The East Main Arms
Posted On: Tuesday - February 26th 2019 9:14AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Race/Genetics
(Of course, it's in New Jersey, so caveat emptor, amigos.)
While spending some time in a far-away city the other day, I did a whole lot of walking on a day that was free of work. It was 60 F outside, and as I left the main part of town, I headed out on what looked like a nice country road. That brings me back to childhood and James Taylor, walkin' on down a country road ... ♪♫♬ ... with the bright sunshine off my shoulder.
Rather than being a nice area to walk in, things got fairly ghetto-like in a short while, so rather than cotton or soybean fields, there were small un-kempt houses, one after another. Long ago, the kids would make fun of black people whose cars were worth more than their living quarters. I figured they were exaggerating. Nope, one could do the math. Yes, a Cadillac could have cost well more than the 500 ft2 shacks they parked in front of. Well, years later that still holds! Additionally, the vehicles have gotten bigger, or at least the pick-up trucks. I really wanted to pace off both a large shiny modern pick-up along with the small beat-up house it was parked in front of, but yeah, it WAS the ghetto, after all. I mean, if it were only aligned a little bit better, I could have been sure, but I believe it was as long as either dimension of the rectangular house!
That aside, upon walking more and looking down the narrow street, I noticed big letters across a one-story building down at the t-intersection 200 yards away ... just a low-sloped symmetric-roofed structure that seemed to be a store, East Main Arms, or something like that. Hey, why would there be a gun store here in the ghetto? That's usually a bad idea. Now with nothing against gun stores, I planned to check it out, but upon another 100 yards of walking as I got past more trees, I could see this was a small apartment complex, not a gun store. "Oh, the East Main Arms." How fancy and NY City-sounding that was!
I had to look up more about this apartment-building naming with "Arms", usually associated with old high-rise structures even not in NY City. Where I lived for years in a medium-sized city, there is just the one old 15 or 20 story building called the XXXX Arms. Does it bring back memories to the reader, as it does for me, of times long past? The answers in the forum site linked-to above explain that the name "arms" came from inns or pubs back in England with their coats of arms shown on flags out front.
OK, but a one-story 20-unit apartment complex in a mile-out-of-town ghetto area being the "East Main Arms"? Is that not a little pretentious? Ought it not just have a plastic banner in front - "Bad Credit? No problem." or "Free Toaster with first payment. No deposit back for burned-down units."? Well, I really expected a gun store.
Walk on down, walk on down, walk on down,
walk on down a country road...♪♫♬
Not only could I not find any youtube clip on this song that wasn't fuzzy, hell, even lots of the pictures are blurry here! Oh, well, I did learn something about JT on youtube, in that I have been on the very road that he wrote about, as this was about the road near the mental hospital he voluntarily spent some time in near Boston, Massachusetts for depression (should have listened to some music for the depressed instead, 'cept this was a coupla/three decades earlier).
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John Wayne - the Airport, the Icon, and the Actor
Posted On: Saturday - February 23rd 2019 4:43PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness California Movies Race/Genetics ctrl-left
The internet says that there are people out in Orange County, California (Santa Ana, Anaheim, Huntington/Newport beaches, and about 100 other jammed-together cities) that don't appreciate the late iconic western-/war-movie actor John Wayne anymore. In The Attack on John Wayne Is an Attack on White America, by writer Paul Kersey* of the "stuff black people don't like" blog**, Mr. Kersey explains that the demographics of Orange County have changed much since the time of John Wayne. From getting the busy airport in Santa Ana (code SNA - doesn't make sense, but most don't!) and a 9-feet tall statue of him located at the entrance to being dissed now by 10's of thousands of twitterers for perfectly decent honest remarks made in a Playboy interview*** from 1971, you may notice that people don't seem to think the same of him.
What's changed about the attitudes toward John Wayne, along with more importantly, Orange County going from a John Birch Society stronghold of Conservatism to a blue (for Socialist, you'd think red, but ...) state? Could it be that this particular very-populated country went from being 86% white in the early 1970's to < 50% white today? "Correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation", but, I'm pretty damn sure that it does in this case.
Before I go further let me discuss John Wayne. I gotta say his movies were out a good bit before my time. I've enjoyed a few, as I do remember seeing The Searchers on DVD. Clint Eastwood as the star of the Western genre is more memorably. Just as with Clint Eastwood, John Wayne was the, OK, PLAYED, the taciturn, tough righteous American hero. That's what's made him iconic. If people didn't identify with him, they at least wanted to. That was the America of 1945 through 1975 though.
Thing thing is that John Wayne was just an actor. Peak Stupidity really doesn't have any particular respect for actors and actresses. Is he entertaining and realistic? Is she entertaining and
Here are some of John Wayne's views on race from the past:
The academic community has developed certain tests that determine whether the blacks are sufficiently equipped scholastically. But some blacks have tried to force the issue and enter college when they haven’t passed the tests and don’t have the requisite background.I can't argue with any of that. Most people couldn't have in 1971 either. Now, not only do a different type of Americans argue with him, but they go back nearly 5 decades to argue with a dead man. From the grave, the American iconic actor says: "Never apologize, Mister, it’s a sign of weakness."
There has to be a standard. I don’t feel guilty about the fact that five or 10 generations ago these people were slaves. . . . Now, I’m not condoning slavery. It’s just a fact of life, like the kid who gets infantile paralysis and has to wear braces so he can’t play football with the rest of us.
I will say this, though: I think any black who can compete with a white today can get a better break than a white man. I wish they’d tell me where in the world they have it better than right here in America.
The ctrl-left has basically the same idea as the Commies of old, your Lenin's, Mao's, Pol Pots, and even has taken a page from the Taliban, in working hard to erase vestiges of history of the traditional American people. This John Wayne hate is part of it. Arguing with them is not gonna cut it, just as it didn't with the Commies of old.
* In case this pen-name of the writer rings a bell, yes that's also from the movies, as Paul Kersey is the righteous vigilante character played by Charles Bronson in the 5-movie Death Wish series.
** now hosted on unz.com. Unz is a brave man, I'll give him that.
*** Playboy interview? Who read those things to begin with? I wonder how the original twitterer got ahold of the interview out of a 48 year-old magazine with most of the pages stuck together ... ah, nevermind.
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Sexual Stupidity and Naked Massages
Posted On: Saturday - February 23rd 2019 9:41AM MST
In Topics: Humor Feminism Female Stupidity
From zerohedge.com, we read about the son of one of the scions, if I may, of Female Stupidity, who embarrassed his Mom in an event that I would call an inevitability, rather than any stupidity, per se. The stupidity is in the ridiculousness of the CEO (really?), one Lisa Borders, of "Times Up" to begin with, along with anyone thinking that this type of massage therapy is strickly bidness!
In reading Times Up CEO Resigns After Son Embroiled In Sexual Misconduct Scandal, we first would like to know what the hell this "Times Up" place is. Just from the context (I felt dirty just looking it up), and now a quick glance at a NY post article on the same story, we learn that Times Up is an organization that purports to fight for women to speak out about their sexual harassment experiences, fun or otherwise. Oh, they have $22 million bucks to
... well, you can't have people hearing about your son inappropriately touching a naked massagee with his fingers and other parts in the wrong positions for a good and proper massage per the massage-guild procedures and protocols. Let's see, per zerohedge, Mr. Garry Dijon* Bowden, on the left above, son of the important CEO Lisa Borders, was invited to Miss (I sure hope it's "Miss") Celia Gellert's, on the right above, home to have a "healing session". Hahaaa, healing session indeed - I need to remember that line. Oh, Mr. Garry Mustard Bowden, Jr. is no simple ordinary healer - he is a LIFE COACH too, and a photographer.
Miss Gellert figured that that's just what you do, I guess, invite a guy over get naked, and get healed and coached. Sometimes that involves erect penises and massaging of the genitals, but I guess that was not made clear. "When I was told to lay on the table naked, I was of the understanding that there would be no erections...." I don't know, readers, I think if I were Mr. Dijon, I would not have been able to help myself either, and there would be some mustard or other condiment in places that seem to really need them. Per the NY Post article, we read "'It was not healing. It was disgusting,' said Gellert, a yoga teacher**." Listen, Miss Gellert, you can ignore the facts - you may not care about the birds and the bees, but the birds and the bees care about you! Or, something like that. I just wish I was good enough to get a girl to let me come over to perform a naked massage to begin with. Maybe I need a life coach for that.
