El Salvador, DeSantis & Joints for Jabs
Viva la Bitcoin (and Truth)
Back home in New York for the first time in 2 weeks and it's disheartening (yet not surprising) to see very little has changed other than most stores no longer get upset when I walk in without a mask. Even in NY, most merchants are tired of the arbitrary 'science-y' nonsense. The sad part is walking around my little town in Westchester today, I saw nearly every single child from the age of 2 to 16 masked up, plus maybe 70% of the parents.
Last point on this topic (I know, I've been saying that for 9 months but I can't believe this idiocy is continuing and how it gets defined and taught in historical context will likely define whether we return to our founding principles and continue as a beacon of prosperity and freedom, or whether the Great Reset cartel wins, and you're numbered chattel with only the civil and medical rights 'they' allow you).
There have been many tragic parts to this almost entirely avoidable man created and exacerbated 'pandemic'. However, as a father of 3, one of the biggest tragedies continues to be the year of psychological torture weak adults inflicted on their children by obeying the absurd mask mandates. They bought into the hysteria and allowed their children to be used as a sacrificial lambs by the teachers’ unions.
The data was clear VERY early on. Kids aren't affected by Covid and asymptomatic spread (especially among kids) is statistically insignificant. The psychological and emotional trauma of wearing masks and forced separation by glass panes or other social distancing measures made it impossible to properly socialize and develop emotionally for over a year and is certain to have lasting effects.
Adults are supposed to protect their children from the wolves out there, instead they were tossed aside as political pawns in a greater game.
Even with the laughably inflated numbers of positivity (intentionally) produced by a super sensitive PCR rate, it's clear that Covid positivity numbers peaked back in December. So why in God's name are kids still being forced to wear masks in school?
The survival rate for people with Covid stands well above 99%. For children, it is statistically 100%. Children are neither susceptible to Covid nor are they affected by Covid and they don’t meaningfully spread it. Kids need fresh air, they need to breathe unobstructed, and their teachers and friends deserve to see their beautiful faces and smiles which should never be covered again.
Write or call King Cuomo the Harasser in Albany, lobby the local school boards and push the media to drop the in-school mask mandate. It's the least we can do for our children after throwing them to the establishment wolves the past 16 months.
On the bright side, if the cowardice and duplicity of the teachers’ unions during Covid is what finally destroys their credibility once and for all, and leads to improved school options via competition, it may produce long term gains that outweigh the short term damage. Add in the explosive and cancerous CRT curricula being peddled by the unions and neo-racist special interest groups, and it's finally becoming apparent that when it comes to the well being of children and their character and academic education, there is no greater enemy out there than public school teachers unions.
Florida, Land of the Free
Florida behind the leadership of Ron DeSantis (and forward thinking mayors like Francis Suarez and Daniella Levine Cava) continues to be the vanguard of freedom and common sense. They were right to reject the mask and lockdown idiocy, and now continue to be on the right side of history by pushing back on Critical Race Theory (CRT), the hateful neo-racist ideology that would have MLK rolling in his grave.
On Thursday, Florida became the latest state to ban critical race theory, the reductive, abusive and backwards marxist ideology that removes personal responsibility and defines a person solely by what race they belong to.
The Critical Theorist justifies any societal ill by simply blaming a web of cultural standards that leave the individual helpless. According to them, only by attacking that structure can someone free themselves from it.
You'd be hard pressed to find a more disempowering and corrosive ideology. Can you imagine telling a generation of black children that they're victims in perpetuity, incapable of competing or finding success without white help, and consequently telling a generation of white children that they are evil and need to be punished because people they weren’t related to hundreds of years ago committed atrocities (that sadly weren’t out of the ordinary for that time period).
It’s the ultimate punish the children for the sins (or lack thereof) of the fathers, a concept we've rejected in this country including classes of citizens.
It's also the opposite of the Constitution. Millions of lives and trillions of dollars have been spilled to enshrine the principle that discriminating against someone based on an immutable characteristic they are born with is wrong, and that all persons are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Pushing back against race-based discrimination (yes, the same thing we've fought as a country (at times slowly and imperfectly) the last 200 years to eliminate) doesn't mean we can't recognize differences in economic opportunity that exist and do our best to uplift and assist those subject to it. But the very idea that we can or should reduce someone's entire existence, future and worth solely down to their race, an inherent characteristic outside of their control is repulsive.
