Wednesday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables, its time for mid-week madness!

August Shatters Another Gun Sales Record

Via The Washington Free Beacon

August 2020 saw more gun sales than any other August on record as Americans continue to rush to gun stores at a record pace.

A Washington Free Beacon analysis of FBI data released on Tuesday found a 57 percent increase in sales compared to August 2019. There were at least 1.6 million sales in August 2020. Only two previous Augusts had broken a million sales, though limitations in FBI reporting means that not every gun sale is captured in the data. August represents the sixth month in a row to set a new sales record with March seeing the most gun sales of any month in the history of the FBI background check system.

Sales thus far in 2020 have soared past previous years. Sales through the first 8 months of the year are up 43 percent over the previous record.

“In 15 years of teaching firearm safety, I have never seen a higher level of interest in guns,” Rick Ector, a Detroit-based firearms instructor, told the Washington Free Beacon. “I do not need to advertise, and my phone is constantly ringing.”

A June report from the gun industry’s trade group indicated dealers believed 40 percent of buyers since March have been first-time owners. The group pegged the total number of new owners at just under 5 million. If the estimated percentage of new owners holds for August, that would mean at least 640,000 Americans bought a gun for the first time in August. The surge in firearm owners could have a significant impact on gun politics and American elections for years to come.

Ector said the sales are driven by concerns over the pandemic, the economic downturn, and recent rioting in places like Kenosha, Wisconsin and Portland, Oregon. He expects the record sales to keep up through the end of the year, pointing to Democrat nominee Joe Biden’s strict new gun-control policies and his lead in national polling.

“Any single issue by itself would lead to an increase of people buying guns,” he said. “We have all four factors ‘in play’ and the run on guns is no surprise to me.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Does Western Civilization Have a Future, or Is It Already in Its Grave?

By Paul Craig Roberts

Sandia National Laboratories, a US government-funded nuclear weapons developer, requires its white employees to be subjected to indoctrination in training sessions in which critical race theory propagandists tell the white employees they are racists, because they have white privilege due to their skin color.

One of the abused white employees, Casey Peterson, produced a video that rejected the propaganda of systemic white racism and white privilege. As whites throughout the US experience this sort of abuse from their government and private employers, the video went viral.

Sandia’s white executives locked Peterson out of Sandia’s email network so that he could not receive support from his 16,000 fellow workers, who have had enough of self-hating white bosses badmouthing white employees.

The anti-white racist bosses at Sandia have been identified as James Peery, Director, Dori Ellis, Associate Director, David White, head of the Cyber R&D Center, and Mark Sellers, Associate Director for the Mission Assurance Division. These self-hating whites “have made it clear that they want to force critical race theory, race-segregated trainings, and white male reeducation camps on their employees.” All dissent will be severely punished. Those who accept the reeducation will be the ones promoted. Those who reject their brainwashing will be purged.

This is happening during the Trump administration. Does this mean that Trump approves of the use of taxpayers’ dollars to force-feed white employees of government funded companies that they are racists?

No. As a person who spent a quarter century in Washington, I can tell you that presidents know only a small percentage of the decisions government makes during their term of office. Most of the people in government are serving themselves, not the president and not the public, and they serve themselves by serving private interest groups. They become lobbyists inside government for private interests. This basic fact makes mincemeat of the liberal hope of a do-good government.

The question that needs an answer is why are the white executives who run Sandia destroying the confidence of white employees in the white race? If Congress really represented the American people, there would be an investigation.

The corrupt Sandia executives who are using taxpayers’ money to teach their white employees to hate themselves for their racist sins have put Peterson on administrative leave while they try to concoct a case that his “actions have comprised or posed a threat to Sandia computing and security systems.” Of course, the corrupt anti-white racist executives will find out that he “comprised the security systems” by objecting to anti-white propaganda.

What is ongoing at Sandia is ongoing at every level of government, state, local, and federal. It is also going on at private companies, both public and private.

