It’s 1984, and people are sitting on their hands

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US President Biden claims Russian troops continue “encircling Ukraine” even as Moscow says they are withdrawing.

The Russian soldiers were never there for the purpose of invading Ukraine. They were in Belarus as part of a training exercise akin to the ones NATO continually conducts on Russia’s borders. The Troops in Ukraine were there to intercede if Ukraine invaded the Donbass republics.

The accusation of a Russian invasion was an obvious lie from the beginning. The purpose of the lie was to scare Europeans about Russia in order to keep them on the US reservation.

Biden claims there is no evidence of troop departure, and the presstitutes claim the Russians are not departing but repositioning for an attack. https://www.rt.com/russia/549485-biden-ukraine-russia-troop-withdrawal/

Western governments and presstitutes are now firm believers of their own lies. The London Times’ defense editor Larisa Brown cites an “unnamed official” who allegedly claims: “We have seen reinforcement of combat and other capabilities close to the border. On balance what we have seen is further reinforcement.”

This from the BBC presstitutes: “A small but politically vocal portion of the American electorate that admires Vladimir Putin’s muscular policies is seeking to undermine US President Joe Biden’s efforts to stand up to the Russian president.” It is Russia encircling Ukraine, not the US encircling Russia. It is the US standing up to Russia, not Russia standing up to the US. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60297302

The British Financial Times reports that “Western intelligence” (an oxymoron) has concluded that the Russians have chosen a former Ukrainian member of parliament, Oleg Tsaryov, to be installed as Ukraine’s president following the Russian invasion. https://www.rt.com/russia/549419-us-ukraine-coup-plot-theory/

The less evidence there is of an invasion, the more we are told it is about to happen. The latest from the British press is that according to US intelligence (an oxymoron) in the early hours of Wednesday morning Russia will invade with 200,000 soldiers after a massive missile blitz. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17655287/russia-set-invade-ukraine-tomorrow/ When Americans arise at 7AM Wednesday, it will be afternoon there. Have a look to see if Ukraine is still there.

My conclusion is that the West will declare there has been an invasion when there hasn’t, and the presstitutes will turn the lie into the truth.

How else are Biden, the Western governments, and the presstitute media going to avoid looking like total fools, victims of their own propaganda?

Putin is taking a somewhat similar risk by holding on to his belief in the Minsk Agreement, when Ukraine, by far the weaker party, demands that the issue with Russia, by far the stronger party, be settled on Ukraine’s terms.

Will this latest excuse for Ukrainian non-compliance with the Minsk Agreement result in the Kremlin finally seeing the futility of this approach? https://www.rt.com/russia/549412-ukraine-refuses-donbass-deal/

The United States has been in totally incompetent hands since the ascension of the Clinton regime. The practice of US manufacturers of offshoring the production of the goods and services that they sell in the US has exploded the annual trade deficit of the US to one trillion dollars.

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US President Biden claims Russian troops continue “encircling Ukraine” even as Moscow says they are withdrawing.

The Russian soldiers were never there for the purpose of invading Ukraine. They were in Belarus as part of a training exercise akin to the ones NATO continually conducts on Russia’s borders. The Troops in Ukraine were there to intercede if Ukraine invaded the Donbass republics.

The accusation of a Russian invasion was an obvious lie from the beginning. The purpose of the lie was to scare Europeans about Russia in order to keep them on the US reservation.

Biden claims there is no evidence of troop departure, and the presstitutes claim the Russians are not departing but repositioning for an attack. https://www.rt.com/russia/549485-biden-ukraine-russia-troop-withdrawal/

Western governments and presstitutes are now firm believers of their own lies. The London Times’ defense editor Larisa Brown cites an “unnamed official” who allegedly claims: “We have seen reinforcement of combat and other capabilities close to the border. On balance what we have seen is further reinforcement.”

