Breakfast For The Brain Weekend Edition

Have a great locked down weekend Deplorables.

The Peasants Are Revolting – California Rebels Defy Comrade Gavin Newsom…

Via The Conservative Treehouse

The Rebel Alliance is pushing back against the insufferable and silly rules of the little blue dictators hiding amid their governor mansions. Yes comrades, the pesky red subversives have taken to the street and realized ‘hey wait, there are more of us, than them‘…

“Have Tar, Need Feathers” – If the COVID Compliance Ministry tries to stop the uprisings, there could be trouble. As a result, some of the little Blue Dictators are retreating to their safe space:

CALIFORNIA – […] Reports on Friday estimated that there were more than 500 people who turned out in Huntington Beach to protest after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) closed Orange County beaches in response to massive gatherings last weekend that went against stay-at-home orders.

Orange County had previously opened its beaches, and even after the large gatherings drew a rebuke from Newsom, the city of Newport had voted to keep them open.

Protesters on Friday were heard chanting “freedom” and “no more Newsom.” Some carried signs lamenting the need for a hair cut, while others held signs calling to reopen businesses so people could get back to work.

Police officers mounted on horses were present to control the crowd, with most, if not all protesters, reportedly violating social distancing guidelines of six feet of separation.

Newsom said on Friday the state is “days, not weeks” away from reopening, but cautioned people to stay home until the all-clear. (read more)

The gathering was substantially bigger than the protest on Main Street two weeks ago. Huntington Beach Police Department spokeswoman Angie Bennett said there were no arrests or injuries, and estimated the crowd at about 2,500 people.

Julian Brudnick, 28, of Yorba Linda waved a black flag that had a snake on it and read “Don’t Tread on Me.”

“I think it all comes down to the same thing, which is personal freedom and liberty, and not sacrificing freedom for security,” Brudnick said. “I haven’t seen this many people not wearing a mask. I go into Home Depot, you cough or sneeze and people give you a dirty look. What they can make us do to each other is unbelievable.”  (LA Times)

Hey, we’ve been piling into crowded supermarkets for seven weeks buying food, yet for some reason if we go into a store to buy sneakers it will create an explosion of the virus… According to the Blue logic, apparently the danger is the type of purchasing you make.

Read the entire article HERE.

Why The Meat Shortages Are Going To Be Much Worse Than Most Americans Are Anticipating

By Michael Snyder/End Of The American Dream

Many Americans have been absolutely shocked by the meat shortages that have started to happen around the nation, but what most of them don’t realize is that the worst is yet to come.  More workers keep getting sick, more processing plants keep getting shut down, and Time Magazine is now warning that the meat shortages “could last for months”.  And even if meat is available at your local grocery store, you may be limited to one or two of a particular item on each trip.  For those not familiar with the concept, this is what is known as “rationing”.  And even though President Trump just issued an executive order that “encourages” meat processing facilities to stay open, it actually won’t do very much at all to alter our current trajectory, and I will explain why below.

But first, let’s talk about where things currently stand.  According to USA Today, the number of cattle, hogs and sheep being slaughtered is way, way down compared to last year…

American slaughterhouses processed nearly a million fewer cattle, hogs and sheep in the past week than they did during the same time a year ago, marking a new low that experts say will likely increase “spot” shortages of meat at some grocery stores.

And as the number of meat processing facilities closing down due to the COVID-19 pandemic has surged, the decline in meat production has accelerated…

Last week, meat production was down about 25 percent compared to the same time last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. On Wednesday, production was a full 42 percent lower than the same day last year.

If production continues to stay at such a low level, we are going to run into major supply chain headaches very rapidly.

After all, do you plan to eat 42 percent less meat this year?

I certainly do not.

In recent days, there was hope that President Trump’s new executive order would bring a quick end to the meat shortages.  When I first heard about this executive order, I assumed that it would force all of the meat processing facilities to reopen and would shield the owners from any lawsuits.  But it turns out that this executive order doesn’t actually do either of those things…

Meanwhile, legal experts said President Donald Trump’s executive order Tuesday declaring meatpacking plants “critical” to keep open will do little on its own to stop the slide in meat production brought on by the spread of the coronavirus among meatpackers.

