John Madden on coaching

Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear. 

~ John Madden

April 10, 1936 - December 28, 2021

Betty White on humor

It's your outlook on life that counts.  If you take yourself lightly and don't take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives.  And sometimes it can be a lifesaver. 

~ Betty White

January 17, 1922 - December 31, 2021

Aaron Rodgers on "the science"

If science can't be questioned anymore it's not science, it's propaganda.

~ Aaron Rodgers, Pat McAfee Show, December 28, 2021

Ralph Raico on how the French Catholic liberals opposed the radical democratic movement in Europe

Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, along with Montalembert the outstanding leader of the French Catholic liberals (see below) delivered upon his election as Tocqueville’s successor at the Académie Française, he lashed out at the radical-democratic movement in Europe for aiding and abetting state centralization: 

The European democrat, idolater of what he calls the State, takes the human being from his cradle in order to offer him as a sacrificial victim to the public Omnipotence. He holds that the child, before belonging to the family, belongs to the City [i.e., the political organization], and that the City, that is, the people represented by those that govern them, has the right to form his mind on a uniform and legal model. He holds that the commune, the province, and every other association, even the most indifferent, depends on the State, and cannot act, nor speak, nor sell, nor buy, nor, finally, exist, without the intervention of the State and in the degree determined by it, in this way making the most absolute civil servitude the entrance way and the foundation of political liberty. 

~ Ralph Raico, Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School (p. 228)

(Raico's source is Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, Notices et Panégyriques (1886) (Paris: Poussielgue), p. 345)

Alexis de Tocqueville on the features of despotism

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world.  The first thing that strikes the eye is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike...  Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and watch over their fate.  That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild.  It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people whould rejoice, provided that they think of nothing but rejoicing.  For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry... what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and the trouble of living?

~ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2

Jim Grant on 2021: a record year of issuance

So far in 2021, a record $156 billion's worth of IPOs have come to market in the United States alone, not counting SPACs, which easily tops the prior, $97 billion record set in the bubbly year 2000.  Year-to-date issuance of leveraged loans and junk bonds ($613 billion and $461 billion, respectively) have similarly roared to records.

~ Jim Grant, "All except for the human beings," Grant's Interest Rate Observer, December 24, 2021

Jim Grant on Federal Reserve economists

Not just any brigade of really smart people could have convinced themselves that lending and borrowing and speculating played no part in the events leading up to the 2007-09 credit crisis or that record-high money growth and uniquely easy financial conditions would give no impetus to the inflation of 2021-and-counting.  The hundreds of doctors of economics on the payroll of the Federal Reserve System did not simply choose to ignore the facts in front of their faces.  Trained to look away, they arrived at their posts pre-blinkered.  What they were taught, and what they believed, was the very opposite of what the layman knows.

~ Jim Grant, "All except for the human beings," Grant's Interest Rate Observer, December 24, 2021

ESPN on the NBA's Covid crisis

NBA players are testing positive and heading into quarantine at an unprecedented rate. As of Monday afternoon, 214 players have entered the league's health and safety protocols this season, with 201 coming in December and 170 in the past two weeks. Six NBA head coaches have entered protocols this season, all in December. 

Twenty-eight players entered protocols on Sunday, a new single-day high for the season, eclipsing the previous high of 17 on Dec. 17 and Dec. 23. Monday, which saw 13 players and two head coaches enter protocols, marked the 12th day in the past 14 in which there have been double-digit player additions to the protocols list. 

Through Monday, 541 NBA players have played in at least one game this season, setting a record for the most in a season ever, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.

~ "Memo: Vaccinated NBA players, coaches can now test out of quarantine in six days," ESPN, December 27, 2021

Kevin Duffy on taxing the wealthy

There's a glaring defect with "tax the uber-rich:" capitalism is a positive sum game while taxation is a zero sum game.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, December 28, 2021

Dr. No on manias

Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Dissipation of energy, fragmentation of vision, loss of momentum, the lack of follow-through — these are the vices of the herd. 

~ Dr. No, from the Ian Fleming novel, Dr. No

Ludwig von Mises on the importance of principles to the battle of ideas

An ideological struggle cannot be fought successfully with constant concessions to the principles of the enemy. 

