even to Twitter. (Note: Those links are very NSFW.) Those have all been deleted as of Friday afternoon. On a fan thread referencing Dyson’s Rent Men profile, there is a photo of Dyson in his scrubs.

Read the entire article HERE.

The New York Times’ Correction To The 1619 Project Proves It Is Not Fit For Schools

Via The Federalist

The New York Times has finally admitted a key error in the 1619 Project. It disqualifies it from use in our schools.

After months of criticism from historians all over the political spectrum, the New York Times is finally admitting a fatal flaw to their 1619 Project. A central essay in the project, written by Nikole Hannah-Jones, underwent a major correction this week. Only two words were changed, but they were big words. And given how much they change the underlying argument, the correction shows this project should not be used as a teaching tool in our schools.

In a tweet Hannah-Jones says that sometimes journalists (note she did not say historians) trying to “summarize” and “streamline” can lose important context. So what was the context lost here? In the original she said that maintaining slavery was a primary motivation of colonists in revolting against England. That was one of the most bashed claims in the whole project. Now it reads, that it was a primary motivation for “some of” the colonists.

It is hard to overstate just how massively this correction undermines the entire project. The purpose of this historian-free history of America was to refocus the American story by centering it on slavery. The idea was that 1619, the year the first chattel slaves arrived is the date of America’s founding, not the traditional 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

This re-dating of the founding of the United States only makes sense if we accept an ahistorical claim that slavery was a major reason colonists split with England. That is exactly why Hannah-Jones made the claim. It is also why the Times has dragged its feet while a deluge of virtual failed peer reviews poured in from actual historians.

And the motivation for revolution is not the only error that has been found. Constitutional scholars have taken issue with the 1619 Project’s treatment of the creation of the Constitution. As recently as December, New York Times Editor in Chief Dean Baquet was defending the project in his pages against esteemed historians trying to tell him what the Times got wrong.

What is now clear is that plans to use the 1619 Project in public schools, as an aid to understanding the founding of the nation must either be scrapped altogether, or at least delayed until all of the flaws in the documents can be scrubbed. This should not be controversial: historians, not journalists, even well-intentioned progressive ones, should be providing our students with history.

Read the entire article HERE.

CNN’s Ratings Collapse As Coronavirus Fears Empty American Airports

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

U.S.—CNN’s ratings have somehow tanked even worse than they previously had as Americans began to quarantine themselves and stopped taking commercial flights, emptying American airports and robbing the cable channel of its captive audience.

While CNN is usually able to claim millions of captive viewers every day, their audience dropped to almost nothing overnight. With airports completely devoid of weary travelers with dead smartphones and nothing to look at but CNN, the core of the channel’s audience has disappeared overnight.

Screens at airports across the country continued to play CNN to empty airports, creating a spooky, dystopian atmosphere as hosts ranted to no one in particular.

On-air personalities were quick to blame the ratings dive on President Donald Trump, suggesting that he had a hand in creating the virus specifically so that CNN would implode.

“This is clearly a Trump and Fox News plot to destroy us,” said Brian Stelter. “The anti-science, racist Trump administration wants you to believe this started in China, but it was clearly created in a U.S. government lab to stop the extremely popular CNN!”

Overcome with rage, Stelter then transformed into his alternate personality, a raging, hulking, green monster who breaks things and rants against Trump and Fox News all the time, which is indistinguishable from his other ego except he’s green and looks a little less like George Costanza.

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

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