Thursday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables, may you be healthy and prepared and may your bullshit detectors be finely tuned.

The Media’s Hatred Of Trump Is Endangering Lives

Via The Federalist

The news media’s disdain for Trump has always led to reporting that is misleading, but during a pandemic it can also be deadly.

From the beginning of the Wuhan virus outbreak many in the media have been playing a dangerous game in which their objective has been to make President Trump look as bad as possible. What else is new? If something bad is happening, its Trump’s fault. Stub your toe? Forget your keys? Woman turned you down for a date? Look hard enough and you can find how Trump caused it. CNN’s Jim Acosta might even ask him about it.

Remember when Trump mentioning the promise of hydroxychloroquine as potential treatment was treated as him selling snake oil to the American people? Now the New York Times reports it helped victims in a study. Remember when a man died because he and his wife ate fish tank cleaner because Trump told them to? Now it turns out she’s a big donor to Democrats.

When the President and Vice President began holding daily briefings to inform the American people of what was going on, the media spent most of its energy focused on minor rhetorical differences in how Trump and Drs. Anthony Faucci and Deborah Birx described what was going on instead of the vital information the briefings provided.

When the American people saw through the pundits like a poorly made piece of two-way glass, the President’s approval numbers spiked. So what was the reaction of the heroes in much in the news media? To make fabulous and fabricated claims that Trump’s briefings were to dangerous to be shown live because the President of the United States cannot be trusted.

Oh, but you know who could be trusted? The communist Chinese government.

Read the entire article HERE.

Massachusetts Shuts Down Gun Stores After Declaring Them ‘Essential’

Via The Washington Free Beacon

Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker (R.) reversed course and shut down gun dealers in the state on Wednesday after previously labeling them “essential.”

The reversal effectively shuts down gun sales in Massachusetts as the governor attempts to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Baker’s declaration came days after the federal government declared the gun industry “essential.” Other jurisdictions have backed away from mandatory closures following the federal revision. Second Amendment activists are now exploring legal action to challenge the policy.

“Massachusetts is one of the states on our list to file suit against,” Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, which has joined with other leading gun-rights organizations to sue jurisdictions across the country over shutdowns, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Our attorneys are working on it.”

Baker’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision. The latest update to his coronavirus “essential services” list allows “workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, importers, and distributors” to continue working but not those at gun stores or ranges.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearms industry’s trade group, said the governor’s previous shutdown order had included gun retailers among those listed as “essential.” The group called Baker’s amended order “alarming.” Other states in the region, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have reopened gun stores and background check systems despite previous statewide closures.

“This antipathy for the respect of the right of Massachusetts citizens to protect themselves is alarming,” NSSF general counsel Lawrence G. Keane said in a statement. “Every other governor in New England is permitting their citizens the right to acquire a firearm. Even the governors of New Jersey and Pennsylvania have now recognized the limits of their authority to infringe on fundamental American rights and reversed course.”

Keane accused the governor of exploiting the coronavirus crisis to pursue an unrelated gun-control agenda.

Read the entire article HERE.

The Democrat Party’s Identity Politics Lied — New Yorkers Died

Via Front Page Magazine

How identity politics pseudoscience left New York exposed to the Coronavirus.

Last year, New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot was warning that “even brief contact with the police or indirect exposure is associated with lasting harm to people’s physical and mental health”.

“We as a public health department have really been trying to frame criminal justice system involvement as an exposure,” Barbot’s epidemiologist, Kimberly Zweig, claimed.

Zweig had a degree in epidemiology, but her focus was entirely on PTSD and stress. Not on disease.

Why was New York City so badly unprepared for the arrival of the coronavirus? The answer was radical politics. And Barbot and Zweig embodied the public health mismanagement of a radical administration.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, the disgraced figure at the center of the city’s coronavirus meltdown, had graduated from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1991. She had worked as a pediatrician, before being selected as the Medical Director for the Office of School Health in New York in 2003. Her qualification for the job was unclear and her bio doesn’t list any administrative degrees.

In 2010, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake chose Barbot as Baltimore’s health commissioner. Blake would later become infamous for announcing that she had given the city’s race rioters “space to destroy”.

The city’s murder rate has continued hitting new highs since.

A few years later, Barbot came back to New York City and began working her way up through the Department of Health. When she was named Health Commissioner last year, the big news was that the city had its “first Latina commissioner” who had come out the Bronx housing projects.