~ Ludwig von Mises

Lew Rockwell on how Ludwig von Mises was given sanctuary in Switzerland in the 1930s

This is hardly the first time statism has cast a dark shadow over civilization.  In the years following the stock market crash of 1929, various sorts of socialism battled for control.  In different countries, it had different names - Bolshevism, National Socialism, Fascism, New Dealism, Fabianism - but the essential principles were the same.  As Mussolin put it: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

In Austria, however, one prominent economist refused to go along.  His name was Ludwig von Mises, known all over the Continent for his pioneering contributions to economic theory, his personal integrity, his tenacity, his love of liberty, and his dogged opposition to all forms of despotism.

As the storm clouds gathered, he realized that Austria would fall to either the Communists or the Nazis.  Then in 1934, a letter arrived.  It was from an independent academic institute in Switzerland, offering Mises a position.  It meant a two-thirds cut in pay, but it also meant sanctuary.

He left immediately for Geneva, and for six years, until he emigrated to America, he worked very hard.  The result was the original German version of Human Action, the greatest economic treastis of the 20th century.  Even today, Human Action is a big seller, still educating students in liberty.

Meanwhile, the Nazi armies did arrive in Austria, marched to Mises's apartment, and stole everything, including all the books and papers he had not taken with him to Switzerland.  Mises.e never saw them again, but his ability to research, write, and teach had survived.

People ask, what would have become of the idea of liberty had Human Action not been written.  But another question is just as important: What would have become of Mises had that insitute not existed to provide him refuge?

When I think of the value of the Mise Institute to the world, I think of our predecessor in the 1930s.  The parallels between them and now are obvious, and chilling.

~ Lew Rockwell, November 25, 2021

Lew Rockwell on what the Mises Institute hopes to accomplish

I am often asked what the Mises Institute hopes to accomplish.  Both Mises and Rothbard were undoubtedly asked about their own hopes.  I think their answer would have been very simple: they hoped to write what is true and do what is right, and to do it with enthusiasm and vigor.  If we do nothing else, that is enough.  And yet, it is everything.

[...]

The difficult times in which we live are a reminder that our mission is far from complete.  The forces of statism are always waiting for an opportunity to rob us of the blessings of prosperity and liberty, of civilivation itself.

Mises believed that the best way to defeat the socialists was to say what is true.  Against the idea of liberty, he said, the fiercest sword of the despot is finally powerless.

~ Lew Rockwell, fundraising letter, November 25, 2021

(Too support the Mises Institute, click here.)

Benito Mussolini on statism

Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

~ Benito Mussolini

Joe Rogan on mask wearing

Masks are like the Democrats’ MAGA hat. You wear it to make people feel comfortable.  I know it’s illogical, and I’m fine wearing it if it relaxes people, and makes them feel better.  But if people want to argue that they do something, it just doesn’t make any sense man.  It doesn’t make any sense.

I don’t even know if they work.  I don’t think they do.  I mean maybe they stop spittle from getting into someone.  If you can get your finger in the side of it, and air is coming out.

I just feel like it’s one of those things where we accepted early on.  And now we’re just pretending it’s somehow or another protective.  But at the end of the day it’s really just a piece of paper over your mouth and you’re breathing perfectly through it, so like how does that work?

~ Joe Rogan, "Video: Joe Rogan And Guest Highlight Environmental ‘Senselessness’ Of Masks," December 24, 2021

President Biden: "If you are vaccinated, you should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas"

All these people who have not been vaccinated, you have an obligation to yourselves, to your family, and, quite frankly -- I know I'll get criticized for this -- to your country.  Get vaccinated now.  It's free.  It's convenient.  I promise you, it saves lives.

If you are vaccinated and follow the precautions that we all know well, you should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays as you planned it. 

If you are not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned.  You’re at a high risk of getting sick.  And if you get sick, you're likely to spread it to others, including friends and family.  And the unvaccinated have a significantly higher risk of ending up in a hospital or even dying. 

~ President Joe Biden, December 21, 2021

Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot on her January 3 vaccine requirement

We didn’t want it to get to this point, but given the situation we find ourselves in, we have no choice. 

Beginning Jan. 3, you must show proof you are fully vax'd to enter bars, restaurants, fitness centers, and entertainment/recreational venues where food/drink are served.

To put it simply, if you have been living vaccine-free, your time is up. If you wish to live life as w/the ease to do the things you love, you must be vax'd. 

This health order may pose an inconvenience to the unvaccinated, and in fact it is inconvenient by design.

~ Lori E. Lightfoot, mayor of Chicago, tweet, December 21, 2021

Joe Biden: "For the unvaccinated, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death"

We are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated.  You've done the right thing, and we will get through this.

