Recent history of gasoline prices - Part 1
Posted On: Saturday - September 1st 2018 3:55PM MST
In Topics: History Economics Inflation
(Sorry, not the best of graphs, but I'll explain discrepancies during the post.)
Pushing on here in this never-ending series of posts about inflation, I'd promised/threatened to write something about gasoline prices over the years. OK, look, I like graphs, that's the 1st thing. Also, I really do have a good memory for how much I used to pay for stuff, good enough to even correct the data in the graphs displayed here. They were the best I could find on short notice, and show the general trends, but they are off by a bit here and there. Lastly, the price of gasoline, at last when it's not stable for a stretch, is always a hot topic, as the reasons for wild changes can be attributed to all sorts of political goings-on. When it's up on the high side, gasoline or diesel can get to be a significant part of the family budget and change people's lifestyles.
I will just go over the recent history from my memory, with reference to the graphs (in this and the next post).
1960's through early 1970's: I wasn't at the pump during these years, as my banana-seat Stingray didn't require the petrol. However, I can remember a number of things discussed later by the folks. Gas was in the high 20 ¢ to low 30 ¢ per gallon where I lived. People would drive a few miles out of the way to save 2 cents. That was in the 7 - 10% range so why not? I'll tell you why not, sometimes: when your station wagon got 15 mpg, and you drove around for 10 minutes, ... well, I don't know.
That 0.9 ¢ at the end of the price, say 29.9 ¢/gal was significant then, though I don't know when that started (the marketing MBAs were at it even back then!), but at that point we were talking about 3 -5 %, not an insignificant amount. Now it's still $2.659/gal, not $2.65/gal. Yep, I checked recently when I filled up to an even number. The stations don't even bother to put that 0.9¢ on the signs now.
Keep this in mind through the rest of the post, if you would. It took 2-3 SILVER dimes to buy a gallon of gas a decade earlier when all the dimes were silver.
1973-4 gas "crisis": I used the quotes because the media-induced fear of the nation's running out of gas was very high in proportion to the cut-back in production by the OPEC countries (in retaliation for US support of Israel, as I recall). As I'll explain later, crude oil and gasoline prices seem to dynamically unstable. Besides the major short-term availability problem (long "gas-lines" and even odd-even-day purchasing), the price went up from that 2-decade-long-stable 20 - 35 ¢ level up toward 60 ¢/gal quickly. (The nominal price never went back down. That was the point at which families in this still-very-prosperous country had to start to take gasoline into account in their budgets.
A big change that came about from this higher price level was the Japanese capturing a significant portion of the auto. market in the US. This was partially just fortuitous, as the big 4 American automakers were geared up for building the big (gas milage, what's that?) big vehicles, the Japanese had been building small vehicles for a long time. There were 3 reasons (2 regarding gas price):
1) Taxes. The US, with it's still wonderful small-government mentality did not tax the living shit out of gasoline as most other developed countries did. The Japanese had long seen the need to drive economically.
2) Japan never had a domestic market in crude oil, so they were always dependent on imported oil, meaning paying a bit more.
3) Japan is an urban society, and was 5 x more densely-populated as California. Just as in Europe, the cars tended to be small to be useable in the packed cities.
It was really a big deal to see the Japanese cars making inroads. People needed to save money on gas, period. Though most were very patriotic in the day when Jap cars were made in Japan and American cars were made in America, this patriotism broke down. It also mattered lots that Americans were discovering the much higher quality of the Japanese cars during this period. This was still the age in which at 50,000 miles, your car had a good chance of developing major problems already. The new imports from Japan weren't like this. There was no return from this development either.
1979-80 gas "crisis" I can well remember this one. Gas went from 70 - 80 ¢/gal up toward $1.50 in a short period, maybe a few months. This was a time of high inflation in general, and Jimmy Carter got the blame. No, he didn't really help either, but with one exception to that. (More on this shortly.) This was the time of the Iranian hostage crisis. Whether that was the real cause of the oil price woes or not is not something I'm going to get into. I'll just say that the discussion of the politics of oil is just as volatile as the gasoline product.
(... will be continued in the very next post - split up for length.)
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Feminist Cops vs. African "Refugees" - venue: Modern Sweden
Posted On: Friday - August 31st 2018 8:33AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity US Police State Feminism Female Stupidity
The video below shows an attempted arrest by 3 or 4 female Swedish police of one of the new diversified residents of their country. It appears the guy, Mr. Diverse African "Refugee", started off throwing rocks or bricks at the squad car windshield, and it escalated to a 4 minute low-intensity brawl. I can honestly say that I didn't know whom to root for. A better way to put that is that I didn't know which side I wanted to lose the fight more.
In this corner, you've got your female Swedish cops, because, feminism and all. The difference in body mass, muscle mass, and experience should be no factor for this type of job*, right? After all, if equality were to suffer, that'd be much worse than just not enforcing the laws or what-have-you. Sweden has been tops in the feminism stupidity, perhaps number 1 in the entire world. There is GIRL POWER that can be unleashed on a perp, invoked with a few magic words "ISIS, ISIS, ISIS!"
In this corner, you've got your worthless African immigrants, living in these tenement buildings with no jobs, lots of welfare benefits increasing their laziness, and not a really big handle on the concepts of feminism and GIRL POWER. I really can't blame the guy for starting trouble, as he's probably Moslem, meaning that he reckons those ladies should be wearing burkas, not police officer wear, and really should have a male cop driving them around in the squad cars to begin with. Oh, and additionally, there's no particular reason to listen to them because they are women to begin with. Throwing rocks at the windshield of the squad car is virtually required under ISLAM. Plus it's fun, but no, they don't break as easily as you think (been locked out of your car before in the desert?)
Sweden is somewhat under 10% Moslem, and has admitted large numbers of supposed "refugees" from all over, to show they care. Sometimes I think a loss in a small battle, such as these migrants winning of their battles with the cops, especially the feminized sort is a good thing. It often can get the population to transfer something useful into their thick heads, such as "Girl Power is just in the movies? What?" "Our migrants can't assimilate into our society?! What, but, but diversity?" Yeah, it can take a while. A couple of blows to the head speed up this knowledge transfer immensely. OTOH, I'd like to see many of the migrants get the shit kicked out of them and send home.
Let's not spoil the match. With more color commentary to come, (pun unintentional but serendipitous), let's switch to our 2nd-story-window-cam:
Play-by-play from commenter BernCar:
Good Samaritan takes down the malefactor for the cops and they pull him off--"Never mind. We'll handle this ourselves. Just the four of us against one guy. No problem." Then they don't gang rush in a mass overwhelming him even though each of the cops outweighed him by all appearances. So the guy gets loose, decks one of the cops, breaks the car window and ambles off. Dumbasses. I'm like you--it's hard to know who to root for here.I was hoping both sides would get some good blows in. The videographer and his buddy were laughing when the guy threw a good punch in a coupla' minutes into the vid, but at first I had thought they were Swedish. Then, I saw the dark left hand with the bling on it on the windowsill – yeah, I wonder what they are thinking. Exactly what are these people supposed to make of their new home?
Oh, then the guy starts in throwing dirt bombs. That brings back early memories from childhood. I used to love how the dirt would make “smoke” when it landed. No cops were involved, though. There was this incident later, at college, when we had a bottle rocket battle going on across 100 yards or so of “the quad” one night. The lady campus cop came over, and all she could threaten us with was “cut that out, or I’ll … I’ll call some more police!” Man, I miss bottle rockets.
*BTW, a long-term reader would know that the Peak Stupidity blog is not particularly cop-supporting, as we value Liberty more than the average American. I don't like the militarization of the police that has occurred (see US Police State topic key for more.) I'd rather that cops dealt with citizens as human beings, per a recent post, "First Responders" - The Cops. That won't and can't happen much the more diversified America becomes.
That leads to the matter of the "fairer sex" being cops. It's much easier for a bigger (not necessarily more intimidating unless necessary) human being to handle situations that have not, and should not, get to the point of use of firearms. That means not just men, but bigger men. Yeah, it'd be nice if society was so non-violent that the smallest lady could just cite the law and set a troublemaker straight that way. Things often escalate, especially in certain populations, and that's the time the fact that the law-breaker can't beat the cop up can just calm things down. Pepper spray and mace may have helped somewhat in this regard.
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[UPDATED: 09/31 am:] Seeing as my writing was moslty just color commentary (do they still use that term, as I haven't watched the sportsball on TV in years?), I feel Mr. BernCar's play-by-play, or blow-by-blow, as they'd call it in the boxing or unwanted immigrant realm should be in the post too.
[UPDATED: 10/05/19:] Video was gone. This new one should be the same thing.
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TBA may be the "death sentence for thousands of women"
Posted On: Thursday - August 30th 2018 6:44PM MST
In Topics: Trump Liberty/Libertarianism Female Stupidity
Per the NRA mag, America's First Freedom, Women's March Pre-Bashes Trump SCOTUS Pick. What a title that is, so let me explain. These women are too lazy to actually march, so "Women's March" is the just the name of an anti-gun group. The term "pre-bashing" is something to be explained in a minute here, and SCOTUS is that weird-ass acronym for Supreme Court Of The United States. That's really not necessary, as we all know which Supreme Court we are all talking about.