“It doesn’t compel meat or poultry producers to remain in production,” said Deborah Pearlstein, a law professor at Yeshiva University, and it doesn’t give employers immunity from lawsuits.

Sadly, it appears that this executive order isn’t really going to do much good at all.

Big meat processing corporations are going to be quite afraid to reopen facilities as long as the threat of lawsuits looms large.  I can promise you that there are already lawyers circling like vultures, and they are going to try to squeeze millions of dollars out of these large companies.

So when will the threat of lawsuits finally go away?

Well, it won’t just be “weeks”, and “a few months” might be overly optimistic.

In our overly litigious society, reopening facilities and exposing your employees to the virus while a pandemic is still raging is basically the equivalent of begging for a class action lawsuit.

Unless President Trump or Congress steps up and takes bold action, nothing is going to change.

And if nothing changes, Tyson Foods is warning that “millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the food chain”…

Read the entire article HERE.

The dangerous liberal ideas for censorship in the United States

By Jonathan Turley/The Hill

Everywhere you turn today, politicians are telling the public to “get used to the new normal” after the pandemic. For some, this means public health precautions from social distancing to banning handshakes. Others have quickly added long standing dreams for everything from the guaranteed income advocated by Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and also raised by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to mailed voting elections advocated by many Democrats.

But the most chilling suggestion comes from politicians and academics who have called for the censorship of social media and the internet. The only thing spreading faster than the virus has been censorship and the calls for greater restrictions on free speech. The Atlantic published an article last week by Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods calling for Chinese style censorship of the internet.

They declared that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.” They added that “significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with society norms and values.”

The justification for that chilling call for censorship is the danger of “fake news” about coronavirus risks and cures. Yet this is only the latest rationalization for rolling back free speech rights. For years, Democratic leaders in Congress have called for censorship of “fake news” on social media sites. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have engaged in increasing levels of censorship and have a well deserved reputation for targeting conservative speech.

Hillary Clinton demanded that political speech be regulated to avoid the “manipulation of information” and warned that people like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg “should pay a price for what he is doing to our democracy” by refusing to take down opposition postings. In Europe, free speech rights are in a free fall, and countries like France and Germany are imposing legal penalties designed to censor speech worldwide.

Many of us in the free speech community have long warned of the growing insatiable appetite for censorship in the West. We have been losing the fight, and free speech opponents are now capitalizing on the opportunity presented by the pandemic.

Representative Adam Schiff sent a message to the heads of Google, Twitter, and YouTube demanding the censorship of information deemed “misinformation” and “false information.” YouTube did just that by removing two videos of California doctors who called for the easing of state lockdown orders. The doctors argued that the coronavirus is not as dangerous as suggested and that some deaths associated with the disease are not accurate. There is ample reason to contest their views but, instead, YouTube banned the videos to keep others from reaching their own conclusions.

Read the entire article HERE.

Politics of snitching: Dems more likely than Republicans to report neighbors during pandemic

Via Just The News

Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say they’d report neighbors for holding a social gathering in violation of coronavirus stay-at-home orders, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.

“There is a huge partisan difference,” Rasmussen said. “By a 44% to 31% margin, a plurality of Democrats would turn in their neighbors. By a 60% to 25% margin, Republicans would not. Independents are evenly divided. Other data I’ve released shows that a plurality of Republicans now believe the worst of the pandemic is behind us. Democrats strongly disagree.”

Just 36% of voters overall say they would report their neighbors to police for having a social gathering of 15 to 20 people, in violation of stay-at-home rules. Forty-three percent (43%) would not.

During its White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings, officials have encouraged Americans to limit social gatherings to under 10 people, with the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention stating in its coronavirus guidelines that, “At a substantial level of community transmission, it is recommended to cancel mass gatherings of any size.”

Suburban and urban voters are evenly divided on the Just the News Daily Poll question. However, by a 53% to 28% margin, rural voters would not report their neighbors.

