Wednesday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables.

How To Prepare For What Comes Next

Via Zero Hedge

It’s pretty safe to say we’re living in a world where everything is dramatically different than it was a few months ago. Regardless of how we personally feel about the response to the coronavirus pandemic, we still have to live in a society that has adjusted the parameters of acceptable behavior and has changed irrevocably.

While it’s impossible to guess precisely what comes next (I mean, were you really expecting aliens and murder hornets?), we can surmise from the things happening right now which way the future is headed. And we can use that information to prepare ourselves for it.

The following are some areas in which we may soon (or already) be facing difficulty, as well as some suggestions for meeting them head-on with resolve and preparations. If you’re looking for more information about the second wave of the virus and effects of that, go here.

The economy

It’s no surprise that the economy is in shambles – after all, it’s been all but shut down for months. Back when I wrote about the potential costs of COVID, I underestimated the total destruction of small businesses and the devastation of the workforce. I didn’t go deep enough in my analysis to foresee 40 million people becoming unemployed in the span of two months or that not just small businesses would suffer – that dozens of major corporations would also go under, taking even more jobs with them.

Few would have predicted the mass money printing for stimulus checks and small business loans and grants, putting our nature further in deficit than ever before. There’s even a possibility that the US could willfully default on its debt to China as the government struggles to handle the most exorbitant national debt in history.

Things that could directly affect individuals are:

• Unemployment: It may be difficult to keep your job or find another one.
• Inflation: As the government continues printing money for “stimulus” it weakens the dollar, reducing its value. This means that the price of goods will increase. So every trip to the store will cost you more money.
• The implosion of credit: As more and more people become unable to make their payments, massive swaths of the economy will suffer, including housing, banking, and the automotive industry. This will result in an inability to get future credit for mortgages or cars, and will also result in a loss of jobs.

What can you do about these things?

It’s more important than ever to have an emergency fund. That might be easier said than done when jobs are difficult to come by and when the money you do have doesn’t stretch as far. If you are getting that extra $600 a week from the CARE Act, I can’t stress this strongly enough: SAVE IT.

Now is not the time to try and pay off all your debts, particularly if your future is looking precarious. Continue making the minimum payments while you wait to see what’s going to happen. Put aside the money you would be using to pay off debt – you can always pay it off in a few months if things are looking up. Remember that the big banks get bailouts. Everyday people do not.  Paying off your unsecured debt should not be a financial priority right now.

Don’t get in over your head with expenses. If you can cut back, you should start doing so now. Don’t sign new phone contracts or expensive leases. Reduce your monthly cost of living as much as possible.

The public education system

The public education system was early to exit from normal operations. Children are currently doing “distance learning” online with their teachers and being guided by their parents.

While a lot of parents complain, many others have enjoyed reconnecting with their children. Some parents are also realizing that the education they thought their kids were receiving isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be when they find their children are far behind the curve and the teacher never even mentioned it.

After seeing some of the horrifying plans for schools reopening with “appropriate social distance,” many parents may decide not to let their children return to school at all. Here’s what the CDC is recommending.

What can you do about the education situation?

While for many the loss of “free childcare” would pose a financial difficulty, a report on the Cato Institute suggests this could be a positive change.

Prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we may be on the brink of a massive educational reset. With families back in charge of their children’s education, free from the constraints of compulsory schooling, they may increasingly demand more educational choice and freedom. Some of these families will choose to opt‐​out of schooling altogether, inspired by the learning, growth, and reignited curiosity they witness in their children during this time at home. (source)

It may turn out that educating kids at home is beneficial to the whole family. Here’s some advice for public schoolers from a homeschool parent and the first post of a series on getting started with homeschooling. It might be a good idea to begin looking into some homeschool programs to see what will might be a good fit for your family. In most states, you’re under no obligation to follow a public school curriculum when homeschooling.

The food supply

We’ve all see bare spaces on the shelves at the grocery stores. There’s a major problem getting food from the farmers to the people who need it. Our system has been designed around the centralization and processing of food.

Interestingly, this problem isn’t necessarily about actual shortages as much as it is processing and distribution.

Processing plants across the country are shutting down as more and more employees become ill. At least ten large meat processing plants have closed due to the virus. Distribution issues have farmers dumping thousands of gallons of milk, plowing under vegetables in the fields, and leaving potatoes to rot.

A lot of the food being produced was destined for restaurants, hotels, and cruise ships. Diverting it to grocery stores and the millions of people using food banks right now (because they didn’t get their money from unemployment yet, remember?) is unfortunately not as easy as it should be. This article explains some of the issues with getting food to hungry people.

