Hans-Hermann Hoppe on democracy

Democracy has nothing to do with freedom.  Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "The Paradox of Imperialism," June 4, 2013

Phil Duffy on the Trump-Biden debate

In 2016 something strange happened. The people were so frustrated with the socialist Democratic Party that they accepted Donald Trump's bombastic style and made him president. That infuriated the Democrats who then used the FBI to spin a wild scheme of collusion with the Russian government somehow fixing the 2016 election. When that blew up in their faces, the Democrats doubled down with impeachment. That caused them to lose votes and the Senate failed to convict so they doubled down once again with Covid-19 lock-downs and violence in the streets of Democratic Party-controlled cities. Then the Democrats made the mistake of selecting the weakest candidate for the presidency in the nation's history and a man cognitively impaired to boot. The critical first presidential debate occurred yesterday evening with everything stacked in Trump's favor. In 90 minutes he managed to snatch probable defeat out of the jaws of victory with boorish behavior that conflicted with the image of being presidential that was necessary to win the evening. 

I have several Republican friends who were already planning to vote for Biden based upon Trump's earlier behavior. Today they have to be confirmed in their earlier decision. But let's assume these voters were irretrievably lost to Trump before the debate began yesterday evening. What was the strategic purpose of the debate from a Republican perspective? Only to win over the 8 to 10% of the voters who remain uncommitted. What did it actually accomplish? For people like [Sean] Hannity, it seemed to be the invigoration of Trump's base. But those votes were already "in the can" to use Hollywood lingo. For voters on the fence, yesterday's ugly performance probably turned the remaining uncommitted into Biden votes. Ironically Trump is considered to be the super salesman and yet he disregarded a fundamental rule of selling - never continue selling when the sale has been made. The idea is to move on to the next prospect. By playing to his most avid supporters, Trump ignored what he needed to do yesterday evening. He appeared to be winging it. 

Trump's campaign had agreed to the rules of conduct of the debate, but then he violated those continually. He was first warned by the moderator and then publicly scolded by the moderator. He continued to blow through stop signs right to the end of this shoddy performance. Ironically, he had the cognitively impaired Biden on the ropes several times, but by interrupting him, he allowed those moments of temporary confusion to be unnoticed while giving Biden time to reorganize his thoughts. Clearly Biden did not win the debate yesterday evening - Trump lost it (not only the debate, but his image of a president under control).

~ Phil Duffy, September 30, 2020

Peter Schiff on the Trump-Biden debate

When both candidates agree that government should spend more, borrow more, and print more, and neither understands the nature of the structural problems that will precipitate the coming crisis, there's nothing of substance to debate. The result is the spectacle we just witnessed.

~ Peter Schiff, tweet, September 29, 2020

Kevin Duffy on the first Trump-Biden debate

Trump had the civil society vote in his pocket thanks to 4 months of "mostly peaceful" BLM protests. He lost that in 90 minutes of not being able to shut his mouth. 

Biden was cognitively on the ropes many times, but Trump saved him by interrupting.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, September 29, 2020

Kevin Duffy on the presidential debate

I am not a fan of Biden, but Trump was a complete disaster. He came across as a bully who refuses to play by the rules. 

No civility, no discussion of ideas, no substance. Kind of reminds me of my interactions with friends on Facebook. Politics is a reflection of the people. This presidential election is a complete embarrassment. Are these the two best candidates we can come up with? 

The only winner was Chris Wallace. He deserves a purple heart.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, September 29, 2020

Andrew Cuomo on the coronavirus: "In many ways fear is more dangerous than the virus"

As this has gone on, we said we are fighting a war on two fronts: We're fighting the virus and we're fighting fear... In many ways fear is more dangerous than the virus.

~ Governor Andrew Cuomo, press conference in Albany, 3:54 mark, March 19, 2020

James Todaro on mask wearing

It’s estimated that over 5 million people have died from the flu over the past decade. It’s a shame that we are just now learning that all of those deaths could’ve been prevented by cloth face masks.

~ James Todaro, MD, tweet, September 26, 2020

George Orwell on indoctrination

These two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments.

~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

Charles Murray on LBJ's war on poverty

In 1968, as Lyndon Johnson left office, 13% of Americans were poor, using the official definition. Over the next twelve years, our expenditures on social welfare quadrupled. And, in 1980, the percentage of poor Americans was - 13%. Can it be that nothing had changed?

[...]

The basic story we shall unravel comes down to this: Basic indicators of well-being took a turn for the worse in the 1960s, most consistently and most dramatically for the poor. In some cases, earliers progress slowed' in other cases mild deterioration accelerated; in a few instances advance turned into retreat. The trendlines on many of the indicators are - literally - unbelievable to people who do not make a profession of following them.