The short blurb says that this group had already made up their talking points against the next Supreme Court nominee before they even knew who the nominee was going to be. That would be Brett Kavanaugh, but the statement by the group had just "XX" as a placeholder and was unfortunately released with everything but the name (of a guy they didn't know yet). They should have use the more common "TBA" for To Be Announced, at least. This just shows the blatant agenda against anyone to be appointed by President Trump. Sure, they may rightly figure that the appointee will most likely not be on their side. However, when you have all the details in your statement ahead of time, well, we know your agenda. Here's the pre-bashing stupidity:
In response to Donald Trump's nomination of XX to the Supreme Court of the United States, The Women's March released the following statement: Trump's announcement today [ of a guy they didn't know yet] is a death sentence for thousands of women in the United StatesWhew, ever exaggerated any, March ladies? Really, you are so lucky to be living in a time and in a country which has a Constitution that prohibits just that, a man in power that could indeed decide to just sentence you all to death.
It so happens that in our glorious Constitution, the best founding document of a country ever written (by all white men, BTW), there is one line in Article 1, Section 9 that states:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.A "Bill of Attainder" is a law written solely to apply to a certain individual or group. If we didn't have that pesky Constitution, President Trump could indeed decide that these women are a hindrance to the nation's well-being and should be terminated with prejudice. Article 1 sets limits on Congress, and Section 9 there prevents a law from being enforced that would single out the "Women's March". It'd be the Supreme Court, in fact, that would determine if any certain law was indeed a Bill of Attainder.
Here, though, these hypocrites want to block a Supreme Court nominee who is too big a defender of the Constitution because of one part that hurts their feeelings! Yeah, how about a "Man's March against Article 1/Section 9", ladies? How would that make you feel, knowing we may write up a law just for you ladies? Don't go babbling on about a "death sentence", especially if you believe in jinxes.
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Real life inflation anecdotal-data(?)
Posted On: Thursday - August 30th 2018 3:58PM MST
In Topics: Economics Inflation
I'd promised (or threatened, depending on how you like this stuff) to give more anecdotal inflation numbers from recent history. As I've written, that Shadow Stats site has much more comprehensive and accurate information than Peak Stupidity could come up with. Inflation calculations (along with other important econ. statistics) is their bread and butter; stupidity is ours. This post is just from prices that sit in my memory, but lots of them are ones I remember very well - why, I don't know.
While still sticking to food for the time being, let's talk beans. OK, bean prices, that is - for recipes, you're much better talking beans with a beaner in the bean aisle. There was a period 8 years ago in which our household consumed a lot of beans... garbanzo beans, red beans, black beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, lentils, stewed beans, fried beans, baked beans, refried beans, rebaked beans ... yeah, the whole Bubba Gump thing with beans instead of shrimp. At the grocery store in which I bought 90% of them, almost all of the dried bean varieties stood at $1 per lb. Getting back into beans lately, we've found these same packages at $1.50 per lb. That ain't no 1-2% inflation, mi
I'd bought canned Campbell's soup back 30 years ago to eat as supper for $0.45 to $0.55 per can. They are now in the range of $1.00 to $1.55 for a smaller can, and yeah, you have to have a good memory to catch these things (the shrinkage especially - 12 oz down to 10.75 oz.) On a per-mass basis, at the price mid-range, that soup's gone up in at an 3.5% annual rate. "Sure, sure..." you may say, ".. pick and choose and you're gonna find big numbers." I don't think that's the case. I am picking items that I just happen to remember numbers for, but there's not much in the grocery that I can't look at and get some idea of how much the price has increased since I started buying groceries (or, at least, buying that item).
Let's get outta the grocery then. Let's talk lumber. That happens to be a product that I bought a lot of also 25-30 years ago. I didn't have projects to buy lumber for, for many years after, but have bought some over the last 10 years. 2 x 4's are just a superb example (pressured-treated or non), as they are luckily still the same dimensions* and made out of the same trees that they were when I first bought them. From well under a buck for a non-pressure-treated 8-footer, I recall $0.79 or so to up above $2 - $2.50 now, that's the increase over, call it 30 years. There we go again, from 3.5 - 4%. The rest of the 2-by's along with the "1-inch" lumber has gone up accordingly.
I'd really like to get into gasoline prices, but that is a commodity the price of which definitely depends on politics, no matter what politics you figure. Gasoline is a big enough part of a household's budget and it's such a volatile (get it??) commodity, that the stats people like to exclude it to get at the "core inflation". Maybe by "core" they mean "the FED", as that's the basic cause. I will put up a post on gasoline prices during recent history, with some anecdotes, because it's just personally interesting.
Let's even get off of products and get into services. This does sound harder, as how much have services changed to disallow comparison? I've got one - auto insurance. See, these older vehicles are all insured at the same basic coverage as required by state law. I'm with the same agent (though I've tried shopping around - they make it very very difficult ...). I won't give too many details, but the total on the vehicles has gone up from $310 only 8 short years back to $415 for the same coverage/period. Aha, that works out to 3.7 % annual inflation.
If I were to get into health care, a topic the Peak Stupidity blog has covered a bit already, things would just get crazy. It may indeed be difficult to compare the value of plans without a group of a dozen accountants with spreadsheets trying out many different combinations of illnesses or treatments under plans with different deductibles, co-pays, in-network rates, etc. Sure, that's true, but I can say this: I doubt you know one soul whose (nominally-same) healthcare plan has not gotten much more expensive over the last decade. That last decade encompasses the stupidity that goes by the name "Øb☭macare", but one can go back 4 decades and say that basic healthcare has continuously gone up much more than then our 4-5 % range seen in the anecdotes here.
Now look - again, this is no statistical inflation study, just anecdotes, mind you. I've had a long habit of not believe everything some US Feral Gov't agency tells me. This is just material to back up my contention that inflation is higher than "advertised".
Is this difference a big deal? "Wow, you think inflation is 3- 4 % vs the Feral Gov't's 1.5 - 2 % numbers", the reader may say, sarcastically. "So what?". Here's what: Over a decade, everything you had saved in dollar form loses 1/3 of it's value.** Did you work 10 extra hours weekly that one WHOLE YEAR to save those 7,500 AFTER-TAX bucks that you put away? So, sorry, that's worth only 5000 bucks now, or, put another way, 4 months of your working 2 hours extra every evening has been taken. "We took it. That's how we make a nice living.", sincerely, your friendly Central Banker.
*The 12 oz. can is from memory. I will have more to say about this shrinkage in another post, especially as related to lumber.
** To clarify, 4% annual inflation, when compounded over a decade, results in an increase of just a smidgen under 50%. It'll take $150 to buy what $100 would have bought at the beginning of the period. Your $100 is worth, $100/$150 = 0.67. You've lost the 0.33 of your original buying power.
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Grasping at Straws - Update from Starbucks
Posted On: Wednesday - August 29th 2018 5:55PM MST
In Topics: Humor Treehuggers Environmental Stupidity ctrl-left Big-Biz Stupidity
Yes, Starbucks has relented to the pressure from, like, one guy or something(?), who has been grasping at straws, successfully as of late. Here at Peak Stupidity, based on just a few simple calculations are pretty sure this has been a strawman argument that has now been milk(shak)ed for all that it's worth. OK, punditry aside for now, we will spotlight this latest installment of stupidity.
Per this Wichita Eagle article (why this site - cause it came up first and loaded quickly), Starbucks will now resort to the dispensation of sippy cups to grown adults due to that intense pressure from TITB ( The Idiots That Be ). The first sentence of the article states:
If you were like many other kids, you probably stopped drinking from a sippy cup when you were 3 or 4 years old — and you probably never had coffee in your spill-proof cup.I guess I was not like many other kids. This writer's name is Kaitlyn Alanis. Has anyone named Kaitlyn made it to adulthood already? Time flies, or maybe she hasn't.
Anyway, Starbucks management, per this story, dispenses a billion straws annually, which is just 2 x that one guy's estimate of straws used (or at least thrown out) daily. That comes out to Starbucks holding 0.55 % of the straw-sucking market, not really enough to make a
There are a couple of tweets about this move in the article too, how bout that?:
I got a sippy cup at Starbucks this morning...I swear I’m an adult.
pic.twitter.com/UdwLxER3Ss
— KitTeaCup_EME (@KitTeaCup_EME) July 6, 2018
Keep in mind that Peak Stupidity does not take too kindly to tweets, as we feel people who tweet like this are the ones who should be using sippy cups for all meals, not just coffee-time.
Also - totes sipping on that new adult sippy cup lid from @Starbucks heheh. pic.twitter.com/M51ihyZ4h8
— RDTJ (@_RDTJ) July 6, 2018
Though this move makes Starbucks management feel greener than a pile of minute-old doe droppings, I don't know if the customers will feel the same. Hey, I wrote already that I don't use straws much, as they seem kind of juvenile themselves. However, I never was a drive-thru guy either and don't get the whole essence of coffee - if I'm gonna drink it, it's usually while sitting down. Don't get me wrong though, I do understand those who are on the move. The lid and straw are necessary, and now life just got a little stupider for lots of Starbucks customers. For some that are already sick of Starbuck's ctrl-left bullshit* this latest move may just be the straw that broke the camel's back. [OK, that's the last straw, I'm warning you! - Ed]
* The Peak Stupidity blog had a few choice words to say about Starbucks regarding raising hell about their nationwide, synchronized struggle-session back in the spring.
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Land's End jumps the Sheep
Posted On: Tuesday - August 28th 2018 3:57PM MST
In Topics: Humor
Some posts just write themselves. This one and the previous one would be good examples. The humor comes out easily, and so does the anger - see that last one.
