Friday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

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Is the CDC Meddling with the 2020 Election?

Via American Greatness

The Centers for Disease Control is looking more and more like the 2020 version of James Comey’s FBI.

The coronavirus crisis is reaping big political benefits for Democrats. President Trump’s signature achievement—a booming economy with record low unemployment, rising middle-class wages, and a sky-high stock market—lies in tatters. At least 33 million Americans abruptly and without warning are out of work. Second-quarter gross domestic product estimates are horrifying, a double-digit dive that the country has never experienced even in the direst economic times.

Americans are scared for their health and fearful of the future. Neighbors are turning on each other; the inner tyrant of every state governor, mayor, and police officer has been unleashed. And President Trump has been denied access to his only stimulant—energetic political rallies where he connects directly with supporters across the country.

Instead, the president has been stuck in Washington, D.C., listening to the advice of “experts” who used fraudulent models to convince him in late March to “shut down” the country.

Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, has been safely shuttered away in his home studio where he struggles to read teleprompter scripts or offer articulate responses to softball questions from late-night hosts. The Democratic National Convention has been canceled so the American electorate won’t be able to assess Biden’s frailty and incoherence on a national stage a few months before Election Day.

At the same time, near-daily disclosures confirm that corrupt federal prosecutors and cops loyal to Barack Obama targeted Trump associates to sabotage his 2016 candidacy and then derail his presidency under the ruse of Russian election collusion.

The two events, anyone who has been paying attention over the past five years certainly realizes, are not unrelated. Moreover, it’s becoming clear that the coronavirus crisis may succeed where the Russia collusion hoax failed: To oust Donald Trump from the Oval Office.

Prolonging the Nation’s Misery
And the Centers for Disease Control is looking more and more like the 2020 version of James Comey’s FBI. The agency that foisted the disastrous experiment of “social distancing” on 330 million unwitting American lab rats continues to inveigh on matters far beyond its purview or expertise.

Not satisfied with throwing tens of millions of American workers on the unemployment line or forcing tens of millions of American students out of school with its initial “Flatten the Curve” plan immediately followed by its “Slow the Spread” plan, the CDC has prepared yet another outlandish plan to prolong the nation’s misery.

The document was leaked to the press last week and published by the Associated Press on Thursday sourced by—surprise!—an anonymous government official who was “not authorized to speak to reporters.” (Stop me if you’ve heard this before or a gazillion times in the Trump era.)

“The guidance contained detailed advice for making site-specific decisions related to reopening schools, restaurants, summer camps, churches, daycare centers and other institutions,” the AP reported. “It had been widely shared within the CDC and included detailed ‘decision trees,’ flow charts to be used by local officials to think through different scenarios.”

As one would expect, the guidance is a labyrinth of costly, unconstitutional, and draconian recommendations that would result in a permanent paranoid police state for the foreseeable future.

Our children would be turned into obsessive-compulsive cultists; field trips, class parties, and extracurricular activities would be canceled, cafeterias would close, and classmates seated six feet apart in some sort of educational dystopia.

Read the entire article HERE.

How The Left Enables Communist China’s Inhumanity

Via The Federalist

A recent tweet and article by Politico shows just how the leftist agenda has empowered a new evil empire.

Politico published a piece this week that amounts to a love letter to communist China. The tweet promoting it is horrendous, the article is worse, and the consequences of being Beijing’s blog of propaganda will hurt the very Chinese people that Politico pretends to be representing. Here you can judge for yourself.

So there’s a lot to unpack here. First of all, this idea that Weibo, a Chinese social network is comparable to Twitter in America. Weibo is operated and monitored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). To pretend that anything that appears there represents the true attitudes of the Chinese people would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. It’s roughly the equivalent of a Nazi press conference in 1940 in which some Jews in Warsaw praise the efficiency of the German government with big smiles while guns are pointed at them.