“This is consistent with a tremendous amount of data I’m seeing highlighting the differences between suburban, urban, and rural voters,” Rasmussen said.

“There is also a gender gap,” he also noted. “Women are evenly divided. However, by a 51% to 32% margin, men would not report their neighbors to the police.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Technology Once Used To Combat ISIS Propaganda Is Enlisted By Democrats

Via The Washington Post

A new Democratic-aligned political action committee advised by retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is planning to deploy technology originally developed to counter Islamic State propaganda in service of a domestic political goal — to combat online efforts to promote President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The group, Defeat Disinfo, will use artificial intelligence and network analysis to map discussion of the president’s claims on social media. It will seek to intervene by identifying the most popular counter-narratives and boosting them through a network of more than 3.4 million influencers across the country — in some cases paying users with large followings to take sides against the president.

The initiative reflects fears within the Democratic Party that Trump’s unwavering digital army may help sustain him through the pandemic, as it has through past controversies, even as the economy craters, tens of thousands have died, and Trump suffers in the polls.
“It’s often said campaigns are a battle of ideas, but they’re really a battle of narratives,” said David Eichenbaum, a Democratic media consultant who is a senior adviser to the PAC. “Today those narratives spread quickly online.”

The initiative is run by Curtis Hougland, who received initial funding for the technology from DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, as part of an effort to combat extremism overseas. He insists Democrats are ill-prepared for the looming battle over information and attention, which is bound to play an outsize role in November.
—
Though he is advising the overtly political effort, McChrystal stopped short of endorsing Trump’s opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, whom the former general once criticized as part of a dust-up over counterterrorism strategy that led to his resignation in 2010.

McChrystal said his interest in the PAC is about ensuring the accuracy of information leading up to the election, even if it involves chasing viral attention with emotional appeals and other tactics rewarded by online clicks.

“Everyone wishes the Pandora’s box was closed and none of this existed, but it does,” McChrystal said in an interview.

Read the entire article HERE. Paywall.

There’s Another Chinese Virus Infecting The Minds Of Intellectuals

By Andrew Klavan/The Daily Wire

The most deadly form of the Chinese Flu may not be physical, but intellectual.

An article published on the Atlantic website this week displayed a kind of oppressive and tyrannical Chinese-style thinking that seems to be spreading through our intellectual classes like the Wuhan Virus itself.

The piece – co-authored by Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona Law College professor Andrew Keane Woods – was so repellent to any Western sense of morality, ethics, or indeed law, that I wondered if some philosophical mutation of the Kung Flu hadn’t erased the mystic chords of memory from the professors’ brains.

The idea of the piece was that during this Courtesy-of-Wuhan crisis, American tech companies “are proudly collaborating with one another, and following government guidance, to censor harmful information related to the coronavirus. And they are using their prodigious data-collection capacities, in coordination with federal and state governments, to improve contact tracing, quarantine enforcement, and other health measures.”

Far from regarding this as an evil, or at least as an emergency contingency that needs to be walked back when the crisis ends, the professors believe that big business’ censoring and surveilling of Americans should become the new normal.

“In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values,” the piece reads.

Read the entire article HERE.

Is This The End Of The Deep-State-Sponsored “Anything Goes, Nothing Matters” Culture?

By James Howard Kuntsler/Clusterfuck Nation

The people of this land have enough trouble in mind — what with livelihoods, careers, businesses, marriages, hopes and dreams circling the drain in the new insta-depression — but let’s hope they have just a little attention left over for the whirlwind denouement of the odious RussiaGate affair, now finally shredding the last defenses of the Deep State’s rogue Intel forces after years of deceit, treachery, and juridical depravity. The beginning of the end is at hand in the malicious prosecution of General Michael Flynn, and, as that’s revealed for the criminal plot it was, all the other threads in this vast tapestry of sedition will unravel.