[...]

A government's social policy helps set the rules of the game... The most compelling explanation for the marked shift in the fortunes of the poor is that they continued to respond, as they always had, to the world as they found it, but that we - meaning the not-poor and un-disadvantaged - had changed the rules of their world. Not of our world, just of theirs. The first effect of the new rules was to make it profitable for the poor to behave in the short term in ways that were destructive in the long term. Their second effect was to mask these long-term losses - to subsidize irretrievable mistakes. We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor instead. We tried to remove the barriers to escape from poverty, and inadvertently built a trap.

~ Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy: 1950-1980, pp. 8-9

Peter Atwater on the current financial bubble and coming recrimination phase

Major market tops are a process, not a single event. Markets peak on exhaustion; everyone must be in. Meanwhile, in the background, the weakest leave the party first. 

I don’t pretend to know when the market will top – or if it already has for that matter – but what is already clear is what is ahead: "The Age of Screwtiny." 

By “screwtiny” I don’t mean the plain-vanilla kind of investigation and inspection that naturally arises as confidence falls. That is a given. What is coming will be different. Think scrutiny but with an angry attitude intent on finding those responsible and then nailing them to the wall. 

You see, what is ahead will be the third major betrayal in twenty years. After the dot.com debacle and the housing crisis, the crowd won’t take kindly to yet another bubble burst. 

And today’s bubble is different. This time it isn’t tech stocks or real estate; its illusion. Deception has transcended the financial markets. It’s cultural and it is everywhere. From “influencers” on social media to blitzscaled business start-ups, the past decade has been a Gold Rush in fakery.

~ Peter Atwater, "The Coming Age of Srewtiny," LinkedIn, September 22, 2020

Micah Curtis on Antifa

One of my biggest issues since the death of George Floyd and the beginning of the riots has been the complete and total lack of honesty when it comes to Antifa. This is not just a group of people that dislikes far-right politics. Their name stands for anti-fascist action, but it is intellectually dishonest to look at what they are doing and think this has anything to do with fighting fascism. Their goal is revolution, and it’s likely that if you were to ask them if they think that Pol Pot did anything wrong, their answer would be no.

~ Micah Curtis, "Antifa in Portland Vow To Kill Cops, Along With Their Families, Children & Friends," LewRockwell.com, September 28, 2020

Ann Coulter on the media

I don't think any progress can be made on anything in America until the media is destroyed and replaced by something with integrity.

~ Ann Coulter, "America's Great Divide: Ann Coulter interview," 27:58 mark, Frontline, January 13, 2020

Nathan Anderson on tech bubble 2.0: "I view it as a state-sponsored mess of stupidity of sorts"

We’re in a market where there’s so much liquidity sloshing around, and so much of the retail investment is in hype-fueled industries, that it has attracted and enriched just about every stock promoter capable of telling a basic story. 

A lot of this is fueled by never-ending Federal Reserve liquidity. So the Fed has come in and largely put a bid under everything. Whenever you print trillions of dollars of new money, at any given point there’s a finite number of Treasury bills and high-quality instruments, whether corporate bonds or stocks, and you can bid up multiples to a certain point. But it seems that eventually that money flows into highly speculative names, and what that’s led to is the Nasdaq ripping past new highs, behind a lot of money that’s really going into just about any speculative tech stock with potential. I view it as a state-sponsored mess of stupidity of sorts.

~ Nathan Anderson, "Nikola Short Seller Hindenburg Research Wants to Oust Bad Actors From the Market," Barron's, September 26,2020

Lew Rockwell on looting, vigilantism and private security services

Ordinary Americans cannot rely on the police to protect them. In many cases, leftwing governors and mayors have ordered to police to stand down. For them, solidarity with the rioters is more important than the lives and property of decent citizens. We have seen the absurdity of rioters being called “peaceful protestors” when videos show cities aflame. When the police do their duty and counter the violence of the thugs, they are vilified as racists, indicted, and even shot at and killed. In these circumstances, they are hardly likely to stay on the job. If the police don’t protect you, you have no legal recourse, and in some places, police won’t even investigate cases of looting... 

What then are we supposed to do? In an interview on the Tucker Carlson show September 23, Danny Coulson, a retired Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI, condemned the rioters. But he thought that there was something even worse than the burning and looting, and this was the main reason he condemned them. Their actions might lead to “vigilante justice”. People must not take the law into their own hands—that could lead to chaos. Instead, we must unify around support of the police. 

