Thursday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables, there is a furious media push to extend the lockdowns as America’s enemies within reveal themselves.

The Land of the ‘Free’ and the Home of Shelter-in-Place Orders

Via American Greatness

Americans should not be complacent, nor should they allow panic or fear to lead them to acquiesce to unreasonable restrictions on constitutionally guaranteed liberties.

n mid-March, governors across the country began issuing broad shelter-in-place orders in response to the coronavirus outbreak. The orders contain sweeping restrictions on individuals’ freedom of movement and activity in every sphere of life. They preclude people from going to work, running their businesses, convening to worship, visiting their own properties, taking a drive, attending school, and visiting with family or friends.

The orders are based on the belief that the coronavirus poses a dire threat to the health and safety of the populace. Drawing on the expertise of epidemiologists and other public health officials, as well as the statistical projections of various models on which those officials have relied, governors issued their orders under the belief that “social distancing” will slow the spread of the disease and spare the healthcare system from being overwhelmed.

Most people initially accepted the premise for the orders and complied with them. But as more and more data have become available, it is clear that the models the public health experts relied on for their projections were wrong.

Moreover, as the shelter-in-place orders continue with no end in sight, public-health officials seem to have moved the goalposts to suggest the orders should remain in effect until there are “no new cases, no deaths.”

Meanwhile, the economy is crumbling. As a result, Americans have begun questioning the scope and duration of the shelter-in-place orders, resulting in various protests and rallies.

Beyond Reasonable Necessity

Even as President Trump has created an advisory council and implementation plan in an effort to reopen the country, state governors insist they have plenary authority to make decisions about the scope of their shelter-in-place orders within their states, and continue to extend them, in some cases to extremes that strain credulity.

Police in California arrested a paddle boarder in the Pacific Ocean who was nowhere near any other individual. A man in Philadelphia was forcibly dragged off a bus for not wearing a mask. Numerous states have banned or restricted fishing. In San Diego police cited people for watching the sunset from inside their cars. In Colorado a man was arrested for playing t-ball alone in a field with his daughter. In Michigan, the governor’s order precludes the sale of seeds and gardening supplies.

Police in some locales are directly interfering with people’s exercise of enumerated First Amendment rights. In Kentucky people were issued “quarantine notices” and their license plate numbers were recorded after they drove to a parking lot to attend an Easter service from inside their cars. In North Carolina police arrested a woman for assembling to protest the shelter-in-place order. Apparently forgetting about those pesky fundamental rights, the police then tweeted, “Protesting is not an essential activity.”

These actions are well beyond what is reasonably necessary to address the risks of the virus. But what is the source of authority for state shelter-in-place orders, and what are the limits on that authority? People increasingly are raising these questions, and now would seem an opportune time to review the long history of legal rulings that address them.

Read the entire article HERE.

 

Big Tech Introduces Social Distance Tracking – CCTV Proximity Alert Warning System…

Via The Conservative Treehouse

Comrades, the engineering department of the Ministry of COVID Compliance is pleased to announce the introduction of a new Proximity Alert Warning System (PAWS) coming soon to the CCTV network in your neighborhood and business.

The objective of the system is to monitor social distances and ensure a compliant society. The system is being tested in partnership with Amazon via state commissar Jeff Bezos.

[AMAZON] will also use machine-learning software to monitor building cameras and determine whether employees are staying at safe distances during their shifts, or whether they are often huddled too close together. (link)

Deployment of the proximity alert warning system will help our compliance office quickly respond to rebellious activity. While our Beijing comrades have an early start on similar systems, our more advanced entrepreneurial ingenuity will provide a U.S-based social distance surveillance system far superior to the Chinese version.

The FEMA Ministry can envision a day in the near future where the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency will open a contract for more widespread deployment. The deployment of Artificial Intelligence surveillance will help reduce the human burden for continuous monitoring, and provide a faster response time for authorities to control rebellious human engagement.

Informed citizens are well aware we are being measured as we introduce advanced robotics into to our new COVID compliant society.  Our new robotic era will merge seamlessly with our advanced proximity alert system.  The initial stages of deployment will be to assist and enhance police efforts in urban environments where fixed state CCTV monitors are more appropriate than the more rural, and secondary, drone program.

Relax comrades, there is no cause for concern.  Obviously the first stage will be active alerts with passive enforcement.

Our COVID network will provide a warning to system operators that violations are happening; meanwhile non-compliant citizens will hear a gentle message from Alexa encouraging the offender to correct their distance.

However, should subversives attempt an form of rebellion against the Ministry; we reserve the right to activate, well, ‘additional measures‘ to discourage wrong behavior.

For the hearing impaired our brilliant engineers will assist their social compliance with visible cues in the form of laser dots appearing upon the clothing of the proximity violator.

According to the engineers: “The detector must first be calibrated to map any security footage against the real-world dimensions. A trained neural network then picks out the people in the video, and another algorithm computes the distances between them.”