Read the entire article HERE.

Corporate Media Didn’t Report What It’s Really Like In Kenosha, Wisconsin, So I Will

Via The Federalist

The scene on Tuesday night was something I had only seen in photos of war-torn countries. Men and women stood with baseball bats, hand-guns, semi-automatic rifles, and shotguns in front of their businesses and homes.

Kenosha, Wisconsin is situated in the southern part of the state, about an hour and a half from Chicago, and has a population of approximately 100,000. Republican Rep. Bryan Steil, who represents Kenosha in Wisconsin’s First Congressional district, told The Federalist the city “is like a lot of cities in Wisconsin.” Steil says Kenosha is “family-centered” and “hard-working.”

Kenosha became a very different place after police shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times. Subsequent video footage showed that Blake was armed with a knife and had been wrestling with officers, threw off a Taser, and was disregarding police commands to stop after they were called to address a domestic violence complaint.

Following the shooting that left Blake paralyzed, rioting erupted in the city. Although the first night was relatively peaceful, after the second night, things were “spiraling out of control,” said Steil. Fire and looting consumed uptown and downtown Kenosha, and Steil said the city was no longer the “Kenosha we know.”

In uptown Kenosha, on Tuesday night, a woman, who said she has lived in Kenosha for more than 40 years, broke down in tears, saying her city felt like a “war zone” and she was “terrified.”

Indeed, the scene on Tuesday night was something I had only seen in photos of war-torn countries. Men and women stood with baseball bats, hand-guns, semi-automatic rifles, and shotguns in front of their businesses and homes. Many Kenoshans explained to me that law enforcement lacked the necessary numbers of officers to control the situation, forcing them to focus on defending public buildings, such as the courthouse, leaving citizens to fend for themselves.

Chuck, who owns an uptown tire shop, said he has been spending every night on his roof guarding his shop “with guns.” Chuck, who said he is “for Trump all the way,” was exhausted from several sleepless nights and fed up with his livelihood and life being terrorized by Black Lives Matter rioters. Chuck glared into my iPhone camera and said to the rioters, “Come to my shop and I’ll blow your heads off.” “I’ll even tell you where I’m at,” he said, adding, “C’mon, boys, I got something for your -sses.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Since 9/11, the Government’s Answer to Every Problem Has Been More Government

By John W. Whitehead

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”—Anonymous

Have you noticed that the government’s answer to every problem is more government—at taxpayer expense—and less individual liberty?

The Great Depression. The World Wars. The 9/11 terror attacks. The COVID-19 pandemic.

Every crisis—manufactured or otherwise—since the nation’s early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government to expand its reach and its power at taxpayer expense while limiting our freedoms at every turn.

Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts.

To the police state, this COVID-19 pandemic has been a huge boon, like winning the biggest jackpot in the lottery. Certainly, it will prove to be a windfall for those who profit from government expenditures and expansions.

Given the rate at which the government has been devising new ways to spend our money and establish itself as the “solution” to all of our worldly problems, this current crisis will most likely end up ushering in the largest expansion of government power since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

This is how the emergency state operates, after all.

From 9/11 to COVID-19, “we the people” have acted the part of the helpless, gullible victims desperately in need of the government to save us from whatever danger threatens. In turn, the government has been all too accommodating and eager while also expanding its power and authority in the so-called name of national security.

As chief correspondent Dan Balz asks for The Washington Post, “Government is everywhere now. Where does it go next?”

When it comes to the power players that call the shots, there is no end to their voracious appetite for more: more money, more power, more control.

This expansion of government power is also increasing our federal debt in unprecedented leaps and bounds. Yet the government isn’t just borrowing outrageous amounts of money to keep the country afloat. It’s also borrowing indecent sums to pay for programs it can’t afford.

The government’s primary response to this COVID-19 pandemic—flooding the market with borrowed money in the amount of trillions of dollars for stimulus payments, unemployment insurance expansions, and loans to prop up small businesses and to keep big companies afloat—has pushed the country even deeper in debt.