The picture above is from the latest Land's End catalog. I don't know; it just comes in the mail. Their marketing staff and powerhouse IT department have calculated that our household consists of yuppies... money not well spent. Perhaps the stuff inside is like J. Peterman, but I didn't open it - I just had to get this cover into the scanner.
Granted this blog is located in neither Australia nor New Zealand, but do these writers get out at all? Or, do they get the joke and are just pushing new frontiers (via the Overton Window) in sexual relations. What is the Land's End cover trying to say here? Is it that the women is so hot that the sheep will be jealous from lack of amorous attention from that guy? She is cute, in a sheepy sort of way, but, you know, she's standing straight up-right - what's up with THAT?
Even if I'd kept the catalog - 40% OFF YOUR ORDER - I'd better not order anything - we don't have any sheep in the neighborhood, but the whole thing just creeps me out. I guess, being a curmudgeon and all, I'm just not ready. BTLG (Bacon Lettuce and Tomato with Guacamole on the side) is something I could get used to, but BLTGQWETY-SHEEP? You've gotta draw the line somewhere, and that's Land's End.
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Mollie Tibbetts murder - no regrets?
Posted On: Tuesday - August 28th 2018 10:23AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Student and other Snowflakes Political Correctness Orwellian Stupidity
In the post title, I don't mean regrets of the young lady. At that age, and for the short time span in which she was raped and murdered she may have realized and regretted some errors. At 20 years old, a young lady doesn't know much about the world these day, so I'm not going to lambast her for the hate-whitey tweets even. It didn't used to be that way. Children used to learn the real facts of life from their parents, before Big Ed had them captured for such a long part of their lives, especially their period of mental development. Parents are prone to tell the truth to their kids because they love them. The State just wants them for indoctrination and the big bucks. Her Dad is old enough to know what goes on in this country. He may feel some regrets, but is he allowed to have them?
You may have read something of the funeral and the PC reaction about a rape/murder by someone who wouldn't have been able to do this, were the law enforced. It is just sickening to me, and this quick VDare post by the blogger there known as "Anonymous Attorney" brings home my anger at these people. By "these people" I mean all the snowflakes who don't ever want to get down to the root of a dangerous social problem and solve it. Nope, it's best to be PC and not get called names.
Mr. Tibbetts, the Dad, along with the Mom and other family I'm sure, must feel a sense of loss that one can feel deeply sad about just imagining. I don't know how this "we're all Iowans" crap will hold down in this guy's system before he cracks or something. I won't even get into now the crime statistics for illegal immigrants - peruse VDare, especially Mrs. Brenda Walker's writings for that. Even if the stats did say that the illegal aliens in Iowa are no more prone to a crime like this than a white Iowan (bullshit, though), it's your daughter, man! The guy should not have been in your town!
Mr. Tibbetts was called "brave" for a touching eulogy which "thanked the local Hispanic community", per the British Daily Mail. Nah, that's not brave. That's what's expected now - just take it in the ass from whatever evil our Globalist masters have deemed we must live with. Protecting your whole community from an invasion, possibly averting other rapes, murders, and just burglaries, ID theft, and ordinary daily hassle which you never had before, is not something we want to get into... too racist, xenophobic... too something! Would it not have been truly brave for that Dad to have brought this all up and told the funeral crowd whose fault it was that his daughter was dead?
As Mr. Attorney wrote at the end of his post:
Truly, the epitaph of the white race will read: 'At Least They Weren't Racist'.
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Juan McAmnesty - Rot In Place
Posted On: Monday - August 27th 2018 7:03AM MST
In Topics: Globalists The Neocons
Peak Stupidity has said most of what needs to be said about this traitor to Americans just over a year back, when the Senator was diagnosed with cancer. Just to clear up why we would stoop so low as to Speak Dead of the Ill, or now, to speak ill of the dead, we will repeat what has been stated probably a number of times on the Peak Stupidity Blog, in regard to the passing of Ted, U-Boat Commander, Ken nedy additionally:
It'd be one thing ifhe were just a retired, possibly reclusive old man living out his life by this point. I wouldn't go into mourning for his death IN ANY SENSE, but I couldn't see any reason to write or say much about it besides "hey, John McCain (Ted Kennedy) died, did you hear?" That's not the case. This guy was a US Senator, one out of 100, and one of the most influential ones, until the day he died. If his dying is the only way for Americans to be rid of his influence and power, then, yes, I'm glad he died!Yep, that's the way I do feel about it. Senator McAmnesty, as you might be able to tell per my disparaging nomenclature, is someone who's had a bad influence on America. There are stories about what went on with the man in the US Navy and in Vietnam, 50 years back, some of which makes him out to be the cause of deaths and demoralization during that war (especially regarding the MIAs). I am no expert on that history, so I should be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not much of what he did influenced the country as a whole until he became a politician, so it's the last 30 years or so that I'm remembering McCain by.
This man's arrogance for his countrymen, especially seen during his flip-flopping on the illegal alien problem is what I remember. It wasn't flip-flopping based on goofiness or general stupidity. Nope, McCain would say one thing, "build the dang fence." in a re-election commercial, then join one of those "gangs of 8" groups to come a c-hair away from pushing through a massive amnesty bill, with regular Americans defeating these bills via direct pressure to the head(s) (yes, you can make a difference.) The arrogance came into play when he would run for election, spouting lies, knowing people don't have long enough memories to remember them and his breaking his word 6 years later.
As possibly the biggest neocon, warmongering Senator in the whole operation they've got there in the FS (Federal Shithole), the amount of deaths around the world that McCain caused should make one wonder if he learned a damn thing in that prison in Hanoi, N. Vietnam ... something like "We've got to stop Communism from taking over the world, but this invading, carpet-bombing, and napalming is not winning over the people, it seems. Maybe installing our own puppet leaders is a bad idea too." Like lots of the Neocons, I guess, once the Cold War was won, they felt that no matter what we did militarily, nobody can stop us anymore, so let's just get this guy Saddam, who, per this Steve Sailer post with an Atlantic interview exceprt, McCain HATED HATED HATED, saying "He ruled through murder. Didn’t we learn from Hitler that we can’t let that happen?" Hey, unlike Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein was not in the middle of (arguably) taking over Europe, so how was the Iraqi government our business again? There was much less reason for that war than for the Vietnam War, and that's what I mean by stating the guy learned nothing.
Now, a bit about Sarah Palin, McCain's running-mate for President in 2008. John McCain has said disparaging things about the lady, but the biggest untruth in that is his contention that she cost him the election! No, that was not exactly the case, as McCain decided to play ball and not be called names by the Lyin' Press that loved him, for bringing up Øb☭ma's connections to racist churches and other still-unknowns in that Commie's background. McCain basically threw the election so's he wouldn't be called a racist. Profiles in Courage, indeed! As for the very decent lady, Mrs. Palin and that campaign in 2008, I'll say this: Especially when she first came on the ticket, Sarah Palin was the only thing likely to have gotten me to vote Republican that year. I remember telling someone back then that I couldn’t be assured that McCain would get impeached or die in the first coupla years, so I’d just go ahead and vote Constitution/Libertarian again. (I believe it was Mr. Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution party that year - a good man.) The odds were against me on that gamble, and history (yesterday) proves me out.
Now you know why I am not going to act all dignified about the death of this man, as Steve Sailer did, but not the commenters on Zerohedge:
cayman 08/26/2018 - 02:09
Satan's little helper finally takes the dirt nap.
As if the incalculable MIC evil wasn't enough, he "hand-delivered the controversial 'Steele dossier' to FBI Director James Comey, returned to the Senate in July 2017 after emergency brain surgery to become the deciding vote that killed the GOP's repeal of the Affordable Care Act."
This was one misersable prick.
FireBrander Sat, 08/25/2018 - 21:18
I'm going to fast for a week as only an empty stomach can prevent me from vomiting when I endlessly hear "What a Great Man, Soldier, Patriot and Public Servant John was throughout his life".
silverer css1971 Sun, 08/26/2018 - 05:36
I'll visit John's grave and pray for him after I visit the graves of all the innocent people he was responsible for killing and pray for them first. Looks like I won't have the time to get around to John's grave.
HowdyDoody Sun, 08/26/2018 - 06:37OK, those were pretty much the tamer ones. There are approximately 1000 more. That never-speaking-ill-of-the-dead meme hasn't seemed to take hold over at zerohedge.
I would like to offer my deeperst condolences .... to the poor glioblastomer that developed a terminal case of McCainitis. May it rest in peace. It will be remebered and honored.
Yeah, those comments could be considered a little overboard. I'd just rather not hear anymore about Juan McAmnesty, that's all I ask.
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The Nurture Assumption - Book Review
Posted On: Friday - August 24th 2018 9:30PM MST
In Topics: Science Books Educational Stupidity
Peak Stupidity was supposed to have movie and book reviews as separate from our regular posting in my original envisionment, with links on the left. Our movie reviews don't usually resemble anything by Siskel & Ebert or the "trade papers" of Hollywood anyway, but we could get organized at some point on this. This post will be as close to a book review as I've written, just because I've been wanting to write about this book, and a bit about the subject for quite a while (there is also one more that really relates to this site - coming, uhhh, sometime).
The book is called The Nurture Assumption*, **, by Judith Rich Harris, and the plan was to write this a bit earlier, to follow-up from the 3-week ago post It's that time of year - THE STATE is coming for your kids.. Yeah, well, it IS and they DID.