With all respect for Mr. Bowden in this story explained, the ex-CEO Mom makes me wonder now. She is not much of a looker (though 61 and with hair almost as short as her son) in the ZH picture, but also a big supporter of the women's NBA. Do women basketball players get sexually harassed? I mean, by men? I seriously doubt that happens. What kind of life "coaching" does the Mom do involving the basketball women, and does she even care about men? Times Up is supposed to be a follow-up to Pound-Me-Too. They probably should get a CEO who actually has a chance of that happening.
OK, well, please go to the Zerohedge comments for some great humor - you now have to click the [Show 275*** Comments] button at the bottom now, but it's well worth the 2 hours to read through them. Enjoy!
*. No, he was not an heir to the Dijon mustard fortune, or he'd have been able to hire higher-class
** A yoga teacher! Man, if I were single, I'd be seeking out life coaches right now - are they on Craiglist? "Yoga teacher" - yes the story all hinges on that, pretty much.
*** 275 was the number as of the last time I pulled up the page.
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Joke Fail During Peak Stupidity
Posted On: Friday - February 22nd 2019 5:53PM MST
In Topics: Humor Curmudgeonry Healthcare Stupidity
... before this whole health-nut craze.
Keep in mind during your reading of this post that Peak Stupidity is no health-nut, diet-advise website. We have no interest in the health of our readers - we only want the eyeballs, as the successful leaders in this blog space would put it. However, your writer here is kind of interested these days in keeping his body functioning well (the blog must go on, after all), and diet can indeed be a big part of that. I've found the cutting down on some favorites fairly easy, yet others take a long time to ease out of, as I guess we may all have addictions of some sort.
It wasn't always this way. It would be nice if my body would still be able to function perfectly well off of bread, cheddar cheese, Cadbury bars, and Guinness for a week as was my diet during a trip to Ireland. Are those the four basic food groups in the pyramid developed by the Irish version of the FDA? There was a time in which I enjoyed a Burger King breakfast of tater tots (OK, they call them "hash rounds", but they're nothing but glorified tater tots) with a vanilla soft-serve ice-cream cone. I'd dip the
I can't do that anymore. Therefore it's a more rare treat to go get some old-fashioned all-American fatty, sugary, salty stuff at a drive-up joint. We'd been working hard that morning (on what limited the blog posts this week), so I deserved it. "Yeah, I'll get the fried chicken with fries and a chocolate shake." The guy I was working with knew I was in general trying to eat healthy, so I had a joke coming. The guy at the window taking my money was at least 25 years old, mind you, as I joked "hey, that stuff doesn't have any saturated fat in it, does it? I can't have any of that." "I don't know. I don't know what that is."
Man, you can't even make a joke anymore if people are too ignorant to get it! What was I to do? "Here's the premise, see: There are different kinds of cholesterol in our bloodstreams ... fat can congeal under different conditions depending on the size of the molec... ". "Listen, I got other people in line, so ..."
Even David Letterman, with his many inside jokes, didn't have to put up with this crap. Should I have put it in the form of a tweet?
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"Hate Crimes" - fight this stupidity
Posted On: Friday - February 22nd 2019 5:48PM MST
In Topics: Race/Genetics alt-right/MAGA Orwellian Stupidity
The entire "hate crime" designation is both stupid and unconstitutional. I ran across one of my favorite bloggers, Steve Sailer, supporting the concept and (more practically) charges for hate crime in one of his comments here under his unz.com post . Just when you not only think people are very intelligent, but agree with about everything they write, you run into this crap. The problem, in my opinion, is with even the best politically incorrect "noticers" among us, is that they still may not understand the reason to have basic principles. I have lambasted the Libertarians before, but it'll be time, in a subsequent post to do the same for the alt-right/conservatives on this score.
The particular comment written by Mr. Sailer was in one of his (probably nearing a dozen) posts on the ridiculous Jussie Smollett hate hoax. You you may have read in our one post earlier this week, Mr. Sailer was way, way ahead in noticing, or more likely, having the courage to write about what he was noticing, about these hate hoaxes for 1 decade and 1/2 already. (His original article is here for reference, and with new comments.)
Peak Stupidity is not trying to be an iSteve stalker or something like that, but this comment from an otherwise very intelligent guy illustrates our point well here:
E.g., if young Liam Neeson had beat up some random black guy to avenge some other black guy raping his loved one, that ought to be a hate crime. Society has an obvious interest in discouraging these kind of attacks because they can spread indefinitely.[Bolding by PS] No, no, no! Bullshit. There ought not to be "regular" crimes versus "hate" crimes. What is the distinction, motive? Motive can indeed result in different charges, such as involuntary vs. voluntary manslaughter. I'm no lawyer, but I do understand that. However, adding this additional layer or "property" of the crime, not just as in "armed robbery" vs. "burglary", but "1st-degree murder" vs "hate crime 1st-degree murder" turns it into 2 crimes, meaning double-jeopardy for any defendant. The guy can be found innocent of the murder but still guilty of hate crimes based on words uttered during the incident. Also, the hate crime" plug-in, as it were, can be added to any other kind of crime.
But if young Liam Neeson tracks down and beats up the actual rapist, but calls him the N word while doing it, that ought not to be a hate crime. It ought to be a regular crime, because society also has an interest in discouraging people taking the law into their own hands, but specific vengeance has less severe potential than random vengeance on a group.
Nah, killing an innocent black based on hot-blooded anger has no worse effect on the victim than if it were just Mr. Neeson shooting his gun at the nearest person of any race who is completely innocent. If you start making new crime designations based on the effect on the community, you are far, far from the ideas developed over 1,000 years by our British/American forefathers.
What’ll be next then, making up new crimes of bad speech due to the effect it has on the population that doesn’t want to hear it? Though that’s not been encoded into law, it’s been effectively used to force cancellation of political talks that bring up “sensitive” issues (Ann Coulter, James Watson, etc., as Mr. Sailer very well knows about. This stuff can easily creep away from just violent criminal acts to all kinds of crimes, and we've seen it.
Constitutional problems with this charge:
1) Double jeopardy, per Bill of Rights, Amendment V: ...nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb ...
2) At the Federal level, all this bullshit is illegal per Amendment X anyway: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
If the alt-right are simply going to ignore any "muh Constitution" (their words of disparagement) arguments completely, they could always go back to their common-sense and see the stupidity of the hate crime idea. The stupidity of going along with this fairly recent concept, probably hardly heard of in the 1980's, and still laughed at in the 1990's, has multiple components:
1) Hate crime law won't be ever used against black people, hispanics, and any other privileged races/ethnicities who have done violence to whites. I ask anyone who's ever heard of a case to please comment. No, even the terrible double rape/torture/murder of the young white couple by black scum in the Knoxville Horror case (still undergoing "justice") did not result in hate crime charges. It'll never happen. Why do you expect this to change?
2) This hate crime-plug-in has already been encoded into law to arrest Canadians and Europeans for "hate speech", formerly no crime at all. George Orwell's 1984 thought-crime is a reality. Is it not stupid to rely on 9 politically-motivated robed fools as the only impediment for the same thing happening here in America?
Do you have ANY principles at all, pundits of the alt-right?
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Steve Sailer on Hate Hoaxes and Fake Nooses
Posted On: Wednesday - February 20th 2019 8:04PM MST
In Topics: Pundits Media Stupidity Race/Genetics
The latter, "fake nooses" is nice word-play there by Mr. Sailer, and is the title of his latest Takimag article. (Also, 212 comments about it, as of this writing, are here on unz.com.)
Once Steve Sailer gets a handle on a topic, such as these continual incidents of race-baiting or gender-baiting fakery, he keeps up with it more than anyone I've read. This Jussie Smollett business that Peak Stupidity has tried to avoid even thinking about is just the latest in a long series of hate hoaxes, though this one seems to have been scripted more than normal (well the hate-hoax director was in "the biz", after all). There was the fake Rolling Stone news a few years back about a supposed rape on the campus of the U. of Virginia by frat-boys, often a target of hate hoaxes, in which Mr. Sailer was a big part of the effort to get at the truth. Mr. Sailer does toot his own horn in the column in a "I've been saying this for 15 years already!" proud manner, but he completely deserves accolades on this.
Most Americans forget the myriad incidents fairly soon after they are dropped by the Lyin' Press. This works out very well for said Lyin' Press, as, once these formerly horrible instances of still-existing white or male racial hatred are proven to be hoaxes, it is hoped that the reality portion (the aftermath) is also forgotten. That way, the Lyin' Press can have the nerve of using these very same previous hoaxes to "prove" that, "yeah, this latest horrible act is just one in a long line .. " bringing up former hoaxes without the little details such as "oh, uh, yeah they were hoaxes..."