One of the issues processing. With meat, in particular, this is difficult – most folks aren’t even going to be willing to process their own chickens and it’s wildly unrealistic to imagine a family in the city processing a cow or a pig. With produce, it becomes a little bit easier – anyone can wash fruits and vegetables – but employees are still needed to harvest the food.

A lot of that scarcity could be remedied if we could reallocate things – if janitorial supplies could be sold to the general public, if farmers could sell directly to stores or consumers, and if farmers could donate unpurchased items to food banks.

To summarize, farmers are losing billions of dollars and people are going without food, while the food we have is left to rot. Hopefully, President Trump’s new 19 billion dollar plan will allow the federal government to play matchmaker between frustrated farmers and hungry families. (source)

Governmental bandaids aside, this isn’t a problem that will be going away quickly. In fact, it may get worse.

What can you do about the food situation?

No matter where you live, you can produce or acquire at least some of the food you eat.

• Gardening – Grow food any way you can, from sprouting microgreens in smaller apartments to container gardens on a patio or balcony to full-on vegetable gardens that take up 90% of your back yard. With all the bare shelves at the grocery store, producing any of your own food will be helpful. Here’s some information on how to start a garden inexpensively.
• Livestock – If you live in a place where you can have livestock, now might be the time to do it. Many cities allow 3-6 hens in backyard coops, and of course, if you live in the country, it will be no problem to have chickens. Having fresh eggs at your disposal could be very important one of these days. Also, keep in mind that chickens are a great way to dispose of leftovers and vegetable scraps. Here’s some information on raising baby chicks. Rabbits are also a good animal to raise and can be farmed a lot more subtly within city limits because they’re so quiet. They can provide a very sustainable source of meat.
• Hunting – If you already have the equipment to do so, hunting can help you to acquire meat. A deer could provide your family with venison for months. Smaller game, like ducks or geese, are also good additions to your freezer. And depending on where you live, you can use snares for rabbit or other small mammals.
• Foraging – Even in the midst of the city, a park can be an abundant source of food in season if you know what to look for. Get yourself a good regional guide to the food growing freely in your area. It’s important that the book be regional because there are so many medicinal and edible plants in the US, you’ll want to narrow it down to what you can find where you are now. Makes sure your harvesting from an area not sprayed with toxic pesticides.
• Sprouting – The fastest and easiest way to grow something yourself is through sprouting. While supplies for orders are backed up, you can get excellent guidance on sprouting what you already have on this website. Sprouting can be done just about anywhere, in just about any home. They provide high nutritional value and some fresh veggies, any time of year.

The ability to locate or produce food is something that can mean the difference between keeping your family’s bellies filled or hunger. Grocery stores remain low on inventory and food banks cannot keep up with the demand of people who are out of work and who haven’t yet received their unemployment checks.

The supply chain of other goods

It isn’t just food that people are having difficulty finding. Nearly any store you visit right now has a lack of inventory. Some of it isn’t being produced, other things aren’t being imported, and still others are somewhere in limbo in the broken supply chain.

Some of the things that are missing are products that originate in China – see this massive list.

Other items, like paper products, are also sparse even though many of these things are made in the USA. It isn’t just because of so-called “hoarders” either, as the media wants us to believe. There have been shortages of TP across the globe and the main reason is the fact that everyone is now at home most of the time now. Previously, a lot of a person’s toilet paper usage was outside the home – so everyone was using those giant janitorial supply rolls. Most households are now using 40% more toilet paper than before. This interesting article goes into detail about why there isn’t a quick and easy fix for this. (source)

We can expect shortages of everything from medications to automotive parts to hygiene supplies in the near future due to the breakdown of the supply chain.

What can we do about the shortage of goods?

In reality, a lot of the things we used to run to the store and buy simply aren’t essential. We can begin to downsize and to focus on needs instead of wants.

We can begin to be more careful with the resources we do have. How many times have we said, “It’s cheaper to just replace it than try and fix it” when tossing something in the trash? We should be living by the adage, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”

It’s also a good time to begin to be more creative with our reuse of things. Can you use the fabric from an item of clothing you’ll no longer wear to make something else that you need? How can you repurpose things? What multiple uses can you get from items? You can’t go wrong with learning new skills like making or repairing commonly used items.

Instead of making a dash to the store your first option, see how you can solve problems without buying anything.  Start looking for substitutes and make your items last as long as possible with careful cleaning and maintenance. This way of life has the added bonus of helping you to get a handle on your finances.