Why does that even matter anymore, you may wonder? Because so many of our current troubles are mostly due to the culture of pervasive dishonesty America retreated into to avoid the mandates and rigors of reality in the 21st century. It operated in every area of our national life from the racketeering in medicine and higher-ed, to the games we played with our national debt, to the stupendous grift of politics, the futile wars we prosecuted, the idiotic gender conflict and race hustling, and, most flamboyantly, to the lawlessness around the CIA, FBI, and Department of Justice during and after the 2016 election. This was the culture of Anything Goes and Nothing Matters. It has to be defeated if we expect to go on as a credible nation.

General Flynn had been an irritant to the Obama administration in his role as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He disagreed with a lot going on around him and he said so, especially the nuclear deal that was percolating with Iran. Mr. Obama canned General Flynn in 2014. Afterward, CIA chief John Brennan and DNI James Clapper put him under surveillance and played entrapment games with him, using some of the same shady characters (Stefan Halper, Richard Dearlove) who later showed up as RussiaGate players.

In early 2016, Gen. Flynn joined the Trump campaign as a foreign affairs advisor and that summer made the mistake of leading the “Lock her up,” chant to a delirious crowd at the Republican Convention. Perhaps he knew a thing or two about the activities of the Clinton Foundation. Perhaps he also knew what Jeffrey Epstein was up to. Then Mr. Trump shocked the world and won the election. Gen. Flynn was soon appointed incoming National Security Advisor. One can imagine the anxiety crackling through a Democrat-controlled Deep State on the verge of surrendering power to its enemies. The alarm bells that went off through the vast US Intel underground must have been deafening.

In a panic, the Intel Community set in motion a suite of operations to get rid of both Flynn and Trump. On December 29, late in the transition-of-power, President Obama lit up a diplomatic flare by confiscating country retreat properties in Maryland and Long Island owned by the Russian embassy and expelling 35 embassy employees, supposedly as payback for Russia “interfering in the 2016 election.” This prompted a conversation between incoming National Security Advisor Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. That cued the FBI to entrap General Flynn. The news media played along with the preposterous falsehood that high American officials should not communicate with diplomats posted to the USA. The shady gotcha interview about that with Flynn, conducted by FBI officers Peter Strzok and Joseph Pientka, has been dissected to death, so I’ll spare you that, except to say that it was carried out in obvious bad faith.

The court case over all that has dragged out for more than three years now, though anyone could see from the get-go that it was a malicious prosecution. (I said as much more than once in this blog years ago.) Presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan has overlooked flagrant misconduct by DOJ prosecutors, led by Brandon Van Grack. FBI Director Christopher Wray has concealed exculpatory evidence of FBI and DOJ misconduct that favored General Flynn for three years. General Flynn’s previous attorneys from the DC law firm of Covington and Burling ­­­­­­­­— where Mr. Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder is a partner — represented Gen. Flynn poorly, and did so apparently on-purpose. In spite of all that, the case is unraveling thanks to the diligence of Gen. Flynn’s new attorney, Sidney Powell, who cuts through government bullshit like a samurai sword through tofu.

—

RussiaGate and all its subsidiary mischief amounted to a seditious conspiracy by several agencies of government against the chief executive. It was explicitly an effort to overthrow a president by illegitimate means. The conspiracy extended to members of congress, who are not privileged with immunity against felony crimes, by the way. The partial list of government officials, current or former, who may be subject to prosecution in these matters should include Barack Obama, Susan Rice, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, John Carlin, Mary McCord, Michael Atkinson, James Baker (DOJ), James Baker (DOD), Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, Dana Boente, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Joseph Pientka, William Priestap, Bruce Ohr, Kevin Clinesmith, Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, Aaron Zebley, Jeannie Rhee, David Laufman, Senator Mark Warner, Senator Richard Burr, James Wolfe, Rep. Adam Schiff, Eric Ciaramella, Col. Alexander Vindman. Players outside government include Glenn Simpson, Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, Stefan Halper, Sidney Blumenthal, Cody Shearer, David Kramer. The following media figures might be named as unindicted co-conspirators: Dean Baquet, Martin Baron, Jeff Zucker, Andrew Lack, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Cuomo, Joe Scarborough, David Corn, David Ignatius, and Ari Melber.

Read the entire article and check out all of the author’s epic takes HERE.