Well Steve Sailer, and his readers HAVE been paying attention. The "hate hoax" term is just now being used after 15 years of that pundit continually writing about it. Peak Stupidity give him great praise for this diligence in bringing this stupidity to the forefront. The only problem I have with his ideas is his actual belief that there are indeed real "hate crimes" that should be prosecuted as such. No, that's not the way American justice is supposed to work, Mr. Sailer. I'd like to expound on that in another post to come later.
It's been an even slower blog-week than I had anticipated, but the project did get finished. This was indeed one of those "hey, look what this guy wrote!" kind of posts that Peak Stupidity has avoided pretty well since our 2nd blog-year started. Hopefully, there'll be 2 - 4 more pieces of juicy stupidity to round out this week.
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The Romantics - What I Like About You
Posted On: Saturday - February 16th 2019 2:55PM MST
In Topics: Music
I spent 10 minutes yesterday searching for this song erroneously as sung by "The Replacements", Paul Westerberg's old band. No, dammit, it was The Romantics, not "Replacements"!
From Detroit, Michigan, at the beginning of the New Wave style of music, here's What I Like About You from the band's self-titled debut album from 1980.
This band did have one other song that played on the radio, Talking in your Sleep, but it wasn't as good a tune.
The Romantics (at the time, on this song):
Wally Palmar – rhythm guitar, harmonica
Mike Skill – lead guitar, vocals
Rich Cole – bass guitar, vocals
Jimmy Marinos – drums, percussion, lead vocals
SITE NOTE: Posting will probably be very scant through coming Thursday due to obligations.
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Ship of Fools - book review - Part 3
Posted On: Saturday - February 16th 2019 2:35PM MST
In Topics: The Dead Pundits Liberty/Libertarianism Books
(continued from Part 2)
How about that!? I just read the last few pages of Tucker Carlson's book (the 2-page Epilogue and the Acknowledgements) and guess what? This guy's a Dead Head! A fellow Grateful Dead fan who Tucker works with is a Dead Head, hence the book's title (Peak Stupidity, way ahead of the game, had the song featured back in the initial "review of the reviews").
Now, about that Epilogue and a few more things: As Peak Stupidity's two favorite Pundits, Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter could be compared here to illustrate our own views. As stated in Part 1 of this extra-special book review, we feel, with all the good writing seen in this book, that Mr. Carlson is just a slight bit too much of a Statist to really, really get it. (What's "it", exactly? By "it" we mean the explanation for the nation being in a state approaching peak stupidity.)
Though with a slightly different style*, and a couple of exceptions, Ann Coulter could have written about these same details and general summation of the stupidity described in the book. An exception would probably that Miss Coulter would not have written such a great disparagement of the neocons (with those 5 1/2 and 9 1/2 pages on Max Boot and Bill Kristol, respectively), having been something of a neocon back in the day herself. Miss Coulter would likely have a more sour attitude of the feminists from day one, judging by her non-support of the women's vote. In the "Shut Up", They Explained chapter on free speech, Miss Coulter appears directly in this book (p. 128), and I doubt I'd see any difference in their view on this subject.
The reason to compare a pundit who DIDN'T write the book to the guy who DID is this: Miss Coulter, being a Constitutional Libertarian, as opposed to Mr. Carlson, being a conservative with an understanding of the old left, is that Miss Coulter would likely have drawn the right conclusion. She seems to "get IT". The problems we have are not simply due to our elites' lack of noblesse oblige, said to be due to their being no old-fashioned political left to counterbalance the right. There is no old-fashioned "right" either. Of course the two sides have merged into The Party, as that's what Big Government naturally wants.
Miss Coulter would likely agree with Peak Stupidity that the problem is not what the new elites do with their power. It's the AMOUNT OF POWER that the new elites have! We've let the beast get out of its chains. The elites can use this beast to beat the population into submission, something the old elites could not do in the much freer American there once was.
The epilogue in Ship of Fools was absolutely disappointing. To Right the Ship, per Tucker Carlson, "there are two ways to end this cycle", to paraphrase a) Kill this democracy, causing violence and mayhem or b) Listen to the people and make changes. "Give them back some of their power." Ahahahaaa, yeah, LOL, you're killing me
I'm afraid you're going to have to listen to the Constitutionalists at some point if you want to know the only solution, Tucker ... to really GET IT. Perhaps you should also listen closely to Jerry:
"Went to see the captain, strangest I could find,All that does not stop me from stating that this is a great book - I hope it sells 5 million copies, as that would be a great thing for America.
laid my proposition down, laid it on the line.
I won't slave for beggars pay, likewise gold and jewels,
but I would slave to learn the way to sink your ship of fools."
* I do like Miss Coulter's snarky humor that Mr. Carlson does not have so much of. I wonder if it's just the writer-helpers that she has, but then she's pretty good on-the-fly too. However, I like Tucker Carlson's writing style very much, and it possibly beats Ann Coulter's, though I've read only one of her books, Adios, America.
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Paul Westerberg - Dyslexic Heart
Posted On: Friday - February 15th 2019 8:56PM MST
In Topics: Music
This is some recent music, by Peak Stupidity definition, having been released in 1992. Dyslexic Heart comes from the soundtrack of the movie Singles.
Paul Westerberg had been in a band called The Replacements, but none of the songs by the band rings any bells for me. This one is just very catchy with the possibly-a-little-too-cute lyrics.
"You shoot me glances, and they're so hard to read.
I misconstrue what you mean.
Slip me a napkin, and now that you start,
is this your name or a doctor's eye chart?
I try and comprehend you, but I got a dyslexic heart.
I ain't dying to offend you, I got a dyslexic heart.
Thanks for the book, now my table is ready.
Is this a library or bar?
Between the covers I thought you were ready,
a half-angel, half-tart.
Do I read you correctly, lead me directly.
Help me with this part.
Do I hate you? Do I date you?
Do I got a dyslexic heart?
You keep swayin', what are you sayin'?
Thinking 'bout stayin',
or are you just playing, making passes?
Well, my heart could use some glasses.
Try and comprehend you.
I got a dyslexic heart.
Do I read you correctly?
I need you directly.
I only went this far.
Do I love you, do I hate you?
I got a dyslexic heart."
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Ship of Fools - book review - Part 2
Posted On: Friday - February 15th 2019 8:28PM MST
In Topics: Pundits Books
(continued from Part 1)
First come our apologies for taking so long for the 2nd part of our review of the very entertaining Ship of Fools by Tucker Carlson. I would say informative too, but that'd more apply for readers who have not kept up with the political blogs, your Ann Coulters, Pat Buchanans, Steve Sailers ... Peak Stupidity, and so on and so on. There's not too many of the pieces of stupidity pointed out by Mr. Carlson, and the points made thereabout that wouldn't be already known to someone keeping up a bit.
The 2nd part of the book, exactly half by page numbers, is commentary, with good examples of the stupidity of a) free speech, well, lack thereof, b) race relations, and c) feminism and genderbender nonsense. (I think the items in (c) could have been attacked separately.) In fact, the second half of Ship of Fools could just be one long essay on Peak Stupidity.
"Shut Up", They Explained is not an original piece of snark, but then lots in these chapters are not original observations. They are put together with good examples, and summed up nicely though, with Tucker's explanations. I did not realize until reading this book that the ACLU had been (till recently) such an EXTREMELY stalwart defender of US Constitution Amendment I for a century running. The reversal of the left's beliefs in unfettered free speech per US Constitution Amendment I to become an Orwellian program is well-demonstrated by examples.
However, I don't think Mr. Carlson got around to the real explanation for the changes. He reckons that the modern media and corporate giants don't care about civil disagreement on matters of opinion, with a right for everyone to have a say, is simply due to those elite's distance from the regular American people. If you recall, this was the explanation for the US Feral Government's failings in the areas of the immigration-invasion and foreign interventionist policy, discussed in the first 2 chapters and discussed in Part 1 of our review. No, the real explanation is that the same people who wanted to destroy traditional America during the time of the free speech movements of the 1960's, still want to destroy it. They needed unfettered speech then, against the establishment. Now they ARE the establishment, so they need to shut down any arguments or complaints by their political enemies.
In Diversity Diversion (see, the title gives away Mr. Carlson's explanation), the deep racial divisions in modern America and bias and media/government encouraged hatred against white people is explored. The author's heart is in the right place, but I'll say this chapter and the next show his guts are not quite there yet. Mr. Carlson is very, very careful in his wording regarding de-segregation, even seeming to support (in hindsight) the forced-busing in Boston, Massachusetts in the '70's. (It happened all over just as tragically, but the violent situation in Boston was particularly mentioned.) Martin Luther King is the fall-back position (uggggh), as Mr. Carlson discussed the change from the idea of judging men by their merits to judging by their color, as is pretty much the current situation, i.e. tribalism.