Barbot succeeded Mary T. Bassett: a 17-year veteran of the University of Zimbabwe. Bassett had launched the Center for Health Equity and spent her time warning of the public health threat from racism in talks, “Why Your Doctor Should Care About Social Justice”, articles, “How Does Racism Affect Your Health”, and research papers, “Uprooting Institutionalized Racism as Public Health Practice.”

As Health Commissioner, Barbot’s bio boasted that “she uses a racial equity lens” and credited her with “spearheading the creation of the Center for Health Equity which operationalizes the Department’s commitment to racial justice.”

As the coronavirus bore down on New York City, Barbot and the Health Department were busy operationalizing social justice while remaining oblivious to the scientific realities of the pandemic. The department’s focus on health equity required it to discourage recent arrivals from Wuhan from going into self-quarantine or avoiding large public gatherings like the Lunar New Year celebrations.

“We are very clear: We wish New Yorkers a Happy Lunar New Year and we encourage people to spend time with their families and go about their celebration,” Barbot insisted.

A week later, Barbot appeared at a press event promoting Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown.

“As we gear up to celebrate the #LunarNewYear in NYC, I want to assure New Yorkers that there is no reason for anyone to change their holiday plans, avoid the subway, or certain parts of the city because of #coronavirus,” she insisted.

Read the entire article HERE.

China’s Cartels: Those Who Control the Medicines Control the World

Via The American Conservative

The vital drugs and supplies needed to treat coronavirus are in the hands of a government that has already weaponized them.

If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, the United States is unprepared for a disease outbreak or biowarfare because we no longer make the medicines necessary for survival.

Shortages of masks, ventilators, and respirators have made headline news but shortages of critical medicines have remained largely out of public view.

On February 27, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported the shortage of a drug caused by the coronavirus outbreak in China. The agency didn’t name the drug because it would cause hoarding. Since then, the FDA has gone silent about shortages. Meanwhile, U.S. drug wholesalers are “allocating” critical generic drugs, an industry euphemism for rationing.

How dependent are we on China for medicines to care for people with severe cases of coronavirus? China is the source of 90 percent of the chemical starting materials needed to manufacture common generic drugs that help people recover. They include medicines to increase dangerously low blood pressure such as norepinephrine, the antibiotic azithromycin for bacterial infections, and propofol given when patients are placed on a ventilator to help them breathe.

How Did the U.S. Become Dependent on China?

Generic drugs are 90 percent of the medicines Americans take. Thousands of them are made with chemical starting materials from China.

China’s dominance escalated after the U.S. granted most-favored nation trading status to China. Within three years of the U.S.-China Trade Relations Act in 2000 and China joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), the last aspirin manufacturing plant in the U.S. shut its doors, the last facility making Vitamin C went out of business, and the only remaining penicillin plant announced its closure. Now, the U.S. has virtually no capacity to manufacture antibiotics.

A common view is that production has shifted to China because of lower labor costs and weaker regulations. There’s more to the story.

Western companies cannot compete successfully because the free market doesn’t exist in generic drug and chemical ingredient manufacturing. China’s cartels fueled by government subsidies undercut U.S. and other companies, driving them out of business. Western firms aren’t competing against Chinese companies. They are competing against the Chinese government.

Read the entire article HERE.

Study: Majority Of Americans Have Absolutely No Memory Of Guy Named ‘Pete Buttigieg’

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

U.S.—A new study found that the vast majority of Americans have absolutely no memory of a guy named “Pete Buttigieg” who allegedly ran for president earlier this year.

81% of those surveyed simply responded, “Who?” while 9% thought he was one of Jeff Dunham’s puppets. 10% claimed that Buttigieg was the mayor of a small town in Indiana who ran for president on the Democratic ticket, but most sensible people agree that these people are insane.

Researchers claim that all evidence points to the fact that Pete Buttigieg exists. He has a Wikipedia page and everything. Still, many are skeptical. If he did run for president, it must have been a very long time ago.

“Anyone can edit Wikipedia and make up a wacky name like Buttigieg,” said Dr. Al Parsons, head researcher. “It’s clearly invented to try to fool people.”

Snopes has rated the claim that Pete Buttigieg exists as “true,” further solidifying the case that he never existed.

Researchers assured everyone, however, that if Buttigieg is real, then it’s “a great mercy” that his memory has collectively been wiped from everyone’s consciousness.

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

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