His advice is useless, and it rests on a false premise. How can we support the police, when they aren’t protecting us? His advice is like urging us to put out a fire with a hose unattached to a hydrant. The false premise is that vigilante justice is bad. Is it? Let’s look at the definition of the term: “Vigilantism is the act of enforcement, investigation or punishment of perceived offenses without legal authority... 

In other words, you are a vigilante if you exercise your basic right of self-defense, without the permission of the predatory State that support the rioters and looters. In fact, if people defended and protected themselves, the result would not be chaos, but a far better system than we have now. As the great Murray Rothbard explained, people in a free market society would defend themselves by hiring private protection agencies. The agencies would compete to provide the services customers wanted, rather than cater to the whim of a mob or promote venality and power-seeking, as officials of the State do now. As Murray again and again stressed, the free market is always better at supplying goods and services than the State, and protection and defense are no exceptions.

~ Lew Rockwell, "Self-Defense and 'Taking the Law into Your Own Hands'," LewRockwell.com, September 26, 2020

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Second Amendment

When we no longer need people to keep muskets in their home, then the Second Amendment has no function, its function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own.  So I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia.  So...the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete.

~ Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, District of Columbia v. Heller, June 26, 2008

Lew Rockwell on Roth Bader Ginsburg and the right to bear arms

We should support our basic right to self-defense. This is guaranteed by the Second Amendment, but our rights don’t depend on the State and its Constitution. By the way, the recently sainted Ruth Bader Ginsburg wanted to end the individual right to keep and bear arms. Our rights come from natural law, and only the free market can enforce them and protect us.

~ Lew Rockwell, "Self-Defense and 'Taking the Law into Your Own Hands'," LewRockwell.com, September 26, 2020

Joe Biden on health care

Health care is a right — not a privilege.

~ Joe Biden, tweet, September 25, 2020

Doug Casey on the culture war in America

Culture is what ties groups and countries together.  When a cultural split develops—such as the one we now have in the US—a country cannot, and, more importantly, should not stay together. 

It’s poisonous to keep different cultures together in the same political unit.  Politics is all about deciding who decides who gets what, how, and at whose expense.  It can be fairly cordial if everybody shares the same culture.  If they don’t, it’s a formula for disaster. 

In the US, politics has become a contest of who gets to impose their will on the rest of the country.  When that’s the case, a country is best off dividing.  It shouldn’t be held together artificially or by force, but voluntarily.  Freedom of association is necessary for a civil society.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on The Culture War," LewRockwell.com, September 24, 2020

Allan Stevo on who to believe when wearing a mask to reduce coronavirus transmission

It would look, on the surface, like the CDC is contradicting itself. One organ of the CDC said one thing in April and another organ said something else in May, which would not be the first confusing message from the CDC. One may feel torn between who to believe. That need not be the case at all. 

You have the top brass at the CDC, composed of political hacks saying to wear something, anything, as long as it vaguely resembles a mask. Their statements shift whenever it’s expedient to them. Then, in contrast, you have the peer-reviewed scientists pointing to the well-established, long-established fact that masks don’t work for reducing coronavirus transmission. 

I don’t know what the political hacks are trying to pull or why, and I don’t particularly need to know in order to understand why not to trust political hacks. What I know is that what they are saying is predictably inaccurate. This is the case for much of what political hacks say. Just because it comes from the hacks does not make it wrong, but hacks have a bad track record when it comes to science. They just don’t have a primary penchant for truth. If they did, they would not be political hacks. 

Face masks don’t work in preventing the spread of Covid. The science on that is well-established.

~ Allan Stevo, "Reminder: CDC Says Masks Don't Stop Covid," LewRockwell.com, September 24, 2020

Zachary Yost on the role of guilt-ridden rich kids in BLM protests

Hopefully, as social life slowly returns to normal and as the weather gets colder, the guilt-ridden rich kids will tire out from playacting as revolutionaries and return home. But until then, it seems that the rest of us will be forced to suffer as they work out their psychological problems through some window-smashing therapy.

~ Zachary Yost, "What's with the Rich Kid Revolutionaries?," Mises Wire, September 22, 2020

Chris Scott on the passing of Gale Sayers

I'm sad.  The greatest running back of all time, the Kansas Comet, has died.  You were the best, Gale Sayers!  "Just give me 18 inches of daylight."

~ Christopher Scott, Facebook post, September 24, 2020

Gale Sayers
1943-2020

Thomas Sowell on educating the younger generation

We're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional. And they are being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about. It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint and more important, to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. 

~ Thomas Sowell, Hoover Institute interview, 7:50 mark, posted on YouTube September 18, 2020

Kevin Duffy on soaring student loan debt

It's tragic all the way around: young people borrowing tens of thousands of dollars (often with their parents co-signing) to become compliant revolutionaries for a cause that attacks achievement, prosperity and civilized life. 