The first thing I should state is that it's about 3 years since I read this book, and I don't have it on me. Can one write a review like this? Sure. I can't name page numbers, but since the book was interesting, I can remember the gist of what I want to write about it. For instance, to get in review-mode here, this 20 year-old book is well written and not can't-put-down interesting, but a good read. Mrs. Harris wrote the book after being a psychology doctoral student and a textbook author. I recall she mentioned that, besides being dismissed from the graduate program (a bit more on this in a bit), she took time off of the career stuff to raise her two daughters, and had major health problems. She was able to work out some psychological theories on other subjects while she was bedridden for a long time. Mrs. Harris had live examples of the nurturing of he daughters to observe in addition to citing studies of many sorts.
The very first portion of the book, the intro. or first chapter, relates to Mrs. Harris' time in graduate school doing research, and unexpectedly made me smile. It was surprising that, even though she is in the field, Mrs. Harris had lots of choice words disparaging the work of the departments of psychology in general. It's a bit up my alley, as I don't have too much respect for the researchers and research in the soft "sciences" either. (I feel a post coming about the whole business of sharing the authoring of papers and such.) That was an unexpected but very honest way to start off a book that references loads of studies in psychology to support her "Nurture Assumption" point.
Before getting to her point though, I'll explain the possibly-very-obvious business of the balance between nature and nurture causing traits and personalities in humans. It's just not something I write about much - go directly to Steve Sailer's site (look especially for the older posts) for way more. A figure of 50% of traits caused by nature's and, of course, the same for nurture's effects, is cited a lot by laymen and people in the field of psychology. That's very obviously just a number used to say "there's significant effects from both, and that's all we know". No, I'm not saying that nothing has been learned, but human traits are so various and numerous, and I don't know how you'd ever begin to categorize them all. Lots of methods have been tried to find the N vs. N cause of important human traits, and most likely the best of those are the studies of identical twins (who have the same genes) that were separated early in life, and therefore grew up in different human environments (nurturing).
The author does not dispute the 50/50 (or any other number) split. Her point involves only the nurture "half". Since the nature (genetic) side of things can't be changed after conception, psychologists, interested people, and most of all parents, want to learn everything they can to understand the best way to nurture children to end up "right". Most of us assume that means the time a child learns in the home, especially early-on when he picks up ideas like a sponge. Mrs. Harris' contention, however, is that the parents' effect is minimal and (if I remember the number correctly) 95% of the nurture effect on traits/personality comes from the child's peers. Now, you may understand why I referred back to the post about schools. The author maintains that the childhood friends and fellow students are of much more importance in forming the personality of your child than what happens at home.
Judith Harris' theory should obviously be a big blow to parents, and I'm not arguing against it just yet. Were it true, though, that means all that upbringing work by parents requires no thinking and planning, as the kid will turn out a certain way predominantly due to which type of peers he hangs out with growing up. Because this is 3 years after my reading, I can't bring up specific examples, but the author cites and explains many psychological studies throughout most of the book to back her contention. It's all very interesting and believable, but then parents with mostly-grown up children may have common-sense that tells them otherwise. I'd believe my common sense over the work of psychologists any day of the week. Parents, or maybe I should just say women, who don't have enough confidence in themselves are the ones who do lots of reading of parenting and more trashy magazines for which psychology departments have a big "in". It's probably the thing that gets these graduate students and professors up in the morning, the idea that one day their research paper, right or wrong, will be cited in Cosmopolitan as an advice article on how to raise kids better and be read all over.
The only problem with Mrs. Harris's theory (for her I mean) is that nobody's gonna publish the gist of it as advice, as the message would be "it doesn't matter what you do - don't bother reading any more of our parenting articles. What's the point?". That's not a good look for Cosmo or People!
Even if I do accept the important conclusion here, it turns out that parents will still have a major influence anyway. Why? It's because parents who do a good job with their kids are ones who help pick or at least guide who their children's peers are to begin with. This brings me to even another factor. Though one would think it's not important (per Judith Harris' theory, that is) how much time children spend at home, it still does matter because trust is built at home. That's not a personality trait, so it the book's theory doesn't cover it, right? However, the more trust in his parents built up, the more likely the kid will listen to them when he is told which kids he should hang out with, why he should get into the smart (but also, better behaved) kids' class, etc. He will also listen to the parents over his peers up to a later age. It's kind of recursive thinking here, but the author's conclusion that nurture effects on personality come from peers still results in very important input from time with the parents.
It's still a thought-provoking book, but possibly the conclusion of The Nurture Assumption, even if totally correct, is not anything that should result in parents doing anything differently after all.
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PS: This is not worthy of as stand-alone post. It just didn't fit in up top, but since this IS a book review, I want to make this small criticism of a detail:
Somewhere among the studies discussed in The Nurture Assumption, I remember one (neither the title nor authors, unfortunately) about a typical type of observational study in which Mrs. Harris agreed with a conclusion that I think is simply wrong. This is one of those experiments involving "ringers", people who are not subjects themselves, but seem to be to the real subjects. It was simple. The real subjects, who were adults, BTW, were asked a bunch of knowledge questions in a verbal manner, along with the ringers. At some point, some questions would be asked that the ringers would all answer wrongly, and the test was to see how that peer pressure would influence the subject, who should have known the correct answer. Most of the time, after a while, the subject would answer wrongly too.
The erroneous conclusion of the study, which Mrs. Harris agreed with. was that this was the result of peer pressure alone. There's a plenty good alternate explanation though. At some point, if you see smart people around you answering differently, depending on exactly how well you think you know the answer, you may just feel you are having a brain fart. You're not afraid to answer in opposition, but you just don't want to be derided as senile or under the influence, is all. OK, that was neither here nor there, except it was part of the book, and a part that I thought was not well thought through.
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* Subtitled: "Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do"
** I am linking here to a cheaper paperback version (if you're going to buy it) updated version for the reason that there are reviews on the amazon page for this one, but not for the original, that I read.
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The Death of Historical Accuracy, by Boyd D. Cathey
Posted On: Friday - August 24th 2018 11:10AM MST
In Topics: Music History Pundits Southern rock
Here comes another highly recommended article by the North Carolina historian Boyd Cathey. We have linked to another great article before, late last year, called Black & White in Culturally Marxist America.
The Peak Stupidity blog gives 2 thumbs up to his latest article, also featured on unz.com, The Death of Historical Accuracy. In it, Mr. Cathey sets the historical record straight in this review and discussion of the recent Dinesh D'Souza documentary movie, Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time? Here is the introduction:
In case you haven’t heard, there is a new “conservative” film out; it is titled “Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time?” Its director and screenwriter is Dinesh D’Souza, the word-measuring figure who occasionally shows up on Fox to talk in pious tones about “conservatism.” He is the movie producer who, by his own admission, has done as much as anyone to shape (in an almost ahistorical manner) perceptions about American history and the Founding Principles that have supposedly guided this country. And, in his latest cinematic adventure he stunningly compares the “triumph of America and its values” under that “great president and martyr” Abraham Lincoln to the crisis facing President Donald Trump. Like Lincoln, Trump is saving America “for a second time.”I was originally planning on excerpting nothing, as I would urge you all to read the whole thing, but additionally, if you have 1 - 3 hours to spare (depending on your reading speed), the 270-odd entry comment thread is just as informative as the article. There are only 10-20% of the trolling or just plain ignorant comments on the subject, but that is well compensated for by some great discussion. A guy with the handle "rebelwriter", from the upstate of South Carolina made some great comments on this history of the "War of Northern Aggression", that are worth commenting on right here.
Mr. rebelwriter (rightfully) considers himself a "historian of the history" of this great war and its causes. He discussed the fact that, after the terrible times of the Reconstruction, not a lot of history of the war was written. Northerners and Southerners, he states, got back together as a people only after the beginning of the Spanish American War, as old Confederate generals, and sons of Confederate soldiers fought along with Northerners in the US Army. That's when the Daughters of the Confederacy and other groups were formed, and monuments were put up all over, North and South. There's lots more from rebelwriter on this, and it's great stuff that I've never studied. Sure, I've read many books (although quite some time ago) on the battles and such, but Mr. Cathey and the commenters cover territory I have not read about. I will say, in my favor, that at least my history class in middle school covered a whole chapter on the damage done to the South after the war, called "Scaliways and Carpetbaggers". I believe I only remember that due to those very humorous terms. I'm pretty sure that book is unfortunately not used today.
Just to sum up Mr. Cathey's opinion of Mr. D'Souza and his views of what is conservatism: Mr. D'Souza makes big use of the completely erroneous meme of "hey, look, see the Democrats were the bad guys then too. We R's were always the good guys" with no real thought into all the politics that resulted in the war. The parties were very much opposite in terms of conservatism and progressivism compared to nowadays.
D'Souza reveres Abraham Lincoln and compares President Trump's job to that of the former. I don't see how any Libertarian with any respect for himself could possibly think of President Abraham Lincoln's policies as anything but tyrannical, no matter what you currently understand the cause of that "late unpleasantness" was. Mr. Lincoln's disregard for the right of States to withdraw from the agreement they made in 1789, discussed well in the article and more-so in the comments, was the first drastic move to change America from a true Constitutional Republic toward the USSA Police State we now live in.
Well, it's nothing about that war, Hank Jr. here says the South is just a better place to be than the North. He wrote this > 25 years ago though...
