Integrity

Don Shula was not only the only NFL coach to go undefeated in a season, he was a man of great sporting integrity. Hall of Famer Larry Csonka tells a story about an ethical choice that faced the late Miami coach the season after their undefeated 1972 championship season:

“We went into Oakland on a Friday and we were gonna practice there on Saturday. But because of construction in the stadium, we had to use their training room. They had practiced earlier in the day, they cleared out, and we used their locker room. I picked [defensive lineman] Art Thoms’ locker, because I’d played with him in college at Syracuse. I was gonna leave him a note in his locker—dead fish or something, mess with him a little bit. So I’m sitting in his locker, going through it to find something to write on. I find the Oakland Raiders game plan. Now that can be construed a couple of different ways. Knowing what they’re going to do . . . it’s their fault for leaving it there. Is it the right thing to do? Unquestionably it’s not the right thing to do. Was it cheating? I don’t know. It’s a fine line. I went and handed that report, quite quietly, to [offensive line coach and Shula confidant] Monte Clark. He said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.’ I walked away.

“Here’s the bottom line: We lost the game. Even with the game report, we lost the game. After the game, I’m riding on the bus. Monte Clark sits down next to me on the bus. I said, ‘Monte, what the hell did you do with the game report?’ He said, ‘I took it to Shula and when he asked what it was, I told him. He said, ‘Tear it up. If we can’t beat ‘em straight up, we shouldn’t beat ‘em.’”

That, even more than the man’s undefeated season, is a legacy worth leaving behind.

Pedocrat arrested

At this point, the Democrats might as well just call themselves the Pedocratic Party.

Fmr head of John Kerry’s State Department security detail arrested for child molestation… J. Scott Moretti, a former deputy assistant secretary of the State Department who oversaw diplomatic security training, is accused of assaulting a girl beginning in 2011, between November 2011 & November 2013 … the female victim, who was between 10-11 years of age at the time of the offenses, was sexually assaulted by an acquaintance, identified as the accused, on more than one occasion during the above time frame.

They make it sound as if he was a bodyguard or something. But Deputy Assistant Secretary of the State Department isn’t exactly an outsider. He’s actually the bureaucrat who informed the Benghazi troops they were being left to fend for themselves.

UATV 2.0

All Annual and Premium subscribers have now been invited to the new Unauthorized site, which I am delighted to say is Legion-made from the custom server and database to the front end and the content administrator. Please share your thoughts and experiences here, particularly as related to current performance and desired features for the future. We’ll be inviting the Creator subscribers next, beginning with The Legend and Gardening subscriptions. We currently have about 100 videos there, with more being added every day.

If you’re seeing slow video responses, please be sure to let us know if you are in the USA or not, as slower initial responses from Europe and Asia are anticipated. The bug with the 0:00:00 time on the more recent videos is known and we are in the process of addressing it. UPDATE: The video time display bug is fixed.

Please note that the black circle spinning in the center of the video does NOT necessarily indicate a slow playback issue, but rather, indicates that the buffering of the entire video is still ongoing. We are currently addressing that as well.

UPDATE: Good news from Asia.

Just dropping a note to let you know that the new UATV site works from China. Still a bit slow (probably due to throttling by the Great Firewall), but much, much better than before.


UPDATE: It would appear the audio-stripping function is working properly too.

Listened to an audio only stream today. Worked great. 

Mailvox: Money magic

A reader observes the creation of money ex nihilo in action:

I wanted to share something with you that demonstrates how you are correct that debt and money creation are one and the same.

Recent changes to 401k rules (from the CARES act) allowed me to withdrawn/borrow 90k from my retirement account, with the promise to pay it back over 5 years to avoid the tax penalty. I did this to pay off my mortgage. Even though this doesn’t change the basics of my personal finances, I just like the idea of being the only person with a legal claim on my house. Also, I figured the market is going to go down, so now might be a good time to sell, and buy-back over the next 5 years.