Who in their right mind would extend such a loan???

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, September 23, 2020

Thomas Sowell on immigration

When only 2% of immigrants from Japan to the United States go on welfare, while 46% of the immigrants from Laos do, there is no single pattern that applies to all immigrants. Everything depends on which immigrants you are talking about and which periods of history. 

~ Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (2000)

Jesse Kelly gets his sons their first puppy

~ Jesse Kelly, tweet, September 21, 2020

Steve Mnuchin: "Now is not the time to worry about shrinking the deficit"

Now is not the time to worry about shrinking the deficit or shrinking the Fed balance sheet. There was a time when the Fed was shrinking the balance sheet and coming back to normal. The good news is that gave them a lot of room to increase the balance sheet, which they did. And I think both the monetary policy working with fiscal policy and what we were able to get done in an unprecedented way with Congress is the reason the economy is doing better. 

~ Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, interview on CNBC’s "Squawk Box” from the White House, September 14, 2020

Mark Twain on speculation

There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can. 

~ Mark Twain

Carl Sagan on arguments from authority

Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" chapter (1995)

Tom DiLorenzo on the Democratic Party strategy to win the 2020 presidential election

I wrote last March that the order had apparently come down from the Democrat National Committee that if you wanted a future in Democrat politics Mr. Mayor, Mrs. Governor, and Miss City Councilwoman, then you will destroy your local economy as much as possible for as long as possible with lockdowns in order to harm Trump’s chances in November.  Nothing else matters – not the millions of lost jobs, the destroyed businesses, the home foreclosures, the depression and suicide that would inevitably result – nothing.  Keep the public terrified, depressed, and miserable, and we will win in November has been their strategy.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "The Political Business Cycle in Reverse," LewRockwell.com, September 19, 2020

James Altucher on the exodus from mega-cities and decentralization of opportunity

It's not like every city with 400,000 people are leaving.  Some cities, real estate is insane.  Real estate is going through the roof in some second and third tier cities.  People are buying houses sight unseen for 50% higher than listing price...  It's a scary trend, but the optimistic thing is that, for the first time ever, opportunity is now dispersed throughout the country.  It's decentralized.  It's no longer just in New York City, LA, San Francisco.  You could be a young person and find success anywhere now.  We all got comfortable communicating remotely and a lot of talented and skilled people are leaving the major cities, but particularly New York City, unfortunately.

~ James Altucher, "The Death Knell of the Urban Era," RealVision, 7:55 mark, September 17, 2020

Kevin Duffy on why fear mongering over the coronavirus persists

I don’t believe this is about deliberate impoverishment which starts to sound like some Dr. Evil conspiracy for world domination. After all, the political establishment doesn’t want to kill the golden goose that feeds it. The election has something to do with it, no doubt. I also think these people see the world through the lens of chaos, with smart people in control (like them) to prevent the planet from spinning apart. The coronavirus is just too perfect: to them the solution is to control it and the people. Allowing the bug to run its course and giving people the freedom to act as individuals never crossed their mind. 

This also has to do with crisis and leviathan. Fear is a powerful motivator to give up freedom for security; the promoters of big government see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to push the agenda. They’re like a pit bull with a rag doll, not about to let it go easily just because of a few benign statistics… least not when the masses are dutifully cowering in fear and masking.

~ Kevin Duffy, September 18, 2020

Yvonne McFadden on the life and career of iconic Chester County restaurateur Jack McFadden

Jack McFadden
June 14, 1948 - September 11, 2020

Jack began his fabled restaurant career at the Marshalton Inn. As a young man, he would often drive by the restaurant with his wife, saying, “I’m going to own that place someday.” And he did. In time, Jack became partners with the owner George Mershon. Together, they transformed the Inn’s stable into a second restaurant, The Oyster Bar (today known as the Four Dogs Tavern), and opened the outdoor patio for dining—a new concept for the area that became an instant hit. 

Jack and George’s next adventure took them to West Chester, where a former shoe store on Gay Street became The Restaurant and The Bar (now Kildare’s). The impressively sized fish tank, along with outdoor dining and Sunday hours, made a big splash. The Restaurant and The Bar set the course for West Chester to become a major dining destination in Chester County. 

Following the success of The Restaurant and The Bar, Jack headed to Chadds Ford, where he converted an old dairy barn into a charming restaurant called The Gables. After opening in 1997, it became “the place to go” before or after a visit to Longwood Gardens, The Brandywine River Museum, and other Chester County destinations. Celebrity sightings included Jennifer Aniston, Tug McGraw, and John Cleese, along with an endless array of other unique characters from all walks of life. 

