Wednesday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables, whatcha gonna do when they’re coming for you…

The Culture War Convention

Via The Federalist

Donald Trump oversaw a naturalization ceremony during Tuesday night’s Republican National Convention. He pardoned a convicted criminal. Nicholas Sandmann, the Covington Catholic student who was smeared by the corporate media in 2019, delivered remarks on cancel culture, donning a MAGA hat. Eric Trump lamented cancel culture too, and derided “elites in Paris.” Abby Johnson, a regretful former Planned Parenthood employee, talked about “the smell” of abortion. Billy Graham’s granddaughter warned that transgender ideology is threatening youth sports.

“You can’t tell me how to vote because of the color of my skin,” Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said, a line directed straight at Joe Biden.

The previous night, “St. Louis Gun Couple” Mark and Patricia McCloskey spoke. Nikki Haley and Tim Scott explained why their experiences as minorities inform their support for President Trump. So did Herschel Walker. Andrew Pollack, the father of a young girl slain in the Parkland school shooting, slammed the media. Maximo Alvarez, a Cuban immigrant whose family fled from Fidel Castro, celebrated “the gift of freedom.”

Tax cuts, small businesses, and entrepreneurs are getting their moments. But this is a culture war convention, where the Republican message is framed as a clear rebuke to cultural leftism, to the 1619 Project, to “cancel culture,” to anti-police protesters and rioters, to the narrative of Black Lives Matter, to media corruption.

Strategically, this makes sense. Anxiety over recent cultural upheaval is bipartisan outside coastal greenrooms. There’s little to be lost by emphasizing accurate, patriotic narratives, and decrying the wildly reviled “cancel culture.” There’s comparatively less to be gained by hammering tax cuts and market gains in this difficult economy, with so many people put out of work by the pandemic, and so many people mourning loved ones.

Against the backdrop of shocking chaos in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where protesters in an Obama-Trump district are demonstrating against the shooting of Jacob Blake by destroying businesses and setting fires in the streets, the wisdom of this strategy is clear. In the same way Democrats seemed to target their convention at Rust Belt swing voters, Republicans are doing the same. Sure, his position on trade wars and foreign policy helped Trump move that needle, but more broadly, his loud opposition to media bias, elites, and political correctness were essential parts of his platform.

Read the entire article HERE.

White Flight or Fight? Either Way, the American Dream Is Turning Into a Nightmare

Via Strategic Culture

Amid rampant violence, urban decay and racial strife across much of the ultra-Liberal heartland, more and more Whites are migrating to the suburbs and rural areas. However, as disaffection for the pale-face tribe continues to climb, this demographic is facing some unexpected hurdles along the road.

For even the most progressive liberal, the daunting problems plaguing America’s inner cities – homelessness, homicide, racial tensions and of course Covid lockdowns – is becoming too much to bear. Now, an increasing number of Americans are pulling up stakes out of Dodge for some semblance of peace and security. But there’s just one rusty catch to this great migration – the White escapees, together with long-term residents – may no longer be welcomed with open arms as they once were. After all, the White man is becoming a second-class citizen in the country of his ancestors.

In scenes more reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters have been flocking to the posh suburbs of Portland and Seattle, demanding that its gentrified citizens make amends for the original sin of being born ‘White and privileged’. Aroused from their slumber by the Faustian chant of ‘Wake up, motherf**kers!’ suburbanites are getting gratuitous lectures on the brand new woke version of American history, which says that the land where they now reside was, in the words of one agitator, “Black people land.”

“Do you know that before your White -ss came here, this was all Black people,” the young man asked his bleary-eyed audience peering through their blinds. “Do you know that people like you came in here and basically bought all the land from the Black people for less than what it was worth and kicked them out so you could live here?”

The homeowners were then instructed by the foul-mouthed Soros-funded protester to “do something about it.” Apparently that means handing over the deeds of their domiciles to the mob.

Had the activists conducted a door-to-door survey, however, they may have been surprised to learn that the demographic makeup of these neighborhoods – Black, Asian, Korean, Jewish, etc. – roughly corresponds to the total number of representatives from any respective race across the country. Since Whites of European heritage, for example, still make up around 70 percent of the total population of the United States, it should come as no surprise that their numbers would stand out.

In any case, this scenario places the average White American, who is ‘guilty’ of purchasing property on the marketplace at an agreed price, into a very precarious situation. On the one hand, they, like all people, want to provide the safest and most livable conditions for themselves and their families. Yet, the left-leaning politicians in control of many of these major cities – New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and Portland, for example – heeding the demands of radical activist groups and progressive politicians, are working at cross-purposes of the status quo.

Amid the George Floyd protests, activists began to make some shocking demands on the authorities, which included defunding and disarming the police. The politicians were only too happy to comply with their wild wishes. To add injury to assault, the citizenry were put on notice that they were at risk of running afoul of the law if they took any actions to protect themselves.

Read the entire article HERE.

Journalism’s Gates keepers

Via The Columbia Journalism Review

Last August, NPR profiled a Harvard-led experiment to help low-income families find housing in wealthier neighborhoods, giving their children access to better schools and an opportunity to “break the cycle of poverty.” According to researchers cited in the article, these children could see $183,000 greater earnings over their lifetimes—a striking forecast for a housing program still in its experimental stage.