Not only is it morally, spiritually and legally repulsive, but even if we decided it was worth moving forward with this grotesque experiment it can never work in practice and can only produce more strife and hate. If you teach hate and victimology, you create a tit for tat moral database that can never be satisfied. The only workable system is the one enshrined in our Constitution and the 14th Amendment, and trumpeted by actual civil rights heroes like MLK, not the BLM grifters of today. You judge someone by the they way they live and their current reality on the ground, ie the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
At its core, CRT is Marxist ideology run amok. It's not enough to ban it in states or localities, run for school boards and take back local school boards that even contemplated this poison. Throw them out across the board and install board members that represent your values. If that's not possible and the cancer has spread to far as it has in places like NYC and LAUSD, pull your kids out and put them elsewhere. Starve the cancer. Get out of cities and places that promote it. We lost at least a generation of children bc we thought the culture war wasn't worth fighting. It's time to pick up the shield and sword.
Trump and DeSantis.
A quick note on former President Trump as it relates to Governor DeSantis. While Trump has never been able to pass on the spotlight, hopefully he can be convinced to stay retired. Let him be a figurehead and senior statesman (I know, hard not to laugh at that descriptor) at this point. The overwhelmingly majority of Trump's policies were dead on and good for America (you could tell by the level of hysteria coming from anti-American, anti-capitalist agitators from NY/LA and other media sources.).
Whether it was America First, ending the Forever Wars, pushing back against the CCP and Chinese predation, fighting to reign in open borders and unlimited immigration, hydroxychloroquine or any number of other subjects that he nailed, Trump was the warrior that was needed to push back on a generation of out of control government growth, anti-American and anti-tradition progressive ideology.
But frankly, the guy never understood the level or league he was playing in. If the first year in office wasn't a wake up call when the media/DNC/deep state colluded to delegitimize the election and create a Russian collusion psyop, then I'm not sure what it would have taken to wake this man up. His last 12 months in office were some of the most bumbling and incompetent I've ever seen culminating in the rowdy Boomer Riot of Jan 6th, a Day that will live in Hyperbole.
It's fine to poke the bee hive, but you better have a plan when those bees come out buzzing and Trump never did. His fans and meme warriors always had him playing 5D chess, but the reality was he couldn't even find the chessboard. His administration did virtually nothing on election security even after watching Dems for 4 years do everything they could to overturn and steal the prior election (ahem Russia collusion, Ukraine impeachment, etc) and he never understood the depth that the bureaucratic leviathan in DC had been infiltrated and corrupted by Obama over the last 8 years (not to mention the Deep-State Bushies and their NeoCon warlords who never once fired a shot in the culture war giving the Left virtually 24 years of unadulterated mission creep and a huge buildup of federal power). Let's not forget, he also let that corrupt little troll Dr. Falsi run wild....
Besides a moral compass, competence and communication matter tremendously. DeSantis has both in spades and he isn't the enervating lightning rod for hate that Trump is. It's time for DeSantis and the grassroots plebs to focus on local elections first, 2022 and then 2024. The best thing Trump can do for the American people and Republican's Party, is to stay at retired and help raise money and push back on establishment RINO candidates.
Transitory Inflation Daydreams
US consumer prices shot up 5% year-on-year in May, according to data released this week—the steepest such increase since May 2008.
The headline number of 5% is a devastating print, as the actual numbers are always MUCH greater. As I've written about repeatedly, shadow inflation is much higher clocking in somewhere between 9 and 14% if you use the same metric that was used to calculate inflation back in 1990 or 1980 as our friends at ShadowStats show us in the chart here.
At its core, inflation is the biggest regressive tax of them all, and hits the poor and middle class much harder than the rich who have the means to protect themselves by diversifying into real assets that do better in inflationary environments. Bitcoin is the great equalizer, but what many of my Bitcoin brethren miss is that the poor and middle class don't have the ability to 'hold' assets, Bitcoin or otherwise, as nearly all income and money they have is used for day to day living and purchases.
Millennials and Zoomers living with their parents have more options as they can sock away wages and stimulus payments from the government into crypto since food and housing is generally not an issue. It's a very different story for a single mom working 2 jobs or a family in a depressed economic area where wages haven't come closing to matching inflation over the last 4 decades.
Again, thank the Greatest Generation for defeating the Nazis and checking communism. But for them, the dollar would not be the reserve currency of the world allowing us to make the most insane financial and economic decisions for the last 40 years without a worry. Any other country would have lost the currency already due to lack of confidence and hyperinflation. The dollar still has a fighting chance because the U.S. military is still unchallenged, and we enjoy free-ish markets and private property rights (basically, we're the best boat in a really shitty flotilla). That’s how we’ve been able to get away with spending trillions more every year than we take in and run up $120Trillion in unfunded liabilities and not see a total collapse of the dollar….yet.
But now comes the real test. When a currency truly breaks, it's already too late to make moves to mitigate that damage. If you’re waiting to price or move assets out of dollars because you think you’ll be able to see it and adjust, let me respectfully say you’re probably not smart or nimble enough. Currencies show signs of breaking long before they hyperinflate and fail. Check out the chart of the Turkish Lira below. There are several ‘breaks’ before the final collapse.
