This hilarious skit by Comedian Harrison Hill Smith reimagines the government’s initial Covid response pitch meeting among experts. If you’re wondering how authorities could have made their response so haphazard and contradictory, this is one scenario.
h/t Instapundit
News
Quantitative Easing Explained
The economist who coined the term “quantitative easing,” Richard Werner, now says central banks are too powerful and irresponsible and that they’re the ones actually causing inflation. Of course, some of us already knew that, but it’s nice to see the professionals finally concur.
This hilarious explanation of quantitative easing by two straight-talking cartoon-characters questions the wisdom of relentless money supply expansion. It has been viewed on YouTube more than 6 million times.
“Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes — excusable or not — can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic — this is the key political argument against an independent central bank…To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers.”
–Milton Friedman
–Wikipedia: iQuantitative easing
–Rolling Stone: iQuantitative Easing–The Hidden Government Subsidy for Banks
–Bloomberg View: The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes
–Reason: How Quantitative Easing Helps the Rich and Soaks the Rest of Us
–Forbes: The Federal Reserve Is Making A Big Mistake
–Time: This Former Fed Official Thinks Quantitative Easing Has Been a Disaster
Ithaka | Documentary
The father of Julian Assange wages a one-man campaign for the release of his son from prison. [ Ithaka credits: Dir: Ben Lawrence/ Stella Moris, John Pilger, John Shipton, Ai Weiwei/ 106 min/ Documentary/ Freedom of Speech/ 2021]
External Reviews
“Assange ‘never wanted it to be him’ in the spotlight, Melzer claims. ‘It was about the States and their war crimes and their corruption. That’s what he wanted to put the spotlight on, and he did, and that’s what made them angry. And they put the spotlight on him.’ In its own small way, Ithaka – with its stirring soundtrack by Brian Eno, no less – is an attempt to turn that light back where it belongs. Here’s hoping it’s not too late.”
–The Age
How to See It
Currently in theaters here
Online Video Search
Links
Official Homepage
IMDB
Related Film: Citizenfour
“The world’s most famous political prisoner, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has become an emblem of an international arm wrestle over freedom of journalism, government corruption and unpunished war crimes. Now with Julian facing a 175-year sentence if extradited to the US, his family members are confronting the prospect of losing Julian forever to the abyss of the US justice system. This David-and-Goliath struggle is personal – and, with Julian’s health declining in a British maximum-security prison, the clock is ticking. Now it’s up to Julian’s father, John Shipton, and fiancé Stella Moris, to join forces to advocate for Julian on this international odyssey. As they rally a world-wide network of supporters and politicians, they cautiously step into the media’s glare – and are forced to confront the events that made Julian a global flashpoint.”
–Ithaka Homepage
Justice For All: J6 Song Banned By Apple
The pettiness of Apple is just unbelievable. Every night for over 750 days, the J6 political prisoners sing the National Anthem at 9 pm from their jail cells. They have been held without trial all this time, a straight-up violation of the “speedy trial” Sixth Amendment. A recording was made of their poignant singing was combined with a voice over of Donald Trump reading the Pledge of Allegiance and released as Justice for All on Apple and Amazon. It skyrocketed to the #1 spot on Apple iTunes chart, surpassing career musicians like Miley Cyrus, Tim McGraw, and Morgan Wallen. That is, until Apple removed Justice for All from its platforms.
Bruce Willis: Libertarian Film Hero
Bruce Willis — born March 19th, 1955 — started out as a minor off-Broadway actor but eventually landed the lead in Die Hard, launching his now legendary action-hero career. He seemed attracted to the role of individualist hero, and it was a role he took up in several films of libertarian interest.
Willis is probably best known for his role as John McClane, a classic American hero standing alone against all odds for what is right in the 1988 blockbuster Die Hard. Working against him are his chief adversary, Hans Gruber — a poised, organized, “classically-educated” gentleman thief; various incompetent, overbearing representatives of organized law enforcement; and a self-serving journalist. This is a film that pits the ordinary guy — who still values, respects, and at his best embodies heroic individualism — against an array of smug elites, who, whether operating for good or evil, despise him and what he represents. It’s an absolute must-see. As one reviewer put it, “Die Hard is the very pinnacle of the ’80s action movie, and if it’s not the greatest action movie ever made, then it’s damn close.”
Ten years later in 1998, Bruce Willis made Mercury Rising. In this story, the U.S. government has just spent two billion dollars to produce an “unbreakable” communications code. The code is a key part of the country’s spy apparatus. As part of the testing of the code, a secret message written in it was distributed in puzzle magazines with the promise of a prize to anyone who could decrypt the message. It wasn’t actually expected that anyone would be able to do so, as the code had already been tested under the most rigorous conditions. Enter a nine-year-old autistic savant. He breaks the code and calls in for the prize. This high-tech code is considered so important to U.S. security that the NSA sends assassins to kill the boy. But they’ll have to get past Bruce Willis, who is again the individualist hero working against officialdom, this time as a renegade FBI agent who defies all authority to protect this peculiarly-gifted child. Should the one be sacrificed for the benefit of the many? That’s the underlying question in this feel-good action/drama.
In 2018, Willis made a remake of the classic Charles Bronson film Death Wish, about a man whose wife is killed and daughter severely beaten by thugs. The broken US justice system has nothing to offer him in the way of justice or resolution. So he turns vigilante, a lone good guy taking out bad guys one by one. One reviewer complained “If the NRA made a feature film, it would be this.”
In 2019, the film Motherless Brooklyn was made in which a corrupt cabal behind New York City’s urban development will let nothing get in its way…in the name of “progress.” Willis plays a detective killed off early in the film, but it’s notable that he took the role. The Independent Institute called the film “a well-told story that sheds light on a dark part of U.S. urban policy. The movie might well contend for the most pro-liberty film to come out of Hollywood in 2019.”
Bruce Willis doesn’t seem to have explicitly identified as libertarian — he supported a variety of politicians, from Democrat Michael Dukakis to Republican George Bush — but in a 2006 interview where a journalist tried to get Willis to defend his endorsement of the Bush administration, Willis shot back with “I’m sick of answering this fucking question. I’m a Republican only as far as I want a smaller government, I want less government intrusion. I want them to stop shitting on my money and your money and tax dollars that we give 50 percent of every year. I want them to be fiscally responsible and I want these goddamn lobbyists out of Washington. Do that and I’ll say I’m a Republican. I hate the government, OK? I’m apolitical. Write that down. I’m not a Republican.” So it’s fair to say his heart is in the right place.
In later performances, Willis seemed to be losing his edge and was often confused. The cause was eventually diagnosed as asphasia, a brain disease that affects speech and comprehension, and in 2022 he retired. His career may be over, but his characters live on. Personally, I like a visit from John McClane every Christmas, as it turns out many people do.
Links
James O’Keefe: Lucky Charms Is Offensive
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Here’s the very first James O’Keefe video, in which a young O’Keefe persuaded a university administrator to ban Lucky Charms as “offensive to Irish.” He went on to create Project Veritas, and later O’Keefe Media Group, both of which produce undercover videos on corruption and left-wing political bias.