The increasing desperation

As Selco has often warned us, the biggest threat in an emergency is often not the emergency itself, but other people. Many of us saw this during the lockdowns, both within our inner circles as well as outside our circles, with the sometimes surprising behaviors of neighbors, coworkers, and friends.

As the financial catastrophe our nation is facing becomes more apparent, so will the desperation that people are feeling. And desperate people can behave irrationally and dangerously. Anyone who has ever considered the extreme measures that they would go to in order to feed or protect their children can understand that others feel exactly the same way.

Right now, during these early stages, we’re still in the “good” times. The government is doling out money hand over fist. Food banks are still operating, although supplies are very limited. A lot of people have looked at this as a “paid vacation” from their everyday lives.  Many are making more money staying home collecting unemployment than they made at work – for some it’s triple the amount.

But when that money stops coming in…when the food banks are empty…when the jobs don’t reappear…when supplies are short even for those with money…when there’s no more help?

That’s when people will begin to feel desperate.

What can you do about this?

First of all, it’s of the utmost importance that you practice good OpSec. That’s a military term that means “operational security.” Put simply, OpSec means that people outside your inner circle should be completely unaware of your supplies, your level of preparedness, and your willingness and ability to defend what’s yours.

Nobody needs to know you have extra toilet paper or canned goods. If you really want to help someone out, pick up a few things for them at the store and drop it off in the bag from the store saying, “I grabbed a few things for you while I was at the store.” Make sure they don’t think it came from your home because hungry people have very long memories.

Secondly, you need to be prepared so that you don’t feel this same desperation. We’ve been talking about preparedness on this website for almost a decade. If you haven’t put your plan into action, you are truly running out of time to do so, and quickly. Stock up and get ready because the future is going to be bumpy.

Read the entire article HERE.

From 9/11 to COVID-19, It’s Been a Perpetual State of Emergency

By John W. Whitehead

Don’t pity this year’s crop of graduates because this COVID-19 pandemic caused them to miss out on the antics of their senior year and the pomp and circumstance of graduation.

Pity them because they have spent their entire lives in a state of emergency.

They were born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks; raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass surveillance state; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulnerable by the blowback from a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.

It’s a dismal start to life, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, we who should have known better failed to maintain our freedoms or provide our young people with the tools necessary to survive, let alone succeed, in the impersonal jungle that is modern America.

We brought them into homes fractured by divorce, distracted by mindless entertainment, and obsessed with the pursuit of materialism. We institutionalized them in daycares and afterschool programs, substituting time with teachers and childcare workers for parental involvement. We turned them into test-takers instead of thinkers and automatons instead of activists.

We allowed them to languish in schools which not only look like prisons but function like prisons, as well—where conformity is the rule and freedom is the exception. We made them easy prey for our corporate overlords, while instilling in them the values of a celebrity-obsessed, technology-driven culture devoid of any true spirituality. And we taught them to believe that the pursuit of their own personal happiness trumped all other virtues, including any empathy whatsoever for their fellow human beings

No, we haven’t done this generation any favors.

Given the current political climate and nationwide lockdown, things could only get worse.

For those coming of age today (and for the rest of us who are muddling along through this dystopian nightmare), here are a few bits of advice that will hopefully help as we navigate the perils ahead.

Read the entire article HERE.

Voting By Mail In 2020 Would Create Chaos To Advantage Democrats

Via The Federalist

Vote-by-mail would federalize a state-based electoral system, introducing something Democrats tend to use when they’re desperate for a win: chaos.

Leftists know that changing the rules of the game can bring victory, and have long tried to change election rules to do just that. When COVID-19 came, facing a contentious race with a populist incumbent president, Democrats turned to their vast network of money-men, many under the umbrella of the “dark money” empire known as the Arabella Network, and set about using the new crisis to their advantage.

Their latest push is an expansion of vote-by-mail and its cousin, ballot harvesting, the collecting of mail-in ballots by third-party operators. Promoted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as part of a wish list of items that should be part of the next coronavirus spending bill, their inclusion is ostensibly to ensure people are safe and socially distant during an election that will take place more than six months from now. But make no mistake: it’s all part of a larger effort to politicize the coronavirus crisis.

What vote-by-mail and ballot harvesting would really do is federalize a state-based electoral system, opening it to huge risks for fraud and incompetence, and introducing something else Democrats tend to use when they find themselves desperate for a win: chaos.

Many are already pointing out the potential fraud risk in using the U.S. Postal Service to conduct an election. The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky and Public Interest Legal Foundation’s J. Christian Adams point out that millions of ballots go missing and are never counted as complete votes under a vote-by-mail system.

