Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"Anyone who says that Texans should trust the federal government or makes the argument that the federal system is 'fixable' is ill and that illness is not COVID-19. It’s Stockholm Syndrome.
The public backlash against the government’s COVID-19 response is rooted in the fundamental distrust that the people have in the elected class. Most Texans wouldn’t trust the federal government, and increasingly the state government, to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the sole. In fact, the government’s track record of screwing up everything it touches and lying to the people is on full display right now in glorious high-definition across 100 channels of doom.
The whole federal stimulus is a lie. While it’s true that individuals, families, and small businesses will receive some money, compared to the big money bailouts, grants, and budget expansions, we are being shoved some crumbs from the 'Master’s table' to buy our silence and continued loyalty. 
Texans should be more outraged than the people from other states. We overpay $103-$160 billion every single year into the federal system. That’s money that has come out of our pockets and landed in the federal coffers, never to be seen again by a single Texan. The shame is that on the other side of the COVID-19 outbreak Texans won’t even get a t-shirt that says 'I Survived COVID-19 And All I Got Was Another $60,000 Of Federal Debt'.
If COVID-19 turns out to be the monster that they say it is, they will point to it and say, 'aren’t you glad we protected you from the monster.' If it turns out to be a total bust, they can campaign on how their draconian measures 'flattened the curve' while fattening their campaign coffers using the slogan, 'aren’t you glad we protected you from the monster.'   
The real monster here is the federal government’s insatiable desire for power and control. It’s time for Texas to drive the monster from our land, our homes, and our lives."
Daniel Miller

"Besides the psychological and physical carnage that will soon be evident due to government’s totalitarian response to this so-called pandemic, the ruling elite have now learned just how easy it has been to capture and control the entire population, with most of that compliance being voluntary due to fear and unquestioned acceptance of mandated orders. Now that the general public has been completely locked down due to a virus, and with ease, all future control will be ever easier to achieve just by claiming and declaring any emergency. Society has become so pathetic that they knowingly and willingly give up any individual liberty in favor of group protection, and when all are told not to band together, they do not understand that this 'social distancing' from everyone is simply a state ploy to stop dissent, and has nothing to do with fighting any virus. A few have little power against an oppressive government, so as long as people can be separated, then resistance to tyranny is virtually impossible to obtain."
Gary D. Barnett

"This is a robbery in progress. And it’s not a bailout for the coronavirus. It’s a bailout for 12 years of corporate irresponsibility that made these companies so fragile that a few weeks of disruption would destroy them."
David Dayen

"You will find that the actual death numbers are low. You will also discover that the science behind this is incredibly compromised as is all science in the west today thanks to the cognitive infection of federal and government funding of science. This is especially true in the current climate (pun intended) of the virulent Neo-Lysenkoism of 'climate alarmists'.  Not to mention the 'scientism' or things that have the cosmetic attributes of science but without its rigor. These poorly educated reprobates have no grasp of empiricism, scientific methodology and an infantile worship of flawed models in everything they do.
You have to ask two questions to get at the heart of this:
Why are the elderly dying? They are dying because like humans for eternity before them, they have natural expiration dates. What you are seeing is some of the same cognitive malpractice you see in climate alarmism. The conflation of correlation with causation and a tendency to bend evidentiary rules so that one can cherry-pick premises to fit the conclusion formed before investigation began.
The old and frail are dying of comorbidity. In medicine, comorbidity is the presence of one or more additional conditions co-occurring with a primary condition; in the countable sense of the term, a comorbidity is each additional condition. Rare is the end of life one primary cause but rather a bundle of conditions and ephemera racing to score the coup de grace on the usually witting victim. Unless I expire in a fight in peacetime or wartime, I have a very good sense of my body mechanics starting to slow down or function less effectively.
In this case the elderly are dying because that is ultimately their career path whether we like it or not. In this case, it would be instructive to see the autopsy reports and I will bet a brick of .22LR that all of them had failing health or pre-conditions of less than optimal function. Keep in mind that less than ten percent of all assigned COVID deaths occur below the age of sixty. And this data is coming from the voodoo clown circus known as the World Health Organzation."
Bill Buppert

