Tuesday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables, six more weeks until election day.

Governments Will Impose New Lockdowns If They Think They Can Get Away With It

Via Zero Hedge

This year’s stay-at-home orders and lockdowns imposed by governments on their populations represent a watershed moment in the history of the modern state.

Before March 2020, it is unlikely that many politicians – let alone many ordinary people – thought it would be feasible or likely for government officials to force hundreds of millions of human beings to “self-isolate.”

But it turns out governments were indeed able to force a sizable portion of the population to abandon jobs, religious practices, extended families, and community life in the name of “flattening the curve.”

Whether through fear manufactured by the news media or through outright threats of punishment, business owners shuttered their shops and offices, churches closed down, and schools abandoned their students.

Over time, most governments lessened their restrictions, largely out of fear that tax revenues would collapse and out of fear that the public would become unwilling to obey lockdown edicts indefinitely.

Those fears—not scientific objectivity—have been guiding the gradual loosening of lockdowns and lockdown-related restrictions in recent weeks. After all, in many jurisdictions—both in the USA and in Europe—cases and case growth are far above what they were back in March and April when we were told that high case totals absolutely required strict lockdowns. If case numbers are higher now than during the previous peak, why no new lockdowns?

Make no mistake, many politicians would love to impose lockdowns again, and indefinitely. After all, the power to micromanage the behavior of every business and household in the manner of covid lockdowns is a power undreamed of by even the most despotic emperor of old. It’s not a power a regime would abandon lightly.

But could they get away with it? This is a question every prolockdown politician is asking. For the extent to which lockdowns have been scaled back and lessened, we cannot thank any enlightenment or change of heart on the part of politicians. If lockdowns now seem to be receding, it’s because policymakers fear another round of lockdowns would be greeted with resistance rather than obedience. In short, the retreat of lockdowns is a result of an uneasy truce between the antilockdown public (which is by no means the whole public) and the prolockdown politicians. The politicians have conceded nothing in terms of their asserted authority, but they nonetheless fear greater resistance in the future.

Regimes Continue to Threaten More Lockdowns

Although they’re slowly backing off on full lockdowns for now, governments have been very careful to maintain that they retain the power to reimpose them—including full-on strict and ruthless lockdown—at any time.

In some areas, this has already been done, such as in southern Australia and in New Zealand. In the state of Victoria in Australia, for instance, residents in recent weeks have been subject to strict curfews and even road closures preventing them from traveling more than a few miles form their homes. Those who dissent—such as a pregnant mother who was arrested for merely discussing an upcoming protest—are brutalized. Meanwhile, military personnel enforce martial law, dragging people from their cars and demanding they show their “papers.”

China continues to impose regional and partial lockdowns. Belgium, meanwhile, insists it may yet still impose “total lockdown.” Back in July, the UK’s Boris Johnson told the nation’s residents to follow the social distancing rules now or face harsher lockdowns in the future. Last week Johnson’s government announced strict new social distancing rules, prohibiting any gatherings of more than six people in most cases.

Nor have American politicians abandoned these newfound powers. In Utah, which did not impose a lockdown in March or April, the authorities are still threatening a possible future “complete shutdown.” Governors in states including Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, and Michigan have all threatened new lockdowns if the residents don’t do as they’re told.

(Only two governors, to my knowledge, have said they will not impose future lockdowns. Earlier this month, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida vowed “we will never do any of these lockdowns again,” and Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, which has never imposed a lockdown at all, has also said lockdowns are not on the table.)

In many cases politicians have substituted face masks and targeted lockdowns (of bars and nightclubs, etc.) in lieu of full stay-at-home orders. This limits public dissent by limiting the number of businesses and industries where people are thrown out of work and business owners are effectively robbed of their property. Fewer destitute or jobless voters likely translates into less active dissent.

This permanent embrace of emergency power is to be expected. Governments have long used crises as an excuse to expand government power, often with the glowing approval of the electorate. After the end of World War II, for example, the party platform of the British Labour Party explicitly sought to extend wartime economic planning indefinitely. The idea was that central planning had won the war and now it would “win the peace.” This meant a host of boards and commissions that would control everything from farming to housing.

But that’s just one example. As Robert Higgs has shown in his book Crisis and Leviathan, using wars and other crises to permanently expand state power is just standard operating procedure for countless regimes. It’s what governments do.

Read the entire article HERE.