In the 2016 election, for example, “more mail ballots were misdirected and unaccounted for than the margin of votes between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. … [F]or every vote that Hillary won over the eventual president nationally, more than twice as many mail ballots disappeared or went to the wrong addresses,” they write.

In fact, over the last four elections, 28 million mail-in ballots went missing. And when third-party representatives get involved in collecting those ballots, it’s not difficult to see how those with bad intent might succeed in never turning ballots in to favor one candidate over another.

Less discussed is the vote-by-mail backup plan that relies on Democratic losses to work. It’s a tactic that was used quite effectively during the Obamacare debacle of 2010: Create a broken, chaotic system that can be used as an excuse for allowing even more federal control of that system in an effort to fix what’s broken.

Read the entire article HERE.

YouTube Censors Criticism of China: Site automatically deletes terms used by regime critics

Via The Washington Free Beacon

YouTube is deleting comments that contain two terms Chinese dissidents use to criticize the government, raising concerns about the tech industry’s willingness to censor content to gain favor with the communist regime.

Comments on YouTube videos containing the terms 共匪 (Gòngfěi), meaning “communist bandit,” and 五毛党 (wǔmáodǎng), meaning “fifty-cent party,” are automatically deleted from the site shortly after they are posted. The latter is a derogatory term referring to Chinese internet censors who are allegedly paid 50 cents for every internet post that they erase.

A YouTube spokeswoman acknowledged to the Washington Free Beacon that the website’s algorithm has been deleting any comments containing either of the two terms within seconds of their submission. She blamed “an error in our enforcement mechanism” for the deletions, rather than an effort to stymie criticism of the authoritarian government. The deletions have raised eyebrows among Republican lawmakers, one of whom is calling on the Department of Justice to investigate.

Robert Spalding, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and retired Air Force general, said that YouTube’s decision to remove the two terms from the comment section is symptomatic of a larger problem: the Chinese government’s ability to wield influence in American corporations to squelch dissent.

“The desire of the corporate sectors of U.S. and democratic countries to have access in Chinese market has [resulted in] the slow erosion of their independence,” he said. “It’s led to more of a co-optation by the Chinese Communist Party, whether it be AI research facilities in Beijing or censorship on their platforms.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Skittles Is Ditching The Rainbow To Celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month

Via The Daily Caller

Skittles is introducing limited-edition colorless candies and packaging as it temporarily ditches its traditional rainbow color scheme to celebrate Pride Month, according to a press release.

Mars Inc., the company that owns Skittles, announced that consumers will still be able to taste the rainbow, although the candies will be gray to highlight that “during Pride, only [one rainbow] matters,” the press release said.

The “Pride Packs” will still include a variety of flavors such as strawberry, orange, grape, green apple and lemon.

“While Pride month certainly looks different this year, Skittles is passionate about showing its support for the LGBTQ+ community,” Hank Izzo, Vice President of Marketing for Mars Wrigley U.S. said in the release.

For every $1 pack of Skittles purchased in June, the company will donate $1, up to $100,000, to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

We believe that giving up our rainbow means so much more than just removing the colors from our Skittles packs,” Izzo continued, “and we’re excited to do our part in making a difference for the LGBTQ+ community through our partnership with GLAAD, not only in June, but all year long.”

“This Pride month, Skittles is removing its rainbow, but replacing it with much-needed conversations about the LGBTQ+ community and a visible stand of solidarity,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in the release.

Read the entire article HERE.

Mark Zuckerberg Finishes Another Long Day Of Deciding What People Should Believe

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

MENLO PARK, CA—Giving his arms and legs a nice little stretch while reclining in his office chair Tuesday afternoon, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, confirmed that he had successfully completed another long day of deciding what people around the world should believe.

“We’ve got over two billion users now, so it’s never been more important to show them only what we want them to see, while throttling to death of all content that we don’t think they should be consuming for whatever reason,” the Facebook chief said. “My days are longer than ever.”

The tech titan, worth $71 billion, went on to describe the weight that comes along with being the arbiter of moral fitness and objective truth, able to make or break nearly any website on the internet by lowering the organic reach of their posts or outright banning them, based upon Facebook’s opinion of the views expressed in their content.

“It’s hard work, dictating which worldviews are acceptable and which are not. But someone has to do it,” he said. “We can’t just let people consume whatever they want.”

At publishing time, Zuckerberg confirmed that he was smothering the reach of this very article.

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

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