Let’s bear in mind that China has a million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps, is crushing dissent in Hong Kong, disappears not only dissidents, but also doctors who defy orders in an attempt to stop a pandemic, and tracks the social behavior of every person under their murderous rule. Given all of this, is it possible, just maybe, that people in China don’t feel totally free to express their true opinions on CCP tracked social media?

Add to all of this that the Politico article blindly accepts Chinese facts and figures on their coronavirus response rate even though it is patently obvious that China has been lying about it for months. It’s a damning situation and one that needs its origins understood. How did we reach a place where a mainstream American outlet is literally pushing Chinese Communist Propaganda?

The answer to this question lies in a cultural relativism crafted by the left over the past few decades, which paralyzes them from criticizing other cultures even while they rip their own to shreds. After all, who are we to call out human rights abuses when we are destroying the planet, cultivating systemic racism, irresponsibly allowing gun ownership, interfering internationally in imperialist ways and culturally appropriating everyone’s outfits?

To see this at work, look no further than the Pulitzer Prize that the New York Times just received for its “1619 Project.” In this case, the problem with the project isn’t the giant cannon balls historians have blown through its flimsy fabric, but rather the intention of the project itself. It isn’t just that the Times is trying to center the American narrative around the horrible institution of slavery, but that it is actively trying to replace the concept of freedom as the primary motivating desire of the American experiment.

Once you do that, the stated goals and values of the founding of our country, which have certainly been poorly executed for much of our history, become essentially irrelevant. At that point it becomes results, not principles, that guide moral judgments regarding governments and cultures. That is exactly the foolhardy approach that Politico has taken in its naïve and troubling tweet and piece.

Read the entire article HERE.

How China is buying up America’s food supply

Via The American Thinker

A Sioux Falls meatpacking plant was forced to close when it became the epicenter of COVID-19 in South Dakota.  Three weeks after executives from its Chinese owner, WH Group, visited the plant, a month after President Trump’s ban on travel from China, nearly 600 of Smithfield Foods’ 3,700 employees tested positive for the virus, as have 135 additional people in close contact with employees.

Smithfield Foods was started in 1936 by a family in Virginia.  Today, the Chinese own Armour and the famous Smithfield hams, together with the most quintessential American brand of all: Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, with its iconic annual eating contest.

In 2013, Smithfield Foods was bought by the Shanghui Group, later rebranded as the WH Group, for $4.7 billion.  It remains the largest total acquisition of a U.S. company by the Chinese.  With that purchase, the Chinese owned one in four pigs raised in the U.S. and, by adding 146,000 acres, continued to be the world’s largest buyer of American farmland.

The purchase was underwritten with a $4-billion Bank of China loan facilitated by the Chinese Communist Party.  The deal was an integral part of the CCP’s 2011 five-year plan to improve the Chinese economy with purchases of overseas farmland and food processing companies.  Food is poised to become the oil of the 21st century, with demand increasing for a scarce resource.  The CCP identified meat processing as a strategically important industry, and, with the Smithfield acquisition, China gained access to the world’s most advanced animal processing technology.  Former Smithfield CEO Larry Pope said, “In many respects, this is carrying out the (Chinese) government’s five-year plan, which is to improve the quality and the security of their food supply.”

The Chinese consume half of the world’s pork production.  Pork supply is so important to them that, just as the U.S. government maintains a strategic oil reserve, China stashes away vast amounts of frozen pork in case of shortages, outbreaks of swine disease, or war.  Smithfield has retooled to give greater focus to the China market.  “Down the road, if this continues and we ship a lot of product to China, certainly I think we (in America) could see shortages, particularly on hams and bellies,” admitted Smithfield’s director of procurement.

Smithfield is run by Wan Long, a former foot soldier in Mao Zedong’s army.  WH Group is the world’s largest producer of packaged meats.  Wan’s path to dominance was cleared by Li Keqiang, now a member of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s supreme leadership circle.