For the unvaccinated, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.

~ President Joe Biden, whitehouse.gov, December 19, 2021

Agatha Christie on success

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. 

~ Agatha Christie

Viktor Frankl on man's purpose

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.

~ Viktor Frankl

Euripides on propaganda

When one with honeyed words but evil mind persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.

~ Euripides

Ernest Benn on politics

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy. 

~ Ernest Benn, British writer

Kevin Duffy on the interventionist response to Covid

An awful lot of smart people were convinced throwing the kitchen sink at the Covid threat would win the day.  The overriding urge was to “do something” collectively, as if individuals were incapable of thinking and acting on their own.  Could they possibly be wrong?  Imagine admitting their error and reversing course…  Far more likely, the interventionists dig in their heels, refuse to admit defeat and double down.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Covid-19 Vaccine Fraud," The Coffee Can Portfolio, December 17, 2021

Kevin Duffy on ideology

The dominant ideology today is that the world is a chaotic place and authorities are required to protect us from the big bad wolf: viruses, recessions, stock market downturns, terrorists, foreign competitors, discrimination, and even ourselves.  As Tom Woods says, “The model of society that we learn in school is that somebody with a bullhorn has to be barking out orders and then everybody obeys.”  This explains why the central state holds a central role in society: culture over conspiracy.  The image of Dr. Evil scheming in his cave to run our lives is less plausible than 95% of the population thinking a certain way and agreeing at least in principle.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Covid-19 Vaccine Fraud," The Coffee Can Portfolio, December 17, 2021

Kamala Harris: "We didn’t see Delta coming, we didn’t see Omicron coming"

We didn’t see Delta coming. I think most scientists did not — upon whose advice and direction we have relied — didn’t see Delta coming.  We didn’t see Omicron coming.  And that’s the nature of what this, this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants.

~ Vice President Kamala Harris, "Kamala Harris, in interview, says administration did not anticipate Omicron variant," Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2021

Friedrich Hayek on how socialism threatens civilization

The demands of socialism are not moral conclusions derived from the traditions that formed the extended order that made civilisation possible.  Rather, they endeavour to overthrow these traditions by a rationally designed moral system whose appeal depends on the instinctual appeal of its promised consequences.  They assume that, since people had been able to generate some system of rules coordinating their efforts, they must also be able to design an even better and more gratifying system.  But if humankind owes its very existence to one particular rule-guided form of conduct of proven effectiveness, it simply does not have the option of choosing another system merely for the sake of the apparent pleasantness of its immediately visible effects.  The dispute between the market order and socialism is no less than a matter of survival.  To follow socialist morality would destroy much of present humankind and impoverish much of the rest.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Daniel McAdams on competition between the U.S. and China

Jeff Deist: Even among libertarian audiences there are people who say China is a real threat to the United States.  China is biding its time and hoping we suffer an economic fall here.  Those people at the Mises Institute who talk about secession would simply open the door for a weakened America to let the Chinese lion in.

Daniel McAdams: What would they do?  Take California?  I had lunch with my good friend Colonel Douglas McGregor and he said, our military is still fighting the idea of territorial warfare.  The rest of the world has given up on this idea.  You don't go and fight and take over.  Right now, we've taken over 30 percent of Syria.  What are we doing there?  Nobody knows.  We're the only country in the world that goes around looking to put in bases and get territory overseas.  What does it give us?  It seems to me the last thing that the Chinese would ever want would be to "own" most of the U.S.  You know, first of all, it's a basket case.  They've got their own basket case because of the economic problems they have.  Why would they want to inherit something worse?  It would be a disaster.  The real Chinese threat is that the Chinese do capitalism better than we do.  We go overseas and we overthrow governments, we take over media, we push people around, we push gay rights.  The Chinese go overseas and make business deals in foreign countries and they get the stuff they want.  They get the rare earths.  They build factories.  And that's the real reason that the Chinese will certaintly outpace us in the future.

~ Daniel McAdams, "All the Trouble in the World," The Austrian, November-December 2021

Daniel McAdams on the evil empire in DC

Jeff Deist: There is a tremendous amount of hubris in the West today.  The whole world has to share our principles and our form of governance, essentially social democracy.  And this should be maintained through international governance in the form of the United Nations or the World Bank or whatever.  From my perspective this is just the twenty-first-century version of imperialism and colonialism.  It is ideological colonialism.