I mentioned Steve Sailer's ideas before, and the writing that makes it seem Tucker Carlson has at least read the guy. The 11 1/2 page (5% of the book!) evisceration of one Tah Nehi Coates (not even TRYING to spell his fucked-up name right) is an instance in which I can't help think the author has read at least of few of Mr. Sailer's dozens of posts* on this affirmative-action author. Mr. Carlson even denigrates the same line "...releasing the eldritch energies." - no, none of us know what it means. By AA, I don't mean Coates is on some quota plan, but (read the book) he is described as a pretty lame author, yet is put on a pedestal by all except a few intelligent blacks and by those whites who want to show-off how much they understand bad (the other) white people are, for reasons of ... insanity(?)
Tucker does a nice job illustrating the hypocrisy of the elites (Hildabeast, Mayor of NY City, Chief Warren, Maxine Waters, etc.) living in lily-white neighborhoods while preaching "diversity is our strength (another Sailer specialty). However, he still holds back, and seems to believe that it would all be OK if we just went back to treating people equally. I don't really think that's gonna cut it, but I understand Mr. Carlson's reluctance to tell the whole truth. He would no longer have his podium were he to go a bit farther, and we'd all be the worse for that.
The book's explanation for the problem here is that this is a "divide-and-conquer" strategy of the elites, though it's not mentioned if this is some actual plan or just their common way of thinking. Again, I don't agree. There are many blacks who have the kind of hatred that leads them to want to tear down the country. They don't need encouragement once they've gotten the law and institutions all on their side, as is the case. Forget it, Tucker, it's tribalism-town.
The chapter on the feminists also pulls a few punches, unless Mr. Carlson is a bit naive. He describes the early feminists, Betty Friedan, in particular, as NOT being harmful to society. He describes the current woman-dominated university and women-as-more-successful lower-ed worlds as just the result of fair treatment as prescribed by those early feminists, with no thought to the matriarchy that enables this stupidity. It's just the current feminist nuts, the completely hypocritical ones (again, described with many great examples) that the author has a problem with.
Mr. Carlson does a good job mentioning the culturally-suicidal effects of having men earning less and being less successful than potential female mates. However, without pushing back on the whole matriarchy system we are under, it seems like he is no conservative in this respect. I guess he never said he was.
The genderbender stupidity is in the latter part of the same chapter, and Tucker describes the stupidity as well as anybody, though it's not a hard thing to do. On this and the extreme feminist stupidity, he does not offer an explanation connected to the new elites. It's blamed simply on the unhappy people who make up the feminists. It's just another way to destroy the nation, so personally I would tend to think it'd be the same people that have been destroying the nation in the previously-discussed ways.
Lastly, on the 5 decades-ago good fight for a cleaner environment in America, in contrast to the situation today, Mr. Carlson again makes some good points. In They Don't Pick Up Trash Anymore, the great theme is that all the sensible things, such as just physically cleaning up, have been dropped for the theoretically "important problems" such as Global Climate DisruptionTM and such nonsense because the latter don't require any actual physical work and, more importantly, they are problems with no solution in sight, hence no end, hence continual funding forevah! Plus, it's important that the immigration invasion continue, so ties between immigration and destruction of the environment have been "nipped in the bud", though not in this book.
One more thing, as I have not really done much of a summation of Ship of Fools here (I think it'll be one more, much shorter post). I did note that Tucker Carlson, though often humorous in his writing, included an actual joke in this chapter. While pointing out that environmentalism is an establishment thing now, he writes:
Go to San Fransisco and see for yourself. Walk through Sea Cliff or Presidio Heights or any affluent neighborhood in the city and ask the first five people you meet if they consider themselves environmentalists. If only four say yes, chances are the fifth doesn't speak English well enough to understand the question.Haha... shades of Ann Coulter there!
Whewww! That's where I stand in my reading of Ship of Fools. A short conclusion will appear shortly.
* BTW, Steve Sailer's posts often demonstrate the PC and anti-white stupidity around us, such as the rantings of this Mr. Coates. I can't say it is a reason, but I could not blame Mr. Sailer one bit if part of his reason for having written so many posts on the guy is anger toward the unfairness of it all. Sailer writes with great insight, yet gets no public acclaim and drives a late-90's model Honda (nothing at all against Hondas - they've got great solid engines in those things, but that's not my point). In the meantime, Coates gets called one of the top 50 writers of the century or some such crap and makes millions. Nope it's not right. Oh, and BTW, Steve Sailer is still in favor of some affirmative action, so maybe is not quite so insightful.
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Don't ask me no questions ...
Posted On: Thursday - February 14th 2019 7:34PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor US Feral Government Southern rock Educational Stupidity Taxes
... and I won't tell you no lies.
Possibly very obviously, the previous post on taxes came out of thoughts generated during my perusal of the forms, due it being that time of the year. It's not like I spend a big deal of worry on this business. One does what one can during the year, if there's anything that can help lower the bill, but otherwise it pretty much is what it is. In my case, it's been fairly simple for a while, and I was in a habit of doing the work at a bar near me during half-time of the Superbowl, back when I was a little bit more into the Bread and Circuses. Yeah, I rounded off numbers to the nearest 10 bucks, then later $100 bucks, I did the arithmetic on a couple of cocktail napkins, and sent the thing off. Like I told the IRS, it is what it is. "No respect, no respect, I tell ya..." is my mutual relationship with the IRS.
The other run-ins with US Feral Government officials are pretty much the decadal censuses that are stipulated in the US Constitution. I can't argue with:
The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.To "enumerate" is defined as "vb 1 : to determine the number of : count 2 : list". I'm fine with that, as you're gonna need that for representative, cough, yeah right, cough cough, government. However "in such Manner as they shall direct by law" clearly means to allow for different methods of counting. It says nothing about more question on how many toilets we've got working in the place, heating via electricity or gas, or anything else. I have never filled out any such "long form", only a short form. However, I recall a couple of times, long ago, in which a man came by in person and asked a few questions. "One guy and one cat" was all I was required to give him, and that's what I gave him, and the cat was cool and he never said a mumblin' word.
This form-fill-outing is something I have just about had enough of, even if it's not for the Feral Government. A while back, the elementary school's registration form was on-line. There was no other option. OK, that's supposed to save the freakin' planet, so, yeah, let's see how that goes. Well, readers, the damn thing was 1/2 hour long, with a whole lot of questions that were none of the school's business. I'd have been glad to have put that "NOYB" or just a nice "N/A" down, but the forms would permit neither those nor blanks for the answers. I was FORCED to make up numbers and other answers.
I could very well see someone from the school district at some time in the future using my "lies" to try to embarrass me or get me in trouble. It's too bad that I did have to make up stuff, but then their website-builders ought to have let me skip the questions, or just quit asking stuff that you don't need to know about.
Lynyrd Skynyrd put it best, in the great Southern Rock guitar classic off of Second Helping back in 1974:
Don't ask me no questions, and I won't tell you no lies!
"So, don't ask me no questions
And I won't tell you no lies
So, don't ask me about my business
And I won't tell you goodbye."
For some reason, I'd always thought this song was a cover of some old-time country song, but nope. It was written by Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington.
Ronnie Van Zant - lead vocals
Gary Rossington - guitar
Allen Collins - guitar
Ed King - bass, slide guitar
Billy Powell - keyboards
Bob Burns - drums and percussion
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2018 Income Tax review
Posted On: Thursday - February 14th 2019 12:42PM MST
In Topics: Trump Economics US Feral Government Taxes
Yep, Peak Stupidity does movie reviews, with no background in "film", book reviews of books that we don't have on hand, and now, reviews of IRS tax forms! Too much excitement? Too soon? (Before you can plead ignorance for this year's
Changes made by Congress a year ago last Christmas, as pushed for and signed by the Trump administration, were discussed at that time in Merry Christmas from
For a family business in which itemized deductions formerly just had to top $12,000 to start to matter, this new deal is a bad deal.
That was a recap. What I noticed and had not mentioned in that > year-ago post is that the simple child credit*, not childcare, etc, but just an amount PER CHILD, has gone up from $1,000 per kid to $2,000. That (see the footnote*) means the extra thousand per, is equivalent to a $4,500 or so deduction, so I will recant my statement about more kids being a worse deal. This extra amount overrides that loss of an exemption by just a tad. (The changes then, are just about a wash there no matter what the number of kids, and that $12,000 additional S.D. minus $~ $8,000 for 2 parents gives a $4,000 gain in deductions - say, $900 off the bottom line.) Also, this credit can be used for a family making more money than was the case in 2017.
