Monday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables, here we are back to Monday again.

Facebook reportedly prepping in case Trump tries to delegitimize election

Via CNET

Twitter, and Google’s YouTube, are also reportedly formulating plans to deal with election trouble.

US President Donald Trump has ramped up his criticism of the 2020 election over the past couple of weeks, saying the only way he’ll lose is if the vote is “rigged.” He’s also claimed that voting by mail is unreliable, even as states prepare for expanded mail-in voting because of the coronavirus pandemic. In response, Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube are drawing up plans to handle efforts the president might make to undermine confidence in the results, according to a Friday report in The New York Times.

Facebook has begun working on contingency plans in case Trump questions the election’s legitimacy via content on the social network, according to the Times, which cited people with knowledge of the plans and who asked to remain unnamed. Facebook is also considering how it would respond should Trump use the site to suggest the post office lost ballots or that “other groups” have interfered with the election. Facebook, which already gives users a way to see fewer political ads, has discussed a “kill switch” to shut off political advertising after Election Day, the Times reported.

Facebook declined to comment while Google didn’t immediately respond a to request for comment. Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager said in a statement that “Big Tech” is attempting to obstruct the President.

“Facebook is a social media website – not the arbiter of election results, and to preemptively suggest they will silence President Trump after the election, while ignoring Democrats as they attempt to single-handedly thrust our election system into chaos, simply confirms their bias against this President,” she said.

Google and Twitter confirmed to the Times that they’re preparing for Election Day issues, but they didn’t elaborate on plans they’re considering. The White House told the paper that Trump is working to ensure election security and integrity.

A Twitter spokesman said the company partners with government, civil society and the social network’s peers “to better identify, understand and mitigate threats to the public conversation, both before or after an election.”

Facebook employees are worried Trump will dispute the election results, BuzzFeed News reported in early August. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the Times that the social network is considering new rules that would address premature claims about victory during the election and other claims about the results. The company also plans on educating users that there’s a “high likelihood” it’ll take “days or weeks” to count up votes “and there’s nothing wrong or illegitimate about that,” Zuckerberg said.

Read the entire article HERE.

Democrats Are the Party of Light, Right, and Revenge

Via American Greatness

The Democrats’ platitudes all served the same narrative: the old America is bad, Trump is the old America, and Trump and his supporters will be ousted and punished.

watched a good chunk of last week’s Democratic National Convention. It’s always useful to study the message and morale of one’s opponents. While the Zoom infomercial approach was remarkably boring—a traumatic echo of what we have all had to endure over the last six months—several key themes emerged amid the dead air and absent applause.

Namely, Democrats and Joe Biden are more high-minded and ethical than Trump, who must be cast aside to restore the nation’s moral center.

The Inclusive Party of Nice Guys

One of the more prominent themes of the Democrats’ convention is that their party is inclusive. This is undeniable. A wide range of people were on display, with new Americans and minorities given prominence: immigrants, gays, women of color, blacks, American Indians, a poor boy with a stutter, illegal aliens who aim to siphon off our limited healthcare resources, and the like.

This part of the Democrats’ message makes sense. It’s familiar. It is the key to the Democratic coalition, which has only grown through the social engineering of the 1965 Hart-Cellar immigration law.

Without constant new blood from the Third World, existing Americans—even older generations of immigrants—grow too prosperous, content, and conservative to keep the democrats in power. This is how the ethnic white Democrats of the 1950s became the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s and Trump voters today.

When America was filled with more of its legacy people, as in 1980 and 1984, the Democrats lost badly. Then, the Democrats could not successfully peddle the radicalism that has now become mainstream. Even Barack Obama won by concealing most of his past and his policy preferences. But through the magic of “electing a new people,” today’s much-more-leftist Democrats are within striking distance of an electoral victory, possibly permanently.

America the Hellhole

We also heard the Democrats’ grim view of American history. While there was critical talk of Russian collusion and celebration of the activist patriotism of the 1960s, these jingoist appeals always sound out of place and merely tactical. The more emphatic message was that America is fundamentally a bad, racist, and oppressive place.

Speaker after speaker talked about their brutal childhoods and overcoming oppression. Former President Obama said it like this:

Whatever our backgrounds, we’re all the children of Americans who fought the good fight. Great grandparents working in firetraps and sweatshops without rights or representation. Farmers losing their dreams to dust. Irish and Italians and Asians and Latinos told to go back where they came from. Jews and Catholics, Muslims and Sikhs, made to feel suspect for the way they worshipped. Black Americans chained and whipped and hanged. Spit on for trying to sit at lunch counters. Beaten for trying to vote.

Evidently, then, the only thing worthwhile in America’s past are those minorities who fought against whites and their endemic racism. We can only love this country by making these fighters our heroes, not the pioneers, founders, astronauts, soldiers, or inventors in whom all Americans used to take some pride.

Their achievements and their America was built on oppression and exclusion. They are unworthy of celebration. This is why their monuments must be torn down and their progeny reduced to second class status.

A Question of Character

Finally, the convention focused extensively on the question of character. Democrats’ niceness, inclusiveness, solidarity with the oppressed, and basic goodness—as exemplified by the amiable Joe Biden—was contrasted with Trump. For them, Trump is all things bad: racist, mean, harsh, disrespectful, vulgar, and self-serving. He was mocked, literally.