Daniel McAdams: Yes, and worse because we can kill a lot more people a lot quicker.  The people that jump on the bandwagon, "We've got to do this, we've got to overthrow X," you are living in a country whose foreign policy and military leadership are responsible for the deaths of millions.  You have a president who just droned a family and then lied about it, started wars, who's now holding nearly a hundred people in a gulag in DC because they happened to set foot in the Capitol building on January 6.  This is one of the most repressive regimes in the world, and if you doubt that, step out of line.

~ Daniel McAdams, "All the Trouble in the World," The Austrian, November-December 2021

Daniel McAdams on Ron Paul's foreign policy

Jeff Deist: Ron Paul was motivated by two things in deciding to run for Congress: foreign policy and monetary policy.  He was able to dovetail those two things.  He understood that interventionism abroad is a cousin of interventionism at home in the economy.

Daniel McAdams: This is something that the neocons and most conservatives never understand.  Those same people believe that six thousand miles away, all of a sudden the government becomes omniscient and omnipotent, there's a huge disconnect and the reason is very simple.  They never have to live with the consequences of the policies that they promote overseas.

~ Daniel McAdams, "All the Trouble in the World," The Austrian, November-December 2021

Ilana Mercer on smashing traditions: Mao's China vs. Biden's America

Core curriculum and Western classical texts have been all but purged from American schools.  In China, the number of “classical texts to be taught in schools has increased from 14 to 72.”

[...]

In 1949, during “the Cultural Revolution, Mao exhorted the Chinese to smash anything old.”  À la Antifa, “Gangs of Red Guards swarmed Qufu, Confucius’s hometown, and blew up his tomb.”  Americans have arrived at that point.  They are purging their foundational teachings and obliterating memorials and mementos to their spiritual fathers.  Been there; done that, say the Chinese.

~ Ilana Mercer, "CNN’s Sinophobic Expert Is Clueless: China Is Reactionary, Returning to Confucianism; Not Communism," The Unz Review, December 16, 2021

Tom Woods: Moderna pulls out of San Francisco investment conference due to Covid concerns

The "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" Department is going to need to open a five-story annex at this point, but get this: Moderna just announced that it's withdrawing from the upcoming J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference because of -- get this -- COVID concerns. 

You heard that right. The same people whose vaccine was described as extraordinarily effective are afraid to attend a conference full of vaccinated people in a city that requires proof of vaccination to enter a huge array of indoor venues. 

~ Tom Woods, December 15, 2021

Nassim Taleb on antifragility

When you ask people, "What's the opposite of fragile?," they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong.  That's not it.  The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.

~ Nassim Taleb, "The Tavis Smiley Show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org, December 3, 2012

Anthony Esolen on the Hobbesian view of mankind

The philosopher Thomas Hobbs, for one, claimed that the only way men live under an uneasy truce would be for them to concede their natural "rights" to all goods.  We all, he argued, have an equal claim to the plums from that tree, the iron in that hill, John's wife, or Mary's gold.  Such equality breeds war.  So we yield our claims up to a sovereign state - the so-called "Leviathan."

Hobbes did not argue that the Leviathan had to be ruled by a divinely anointed king.  There was no divine anointing.  There need not even be a king; a council might serve as well.  The point is that Leviathan's will is absolute.  The unitary state is a divinity by comparison with the individual.  It alone has rights.  It can determine what or how much you will own.  It can determine whom and how you will worship.  It directs them, since men are, individually, random atoms of willfulness, colliding against one another in a meaningless existence.  There is, as the nominalists said, no such thing as "mankind" except as a convenient term, and no such thing as human nature; only individual human beings seeking pleasure and fleeing pain.  Nature cannot guide us here.  For the life of natural man, said Hobbes in his most famous sentence, in that ugly non-Eden before the rise of the Leviathan, is embroiled in the war of all against all.  It is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

~ Anthony Esolen, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization

Mark Oshinskie on coronamania and friendship

I don’t worry about alienating some people.  The Scamdemic has been the kind of experience during which you learn about others’ character, mental health & critical thinking ability.  You weed your garden.  You plant new seeds. 

~ Mark Oshinskie, "Mocking Coronamania," LewRockwell.com, December 14, 2021

Alexis Madrigal: "The pandemic will soon be over for the heavily vaccinated" (2021)

For the immunized, this disease is essentially harmless. Washington State, for example, has reported just 100 cases and as few as eight hospitalizations among its 1.2 million fully vaccinated people. But for the vulnerable and unvaccinated, COVID-19 is as devastating as it has always been. 