A DARPA-Funded Implantable Biochip to Detect COVID-19 Could Hit Markets by 2021

Via Mint Press News

An experimental new vaccine developed jointly with the US government claims to be able to change human DNA and could be deployed as early as next year through a DARPA-funded, injectable biochip.

The most significant scientific discovery since gravity has been hiding in plain sight for nearly a decade and its destructive potential to humanity is so enormous that the biggest war machine on the planet immediately deployed its vast resources to possess and control it, financing its research and development through agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and HHS’ BARDA.

The revolutionary breakthrough came to a Canadian scientist named Derek Rossi in 2010 purely by accident. The now-retired Harvard professor claimed in an interview with the National Post that he found a way to “reprogram” the molecules that carry the genetic instructions for cell development in the human body, not to mention all biological lifeforms.

These molecules are called ‘messenger ribonucleic acid’ or mRNA and the newfound ability to rewrite those instructions to produce any kind of cell within a biological organism has radically changed the course of Western medicine and science, even if no one has really noticed yet. As Rossi, himself, puts it: “The real important discovery here was you could now use mRNA, and if you got it into the cells, then you could get the mRNA to express any protein in the cells, and this was the big thing.”

t was so big that by 2014, Rossi was able to retire after the company he co-founded with Flagship Pioneering private equity firm to exploit his innovation, – Moderna Inc., attracted almost a half billion dollars in federal award monies to begin developing vaccines using the technology. No longer affiliated with Moderna beyond his stock holdings, Rossi is just “watching for what happens next” and if he’s anything like the doting “hockey dad” he is portrayed to be, he must be horrified.

Remote control biology

As early as 2006, DARPA was already researching how to identify viral, upper respiratory pathogens through its Predicting Health and Disease (PHD) program, which led to the creation of the agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO), as reported by Whitney Webb in a May article for The Last American Vagabond. In 2014, DARPA’s BTO launched its “In Vivo Nanoplatforms” (IVN) program, which researches implantable nanotechnologies, leading to the development of ‘hydrogel’.

Hydrogel is a nanotechnology whose inventor early on boasted that “If [it] pans out, with approval from FDA, then consumers could get the sensors implanted in their core to measure their levels of glucose, oxygen, and lactate.” This contact lens-like material requires a special injector to be introduced under the skin where it can transmit light-based digital signals through a wireless network like 5G.

Read the entire article HERE.

Chicago Logs Whopping 52% Jump In Homicides From 2019: ‘Five Times Any Prior Year’

Via True Pundit

A new disturbing investigation by USA Today this week found that Cook County in Chicago has seen homicides spike by a whopping 52% compared to the same time frame last year.

What’s more is that this second largest county in the country has seen more homicides already this year than in all of 2019, and still with months to go. Alarmingly this includes dozens of children under 10 who were gunned down, often in gang-related cross fire incidents, according to police records.

USA Today wrote that among the jump in 2020 homicides, the majority, as much as “95% – were people of color, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office announced this week.”

Chicago witnessed also the single largest mass shooting in recent history this summer — though one might not have noticed by major media network coverage, or lack thereof — when 15 people were shot at a funeral.

One community anti-crime activists cited in USA Today, Katya Nuques, said that COVID-19 combined with rampant unemployment is taking its toll: “Facing illnesses, facing deaths, facing also the higher rates of unemployment and loss of income in our communities has also, unfortunately, played a role in the levels of violence we’ve seen throughout the year,” she said.

Read the entire article HERE.

American Removes Mother, Child From Flight When 2-Year-Old Refuses Face Covering

Via The Daily Caller

American Airlines reportedly kicked a mother and her two-year-old son off of a flight when the child refused to wear facemask.

Most U.S. airlines require children over two-years old to wear a facemask, according to the ABC News report, and all passengers were forced off the plane because of the incident.

“Rather than get themselves any bad press by escorting a crying mom and two year old off the plane, they forced everyone to deplane, and wouldn’t let us back on the flight home. Apparently before we got off the plane everyone who left before us lit up the crew in the gate area,” Rachel Davis posted on Instagram.

“I tried repeatedly, begged him, bribed him, pleaded with him, did everything I could while he was screaming and crying as I tried to hold him and put the mask on, feeling my absolute lowest of lows as a mother,” Rachel Davis, added.

The latest incident comes on the heels of Southwest Airlines removing a mother and her tw0-year-old son because he would not wear a mask, according to a report from USA Today.