Peak Stupidity does not claim to be a tax-accounting site, but still we apologize if the reader has held off having kids due to this slight oversight. As they say on youtube, "We own NOTHING! Don't sue! There's no point!" [Thank you! - PS Legal Department spokesman Dewey Cheatham.]
Keep in mind that the rates in tax brackets itself are lower at the middle class level by a few percentage points meaning 10% or so, which is not insignificant. (They are a tiny bit higher at the lower levels, as a 10% rate on income up to $18,000** (ADJUSTED income, i.e. after deductions) is now a 10% on up to $9,500, then 12% on up to $19,000.) Those who say that bill was another deal favoring the corporate and rich-man's world are wrong. It may be, I mean, but it helps the small guy enough to matter.
Now, here are a couple of points on the simplification: First, I don't see how anyone can really see this stuff without LOOKING AT THE FORMS themselves. No, Turbotax, etc, can do a fine job, and one can experiment with different scenarios, and your accountant can try to explain what's going on, as if you care (you just want the tax at a local minimum!) However, that all is no substitute for seeing the boxes and numbers in front of you.
This relates to the 2nd point, as, see that form up top? Yes, that is the whole 2018 1040 (not "-A", or "EZ", mind you), which has always been 2 pages. I suppose some stuff could have just been shifted, but possibly a lot has been eliminated. Good. Was that not Ronald Reagan's big quest? He said it should be on a postcard, and yes, he probably did make the joke that it would simply say:
a) How much did you make last year? ___________Man, I miss old Ronnie!
b) Send it in.
Are these new tax rules really a simplification to get rid of all those loopholes that the corps and the richies have got accountants and lawyers for? Seriously? No, that'll never happen until we scrap the whole damn deal. Ronnie Reagan would completely agree with Peak Stupidity, of that I have no doubt.
New 1040 out. Bon appetite, boys!
* A credit comes straight off the taxes, off the bottom line, the tax to be paid, that is. A deduction comes off the top line, the wages/interest(hahahaa!), so is worth much less. If one's income is such that his marginal rate is the new 3-points-lower 22%, the case for most of the middle-class, then a credit is worth ~ 4 1/2 times as much as a deduction.
** I've used the married-filing-jointly numbers
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The New Stasi - same as the Old Stasi?
Posted On: Wednesday - February 13th 2019 5:26PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness History Race/Genetics Orwellian Stupidity Socialism/Communism
... back when we analyzed poop by hand, and WE LIKED IT!
STASI in German meant something to the effect of "Ministry for State Security". It was arguably* the best, or worst, if you are a decent human being, spy apparatus of the other side of the Cold War, the East Bloc (no "k") as it was known by in the West. There is an excellent movie from 2006, The Lives of Others that gives a great feeling of the terrible nature of life under such a spy apparatus. (It's no documentary, just a great movie with a plot and all.)
I will defer to Wiki for a minute, since the Editing King, at least, doesn't seem a real Commie of any sort and this didn't sound too biased at first glance.
The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) or State Security Service (Staatssicherheitsdienst, SSD), commonly known as the Stasi was the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies ever to have existed. The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities throughout the city. The Stasi motto was Schild und Schwert der Partei (Shield and Sword of the Party), referring to the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) and also echoing a theme of the KGB, the Soviet counterpart and close partner, with respect to its own ruling party, the CPSU. Erich Mielke was the Stasi's longest-serving chief, in power for thirty-two of the GDR's forty years of existence.Only in
One of its main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants, and fighting any opposition by overt and covert measures, including hidden psychological destruction of dissidents (Zersetzung, literally meaning decomposition). Its Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung) was responsible for both espionage and for conducting covert operations in foreign countries. Under its long-time head Markus Wolf, this directorate gained a reputation as one of the most effective intelligence agencies of the Cold War. The Stasi also maintained contacts, and occasionally cooperated, with Western terrorists.
In 1989, the Stasi employed 91,015 people full-time, including 2,000 fully employed unofficial collaborators, 13,073 soldiers and 2,232 officers of GDR army, along with 173,081 unofficial informants inside GDR and 1,553 informants in West Germany.
For now, the Stasi-style operations within the HOMELAND have been unofficially contracted out to the Social Justice Warriors, which have till now been treated as unpaid interns. That may be changing. Mr. Allan Wall, one of the many great VDare writers**, posted Not a Satire: Black College Students to be Paid to Pore Over Old Yearbooks Seeking Racism last week. Please read Mr. Wall's article, but here's a quick excerpt of his (from Slate website:
Here’s a unique idea spawned by the blackface scandals in Virginia this week: A group of activists from Richmond has put together a GoFundMe to pay students from historically black colleges and universities to go through yearbooks and look for evidence of “racist behavior and imagery” on the pages of present-day Virginia state officials and candidates for public office. Community organizer Chelsea Higgs Wise and another activist, Bob Bland, had the idea for this project on Monday; as of Friday morning, the GoFundMe had raised about $6,000 of its $10,000 goal.This is the best best we have come up with for a Stasi so far? Activists from "historically black" (white people don't want to go there) colleges will be funded to look into the pasts of politicians and officials of the government of Virginia***. Alright, alright, that's just for starters. Will they even spend any effort and gas, or money on ebay, to go back and get these yearbooks - aren't they on-line now? Knowing young people, I think the most they will do is sit down at a computer, or on their phones as they sit extra-long at 4-way stop signs and google up whatever odd stuff they can find, white people in black face, black people in whiteface, yellow people in brownface ... lots of possibilities, along with "most likely to succeed ... in the KKK" "most likely to succeed in the FBI, then the KKK", ...
[SNIP]
This GoFundMe, sponsored by a group on the other end of the political spectrum, looks to systematize this kind of grassroots research into politicians’ backgrounds. The researchers plan to start with state-level elected officials in Virginia—those that are facing re-election in 2019 or 2020, as well as those that community members flag as possibly having (as Wise put it in a phone call) “the kind of implicit bias that could be shown through their yearbooks.”
Next, it will be looking through the decades old comments, posts and tweets of those who aren't in official office. Still right now, I'm not very impressed with the operation, which is a good thing indeed.
The simplest tasks that these new Stasi members will undertake will use technology so powerful that the old East German Stasi members would have been creaming in their knickers, nay, partaking in Party Circle Jerks on short notice, were they to even think about it. They'd have been calling each other in the middle of the night on the land-line phones, then having meetings at headquarters, which would sound thusly:
"My patriotic comrades, I have thought of some wonderful ideas while in the outhouse this evening. This could not wait for tomorrow! We will make Herr Mielke so proud of us."It's a whole lot easier nowadays to dig up dirt on people, with lots of it provided willingly or ignorantly. OTOH, even the best of us are having a hard time keeping our lives private enough to even compare with perhaps suspect # 1 in Cold-War era Communist East Germany (no, it was - seriously - the "Democratic Republic of Germany").
"My first idea will save our hard-working field officers so many hours every day. See, we will provide phones to all of our population."
"Whoa now, hold on Comrade, even inner-party members such as myself just got our first phones this year. My beautiful black bakelite machine is so conveniently attached to kitchen table. I only haf problem when using outhouse, so I must turn zee volume up very loud, and run into house with my pants still down for possible important Party directives. It is amazing that Communism has given us such advanced technology vs. the Western Capitalists, but we don't have enough phones for all Democratic Republic of Germany ... right now there are 146 of them in central supply."
"No, no, you misunderstand. See, my idea is have something called iPhone, it is computer, Comrade. One need not even talk on it, like your advanced land-line, but can type like telegraph, but in color. People will send each other information. We intercept information and, Violas! (and Cellos, please), we will have such information that takes a thousand Comrade-hours in 10 minutes! People will name names. They will give out their sex organ descriptions. Imagine, Comrades, we will no longer have to tap hotel sewer pipe during 1st night of Capitalist Americans' stay to scrutinize bowel movement for information. Naive proles will send this information on their personal wireless, WILLINGLY!"
"Nah, iss ridiculous! Why will un-patriotic citizens give out such information? We must hold ear to wall for hours at a time right now, and citizens still talk in whispers and sign language, un-patriotic swine that they are! I have crook in my neck since wonderful Soviet Motherland secured our country for Communist society back at Yalta, Comrade ... that time building Berlin Wall did not help either ..."
"Aha, that is my brilliance, if I do say so myself. Citizens will join clubs and use internet on computer. They will spend much time for people to LIKE them so much and FOLLOW them, so they will tell us their secrets for purposes of blackmail on computer, saving us so much fieldwork and patriotic adultery-spy-sex."