Here is why you should care.

Read the entire article HERE.

San Antonio City Council passes ‘COVID-19 Anti-Hate Resolution’

Via KSAT-12 San Antonio

Resolution denounces terms like ‘Chinese Virus’ or ‘Kung Fu virus’

The San Antonio City Council unanimously passed a resolution Thursday denouncing bigotry, antisemitism and “hateful speech” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The resolution, which was put forward by Mayor Ron Nirenberg, states that hate crimes, discrimination, and aggression against Asians and Jews are on the rise as the groups are blamed for the disease’s outbreak and spread. The city is committed, the resolution reads, “the safety and well-being of all community members, including the Asian and Jewish communities, and in combatting hate crimes targeting Asians, Jews and Pacific Islanders.”

The resolution also states that the use of terms like “Chinese Virus” or “Kung Fu virus” encourage hate crimes and incidents against Asians as well as spread misinformation. Meanwhile, it says, the Jewish community has been targeted with blame and conspiracy theories regarding the disease.

“We’ve seen incidents that are clearly racist in nature all around this country, and we’ve even seen some incidents here. But this is really about standing in solidarity with all the members of our community,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg told reporters following the vote.

Read the entire article HERE.

NBA Superstar LeBron James Claims Black Men Are Being Hunted ‘Every Day’

By Chris Donaldson/Trending Politics

NBA superstar LeBron James may not suit up for another basketball game this season but he can always be counted on to chime in with ridiculous comments about the state of race relations in America.

This time King James is cynically exploiting the tragic shooting of an unarmed black man in Georgia who was allegedly gunned down by two white bigots to promote an irresponsible conspiracy theory that far too many will believe to be true.

The bored multi-millionaire who is currently under mandatory self-quarantine in one of his mansions fanned the flames of racial discontent by claiming that all black men are “hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes!”

Not only is the Los Angeles Lakers’ star lying and promoting conspiracies but he is doing it at a very dangerous time with locked-down Americans on edge, forced into joblessness angry and increasingly desperate.

But this is the way that LeBron rolls.

Via The Hill, “LeBron James tweets ‘We are literally hunted’ in response to Ahmaud Arbery death”:

Following the death of Ahmaud Arbery, the black man gunned down in Georgia while jogging, many activists have called for an investigation into Arbery’s death as the hashtags #ArmaudArbery and #BlackLivesMatter trend on Twitter. One voice in particular, however, echoes especially loud.

NBA superstar LeBron James, who has a long history of social activism against racism in the U.S., took to his personal Twitter to make a statement about the slaying. In it, he tells the world that black Americans are “literally hunted” on a daily basis as they step outside the relative safety of their homes.

The tweet features a photo of a smiling Arbery, with the text “I was murdered by an armed father and son who hunted me down and shot me as I jogged in a Georgia neighborhood. Neither of my killers have been charged” added below.

Arbery, then 25, was killed in February, but his death has recently circulated online with the release of video footage showing Arbery actively chased down while jogging on the street by three white men in a pickup truck and shot.

While the murder of Ahmaud Arbery is an outrage if he was indeed shot for simply being black, it is an isolated incident that is being blown out of proportion by a SJW-infested media and noisy celebs who fail to condemn the ongoing carnage of black-on-black violence as young men are killed over drug deals, gang turf conflicts or perceived disrespect.

LeBron has much contempt for a society which despite his constant playing of the race card, has treated him very well and made him into a multi-millionaire and global figure simply because he can dribble and dunk a basketball better than most.

Sadly, James enjoys far too much credibility in both media and sports despite his bitter and outlandish claims of systemic racism.

Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock who is also black ripped King James as a dishonest “pied piper” in a missive from his own Twitter account:

“LeBron is the Pied Piper for a lot of athletes. If the goal is to promote justice for Ahmaud Arbery, LeBron’s rhetoric doesn’t promote justice. It promotes emotion and fear, the enemies of justice. We can continue to promote emotion/fear or we can seek justice.”