The United States is entering a new phase of the pandemic. Although we’ve previously described the most devastating periods as “waves” and “surges,” the more proper metaphor now is a tornado: Some communities won’t see the storm, others will be well fortified against disaster, and the most at-risk places will be crushed. The virus has never hit all places equally, but the remarkable protection of the vaccines, combined with the new attributes of the variants, has created a situation where the pandemic will disappear, but only in some places. The pandemic is or will soon be over for a lot of people in well-resourced, heavily vaccinated communities. In places where vaccination rates are low and risk remains high, more people will join the 550,000 who have already died.

~ Alexis C. Madrigal, "The Threat That Covid-19 Poses Now," The Atlantic, April 2, 2021

Anthony Fauci on vaccine mandates

Andrea Mitchell: I also want to ask you about the president's mandate which is being litigated right now...  There's so much opposition now in Congress and across the states, even in Democratic states...  This is becoming just a political test and the outlook is not at all a sure thing in the court system.  Is there any thought of backing off of that and trying to avoid all the outcry against it?

Anthony Fauci: We really have to get people vaccinated.  I understand and we all understand how people do not like to be told what to do.  They want to make their own choice and their own free will.  I get that and I respect that, but these are unusual times and you can't think only of yourself and your own personal opinion, but you've got to think about your communal responsibility to get yourself and your family and, indirectly then, the community protected.  So I would prefer - and we all would prefer - that people would be voluntarily getting vaccinated, but if they're not going to do that, sometimes you've got to do things that are unpopular, but that clearly supersede individual choices and are directed predominately at the communal good, and that's what we're talking about when we're talking about requirements.

Mitchell: It's such an important warning.  Thank you very much.  Maybe there would be a better word than mandate, but I don't know what it is.  

~ Dr. Anthony Fauci, Anthony Fauci interview with Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC, 8:35 mark, December 8, 2021

Doug Casey on economics, mathematics and philosophy

Economics is taught in colleges as if it were a subdivision of mathematics.  It’s not.  It has only a limited amount to do with mathematics.  Rather, it’s a division of philosophy.  It’s a moral study that looks at how people relate to one another in the material world.

~ Doug Casey, "How Economic Witch Doctors Convince Everyone They're Neurosurgeons," International Man, December 8, 2021

Dr. Robert Malone on natural immunity, WHO and the fact-checkers at Facebook

The official party line, as stated today by the World Health Organization, is that the vaccine-induced immunity is better and more prolonged than the protection afforded by natural infection.  Yet we have... multiple, multiple articles now, as one would expect, that the breadth of immune response after natural infection is greater and the durability is quite long and the levels of disease if you get reinfected are no worse than if you had been vaccinated, in many cases appear to be less.  So we've got the WHO posting on Facebook what is inconsistent with multiple peer reviewed publications - and common sense.  Facebook is not fact-checking the WHO.  By definition, they are the purveyors of truth.  So we're now in this Orwellian world where truth is whatever WHO says it is.

~ Dr. Robert Malone, COVID Revealed, Episode 9, 24:00 mark

Dr. Robert Malone on the performance of Covid vaccines vs. initial claims

If nothing else, Joe Public, in good faith, has accepted vaccine.  And they bought the storyline that this vaccine is going to protect them and that they're now out of the woods.  They've taken risk - most of them know there's some risk...  But they've accepted that risk,  they've done their good thing for their community because that's what they've been told to do and they assume that they were going to be protected.  And now - boom - here comes the CDC slide deck and it says "no, I'm sorry, you're not going to be protected from infection."  If you get infected, the levels of virus may be at least as high, if not higher, from what you would've had if you were not ever vaccinated and if you are infected it's not going to protect you from infecting your children or your grandmother or whomever else might be around you.

So it's not providing full protection from infection, it's not protecting you from virus replication if you do get infected, and it's not protecting you from infecting others.

~ Dr. Robert Malone, COVID Revealed, Episode 9, 21:00 mark

Tom Woods on learning to live with Covid

We learn to live with [the flu], in exactly the same way that we will obviously have to learn to live with COVID.  We can't shut down all of society in a monomaniacal battle against one thing.  There will be horrific consequences.  At the very least, that's an eminently defensible view, and one held by some of the best scientific minds in the world.