Is the dollar heading this way? With the leadership we have now it’s almost a certainty. The only question is when and what do you do about it. Realistically, there's not that many assets that work as a hedge against hyperinflation. Against 5% inflation, you can buy real assets like real estate, gold, commodities, ammo.
You can also logically take on as much debt on assets as you can, especially with today's interest rates, because you get to repay that debt with cheaper inflated dollars in the future.
Against hyperinflation however, there's really only bitcoin and gold, presuming you have enough ammo and friendly neighbors to defend against hostiles.
Check out the presentation in the video section below from my friend Parker Lewis last year. It's only about 30 minutes and has some great historical examples of currencies breaking.
Speaking of Bitcoin, here's a quick recap from the past week:
Bitcoin wasn't hacked by the FBI as mainstream news morons reported.
Trump calling Bitcoin a scam should be a good thing, as 40% of the population instinctively does the opposite of what he says (why anyone still listens to him is beyond me....it's like Warren Buffet offering technology investing advice....you smile because he's old and successful, even though anyone with an IQ over 100 knows he doesn't know shit about technology and hasn’t been a successful stock market investor for over 3 decades).
Bitcoin wasn't banned from China (for the 14th time).
Bitcoin still isn't bad for the environment (and even if it was, the radical potential increase in monetary and personal liberty far outweighs any minor climate FUD).
Not a single institution or corporation of note has divested.
MicroStrategy and hedge fund Brevan Howard are buying more.
And the biggest news of the week, El Salvador starts the sovereign domino as nation-state's adopt bitcoin for their balance sheets or as an everyday legal currency. This news cannot be discounted or minimized. It is monstrous. Expect much of LatAm to follow. Gradually, then suddenly.
Elsewhere in crypto land, plenty of progress.
Scam coins like DOGE, SHIB and MILF seem to be diminishing. Hopefully holders of these marketing gimmicks get smart and take some of the advice I've proffered in these pages for the last 4 months and migrate elsewhere. There is so much creativity and innovation in the entire sector, pick something that at least pretends to be an actual application with utility. The sooner the pitchmen, scammers, and shitcoiners go broke, the better.
To Vax or Not to Vax
People incorrectly assume that either I am anti-Covid vax because of my libertarian leanings, or that of course I’ve been vaxxed because I live in one of the two Leftist states where the brainwashing and compliance is so pervasive, that any decision contrary to blindly accepting the establishment position is madness!
The reality is a bit more nuanced. For certain people in certain risk categories, the vax (and I hate even calling it a vaccine because it’s certainly not) may be entirely appropriate and it should be a personal decision (remember that HIPAA thing and medical privacy?).
Individuals should ignore the propaganda, and do their own work. And definitely do your own risk-reward calculus. For healthy people under the age of 60, it may not make sense. For those under the age of 25, the risk reward of getting the jab statistically outweighs any risk from Covid, especially if you’re a male. Will that change? Maybe. I would venture a guess that less than 3% of the people in the country realize the above is true. Based on the aggressive emails from schools and camps lobbying and peer pressuring 12 year olds to get vaccinated, that number could be even less.
Remember, until proven differently, this is a bioweapon that hits the old, obese and immunocompromised particularly hard. There are cheap, readily available supplements that defang most of its impact, but for someone over the age of 60 the vaccine may be a better option despite its numerous adverse consequences (in a few short months, the adverse events reported on VAERS outweighs the number of adverse events from all other vaccines in history!) That is a scary f’n stat. And VAERS reporting is voluntary, consider how many incidents of myocarditis, clotting or other complications occur that aren’t reported or don’t rise to the reporting level. The database is also 3 months behind.
For children under 18, the vaccine risk is small, but it's certainly statistically greater than that of Covid itself. And that's just based on today's adverse incidents. The truth is we have no clue what the long term effects will be because there WEREN’T any long term studies done. The rush to market made sense for those over 75, or the morbidly obese. The verdict is certainly out whether it makes sense for anyone else. Never forget, YOU are the study right now, and this is the greatest mass public experiment in history.
But will I personally be getting the jab anytime soon, fuck no. I’ve had Covid. It was two days of sluggishness and I was fine. Then again, I’m a 50 year old male in decent shape that supplements properly and was popping Ivermectin like candy the day I tested positive (had I not been tested, I likely would not have even known I had it). Fortunately, the science is pretty clear that those who have had it enjoy strong antibodies that last for quite some time - in other words, an ‘immune system’ (see Cleveland Clinic article below).
My main issue is the people pushing the hardest for the jab have been wrong or lied about nearly everything of import since the beginning of the pandemic. That’s not exactly a track record that inspires confidence. The way they're desperately trying to pressure, cajole and bribe us giving away burgers, beers, joints cash to get pricked should alarm anyone with half a bit of common sense. If the virus was as dangerous as they propagandized, you wouldn’t have to pay people to get an experimental ‘vaccine’, or participate in the largest real-time human lab experiment ever.