If you squint as you read the story, you’ll notice that every quoted expert is connected to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps fund the project. And if you’re really paying attention, you’ll also see the editor’s note at the end of the story, which reveals that NPR itself receives funding from Gates.

NPR’s funding from Gates “was not a factor in why or how we did the story,” reporter Pam Fessler says, adding that her reporting went beyond the voices quoted in her article. The story, nevertheless, is one of hundreds NPR has reported about the Gates Foundation or the work it funds, including myriad favorable pieces written from the perspective of Gates or its grantees.

And that speaks to a larger trend—and ethical issue—with billionaire philanthropists’ bankrolling the news. The Broad Foundation, whose philanthropic agenda includes promoting charter schools, at one point funded part of the LA Times’ reporting on education. Charles Koch has made charitable donations to journalistic institutions such as the Poynter Institute, as well as to news outlets such as the Daily Caller, that support his conservative politics. And the Rockefeller Foundation funds Vox’s Future Perfect, a reporting project that examines the world “through the lens of effective altruism”—often looking at philanthropy.

As philanthropists increasingly fill in the funding gaps at news organizations—a role that is almost certain to expand in the media downturn following the coronavirus pandemic—an underexamined worry is how this will affect the ways newsrooms report on their benefactors. Nowhere does this concern loom larger than with the Gates Foundation, a leading donor to newsrooms and a frequent subject of favorable news coverage.

I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism. Recipients included news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting; charitable organizations affiliated with news outlets, like BBC Media Action and the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund; media companies such as Participant, whose documentary Waiting for “Superman” supports Gates’s agenda on charter schools; journalistic organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Press Foundation, and the International Center for Journalists; and a variety of other groups creating news content or working on journalism, such as the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency that Gates commissioned to create a “news site” to promote the success of aid groups. In some cases, recipients say they distributed part of the funding as subgrants to other journalistic organizations—which makes it difficult to see the full picture of Gates’s funding into the fourth estate.

Read the entire article HERE.

HBO’s John Oliver Freaks as Town Names Sewage Plant After Him: ‘Go F**k Yourselves’

Via The Hollywood Reporter

The new name comes after a recent episode of HBO’s ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’ in which he explored the racial disparities in the jury selection process, citing problems in a few Connecticut towns.
A Connecticut town’s officials are showing comedian John Oliver what they think about his expletive-filled rant about their city — they’re naming the local sewage treatment plant after him.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton announced the tongue-in-cheek move in a video posted on his Facebook page on Saturday that shows him at the plant. “We are going to rename it the John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant,” the Republican mayor says. “Why? Because it’s full of crap just like you, John.”

The new name comes after a recent episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in which he explored the racial disparities in the jury selection process, citing problems in a few Connecticut towns. In the segment, Oliver noted Danbury’s “charming railway museum” and its “historic Hearthstone Castle.”

“I know exactly three things about Danbury,” he said. “USA Today ranked it the second-best city to live in in 2015, it was once the center of the American hat industry and if you’re from there, you have a standing invite to come get a thrashing from John Oliver — children included — (expletive) you.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Lebron James Is A Bigot

By Jason Whitlock/Outkick

LeBron James has more than 40 million followers on Twitter. Doesn’t he have a moral responsibility to be informed and measured before commenting on a controversy that could inspire civil unrest? What’s the harm in waiting 48 hours, 72 hours or a week?

Is James intentionally being used as an agent of chaos?

His logic is consistent with the logic of white bigots. James uses occasional anecdotes to make sweeping negative generalizations about white police officers.

“And y’all wonder why we say what we say about police!”

James’ Twitter feed reads like a transcript from a KKK rally. Can’t you hear the Grand Wizard of the Klan shouting to his followers in the aftermath of O.J. Simpson?

“And y’all wonder why we say what we say about black people!”

LeBron James foolishly thinks he’s overseeing the police. He’s overseeing the black KKK. He’s promoting racism. He’s demonizing a group of white people based on the behavior of a few.

As a black man that sort of racist tactic should be terrifying. That racist tactic was used to deny us freedom in this country. No one who professes to care about the welfare of black people would adopt the tactics of white bigots.

Bigots, regardless of color, have a common trait. Ignorance. Ignorance fuels their ego. Information is their enemy. They avoid it at all costs. Negative anecdotes frame their worldview.

Bigotry has subdued and detained LeBron James.

Read the entire article HERE.

Bernie Sanders Praises China For Eradicating Poverty By Killing All The Poor People

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

U.S.—Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders offered words of praise for China’s successful reduction of poverty in many parts of the country by killing off all the poor people through government control of the economy.

Sanders pointed out that the country has been very successful in eliminating vast swathes of poverty and also the poor.

“America still has a lot of poor people, and that’s because we haven’t been aggressive in implementing socialist programs that cause mass starvation,” Sanders said, his fingers flopping around like ten tiny wacky inflatable tube men. “Firing squads, death camps, breadlines—all of these are humanitarian tools in the arsenal of the government to shoot poverty in the face, and sometimes also the poor in the face, when it’s necessary.”

The senator also pointed out that poor people, who often own fewer than three homes, don’t contribute much to a socialist economy and “not much is lost” when these single-home-owners are shot or simply starve to death as the government can’t even figure out how to get food to everyone, a problem even bad fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s solved decades ago.

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

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