"People are beginning to ask themselves the very question which can 'red pill' them into economic enlightenment… 
If the Fed has infinite cash, and we can print it up virtually in an instant… 
Why stop at $6 trillion? 
Why not 100 gajillion dollars! 
Why can’t we all be TRILLIONAIRES!? 
What’s stopping us from making all of our dreams come true?
Why pay taxes if we can just print it? 
In turn, the system is being exposed for what it is -- a FRAUD."
Chris Campbell

"To focus the minds of our politicians who are shutting down the economy, we should stop paying them as long as the shutdown lasts. Government employees keep getting paid, while millions of Americans will lose their jobs. They 'solve' the problems they helped create, by spending other people's money. Businesses – free markets -- are chastised, destroyed, casualties left in the wake. But they are the only ones that, if they can weather the shutdown, will be able turn the economic tide."
Brian Wesbury

"The 'public health professionals' are the architects and 'intellectual' supporters of the totalitarian police state that the U.S. has become in just the past two weeks.  The virus will disappear almost completely with the warmer weather, as the cold and flu season ends, at which point they will tell us that it is not the ultraviolet rays of the sun but their police state that did the trick.  They will pat themselves on the back, the media will cheer them and make them celebrities, and they will therefore be encouraged to declare 'public health emergencies' ever more often.  'Public' health is the health of the state."
Tom DiLorenzo

"Millions of businesses, churches, schools, charities and more have been deemed 'non-essential' by every type of politician and bureaucrat, from the president to the lowliest mouth-breathing pinhead politician elected mayor of some tiny town by a couple of hundred clueless sheeple.
Has any government bureaucrat anywhere at any level of government  been told that he is 'non-essential' and should stay home?  Haven’t heard of any so far."
Tom DiLorenzo

"The point is that, quite apart from what will surely be the devastating costs of an unprecedented economic shutdown, there is a tremendous human cost incurred by allowing any state to have this much power over us. It is a cost that very few are even talking about. But it is the one we most urgently need to be talking about.
Each one of us needs to ask ourselves this question. Each one of us needs to decide which side of this they are on, which side they will stand up for. And yes, there really are only two sides: Choosing to go in the direction of a more free society, or choosing to go in the direction of a more authoritarian one.
For myself, I would much rather take my chances with the sum of the people around me making their own decisions about this virus (and me and my family making ours). Not because I think they are better people than our rulers, but because there are ways to hold individuals accountable for their actions and for harm they inflict on others. The same can never be said for the state.
We should all be far more frightened by the consequences of letting a government have this much power over our lives, than we should be of any pathogen. Why? Because human beings have the tools and the capacity to deal with viruses.
But after all this time, after all the man-made famines, the endless wars, the gulags, the killing fields, the death camps… after all of this, we still have not yet found the tools to effectively deal with the problem of an all-powerful state."
Bretigne Shaffer

"It is difficult to believe public health authorities are doing all that can be done to prevent disease, save lives and promote health.  That is because what is obvious, what is essentially free (sunshine vitamin D), and what is logical, is not being done.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is a one-trick pony – – vaccination. Inject a little bit of a disease into people under the presumption all will develop antibodies against infectious diseases.  Everyone on the planet is expected to hold their breath, metaphorically speaking, and wait for a future vaccine that will, by my predictions, end up hospitalizing many and leading hundreds of thousands of high-risk individuals (diabetics, smokers, drinkers, the frail elderly) to their early demise because these are the people who do not develop sufficient antibodies following vaccination."
Bill Sardi