In his personal time, Jack enjoyed traveling the world with Yvonne—including countless trips to their much-adored France—and going on long hikes with their dog. His love for open space and the scenic Brandywine Valley prompted him to come up with the novel idea of a peddle-paddle-pace race, the Marshallon Triathlon, in 1973, to bring attention to the beauty of the Brandywine. It is now an annual event in Chester County that benefits the volunteer West Bradford Fire Company and the Marshalton Conservation Trust. 

And, of course, there was golf. Jack was a longtime member of the Radley Run Country Club where he golfed “every day that ends with a ‘y’” with his “Radley Boys.” 

Jack McFadden was a one-of-a-kind original. Always the life of the party, he was beloved for his creative talent, his quick (and often wicked) sense of humor, his gracious spirit and upbeat temperament, and his unapologetic joie de vivre. Jack lived life to the fullest, his unforgettable, infectious laughter echoing wherever he went, not to be soon forgotten.

~ Yvonne McFadden, John P. "Jack" McFadden obituary, September 14, 2020

Kenosha resident on the riots

If…you don’t live here… you could not possibly understand what we went thru. People should wait before they jump to conclusions. I just am disgusted beyond words at the judgement that’s happening. DISGUSTED

~ Kenosha, Wisconsin resident, "A Terrifying Eye-Witness Account of the Kenosha Riots: 'Everyone in the city was getting ready for a war'," LewRockwell.com, September 15, 2020

Ryan McMaken on risk management

Yesterday, I saw a morbidly obese man riding a motorcycle down the highway. With no helmet. He was wearing a mask, though!

~ Ryan McMaken, tweet, September 15, 2020

Todd Morgenfeld on Pinterest's decision to cancel a lease for 490,000 square feet in San Francisco

As we analyze how our workplace will change in a post-COVID world, we are specifically rethinking where future employees could be based. A more distributed workforce will give us the opportunity to hire people from a wider range of backgrounds and experiences. 

~ Todd Morgenfeld, Pinterest’s CFO and Head of Business Operations, "California Taxpayers Can Check Out Any Time They Like, But Lawmakers Still Want to Tax Those Who Leave," Forbes, August 31, 2020

(Pinterest announced at the end of August that it’s paying a termination fee in excess of $89 million to cancel a lease for 490,000 square feet of office space to be constructed near its current San Francisco headquarters.)

Kevin Duffy on left media bias

What we have in this country is rampant ideological certitude, confirmation bias and knee-jerk rush to judgment. What we lack is objectivity, critical thinking and dedication to the truth, even if it doesn't comport with our belief systems. I may not know the truth, but I can tell you who's lying.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, September 14, 2020

Laurence Vance on libertarianism

Libertarianism is the philosophy that says that people should be free from individual, societal, or government interference to live their lives any way they desire, pursue their own happiness, accumulate wealth, assess their own risks, make their own choices, participate in any economic activity for their profit, engage in commerce with anyone who is willing to reciprocate, and spend the fruits of their labor as they see fit. As long as people don’t violate the personal or property rights of others, and as long as their actions are peaceful, their associations are voluntary, and their interactions are consensual, they should be free to live their lives without license, regulation, interference, or molestation by the government.

~ Laurence Vance, "Libertarian Positions," LewRockwell.com, September 14, 2020

Nerdrotic on the mass exodus from San Francisco

I don't want to live in a city where rioting and looting is allowed.   I know, that sounds crazy.  I'm the bad guy here.  But I don't want to live in a place where it's against the law for my wife to go and run her business, but it's perfectly ok if someone wakes up in the morning and burns down my wife's business.

~ Nerdrotic, " San Francisco's Mass Exodus," YouTube, 2:08 mark

James Altucher on the death of New York City

OK, OK, but NYC always comes back... 

Yes, it does. I lived three blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11. Downtown, where I lived, was destroyed, but it came roaring back within two years. Such sadness and hardship — and then, quickly, that area became the most attractive area in New York. 

And in 2008 and 2009, there was much suffering during the Great Recession, and again much hardship, but things came roaring back. 

But this time it’s different. You’re never supposed to say that, but this time it’s true. 

If you believe this time is no different, that NYC is resilient — I really hope you’re right.

I don’t benefit from saying any of this. I love NYC. I was born there. I’ve lived there forever. I STILL live there. I love everything about NYC. I want 2019 back. 

But this time it’s different. 

One reason: bandwidth.

~ James Altucher, "New York City is dead forever," New York Post, August 17, 2020

Altucher meets Henry Winkler at his comedy club
(before coronavirus)