So I apply for the loan. I get the 90k check and deposit it in my bank. I look at my 401k balance and the amount has not changed! The 90k was literally created out of thin air with the understanding that I’m obligated to pay it back over 5 years.

Now that money essentially exist in 2 places; in my house, and in the stock portfolio of my 401k. I naively thought that the 401k was an arrangement between me and the government that I get a tax break on money I put aside for retirement. In reality, the 401k is an arrangement between me on the one side, and the government and the financialized class on the other side. Once I put money in those stocks, I can’t sell it off until I turn 60 without a huge tax penalty. My 401k money is essentially a trust fund for the financial class.

At face value, most would think this is beneficial to me. But in reality, I’m prevented from the opportunity to sell high and buy back low. This protects the financialized racket from any loses today, but it also prevents the opportunity for that money to be redirected toward more profitable endeavors in the future. As losses to the financial market are prevented, so too the opportunity for profits are prevented. And they wonder why the economic recoveries are so feeble or non-existent.

Heads, everybody wins. Tails, they win and you lose. It’s not the worst scam in the history of financial shenanigans. But it will lead to an economy-wide breakdown, in which everyone loses, sooner or later.

Obama is getting nervous

The ex-president is starting to speak out in a very un-ex-presidential manner:

Former President Barack Obama harshly criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News.

Obama also reacted to the Justice Department dropping its criminal case against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, saying he worried that the “basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”

Translation: “I’m worried that the charade is about to be exposed.” He’s also not telling the truth.

President Obama is being quoted on Flynn, saying “There is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free.” It is a curious statement. First and foremost, Flynn was not charged with perjury.
— Jonathan Turley

And this might explain Obama’s strange actions:

“Sources are telling Watters’ World that Attorney General Bill Barr was just given a trove of smoking gun documents that could point directly at former President Barack Obama, revealing his powerful connection to ‘Spygate’ and the Russia hoax.

That aged well

Just months after almost everyone on Wall Street worried that a recession was just around the corner, Goldman Sachs said a downturn is unlikely over the next several years. In fact, the firm’s economists stopped just short of saying that the U.S. economy is recession-proof.
– December 31, 2019

The hilarious thing is that the downturn had already begun. This sort of thing is why I meant it very literally when I wrote the chapter entitled “No one knows anything” in RGD.

It is also why destroying your nation simply because the economists tell you that doing so will make everyone rich is a horrifically bad, horrifically stupid idea.

Different directions

As Arkhaven has embraced Webtoons – and if the backers want it, we are even considering our own custom site and app, which would be considerably simpler than SG2, UATV2, or Infogalactic – Marvel is retreating from web-based comics.

Thank you for being a loyal Marvel fan. As a fan of Marvel digital comics, we wanted to let you know that the Marvel Digital Comics Shop at comicstore.marvel.com will be closing on June 2, 2020.

After June 2nd, you will still be able to purchase Marvel digital comics and read your existing Marvel digital comics library via the Marvel Comics app and the comiXology store.

To purchase Marvel digital comics after June 2nd:

Download the Marvel Comics app on the App Store or Google Play Store, and/or Visit comixology.com.

To read your existing Marvel digital comics library after June 2nd:

View your past purchases in “My Books” when you log into your account on the Marvel Comics app, and/or

Sync your current Marvel Digital Comics Shop account with a comiXology account to continue to read your books on a web browser

I can only read digital comics on a web browser, how can I continue to do that?

Marvel won’t support a web reading experience after June 2, 2020.

Translation: Apps or Amazon. Comixology is Amazon’s platform and it is a suboptimal page-based approach. Vertical panels are the future since they display much better on smartphones. All of our comics are now being created and constructed with that in mind, even if they’re not designed specifically as panels for vertical digital display.

Most Italian deaths were NOT coronavirus

At least, not according to the Italian National Institute of Health.

