“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

“A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” – Salmon Rushdie

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard Feynman

Another Big Retail Store Bites the Dust! 

From Nellie Bowles (The Free Press) on crime in Portland:

“REI, the do-good outdoor recreation chain, the store where I buy most of my clothes (whoever says they don’t carry black tie clothes isn’t trying hard enough), is closing its big downtown Portland location, citing crime and theft. The company said that the store ‘had its highest number of break-ins and thefts in two decades, despite actions to provide extra security.’ From a local news channel: ‘The company said its theft problem came to a head last November, when a car crashed through the glass front doors on Black Friday. It was the store’s third break-in in a week.’

“I understand that Antifa doesn’t believe in private property and that Portland is their capital. But guys, all you wear are cargo pants and hiking boots. How is this going to work? Who will provide your balaclavas and headlamps?”

“America is a victim of its own flim-flam. The peak of it… probably came when Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, announced that the US was ‘indispensable’… and that ‘we stand taller… and ‘see farther’ than other people. Since then, we’ve gotten shorter… by almost every measure. Even life expectancy. The rest of the ‘western,’ fully developed nations in the G7 have an average lifespan of 83 years. In America, we live to 76… and life expectancies are falling, along with wages, productivity, GDP growth, trust in government, innovation, happiness and just about everything else.” (Bill Bonner, Bonner Private Research, May 2, 2023)

“Many people won’t attempt something unless they can find an example of someone else who is already doing it. Rely on this type of thinking too much and you’ll never do anything interesting.” – James Clear

“If you can mandate or ban words, you can control thought. If you can control thought, you can control behavior. If you can control behavior, you have created a self-sustaining tyranny.” – Michael Masterson

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” – Mark Twain

On America’s Intelligence Capabilities 

In 1957, following an attempt to assassinate Indonesia’s president, James Burnham wrote this in the National Review:

“Last week’s attempted assassination of Indonesia President Sukhano had all the hallmarks of a CIA operation: Everyone in the room was killed except Sukhano.”

And in the Feb. 20 issue of Taki’s Magazine, Daniel Oliver wrote this:

“If ever there was a gang that couldn’t shoot straight – or spy usefully – it’s America’s intelligence agencies.”

As he pointed out:

“They vastly overestimated the strength of the Soviet Union, missed 9/11 plotting, claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, failed to predict North Korea’s progress on intercontinental ballistic missiles, and predicted Russia would quickly subdue Ukraine and on and on and on.”

But now we are supposed to believe the CIA’s reports on China and Russia and the Ukraine. And those are international issues. Should we also trust them when it comes to domestic spying? What kind of data are the CIA collecting and using to spy on Americans?

“‘We don’t know,’ writes the left-wing Brennan Center for Justice, ‘because the Biden administration is refusing to declassify a single word about the nature of the program.’ Americans desiring to stay free have hope the agencies’ incompetence extends to their domestic spying.”