"In case you haven’t noticed, major media have been shoving the devastating economic effects of the global lockdowns into the background. They aren’t leading their daily coverage with people’s lives being destroyed. They’re pushing case numbers and new COVID horror stories. This is not an accident. This is conscious policy. Network bosses have sent down the word. Don’t emphasize the economic human wreckage. Instead, it’s: we’ll all get through this, we’re all in this together. Here are seven steps you can take when you’re washing your hands. It’s robot city. 
After a hurricane or an earthquake, the news shows you the rubble and the families with their belongings in sacks wandering through torn roads. Reporters interview mothers who are sitting on curbs in a daze…
But this time, not so. They don’t want people to grasp viscerally what loss of jobs and businesses and money actually means. They want passive acceptance.
Don’t let them get away with it."
Jon Rappoport

"President Trump and Congress have ridden to the rescue. They've passed a spending bill — filled with lots of pork and leftist dreams — that will give each American a couple of thousand bucks (and the banksters and globalist megacorporations billions). Congressweasels and Trump think that will somehow tide Americans over for three weeks — or three months or however long the medical men with their computer programs generating models based on incomplete and/or fabricated data tell us."
Bob Livingston

"More and more evidence is forthcoming daily that this new coronavirus called Covid-19, is not only being blown out of proportion, but is purposely being manipulated to show many more deaths than are actually caused by this mystery virus. In some cases, as in Italy, the so-called current epicenter of this falsely identified pandemic, the obvious deception is easy to identify, but it goes on none the less; this due to the perpetrators of this fraud understanding that fear sells, and allows for the unimpeded ease of population control. This is partially due to a weakness of mind, but also to the fact that the American public is no longer independent and free, but is beholding to the state as guardian of the flock. 
Much of the hype surrounding this ordeal has been refuted, and those responsible for making magnificent and unsubstantiated death claims early on have not only backed off, but have ratcheted down their initial warnings exponentially. This was done quietly and without fanfare of course, unlike their mass fear mongering, but nonetheless their claims were patently false. This is why the continued tyranny due to this hype is so ridiculous, as the false basis for the initial fear has been exposed, but the political class and its media continue on as if their lies were not noticed. In the meantime, millions of Americans are without a job, without savings, and without any way to support their families, all due to forcible government interference into their lives in the name of 'safety.' The economy was shut down, and is still shut down, with no apparent end in sight."
Gary D. Barnett

"The widespread diagnostic test for the COVID virus now in use, called the PCR, falls far short of proving that ANY person is sick or will get sick. In other articles, I have proposed a vetting process for the PCR—which should have been done decades ago—in order to show it works or doesn’t work in the real world. This vetting procedure would be suggested by any college science student as obvious and necessary. It has never been carried out. It involves proving the test can determine that a huge quantity of virus, actively replicating in the human body, is present—and therefore, the patient would, in the real world, be sick. Carrying out such a test, on hundreds of patients, in a controlled and blinded setting, AND THEN SEEING WHETHER THE TEST DOES POINT TO ACTUALLY SICK PEOPLE, has never been done. Therefore, claiming the test confirms that COVID virus is causing great damage is unsupported. This, too, is quite convenient, if a common coronavirus that causes nothing more than a common cold has been engineered. In that situation, you would want a diagnostic test that can’t predict or detect serious illness, because the virus doesn’t cause serious illness. The virus is only there as a prop, to create the illusion of case numbers stemming from one source: a harmless COVID-19 VIRUS."
Jon Rappoport

"Once the hysteria subsides a little the endless MSM chatter will inevitably turn to 'analysis'. This will include grading who reacted the best, as in, the fastest and most totalitarian. But I am going to bet that at some point the root cause of the 'crises' will eventually be liked to 'climate change'.  And you know 'all the experts will agree'."
Greg Privette