Former President Obama attacked the sitting president in an unprecedented way, saying:

For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.

In other words, Obama said rather explicitly Trump is both evil and stupid.

Combining these three messages poses some problems. First, as with the racially separatist slogan Black Lives Matter, the implicit message is likely to frighten white voters, who still make up a majority of the country and an even greater majority of likely voters. Far from being inclusive, the coalition of the ascendant is based on an “us versus them” narrative that does not allow any pride of place, or indeed much of any place, for white Americans.

While Biden was the nominal candidate, he was one of very few white men on stage, and the only things he was allowed to be proud of were his family, his willingness to serve under Barack Obama, and his decision to pick Kamala Harris as his vice president. His age reinforced the message loud and clear: this is the last dance for the white man.

Second, the talk of niceness was peculiar. While it was said repeatedly, it was peppered with personal attacks and a note of conceit: We are the good people, and those mean Republicans are the bad ones. The words did not match the music.

For example, Michelle Obama intoned, “This is who we still are: compassionate, resilient, decent people whose fortunes are bound up with one another. And it is well past time for our leaders to once again reflect our truth.”

Joe Biden, channeling Shirley McClaine, said, “If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light not of the darkness.”

This is not the language of humility. This is the language of triumphalism. Talking about someone else’s character, or lack of it, is always kind of obnoxious and aggressive. And implicit in all of this talk is a threat: not just Trump, but all those mean Americans who think like him and talk like him and voted for him, need to watch out. You are the bad guys, you are not real Americans, and we are going to get our revenge.

Read the entire article HERE.

Biden: I Will Shut Down Nation In January If Scientists Tell Me To

Via The Federalist

2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said Friday he would be willing to implement a nationwide lockdown in response to the novel Wuhan coronavirus if White House advisors recommended the drastic measure.

“I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” Biden told ABC News alongside his new vice presidential running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris.

Biden condemned what he billed as the “fundamental flaw” in the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic: encouraging states to reopen before the virus has virtually disappeared. He did not address the problem of the nation and local areas lacking an economy to reopen if states wait for a vaccine that experts say may never come, or wait for constant and everpresent testing capabilities.

“I will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus,” Biden said. “That is the fundamental flaw of this administration’s thinking to begin with. In order to keep the country running and moving and the economy growing and people employed, you have to fix the virus, you have to deal with the virus.”

The full ABC interview with the Democratic ticket is slated to air Sunday.

Biden’s endorsement of a potential nationwide shut down comes after Biden and Harris declared their support for a three-month federal mask mandate that would include individuals outdoors.

“Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months, at a minimum,” Biden said. “Let’s institute a mask mandate nationwide starting immediately, and we will save lives.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Otter Pops apologizes, walks back tweet supporting Black Lives Matter movement

Via Fox News

PORTLAND, Ore. – Popular frozen treat brand Otter Pops has apologized and walked back a statement after it tweeted out its support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

On Monday, the brand was contacted on Twitter by user @PDXCarMedic, a disabled Air Force veteran, who hands out food, water and other supplies at Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Ore., the Willamette Week reported. The Twitter user asked the company if they supported the movement and if they would donate popsicles for him to give out to protestors.

According to the outlet, Otter Pops responded with, “We 100% do. Send us a DM and we will see how we can help!”

Soon after the tweet was sent, conservative Andy Ngo tweeted an allegation that Otter Pops was offering popsicles to “an antifa pop-up group in Portland that gives supplies to rioters.”

Otter Pops has since deleted its account and walked back the statement.

“We regret that an individual consultant hired by Otter Pops recently commented on a social media post that appeared to align the brand with a political movement,” read the tweet, the Willamette Week reported of the now-deleted tweet and profile. “We apologize if anyone was offended by that comment, which was not representative of our brand.”

Since then, the brand has received more backlash from Black Lives Matter protestors and supporters who have started the hashtag #boycottotterpops on Twitter.

Though Otter Pops told the Willamette Week it did not delete its social media because of criticism, but because “Otter Pops does not align with any political group or organization,” part of a statement read.

“Otter Pops supports the rights and freedoms granted to Americans,” the company writes. “Our core mission is to serve children and families.”

It was not reported what happened to the social media consultant.

Fox News reached out to Otter Pops for further comment.

Read the entire article HERE.

Chicago White Sox To Drop Offensive ‘White’ From Name

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

CHICAGO, IL—Amid mounting pressure from a coordinated campaign of 12 mentally ill Twitter users, Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf has confirmed the franchise will finally be dropping the offensive word “white” from their name.

“Being a mascot is an honor,” Jerry said. “Unless, of course, your mascot is a Native American. Then it’s a shame. I’m still not sure how all this works. Anyway, we have realized it’s inappropriate to give a place of honor to whiteness in our team’s name. The word ‘white’ really has no place in modern society, so we have removed it.”

According to sources, there was debate over some new names, like the Chicago Stinky Sox or the Chicago Tube Sox. In the end, stakeholders elected to simply shorten it to “Sox.”

At this news, gang leaders across the Windy City laid down their weapons, and all crime and oppression disappeared overnight.

Unfortunately, the name change had no effect on the team’s win to loss ratio.

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

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