This from the BBC presstitutes: “A small but politically vocal portion of the American electorate that admires Vladimir Putin’s muscular policies is seeking to undermine US President Joe Biden’s efforts to stand up to the Russian president.” It is Russia encircling Ukraine, not the US encircling Russia. It is the US standing up to Russia, not Russia standing up to the US. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60297302

The British Financial Times reports that “Western intelligence” (an oxymoron) has concluded that the Russians have chosen a former Ukrainian member of parliament, Oleg Tsaryov, to be installed as Ukraine’s president following the Russian invasion. https://www.rt.com/russia/549419-us-ukraine-coup-plot-theory/

The less evidence there is of an invasion, the more we are told it is about to happen. The latest from the British press is that according to US intelligence (an oxymoron) in the early hours of Wednesday morning Russia will invade with 200,000 soldiers after a massive missile blitz. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17655287/russia-set-invade-ukraine-tomorrow/ When Americans arise at 7AM Wednesday, it will be afternoon there. Have a look to see if Ukraine is still there.

My conclusion is that the West will declare there has been an invasion when there hasn’t, and the presstitutes will turn the lie into the truth.

How else are Biden, the Western governments, and the presstitute media going to avoid looking like total fools, victims of their own propaganda?

Putin is taking a somewhat similar risk by holding on to his belief in the Minsk Agreement, when Ukraine, by far the weaker party, demands that the issue with Russia, by far the stronger party, be settled on Ukraine’s terms.

Will this latest excuse for Ukrainian non-compliance with the Minsk Agreement result in the Kremlin finally seeing the futility of this approach? https://www.rt.com/russia/549412-ukraine-refuses-donbass-deal/

The United States has been in totally incompetent hands since the ascension of the Clinton regime. The practice of US manufacturers of offshoring the production of the goods and services that they sell in the US has exploded the annual trade deficit of the US to one trillion dollars.

Trudeau the Snowflake Tyrant

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Who knew that the 21st Century version of Stalin and Hitler would be a snowflake? Actually, all tyrants are snowflakes. They do irreparable damage, and they might even kill millions. But at root they are parasites. They could never create or produce ANYTHING. Their whole careers are based on pull, intimidation and deception. And they would enjoy NO power without the weakness, gullibility or character flaws of the millions who tolerate or even support them.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

A Call to Arms

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CALL TO ARMS

In the last week, Joe Biden’s handlers decided to have Josef Stolen commit an act that was so controversial, so unconstitutional, that it would knock the Afghanistan fiasco off the News Misleadia headlines. It worked, of course, as it would with a willing sycophantic press.

Leaving aside for a moment that this behavior is very reminiscent of Barak Obama’s tenure — and all that the similarities imply — let’s dwell for a moment on his actions.

The two most controversial initiatives and utterances were:

1) That he was going to use Executive Orders to force all businesses with 100 or more employees to mandate vaccinations (or enforce weekly Covid testing), and

2) That if Governors opposed him, he would ‘get them out of the way.’

To the first initiative, it is quite clear that this is an wildly unconstitutional act, with utterly no basis in law. That is not how this nation works. If he wanted such a scenario to be implemented, he should have asked Congress to pass a law, had the Senate ratify it, then signed the bill.

To the second statement, that he would ‘get governors out of the way’: While it sounds like bullying and bravado, Biden actually has a vehicle he can use. It is called the Insurrection Act. It can be used for two reasons: If a State has difficulty with rioting and civil disorder, the Federal government can either be asked by that State, or simply step in, with troops. The second reason it can be invoked is that a State willfully disobeys a Federal law.

The Insurrection Act, written in 1807, has been employed (for the second reason, willful disobedience of a State) several times in our history, one such example (in 1963) being when National Guard troops were deployed to escort black students to the University of Alabama to enforce a desegregation law.

If the States of Florida or Texas refuse to permit or help enforce the (admittedly unconstitutional) the vaccine mandate on companies who employ 100 persons or more, these States risk Biden invoking the Insurrection Act and marching National Guard troops in to force cooperation, or shut those companies down.

The only recourse for those states that wish to defy this unconstitutional Executive Order is to go through the courts on an expedited basis.

So, what are we, the common citizen, to do? Individual acts of violent resistance are possible, but unlikely to cause change, unless very spontaneous and widespread in nature. Organized acts of violence are even less likely to cause change, what with modern surveillance and infiltration techniques available to the Federal powers.

But there is something we can do.