It's Hank Williams, Jr., with Dixie on my Mind. OK, it's just up here because the rebel flag is the video, I admit it. Somehow this is offensive nowadays, and, if nothing else constructive, Peak Stupidity aims to offend.
(Yeah, I put the topic key, "Southern Rock" on this post, not due this song being truly part of that "genre" or style, but it's pro-South in lyrics and it does resemble rock to a degree. This was the point when the electric guitars starting changing the sound of country music. However, what made country music go down the drain from about that time on was more the fact that it became nothing but guitar rock with Southern accents, and stories about pick-up trucks and barbecues and "the flag".)
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Grasping at Straws - Part 2
Posted On: Thursday - August 23rd 2018 4:57PM MST
In Topics: Treehuggers Environmental Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity
(continued from the previous post)
The use by Americans of so many plastic straws is said to be a problem. As Part 1 ended, we had calculated that no, plastic straws are no kind of serious problem for the environment. That was just a strawman. Are there people who want these useful enviro-idiots to do this campaigning and propagandizing against the poor straws? I only think of this now, because that's been the modus operandi for the ctrl-left and globalists behind lots of other supposed environmental crises in the past, with exhibit A (with a bullet) being the use of the Global Climate Stupidity to push for global control of energy use.
It was the efficient refrigerant Freon, or R-12, that was the big one during the 1980's. It supposedly was going to destroy a part of the atmosphere. We were apparently very lucky to have it phased-out through Feral Gov't coercion just in the nick of time for a new DuPont refrigerant, right after the patents for Freon expired. Wheeew, that was close. Lots of older car's air conditioning systems and home A/C units to this day cannot be repaired or charged up without a big-money conversion, making them now disposal, forcing the purchase of new units and cars. Great for the economy, it is - I mean, the Big-Biz economy, not your personal finances - nobody cares about that. Peak Stupidity has a post coming soon about CARB, the California Air Resources Board, which is responsible for lots of misery in American life - some of that is due to Big-Biz behind forced changes to products to force otherwise-unwanted purchases by the lowly consumer.
What's the deal behind this straw thing? I don't see some big ulterior motive, but I do believe that restaurants and fast-food joints will be glad to be FORCED into not having straws now. Sure, most of the local business owners do think it's stupid, and feel for customers who don't appreciate the stupidity. However, the corporate MBAs on Honchos will be glad to save the bucks on purchases and logistics. McDonalds and the like will have one less task for the overworked, undersmart folks behind the counter, and that will help the bottom line. (4 seconds cut off of every order! Bonuses all around, folks!) See, they can pretend they're sorry for the inconvenience, but "folks, IT'S! THE! LAW!". In addition, they can, at the same time, perhaps, advertise how damn green they are by not putting that 1/4 cubic yard of plastic in the huge local landfill daily. "We are so sorry! It's the law! We are green as all hell!" That's the ticket.
Could there not be a simple solution for restaurant services, in which, they may charge a few cents for straws? OK, that could be annoying. How about have some really solid ones that are not disposal, but kept with the silverware and washed and re-used? How about a lot of ideas without the treehuggers and governments getting in our faces? Why is there no outcry about plastic drinking cups, BTW? I've seen lots of those out there. Like I wrote in the last post, I like waste a whole lot less than the next guy. It's not by business though, if the free market is left to take care of it. For example, the whole bottled water thing irks me to no end. It's not the plastic, but the energy, my energy, involved in hauling this stuff around, when the Romans invented piping 2 Millennia ago, that chaps my hide.
I think this straw silliness is a great example of the Peak Stupidity blog's contention that it's all about the money, discussed in our post Green is the new Cheap-Ass.
Lastly, I promised to mention milkshakes. I've noticed that the straw that comes with a milkshake these days is one of the biggest in diameter and thickness. Those are the ones that are really bad, mmmkaaay? Why do they need to use those big-ass straws? Well, I'll tell ya', cause PEOPLE! DON'T! KNOW! HOW! TO! MAKE! GOOD! MILKSHAKES! anymore ... well, OK, in a lot of places. They are so damn thick that even those Grade-A industrial straws collapse, or the drinker collapses, whichever comes first. You've got to mix lots of air into the shake. That's what makes it great. You should be able to tap the side of the nice tall steel cup, or the glass, and here a nice thudding sound. If you don't, that is not a milkshake but a travesty. So make better milkshakes, people, and save YOUR planet!
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[UPDATED 08/29 Afternoon:] Changed title to comply with rules of punditry.
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Grasping at Straws - Part 1
Posted On: Thursday - August 23rd 2018 10:07AM MST
In Topics: Treehuggers Economics Environmental Stupidity
(It's like one of those New Yorker cartoons. You don't think it's funny, but you pretend it is.)
It's been a big brew-haha for a few weeks now, I guess, so this is a post I'd almost forgotten I was supposed to write. Plastic soda straws are bad, mmmkaaay... after ~ 30 - 40 years of use (my memory here) people have just realized that, "hey, these things are killing the planet!" We apparently don't have any other problems more serious than straws right now. Anyway, I came upon a Takimag article by one Joe Bob Briggs, called 500 Million Lazy Environmentalists on this topic. The guy lays out the stupidity reasonably well, but doesn't seem to know a lot of the background of this kind of Environmental Stupidity, so this post and it's 2nd part will attempt to explain the real causes.
Let me first say one thing about one number, as I'll use it later on. No engineering type himself, at the end of the article, Mr. Briggs explains the source of the number of 500,000,000 drinking straws used per day thusly:
Besides, the numbers are overwhelming—the operative statistic is 500 million a day!OK, now I don't mind rectally extracted numbers for some purposes, and this is one instance. (And, no, it's not a "statistic", per Briggs, just a number.) Let me explain. Just plain Does It Make Sense?, in-my-head, analysis makes me think it could be too high, but it's not an order-of-magnitude off. Sure, people eating at home don't use straw one most days, but people eat lots of fast food meals that come with straws for all. Sit down restaurants provide them, oftentimes when one doesn't need one, so that seems to be what started this brew- ... err, slurp-haha. I will go with this number with the realization that it could easily be 100% high. I want to look at some basic numbers to see the problem. For that, a 1/2 order-of-magnitude is good enough. Were this a calcuation for engineers or managers in the waste/recycling business, no, that would not be good enough.
The problem with this statistic—the statistic that has driven this movement since 2010—is that it’s based on a single study conducted in 2009. When National Public Radio went looking for the author of that study, they found him in Shelburne, Vermont. It’s a guy named Milo Cress, who noticed that straws were being handed out in restaurants regardless of whether the customer asked for one, was bothered by that, and went on to found a movement called Be Straw Free. But he couldn’t find any official statistics on straw use, so he called manufacturers, wrote down what they told him, and made an educated guess that the number was 500 million per day. It must have been a good guess, because he was rewarded for it. [Note: author's italics became my bold.]
That number aside for a while, sudden plastic straw panic is another narrative with the usual sources, useful idiots, and devious greedy evil people behind the scenes. In other words, it's business as usual in the Peak Stupidity of America.
Let's think about the source here first. Somebody has thought what plenty of others have, while sitting down at a restaurant or rummaging through his McDonalds take-out bag. "Hey, what a waste. I don't need these straws. They always put them in the bag." or "They give you one with your fork, knife and spoon, and I don't need one." Fine, I don't like waste, period. It bugs me, and, for the latter case, I will try to catch the waitress in time and tell her we only need ones for the kids. For the former case, I try not to eat the junk food, and am not too lazy/busy to walk into the place if I do have the craving. I'm not a straw guy, but the people at the drive-thru don't want to make a mess on themselves, so they want them. Lastly, good luck at the drive-thru trying to get the straw-count correct. You're just lucky if you've don't have the onions and mayo on the burger, even after you've told the lady 3 times on the microphone, in each of English, Spanish AND Ebonics that "yes, I don't need no steeenking onions, senorita!" You don't sweat the straws at this point.
Now, a few who've naturally wondered about the waste involved in the food service business have taken it upon themselves to get outraged, in particular the drinking straw industry. No, no thoughts about cups, napkins, 1/2 eaten food, oh, and, like 100 million extra people in the country right now! Nope, they are fixated on the straws. It's an easy thing to pass laws about. Ban the straws! It's "doing the right thing", and that impresses some chicks, which is what it's all about for the guys, while for the chicks it's all about being silly and stupid and not knowing much about the world around them. The reason I call these people the "useful idiots" in these matters is that there is usually someone behind the scenes with a vested interest. I'll get to that in the next post.
Is the worry about filing up the landfills? As explained in the Peak Stupidity post Toward Sustainable Stupidity (yes, one of our favorite titles!), there's not actually any problem about running out of space for landfills. It's really a matter of placing landfills further out of the city, due to rightful NIMBY concerns, costing the city more in refuse transfer costs. When recycling pays off in this respect, well, the free market (were there one) would say "do it.". If it cost more to get the stuff recycled than trucking it out to the landfill, then the free market (were there one) would say "don't do it." I'm all for the material being re-used in many products, as Mr. Briggs (in the Takimag article) says, IF IT PAYS. Let's say it doesn't. How much material are those straws we are throwing out every day?
Let's crunch the numbers in our heads, shall we? Now, I have an advantage in doing this, as I seem to have a calibrated eyeball/memory combination. I would have guessed 3/16" diameter (sorry, no SI here, buddy!) for the small straws and 3/8", almost to 1/2" diameter for the big milkshake ones. I'd have put length at 8". Indeed I see that Web Restaurant Store's straw page gives diameters from 1/8" for the kid's school straws to near 1/2" for the massive milkshake intake pipes. Lengths go from 5 1/2" to 8". I was pretty close. I need thickness now.