"Why would several thousand deaths from a contagious disease be more important than the hundreds of thousands killed by government and Big Pharma every year? Why are they more important than the thousands that will commit suicide due to economic recession? It’s not a matter of not caring about those who die. It’s a question of why are some deaths perfectly acceptable and others justify complete removal of your rights & privacy?
If curtailing the number of deaths is not the determining factor driving this manufactured recession, then what is? Is it a test to see whether we will voluntarily surrender all of our last remaining freedoms in exchange for government, Big Pharma and the Big Tech Surveillance Capitalists 'saving' us from one of many infectious diseases?"
Dr. Joseph Mercola

"If there had been no media hype about the coronavirus and if the governments had not resorted to drastic measures in foolish obeyance and submission to the commands by the World Health Organization, hardly anyone beyond some specialists probably would have noticed the coronavirus. Mutations of viruses happen all of the time and most of them do not do more harm than the influenza virus. The family of coronavirus is very large and its existence has been known since the 1960s.
In order to justify their draconian measures, governments claim that their policy is about 'saving lives'. Yet there is no way 'to save lives' for good. The best we can do is to gain a little more time to live and to avoid an early death. Therefore, the question is not whether to save lives or not, but by which measures we will gain more years or may lose time to live. When we close down the economy, those who thereby avoid contagion will gain a few more years. On the other hand, because of the shutdown, millions of people will lose many years of their lifetime. Make your choice.
Our wants are always manifold and therefore require a trade-off. The idea of 'saving lives' as an absolute good is absurd and can only gain such prominence in a society that has lost its touch with the elementary truths of human existence."
Antony Mueller

"Do not be fooled. This isn’t a pandemic induced failure of the financial system. This was a 100% eventuality, pandemic or not If not for its heavy dependence on credit and an unsustainable degree of leverage, the world would not be waking up to the S&P 500 futures locked limit down with seeming regularity."
Patrick Lewis

"Just as the so-called climate experts call on us to suppress the world economy in the name of a climate disaster, the medical experts call on us to close down the US economy in order to prevent a healthcare disaster.
This is not an acceptable argument. The healthcare system is not separate from the economy but a crucial part of it. The socialization of healthcare, as if it can function without a free economy, is already a major error.
Our system is based on the assumption of human agency, free will, and choice. Even if humans could live longest and most happily in the pods of the 'matrix,' with every need and sense optimally gratified, we would spurn this utilitarian nirvana. We would seek freedom. We would assert common sense.
Common sense says that if a disease poses the threat of killing millions of elderly people already afflicted by medical conditions, those people should be sequestered and protected. But the rest of us should proceed with our work, taking prudent precautions, even if, amazingly, some of us will die anyway."
George Gilder

"I wish just one of those public health officials standing behind President Trump at his daily briefings would step up to the microphone and say, 'The best defensive position against this is a vibrant, robust immune system. Let's spend one week on a national initiative to bolster our immune systems.' 
That can never happen because personal responsibility is obsolete."
Joel Salatin

"What will government do when this pandemic is over and it has flexed its massive new control powers over us?
Just how many people will we have saved with the unprecedented economic shutdown and other actions? And among us who survive the coronavirus pandemic, will we be standing tall or living on our knees?
I find it difficult to endorse the status quo by granting government authority to take these extraordinary measures that threaten my freedom and my future health and well-being. I would rather fight for my freedom even if I face a greater risk of death as a result."
Raymond C. Niles

"Three-fourths of NYC deaths allegedly 'from coronavirus' are people with pre-existing underlying health problems. Like heart disease, cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes, or all of the above.  Yet, someone has apparently ordered that ALL of these deaths be declared to have one and only one cause, 'COVID-19.'  The media are also fomenting mass hysteria by reporting that someone dies in NYC every 9.5 minutes, ignoring the fact that this is quite normal.  The city government itself reports that in 2018 the number was every 9.1 minutes.  No mention at all, however, that NYC claims to have almost 600,000 illegal immigrants, thousands of which are known to have latent (or not so latent) tuberculosis."
Tom DiLorenzo