“It was very cold and cruel,” fellow passenger Taylor Cournoyer told ABC . “This wasn’t an issue of a grown adult not complying out of spite because they don’t agree with masks — this was a child. And it was not a bad, irresponsible mom either — she was crying and trying to keep the mask on and asking the flight attendants for help and advice on what to do.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Black journalist calls BLM a ‘Criminal$ Justice Movement’ that is nothing more than a ‘cash grab’ for athletes, Democrats, and media

Via The Blaze

‘White Marxist anarchists determined to overthrow capitalism, democracy, freedom and God’

Jason Whitlock is a rarity in sports journalism: He’s willing to take on the sports business and challenge progressive groupthink. For example, just 10 days ago he came out to declare that “white liberals” are the “true racists” and that liberalism is “the new KKK hood.”

Now he’s sending the left into fits with a recent Outkick column calling the Black Lives Matter movement the “Criminal$ Justice Movement” that is nothing more than a “cash grab” by professional athletes, celebrities, the media, and Democrats.

What did he say?

Whitlock began his Friday column — “BLM 101 History Lesson: The 2020 Criminal$ Justice Movement” — saying it was time someone defined the real “history being forged by Black Lives Matter, Colin Kaepernick, Lebron James, Nike and their media sycophants.”

The left, he wrote, “created the Criminals Justice Movement. Or better yet, the Criminal$ Justice Movement.”

“The intense fight for the rights of criminal suspects resisting arrest is really just a cash grab by Democratic politicians, Nike and athletes, celebrities and journalists seeking social media influence,” Whitlock said.

As evidence, he pointed to two examples:

Attorney Ben Crump: The man who has represented the families of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Jacob Blake, “bragged to reporters about the $12 million settlement the city of Louisville will pay Breonna Taylor’s family. It was good advertising. You’ve heard of ambulance-chasing lawyers. Crump chases hearses,” Whitlock said. He added:

He’s built a multi-million-dollar law practice around securing cash settlements for the families of victims of alleged police misconduct. On September 8th, Crump tweeted out a “powerful” message from Jacob Blake that summarizes the Criminal$ Justice Movement.

“Change y’all’s lives out there,” Blake said from his hospital bed, “stick together, make some money, make things easier for our people out here.”

“Make some money” best explains the Criminal$ Justice Movement.
Whitlock’s concern, he said, is that all of the “awareness raising” will actually promote a climate that’s more dangerous, not less.

“The Criminal$ Justice Movement and its primary policy push — defund the police — have predictably emboldened criminals,” he wrote. “Violent crime is elevating in high-crime neighborhoods and police are reluctant to aggressively police those areas.”

According to Whitlock, this is not about seeking justice — it’s about seeking money and power:

All while Kaepernick and Nike cash in and financial donations pour down on Democratic voter drives. Everybody is using George Floyd’s death to make it rain. His memory is used to hype NFL and NBA games, power ad campaigns for podcasts and YouTube shows, leverage media members for promotions and, most importantly, fuel left-wing political funding.
And the people being used by the left to push this cause, Whitlock said, are uninformed, easily influenced young people who can’t be bothered to examine the details of what the movement is claiming:

Read the entire article HERE.

Ninth Circuit Court Overturns Death Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—In a landmark ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In a close decision, the judges on the court have ruled RBG’s death unconstitutional and will block Trump from nominating a replacement.

Kim McLane Wardlaw, the judge who issued the ruling, said in a statement: “Justice Ginsburg’s death was an affront to the constitution as well as our God-given right to abort as many babies as possible and sell their body parts for research. Death, at its core, is a construct designed to subvert the rule of law by taking pro-choice liberal judges away from us too soon. We cannot allow Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death to stand. By law, she will now be considered to be still alive.”

Trump slammed the ruling as “idiotic” and called the court judges “a bunch of morons.” Republicans pounced on this ruling like tigers that pounce on their prey before ruthlessly tearing it to pieces with their razor-sharp claws. “This is a terrible ruling because we’re racist and we hate women,” said a bunch of Republicans, according to anonymous sources.

Judge Wardlaw followed up on her ruling, saying: “We hereby rule any attempt by President Trump to appoint a replacement to be unconstitutional. We will block any attempt until we figure out a way to resurrect her or maybe clone her and restore her to her already ‘legally alive’ state. We’re still figuring that part out.”

Read the entire article HERE.

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