Tuesday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Good morning Deplorables, only a few days left in this year of shit.

2020: The Year We Lost Our Common Sense, Courage, & Civil Liberties

Via Zero Hedge

Once it became clear to the Western elite that their subjects would readily accept draconian anti-Covid measures, it encouraged them to usher in a code-red lifestyle where there will be no ‘return to normal’ in the foreseeable future and, possibly, never.

If nothing else, nobody can say we were not warned about the madness that would descend upon leap year 2020, making it one of the worst 366 days ever recorded on the Gregorian calendar.

On October 18, 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, together with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted the incredibly visionary Event 201, an exercise that simulated the outbreak of a pandemic “transmitted from bats to people that eventually becomes…transmissible from person to person.”

The simulation proved to be so uncannily similar to the real thing that started just three months later – from imagining a dramatic drop in air travel and business, to breaks in the global supply chain – that Johns Hopkins eventually felt compelled to release a statement saying their exercise was not intended to be a prophecy of future events.

“To be clear, the Center for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction during our tabletop exercise,” the statement read, in what just might be the creepiest caveat ever.

“For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction… We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people.”

Shortly after the global elite played Nostradamus, on January 15th to be exact (the very same day, incidentally, that the Democrats presented articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in the Senate), the first Covid-positive person arrived in Seattle from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease is said to have sprung to life. From there it has been a non-stop roller-coaster ride of government-sponsored insanity.

Before continuing, it is important to remember the context with which the pandemic has been happening, that is, in the most consequential U.S. presidential election in recent memory. It should thus come as no surprise that the Democrats and Republicans would use the scourge to achieve some sort of advantage, demonstrating Machiavellian opportunism at its very best. Indeed, such is the nature of the political beast.

For example, although Trump shut down the U.S. border on January 31 to Chinese nationals, the Democrats and leftist media pounced, saying the U.S. leader responded too late to make a difference. Even Trump’s use of the term ‘Chinese virus’ was slammed by his opponents as ‘racist.’ Meanwhile, it was the Democrats themselves who were the pioneers in taking the first draconian steps of locking down society to stop the contagion.

On March 16, 2020, six counties in northern California and the city of Berkley ordered an unprecedented stay-at-home order for some 7 million Bay Area residents. This was all part of “flattening the curve” logic that would “buy time for hospitals to gear up for the onslaught…” Well, 233 days later political leaders are not only still flattening the curve, but flattening their economies as well. Today, although the survival rate for those infected with Covid-19 is reported to be in the neighborhood of 99.85 percent, harsh lockdowns continue to wreak havoc, not least of all for small businesses.

Consider the situation in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom has mandated yet another ‘shelter-in-place’ order, which has shuttered, among other businesses, hair salons, barbershops, personal care services, movie theaters, wineries, bars, breweries, family entertainment centers and amusement parks. What is hard to fathom, however, is how the corporate big-box stores are considered “essential businesses,” apparently immune to the scourge, while the small business owner is trashed as expendable.

By way of example, consider the tragic plight of Angela Marsden, the owner of Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill in Los Angeles. In an effort to comply with the ever-changing anti-Covid rules, Marsden spent over $80,000 to build an outdoor patio so she could stay in business during the pandemic. With Newsom’s latest lockdown restrictions, however, city officials denied her permission to serve clients on location, even in the parking lot.

To add insult to injury, the authorities granted permission for a film company to set up a large outdoor eating area for its staff just across the road from where Marsden had built her patio.

“I’m losing everything,” she exclaimed in a video posted to Twitter that has been watched almost 10 million times. “Everything I own is being taken away from me. They have not given us money and they have shut us down. We cannot survive; my staff cannot survive…”

For the Fortune 500 companies, however, the pandemic has translated into a windfall. Between April and September, at a time when thousands of small business were quietly getting crushed underfoot, 45 of the 50 most valuable publicly traded American companies turned a profit, according to the Washington Post.

At the same time, at least 27 of the 50 largest firms slashed their workforce this year, collectively cutting more than 100,000 workers, while at the same time distributing billions of dollars to shareholders. As just one example, Walmart distributed more than $10 billion to its investors during the pandemic while terminating 1,200 office staff.

To put these figures another way, since mid-March – when President Donald Trump declared a national emergency – America’s 614 billionaires saw their net worth explode by $931 billion in total. Jeff Bezos, for example, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, saw his private wealth go from $73.2bn since the start of the crisis to a record $186.2bn.

Read the entire article HERE.

Did Americans Come to Love Big Brother?

Via American Greatness

Millions of Americans may come to resemble Winston Smith, the defeated hero of Nineteen Eighty-Four, who at last accepts the calm.

In less than a month, there will likely be no more President Trump for the media to obsess over. No more false stories about him overfeeding koi fish or headlines screeching that Trump told Americans to inject bleach to combat COVID-19. No more Trump-fixated media worries over how to best accentuate bad news and downplay good.

