Wednesday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables, the lockdowns are expanding.

Suspending the Constitution: Police State Uses Crises to Expand Its Lockdown Powers

By John W. Whitehead

You can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured.

This coronavirus pandemic is no exception.

Not only are the federal and state governments unraveling the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that are sending the economy into a tailspin and wreaking havoc with our liberties, but they are also rendering the citizenry fully dependent on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance.

Unless we find some way to rein in the government’s power grabs, the fall-out will be epic.

Everything I have warned about for years—government overreach, invasive surveillance, martial law, abuse of powers, militarized police, weaponized technology used to track and control the citizenry, and so on—has coalesced into this present moment.

The government’s shameless exploitation of past national emergencies for its own nefarious purposes pales in comparison to what is presently unfolding.

It’s downright Machiavellian.

Deploying the same strategy it used with 9/11 to acquire greater powers under the USA Patriot Act, the police state—a.k.a. the shadow government, a.k.a. the Deep State—has been anticipating this moment for years, quietly assembling a wish list of lockdown powers that could be trotted out and approved at a moment’s notice.

It should surprise no one, then, that the Trump Administration has asked Congress to allow it to suspend parts of the Constitution whenever it deems it necessary during this coronavirus pandemic and “other” emergencies.

It’s that “other” emergencies part that should particularly give you pause, if not spur you to immediate action (by action, I mean a loud and vocal, apolitical, nonpartisan outcry and sustained, apolitical, nonpartisan resistance).

In fact, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been quietly trotting out and testing a long laundry list of terrifying powers that override the Constitution.

We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die…

You’re getting the picture now, right?

These are powers the police state would desperately like to make permanent.

Read the entire article HERE.

New York Times editorial board calls for national lockdown over coronavirus

Via The Hill

The New York Times is demanding that President Trump lockdown the entire country with no regard to the widespread economic damage that it would cause.

To the unhinged left, the worst possible outcome of the coronavirus crisis would be for President Trump to save the economy and emerge stronger than before.

This a large reason why the national media has been working overtime to create a state of national hysteria and to savagely attack the president at every turn.

To the left, chaos is the goal and the longer that it goes on, the better for the Democrats and the once venerable newspaper has mobilized its staff of motivated propagandists.

After Trump expressed his hopes that the country could be open again for business by Easter, the authoritarian Democrats who have shut down states and cities and deprived their citizens of their civil liberties flew into action to undermine the POTUS.

And the NYT is leading the drumbeat for these un-American decrees that have an ominous whiff of what it is like to live under an oppressive communist system.

Via The Hill, “New York Times editorial board calls for national lockdown over coronavirus”:

The New York Times editorial board is calling for a national lockdown in the U.S. to combat the outbreak of the coronavirus as the growing number of confirmed cases begins to overwhelm health systems in parts of the country.

“President Trump needs to call for a two-week shelter-in-place order, now, as part of a coherent national strategy for the coronavirus to protect Americans and their livelihoods,” the editorial board wrote Tuesday, arguing that the U.S. had passed the point “where aggressive, targeted efforts at tracking and containment … have a realistic chance of success.”

The editorial board acknowledged that Trump does not have the authority to impose a national lockdown, though it urged him to use his platform to “put pressure on, and provide political cover for, governors to take the hard steps that are needed.”

“As the president’s own health advisers warn, the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is yet to come,” it added. “The nation’s slow and spotty response has allowed the virus to spread to every state. Modeling by researchers at the Imperial College London indicates that upward of two million lives could be lost to the pandemic unless America somehow manages to ‘flatten the curve.'”

Read the entire article HERE.

Why Governments Shouldn’t Close Gun Stores During A Pandemic

Via The Federalist

Keeping gun businesses running isn’t a luxury of a free state. It is a necessity.

Business across America is grinding to a halt. Some of this is due to self-isolation and some to stay-at-home orders by government officials. There are exceptions for businesses critical to maintaining a functioning society. Gun businesses need to be among them.

Americans are turning out in droves to purchase firearms. In times of crisis, keeping yourself and your loved ones safe must be certain. America is entering into an unsettled time, and hundreds of thousands of Americans, many of whom have never owned a gun before, are taking action.

Gun stores across the nation are flooded with customers. The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System officials told the National Shooting Sports Foundation that background checks skyrocketed 300 percent March 16, 2020, compared to the same date one year prior. FBI officials told the firearm industry trade association that since Feb. 23, background checks have been roughly double each day what they were a year ago.

The exact numbers will be available in early April, but all expect firearm sales figures to be eye-popping. The reasoning is easy to understand. Americans want to know they have access to guns when there are real concerns for personal safety. Authorities announced they would no longer jail nonviolent offenders, and some police departments are being forced to quarantine and temporarily reduce staff due to health concerns.

Read the entire article HERE.

China’s Post-Virus Plan to Destroy America’s Economy

Via American Greatness

The “respected voices” calling for America to lift the tariffs on China are simply swallowing Beijing’s sophisticated propaganda. China means to use this crisis to destroy us.

The virus that originated in Wuhan, China poses a double threat to America.

The first is to our health as the virus spreads through the U.S. population. The second is to our economy as more businesses, schools, and events shut down to slow the spread of the contagion.

We must not underestimate the economic threat because the Chinese Communist Party is using the pandemic to achieve its goal of supplanting the United States as the world’s leading economic, diplomatic, and military power.

Sounds unbelievable?

A new report from Horizon Advisory consultants details Beijing’s post-virus strategy—already operational—to leverage the pandemic to seize global market share in key industries, further global dependence on Chinese manufacturing, and reverse efforts in the United States and elsewhere to decouple from the People’s Republic.

“Beijing intends to use the global dislocation and downturn to attract foreign investment, to seize strategic market share and resources—especially those that force dependence, and to proliferate global information systems; to as Chinese sources put it, ‘leap-frog’ industrially, ‘overtake around the corner’ strategically, capture the ‘commanding heights’ globally. Beijing intends to reverse recent U.S. efforts to counteract China’s subversive international presence; at the same time to chip away at U.S.-Europe relations. In other words, Beijing will use COVID-19 to accelerate its long-standing, strategic offensive,” the Horizon report states.

We’re witnessing Beijing’s attempt to scrub its culpability for the pandemic from the world’s memory. Chinese Communist propagandists declare, “China is owed a thank you for buying the world time” and the New York Times dutifully repeats it.

Read the entire article HERE.

Journalists Investigating Ways To Make Crisis All About Them

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

U.S.—As the current crisis continues to spread, journalists are working hard researching ways to make the disaster all about them.

Reporters across the country are putting in long hours brainstorming ways that they’re really the victims of our current crisis.

“We’re the victims here, and we just have to figure out how,” said one editor at The New York Times in a morning teleconference. “As with any story, we have to have a good, hard look at the facts so we can push the narrative that it’s really all about journalists. Good journalists report the facts — great journalists turn those facts into a story about how brave they are.”

“And boy, are we the brave ones here.”

Many journalism schools have shifted in recent years from teaching students to gather and report facts to teaching them to gather facts, figure out how they tell a story about themselves, and then report that story instead.

“It’s really more creative writing than anything,” said one journalism professor. “It takes a special kind of person to turn any news story into a narrative about how amazing everyone in their profession is.”

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

Be sure to subscribe to Def-Con News to get Breakfast For The Brain in your morning mailbox.