It’s been a rough year for King James with what may likely be his best chance to win another ring circling the drain with the NBA on the brink of possibly canceling the season and the team that he plays for being in the state under the purview of Gavin Newsom who isn’t going to budge on keeping California under lockdown.

James also came under fire for controversial statements that he made defending China months before the new evil empire unleashed the coronavirus on the world.

Keep tabs on out all of Chris’s daily columns HERE.

As Massive Crowds of Blacks Gather in Atlanta for Newest Air Jordans, Whites Blamed for 83% of Coronavirus Hospitalizations Being Black in Georgia

Via VDare.com

How are we going blame this on white people in Georgia?

Far too many patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Georgia are black, new CDC data shows — a staggering 83%, Business Insider, April 30, 2020

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Wednesday found that 83% of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Georgia during March were black.

“The proportion of hospitalized patients who were black was higher than expected based on overall hospital admissions,” the report said.

The CDC looked at demographic data from 305 coronavirus patients admitted to eight hospitals — seven in Atlanta and one in southern Georgia — and found that, out of the 297 cases in which race was known, 247 patients were black.

Black people account for 52% of the overall population in Atlanta and 32% in Georgia, meaning they were significantly overrepresented in COVID-19 hospitalizations.

The report came days after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp allowed some businesses in the state to reopen, despite pushback from some local officials. Georgia has over 26,000 reported cases of the coronavirus; according to projections, the outbreak there won’t reach its peak until after May 2.

Here’s the breakdown of Georgia’s coronavirus hospitalizations, by race.

The study doesn’t account for every coronavirus patient in the state, and focuses primarily on Atlanta hospitals, but the disparity it found aligns with findings in California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Kansas, and North Carolina, as well as the US more broadly. In all of those places, black communities are being hit hardest by the virus.

“We do not think people of color are biologically or genetically disposed to get COVID-19,” US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said earlier this month. “But they are socially predisposed to coronavirus exposure and to have a higher incidence of the very diseases that put you at risk for severe complications from coronavirus.”

Then there’s this:

To those not social distancing, Atlanta’s mayor has this message, 11Alive.com, May 5, 2020]

ATLANTA — A new Forbes magazine article on Monday says that the risk of exposure to COVID-19 in the state of Georgia has increased by more than 40 percent since Gov. Brian Kemp has reopened the state for business.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms cited the article in a tweet Monday afternoon, saying that those who came out in large groups over the weekend and ignored social distancing were in danger of being exposed to COVID-19. Bottoms cited the people who gathered in crowds at Greenbriar Mall in southwest Atlanta on Saturday morning in search of the new version of Nike’s Air Jordan shoe as it went on sale.

Not much social distancing in Atlanta by these black citizens hoping to score the latest Air Jordans…

Read the entire article HERE.

Bill Of Rights Was Hidden Away For Safekeeping During Lockdown And Now No One Can Find It

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

WASHINGTON, D.C.—When the lockdowns started and stay-at-home orders were issued, the Bill of Rights was taken out of the National Archives and put somewhere for safekeeping since it wasn’t really needed at the time and no one wanted it to get damaged. Now that states are starting to open things up again, no one can seem to find it.

“It’s probably under a couch or something,” said President Trump. “We’ll find it eventually.”

The Bill of Rights, by listing certain rights, placed limits on how the government could order people around and arbitrarily tell them what to do. Everyone agreed it was in the way during a pandemic, but the hope was to eventually pull out the Bill of Rights when things got better. Now that it has been lost, many are unsure what to do, though some think we can make do without it.

“I think most of us remember what was in it,” said Senator Bernie Sanders. “There was stuff about health care and not letting anyone have way more money than you.”

If you think you’ve seen the Bill of Rights, there is a number you can call — though at the other end of the number is just a recorded message reminding you to stay at home.

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

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