By “the country,” I really mean the taxpayers. And by “the taxpayers,” it’s really future generations who will be shackled to debt loads they may never be able to pay back.

This is how you impoverish the future.

Democrats and Republicans alike have done this.

Without fail, every president within the last 50 years has expanded the nation’s debt. When President Trump took office on January 20, 2017, the national debt—the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back—was a whopping $19.9 trillion. Despite Trump’s pledge to drain the swamp and eliminate the debt, the federal debt is now approaching $27 trillion and is on track to surpass $78 trillion by 2028.

For many years now, economists have warned that economic collapse would be inevitable if the national debt ever surpassed the size of the U.S. economy. The government passed that point in June 2020 and has yet to put the brakes on its spending.

In fact, the Federal Reserve just keeps printing more money in order to prop up the economy and float the debt.

At some point, something’s got to give.

As it now stands, the U.S. is among the most indebted countries in the world.

Almost a third of the $27 trillion national debt is owed to foreign entities such as Japan and China.

Most of the debt, however, is owed to the public.

How is this even possible? Essentially, it’s a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

First, the government requires taxpayers to pay a portion of their salaries to the Social Security Trust Fund. The government then turns around and borrows from Social Security to cover its spending needs. Then the government raises taxes or prints more money in order to pay out whatever is needed to the retirees.

It’s a form of convoluted economics that only makes sense to government bureaucrats looking to make a profit off the backs of the taxpayers.

According to the U.S. Debt Clock, each taxpayer’s share of the national debt is $214,000 and growing.

That’s almost five times more than the median income for what Americans earn in a year. That’s also almost five times more than the average American has in savings, across savings accounts, checking accounts, money market accounts, call deposit accounts, and prepaid cards. Almost 60% of Americans are so financially strapped that they don’t have even $500 in savings and nothing whatsoever put away for retirement.

Just the interest that must be paid on the national debt every year is $338 billion and growing. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the fastest growing item in the budget over the next decade will be interest on the debt.

As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reported in 2019, before COVID spending pushed the country over the fiscal cliff, “Interest payments will rise from $325 billion last year to $928 billion by 2029, a nearly threefold increase. If tax cuts and spending increases are extended, interest will exceed $1 trillion and set a new record as a share of the economy. The federal government will spend more on interest than on Medicaid or children by 2020. By 2024, interest will match defense spending.”

Bottom line: The U.S. government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are the ones who will have to pay for it.

Read the entire article HERE.

Boycotting Themselves Out of Business?

Via The City Journal

By skipping games for nebulous political demands, pro athletes threaten to alienate fans and crater their own industry.

With their boycott of games earlier this week to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, athletes in the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball have crossed a bridge that they may find difficult to return from. Though professional athletes have become increasingly politicized since former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began his “Star Spangled Banner” protests in 2016, the widespread cancellation of games, including NBA playoff contests, is unprecedented.

The walkout in support of Blake, who was wanted on a sexual-assault charge and whose own girlfriend called the cops on him, hardly represents the kind of compelling case against police brutality one might build a mass movement around. If players, in the midst of a pandemic slowdown already costing professional sports billions of dollars, were willing to shut down their industry in this instance, how frequently will they feel compelled, or even pressured, to do the same in the future? Fans who were already watching less sports may react negatively to being lectured by wealthy athletes who regularly walk off the job.

The shooting of Blake, who remains hospitalized and in custody in Wisconsin, sparked several days of rioting and protests in Kenosha beginning last Sunday night. Cancellation of games began with the Milwaukee Bucks refusing to take the court against the Orlando Magic and then spread to other teams, prompting the NBA to call off all playoff games scheduled for Wednesday. Players for the Milwaukee Brewers decided to join the protests by refusing to take the field against the Cincinnati Reds that same night, and several other baseball teams joined them. Some players and sympathetic commentators thought this signaled a defining change in sports. A New York Times columnist wrote that, “Next time, the stoppage may well last longer than a few days. Maybe players will sit out an entire season.” Reportedly, some NBA players discussed not finishing the league’s playoffs.