Without my calipers and a straw (I don't use 'em, see, I'm greener than fresh horseshit!) I would have guessed thickness from 10 to 25 thousandths of an inch. That restaurant supply site has the other dimensions, and talks about thickness, but gives no thicknesses. What a crock - give me numbers, people. Wikipedia - let me down, the innumerate bastards. Ahh, finally, I got to an industrial site and got a dimension of 5-8 thousandths (that's 0.005" - 0.008"), but this has to vary widely from the school straws to the near 1/2" thick ones. One could easily, starting with max. expected suction pressure (I suppose one should start this research at the whorehouse...), calculate thickness required to avoid straw collapse based on diameter. This would not use the normal thin-walled pressure vessel equation, as this is a buckling problem. I'm quite out of time for that, so let's just pick an average thickness of 15 thousandths to account for many of the bigger straws and to be conservative, and use 1/4" as an average diameter. That's .25" x π x 0.015" x 8" = 0.10 in3 of plastic per straw - didn't even need a calculator. 500 million x 0.10 in3 = 50,000,000 in3. Sounds baaaaad? Nah, divide by 1728 to get a number near 29,000 ft3. Sounds baaad? That much could fill up the space of a decent sized house (oops "home", sorry), with 10' ceilings. That does sound like a lot of plastic to throw out per day, but that's the whole country (and based on a probably-high initial count and conservative estimates on material volume). If you live in a medium-sized city, with say, 100,000 people, which would have an infrastructure to support a landfill etc., that is 0.03% of the population, hence, straw
That may have been pretty boring there, but, hey, if you're going to be numerate about it, and understand the problem, than, yeah, some quick calculations are needed. The next post will get more into the stupidity aspect of this environmental crisis, or are they just bringing up another strawman here?
(I had to get that joke in somewhere, right? Yeah, I'll get into the behind-the-scenes shenanigans involved in many of these environmental schemes along with more on milkshakes.)
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[Updated, late 8/23:] OMG! I forgot to get the material cross-section of the plastic straws via π x the diameter x thickness (left out π completely). I updated all the numbers. That was stupid.
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[UPDATED 08/29 Afternoon:] Changed title to comply with rules of punditry.
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[Updated, 05/18/20!:] I'm looking at this post almost 2 years later. What I get for estimating in my head is that I had used 1440 in3 in a ft 2 instead of 1728. OK, updated one number - of course, the numbers are in the same ballpark, but still...
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The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin
Posted On: Wednesday - August 22nd 2018 9:23PM MST
In Topics: Music
Between working and commenting elsewhere, Peak Stupidity has kind of dropped the ball the last few days and today. I used to just put up some great music without much commentary once in a while, so that will be the case this evening. There are about 10 posts in waiting in the wings, but the mood for writing has got to be there.
Tonight we'll feature The Rain Song from the album Houses of the Holy. The confusion with this album is that the "title track" of it is NOT ON THIS ALBUM, but on a susequent one called Physical Graffiti, and was featured long ago here.
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On robberies gone horribly right
Posted On: Tuesday - August 21st 2018 8:50PM MST
In Topics: Humor Liberty/Libertarianism
The title of the last post here, Social DIstortion - just a stage dive gone horribly wrong? may or may not ring a bell for those of us who've otten heard this phrasing in relation to various crimes. The "gone horribly wrong" part is the Lyin' Press's way of trying to explain to us that, no this criminal wasn't a bad guy really. He just intended to commit robbery.... you know, ransack your place and take some of your most valuable, possbily sentimental belongings. He in no way planned for the crime to involve rape or murder or anything. Things just went wrong ... horribly wrong. It didn't have to be like this ....
Peak Stupidity should really have a topic key just called "guns", but we hesitate about adding them willy-nilly, as then we've to to re-categorize a bit. We have featured one article specifically about defensive shooting by a Washington State man in Hey man, nice shot!. That story was more about a guy that stopped a rampage, but armed defense of the home happens every day. Just once we'd like to hear it straight from the Lyin Press, with this same phrasing, about, say, a burglary gone right!
Here's part of our imagined transcript of the 911 call:
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"Hello, 9-1-1, marko numero uno por Engleeesh ....
... how may we better serve you today?"
"Uhhh, yeah, I just want to report a burglary and ..."
"SIr, don't panic! Breath normally. Are you Mr. XXXX at YYY Elm St?"
"Hey, HTF did you know that?! Anyway, two guys came in through the kitchen window and I got out my Sig ..."
"Sir, breath normally. We'll have an officer out there in the next 5 ... 10 minutes... 15 tops. Shelter in place. Do you have any large pieces of furniture to hide in ..."
"Hey, what? They busted up the big cabinet looking for stuff. That's when I heard them and got my pistol and 2 extra loaded magazines."
"DO! NOT! TRY! TO! HANDLE! THIS! SIR! These burglaries can sometimes go horribly wrong. You need police officers for protection. GIve me that addresss one more time, for verification purposes. The officers will be there soon. Are you hurt? Do you need an ambulance?"
"Uhh, yeah, I guess, but they're not moving. I guess it wouldn't hurt any to send out an ambulance, but uhhh, I'm not payin' for it!"
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See, now that's a burglary gone horrible right.
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Social Distortion - just a stage dive gone horribly wrong?
Posted On: Saturday - August 18th 2018 7:02PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music Humor Trump
A guy named Mike Ness generated a bit of Social Distortion out in Sacramento, California a month back, as the lead singer of said band came off stage to beat up on a
One concert-goer, a Mr. Tim Hildebrand, somewhat-cooly from the town of Galt, CA (just S. of Sacramento, and currently 32% hispanic), had had enough with the lead singer Mike Ness' making a political diatribe during the show. Said diatribe included some badmouthing of President Trump. Mr. Hildebrand, note again from a now-32% hispanic town, is a Trump supporter and didn't particularly appreciate the last part. He "allegedly" held up his middle finger toward the singer and band, haha, for 2 FULL SONGS (emphasis, because doing that for 6-10 minutes would be extremely tiring). That's when the lead singer got tired of having anyone question his political righteousness, and came down off the high ground.
The incident in question is nothing if not a learning experience on both sides. As for the band, Peak Stupidity has been on about entertainers mouthing off about stuff that they are not particularly more knowledgeable about than their fans before in Bono, you'd be serving up fries chips if it weren't for The Edge and Of course the Russians love their children, you dumb bass player!. (In the latter, I'll have to give Sting a break, as it wasn't mouthing off so much as just silly lyrics - that ain't no crime.) "Shut up and play!" should be the mantra - imagine if bands just played and played like the All-American Grateful Dead, leaving the politics alone as a matter of understanding one's limitations.
The concert-going plaintiff, with 2 black eyes, a busted lip, and a concussion, should learn a few things:
1) Maybe he didn't know that the punk band Social Distortion injected politics into their shows. Maybe, but would you really expect a punk band to be conservative though, anyway? If he did know their views, why support the guys by attending the show?
2) If you blow off the politics because you just love the music, and attend anyway, I can see a few heckles or boos at the singer, but once this fight got started, whose side would you expect the fans to be on? It was a very unfair fight, as the fans held Mr. Hildabrand back, as the 56-year old Mike Ness inflicted the injuries. The ctrl-left doesn't like to fight fair ... then they lose.
3) It could have been a lot worse. Besides having the high ground of the stage, the weapons in the band's possession include heavy microphones, drum sticks, and still-heavier guitars (hell, they used to smash them even when they weren't mad at ANYBODY!)
4) Here's how you do it next time: Aren't these punk guys into stage diving and such? They have their fans catch them as the jump from 8 feet up, sometimes on their backs. Mr. Hildabrand, my suggestion, in lieu of some lawsuit or what-have-you goes thusly: Bring 20 friends next time and enjoy the show. Encourage a stage dive from the lead singer Mr. 56-y/o (bones are not getting any spongier) Mike Ness. When he gets to peak altitude just spread yourselves and everyone else away from a 10' diameter crash zone on the concrete floor. Put on MAGA hats, and run like hell for the emergency exits. No, wait, first run like hell for the exits. Call 911 to be sportsmanlike.
Speaking of being sportsmanlike, though I don't like the guy's politics, I'm gonna cut this band some slack. I just read that Mike Ness has played with Social Distortion since their beginning 40 years AGO!. The first song I looked up on youtube was Ball and Chain, and yes, it's good stuff. Though I respect Mr. Hildebrand's possible courage (mixed with some small amount of foolhardiness) in the incident, maybe I'll chalk this one up to Mike Ness' youthfulness and punk spirit. There was no felonious intent - he was just a poor yute, caught up in a stage dive gone horribly wrong.
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Evil of Inflation/interest-rate stupidity Summary-2
Posted On: Friday - August 17th 2018 7:36PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity Economics US Feral Government Inflation
(continued directly from previous post.)
The amount of additional money poured into the economy via FED creation is what leads to inflation. The increase in prices is the symptom, but economists' definition of "inflation" is inflation of the supply of money. Making pieces of green paper (or more like pressing some keys and putting more zeros on the ends of some numbers stored on a secure server) does not create wealth. Whatever wealth is being created will be the same that day, no matter what the FED "prints". The very simple supply/demand laws says that if there's more money, but the same goods/services out there, then it'll take more money to obtain those goods/services. Sure, sometimes it takes a while for the increase to filter through, and guess what, the US government gets the money first, at it's earlier, higher value.