To enhance the welcoming of our latest efforts, the Ministry encourages all good citizens to understand the evolution in our new society by reading the latest information HERE.

Read the entire article HERE.

Farmer says his 61,000 chickens were euthanized as demand for eggs during pandemic drops

Via The Hill

A Minnesota contract egg farmer said 61,000 of his chickens were euthanized amid falling demand for eggs.

Closures of schools, restaurants and caterers has trickled down to farming, affecting egg producers as well as demand for milk and ripe lettuce. Kerry Mergen, who works near Albany Minn., told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that Daybreak Foods, which owned and paid to feed the chickens, made the decision after a fluid egg plant in Big Lake temporarily shut down last week and laid off 300 workers.

Mergen told the Star-Tribune a crew of about 15 workers arrived in the early hours of April 9 with carbon dioxide to euthanize the birds.

“They come in with carts, put them all in carts, wheel them up to the end, put a hose in that cart and gas them, then dump them over the edge into a conveyor and convey them up into semis and the semis haul them out,” he said.

“I was in there for quite a while and the longer I was there the more disgusted and disappointed I was knowing that I’m not going to see anything put back in my checkbook again, so after a while I just simply left,” he added.

“It is important to note that food-service orders have not stopped, but with the decline in food-service orders, Cargill and its egg suppliers are working diligently to rebalance supply to match these consumer and customer shifts,” Cargill said in a statement, according to the newspaper.

Read the entire article HERE.

Gov. Cuomo to out-of-work quarantine protesters: Get an ‘essential’ job, you bums!

Via The Washington Examiner

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has earned mostly high marks for his leadership amid the coronavirus pandemic. But not today.

The governor was asked at a press conference Wednesday to respond to the out-of-work quarantine protesters who say the state’s economic lockdown cannot continue as-is because their cash savings are running out. After a lengthy back-and-forth with a reporter, Cuomo eventually said that if the demonstrators are so desperate for work, they should “take a job as an essential worker.”

That is some great advice. Why worry about the status of your full-time employment or whether your business will be bankrupted by the lockdown when you can always take a gig as an Amazon deliveryman?

“There are protesters outside right now, honking their horns and raising signs,” the reporter said, “These are regular people who are not getting a paycheck. Some of them are not getting their unemployment paycheck. And they’re saying that they don’t have time to wait for all of this [coronavirus] testing and they need to get back to work in order to feed their families.”

https://youtu.be/omxhz3FevkY

“What if someone commits suicide because they can’t pay their bills?” the reporter asked the governor Wednesday.

“The illness is maybe my death as opposed to your death,” Cuomo responded. “You said they said, ‘the cure is worse than the illness.’ The illness is death. How can the cure be worse than the illness, if the illness is potential death?”

“What if the economy failing equals death?” the reporter persisted. “Because mental illness that the people stuck at home – ”

“No, it doesn’t,” Cuomo interrupted. “It doesn’t equal death. Economic hardship. Yes. Very bad. Not death. Emotional stress from being locked in a house. Very bad. Not death. Domestic violence on the increase. Very bad. Not death.”

Well, at least he conceded that domestic violence is “very bad.”

“It’s your life,” Cuomo said, addressing the protesters’ grievances. “Do whatever you want. But you’re now responsible for my life. You have a responsibility to me. It’s not just about you. You have a responsibility to me, right?”

“They’re saying that – ‘is there a fundamental right to work if the government can’t get me the money when I need it?’” the reporter queried once more.

“You want to go to work?” Cuomo snapped. “Go take a job as an essential worker. Do it tomorrow.”

Those are the words of a man who has never in his entire life had to worry about money.

Read the entire article HERE.

AOC Drops By Unemployment Office To Tell People How Lucky They Are Not To Have Oppressive Jobs

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

NEW YORK, NY—In a rare visit to her district, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped by the unemployment office to explain to everyone why losing their jobs was actually a good thing.

Ocasio-Cortez explained how those who had worked for oil companies were involved in an inherently evil industry. Furthermore, she said, by losing their jobs, they were pushing America closer and closer to a socialist utopia where nobody works. Finally, she told them they had thrown off the capitalist shackles of work and income.

“What a great turnout today!” she said cheerily as she turned on her megaphone, though she was shouting into it backward until an aide helped her turn it around. “Work and income are capitalist constructs! You should be thankful! I’m just so excited to see that everyone here, like, is totally ready for a socialist workers’ paradise. Like, if nobody works, then the government just has to pay for our stuff, because, like, otherwise, money wouldn’t exist.”

Nobody seemed to understand her, but she pressed on. “Anyway, just keep fighting the good fight and topple our capitalist overlords!”

“You love to see it!”

She tripped on her shoelaces and fell on the way out, but an aide was ready to free her with a pair of scissors he always keeps handy just for such an occasion.

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

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