"The economy is what keeps us alive. It is what sustains the nation and the world. If it fails, billions will starve or die early of other preventable afflictions. If the medical diagnosis declares that the economy must be suspended to uphold medical priorities, then political leadership must assert the larger public interest.
What is left after war is silence: The silence of the death; the silence of the debris; the silence of the birds! After war even the screams of sadness are silent because the pain is in the very depths of the soul!"
Mehmet Murat ildan

"Here is how the ruse works in detail: Politicians allocate (steal) taxpayer funds for programs under the guise of alleviating the plight of the poor, the homeless, the sick, the elderly and the unemployed, and serving the 'public interest' or 'national security.' Yet it is not the mother’s milk of human kindness and compassion which lubricates the intricate gears of political machinery. It is the snake oil of expediency.
The bureaucrats who administer this flim-flam provide taxpayer funds to political advocacy groups through massive grants and contracts, ostensibly intended to fulfill program objectives. However, much of the money received by the special interests is used to lobby, campaign and organize support for the mandarins to manage, additional funding for existing programs, and the re-election of their shills who favor the appropriations which play politics with human misery.
Farcical public hearings are staged to persuade the complacent and compliant news media that greater spending is essential to deal with these pressing problems. Incumbents then appropriate more funds for existing malevolence and initiate new mischief through legislative legerdemain.
In turn, they mass their campaign contributions from clients and franking privileges for their re-election efforts. The bureaucracy awards more pilfered taxpayers’ funds to the special interests, and the process begins all over again."
Charles Burris

"In a free market society, income is neither taken nor distributed. Income is earned by serving one’s fellow man. Say I mow your lawn. When I’m finished, you pay me $50. Then, I go to my grocer and demand, 'Give me two pounds of sirloin and a six-pack of beer that my fellow man produced.' In effect, the grocer asks: 'Williams, what did you do to deserve a claim on what your fellow man produced?' I say, 'I served him.' The grocer says, 'Prove it.' That’s when I pull out the $50. We might think of dollars as 'certificates of performance,' proof of serving our fellow man."
Walter Williams

"There is no such thing as 'representative government,' and there never has been such a system. That is a myth, and that myth was planted into the psyche of the common man long ago. The fantasy of representative government has been accepted and embraced by the sheep since the beginning, and voting has been the shameful tool used to fool the people into believing they have a say. Those that still cling to these ridiculous notions are seemingly lost in a vacuum of ignorance, and no longer attempt to break the chains of the slavery that binds them. Who among you has broken those chains, denounced the state, and has rebelled against the misplaced authority and tyranny that is now so obvious? Sadly, this is reserved for only the few that seek, accept, and embrace truth in this hostile environment."
Gary D. Barnett

"Democracy and politics will not alleviate our problems; only committed individuals working in the intermediary institutions of civil society can. Democratic elections can work locally, and in small countries or communities; Switzerland’s system of express subsidiarity comes to mind. And clearly the best hope for America’s survival will come through an aggressive form of federalism or subsidiarity, one that dramatically reduces the winner-take-all stakes of national elections. But mass democracy, in a country as large as America, is a recipe for strife, bitterness, endless division, and much worse."
Jeff Deist

"[Trump] is completely unpredictable, and he seems to see his unpredictability as a virtue when it comes to negotiating. It’s not. Unpredictability is a virtue when you’re playing poker – but poker is a win-lose game. In real life, unpredictability equals unreliability and untrustworthiness. It’s a sign of someone without ethics, without a moral core. It tells people that you’re trying to 'play' them, to 'game' them.
He’s an economic ignoramus. His fiscal and monetary policies amount to Modern Monetary Theory. He thinks ultra-low interest rates are always, and necessarily, a good thing. He’s a pathological borrower. His tariffs may be catalysts for Stage Two of the Greater Depression. Sorry to go off on a tangent about The Donald. But – whatever his virtues – he’s not thoughtful, well-educated, or stable. He’s a narcissist, and shows universally bad judgment in choosing the people he surrounds himself with."
Doug Casey