Lockdowns Ending but Their Politics Still Rule

By Tom Luongo/Gold, Goats and Guns

While it looks like the worm is turning against the draconian economic shutdowns decreed by governments, so much damage has already been done it likely won’t matter now.

I began the week hopeful that my home state of Florida would lead the way towards challenging the anti-human and thoroughly intolerable lock down mentality imposed on us by officials at the WHO, NAIAD, Johns Hopkins, and the IHME.

That hope continued earlier this week while watching Governor Ron DeSantis give a half-hour presentation of why Florida not only outperformed all of the grossly negligent predictive models but nearly every other state in the union in nearly every metric relevant to COVID-19.

It, however, vanished completely when he finally unveiled his new plan, which was to graciously allow the private economy to get back to 25% capacity, following the same tyrannical guidelines of those now-discredited members of President Trump’s Task Force.

I guess I need to remind myself of why hope is the most negative of all emotions.

“Phase One is a baby step,” DeSantis said during a news conference at Tampa General Hospital. “We are deliberately going to be very methodical, slow and data-driven on this because I think people want to have confidence things are going in a good direction.” He said a slow approach would also give the state an opportunity to step in to handle any spikes in the disease that might occur.

But this is typical political double-speak. Because the political pressure on DeSantis, Trump and other ‘Red State’ Governors to not open things back up has been enormous. If it wasn’t he would have shown more spine.

But, the numbers don’t support DeSantis’ decision at all…

Read the entire article HERE.

Nurses Dance With Mock COVID-19 ‘Corpse’ in TikTok Video

Via The National File

A viral video circulating social media showing four healthcare professionals dancing with a fake corpse with the words “COVID-19” written on the makeshift body bag’s feet has been negatively received.

Various images of healthcare professionals dancing, twerking, and even showing nudity have surfaced–all receiving varied responses.

At first, these images were welcomed by many, encouraging the videos to keep spirits high. However, in the past few days, social media has become saturated with multiple images, slowly shifting public opinion away from healthcare workers as choreographic becomes more risque and outrageous.

The video depicting masked up nurses dancing with the fake corpse imitates a new internet meme involving professional Ghanaian pallbearers. The meme itself has enjoyed tremendous success on social media.

Rumors began circulating social media as to whether the body itself was a real corpse.

Nevertheless, the video raised several eyebrows as annoyed viewers gave their opinions on the amateur dance routine.

One tweeter said: “I agree that it should never have been a tiktok thing, But, knowing a number of first responder’s (cops, paramedics, nurses etc.) A very dark sense of humor is not meant as a way of offending or insulting anyone, but rather a coping mechanism for the horrible they see every day.”

Read the entire article HERE.

‘Workers Of The World, Unite!’ Says Man Who Has Never Worked A Day In His Life

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

PORTLAND, OR—Local man Rayne Skye Meadows is constantly reciting Communist mantras like “Workers of the world, unite!” though he himself is not a worker, never has been, and currently has no plans to be one, ever.

“Workers of the world, rise up, and seize the means of production!” said the man who has never had a job. “I mean, not me. Other workers. I’m between work right now. But all you other workers, unite and rise up and stuff so I can continue not to be a worker.”

Though essentially permanently unemployed, Meadows rises up early each day to log in to Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook to espouse abstract economic and political theories. “If only all the people all around the world would adopt these premises about capital and class analysis, then we could have a utopia,” he wistfully said to himself as he madly hammered away about the labor theory of value. Arguing online, while simulating actual productive labor that expends energy, doesn’t pay very well. Meadows’ Patreon account for his Communist video channel hasn’t received a single donation. This may have to do with the fact that he’s never lifted a finger to produce content, but still, he says it’s unfair.

“Wage slavery is alienating us from one another as we become merely cogs in a machine,” Meadows said. He thought about making his thoughts into a video but decided that would be too much work.

When asked for comment, Meadows’ mother stated, “I know he means well, but I wish he would just go get a part-time job to help with the rent or groceries or something.”

At publishing time, Meadows was seen emerging from his mother’s basement to gather his folded laundry that she washed for him and some Cheetos from the kitchen that he did not pay for.

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

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