We can stand in SOLIDARITY with one another and RESIST all the unconstitutional acts, both those that exist now, and those that will surely come in the wake of the present lawlessness.

Do you remember, during the Trump administration, how most of his initiatives and efforts were stymied by many who simply refused to comply? Often, they had ‘RESIST’ on blue bumper stickers on their cars. Through the actions of individuals who were imbedded in government, and those who were not, many of Trumps’ initiatives were slow-walked or thwarted. We can do the same.

RESIST. Do not comply with an illegal Executive Order. If you can afford to, make the employer fire you, then lodge a wrongful termination lawsuit, and contact your State to join a class action suit against this illegal executive order. In the meantime, get employment at a company that has 99 employees.

STAND IN SOLIDARITY. Stand together with your compatriots. Do not abandon them. If you know of someone who forced an employer to fire them in defiance of an illegal Federal Executive Order, see if you can support them financially a little. If you can afford to, and are vaccinated already, claim you are not. Force your employer to fire you. File lawsuits. Grind the machine to a halt. Organize, protest, shut things down, just as the left did.

To signal our solidarity, do as the left did: Put a bumper sticker on your car that has the word RESIST on it, to signal to like-minded citizens that we stand together. We will make ours Red, to distinguish ourselves from the leftist.

Do this with absolutely every illegal proclamation that emanates from this out-of-control, Obama-directed White House.

SOLIDARITY. RESIST.

A quick note about this very forum: We have our differences among ourselves. Now is the time to put aside those differences and unite against a common foe: Dictatorship. I don’t care if you are pro-vax. I don’t care if you are anti-vax. I do care if you oppose tyranny. WE MUST STAND IN SOLIDARITY.

SOLIDARITY. RESIST.

This post is in memory of Rush Limbaugh, who passed away one year ago today.

Wealth and its Creation

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Adam Smith recognized the nature and cause of wealth; it results from the development and extension of the division of labor. As Smith observed, “It is the great multiplication of the productions of all different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-grounded society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.” This market process is the source of wealth, since it brings individuals freely pursuing their own interests into voluntary cooperation with others. For example, an individual who specializes in mechanics, cooperates, perhaps unknowingly, with those specializing in physics, chemistry, meteorology, mining, steel production, and hundreds of other fields to create travel by airplane and make it possible to fly to almost any major city in the world. It is through the division of labor, peaceful cooperation, and free exchange—the market process—that wealth is created….

The market process is the source of new wealth. It does not redistribute wealth to the powerful at the expense of others, such as in a collectivized economy; rather, it enables new goods and services to come into the marketplace. A free market system is a positive sum system. Remarkably, the standard of living can rise, even though the population is increasing, because the total amount of wealth is not fixed. Transfer payments, on the other hand, come at the expense of wealth creators—workers, businessmen, investors, and successful entrepreneurs.

Contrary to popular sentiment, high incomes and high profits are key elements of the process which generates our prosperity. High incomes and profits are the reward a person receives for serving his fellowmen. More specifically, profits are the reward for reducing costs and using scarce resources most efficiently in the competition to satisfy consumer desires. By rewarding with profits those who successfully satisfy consumer demand, the free market maximizes the incentives to create goods and services. By permitting the accumulation of wealth, it also maximizes the amount of capital available to produce more. Profits direct this capital to where it is most vitally needed in order to meet consumer demand. Even Samuel Gompers, father of the American labor movement, recognized that “the worst crime against working peoples is a company which fails to operate at a profit.”

Envy, covetousness and hatred toward those with wealth is ill-advised. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out in Human Action, “The very principle of capitalist entrepreneur-ship is to provide for the common man…. There is in the market economy no other means of acquiring and preserving wealth than by supplying the masses in the best and cheapest way with all the goods they ask for.” Evidence of this was the success of that creative genius, Thomas Edison, who fulfilled his pledge to make the light bulb so cheap that only the rich could afford candles. As Brian Summers commented in the Spring, 1981 issue of The Lincoln Review, “It is true,… that a few captains of industry accumulated great fortunes, but they became wealthy through mass production of goods and services which raised the common man’s standard of living.”