"When a prominent politician dies or retires, you will, without a doubt, hear him referred to as a 'public servant.' We will be told that a nation is grateful for his years of service, and that as a mere youth, he aspired to a career as a public servant. Another whopper of an unseen elephant, perhaps because few, if any of us, have servants, or have even encountered a servant, except in the movies. But isn’t it interesting that in the movies servants do as their masters dictate, whereas the 'public servants' have US do as THEY dictate. And if you actually found yourself blessed (?) with servants, would you expect them to sit you down and tell you how you were to behave, what you had to do, or not do, how much you were to pay them, what their hours would be, and how you would be punished for disobedience?"
Paul Hein

"It is not enough to judge the morality of a philosophy by its intended goals. Stalin and Mao and Castro all had goals they judged as good, and goals that Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez approve of; but if mass killing, mass indoctrination, mass suffering, mass penalties, mass imprisonment and mass theft are used, effectively or ineffectively, to attain these goals, are we entitled to ignore these immoral means? If social justice, as defined by socialists, and which is not necessarily social justice at all, is bought at the price of suppressing the humanity or human endeavors of persons, it’s the antithesis of Christianity. The latter is profoundly a religion of freedom and of individual personality. The Kingdom of God is pursued by changes within a person, not by means of power enforcing human slavery."
Michael Rozeff

"[The United States is] overly big, one of the biggest countries in the world. Smaller countries are happier and less corrupt. They’re less inclined to throw their weight around militarily, and they’re freer. If there are advantages to bigness, the costs exceed the benefits. Bigness is badness."
F.H.Buckley

"Real history no longer exists in the US.  The American experience has been turned into one of crimes and injustice.  There is no doubt that American foreign policy is responsible for many crimes and much injustice. I write about it often.  But the people used to be unified.  They didn’t hate one another. Yes, there was some low-life racism against blacks, but the middle and upper class Southern white population disapproved of it.  In the South white families relied on black help.  We knew them. White people trusted blacks with their children, their meals, their household budgets.  Who would trust their children, food, and household to people that they hated?
The hatred was manufactured. It serves an agenda: disunity."
Paul Craig Roberts

"The rule of law has collapsed in Western society. They say God created the 10 Commandments, which we have translated into a billion laws. The greater the regulation, the greater the injustice. The very purpose of civilization ceases to exist because it merely becomes a contest between two philosophies with the left always seeking to suppress the right who simply wants to be free. This is ultimately why all governments are buried in a common grave dug by history."
Marvin Armstrong

"There are not enough prisons for all of us, and once we realize we are building prisons for ourselves, the gig is up.  This is the brittle fragility of the US empire. The dark menacing unmoving iceberg of state power is an illusion; it can be shattered by a small set of harmonic vibrations, many of which are already in play.  However, the blood of tyrants is real."
Karen Kwiatkowski

"The most truly privileged class in America is the professoriate, which holds part time jobs — fully paid — from which they cannot be fired, endowed by capitalist without tenure, who can be 'fired' by customers at any time. From their privileged promontory, the credentialed classes currently use claims of inequality and climate doom to discredit their rival elites in business. 
Tenured faculty comprise a privileged American aristocracy that resents a capitalist order where performance trumps empty credentialism almost every time."
George Gilder

"Citizens should remember that the government that claims a right to seize their firearms also denies that it has any legal obligation to protect individuals from violent criminals. Almost no one is holding politicians advocating mass gun confiscation liable for the carnage their proposals would produce. Instead, gun-ban proposals are being treated as moral imperatives or viewed as a chance for national atonement. Unfortunately, politicians can win votes in primary elections for championing policies that would ravage much of the nation."
James Bovard

"Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and the hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward."
Edward Abbey

"Every major traumatic and cataclysmic event in the United States in my lifetime – and for decades before – is due to a lie or false narrative."
Bionic Mosquito

"You know you’re living in a banana republic when a roll of toilet paper is worth more than the Bill of Rights."
Anonymous