There will be no more frenzied mockery that Trump was lying about a vaccination delivery date in 2020. Instead, imagine a happier world of 2021 where Dr. Anthony Fauci is the genius behind the vaccination. Joe Biden is the master logistician who inoculated the nation. And COVID-19 disappeared with Trump to Mar-a-Lago.

There will be no more news blackouts of the first lady, no more snide suggestions that the elegant and quite stunning Melania Trump lacked the beauty and grace of Vogue cover star Michelle Obama and the education and academic authority of Jill Biden.

There will now be no more media bombshells about “Russian collusion” mythologies. There is only the effort to downplay the real, frightening, China collusion narratives. And they involve U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Hunter Biden and the Biden family, and a host of American corporations, universities, and multibillionaires. Nothing to see here, move on.

There will be no more anger over Trump’s use of the term “China virus.” There is only the deadly suppressed truth of the COVID-19 virus that originated in Wuhan, and Beijing’s outright lies about the virus ensured its spread and lethality. No matter, troublemakers. Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg will reassure us that a non-authoritarian China did as well as it could.

There will be no more media “walls are closing in” frenzies that Trump is crazy and should be removed under the 25th Amendment. There will be only the underground whispers that he seemed a lot more hale than incoming President Joe Biden.

The real question is not how or even whether the media can exist without its obsessions with Trump, but what will it now do with Joe Biden? To put it another way, the media assumes that its creation of a new fake hero can become even more believable than the construct of its old false villain.

For over a year, the media gave Biden—the Left’s only last-chance hope to end the Trump presidency—a complete pass. We were told that the tens of thousands who crammed Trump rallies were rubes, while the few dozen who honked their horns at Joe Biden’s occasional virtual car stops were ecstatic.

The press largely refrained from asking Biden any “gotcha” questions. They gave no tough interviews. He gave no spontaneous press conferences. They conducted no probing investigations into Biden, Inc.’s financial quid pro quos with foreign governments, and offered no honest inquiries about Biden’s health and cognitive abilities. Heroes, we gather, need not stoop to answer such ankle-biting.

On the one hand, many journalists now crow that the media’s asymmetrical coverage helped get Biden elected and yet, on the other, they’re all wondering, at least for a few seconds, now what?

Read the entire article HERE.

Pro-Black Lives Matter Breonna Taylor Bust Smashed; Sculptor: ‘An Act Of Racist Aggression’

Via The Daily Wire

A sculpted bust of the late Breonna Taylor in downtown Oakland, California, was smashed over the weekend, about two weeks after it was installed.

The bust, according to sculptor Leo Carson, was created in support of Black Lives Matter, a radical organization that has called for defunding police and dismantling the nuclear family.

“This vandalism is an act of racist aggression, and it shows why sculpture and art matters,” Carson told KQED. “I made this sculpture to support the Black Lives Matter movement and while I’m overcome with rage and sadness at their cowardly act, their vandalism will make her even more potent.”

The Oakland Police Department is “aware of the incident,” according to KQED, and the matter is currently under investigation.

In September, Republican Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced that no officers were to be indicted for murder in Taylor’s case.

Two officers in the case were cleared, and another was charged with wanton endangerment in the first degree — which comes with a maximum sentence of five years — for shooting into a neighboring apartment while returning gunfire sparked by Taylor’s boyfriend, The Daily Wire reported at the time.

Taylor was fatally shot by plainclothes officers who raided the 26-year-old’s Louisville, Kentucky, home back in March.

Though the mainstream narrative surrounding Taylor’s death promoted the idea that she was killed when officers raided her home without knocking, media reports, testimony, and statement from Cameron indicate that officers involved did knock before the raid.

Destruction of statues has become increasingly prevalent across the United States. For example, in October, protesters toppled statues of former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt in Portland.

Read the entire article HERE.

Why have Midwestern cities banned a beloved winter pastime?

Via AccuWeather

As snow piles up in yards and parks across the United States this winter, many children will be hitting their neighborhood hills to sled on their days away from school. Common injuries caused by the time-honored winter activity, however, have led some cities in the Midwest to place a ban on sledding.

According to a study from The Center for Injury Research and Policy (CIRP) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, more than 20,000 Americans younger than age 19 receive treatment for sledding-related injuries each year.

Some cities in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana have banned sledding on steep hills in recent years. Other municipalities have posted warning signs cautioning people to sled at their own risk.

Dubuque, Iowa, is among the cities that have banned the pastime in previous years. In 2015, the city council voted to ban sledding in 48 of the city’s 50 public parks. Violators at the time would risk a fine of $750.

Des Moines, Iowa; Montville, New Jersey; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Columbia City, Indiana; all imposed sledding restrictions in recent years, according to The Kansas City Star. Lincoln, Nebraska, has since lifted the ban.

“Sledding is a time-honored tradition in cities that have hills (but) sledding is a risky activity,” the Dubuque city manager wrote in a letter in 2015, TODAY reported at the time.

The cities began taking action against sledding after some high-profile lawsuits involving sledding accidents were filed in recent years. Some have cost the cities millions of dollars in settlements, including cases against Omaha, Nebraska, and Sioux City, Iowa, TODAY reported.

Read the entire article HERE.

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