~ Tom Woods, October 7, 2020

Jeff Deist on Alex Berenson: "virus gonna virus"

Some of you may know the name Alex Berenson, the former New York Times journalist who comes from a left-liberal background.  He has been absolutely fearless and tireless on Twitter over the past eighteen months, documenting the overreach and folly of covid policy – and the mixed reality behind official assurances on everything from social distancing to masks to vaccine efficacy.  He became a one-man army against the prevailing covid narratives.  Mr. Berenson is famous for creating a viral (no pun intended) phrase which swept across Twitter last year: virus gonna virus.  Which means: whether one is in Sweden or Australia, whether in New York or Florida, whether you have mask mandates or lockdowns or close schools or require vaccine passports – or do NONE of these things – virus gonna virus.

~ Jeff Deist, “The Terrible Economic Ignorance Behind Covid Tradeoffs: My Speech to the Ron Paul Institute,” Mises.org, September 7, 2021

Daniel McAdams on the Omicron variant

If this weaker guy [Omicron] takes over the tougher guy [Delta] and everyone gets the weaker one, then basically Covid is gone.  So the question is, if this is the case, "Why are countries doing everything they can to prevent a weaker form from supplanting the more lethal form?"

~ Daniel McAdams, "If Omicron's As Mild As Experts Say... Why All The Hysteria?," Ron Paul Liberty Report, 6:00 mark, December 2, 2021

Yogi Berra on theory and practice

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.  In practice there is.

~ Yogi Berra

President Biden on the Omicron variant

On Thursday, I'll be putting forward a detailed strategy outlining how we're going to fight COVID this winter, not with shutdowns or lockdowns but with more widespread vaccinations, boosters, testing and more...  If people are vaccinated and wear their mask, there is no need for the lockdown.

~ President Joe Biden, "Biden says 'lockdowns' not needed to curb coronavirus variant," The Hill, November 29, 2021

Jim Cramer on the Omicron variant and vaccine mandates

So it's time to admit that we have to go to war against COVID.  Require vaccination universally.  Have the military run it.  If you don't want to get vaccinated, you better be ready to prove your conscientious objector status in court.

~ Jim Cramer, CNBC's "Mad Money," November 29, 2021

(Quote in "CNBC host suggests nationwide vaccine mandate: 'Have the military run it'," The Hill, November 30, 2021

Yuri Maltsev on Stalin's infatuation with penicillin

The country is flooded with penicillin, however.  In 1946, Stalin was impressed with how effective it was at fighting disease and ordered that the Soviet Union have the same amount the West does.  The "plan" has never been altered, but 89% of citizens have built-up a resistance to penicillin's effects.  But it is still prescribed because there is nothing else.

~ Yuri N. Maltsev, "The Soviet Medical Nightmare," The Free Market, August 1990

Goldman Sachs strategist ready to buy the dip on Omicron variant scare

We think a broad risk recovery may be impeded in the near term by the need to digest the prospect of a more hawkish Fed and a less consistent cyclical tailwind.  Ironically, the Omicron scare itself may now create the best possibilities for relief in the coming weeks, either because incoming news is better than feared or because it prompts monetary policymakers to take a more cautious stance toward tightening.

~ Dominic Wilson, Goldman Sachs strategist, client note, November 29, 2021

Calvin Lapp on the three things the Amish don't like

There’s three things the Amish don’t like: that’s government – they won’t get involved in government. They don’t like the public education system – they won’t send their children to education.  And they also don’t like the health system – they rip us off.  Those are three things that we feel like we’re fighting against all the time.  But those three things are part of what COVID is.

~ Calvin Lapp, Amish Mennonite, "How Amish Communities Achieved 'Herd Immunity' Without Higher Death Rates, Lockdowns, Masks or Vaccines," The Pulse, November 25, 2021

George Orwell on gun control

That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy.  It is our job to see that it stays there. 

~ George Orwell

(The photo below was taken by Dennis Call: "I love to wander the backroads of Texas.  It may never get completed, but I am putting together a coffee-table book called "Driving Texas."  It is a picture book of places/sights/only in Texas and other items of interest.")

"Only in Texas!"

Dr. Aseem Malhotra on the vaccines and link to heart disease

I think now it's high time that policy makers around the world put an end to the mandates because I think if this signal [heart disease link with Covid vaccines] is strong and if it's correct, then history will not be on their side and the public will not forgive them for it.

~ Dr. Aseem Malhotra, "Explosive Interview, UK Cardiologist Highlights Link Between mRNA Vaccines and Heart Disease, While Noting Researchers Withholding Data Fearful of Losing Funding," The Last Refuge, 2:50 mark, November 27, 2021