Just look at that graph. For the 1st 125 years of our country, from the first US dollar until the mid-19-teens, inflation was virtually ZERO. Remember the y-axis is just an index representing price level in 1790 as a "1" or some such method. Besides during wartime, the graph is a horizontal line. What changed 100 years ago? Yeah, I know, we just told ya'.. Notice, also, that between the wars in the 19th century prices actually went down. Why would they not, as productivity improved? Most of American history has been a time of great innovation, but the late 1800's were one of the best of these times. If the same amount of money is in use (the money supply), and things take less time and resources to make, then of course prices should go down. What was the deal then, during the 1990-2000's internet ages, when white-collar work got much more productive? I didn't see prices go down. (There was a lull from the mid-90's to mid-00's due to the big shift to China, but that'll discussed in part of another post.)
Prices did not recover the pre-WWII levels after the war, but notice that prices did not go nuts until the mid-1970's. Hmmm, wonder what happened then? There was a coupla' year lag, but since President and Dick Nixon took the country off of the gold standard in 1971 or so, meaning money could no longer be redeemed for it's supposed value in gold*, prices have shot up better than any moon rocket we don't have the money for anymore ever did!
Let's put the two financial evils of inflation and doctored-up interest rates together again. Peak Stupidity has a decent post about this (so please refer to that, if interested (no pun intended)), from 1 1/2 years back, but I'll just try to say this slightly differently. As explained also here interest rates ARE NOT compensation for inflation. If the interest paid on your money in the bank equals the inflation rate, you are going nowhere. You've let that bank have your money to lend out at will, and believe me, they aren't charging basement-level rates. Compensation to you at the rate of inflation is like paying you ZERO for the use of your money! Now, if the FED were not around, and private banks would compete for the use of your money, you could make a decent amount for your services (yes, lending them the money is indeed a service rendered), and I mean a decent rate ABOVE and beyond what inflation is. After all, they are giving you back the money at a lower value, so you should be compensated for that too.
With or without inflation, were interest rates allowed to exist in a free market, then, one could still put some steady savings away and through the "miracle" of compound interest, really make a nest egg. The local bank can do fine giving out 5 % on savings accounts and charging 7% on mortgage loans. However, let's say inflation is running at 4% (quite likely!), and the time value of money is worth 5% annually. The 9% that you SHOULD SEE from the bank is still only really 5% in real value. You're still coming out ahead just the same, as is the bank, but just not as much as it looks. At the same time, you've still got the problem that your wages or income must continually go up, or you won't have the extra to put that same amount of money away yearly. Now, imagine the money supply was left the hell alone, or our currency was backed by something that made it impossible for the money supply to increase (if it did, people would just turn in paper or bits for the real stuff, and turn that currency into trash). Without inflation, such as was the case through still more than 1/2 of the history of America, one could earn, spend, and save without the misery of getting screwed six ways from Sunday in all aspects of one's financial matters.
OK, who's doing the screwing? Yeah, the big bankers have been around for centuries, and all over - I've just been concentrating on America, "cause we live here!" The kind of business that takes even a 1 %, but maybe often a 4-5% cut of EVERY SINGLE FINANCIAL TRANSACTION ON THE BOOKS is a BIG MONEY BUSINESS. That's big banking, taking those seemingly small cuts on a large economy. The people behind the big banks are extremely wealthy, powerful men, the kind with legends behind them - the Rothschilds, the House of Morgan, what have you. They have the power, via the money, to influence people in high levels of government to make sure they KEEP that money flowing in.
This brings up one last point I want to make. At this point in reading, a reader may well ask, "shouldn't you not be a libertarian then? Quit that silliness - we NEED Big Gov to rein in these banksters!". No, see, this gets into the chicken-or-the-egg question - who came first, the big banks or big gov? It's not exactly like the chicken/egg question though, as the answer is: The big banksters had, and could have again, NOTHING TO INFLUENCE, were the Federal government as small as the Founders envisioned, and as it went for ~ 150 years. If there is not much that government is involved in, especially financially, then what power do the banksters have? Once the government is let to get big, by an uncaring voting population, then the banksters have the power via Big Gov to make Big Gov bow to their wishes. "♪♫♬ Mister, we could use a man like Andrew Jackson again ... ♪♫♬
Oh, yeah, to finish the chicken-or-the-egg analogy, I think the voters are the chickens right now, and if they'd only wise up and listen to Peak Stupidity and Ron Paul, they could break a few bankster eggs ... you know... to make a free market omelet.
* This was done due to the wish of the French government to redeem dollars, as they recovered from their expensive foray into Vietnam, and America was in the middle of its one. We obviously didn't have the gold to back up the dollars.
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Evil of Inflation/interest-rate stupidity Summary-1
Posted On: Friday - August 17th 2018 7:16PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity Economics US Feral Government Inflation
(This post is a wrap-up, and continued from the recent Peak Stupidity discussion of interest-rates and inflation as twin evils of the American financial system.)
I have Ron Paul's photo at the top of this post, just due to his being the only Federal-level politician who, not just understands, but tried to explain to Americans the source of our increasing economic woes. He was also a Constitutionalist with integrity, hence the moniker "Dr. No", as he voted against legislation way more than your average representative. Why? It was because almost all of it's been unconstitutional over the years per Amendment X.
Back to the economics, Dr. Paul made big efforts to bring the evils of central banking, unsound money, inflation, and artificial interest rates into the public light. It wasn't awful successful due to Americans either not understanding how deep the roots of the problems go, or thinking that everything is still hunky-dory, what with the DOW in the middle 20 thousands lately.
The interest-rate post brought up the Federal Reserve Bank, the FED, created in secret by a cabal of Big-Biz guys just before Christmas Eve on Jekyll Island, Georgia 105 years back. I've read The Creature from Jekyll Island a few years back, so though I can't give out details, the general idea of what happened is in my head. These guys came from around the East mostly, NYC in particular, along with the one Senator or Congressman that they pressed into service for their cause, by train to ostensibly "do some hunting" on this Georgia barrier island. They got a law passed while most Americans, including in Washington, FS were distracted by Christmas festivities, and created the now century-old Central Bank that American politicians in the 19th century had done their damndest to prevent. President Andrew Jackson, who is very ironically on the front of the 20 dollar "Federal Reserve Note" (get it?) upon his dying day felt that keeping a Central Bank from being created was his biggest accomplishment. "I killed the bank!", he said. That was the early/middle of the 19th century. We've suffered through 87% of the 20th, and now 18% of the 21st, with this Central Bank.
This bank is in private hands, no matter what the name says. It has the ability to create money, loan it out in various ways at various rates to try to "control the economy". The distortion in the markets for money, as discussed in the previous posts, are the results of having "The FED", rather than the US Treasury minting only silver/gold money, per US Constitution. OK, I know, you can't carry all that money around, blah, blah. Sure, there were paper notes long ago, but these could be created by independent private banks whose customers understood that they could redeem them for real money, aka gold and sliver. With the FED in charge of all big-money matters, private banks can only work with the system created by it. When the FED loans out money at 1.5%, and the local bank can lend it back out at 4.5% for a mortgage, you'd better believe they're gonna work with the FED.
(to be continued very shortly in a 2nd post - the entire thing was just a bit too long - stand by...)
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Doctor Talk
Posted On: Thursday - August 16th 2018 8:21PM MST
In Topics: Humor Healthcare Stupidity
To (possibly) wrap-up the posts on Doctors, generated unexpectedly by the post about the strangely-murdered Houston Cardiologist, something from somewhere on the internet reminded me of some of the weird doctor terminology. I guess the nurses probably are part of this too - they'll jump on the bandwagon, if it gets them in tight with the Docs.
This is not about Latin, but, come to think of it: These guys learn lots of Latin terminology in Medical School (in fact, taking Latin beforehand can be a real help). That's fine, you've got to stick to the existing terminology, unless you're Chinese, and you call "arteries" "blood pipes". That's one thing, contrary to my other opinions about the Chinese language, that I do like. The Chinese DON'T make up new words when they can use perfectly useful normal words to make up the necessary words. (This may because the DON'T have Latin and Greek to reach back to.) The literal translation of a phone, at least a mobile one, is "electric talk".
Doctors have Latin terms, though, even for simple business stuff. The generic drug names are all still in Latin, it seems. Doctors say "locum tenens" for temporary assignments, when they could say "contract job" like the rest of us. I guess it makes them sound real edumacated, haha! I'm surprised they don't come up with a Latin term for Stat, or maybe they did. Nurse, fetch my patient, stat, statorum, statiamus, .... and HURRY UP doin' it!
It's the perfectly normal English words they use in just weird ways that is kind of humorous, though. The word that came up somewhere recently was "present" in a form that doesn't use an object (it normal does). "This disease presents as a bunch of big warts around the genital area." is an example (luckily not a personal example!) How do they get off talking and writing like this? You can't just make up your own usage of an already well-known verb like this. Who do these doctors think they are? I think their insanity presents as crazy talk.