"I still do not understand. Are our people not already LIKED by Big Brother? They can FOLLOW Big Brother, Comrade, and even better, he LUVS LUVS LUVS them."
"No, these [LIKES] are buttons on a computer. They will not be real, but people will stay on spying system for many hours daily to make sure they are LIKED and can FOLLOW The Lives of Others". [ ... wakes up, "Sheist, still in outhouse! Such a pleasant dream it was! And what the f__k is Komputer?!" ]
Here's one more quick tidbit from the Wiki article about the time after the fall of Soviet/East Bloc Communism:
Numerous Stasi officials were prosecuted for their crimes after 1990. After German reunification, the surveillance files that the Stasi had maintained on millions of East Germans were laid open, so that any citizen could inspect their personal file on request; these files are now maintained by the Stasi Records Agency.It doesn't say anything about beat-downs - hmmm, maybe Wiki could use a new Editing King. Anyway, the modern SJWs may want to read a little Wiki, if nothing else, and learn what happens when the Commies finally get ousted. They should have a chat with old Nick Ceaușescu, using a medium and ouija board, of course, as his countrymen finally executed him on Christmas day 30 years ago. No, I don't mean ... I'm just sayin', is all ....
It's a really good thing our governments, universities, media, and other institutions are filled to the brim with incompetents. Otherwise, this Orwellian crap would already be beyond the level of East Germany in the heyday of the Stasi.
* I mean, if you want to argue, as that's just what I've read a number of times.
** Mr. Wall, with his fluency in Spanish and decade-or-more experience of living in Old Mexico, normally writes his "SAID IN SPANISH" columns, his interpretation of speeches and media output in Mexico, not originally meant for American eyes and ears, along with many other insights from his great knowledge of the Hispanic political scene and its connection to the immigration invasion of America.
*** You're supposed to do that BEFORE you elect the people - Democracy 101, people.
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Virginia Governor Northan as Branch Manager Michael Scott
Posted On: Tuesday - February 12th 2019 6:32PM MST
In Topics: Humor Political Correctness Race/Genetics
"“There’s so much deep division in our society,
I tell ya what—it’s got me spooked.”
(Caption stolen from a Generic American unz.com commenter - big hat-tip!)
If you have been keeping up with this type of news, the constant digging up and airing of grievances (yeah, Seinfeld "Festivus" clip will have to appear elsewhere), you may be familiar with the Ralph Cramden, no Northam, case. The stupidity of this one is almost self-contained, as the Democrat-squad Governor of Virginia has been the most anti-white politcally-correct bastard to begin with, so Peak Stupidity has no problem seeing him squirm after accusations about a 1984 photo from medical school. Medical school, yeah. "No, I don't think I'm gonna ever let 'em cut on me."
He has insisted he will not resign the Governorship. Peak Stupidity doesn't care either way. The whole thing is pretty humorous (although the Stasi-ist digging up of silliness in people's backgrounds will be the point of an upcoming more serious post). Governor Northam's apology press conference was supposedly disjointed and provided a good view of the lack of "gravitas" (there's an oldy) with this guy, but, again, I didn't watch. His suggestion of his demonstrating the Michael Jackson* moonwalk to prove his bonafides and solidarity with the people of the urban persuasion sounded like the guy below, who has no TV wife to give him that surly "there will be no more sex if you don't stop right here" look. I'd have gone to youtube for the moonwalk.
This is perhaps the most hilarious The Office single scene that I can remember. To give the background, Michael Scott, the white guy there, is boss of the office. He got in trouble from corporate for doing a Chris Rock imitation, and so the black guy you see has been paid to run a sensitivity-session for the ~15 person office. (See, Michael Scott likes to always run the show, and hates that this guy gets to talk to his employees to begin with.)
You will not regret the 1 min 45 sec. of your time wasted.
(Look at Michael Scott at 0:45 to 0:48 - he takes the re-enacting thing very seriously - this is why it is my number 1 favorite funny show of all time.)
On that same Steve Sailer thread, commenter Mr. Anon adds:
What? O.J. Simpson joke ... too soon?The governor still contends that he is not in the photograph of one person in blackface and another in KKK robes but could not say how it wound up on his yearbook page, nor why he initially took responsibility for it, other than to say that he was “shocked” when he first saw it on an iPhone the afternoon of Feb. 1.Governor Northam further stated that he would spend the rest of his term trying to find the real minstrels.
* There's another guy that used to be in blackface ... way back in his ABC-123 days. After that he got better(?)
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Ship of Fools - book review - Part 1
Posted On: Tuesday - February 12th 2019 9:00AM MST
In Topics: Pundits Books
Four months ago, Peak Stupidity posted a review of a review of our #1 youtube pundit Tucker Carlson's recent book, Ship of Fools. That post points to a very good VDare review by Jake Bowyer, along with amazon.com reviews. The latter were mostly just political arguments, as amazon review of anything controversial become, though amusing nonetheless. The book wasn't then out yet for perusal by the PS editorial staff, but the library finally had a copy available (for some reason, we did not get sent an advance copy in the mail - damn Postal Service!)
This will be split up into two parts, simply because I've only read 1/2 of it yet. It's very quick, easy, and enjoyable reading - don't get me wrong. I read 1/2 of it in < 2 hours yesterday and I just wanted to discuss it while it's fresh (very different from most Peak Stupidity book reviews, I'll admit).
The "Ship" is our nation, and the "Fools" are not the American people (though many are!) but our elite that "run" the place. Mr. Carlson's introduction lays out his theme that the elites of our country don't feel any "noblesse oblige"* toward ordinary American-heritage Americans. Tucker inserts his explanations of why that has become the case in various places.
The first two regular chapters are descriptions of how America is off the rails in terms of immigration/dieversity and then foreign warmongering. This is very much why Steve Sailer had written some months ago (very hard to find right now) that Mr. Carlson could have read his writings on unz to get his background. That's not saying (by either PS or Steve Sailer) that he DID, as ideas can come independently. Two things come to mind to support it. One is a sentence about the Lazarus pro-immigration poem bolted somewhere on the Statue of Liberty (well after it's reception from the French in 1876, BTW) as if it were a part of the Constitution. That's almost "straight from", though maybe "just like" is the case, Sailer's "Zeroeth Amendment" meme that he uses a lot. The second is the first two main chapters themselves. They are basically and evisceration of the "Invite-the-world/Invade-the-World" behavior of the American elites broken into the two parts (in that same order, too)!
In these two chapters, the reader here will immediately recognize all the stupidity in both those realms that has been destroying American society and political/economic respectability, respectfully, over the last 5 decades. It is good reading, with a few anecdotes of Mr. Carlson himself and some of American political history that one may have not heard of. That was all very enjoyable.
Within these main chapters, the big concept from Mr. Carlson is that bad things are happening in American politics because the left (still called "liberals" in the book) have NOT been pushing back against the right on both issues, massive immigration and foreign interventionalism. This is not at all to say that Mr. Carlson is left-wing. If you've seen him on TV or youtube, you'd know better. In fact, he starts off with some humorous stories about his liberal elementary school teacher in 1970's California - great stuff too! As Mr. Sailer had written in his review, Carlson melds elements of the left and right. He is a labor union supporter, discussing the history of anti-immigration farm labor union leader Cesar Chavez in good terms, along with other (at least non-government) unions. On the foreign-policy side, he is not just rightly against the Neocons, but very pacifist in general. The latter is not a bad thing, but in his short political history, he seems to give short shrift to the Cold War, IMO.
It's all pretty even-handed, though. None of Mr. Carlson's "liberal" views are anything like the ideas of the current left in, say, the Democrat squad of The Party. Just glancing ahead, I see that Tucker has chapters that criticize the anti-free-speech Orwellian Stupidity of the modern left along with the Genderbender madness that would not be a real issue in politics in a serious country.