Speaking of Vaccines…
**The Cleveland Clinic (which is strongly pro-vax and financially incentivized to hype vaccinations as are most hospitals, doctors and government organizations) did a study of their 53,000 employees over the six months from December 2020.
They found ZERO benefit in vaccinating those already infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Over 160 milllion Americans have tested positive for Covid. Take those 160 million vaccinations and give them to people who actually want or need them. Because there are plenty that don’t and the evidence is substantial and unequivocal for this position.
The conclusion of the Cleveland Clinic study:
“The scarcity of vaccines, coupled with the knowledge that vaccines do not provide additional protection to those who have already been infected, is the strongest argument for restricting vaccine administration to those who have not had the infection.
In addition to the profession, age, and comorbid conditions, previous infection should be an important consideration in deciding whom to prioritize to receive the vaccine.
A practical and useful message would be to consider symptomatic COVID-19 to be as good as having received a vaccine, and that people who have had COVID-19 confirmed by a reliable laboratory test do not need the vaccine.”
So respectfully, take your peer pressure, your 24/7 propaganda, your bribes and pining for vax passports, and stick them exactly you know where.
A Few More Highlights on the ‘No Longer a Conspiracy’ Lab Leak Thesis
“But the fact that Wuhan is now home to the world's leading coronavirus research facility, as well as the first city to be ravaged by a pandemic outbreak of a deadly new one, has fueled suspicion that the two things are connected.” Hard to imagine someone could write that sentence unironically, and yet see the article below.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55364445.amp
There have been many well-documented cases of viruses leaking from labs. The first Sars virus, for example, leaked twice from the National Institute of Virology in Beijing in 2004, long after the outbreak had been brought under control. Wait, so there were already numerous known incidents of leaks from Chinese labs? Funny how that fact never made the rounds early on last year.
The practice of genetically manipulating viruses is also not new, allowing scientists to make them more infectious or more deadly, so they can assess the threat and, perhaps, develop treatments or vaccines.
And from the moment it was isolated and sequenced, scientists have been struck by the remarkable ability of Sars-Cov-2 to infect humans.
“The Wuhan CDC laboratory was also moved on 2nd December 2019 to a new location near the Huanan market. Such moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory.” You don’t say…
As I’ve said repeatedly since last February, anyone who doesn’t lead with Shi Zhengli and the Wuhan Lab as the most likely culprit for the release of the Sars-Cov2 bioweapon shouldn’t be taken seriously. Call it Occam’s Razor, or as my grandfather would say, if the shoe fits…
Life Hack
What I’m Reading…
**A Post-Election Assessment in Pennsylvania County Uncovers Software that wasn't permitted was improperly installed on the Dominion Voting Servers that would allow anyone with access to edit, erase or change the database (ie, voting record). Because the machines were not sequestered it’s impossible to know at this point whether any changes were made, and that no Logic or Accuracy test was done on any of the machines. So bottom line, software was illegally installed that could change votes easily, those votes could have been changed, we have no idea if that actually happened, and nothing has been done in the interim to confirm or fix. Sounds very confidence inspiring.
**Accidental Billionaires: How Seven Academics Who Didn’t Want To Make A Cent Are Now Worth Billions
**Chamath, the Pied-Pier of SPACs. Other than Bitclout, this guys batting 1000.
**Leak of wealthiest American’s tax info under investigation by IRS. Leaks include Bezos and Buffet, and show (not surprisingly) that many billionaires pay almost no tax.
**Florida Board of Education Votes to Ban Critical Race Theory in Public Schools.
**FDA panel experts resigns in protest of Alzheimers therapy approval. This is a good example of the politicization and corruptibility of the FDA.
**Yes it's insane and yes, it's stupid....just like most art. #ScarcityMatters
**Between this and Neuralink type implants, no one is prepared for what’s coming down the pipe. And this is in the West. In China, you can bet that everything you hear about here is being done 10x over with zero ethical limits or qualms with the sole goal of producing a stronger, smarter, more resilient soldier to conquer and rule the world.
What I’m Listening to…
The Tim Ferriss show with Vitalik Buterin on all things Ethereum. My sun still rises and sets with Bitcoin, but the experiment called Ethereum and the move to v2.0 and POS has the potential to be groundbreaking and revolutionary. Who better to hear about it from than Vitalik himself, being interviewed by Tim and Naval.
What I’m Watching…
Parker Lewis - Gradually then Suddenly
Michael Saylor, Bill Barhydrdt and Peter Diamandis talk abundance and bitcoin.
TWITTER OCTAGON
Parting Words
That’s it for this week. If you haven’t make sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.
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