The funniest ones are the use of "admit" and "deny" to denote a patient's yes or no to questions about his symptoms. "The patient denies having chest pains." "No, absolutely not, Doc. I swear on my Mudda's grave! I don't care what you write down on the chart, and what you hear on that stethoscope, I don't have chest pains." "Patient admits to joint pain in the knees." "OK, OK, you got me, Doc. My knees hurt! There, I said it - are you happy now?! Now, get the nurse to stop banging on them with the ball-peen hammer, and get your finger outta my ass! My knees hurt!" "OK, that wasn't so hard - I'm gonna write you up some knee medication and schedule in for another struggle session once we check your insurance. Oh, and I don't know how you came to get those Betty Davis knees, but worst of all, young man, you've got Industrial Disease."
*To get this, one must have seen the old 1976 flick, Marathon Man.
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Even Down-Under, you can't say anything.
Posted On: Thursday - August 16th 2018 11:05AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Political Correctness ctrl-left
You can't say anything* anymore, apparently, as Michael Scott explains:
(That one is too hilarious to just put in the few seconds illustrating the slight problem with the English language on this fine point. I had to include up through the "that's what she said" part. Yes, it's my favorite TV show of all time.)
It has been brought to the attention of the Peak Stupidity blog, that you will get excoriated by just about all the damn politicians in your country for saying a simple term that is not particularly mean, crude or derogatory, oh, I mean if you live in a Western country. This was in Australia, way, way to the West, just south of the Orient (caution - bikini picture in link - not safe for surfing during a date!), in fact. A Senator Fraser Anning from Queensland, of the Australian Party* made a speech using the term "final solution". Hmmmm, let me write right away here (because the Lyin' Press won't even get me the simple quote easily) that Mr. Anning said, to paraphrase - the final solution to the immigration issue in Australian should be a vote by the people, a referendum, that is. THATS! ALL! THE! MAN! SAID! He got fired, even though his party head, a Mr. Bob Katter, was the only guy standing up for him against the PC hordes. But that was yesterday (or tomorrow in Australia, or whatever...) and Peak Stupidity had pulled out a 3 or 4 year-old New Years' resolution to start to Keep the Hell Up!
Now, quickly, before you condemn this blogger for the massive lyin' stupidity in the link to follow, let me tell you: I searched for 2 minutes, which is all I had time for, for a non-"mainstream" source, so I WOULDN'T get the lies. I clicked to this CompuServe** article thinking "hey, computer guys, and the story is in the entertainment section at that - it can't be too bad". Oh yeah, it is - read this to both raise your blood pressure, as some Peak Stupidity readers are known to have hypotension, and to see how the narrative is just pushed everywhere now. I can't even excerpt this one for facts, and had to paraphrase the damn quote from Mr. Anning! It's pretty ridiculous, the amount of lying that goes on.
Let me go back here... way on back... to 1940's Nazi Germany. Yes, there WERE millions of Jews murdered by people working for Adolf Hitler. He used the term "final solution" to refer to his program of extermination. It was too late for any better solution to be implemented, as Herr Hitler had absolute power over all the 3rd Reich at that time. This is why, no matter how it starts out, YOU! DON'T! LET! ANYONE! GET! ABSOLUTE! POWER! - SIMPLE! It was a terrible thing. However, one Pol Pot, only known about by probably 10% of Americans, and that's only do to the 1984 movie The Killing Fields, killed ONE THIRD of his countrymen in Cambodia, aka Kampuchea, aka Cambodia again. Pol Pot had absolute power. The Commies in Red China under Mao Zedong killed 30-40 million. Oh, true, most of that was from starvation due to programs to get farmers to quit farming and make steel at home (yeah, just like the internet advertises still today). Chairman Mao had absolute power. Unfortunately, those people are dead just the same. Then you had the Bolsheviks in Russia, aka USSR - that went on for multiple decades at various levels of murderous stupidity. OK, I know, the astute reader here gets it - I'll quit this rant and get back to the stupidity down-under.
"Final Solution", the term, may have left a very bad memory in 90 y/o people who had family and friends killed in Nazi Germany. However, they have not trademarked*** the otherwise perfectly-useful phrase. If I'm a math professor, and I have just finished a proof or an engineer who has finished a lot of work on a complicated analytical problem, can I not call my completed work my "final solution"? Senator Anning had no malice in the use of the term, as it makes perfect sense to call a referendum by the people the "final solution", kind of like BREXIT, uhhh, was supposed to be. This PC stupidity has gone so far, that almost all the politicians in the man's country have hounded him out of his office in about one Peak Stupidity news cycle - seriously, it was a day or so.
OK, nothing greasy in your stomach? I will excerpt something after all from the guys that used to sell us 4096 lighting-speed dial-up internet:
In one of the most divisive speeches seen in parliament since 1996 when far-right politician Pauline Hanson declared incorrectly that Australia was being swamped by Asians, Senator Fraser Anning on Tuesday called for a national vote on whether to ban Muslim migration.[My bold]The lying is so blatant. Who says Miss Hanson's statement of 22 years back was incorrect? It turned out to be right, unless you get really technical - true, most of the Asian (all kinds) immigrants didn't move into the swamp, if that's what CompuServe means - these people are not stupid.
One more thing - whether the ex-Senator was lying in order to back-pedal (not necessarily the case) or not, he and his party boss stated that Mr. Anning didn't even know that horrific use of the term. It shouldn't freakin' matter though. We don't just prohibit use of perfectly fine English language because it freaks other people out! Fraser Anning must know that the ctrl-left would like to shut him and his party up on the immigration-invasion issue. From 2 days ago being a member-in-good-standing to this - he should have known "you can't say anything".
I wish one of these guys would stand up, well, for more than one day!
*Would it not be cool if America had an "American Party", you know, one party that is pro-Americans? Man, those people down-under are way ahead of us! Yeah, we tried with the Mr. Perot-inspired Reform Party, then the Tea Party (which didn't actually have anyone running for office under the name), but for now it's still the two squads of The Party up here, where the toilets flush CCW....
** Yeah, anyone remember CompuServe? I'd first worried a bit that the article would be in monochrome, green on black. It'd rather read truth in monochrome than lies in 256-bit color any day though.
*** I hope the reader understands that Peak Stupidity claims a trademark on "Global Climate Disruption(TM) only as a running joke. We don't have the money for that kind of thing, and we would really like the term to spread.
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Great comment on Trump from a guy named Jack D.
Posted On: Wednesday - August 15th 2018 9:02PM MST
In Topics: Music Trump Pundits
Once in a while Peak Stupidity will just save some effort by posting an entire great comment from, well it's been so far, guys writing on the unz.com site. So far there have been 2 posts, written as comments by a guy named Mark Green, one about Trump and the Neocons, and another also about America's foreign policy.
There is a commenter that goes by the handle Jack D. who writes prolifically under the Steve Sailer posts. He's a good writer, being always coherent and to the point. Though I don't agree with the guy always, say, 90-95% of the time (85% on a bad day), I wanted to put up this one, maybe not completely related to the post it was under an iSteve post called
"Swedish PM Asks Arsonists 'What the Heck Are You Doing?". That title has Mr. Sailer's great humor in it, as it makes fun of the unflappable, always nice, semi-stupidity of the Scandanavians.
The comment here is response to another commenter's embedded tweet about the President's calling one of his disloyal, traitorous staffers a dog, and the problem for the ctrl-left that none of us give a crap about the name calling. Jack D:
At least he didn’t call her a monkey or else they would have to cancel his show.Well put, Jack D. I couldn't find it in a post just now, but Peak Stupidity liked Donald Trump from the get-go for the main reason that he doesn't seem to be a guy easily bullied or blackmailed. We knew he was a playboy. We're beyond caring about whether that is a "problem", as this guy could actually do some good for Americans. I did find a fun post from Inauguration Day in which Peak Stupidity declared President Trump a Righteous Dude.
Oh, wait, they can’t cancel his show – he was elected by the people of the United States to serve for 4 years. This is what really drives the left nuts because they are so used to being able to instantly unperson anyone who has slipped up. One word and you are out. But Trump says one word and then another and another and nothing ever happens to him.
Imagine the shock when the Hillary people unleashed Pussygate and it didn’t work. The expression on their face must have been like the bad guys when they would shoot Superman point blank and he would just stand there with his chest out. And then he would grab their guns and twist the barrel into a pretzel.
Or maybe it was Machado. Machado was going to cause Trump to “self destruct” – he called a woman fat. This is unpardonable – not one single woman in America could ever vote for such a monster. Trump would melt like the Wicked Witch of the West. He would self-destruct. Except he didn’t.
[Jack D.'s Vanity Fair link]
But every day they try again and again even though the election is over – hope is evergreen.
Yes, we've been up and down on this guy. We've had hopes and disappointments, yes and no feeling on whether this guy has been already neoconned, or deeped state(?), but damn, we still need to wake up each morning thankful that the sick wicked Hildabeast is safely ensconsed in some liquor-and-drug-induced state in some state from away from here, anyway. Could Peak Stupidity do the job better? Of course.
"If I was the President (was the president)
the minute the congress called my name (was the president),
I'd say now who (whooo?) do you think you're foolin'? (who do you think you're foolin'?)
I've got the Presidential Seal, I'm up on the Presidential podium.
My Mama loves me, she loves me, she loves me like a rock."
Loves Me Like a Rock is from Paul Simon's excellent album One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor from way back in 1973, only a couple of years after he broke up from the great duet act with Art Garfunkle. Peak Stupidity featured Paul Simon before, in a serious manner with American Tune , then with a fun song named At the Zoo, and lastly with the more obscure song Only Livin' Boy in New York. Those great backing vocals on Loves me Like a Rock and others on the same album were the singing of the black gospel group The Dixie Hummingbirds.
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