Here's where I have my first problem with the ideas in Ship of Fools: Mr. Carlson discusses how the elite, with their lack of noblesse oblige, are destroying the country for their own benefit. These people are supposed to, per Carlson, lead us better, as the political and business elites did in the old days. In the American politics of the past, he notes that the pro-labor, anti-war left fought the pro-business and more warmongering right** at every turn. Now that they've gotten together within 3 decades*** to all be pro-warmongering and pro-industrial-scale-immigration, the general American public has been screwed. (Mr. Carlson gives a nice page or two to nailing Max Boot and his position as expert on American aggression, with Lyin' Press complicity, is GREAT STUFF. If you've not heard of him, Max Boot, an immigrant from Russia is basically Chief of the Neocons)
Wait, where's the problem, now, the reader may well ask? The problem is that Mr. Carlson comes off as slightly too Statist for me. I've seen a lot worse, and still very much like Tucker Carlson, but his words read as though this "ship" can bet turned around - that we just need to be lead better. I haven't read his conclusion yet, with any solutions (tomorrow, I guess), but his problem description seems to be rooted in our having the wrong elites. Yes, Mr. Tucker, they are terrible. Who voted for these guys? Who supports the big business elites? Do people that support the Zuckerbergs and John McCain have real choices? How much and for how long has the public neglected to worry about encroaching Big Government? Maybe people a lot bigger and more sinister are behind these elites. Possibly they all have too much power due to Big-Government and the resulting Crony-Capitalism (bordering on actual economic fascism). Is it just a matter of the wrong people leading us? I differ with him on this. I'd rather we be lead LESS. But then I'm just some "muh Constitutional" fool.
I'll read the rest of Ship of Fools within a day, time permitting, and get to Part 2.
* It's not that it's hard to figure out the French term, meaning "the obligations of the nobles/elites", but I included this as-of-yet unread-by-me wiki link because the book really leans on that concept.
** The right being more pro-war was really only the case during the Cold War, anyway.
*** A small quibble here is that Carlson says "one generation", which would mean only back since ~ the later 1990's, but in further writing, he notes "since 1985", so more than 3 decades.
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Legal Stupidity on the back of the phone book
Posted On: Monday - February 11th 2019 6:52PM MST
In Topics: Music Feminism Legal Stupidity
Yes, there are still phone books where I live. OK, at least there are yellow pages. It's just that I'd thought I'd have to scrounge for other types of material for shooting experiments, as that was pretty much all they've been good for, since the internet and cell phones. There was an interesting ad on the back:
Names redacted to protect the innocent (bloggers, not the lawyers).
Look at that, the husband looks pretty mean and tough. The poor, cute (from the profile view, but probably overweight below the ad height... oh, which is probably why the guy's had enough) lady is very innocent. She needs the help of those smiling, always-glad-to-help for FREE (... and contingency fees) nice gentlemen who'll be like knights on white
Peak Stupidity has been around for, what, over 2 years, and has not even had the time to point out the "Legal Stupidity" (brand, spanking new topic key!) yet. It's a big one. In the family court realm, it is very closely tied to feminism, which has pushed the idea that women should initiate divorce whenever the mood strikes them to say that they are not happy or fulfilled, or Cosmo magazine tells them that. These sleazy lawyers are glad to take full advantage of that. Breaking up families is not something that concerns them, as those BMWs aren't going to pay for themselves.
I bet those guys won't be so tough after the SHTF and men have had enough of this shit. Please, corporate gigs and defenders of the Constitution aside, Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be lawyers ... take it, Waylon & Willie:
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Rounding up for the Army?
Posted On: Saturday - February 9th 2019 3:43PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Economics US Feral Government Big-Biz Stupidity
Unless by that you mean, creating widows and orphans.
While visiting a take-out eating establishment on my travels last week, I was asked if I wanted to round up the change "for the army". "For the army? Are you kidding me" is what ... I wanted to say. "Nah." was all, as I took the advice of a young guy years ago to pick my battles. Really, though, does the US Army need my spare change? Maybe it'll come to that when the financial stupidity stops (though, even then, I'll not be donating my change). Just the visible portion of the US military budget is in the $700,000,000,000 range yearly. Let's see, my 85 cents is exactly 12.1 x 10-9 %! Quantum physicians, or even quantum physicists, for that matter, don't like to deal with numbers this insignificant. No, I'd rather use my change for half a pack of peanut M&Ms, thank you, Ma'am.
I've given change to the late Dave Thomas's establishments, almost every time I've gone to Wendy's over many years, as that money is to go to help kids get adopted. Peak Stupidity has rightfully given Big Business in these "pages" lots of grief, but I make an exception for lots of privately owned or owner-dominated businesses. I feel that Wendy's would make a lot better use of my charity than the big charities like The United Way, and the US Army would be in a class by itself in wasteful "charity" cases.
Another thing was that I use cash a lot, something I recommend for multiple reasons (see Chipotle - no credit, no debit and hold the E. Coli, along with Cash is King - Part 2 and Part 3). Hmmm, I did wonder one thing first, than another thing:
1) Did the young woman just not like making change? I know math is hard and all, but ...
2) I began to wonder later on, if I'd have heard the same request were I using a card to pay. I'm not sure I'll get a chance to check that out, but I might. Who makes the effort to check - on both ends of the transaction - if it's done in cash? How do I know this money is really going to I-corps, 1st battalion, 2nd division, 101st Airborne?
It's probably mostly for reasons that I don't like how the American military is using the hundreds of billions of dollars to "defend" our country that this thing pissed me off. I'm not thanking the troops everytime I see a guy in military garb, as this is not the big one, WWII, and many say even that one was not a proper use of the US military - that's arguable for sure. No, I'm not at all thankful for your service in Afghanistan or Iraq, Syria, Yemen or a hundred other places. Sorry, it's not personal. I know most of you are doing a good job at what you're doing, but it's not the right thing. Some are putting their butts on the line too, with a few getting maimed or killed, but it's not for the right thing. I'd rather you all be at the southern border of the US, actually defending something.
From what I've seen though, the cash is flowing pretty well to you all too. Other than special units and airmen, I know most are in it just to get training in skills on the taxpayer's dime, get some college money, or it's really your only way forward. That's fair enough, but let's be honest about it.
Peak Stupidity will just have to present this same song by the Ben Folds Five that we already featured way back in a university bubble post, as Mr. Fold's lyrics are excellent. The song covers a lot, but it applies so much to this post that, well, you've just got to listen to it AGAIN!
Ben Folds explains his thoughts about joining the Army:
It's from their album called The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner.
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Snowden - movie review - Part 2
Posted On: Saturday - February 9th 2019 2:28PM MST
In Topics: Humor Political Correctness Movies Orwellian Stupidity
(continued from Part 1)
The last post ended with my promising to bad-mouth the non-political aspects of the Oliver Stone-directed movie Snowden about, you guessed it, Ed Snowden. I did not mean to imply that the movie sucked by any means when I wrote that, along with the diatribe on the poltical slant of the movie (toward Ed Snowden, with which I agree, but toward the "mainstream media" with which I surely don't!).
This post is just about a some details that I was amused about, mostly involving the computer-geek screen scenes. If you've seen
The suspenseful scene near the end of Snowden had so much of the usual gimmicks, I figure these are written in some kind of geek-movie-makers psuedo-code or something. Look, geek-movie protaganists - if you find yourself in this situation, where you're still in the middle of hacking or downloading some files, and the mean-ass boss who will fire you or have you arrested is coming around the corner, here's what you do: MINIMIZE! MINIMIZE! oops, minimize. Maximize some window of your shopping cart on Amazon or the tracking info on your UPS delivery to "the focus". Anything! Oh, there's little pop-up windows, you say? Do you know how to run a process in the background? I don't know - you're the geeks! Just don't get me so worried next time! Every movie like this has got my heart rate up to 150 bpm and blood pressure up to 150 mm-hg as I fear "OMG! When will the program finish?! Your boss is 5 ft from your office and closing!" Geeez, that was close.
Listen guys, I don't like Windows any more than you do. Could you not get into the shell, or open up that "run" window that looks like the old MS-DOS? GOT
Oh, they want it like this?? NEVERMIND!
And another thing: There's the nice black guy who you know can do no wrong. Of course you've got to have that in any movie now, or you'll be called bad names and never work in dis bidness again. The problem is, that you know everything this guy's gonna do. They can't make the movie any differently for the scenes he's in. Well, of course this guy did the right thing and covered up Mr. Snowden's little jump drive that he dropped with his foot. I saw that coming, so I'm proud of myself. Now, this NSA geek knew sign languages in addition to 7 other verbal languages, per the scene below:
There's this big microphone hanging from the ceiling. Were there no little microphones existing in 2013, as I don't understand the big RCA radio microphone? Well, OK, there's a microphone hanging from the freakin' ceiling, so these guys got the bright idea to say their final goodbyes (as Snowden revealed his intentions to reveal the extent of NSA spying) in sign language! What about the, uhh, cameras, guys?! Just after a scene in which the boss appears on some giant-ass 120" TV screen, and the security is tight as a Hildabeast's ass, we are supposed to believe that there aren't cameras all over the place INSIDE the NSA offices. (I would guess even more than OUTSIDE NSA offices.) You suspense-movie makers need to up your game some.