But the players themselves don’t hold all the cards. Americans have been falling progressively out of love with the NBA, for instance, and the pandemic has only exacerbated an already difficult situation. TV ratings, mediocre after the season restarted, are down collectively by 40 percent on the TNT network, and 20 percent on ESPN, since their peak nearly a decade ago. Even more troubling is that the league’s network TV premium broadcasts ratings on ABC are off by 45 percent, what a former public relations executive for the NBA describes as a “cratering” of viewership.

It’s hard to ignore the politics, especially the increasing habit of NBA players and coaches of criticizing the U.S. and its citizens, even while many gave a pass to China—one of the league’s biggest new markets—during its crackdown on Hong Kong dissidents. “How much public commentary out of the league should be a lecture directed at people other than themselves?” former NBA executive Ethan Strauss asked recently.

Making up ground that the league has lost will prove even harder with the pandemic. The lockdown will cost the NBA at least $1 billion in revenue, and an MLB study earlier this year projected a potential revenue decline of $4 billion from the shortened season. And the poor TV ratings suggest that many sports viewers have missed watching NBA games less than the league might have anticipated.

Though players have argued that the business of the league should be a lower priority than social change, they’ve also earned increasing criticism, even within the black community, for supporting the controversial Black Lives Matter movement. Many have given money to the group, and the league has blazoned BLM slogans courtside and on uniforms. Sportswriter Jason Whitlock recently criticized NBA star LeBron James for tweeting that he’s terrified of living in America. “I’m black. I’m not scared. I’m not terrified,” Whitlock wrote. “Neither is LeBron James. He’s lying. He and the political activists controlling him want black people to immerse themselves in fear. Fear is a tool used to control people. If you comply with police instructions, there is virtually no chance of an American citizen being harmed by police.” Whitlock has called BLM a “divisive, anti-religion, Marxist-influenced movement tearing apart America” that’s also seduced young athletes. “It’s tough to love pro athletes right now. They’ve joined a movement that violates all of sports’ traditional tenets,” he writes.

Former New York Jets defensive lineman Michael Faulkner, now a pastor at a Harlem church, has similarly criticized the direction that violent protests have taken under BLM. “It infuriates me as a Black man, a father and as a minister that radicals are inciting or condoning riots in my name and in the name of our struggle,” Faulkner recently wrote. “Breaking into a department store or throwing objects at police officers, many of whom are Black or Brown, isn’t a protest against racial injustice; it’s criminality.”

Read the entire article HERE.

‘We Black Women Are Ignored,’ Says Multimillionaire Black Woman To Millions Of Adoring Fans

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

U.S.—Michelle Obama, a black woman over whom the media fawned for 8 years and beyond, said on her extremely popular podcast last week that black women are ignored and might as well not even exist in Trump’s America.

She made the comments to her massive, adoring crowd of followers who worship the ground she walks on. Her statements were immediately reported on and echoed and enthusiastically shared by scores of adoring journalists, bloggers, and social media activists. Her bold statement that black women are invisible became the talk of the country for days on end.

“Nobody sees us. It’s like we don’t exist,” said the author of a bestselling book, adored former First Lady, and incredibly successful multimillionaire. “It’s like, is this thing on? Is anyone even listening to me? I might as well disappear. It’s not like anybody knows who I am, and I definitely haven’t gotten incredibly rich in this racist country.”

Obama then grabbed a bundle of $100 bills she had lying around on the desk and wiped her tears with them.

At the end of the podcast, Obama reminded her listeners that not subscribing to her podcast and dutifully hanging on her every word is literal violence. “Remember to mash that subscribe button, or you are a racist.”

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

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