from Jason Bermas
Get Ready for Your Mandatory ‘Morality and Compliance Pill’
by Simon Black
Sovereign Man
Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.
Teachers call Child Services when kids miss online class
Teachers are serving as the state’s newest surveillance into your home.
The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families issued a fact sheet for teachers outlining when they should call DCF– the agency which can take your children and put them in foster care.
Did a kid miss an online class? Call in child services, because that could be evidence of neglect.
‘Outrageous’: Pennsylvania Health Secretary Reportedly Cut Secret Deal with Car Show to Bypass Covid-19 Restrictions
by Jon Brown
Daily Wire
Pennsylvania’s Health Secretary reportedly cut a secret agreement with a car show near the state capital that enabled them to get around coronavirus restrictions on outdoor gatherings.
According to legal documents obtained by local Pittsburgh outlet WPXI, Dr. Rachel Levine made a confidential settlement agreement with the Carlisle Car Show near Harrisburg that allowed 20,000 people to attend their four-day event in June. According to Pennsylvania’s color-coded reopening plan, outdoor gatherings are limited 250 people or less.
Why Martians Are Wrong About Gold
by Brian Maher
Daily Reckoning
A martian — Warren Buffett once razzed — would marvel that earthlings dig gold from the ground… only to rebury it in vaults.
That is, the business is idiotic… pointless… and wasteful.
At first blush, our space man is justly puzzled. Why would humans shovel up hunks of metal — only to lock them away, idle?
Yet the martian — and the Nebraskan — jump past a fundamental truth of human nature.
As one insightful fellow (whose identity we cannot recall) has noted…
Democratic Mayoral Candidate Sabrina Belcher Faked Her Own Kidnapping to Win Votes, Police Say
by Henry Rodgers
DailyCaller.com
A Democratic candidate running for mayor in South Carolina was reportedly arrested for allegedly faking her own kidnapping to try to win votes.
Sabrina Belcher was arrested and charged with conspiracy and filing a false police report after police say she filmed herself being kidnapped, beaten up and robbed in a Facebook live video Tuesday, which she orchestrated, according to The State. Police say she did this to get “sympathy” ahead of the election.
Post Office Expects $9 Billion Loss This Year, Will Prioritize Mail-in Ballots Before Election Day
Postmaster Louis DeJoy told members of Congress that the post office must make changes to survive. Will Congress let it?
by Eric Boehm
Reason.com
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy attempted on Friday to depoliticize recent policy changes that have slowed mail service and to calm worries that the post office will be unable to process an expected surge in absentee ballots amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In testimony to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, DeJoy promised that mailed ballots would be given priority in advance of November’s general election. But he also stressed the dire financial straits facing the U.S. Postal Service—circumstances that have been worsened by the pandemic and that will necessitate changes if the post office is to remain functional.
Ride Sharing and the Absurdity of “Protecting” Workers Out of a Job
by Raymond C. Niles
The American Institute for Economic Research
Lyft and Uber have gotten a temporary reprieve and have been walked back from the gallows. A California appeals court has issued a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of California law AB5, which would have forced both companies to reclassify their drivers as employees, rather than as independent contractors. Both companies had planned to shut down operations in the state at midnight yesterday, rather than obey the law.
Why were Lyft and Uber willing to shut down? It is dollars and cents. By being forced to classify their drivers as employees, Lyft and Uber would be forced to incur huge new expenses on behalf of each of their drivers to pay for mandatory new benefits. And they must incur these expenses on their drivers’ behalf whether or not they want those benefits, given the cost.
Dissecting Obama’s Delusional DNC Speech
by Jack Cashill
American Thinker
Barack Obama’s speech at the DNC’s misbegotten cyber-convention worked only for those Americans, including most in the media, who paid no serious attention to the eight years of Obama’s presidency. As I document in my book Unmasking Obama, I and scores of other journalists, many of them unsalaried, did pay attention. What follows are some of the riffs that I, and likely they, found most entertaining.
Obama began by telling us the Constitution “wasn’t a perfect document,” implying that he would have done better had he been there. Its redeeming quality was that it established “a system of representative government — a democracy — through which we could better realize our highest ideals.”
As late as March 2011, Obama seemed to believe this, saying, “With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.”
Warren Buffett Turns Positive on Gold, Negative on Banks
by Nathan McDonald
Sprott Money
The writing is on the wall, and as I have written about numerous times, Central Banks are well aware of the necessity to move a significant portion of their reserves into gold bullion, which is exactly why they have been net positive buyers over the last couple of years.
Central Banks have been steadily increasing their holdings while the rest of the masses foolishly ignored the safety of precious metals, even while the risks continued to mount all around them.
This of course does not include everyone, but in the grand scheme of the investment community, those who have partaken in the steady accumulation of precious metals are a dedicated-but-small percentage of the overall markets.
I believe that this is set to change—and in a very significant way.
Illegal Immigrant Highlighted at DNC Was Deported Under Clinton, Flagged by Obama Administration
by Penka Arsova
LaCorte News
The DNC used the story of an illegal immigrant mother to criticize President Trump but the person in question was first deported from the U.S. under the Clinton administration and later flagged for deportation while Barack Obama was in office.
The story: The DNC on Wednesday showed a video that featured 11-year-old Estela Juarez who read from a letter that accused President Trump of orphaning immigrant children and spoke about being separated from her mother, Alejandra Juarez, who was purportedly deported by the Trump administration.
“My mom is my best friend. She came to America as a teenager over 20 years ago without papers in search of a better life. She married my dad, who served our country as a Marine in South America, Africa, and Iraq. My mom worked hard and paid taxes, and the Obama administration told her she could stay,” Juarez said.
“White Flight is Real”: Publicist Says Middle Class & Wealthy Are Fleeing Los Angeles
“When I first arrived in LA 40 years ago, the town smelled of orange blossoms. Now the streets stink of urine.”
by Paul Joseph Watson
Info Wars
Veteran publicist Ed Lozzi says that the middle class and wealthy are fleeing Los Angeles, noting that whereas the town once smelled of orange blossoms, it now smells of urine.
Lozzi noted that coronavirus was just the final blow to a city already reeling as a result of its progressive attitude towards homelessness.
“Hollywood has always been the wokest of the woke, so politicians have done nothing to stop people sleeping on the streets. It’s not illegal and the weather’s nice, so they keep coming,” he said, adding that, “there is insufficient housing, inadequate mental health care. Add in Covid and it’s a perfect storm.”
The economic impact of the COVID lockdown and the problems caused by open air homeless camps has made the downtown area unlivable for families, with many of them now desperately trying to sell their properties and escape to suburbia.
Professor Suggests Adding “Psychoactive” Drugs to Water to Keep People Docile
by Mac Slavo
SHTF Plan
One professor has suggested that the water supply be laced with psilocybin to make sure people are drugged into compliance with the lockdowns measures. Because Americans aren’t being good little sheep and complying with the New World Order’s insistence of enslavement, Parker Crutchfield thinks we should all be drugged.
Apparently, the fluoride they already put in the water supply isn’t doing a good enough job of churning out obedient little order followers.
Take it from Hunter Biden: Joe Biden is ‘Honest’
by Monica Showalter
American Thinker
Hunter Biden’s the guy who needs to be in the basement of Joe Biden’s basement. He shouldn’t be anywhere near Joe as the latter campaigns for votes, given his past.
He’s a walking, talking scandal, an emblem of corruption, a living reminder that Washington has a political class that looks out for its own and, with the aid of communist dictators, gets very, very rich. And on the side, oodles of cocaine, strip clubs, and child support payment battles, but never jail time.
In short, a political liability. So whom do the Democrats trot out to endorse old Joe?
A Vote for Joe Biden is a Vote for a National Mask Mandate, Says Biden
Plus: Emoji law, food trucks, and more…
by Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Reason.com
The Democratic convention wraps up. Former Vice President Joe Biden formally accepted the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination last night with an address from the virtual Democratic National Convention. Biden’s message, like the messages from other convention speakers talking about him, boiled down to I am a normal human being with normal levels of human empathy and a normal family, I won’t be embarrassing on the national stage or in front of your children, and I won’t put my own needs before the country’s.
It was light on actual policy prescriptions, but strategically speaking it was probably what the moment called for, and Biden delivered it well. (Watch the whole thing here.) He did mention one highly specific policy prescription, though: Biden casually dropped a call for a national mask mandate.
Terrible Policies Possess Both Virulence and Prevalence
by Robert E. Wright
The American Institute for Economic Research
Why did so many governments lock down economies and societies in response to the not-so-novel coronavirus? According to a recent study, “Explaining the Homogeneous Diffusion of COVID-19 Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Across Heterogeneous Countries,” they did it because other countries did.
That’s right, nations ignored the perennial warning of mothers everywhere and jumped off the bridge of rational policy because their friendly neighbors jumped first.
Monkey see, monkey do in other words. AIER’s Jeffrey Tucker would have retitled the scientific paper referenced above to “how so many governments behaved so stupidly at once.” Yes, stupidity is a strong term but I cannot reject his hypothesis that the bizarre spectacle of countries with no COVID cases locking down stemmed from “ignorance and stupor.”
Market Report: Silver Shortage
by Alasdair MacLeod
Gold Money
After last week’s extreme volatility gold and silver consolidated this week, with gold down $10 on balance at $1933 this morning, European time, and silver was up 65 cents at $27.05.
The position with silver is tricky for the bullion banks, which have generally managed to steer clear of being short. In recent weeks they have managed to reduce their net short position to 3,736 contracts (11 August) and we will get an update after hours tonight. The long-term chart puts this in context.
[…] It appears that Swiss refiners are concentrating on refining gold to the exclusion of silver, which has aggravated the shortage of silver bars, which is also the feedstock for production of silver coins. Meanwhile, public demand for the SLV ETF continues apace, forcing demand for more bullion. SLV now accounts for about 50% of LBMA stocks, the rest being stored by industrial users with some in the hands of investors, who for the moment are enjoying the ride.