You can get over that stuff. You can get past the glorification of the Lyin' Press, though that's a little off-putting and requires lots more suspension-of-disbelief (a term we use in the movie-review biz). It'd probably be best NOT to get all your history, recent or otherwise, from the movies, but the Ed Snowden story is worth learning about. He's cast in the movie as the perfectly righteous guy. That's not all the truth, of course. You may learn more elsewhere, but from all I've learned so far, the guy is a hero. I've maintained that since his revelations in 2013. Peak Stupidity wishes Ed Snowden a decent life in Russia, where he currently resides, and gives the movie two thumbs up.
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Another one out of the park by Ann Coulter
Posted On: Friday - February 8th 2019 6:08PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Trump Pundits
Peak Stupidity's favorite literary pundit, Ann Coulter, unlike some we could name, cough, ex-president Øb☭ma, cough, cough, Miss Coulter is a real Constitutional scholar. Maybe she didn't major in it in law school, but she knows the document and lives that document in her writing. As a Libertarian myself, and a Conservative, there has been but one issue I've disagreed with the lady in a decade*. That's a damn good record. Would you marry a lady just for her political views? That's not usually a good reason**, I'd have to say, but were I not married... were I her type... maybe we'll meet in some magical Libertarian bug-out country after the SHTF ... on the beach ... just daydreaming, where were we?
In Ann Coulter To Donald Trump: Hey, Commander! Start Commanding!, she again lambasts the President on his lack of action on illegal immigration across the southern border. I hope her next column will do the same regarding his treasonous talk recently on LEGAL immigration. It would especially help if the guy really does read this stuff by Miss Coulter, as she is a pretty good overall representative of his base, I'd say. Does he really want to get re-elected in a couple of years? He'd better listen to this lady, if he cares about that, or more importantly (for us) what happens to this place.
Please read the whole thing. I'll just include on excerpt with nothing in particular to say about it:
A couple of years ago, an American sailor who had just helped build a school in Ban Nong Muang, Thailand, was proudly quoted in Seabee Magazine: "My recruiter told me to join the Seabees. He said they build schools in foreign countries for kids."The biggest point Miss Coulter made, using writings about, and the document itself, this one,
The U.S. military does these things in other countries but, we're told, can't build a wall in our own.
At this point, our only hope may be for the border states to secede from the Union and form their own nation, so that we can send troops to build them a wall. They could call their new country "YouMustGoBackistan."
is that making OFFENSIVE war was meant to be very difficult, while making DEFENSIVE war was meant to be simple, with action to be taken immediately by the, you guessed it, Commander-in-Chief!
#SAD and #PISSED, Mr. President.
* She is a supporter of Affirmative Action for certain people. Peak Stupidity is dead against it.
** See bottom of this post for more on a Power-Pundit-Couple - nah, it didn't work out ...
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Snowden - movie review - Part 1
Posted On: Friday - February 8th 2019 9:33AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Movies Media Stupidity Liberty/Libertarianism Orwellian Stupidity Deep State
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Prequel (4/09/19): I am amazed at myself here for forgetting that I'd semi-reviewed this movie already right here back in December of '17! That is ridiculous, as it has the "Movies" topic key and I could have searched first. So, the reader may want to go to that previous post first, before reading this and Part 2. I'll give myself credit - the short 3-paragraph review 1 1/3 years ago matches these newer 2 very well.
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I can already see enough coming that I want to write in this post on the movie Snowden to require another one "first thing" tomorrow. Unlike with the review of The Green Inferno which required a Part 2 to avoid Peak Stupidity being a spoiler for the reader, both posts really can't be spoilers as the story of American patriot Ed Snowden should be known to anyone who either follows the Lyin' Press infotainment, or, hopefully, more like keeps up on the real stories on the blogs. It's not a documentary, but "based on a true story" that we can find out lots of details about.
As usual, this is not the review in which you read about the lighting, the cast, and the cinematography. I don't care. However, Oliver Stone, the director of this movie, has got some guts, I'll give him that. I don't say that mostly based on this move, which I'll explain. However, it's the interview embedded below (which I hope is the one I watched already) that shows me he really bucks the establishment movie scene. There was JFK, which was said to be controversial. I have not seen that one, but I'll just say that the JFK assassination has been covered up, yet speculated on, for so long that I think
The politics in the movie Snowden start off early on, as his girlfriend below meets him face to face and they start talking politics. Though medically-discharged from the Special Forces, Ed Snowden must have really been a geek (this is based on a true story, so ...) to start talking politics on the first date - big, big, no-no.
Again, I don't even care to keep track of the actors [what kind of damn movie reviewer are you?! - Ed], but the lady above is Mr. Snowden's steady girlfriend, excepting a few breakups-with-cause until the end of the story. As cute as she is, I really think she should have been just a tad firmer around the body. As
See there you go, now that last paragraph goes in a review! Back to the politics now. The girl actually uses that term "liberal" in the scene the picture above is from, I kid you not. How quaint is that? I don't think Snowden's movie girlfriend means "classical liberal" in the vein of Thomas Jefferson, as much as Mr.Jefferson would have agreed with Mr. Snowden on the NSA surveillance business. From the context in the scene, she meant liberal in the modern sense of left-wing, and I thought the term "liberal" had finally been thankfully left behind. Nope, near the end of the movie, Snowden's big change of heart is supposed to mean he should have listened to his stripper girlfriend and been a "liberal" from the time she
Oliver Stone purports to be anti-establishment in this movie, with the establishment being the Deep State but also the "right" in general. His liberals are the good guys, that want everything out in the open and no brown people overseas randomly droned to death. This is kind of a quaint notion too. Does he not know that the modern establishment is globalist/neocon (with Conservative, Inc. sidekicks) and not in the tiniest bit classically liberal? Is the left now against war and stuff? Does Stone know it's not 1965 right now? Who is this establishment that Mr. Snowden fought against? The movie puts Ed Snowden in a very good light.* Snowden ended up fighting the big state by revealing the Orwellian practices of the NSA. That was a major gutsy move that made him a big target and therefore a fugitive and man-without-a-state. Oliver Stone does shine some light on the Deep State, but I think, as a sop to his movie business colleagues, had to make the good guys out to be "liberals".
At the end of the movie, the British Guardian newspaper journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, holed up with Mr. Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel room, made a big thing of praising the "Mainstream Media" when their big-wig in London decided to air this story. Yeah, "Mainstream Media" were the heroes too! Sure. I think it was more like their worry that they'd be upstaged. Greenwald worked for The Guardian but had been an internet journalist (and real Constitutional lawyer) before that. He represented the new media. If the
See that's the sop to the left by Mr. Stone, showing the Lyin Press, aka Government Media, as anti-establishment, like modern Woodwards and Bernsteins of Watergate fame (or notoriety, depending on whether you liked that dick Nixon).
It gets quainter and quainter. The real TV infotainment footage shown in that movie scene near the end featured the Wolf Blitzers and such proudly railing on the US Gov't's unconstitutional spying on Americans. Yeah, like Wolf freakin' Blitzer cares about the US Constitution. The mainstream media and the left were gonna end the killing of brown people overseas again! Funny, but I don't recall any "Liberal" presidential administrations making a big effort. 8 years of Commie Øb☭ma didn't change a thing. It's not like the Hildabeast would have either. She never even SAID she would change the American warmongering foreign policy (though, granted what the Hildabeast says and what goes through her reptilian mind have no known correlation whatsoever). Going back to her sweetheart, executor of the laws of the land through most of the 1990's, well, that "liberal" started a war to help Moslems kill Christians in Bosnia and had an aspirin factory in north Africa bombed to distract for a minor (for him!) scandal.
Oh, and there was Piers Morgan on the small screen, within the big-screen of this movie. Yeah, this very same gun-grabber was on TV there gabbing about this great development in freedom. OK, right, so we need to fight these Orwellian Deep-State people in the establishment so they don't keep spying on us, but not with guns, though, OK? Whatchu' talkin' about, Winston?
Man, that "movie review" got political real quick-like. I promise to bad-mouth more of the movie itself in the 2nd post.
This is just a short segment with Tucker Carlson, but I can't find the original one I'd watched a good while back. Even so, refuting the Lyin' Press' hatred for "The Russian" and treating President Putin like a human being has got to put him somewhat on the outs with those people and his people in The Biz.
* Just for fairness, here's a ridiculous-at-first-glance counterpoint with some neoconnery I didn't know existed in The Federalist (just never have read it before, I guess). by one Rebeccah Heinrichs.
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[UPDATE 4/9/19:]Added 1st paragraph to note that I had semi-reviewed this movie in another post that I had forgotten about!
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