High incomes and profits, the incentives to invest and produce, are put to work, provided they are not confiscated by government. The motive for wanting a larger income and higher profits should not be a concern of economics; whether for a base reason or a high-minded objective, the only way to get more, in a free market economy, is to serve others. The way to lessen poverty is to create a favorable environment for investment and wealth creation. In fact, when William E. Simon was Treasury Secretary, he suggested to a Senate committee that, “If you really want to help the poor, help the rich. They’re the ones who will invest, build more factories, create more jobs.”

What to do about Inflation

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Americans live from threat to threat. Now that the “covid threat” and the “Russian threat” have played out, we have the “inflation threat,” but is it any more real?

It is true that the Central Bank has poured out unprecedented amounts of money for more than a decade. The excuses were: to cause a 2% annual inflation that would stimulate economic growth, and to save the economy from the banks financial speculations.

I didn’t think the Federal Reserve could create so much new money without driving up inflation and interest rates and driving down the dollar and equities. But the money went into the prices of financial assets–stocks and bonds–and into home prices. If you were loaded up with stocks and bonds and residential real estate, the Fed made you rich. The money also went into bank reserves as the Fed bought troubled assets from the banks and put them in the Fed’s portfolio.

So the expected inflation in consumer goods and services did not occur.

Now suddenly here is inflation with some measures knocking on double-digit doors. Judging by high stock and bond prices, this is not inflation from previous money-printing being drawn out of stocks and bonds to spend on consumer goods. Some claim that the checks sent to locked-down people to substitute for missing pay checks are at fault, but this money, at best, only replaced the money in the missing pay checks.

So what is the cause of the inflation? Or, more precisely, is it really inflation, that is, prices driven up by excessive spending, or is it a reduction of supply in relation to demand? If the latter, the solution is to increase supply, not reduce demand with higher interest rates or higher tax rates.

The better part of the rise in prices is the direct result of the foolish and counterproductive lockdowns. The lockdowns reduced supply. Much work came to a halt. Supply chains were adversely impacted. Many businesses failed and have not reopened. Real GDP declined, but money didn’t.

With the flow of goods and services reduced while money wasn’t, prices rose. Many service businesses, such as pool services, heating and air, jumped at the chance to raise prices. Supermarkets have to bid for items in short supply, and this has pushed food prices up.

Other idiotic policies of governments, such as vaccine mandates for truckers, have tied up delivery trucks in protests. The California governor banned half of the US trucking fleet from entering the state, because it doesn’t meet emission standards. This means the docks at the ports can’t be unloaded, which means the ships waiting to unload can’t unload.

The fake “Russian threat” sent up the oil prices. The extraordinarily low interest rates caused a house building boom, driving up prices of construction materials.

Equity valuation driven by money creation is not a good thing. But the Fed has been at it for so long, how does the Fed stop without unwinding values based on Fed liquidity? Washington’s abusive misuse of the dollar as reserve currency by imposing sanctions on other countries has led to Russia and China organizing their own system of international payments. This will cause the use of dollars, and therefore the demand for dollars to drop, leaving the Fed with the problem of dollar depreciation, which will add to inflation. A less valued dollar raises import prices.

To sum up, the sources of today’s rising prices are three. The Fed quantitatively eased to save the banks and went on from there to make the rich richer by driving up stock, bond, and real estate prices, and rents rose with real estate prices. Washington undermined the dollar by discouraging countries from its use with sanctions. The lockdowns shrank supply and set back the ability to produce, resulting in supply and demand sending prices up.

The solution to this problem is not higher interest rates. There is no doubt that interest rates are artificially low because of the Fed’s bond purchases, but raising interest rates will not repair the damage to supply caused by the lockdowns and caused by the financialization of the economy that the Federal Reserve has aided and abetted.

A financialized economy is one in which debt service–mortgage, car, credit card, student loans–uses up a large percentage of monthly income, leaving little discretionary income to drive economic growth. Financialization was worsened by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. The repeal permitted commercial banks to be investment banks. This changed the nature of bank lending and behavior. Instead of lending for new plant and equipment, the banks finance takeovers of existing assets and engage in financial speculation.