“Non dite anche qui venticinque mille morti. Non è vero! Non usati per retorica e terrorismo. I dati di Istituto Superiore dal Sanità dicono che il novantasei virgula tre percento sono morti per altro patologie.”
– Vittorio Sgarbi

Translation: Also, do not say here 25,000 deaths. It is not true! Do not use the deaths for rhetoric and terrorism. The data from the National Institute of Health says that 96.3 percent died from other diseases.

Vittorio Sgarbi is a Member of Parliament representing Emiglia-Romagna and is a member of the Forza Italia party.

Whose hype do you buy?

The China-China-China crowd has been predicting the collapse of the Chinese economy for years. But is it actually as vulnerable as they believe? More than a few international economists simply don’t buy that assumption:

RT talked to economists to find out if Beijing may have foreseen the economic crash and about the Chinese government’s response to it.

“Nobody, including Beijing, could have foreseen the depth and gravity of this pandemic, specifically the cryptic transmission parameters by which the Covid-19 virus spreads. It is truly a once-in-100-year pandemic event,” said Sourabh Gupta, senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies.

According to him, China was better prepared because “it is in a much healthier fiscal position compared to most advanced economies and many emerging economies too.”

Gupta explained that the central government’s debt level as a percentage of GDP is fairly modest, which means there is ample space on the government’s balance sheet to ramp up policy support. Also, consumers’ debt levels relative to income is modest, so they are not overleveraged either and can open up their wallets.

He was echoed by Andrew Leung, international and independent China strategist, who said “China is always very long-term strategy-minded” and is better prepared for any crisis thanks to its state capitalism. “The state can direct massive funds and mobilize businesses and people more effectively than the West. The same capability was demonstrated during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 and the world financial crisis of 2008-09,” said Leung.

According to Temur Umarov, an expert on China and Central Asia at Carnegie Moscow Center, every country is in a different economic situation, so their response to the coronavirus pandemic also differs. While numerous economic stimulus packages were announced by some countries, China has focused on recovery of domestic consumption, as well as on help for small- and medium-sized businesses, he said.

All the analysts agreed that neither China nor other countries could have foreseen the magnitude of the current crisis.

“There is a tsunami of negative views about China as a result of the spreading coronavirus crisis. America’s bad-mouthing has also helped. But China remains by far the second-largest economy, bigger than the rest of the BRIC countries combined,” said Leung. He noted that many more countries have China as their largest trading partner than the United States.

I think the Chinese economy is better poised to survive the crisis simply because it is less financialized, which is another way of saying that it is less fictional. And I would remind those who cite the failed predictions concerning Japanese preeminence of the 1980s of three things.

  1. The US economy of 2020 is not the US economy of 1985. The USA of 2020 isn’t even recognizably American anymore.
  2. China is not Japan.
  3. The Japanese economy of 1985 was very heavily financialized. Most of its massive real estate wealth was as fictional as the Silicon Valley wealth is today.

A chapter ends

A homeschooling father writes to express his appreciation after successfully homeschooling of his boys:

Fourteen years ago I wrote to see what advice you and the Voxologisti could provide a family embarking on homeschooling:

The youngest of my three sons just completed his homeschooling this month, closing out this chapter of our family’s story.  We’re grateful for all the encouragement and suggestions we received through your site, and the wonderful community we discovered through the experience of homeschooling.  The road is challenging, but full of blessing.

It was amusing in the early years when I’d have the boys with me in the hardware store during school hours (field trip!).  The odd looks from strangers sometimes made me wonder if they wished they could call a childcatcher.  What annoyed me most was the constant “aren’t you worried about their socialization?”  After the first few times I began replying “no, because I’m not raising them to be socialists.”  That usually ended the conversation quickly.

My older two are nearly finished learning trades (welding and physical therapy).  Like his older brothers, my youngest will work full time for a while before making a decision about training/education.  My wife and I are proud of the young men they’re becoming.

Our thanks to you and the Vox Popoli community.

It’s always good to hear the happy endings. But man, have we really been doing this for so long….

That doesn’t seem right.