The solution to the causes of the current inflation is to remove the policies that restrain the growth of output. There has to be a supply-side solution. In the early Reagan years the solution was a reduction in the high marginal tax rates that restricted output. Today the supply-side solution is policies that move the economy away from the absorption of income in debt service and toward supporting the expansion of output.

Here’s Hoping the Canadian Civil War Spreads Everywhere

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Here’s Ayn Rand’s answer to the claim that evil IS all-powerful: “Then I saw what was wrong with the world, I saw what destroyed men and nations, and where the battle for life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality—and that my sanction was its only power. I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it. Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-immolation to provide them with the means of their plan—so throughout the world and throughout men’s history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collectivized countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values—the impotence of death. I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win—and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was “No.”” [from Galt’s Speech in Atlas Shrugged]”

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Trudeau screams about the “illegal actions” of truckers. What about the illegal actions of a totalitarian government? It’s like a thief calling his victims “criminal” for demanding their money back.

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Giving any government “emergency powers” based upon the government’s subjective definition of “emergency” is a blank check for unlimited, unprecedented and totalitarian dictatorship. Example? Canada, right now.

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If Trudeau fires on the truckers, will Biden rush to defend them as he claims to defend the Ukraine?

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In a lawless regime, is Hillary Clinton’s proven guilt of any significance? The criminals will not prosecute a fellow criminal.

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“There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China,” Trudeau responded [in a video uncovered from 2014]. “Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and saying ‘We need to go greenest fastest, we need to start, you know, investing in solar.’”

“There is a flexibility that I know [former Conservative Prime Minister] Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted, that I find quite interesting,” he continued.

The resurfaced video of Trudeau’s admiration of Xi Jinping’s government, who took the reigns of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, comes as his government is currently cracking down on peaceful protests against Chinese coronavirus-related civil rights violations, using tools many are comparing to “martial law.” [Breitbart News]

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Biden and Trudeau: The Free World is no Longer Trudeau

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Health officials announced Monday that they had detected a strain of bird flu in Kentucky and Virginia after the destruction of around 30,000 turkeys on an Indiana farm, according to The Hill.

But the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has noted that no human cases have been detected so far. [NEWSMAX 2-14-22]

OMG. LOCK EVERYTHING DOWN. LOCK EVERYONE UP. CONCOCT A POTION, CALL IT A VACCINE, SAY IT’S “SCIENCE”, STARVE OR SHAME ANYONE WHO WON’T TAKE IT, PAY THE MANUFACTURERS A TRILLION DOLLARS AND IMPOSE NO LIABILITY ON ANY OF THEM FOR ANY FAILURES OR DEATHS THAT OCCUR. MAKE ALL PEOPLE, INCLUDING CHILDREN, WEAR MASKS FOREVER, AND ELIMINATE ALL INDIVIDUAL AND CIVIL RIGHTS PERMANENTLY.

Oh, wait. None of that could ever happen. It was all a dream. It could NEVER happen in America.

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If borders do not matter, why is the Ukraine-Russia border so important to Biden?

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Biden needs a war to look like a President. Biden will never look like a President.

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Biden the Chihuahua screeching at a bemused Putin … or Justin Trudeau threatening to turn all of Canada into Tiananmen Square: Which one is the bigger story?

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Canada’s Trudeau and Leftists on MSNBC prefer world totalitarianism rather than allowing one person, even for 5 minutes, NOT to wear a mask.

It’s beyond sick, beyond insane — even beyond evil. Unspeakable and unprecedented.

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“Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us.” — Ayn Rand

Good guys of the world, unite. THIS is your adversary. How unspeakably, embarrassingly pathetic! If your predecessors could defeat royal tyrants, Hitlers, Stalins, and terrorists, surely you can defeat these pathetic, metaphysically impotent moral mutants. We are with you. Go get them.

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Emergencies Act in Canada will expand powers of Canadian banks to freeze account, halt funds

Financial institutions will be allowed to share information with police in bid to curb protests

[2 headlines from today]

It can’t happen here, you say? It’s already happening up there, in Canada. Canada is now literally a dictatorship. I tried to tell you back in March 2020 that forced mask wearing was never about disease. Now, 2 years later, freedom has been obliterated in Canada. Will the USA be next?

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason