ZeroHedge summary of 3 Trump options against pro-Invasion Lawfare
Posted On: Monday - May 12th 2025 7:25PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Trump US Feral Government ctrl-left Legal Stupidity
A couple of weeks ago on Peak Stupidity we had a Reader Friend Suggestion: Judge shopping for re- and pro-active Reverse Lawfare. This friend, who has started commenting as "Coulda Had Lee Rille" (disclaimer: not his real name... not ANYBODY's real name), asked for input from any legal types on whether any of this was feasible or legal. He obtained some answers from Unz Reveiw commenters.
The ZeroHedge post I saw today, Trump's 'Nuclear' Deportation Options, did not bring up Coulda' Had's ideas, but the author, one James Rickards of The Daily Reckoning, summed up the already well-known possibilities nicely. Mr. Rickards focussed his article, as per his title, on immigration measures by Trump, though this judicial obstruction tactic can and has been used by the ctrl-left of stop other policy by Trump and others.
Therefore, the 1st portion of the article is a good summary of the struggle the Trump administration is having with its deportation efforts. At this point, those efforts are still mostly aimed at the violent gang members, convicted criminals and other of the worst aliens that most obviously should be sent out of this country NOW. That's why it's a real sight to see, when the ctrl-left is working so hard to defend your Venezuelan Tren de Aragua members who've already raped and killed people. It takes a sicko to work to stop their exit from America, a leftist-principled sicko, but a sicko nonetheless.
What I don't like here in the article is a trend I have predicted. Rather than see the big picture that there were already a rectally-extracted-but-ballpark 30 million illegal aliens here before the Brandon/Mayorkas treason brought in 10-12 million more, people are forgetting the initial 30 million! This writer writes as if the 10-12 million is the ultimate goal. I'm afraid the Trump administration will start thinking that way too. With all the success in the world, they'd figure they're done, when we've gone down to accumulated numbers from 2020!
I have not yet looked to see if any of the astute ZeroHedge commenters - they are a mixed bag - have corrected Mr. Rickards on this matter. That aside, his summary of 3 possible ways to stop/avoid the judicial obstruction is good quick reading:
One is for the Supreme Court to issue a definitive ruling that district courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions, can only issue orders for the plaintiffs in the case and not the entire class of illegals, and that the courts have almost no jurisdiction over the conduct of foreign policy. Those rulings would empower Trump’s deportation programs.Let me be brief on my analysis of these 3 options:
The second way is for Trump to ignore the courts and proceed as planned. Critics will scream this is “unconstitutional”, but it’s just as unconstitutional for courts to ignore their limitations and intrude on the power of the executive branch. It’s an outcome the courts will have brought upon themselves.
The third way is to abolish the district courts, or at least some of them. That’s not as radical as it sounds. The Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to structure the court system any way it likes with the exception of the Supreme Court. Congress created the district courts and Congress can abolish them as well..
1) I'm pretty sure someone has pictures of John Roberts with naked little boys or something just as incriminating. He can positively be counted on to let America down when he is needed. Trump really screwed up his 3 SCROTUS picks, arguably at least 2 of them. I don't think we can count on (1) happening.
3) Congress can do a lot using their Constitutionally specified powers. They don't though. There's no way any of this will happen. If it miraculously did, activist judges would obstruct any legislation that did away with their jobs. Hell, wouldn't you?!
Ooops, I skipped over (2).
2) This is the only method that can work. This is not the America of 1985, in which perhaps we could work to form an across-the-aisle coalition to solve these problems. Now, one side WANTS these problems. The other side has half its people WANTING these problems. Of the rest, half of them care more about being thought well of in Washington, FS, so they can be welcomed at the cocktail parties.
Trump needs to do an Andy Jackson. He started off the Trump-47 term with a Blitzkrieg. The ctrl-left has formed its skirmish line made of activist judges. It's time to get the tanks back into formation and roll on through. Lighting war does not stop for Judge Boasergs. How many divisions do these judges have? They should be squished into the mud under MAGA's tank treads.
Comments (6)
The Brown LA Haze
Posted On: Saturday - May 10th 2025 8:36PM MST
In Topics: Music California Global Climate Stupidity Cars Environmental Stupidity
"Land Ho!" Nah, it was more like "Hey! There's a big freaking island out there!" Long ago, I spent some time in Los Angeles. I'd been there for a few months already, spending lots of time right there at the coast. I can't remember if we were at Hermosa or Manhattan beach, but as I hung out with my colleagues I saw that huge island, Santa Catalina,
What the hell was that thing doing out there all of a sudden? Well, obviously visibility had been less than 35 miles, really MUCH less, so I hadn't seen Catalina during all the time I'd been there, due to that brown LA haze, that particulate smog that used to fill the LA basin. What was that stuff? Particulate pollution can be a lot of stuff, water droplets and particles, including, yeah carbon. It's not gaseous pollution, or you wouldn't be able to see it. Californy resident Jed Clampett explains this to a visitor:
With those wide-open freeways - yeah, I'm going back a ways!* - and, the new car culture, and way before the CARB**, car culture was big in southern Cal. See American Graffiti and songs by The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean. This was long after the heyday of those guys and the movies, but the cars were all there, even more of them still and still spewing out quite a lot of particulates.
You get all that nasty stuff into the air from non-ideal internal combustion. (Stoichiometry - now there's something to chew on.) There's Nitrogen coming into your intake (78% of air) that's OK for the working fluid but the idea is not to make Nitrogen compounds. Then, there's the carbon in the form of soot particles. Auto pollution controls and engine electronics, etc. have done a lot since that day I finally viewed Catalina Island from the LA beaches. With all that the chemists and engineers of that age had to deal with, I don't believe Carbon Dioxide would have been considered a problem. After all, it and water are the 2 PRODUCTS, not BY-PRODUCTS, of ideal combustion of hydrocarbons. The Hydrogen combines with the O2 to make water, and the Carbon with it to make CO2. What't the problem?
In fact, my old not-so-clean-burning muscle car is kinda MORE carbon neutral than Greta might give it credit for. After all, if I'm sending the Carbon out the tailpipe as soot, then it's not being combined with the nasty planet-killing Carbon Dioxide. That's good, right? Any Chemists, Chemical Engineers, car guys, or just smart asses have anything to say about this? It doesn't sound like it, but comments are always welcome here.
Californians and their government, and I use "their" loosely here, have gone beyond worrying about real pollution. They did a good job with it, but you don't just quit saving the planet just because the air is cleaner. Saving the planet pays pretty well, so you find something new. The Climate Calamity™ pays very well!
In the meantime, I'll now feel good about saving the planet as I drive my muscle car that spits out soot to save from putting it into greenhouse-gas form. I'm not in LA, so I'm not responsible for that brown LA haze. Come Monday, it'll be alright...
For the ParrotHeads, this one's from Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. Perhaps it's been overplayed, but it's a nice tune. As for the lyric line that is the title of this post, let me tell you, I could NOT figure out what Jimmy was saying until about 20 years after I'd heard the song. How were you to find out? We didn't have the internet, dammit, much less fuel injection, catalytic converters, unleaded gas, and a view of Catalina Island. It just came to me one day.
Have a happy Sunday, Peakers. Thanks for reading and commenting. Come Monday, there will probably be another post.
PS: Because I saved the top image on that date, it was at that time of our 2 posts about the work done, and video made by, Climate Sanitist Tony Heller, aka, Toby Flenderson (Part 1 and Part 2) that I thought about this one. For the life of me, I can't see where that one led directly into this, but I can actually remember my thoughts of that moment.
* Perhaps the mid 1970s, Jim Rockford's time, were still before the time of the ubiquitous traffic jam, but that's just going by a TV show. (They didn't want to film really, really tedious car chase scenes I guess...) Commenter SafeNow could tell us the answer.
** They had carburetors, yes, but not the California Air Resources Board.
Comments (10)
Road Construction Update
Posted On: Saturday - May 10th 2025 8:59AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Political Correctness Curmudgeonry Peak Stupidity Roadshow
Going on 8 years since the last time, hence the last post written, since I noticed a non-Feminist, non-PC construction alert sign, I saw another. Has this "opportunity" for a pro-Feminist struggle been missed? I just can't recall.
It's one thing to use completely different wording, like "Road work in progress" or "Road work ahead" that does not necessarily have an agenda but just a different way of saying the same thing. Have I missed "People at work", "Workers working" (yeah, I know), or anything else that is PC?
This is a good sign, pun intended. Are people getting fatigued of the everyday PC/wokeness, or is it that, basically nobody cares to make new signs? The latter thought had me motivated to write this post because of another sign also there, associated with this one. The other sign tells one to merge left, as the right lane is closed ahead.
Except, the right lane WAS NOT closed ahead. We're getting back to this topic of decreasing competence, and we may see it in all walks of life. I get that the orange barrels and cones are put just off the street for the times the road work is not in progress. It'd not be efficient to keep picking them up and putting them on trucks at night. This "Right Lane Closed" sign, though, ought to be put to the side and turned 90 degrees. Hell, it's cloth, I think, so just roll it up.
Back in the days when Curmudgeonry posts were half the blog, we asked People can't merge ... is there an App for that? (This one was almost right at 8 years back.) I don't take that post back - merging really is a lost art.
A few weeks ago, I saw a lady stopped completely in the middle lane of 5 lanes of highway, with her left blinker on because she wanted to get into one of the 2 lanes that forked left, over 1/4 mile away!. She was a sitting duck there, when all she had to do, even at that point, was gun it, get up to 50 mph or so, and slide over. Or, just suck it up, and don't fork left - the phone will help you get back where you want to go anyway. Madness!
Upon seeing the erroneous "Right Lane Closed" sign, for days now, I question whether some of the merging hesitancy is due to the incompetence of the road crews or their managers. In a sports car, one may not see what's ahead, lose some time merging, and then realize that was for nothing. In a taller vehicle, I could see that there was no reason to merge - both lanes were visibly open. There's no telling now, whether the signs mean it or not. Just keep going, and if we really have to merge, oh well, wait until 100 ft. away, stop, and we'll all have a traffic jam. That's the new normal.
Finally, there's a stop light nearby that used to work "smartly", I have to say, as the side road of this T-intersection didn't have much traffic. It'd stay green until a while after a car on that side road tripped the sensor. Then, the red for he main road would be short, but a little longer if it detected a number of cars flowing through still. Smart, with no internet required! (For now.)
Once the road was paved though - one of the proud few! - the signal reverted to olde timey timer-style. The main road will have a red light for no reason now. Ha, it's funny to think that this would have sounded stupid 40 years ago. "Whaddya' mean, for no reason? It's some wiring and some lights!". With some tweaking allowed, the timing of one direction vs. the perpendicular, all you had was timing back then. Now, though, you can do better, and we are used to that. However, after the paving job, the traffic engineers must send some technicians out to re-program the box. That hasn't happened. It's been half a year.
Get used to the new World - smarter devices, stupider people.
Comments (10)
Trump taking pro-White action
Posted On: Friday - May 9th 2025 10:59AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Trump Race/Genetics
The guy on our right looks a lot like a S. African guy I know, but the guy I know is an English-ancestry S. African. I can hear his accent in my head when I look at this picture.
I have no idea where most Peak Stupidity readers get their news from. Our commenters are known to be an erudite set, so I wouldn't think their "Conservative" outlet would be Fox News or the usual RedState, Townhall, etc sites. I bring this up because I've gotten the feeling from comments on The Unz Review that many real Conservatives have a bad opinion of President Trump-47 since these last >100 days.
I imagine if you were to watch the guy, whether on Fox news, various youtube/rumble/bitchute clips, wherever, you'd be bound to get a bad impression of The Donald. He runs his mouth too much, and changes his mind seemingly randomly. He is, after all a wrecking ball*. There's something to be said for not listening to a word out of his mouth - as has been the case for me for at least a couple of months - and just read about some very important and successful efforts he HAS made.
Regarding the picture above, I cannot be sure this effort won't be blocked by rogue destructive judges, maybe by the same freaking guy(!), but it's a work in progress. Per The Gateway Pundit, Trump to Welcome First Batch of White South African Refugees Fleeing Government-Sponsored Racial Persecution to U.S. Within Days.
On February 7, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order halting all U.S. aid to South Africa, citing “government-sponsored race-based discrimination,” including racially discriminatory property confiscation.Yeah, no shit, but then has ANY President or Majority leader or ANYBODY called the racist Black! rulers of the former 1st World country of South Africa out for this?
It can be recalled that South Africa’s EFF leader Julius Malena was again calling for genocide against white South Africans at a rally last year.It's been really bad, and the destruction of that country since the 31 year-ago handover of the country from the White man to the blacks is in an acceleration phase now**.
Instead of another 100 thousand here, 50 thousand there of 3rd-World people, supposed war refugees***, asylees, parolees, etc., Trump is welcoming up to 60-odd thousand White Afrikaners. Yes, they are NOW from the 3rd World, but they are not 3rd World people. Besides that these Boers (the other term) are hard-working people, as opposed to the 10's of millions of other "newcomers" over the last decades, they will actually, albeit minutely, slow the decline of the White population here. Thirdly, for their own sake, their home is going down quickly, and, if not already, they will be in great danger. These are deserving refugees. A tweet from some dude notes:
EXCLUSIVE: Trump officials plan to use funds for at-risk refugees to facilitate an influx of white South Africans within days, according to a government source & internal memo viewed by @LeverNews.I can't tell if he's pissed or happy, but I'm not about to wade into some confusing tweet-fest to find out!
The influx is happening as Trump bans other refugees.
It's not the numbers, as we're talking 1,000 this year, even if not judge-blocked. The southern border is nearly under control, so we've stopped digging, but the deportation program had better be ramped-up 10 or 20 fold if it is to be serious. That's not what this move is about.
This move by President is openly pro-White. Additionally, I just read a couple of articles about Trump firing 2 black government officials. I know, there are millions of people in the Feral Gov't, and "women and minorities will be hardest hit!", but these were specific firings. One was a deputy director of the NSTB, and the other was the Librarian of Congress. (I'm guessing she was too loud.) These 2 firings are not big deals in of themselves, but how many Presidents would have been too cowardly to fire a black lady, directly, and in plain sight? I'd say all of them, in the past.
President Trump will get called all sorts of names whether he does these sorts of things or not. He's got 3 3/4 years to change things. Why not go all out?
Therefore, I really think that Conservative Trump detractors ought to spend a little time thanking the man for pro-White moves like this. Nobody else would have had the guts.
PS: This is probably the only one of hundreds of posts here with the Immigration Stupidity topic key that is pro-immigration. Save the Boer!
PPS: While I was looking for the GP article on one of the black ladies fired, I found an alleged update on THIS story. It does have the following:
“Trump’s policy is a bold, necessary correction,” said a spokesperson for the Chamber of Commerce. “While the West bends over backward to help every other group under the sun, these people—Christian, European, hard-working—have been abandoned. Not anymore.”Say what you want about Trump, but you should mention this too.
* I am not sure if it was Peter Brimelow himself, another writer on VDare, or someone else, who coined that term. It fit for Trump-45, and it fits now. However, I think we've got the crane placed in a much better spot this time!
** Roughly 2 years back Peak Stupidity published an 8 part series of posts, Cry the DeConstructed Country based, to start out, on one article by a long-time expat to America who came back to visit. They are:
Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - Part 4: Anecdote on Anti-Apartheid - - Part 5: Cold and Hot Wars, and the Commies, of course - - Part 6: Africa Wins - - Part 7:
1st World Memories of Suid Afrikaanse Lugdiens and Part 8: As Falls S. Africa...
*** No doubt some are refugees due to American caused warmongering. As much as we'd like it to stop (and this is NOT one of Trump's successes) that's still only an excuse. They may have to leave home, but they don't have to come here. See our discussion of this point in our post Invade the World/Invite the World: Cause & Effect.
Comments (12)
"Houston, we habe Papam."
Posted On: Thursday - May 8th 2025 2:39PM MST
In Topics: Americans Bible/Religion So-called Pope Francis
The white smoke has wafted out of the Vatican chimney - apparently it's much easier to pick a Pope when stoned. Is the new Pope
We weren't so sure about that standard joke question "Is the Pope Catholic" with the guy they had the last dozen years. We were pretty sure he was a Communist though. Due to our disgust with the Papal Bull out of so-called Pope Francis, we didn't even go take hundreds of pictures of the Vatican while in Rome. (Well, "don't as the Romans don't", they say... it would stand to reason ...)
Amazingly, not only is the new Pope Leo XIV (14th for those readers out there on the other side of Hadrian's wall), a straight** White man, he's an American! It's about damn time. Without checking anything, that also increases the chances of his not being a Communist. We'd better check though - we got the internet, so ...
That this new guy, Robert Francis Prevost, didn't pick Pope Francis II as his alias, seeing as he could have used his middle name - easier to remember, if nothing else - is a good sign to start with. OTOH his last name comes pretty close to "Prevert", which is how many of us like to pronounce "pervert", so not so great a start there. OK, fine, let's go to the wiki page.
Robert Prevost was born in 1955 in Chicago and lived his childhood in Chicagoland (Chicagoans' term for Greater Chicago), specifically Dolton, Ill. That town might ring a bell, if the name of Black! grifter Mayor Tiffany Henyard rings a bell. That business happened much later than then-Mr. Prevost's time in "the far south side of Chicago", per wiki. You'd think he might have a clue on racial reality, but we'll see. I won't bring up every detail of the man's schooling, mostly divinity schools of various sorts and lots of it. He decided to be, or started becoming, I should say, a Priest at age 22. At age 30, he went down to Peru to the Augustinian mission for a year or so, and then came back in '88 and stayed through '99.
Peru, huh? That's worrisome, but then, I remember first hearing of the Shining Path Communists down there from a Peruvian friend from that very time. I wouldn't think this guy would be too enamored with Commies after the "antics" of the Shining Path, but, again, who knows. (He didn't join up, at least...)
However, Father Prevost does have a THING about Peru, and it can't all be about Machu Picchu, olde turtles, and llamas. He was down there again for 11 years starting in '14 as Bishop of Chiclayo. I seriously first thought that was a typo on the wiki page, but that's a place, and he became titular bishop. (No, that's not ... we'll get to the harassment business...) By THING, I mean that Prevost obtained citizenship of Peru, in 2015. What exactly is up with that?
I am not the type to believe all the #MeToo women's nonsense, and I give the Catholic Priests some leeway too. Lots of people lie. From wiki:
Alleged victims of abuse from two priests, dating back to 2007, said that Prevost failed to open an investigation in 2022. According to the Diocese of Chiclayo, Prevost met with the young women in ...Ohhhh! Women, whyn't ya' say so? Seriously, I've been dinged myself for not making mountains out of molehills, Prevost was not the alleged perpetrator, and I don't know what they mean by "young" here. So, I'll leave that without further comment. Plus, it was Peru. If no donkeys were involved ...
There's plenty more to learn, and I'm sure Ann Barndardt will and will tell us what she has. I'll read there later. In the meantime, ZeroHedge, in American Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost Announced As New Popehas some more info including some of his recent anti-Social media statements. I went through it. It's not pretty, especially his re-tweets and original tweets on the US Immigration Invasion. The same old short-term sob stories appear, with no regard to the long-term sob story of the sad demographic future. Well, they got THEIR walls, so, and there's no great rush of people into Peru...
... which seems to be Robert Prevost's, aka, Pope Leo XIV's, country. I take it he's a dual citizen. He was down there for 1/3 of his life and more than 1/2 of his adult life. I've got a feeling we've got another Liberation Theologist on our hands, maybe not a complete 1970's style Commie, but not an American Conservative theologian either. I should say, YOU'VE got another Liberation Theologist on YOUR hands. I wash my hands of this guy. You got it, Catholics. Good luck with Uncle Leo and all that!
This time around it sounds like the question is not "Is the Pope Catholic?" It might be "Is the Pope a Commie?", but the real question is, "Is the Pope an American?" Is he an American from Chicago or an "American" from Chiclayo?
* Jackson someone... anyone? Jackson Browne from... anyone, anyone coke-something, anyone?
** Actually, we don't know this for sure. I'll have to listen to him talk first thing.
Comments (6)
Isaac Asimov unavailable for comment
Posted On: Wednesday - May 7th 2025 7:54PM MST
In Topics: Music China The Future Science
I'm just phoning it in this evening - kinda tired.
Though unfortunately it's not the case socially and politically. we are starting to see a world of technology that had been envisioned by Science Fiction writers whose short stories, novels, and novellas I read as a kid. Does anyone remember Isaac Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics? Perhaps his novels never got translated into Chinese. One wonders about the Quality Assurance on the software.
Don't worry - this guy was on a test stand of sorts. Once he's standalone finished and has a sticker from Q/A, and all the paperwork is in order, he can't hurt a human. It's built into the software... and will be in all the upgrades too... and we're pretty sure about that ...
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto... NO! Can't do it.
As appropriate (though somewhat dated, with "Made in Japan" and "My brain is IBM") that song would be for this post, Styx was at their best in the 1970's, which ended for them in, actually 1981 with the great album Paradise Theater. Peak Styx was IMHO 1977 and the Grand Illusion album.
Styx was:
Tommy Shaw – lead vocals, acoustic lead guitar
James Young – electric rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Dennis DeYoung – keyboards, backing vocals
Chuck Panozzo – bass
John Panozzo – drums
Comments (9)
Peak Stupidity University Sociological Observations versus Theory
Posted On: Tuesday - May 6th 2025 7:33PM MST
In Topics: University Female Stupidity
At the bottom of our post last week entitled University Bubble Housing, we foreshadowed this post, saying "Next time: What one can't help noticing around campus."
Since I'd looked at a whole bunch of stats on the University in question with the rapidly growing housing capacity yet questionable growth prospects, I wanted to discuss one of them in particular. That is the sex ratio, often mistakenly called gender ratio, which I must admit, is probably clearer in this context than sex ratio. (Sounds like "who's gettin' any?") Here is that pie chart:
Let me get a couple of things out of the way here. Firstly, I'm sure most Peak Stupidity readers are aware of societal trends enough to know that the numbers of University enrollees would be skewed toward woman at this point. Secondly, the reasons and the implications have probably been discussed by you all, likely in the comments section of the old iSteve blog, as that's well within Steve Sailer's wheelhouse. Therefore, I won't get into all that here.
This is one university, so to get more general data, I did my best with my sorry-assed search skills on the www. For the recent few years, I get the ratio for the whole US as anywhere from 57.4% women to right at the numbers for this school, approaching 60% women. Oh, so it's significant, but the number of women is only 20% more than the number of men. No, this is why some of us went to the university!... besides that there are so many women there - ;-} - that's 50% more women than men! Nice! (If you're horny.)
That means that if you sit there at the student union and wonder if you'll be able to get chicks, you can think "I'll write off 1/3 of these girls as too homely and we're still even." Does that work? Some say no. I was not in a fraternity, so your mileage (heh) may vary.
Is there anything that we can notice that has changed due to this now-heavily-female-skewed university attendance. Yeah, Noticing. I'm no Steve Sailer, but I still have that Y chromosome, so I can't HELP but notice some things at the university campus or within a mile radius.
Butt cheeks. You can see a lot more. Perhaps the girls were generally slimmer when I went to college, which is very important, but of the many who are now, I have noticed this trend. They wear shorts that show significant amounts of material that I don't recall were visible years ago. It's something else, I tells ya'.
I see a correlation, with the observational numbers - I mean, I can't go measuring parts of people - and the theory, which supposes that these young ladies, many, or probably most, there to start that MRS degree, have to "work" harder these days to attract attention, since they outnumber the men 3:2. There's more competition and that means that you've got to show off more skin than the next
Since I've brought up Steve Sailer throughout this post, let me take a cue from him and propose a law, somewhat (but not) akin to his Law of Female Journalism.*
Peak Stupidity's Law of Female University Student Hotness: The higher the female/male enrollment ratio at a university, the higher the average amount of ass cheek visible.
Sociological Observation. We have not even gotten our research grants approved yet. Still, it's what we thanklessly do here.
* You'll have to read the book, or, yeah, look it up on the www, for the exact wording.
Comments (8)
Shiloh and the Somalians
Posted On: Saturday - May 3rd 2025 5:16PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Student and other Snowflakes Political Correctness Liberty/Libertarianism Race/Genetics
This is a screenshot from The Gateway Pundit, not the video itself. It's at the bottom.
No, that wouldn't even be a good name for a rock band*. In Minnesota, don'tcha' know? Shiloh obviously sounds like a Southern girl's. name, and Somalians, I mean what the...? I'd have figured a Rochester, Minnesota girl would be Natalie, Marge, Helen, Mary... Tyler Moore, or something, and we were led to believe (in a 1970s TV show) that there'd be no Somalians in a place like Rochester, Minnesota.
OK, we're being facetious here, as we HAVE kept up with the immigration invasion, including the refugee resettlement scam. As if they hadn't already screwed up by creating a big welfare State in the upper midwest to where native blacks from other States moved up, the nice White Minnesota ladies invited 10's to 100's of thousands of foreigner blacks from Somalia, repeating a 200-400 year old mistake.
Well, for this "N-word" story today (one I just read about today, after reading "Shiloh" here for a while in bewilderment) the difference between mistakes made by Shiloh Hendrix's possible 20th generation ancestors vs. those made by her parents' or grandparents" generation doesn't matter. This could have happened either way, with either "community". As I watched the viral video of Miss(?) Hendrix admitting (OH! GOSH!) to calling a budding little thief a nigger and not backing down, I had a memory from years ago of some little black girl grabbing something of my boy's off the bench at this same type of playground. Her little brother seemed to be eyeing stuff too. It was the appropriate time to give my son John Derbyshire's The Talk - non-Black! version. He was about 4 y/o, so I had to abbreviate it quite a bit, to "You have to keep an eye on 'them'." I don't remember having known who the Mom was there at the playground, and luckily, yes, we have no
Miss Hendrix must have had the word "nigger" nearby in her head, meaning she had some experience with racial matters. No, it's no longer Mary Tyler Moore's Minnesota. (... and this is Rochester, even, not Minneagadishu.) You get pissed, and the bad words come out... rude, but it ain't no crime [/Billy Joel]. OTOH, stealing someone's diaper bag at the park is, but it was a little thief, so whaddya' do? Usually nothing - just walk away and cool down.
Mr. concerned good
I'm sorry if I don't pay attention to, or really care about, foreign students who get kicked out of the country for speech of some kind, that is, as compared to the de facto ban on certain "Hate Speech" by the Establishment, in which free speech has been limited for 2 decades. It was very nice to see Shiloh Hendrix not back down to this race hustling Somalian... and multiple times at that. I suppose once you're already on camera, the rest of them are free, as they say.
Young people especially know how video is everywhere, and it can put your good or bad moments "up" for all the world to see. Yet, young Shiloh thought "Screw it, we shouldn't have to take grief from some worthless foreigner for not putting up with theft from my little one in our formerly White spaces." I am very glad to see that she is getting a lot of support from (ya' gotta figure) White people around the country and also that she has not backed down, as of press time.
Will the BLM types and Commie goons be stirred up by their leaders to start another Floyd campaign 5 years later, in the same State even? Well, see, nobody died... but then, saying "nigger" is worse than murder, apparently. I'm guessing even the Snowflakes of Minnesota won't put up with any more of that. The Commies will have to come up with something else, because, single-motherhood, arm-long tattoos and all****, Shiloh Hendrix is something of a hero. I don't proclaim the following in jest, as the wording suggests:
(AI cartoon kindly provided by Adam Smith, without his permission.)
In comments below, Adam Smith has given a link to Shiloh's GiveSendGo page. It's up to $619,000 and climbing, with many small donations. It's perhaps hypocritical for me to urge people to Give, Send, and Go(?) when I haven't, but I seriously have a problem with apps and personal info for ANYTHING that doesn't need it. I send checks and cash. Were I to be sure to have a good address for this young lady, I may send her $100 and a nice thank you note. Hopefully she's the type that cares about what happens here not solely for her ability to get away (but where?! This was Minne-freaking-sota!) from this "community", but I also hopes she does care, and is proud of, her probably unintentional blow for free speech in America.
Here's the video from Adam Smith's youtube channel (No, you can't use the clicker there, Meathead!)
If the youtube MiniTru Dept. strips it out, Adam has provided us with 2 other sources. Thanks!
PS: This isn't unexpected, but it's too bad Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit has nowhere near the courage of young Shiloh. His post on this story reads "N-Word" in the title, and he made this into story of the criminality of the Somalian playground-goer rather than any defense of Shiloh Hendrix and free speech. Beyond that, he advises discretion of his readers (hence my not having cropped that out above) due to, what... the one word? Cuck!
* Hat tip to good old Dave Barry.
** See this take on the parable of The Good Samaritan.
*** Not to be confused with a guy named Omer, who was involved in some crime with him. It used to be you wouldn't get confused by Omar/Omer because THERE! WERE! NONE! in America.
**** From thoughts of Greg Hood in the article on this story linked-to up top also, The Battle of Shiloh. Yes, clever title there.
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[UPDATED 05/04:] Added GiveSendGo link and paragraph associated. Added the video clip itself. Thanks to Adam Smith for the help.
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Comments (28)
Senator Josh Hawley reintroduces the PELOSI Bill
Posted On: Friday - May 2nd 2025 7:26PM MST
In Topics: Humor US Feral Government
They're calling it an Act, but an Act is only created when a Bill is passed, by both the House and Senate, and then signed by the President (or via the override of his veto by 2/3 aye's in both the House and Senate. The PELOSI Bill, an acronym for Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments is surely not going to. US Congressmen and Senators have too much invested in the status quo.*
Yes, the PELOSI Act! Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is a clever guy. I mean, that there is funny, no matter who ya' are... unless you're Nancy Pelosi or one of the stockbrokers who work for the many millionaires in the House and Senate.
Really, even if one of the Communists of the American left had come up with such a great acronym, I'd find it humorous. That wouldn't happen though, because the ctrl-left have no sense of humor. We at Peak Stupidity do, and this is so funny because it fits so well.
Nancy Pelosi is something on the order of 1/4 $Billion filthy rich. It pays to be a 20-term servant of the California taxpayers. Additionally, if you don't want to be eating cat food when you retire (aka, die) from the office, there's insider trading, designed to help one augment the meager $174,000 annual salary plus the $49,500 override for serving as Speaker.
* Surely that pun was intended, the reader may ask. Indeed it was, and quit calling me Shirley.
No comments - Click here to start thread
University Bubble Housing
Posted On: Thursday - May 1st 2025 7:45PM MST
In Topics: University Economics
The reader may have been expecting "Housing Bubble" together, as we've written about that before. (See our old posts with my favorite Case-Schiller graphs off one particular blog I used to like: Housing Bubble 2.0 - West coast, university towns, minorities, to be hardest hit! - - Housing Bubble 2.0 - (Part 2) - Voila, an American Dream - - One year after our last post - Housing Bubble 2.0 going Bubblicious and Checking in on Housing Bubble 2.0- Bubble or just high inflation?.) I've been wrong too many times about housing prices, as you can see from the titles*, so here I discuss the University Bubble, prompted by my seeing so lots of new housing being built.
The "University Bubble" is something Instapundit Glenn Reynolds used to discuss, or actually, point out articles about, and I saw a post of his about it a couple of months back. Is this anything real?
Is it as with the manufacturers of socks I buy at Target, there's just one architect doing all of these?
There have been traffic jams as work had to be done out into the busy streets around this whole city block apartment complex being built ~ 3/4 mile from the center of the nearby University. I looked the builder up. They are a big company that builds these structures all over. Regarding this particular one near us, depending on which site you read, there will be 600-odd or 900-odd bedrooms. (Based on units, also 2 different numbers, the apartments will average to 3 bedrooms.)
These are not dorms, owned by the U., but they are mostly definitely for students. They are expecting a WHOLE LOT of university students. That would be a whole lot MORE. This is after 20 years of my seeing new housing being built all over, and it's not going anywhere.. I just found a nice web page for the University of REDACTED stats on student population. Student population attending this campus has increased 18% in the last 10 years, but unfortunately, the data doesn't go back past 11 years ago.
Interestingly, at first, I found it odd that, for all years I checked, the number of students in each academic year-category went up from Freshmen, sorry Freshpeople, through Seniors. Whaaaa? Don't students drop out anymore? (Well, now there's "grade forgiveness" and basically lower standards and all the student loan money you can use, so .. don't call us, child, we'll call you....) Freshman class sizes are about 1/2 of Senior class sizes, and Sophomore and Junior are in the middle and fairly close to each other.
Ahaa, this shows that there are plenty of students that have transferred from other schools, most probably from less expensive community/tech colleges.
I see a pie chart that says 17% of the students get Pell Grants, but no pie** about student loans held. THAT would have been more helpful. It was not easy to get consistent numbers, but for American college students in general, I get that about half of them exit (graduate?) college with student loan debt. The average amount is not as much as I'd thought, somewhere around 25 big ones. (That's only half of a new pick-up truck.)
Is this continual growth in college student population, ahem, sustainable? I see 3 factors in this possible University Bubble:
1) College student age population. I know I read something by Steve Sailer predicting lower numbers of American available to attend college, but Census Bureau data doesn't agree. this link on the CB site goes to a simple spreadsheet. There's a slight drop going on, with the population of the 20-24 y/o, 15-19 y/o (about 1/2 of these 2 of standard college age), 10-14 y/o, and 5-9 y/o (a decade before college age) groupings going from 22.3 million, to 21.6 million, to 20.7 million, then down to 19.9 million. It's not a drastic change. With some averaging of the oldest 2 groupings, we'd see a drop of 5% over 5 years and 10% over 10 years. (This is assuming President Trump keeps on doing what he's doing at the border, what with all those future Valedictorians and all...)
That reduction is not what I'd call the popping of a bubble.
2) The financial burden of student loans. We have an idea of this burden numerically. However, we don't know whether or when students, or more like their parents, will start balking at accumulating debt that may have served no purpose, depending on major. IOW, will potential students and their parents stop supporting this cycle of tuition increases***, with taxpayer support for it all? I guess this depends on the rest of the economy, the outlook of which is not rosy.
3) The point of going to college. There's a video I've seen referenced in multiple place recently by some famous (not to me!) guy who recommends not going to college for lots of young people. With automation and AI possibly wiping out lot of the rest of the white collar jobs, will it get even harder to enter one of the careers that college education is important for?
There will always be a need for engineers, doctors, scientists, etc., but most of those attending college are in other majors. Is there really a point now, when most student have no resemblance to real humanities scholars of the past? College has become a rite of passage and 4 years, sometimes 5, of good times and that's all. Your parents went, they still buy the sweatshirts and ball caps, and everyone follows the sportsball teams, so ... why not? The future of this spending of half a decade just for fun and inertial reasons depends, yet again, on the economy, the outlook of which is .... yeah...
One would think the businessmen at the large firm behind the erection of these 600-900 student housing complexes know what they're doing. I don't know about that. I think someone, somewhere is gonna lose his ass.
Next time: What one can't help noticing around campus.
* OTOH, I was right in thinking that Housing in China was going to take a dive. That's what I've been hearing about from personal sources.
** There's another very important simple pie chart in there that I'll discuss in another post.
*** And don't forget FEES either! They're not your parents' $20 lab fees anymore. They are significant... but they are not tuition. (Don't ask me how they're not.)
Comments (5)
Pat-25 Helo Pilots - NY Times with some below-the-fold details
Posted On: Wednesday - April 30th 2025 8:04PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Feminism Anti-Social Media
No, it's an expression from the days of paper newspapers. Please don't fold your computer screen. Peak Stupidity takes no responsibility for this or any other stupidity recommended on this blog. [Ker-ching!! - PS Legal Dept.]
We got hung up on this story on Monday with that old-timey but still very stupid and confusing Feminist-implemented grammatical stupidity. Before we move on, let me restate from Adam Smith's comments (also mentioned by ZH commenters) that it was NOT the NY Times doing this stupidity.
Moving on, this post is written to start to answer the question posed a week after the Army UH-60 Blackhawk/Canadair* CRJ-700 jet mid-air crash in the terminal area of Ronald Reagan Field (aka, Reagan National, code KDCA**), Did D.I.E. cause 67 people to die?. The next day we discussed the D.I.E. factors in regard to the helo crew, who, even at that point, were known to be THE cause of the crash
Let me paste in a bit from that post, and then we'll add some more based on that NY Times article that Gateway Pundit and ZeroHedge referred to. (BTW, thank you so much, Adam Smith, for the links! One link is to the article on the web archive site, so I didn't even have to click on the NYT website, something I'm loath to do.)
I don't know how the relationship would have been between a higher ranking officer getting trained and her instructor. I emphasized her, notice, because I can see that being a part of a problem.
I talked to a former Army helicopter pilot today who assured me that, no, there's no big deal about a higher-ranking officer receiving instruction from a lower one. Each knows where he stands. Oh, that was he. I don't know the guy well enough to ask him about problems with the sexes in said situation. Some would say it's a bad idea to have women involved in military combat roles period. I would tend to agree.
Rebecca Lobach, using her leverage as a member of the IN crowd during the Bai Dien Reign Administration, moved up the ranks to Captain very quickly. I imagine the whole "Grrrylll Power" thing took with her. What could go wrong, indeed? What kind of attitude did she have that night when flying with a lower-ranking man? She'd broken that plexiglas ceiling. Was Andrew Eaves, still Pilot in Command of the flight, as the instructor, a little bit wary of being too tough on his student? There'd be a number of social factors at work. Again, I don't know, and nobody can be sure, until the pertinent parts of the voice recorder transcript are released. Will the military ever release that?The 2 NYT reporters, Kate Kelly and Mark Walker's discuss 5 "takeaways" (can't stand that term) from "The Times investigation". What? I was expecting it to say the "NTSB Investigation", as that's where the info is coming from. What the NY Times DOES have, rather than an investigation, is apparently access to the Blackhawk's (and possibly CRJ's too) Cockpit Voice Recorder transcript. I'd like to see that too, as I can only get so much from Kelly's and Walker's last, 5th, takeaway, the one that has the important information on what the helo crew did that night.
The other "takeaways" show the 2 authors slight ignorance about aviation, as much as they try to understand things. We'll have more on this stuff, just for the record in an other post. This last one, The Black Hawk pilot failed to heed a directive from her co-pilot to change course., is that key point held for the end, cause, yes, shhhhh, Diversity Hire. Rebecca Lobach was one. Even after her name was withheld for a couple of days so that her anti-Social Media self could be scrubbed, we all found out that she had become a Brandon Administration political figure, until, sucks to be her, Trump won the '24 election and she had to go back to just old flying helicopters (something some guys might have loved to have GOTTEN to do to fulfill their dreams, but for Diversity).
What happened, as gleaned from the NY Times writers' summary of the CVR transcript? As we had thought happened, in contradiction to the claims of former helo pilot I'd talked. To be fair, I didn't bring up the sex/diversity angle, just the conflict between rank and instructor/student relationship. I'd say commenter Alarmist summed up the problem succinctly on Monday:
I missed the part where he called out "My Aircraft" and took control to avert disaster.
I guess you don't interrupt girl-bosses in the New US Army.
Right, hopeful suggestions don't cut it after a while. "Take us down to 100 ft radar alt, now." might have been said, but, otherwise, yes "My aircraft!" or "I got it", and do what needs to be done. That's an important part of an instructor's job. NY Times "investigators" Kelly&Walker - LLC, two hundred dollars a day... PLUS EXPENSES - either don't understand this or could not shake that PC/Wokeness, being worried about the NY Times editor in chief calling out "My newspaper!"
Of course, this lady pilot was not up for the job, but I put more blame than that above on the Warrant Officer Eaves, the Instructor pilot too, than just what was written above.
The 2nd big mistake he made was something I have gleaned from this article, but this, along with the 1st point would be clearer had I the CVR transcript. It really sounds like this pilot's use of the visual separation exception to other air traffic control methods was a quick crutch for him, requested a couple of times quickly recklessly as a way to continue the trip down the Potomac on that Helicopter Route 1 without hassle. It's a published procedure that they were not following anyway***. The Tower had told the helicopter (as in the 2 crew members both listening to the radio, one would think. where this traffic was and that they were coming around to land on 33. Some of this may have been missed, as in "stepped on" (on Live ATC, one cannot detect the reception, only the transmissions), but that does't excuse anything. You either positively see the specific aircraft in question or you don't claim you can maintain a visual on it.
It's likely that neither pilot had the PSA flight in sight when they needed to, and it's possible they didn't even try looking for it. That would explain why the instructor wanted to go down and left besides just for compliance's sake. It's also very possible that neither of them knew the layout of Reagan Field enough to understand that an approach to runway 33 would put a jet just over their heads coming from the left, if they were where they were SUPPOSED to be, even.
Until we read the CVR transcripts, we can't be sure what as said between the lower-ranking and White male instructor pilot and the woke Diversity hire token pilot during those critical moments. How hesitant was this instructor to take charge due to worries about being written up later as a bigot or male chauvinist pig? (Haha, it's That '70s Show here at Peak Stupidity. Maude is on next.****) A few extra seconds of hesitation can get lots of people killed.
This team of 2 from the "Paper of Record" sure didn't want to get into THAT part. It was just that she wasn't doing what she was told, that's all. What would be the NTSB recommendations to prevent that sort of thing? That it shows the very real dangers of D.I.E., when push comes to shove, well, will there be some recommendations based on THAT? I believe that's a bridge too far, even for the NTSB, one of the few organizations in the US Gov't that I support and appreciate.
We'll have more to say based on the first 4 takeaways (ugghhh!) from this article, but our conclusions won't be much different from before.
* The news"papers" use Mitsubishi now, but they bought out that particular part of the Canadian conglomerate Bombardier ("Bombadeer" in English), who had bought out Canadair a few decades back.
** The "K" is the international code for US airports, and DCA is District of Criminals Aerodrome, if I'm not mistaken.
*** That the geometry for use of that helo route at the same time traffic was landing on runway 33 (or T/O on 15 for that matter, but I think that'd be rare) doesn't work is something to be explained in the next couple of posts on this accident.
**** Thanks go to my friend for remember these terms as I had a Brandon moment in progress.
Comments (5)
Pat-25 Helo Pilots - wading through grammatical stupidity
Posted On: Monday - April 28th 2025 7:50PM MST
In Topics: Websites Political Correctness Media Stupidity
It was a tweet on Instapundit, by Alex Berenson (he of anti-Corona-Panic fame) critiquing a NY Times article on this past January's fatal mid-air crash of Army "Pat-25" and PSA, dba American 5342, that got me back into this story yesterday. The CVR from the helo (along with from PSA's CRJ-700) with excellent sound quality, per the NTSB, is out somewhere, such that the NY Times could get to it.
I'd noted early on that the pilots of the Army Blackhawk helicopter were completely at fault for the crash. There are always contributing factors, but this doesn't change the basic blame. Peak Stupidity asked Did D.I.E. cause 67 people to die? and then discussed the D.I.E. social factors in The pilots of Pat-25 about a week after the crash. In addition to bringing up D.I.E. as a root cause,in that tweet, Mr. Berenson objected to the way this "Newspaper of Record" only got to the real story of the mistakes of the diversity helo pilot* at the end. Does he read Steve Sailer, because I'm pretty sure pundit Steve Sailer has been first in being all over those writers for putting the important stuff in paragraph 18 or 25
Perhaps Peak Stupidity may have been first in noticing this were we prone to READING the NY Times. We won't, generally, but this story was interesting enough to where I tried to get to the original article, especially to see how and where the writers got that CVR transcript. Alas, tweets suck! I spend=t time going to twitter, back and forth, gave up, and then figured I'd go on 2 go-to websites for the story.
That's where this post turns into a story of Media grammatical stupidity - we'll get to the real story soon. OK, Gateway Pundit (review there**) is full of ads and hype. I got sick of it about a year ago. However, I can usually find news on a timely story that would interest Conservatives there. Yeah, I found their story.
As I'd expected, the writer Christina Laila knows nothing about aviation. That wasn't the problem. The problem was the confusing pronoun usage that truly impeded intelligent conveyance of a story. Let me get this straight. D.I.E. hire or not, it's possibly Army Captain Rebecca Lobach did get into the weird Woke pronoun business. However, the politically erroneous pronoun problem here, and worse to be described later hearken back to Feminism. This is the use of "they", "them", and "their" for 3rd-person SINGULAR when the sex of said person is not known. We discussed this way back in First post on Feminism - starting off at a low stupidity level. The deal was, we can't use standard English male pronouns for unknown sex. It'd be "sexist".
Yeah, that's a pretty low stupidity level compared to today's, but it's, after half a century, still damned annoying and confusing. What I didn't get to in that post (because they used to be short!) is that these pronouns will be used even if we DO know the sex, and even if the sex is female! I thought at least Feminist would like us to use "she", "her", "hers"...
So, I'm there trying to quickly get the gist of things on GP, and I see the following (reproduced as best I could because the site fixed it since yesterday.)
On Sunday, The New York Times released new details about the fatal crash and it revealed Rebecca Lobach repeatedly ignored warnings from their right seat about altitude.Well, enough of that - I went over to ZeroHedge to read this:
Lobach’s male co-pilot, an Army flight instructor, directly told them to turn away, and they flew straight into a passenger jet.
It was worse there!
Let me spell out what the Times buried deep in their article: The Black Hawk pilot received clear, explicit warnings about altitude from their co-pilot.You couldn't tell who's doing what and who's telling what to whom, were you not already familiar with the story. No, the blameless unfortunate crew chief is NOT one of the plural people here. There are only 2! In aviation, if ANYWHERE, you want clear communication, which is, in fact part of the very story of the crash.
The co-pilot explicitly instructed them to turn away from the passenger jet. And what did they do? They ignored those warnings and flew straight into the path of an American Airlines flight carrying 64 innocent people.
Yet, this gobbledygook is written all because of a bunch of bitching by some Feminists 50 years ago. If we're (and Trump sure is trying!) going to shut down D.I.E. and wokeness, the least we can do for starters is to reverse this old-timey pronoun stupidity. Maybe, then, we - talking Peak Stupidity here - can get to the additional information on the Pat-25 helo pilots in that fatal crash.
PS: As you can see, it was not "Tyler Durden" who wrote the ZeroHedge article, but, rather, one Matt Margolis of Conservative PJ Media. Still, Tyler Durden is Blogger-in-Command of ZeroHedge, so he should have taken control of the pixels, just as Warrant Officer and Instructor Pilot Andrew Eaves should have taken the stick from them, you know, them, I mean the one(s?) flying that Blackhawk. See?
PPS: The GP commenters are an OK lot, but not as bright and fun, IMO, as the ZH guys. The ZH guys gave the writer appropriate criticism for this confusing pronoun stupidity.
* Blame can be put on her instructor too, but we'll get to that in the REAL POSTS on this story.
** See also our Addendum to that. Also, a bit later, I got pissed off and wrote about Gateway Pundit Spanish-language "outreach". That was about the time I quit reading regularly.
Comments (12)
Reader Friend Suggestion: Judge shopping for re- and pro-active Reverse Lawfare
Posted On: Saturday - April 26th 2025 4:12PM MST
In Topics: Trump US Feral Government ctrl-left Legal Stupidity
(I was glad to see that when I'd typed in "Boasberg Judge i..." for "images", google suggested impeachment.)
In my mind, the judicially obstructionist strategy of the ctrl-left was even worse during Trump-45, but, after the initial Trump-47 E.O. Blitzkrieg, it's baaaaaaackkkk! We may see much more of it, just based on the fact that Trump has been getting a LOT more done this time, or in some areas just trying harder. It's been only 4 months, and I don't think President Trump had this many policies at least STARTED in 4 years last go-around.
Will no one rid of us these turbulent Commies? For Henry II, just asking the question may have greatly helped answer it in the affirmative. For American Conservatives, we like to stay within the law. As much as the commies of the ctrl-left stretch the law way beyond the spirit of it to fight us, we may need to fight back in the same manner.
A long-term friend and Peak Stupidity reader has an idea on this matter. He's been trying to get someone, ANYONE, to at least explain why it won't work, if there's a reason. If not, why can't the Trump Administration adopt these ideas?
Here's Coulda Had Lee Rille (NOT his real name) with his idea:
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I've had this idea since Trump's first term to deal with anti-constitutional lawfare (e.g. Boasberg, Friedman, many others) that attempts to usurp executive powers at the hands of a few black-robed unelected "judges". The problem's gotten so ridiculous now that I'm compelled to find some way to get this seemingly obvious idea out there. It seems so simple and obvious to me, but in all this time (7 or 8 years now), I've not seen ONE person online, in the media, or in government mention it. That makes me think there must be some technical or legal reason that it's not even being mentioned.
There are two versions of the strategy. The first might be called "reactive" and is considerably simpler. The second might be called "proactive" and would require more planning and thinking, even before an Executive Order is issued. The "reactive" version assumes that one can bring a complaint or case to a federal "district" court, even though a fairly similar complaint has already been brought (and possibly ruled on) in another district.
Reactive: Once a lame injunction or ruling has been dictated in a leftwing activist judge-shopped district, you get a plaintiff(s) to bring a similar complaint to a "conservative or constitutional" judge in a different district. Hopefully, a ruling is then soon made which runs counter to the first ruling. At that point, the prez can safely say "We've got one judge that says "A", and another that says "B", and they conflict with each other severely. The only reasonable thing to do is to keep the order in place until one or both rulings are possibly appealed to the Supremes."
Proactive: Before the latest EO is signed, people in or near the administration brainstorm and try to predict the most likely case or complaint that a crazy leftwing group and lawyer might use to defeat said EO in court. Find some plaintiff(s) to bring that complaint/case to a conservative or originalist judge (reverse judge shopping, as it were!). Hopefully said complaint will be quickly struck down. At that point, if the ACLU (or other anti-American activist group) brings a similar case elsewhere - and it results in the inevitable injunction or "temporary blocking" of the EO - you're back in the situation of saying "hey, we've got two judges saying two totally contradictory things on this, so we're forced to just keep the EO in effect until an appeal is made and ruled on."
Note, the main reason to go with the "proactive" version is if it's somehow illegal or "against process" to bring a complaint to a district judge if a "similar" complaint has already been brought (and possibly ruled on) in a different district. I apologize for my lack of legal process knowledge and language. I'm just hoping some legally knowledgeable people out there might explain why some version of this strategy has not been implemented. BTW, it would also work for a Democratic administration, but they don't seem to have this judicial activist issue hitting them in the face every week or two (probably because there are so many leftwing activist Federal judges that only care about party and politics).
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I hope Mr. Had Lee Rille will get some help from either Peak Stupidity readers or elsewhere. (I'm gonna put it in the next Steve Sailer Open Thread.)
Have a good Sunday, Peakers. We'll be back with plenty more next week.
Comments (9)
REAL ID - Zee deadline iss approaching, Comrades
Posted On: Friday - April 25th 2025 10:39PM MST
In Topics: US Police State Liberty/Libertarianism Orwellian Stupidity
Back in the day, one would make fun of attempts to implement an American Police State using German or Russian sounds, seeing as a) Those were the Police States people were most familiar with, b) Nobody knows how to even attempt at making fun of Chinese, and c) We didn't have our own Police State yet here, so we didn't just write in plain English. Oh, and, as with that Monty Python Communist Quiz Show skit, we often confuse Russian sounds with German ones. (I do, anyway.)
Peak Stupidity mentioned the continual extensions of this Orwellian REAL ID bull twice already. Oddly, but maybe not, the 1st post, Reprieve on the Illuminati ID* - written in Fall '21 about the extension of the '20 deadline, was not mentioned in the 2nd post Illuminati ID delayed. Peak Stupidity delighted., written at the end of '22, about the extension of the then-coming '23 deadline. Yes, we forgot we'd written the 1st one.
I swear I'd seen a sign extending the May '25 deadline earlier this year, but maybe that was in a dream sequence. Alas, per Ron Paul, who keeps up and hates this stuff as much as anyone, in REAL ID: Phony Security, Real Authoritarianism - this time's for REAL.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem must not be much of a Patriot, since she's enforcing this deadline. Actually, anyone who'd work at a "Homeland Security" department, speaking of old Police States in history, is by definition not a Patriot. Ron Paul notes the various ways the REAL ID can and will be used against you (no court required), but he also added:
REAL ID could even be the final piece of the transformation of America into a total surveillance society where government monitors, and thus controls, our actions.I don't see this as the final piece. Peak Stupidity readers may know that the transition to a cashless society is one of our niche issues (check out the US Police State or Orwellian Stupidity topic keys). Control of who may buy and sell sounds like the final piece, or at least it is from what I've read.
Back in '08, when this REAL IDea was first trotted out, we did not yet carry the pieces of iEspionage that willingly send in all the info about us that iCrap designers and Globalist control freaks can imagine. What's REAL ID compared to that? Still...
My driver's license had gotten so worn out already 2 years back - it fared better before, in my wallet made out of duct tape! - that the cop the other month had to look it up. I went in a few weeks ago and got a non-Illuminati license (even the black ladies at the Highway Dept. seem to understand that terminology). However, it still expires in a year, so what next?
Here's hoping the airports are full of loud, pissed-off passengers who are being turned away by the TSA in a couple of weeks. Maybe the Feral Gov. control-freaks will back off on this yet another time. The deadline looms ...
* There are some great driver's license (or NOT) stories from Adam Smith in the comments thereunder.
Comments (7)
The 5150 Skil Saw
Posted On: Thursday - April 24th 2025 11:23AM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap Americans
#CommissionEarned-KerChing! [/Instapundit's wife] We don't do sales here. It's a shame though, that we can't recommend the Peak Stupidity reader go out and buy the (original, not generic-termed) Skil Saw shown above. They don't make stuff like that anymore, though there are a few on ebay.
I'm pretty sure I paid $30 for this made-in-America circular ("Skil") saw in 1990. That's when I got to doing a lot of wood projects. I would say that equals $100 for a saw in today's money, but you'll unfortunately still be getting TODAY's saw - probably Cheap China-made Crap. Do you have a choice now?
We had to cut some 14 gauge sheet metal - that's only .074" or so. I got the right blade, pulled the saw out from the shop, swapped out blades, and guess what? The saw doesn't care what year it is. It doesn't get on the internet and talk to my phone about updates. It just RUNS. Same as it ever was.
OK, sure, the thing is mostly just a big electric motor, but the spring-loaded safety cover has some screws and that torsion spring, there are electrical connectors, and there's the safety trigger mechanism* and pieces of obviously very durable plastic. I haven't replaced a single part and haven't had to do ANYTHING. It just runs. That WAS America.
Americans under 40 y/o, much less foreigners, have no memory/idea of how it used to be. It's difficult trying to convince people that, YES, quality stuff can be and did get built in America. I mentioned experiences with my long-owned American-made mower and desk lamp already. I just started the 1992-built Murray/Briggs&Stratton mower for the season. (I even gave it some new oil- no NOT the good stuff, though I feel terrible about that.) I've given up on it before, but It never gives up. I've also given example of household appliances/equipment that lasts 3-4 decades in comments elsewhere.
Could America ever build good stuff again? I'm not sure myself. President Trump's efforts, no matter how Reality-TV-style they are, will help us find out.
In the meantime, I've bought old Ryobi tools (saws, both) from an estate sale. I expect they will work well. They were made 30 years ago, and per the instructions that were actually in GOOD ENGLISH (ONLY!), they were "Made in USA". (The funny thing is that I'd long thought that name was Japanese.) However, as with selling each other gourmet hamburgers and craft beer to support the Service Economy, I don't think the purchasing of good power tools from estate sales by Americans who want durable goods is SUSTAINABLE. (If I may borrow that word from the tree-huggers.)
PS: The Skil saws - no matter what brand - are one type of the more dangerous of hand power tools, IMO**. That aside, we used eye protection for the steel, and it's the only thing (when cutting wood) that's loud enough at the right frequency to make me consider putting foamies in my ears. Nope, our lawyers didn't make me write that.
* I'm not sure about all of them, but this one has a push switch for one's thumb that unlocks the trigger. Now that I'm not using it and have put it up, I have to think about it, but I believe after you've unlocked the trigger you don't have to stay on that unlock switch.
** Perhaps a Sawzall "beats" the Skil saws in this respect - I haven't used mine enough yet.
Comments (9)
Bad luck streak in Traffic School
Posted On: Wednesday - April 23rd 2025 3:26PM MST
In Topics: Humor US Police State Cars
Continued from our post Good luck streak in Traffic School of 6 years back, only because, yeah, our streak of good luck has been broken. (The titles come from the great title of a music album by the late Warren Zevon, to be honest.)
Who coulda' seen this coming? I've been doing any speed I felt comfortable with, rolling through stop signs with open views, whatever, for 15 years now and no blue lights ever appeared in the rear view mirror. I was under the impression that sort of thing didn't happen anymore. It didn't used to be like that, I can tell you! (Got pulled 3 times in one week one summer in the 1990's - 2 tickets out of that, and one time in traffic court the judge who I well recognized asked me first "Hey, where do I know you from?" Somehow, we couldn't figure it out...)
We've got this one 3-way intersection nearby for which there's really no point in stopping completely. You can see the other 2 ways. If someone were coming cross-ways, he'd better slow or he'd barrel though parked cars and into a house.
Because the one vehicle has very accurate real-time and cumulative gas mileage readouts, it's a game for me to bring this number up and up vs. my wife's driving. It's wasteful to stop completely and then accelerate, so I don't. I care about the planet, you know? And another thing I could bring up to the judge besides the fate of the planet is that if someone else is stopped dead in front of me (we're in a neighborhood of Grannies, traffic-wise, some of them 40 y/o guys in big pickup trucks, but, yeah, grannies!), and I've already got the view, I should be legal to follow through. (Rarely is anyone coming on the vertical leg of the T.) This would be an interesting question for a lawyer, in fact.
Well, my wife kinda learns by example. She got pulled over on the way to work at that 3-way, first time ever for her. Per her words, the cop said she sped right through it. I believe him. She got the full 4 points.
The jurisdiction has a "diversionary" policy - wait, we're not Black!! - in which one can go one time to this program. That means you're in for $150 for the ticket and the same for that program. But wait, there's MORE! You still gotta pay $25 to the guy who "teaches" the class. It's on-line and NOT in real time, just web forms, so this guy may be making thousands each "class".
So, instead of some at least minor learning experience, as I'd had 1) enjoying the work of a comedian who wasn't yet ready for the clubs, 2) Watching sportsball due to muh playoff and talking about how to deal with cops once pulled over so you don't get tickets in the future, or 3) having a guy tell me that 1 in 3 of us will die in traffic accidents, she had to answer page after page of web tediousness and WRITE ESSAYS! Yikes!
The worst part was actually the multiple choice questions as this "instructor" must have used this very same test for all kinds of diversionary programs. I kid you not, there was a long series of "When did you stop beating your wife?" (I guess husband, in this case) questions about my wife's alleged substance abuse. I mean that it's inherently alleged by questions such as:
How did your substance abuse affect your family's finances?
Do you think this class will help you with your substance abuse?There were about a dozen of them. How do you answer these, as there was no "N/A" option?
To me, it'd be a great way for The State to have some "dirt" on her saved for future use. "Suspect admitted to abusing substances during her traffic school class." (Oh, was this a traffic school class?) "That is inadmissible, Your Honor. Anything answered during a diversionary program for allegedly driving like a maniac is not allowed." "You're out of order, councilor." I'm out of order?! You're out of order! This traffic school is out of order, and this whole society is out of order!" [/Al Pacino or Robert D'Niro, one of 'em]
This required a text message to the instructor who wrote back telling her to ignore these questions. Yeah, he wasn't about to straighten this out by going all out making up a separate automatic web-based test... just for thousands of $$ a day - that's not a Black! Middle Class thang. This website has its name for a reason. I hope our readers do see that by now.
Now, eventually there were questions not about actual driving, but ones like:
Explain how your bad driving affected your family?My wife showed me that. "Oh, let me do this one. Put down My husband is very upset that I didn't look uphill for the cops. She refused to write that in. I get it - you wanna get those 4 points back...
As I described what my wife had to go through for modern traffic school to a friend of mine who gets speeding tickets like $Million-donating alumni get tickets to basketball games, I ... got pulled over for 55 in a 40... yes, while I was on the phone. The cop was pretty nice, but I didn't get the golden opportunity to answer the usual question "Do you know how fast you were going?" The speedometer hasn't worked for 8 years, so I had so looked forward to answering "Not really. I mean, right now the needle's curled around pointing to 105 mph. That CAN'T be right!" He wrote it up for 49. I think the reader may have figured that I won't be going to traffic school. It's not the same...
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Earth Day celebrated as landfills with cheap China-made Crap
Posted On: Tuesday - April 22nd 2025 7:38PM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap Treehuggers Globalists Cars Curmudgeonry Economics Americans Artificial Stupidity Environmental Stupidity
There are a whole lot of points we made about garbage, recycling, and landfills in our 7 y/o post Toward Sustainable Stupidity. One point was that, NO, we're not running out of room for landfills. It's just that for completely reasonable NIMBY reasons, as America grows full of newcomers, population increases result in landfills having to be located farther out of cities, meaning more expense is involved in trash transportation.* That's all, not the End of the World as we know it.
In somewhat of a follow-up post, 2 1/2 years later, we got more into the economics of recycling in Make Stupidity Sustainable Again. The leads us to the actual topic of this post, economics and the recent goings-on with President Trump, tariffs, and China.
First, let me say that your Peak Stupidity lead blogger is NOT a licensed Economist. [Thank you! PS Legal Dept.] We do have pages of reports from the BLS, Jerome Powell, Ben Stein, and all sorts of sources
Continuing along those lines, I very much enjoyed a recent Charles Hugh Smith** post - he of Of Two Minds fame or unfortunate lack thereof - on ZeroHedge, Last Gasp Of The Landfill Economy.
Mr. Smith's post is not so much about landfills either as it is about the American pursuit of Cheap China-made Crap. I agree with a ZH commenter that, unfortunately, that "Last Gasp" part is quite optimistic, but I sure like the way this guy thinks!
Globalization's great gift wasn't low prices--it was the collapse of durability, transforming the global economy into a Landfill Economy of shoddy products made of low-cost components guaranteed to fail, poor quality control, planned obsolescence and accelerated product cycles--all hyper-profitable, all to the detriment of consumers and the planet.Charlie, my man, you're preaching to the choir here, nay, to the Bishop of Stupidity! AMEN, anyway! Peak Stupidity has discussed multiple times in posts tagged with our Inflation topic key that decreases in quality are very much a form of inflation but one we really doubt is taken into account. There's that basket of goods the green-eyeshade boys (and girls, and unknowns) manipulate to reflect consuming habits, and even this very basket is now cheap China-made crap and deteriorates before you can even calculate the current year's CPI! Holy moley, I want to excerpt the whole article!:
Globalization also accelerated another hyper-profitable gambit: . Since all the products are now made with the same low-quality components, they all fail regardless of brand or price. The $2,000 refrigerator lasts no longer than the $700 fridge. Since the manufacturers and retailers all know the products are destined for the landfill by either design or default, warranties are uniformly one-year--and it's semi-miraculous if the consumer can find anyone to act on replacing or repairing the failed product even with the warranty.
In The Landfill Economy, Consumer choice is pure illusion. I'd like to buy once, cry once, so where is the option with a 10-year all parts and labor warranty? There isn't one, because nothing is durable--by design or default.Right. I just got done (for now) relating some stories of working household appliances/infrastructure made in America one lasting 38 years, just gone bust, and another 37 and still going strong. Then, there's the now-33 y/o lawn mower.*** Next, I'm gonna write about a 35 y/o Skil Saw (the actual brand, not generic terminology) that I just pulled out to use after 3-5 years. It doesn't care what year it is - it just plain works!
As a result, The Landfill Economy is fundamentally extortionist. We know this product will fail, you know this product will fail, and so here's our offer: buy a 3-year extended warranty for a hefty sum, because we've engineered the product to fail in four years.
If the product is digital, then even if it still functions, we'll force you to replace it via a new product cycle: we no longer support the old operating system, and since your device is out of date (heh) it can't load the new OS, and since all the apps now only function with the new OS, your device is useless.
The low price is also illusory, as we now have to buy four, five or ten products instead of one durable product. Appliances that once lasted 40 years now fail in 6 or 7 years if not sooner, so over the course of 40 years we have to buy five, six or seven appliances instead of one.
Let me back up to the 2nd-to-last paragraph I excerpted. This is very much what Peak Stupidity has described in a number of apoplectic spasms of curmudgeonry about all the Artificial Stupidity such as in our post Software as a tool.
Digitization is a key driver of The Landfill Economy, as cheap electronics all fail, and the product / vehicle / tool becomes a brick. Since inventory is an expense, it's been eliminated, so parts for older products are soon out of stock and unavailable.Car stories follow, so you Peak Stupidity car guys have just got to finish reading that great article, as I don't want to get sued here. (Nah, CHS is a cool guy - I'd love him to read here.)
In a few years, the firmware is no longer supported, and in a few decades, nobody will even know what coding was embedded in the chipset, but it won't matter anyway, because the chipsets are long gone.
Readers tell me vehicles are now wondrously reliable. Um, yeah, until they need to be repaired. Then the cost is higher than what I've paid for entire used cars.
I really wish that the Trump tariffs and big wrecking ball style upset of the world's economies results the end or a big tailing off of this Landfill Economy, produced in China. I've hated it since it started. That makes me a REAL treehugger, I'd say, as, no matter about costs and all, I just hate to see things get thrown out that could be fixed. (Except they often can't.) My trash can goes out to the road once in 2-3 months and the recycling can about 1/2 that often. We're leaving a small polycarbonate footprint and helping to keep the landfills small, which is great... unless you're a seagull... or Tony Soprano.
Thanks so much for this, Charles Hugh Smith! I hope this has gotten read by millions.
PS: Now, OK, I haven't agreed with all the ZeroHedge commenters lately. (It's read-only for me.) When they do let loose, though, they are truly the best! These are just the first 3:
Krink26
Digitization is a key driver of The Landfill Economy, as cheap electronics all fail, and the product / vehicle / tool becomes a brick.
But your new refrigerator comes with an app. That needs to be connected or it won't cool. Because it's green. Or some other nonsense. And you can get notifications. For a fridge.
PeachPit
I often get notices on my cell phone, if I use it outside, to register or something my Samsung washing machine. Some day I'm going to try it and see what it does.
PS. I don't own a Samsung washing machine.
TeleslesThen the Prepper talk gets going, which is good. One guy mentioned getting tools at estate sales, which is horning in on my post to come.
My neighbor's fridge has an open Wi-Fi network. Too bad I like them.
* If you don't like it, go have a talk with my friend Tony Soprano - and you thought you already have enough trash in your yard due to illegals... he's gonna make you an offer for some refuse you no canna' refuse. (Pun totally serendipitous!)
** We praised this pundit Brandon in a post a year back titled Lew Rockwell and the 2 Smiths.
*** I wrote that one nearly 8 years ago, and interestingly the title was close to Mr. Smith's: Cheap China-made crap in a throw-away country. Yeah, OK, "World".
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So-called Pope Francis finally lightens up.
Posted On: Monday - April 21st 2025 7:35PM MST
In Topics: Commies Bible/Religion Poetic Stupidity So-called Pope Francis
He died yesterday, is what we're trying to say.
His real name was Jorge Mario Bergoglio. I don't know who so-called Pope Francis was trying to fool with that subterfuge. Was he running from the ghost of Juan Peron? I have not liked this guy one bit. Pick most well-known Catholic figures down there in Latin American, and you're gonna get a "Liberation Theologist", that ideology being a brand of Communism. What were the Bishops and Cardinals thinking 12 years ago when they put out the white smoke for this guy?
Peak Stupidity has stated that we find only one reason to speak ill of the dead. We've stated plainly that we were glad when Ted Kennedy died and when Juan McAmnesty died - that was due to the fact that neither WOULD EVER retire from his position of power, so we'd only get relief from their ctrl-left oppression when they kicked off. Whaddya' gonna do?
It's tricky with Francis and his death. Pope is not a position you generally retire from, so one can't expect that, and I suppose Catholics felt they had to put up with whatever ctrl-left ranting and poor advice came from the guy. Impeachment is not a Biblical thing - you're thinking US Constitution. (Then again, there is no "Pope" mentioned in the Bible either.) I've ignored the guy for the most part, the last few years, and he's mellowed out in his old age, so OK, R.I.P.
Let me add here that his late Pope was an exception, the last being 600 years ago, to what I just wrote, about Popes being Popes for life. For all the information one could possibly want about the deal that happened with the short-time (under 8 year "reign") Pope Benedict XVI, you could not go wrong by visiting the site of Ann Barnhardt and her The Bergoglian Antipapacy. section (with 3 videos too). Miss Barnhardt saw Jorge Bergoglio as evil.
Though we'll probably have no more posts with the So-called Pope Francis topic key, I noted we had some fun stuff and some angry stuff in there. The image up top is from a fun one titled Pope Poetry. What made me most angry at this imbecile and Communist turd (sorry, just quoting the President of Argentina here - not MY words) was not his suicidal stance on immigration but his deigning to be an expert on the Climate Calamity™, with admonitions to the world about it. From Is this Pope on Dope?!, we quote ourselves:
Now, we see that "Pope" Francis, titular* head of the Catholic Church, has got a bug up the Papal rear-end about his apparently undeniableWell, it was a little of both there...knowledge offaith in the ongoing Global Climate DisruptionTM. In his latestpiece ofPapal Bull, he "rebuked those who deny the science behind global warming and urged negotiators at climate talks in Germany to avoid falling prey to such "perverse attitudes"..." OK, so besides the label of "denier", people who understand mathematical modeling (continued here, here, here, here, here, and here) are now also shouldered with the appellation of pervert.
Now, not to get into the history of some of the Middle-Age Popes in terms of being perverts, we would be the last to tar all Popes with the same broad brush. The current Pope is no pre-vert, and probably not high, but just lightly retarded. That's OK, that's OK, a differently-cognizant individual should be given an opportunity to run the Catholic Church, as appointed by God, as any thinking man, even in these times of anti-Christian fervor, what with 1.5 Billion Moslems having started a demographic invasion of Europe, because, like, diversity. [Links in original only]
Today, we'll add another limerick to the 3 in the "Poetry" post:
We'd told him to "Lighten up, Francis!"
Pure Papal Bull each of his rants is.
For his Lib'ration Theology
we deserve an apology.
Next Pope, pull your head outcher pants(es?)
Will the next Pope also be Woke? Will Wokeness itself pick the next Pope? It would not shock me too much if they picked a woman, even. In comments elsewhere, someone suggested it'd be fun to see a strongly anti-gay African guy. (I've read about one in particular.) I really hope they don't practice Catholic AA though. I don't think we'd like what we'd get.
Europe is the long-term home of Christianity, so I say narrow your search, Bishops and Cardinals. Francis was the 1st non-European Pope in a Millennium and a quarter, going back to Gregory III from Syria in the early/mid 700s. Francis is just one data point, but... no, none of that.
Why should Peak Stupidity care anyway? This whole Pope thing - not my monkey, not my circus.
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A Quarter Millennium Ago: Lexington & Concord, Mass
Posted On: Saturday - April 19th 2025 10:00PM MST
In Topics: History Americans Liberty/Libertarianism Bible/Religion Holiday from Stupidity
How long has it been since the residents of Massachusetts have resembled in the least the Patriots of a quarter millennium ago? It seems to be the last place you'll find a modern day Patriot. What happened to the people in that Colony that turned them from Patriots to Massholes?
We probably shouldn't pick on Massachusetts alone when wondering how the America of colonial days became the Imperial Socialist Police State of 250 years later. However, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the site of the proverbial "Shot heard round the world" that anyone my age learned about in Elementary School. It was 250 years ago today.*
In case you didn't participate in said schooling or just don't remember it all, Rick Moran of PJ Media has written a pretty good quick summary. Massachusetts militiamen under the command of John Parker had mustered at Lexington as British regular soldiers under one John Pitcairn marched through out of Boston. Pitcairn had told the militiamen to lay down their arms.
Through the haze of one quarter of a Millennium, we know there was confusion as can be the case , and nobody knows which Colonial militiaman fired that first shot. The battle later on that April 19th at the North Bridge across the Concord river, with 400 Americans overwhelming less than 100 British soldiers, is seen as the first battle of the Revolutionary War. That was April 19th of 1775, so today we memorialize it.
The American colonists had a lot of beefs with their British rulers. We've got so many more now that a new Declaration of Independence (from the Potomac Regime) would take a half hour to print out on a laser printer. Were we to write U.S. Constitution 2.0, we'd hopefully include a lot learned during the misuse of 1.0 and doctor the old one up quite a bit.
We can go back only 32 years and see the state of the American Republic at the end of the
The country has become even more of a Police State since the Waco Massacre.
We've been lucky that they've put off this National (Illuminati) ID implementation 3 or 4 times already, but they seem to be pressing the issue this time. Nobody balks anymore when Bill of Rights Amendment IV is trashed at airports around the country daily, so what's one more small indignity?
Generally, we are not the same Americans as the militiamen involved in that shot heard 'round the world 250 years ago today.
That all said, going back 8 times farther in time, to right at 2 Millennia ago,
Luke 24:
1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.
2 And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.
3 And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.
4 And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:
5 And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?
6 He is not here, but is risen:
PS: I'm sure there are plenty of websites with "This day in history", and specializing in the Revolutionary period. We'll put a few more highlights up some days, just to imagine "it was today, a quarter of a Millennium back!" That beats memorializing all the rock/pop stars from a few decades long era of great music, as pretty soon, there'll be a famous one dying weekly. We appreciate their music, but the men of the American Revolution deserve mention more.
* Your blogger-in-chief is too tired to make a Sergeant Pepper's verse out of this tonight - maybe I'll fill it in later.
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Tariffs: Libertarian Ideology v Patriotism and RealLifePolitik
Posted On: Saturday - April 19th 2025 11:23AM MST
In Topics: Trump Globalists China Economics Liberty/Libertarianism
I believe I've only written this in comments (will search later), but I will relate the subject of a conversation between me and my now-departed friend about China. I'm trying to pin the time down, but it just MUST have been near the end of the 1990s. We both knew that lots of manufacturing work was being outsourced to China even then. My friend did not like the whole deal, and his major point was "they will equalize the salaries between China and America." I disagreed that that was a problem. "So? What's wrong with that?"
I don't know why I said that, as even in the early '90s I was well aware of the problem with America trying to have only a service economy. I'd even helped in the Paul Tsongas campaign, and then nearly voted for Ross Perot* in '92. (No, of course not Bush, nor Clinton, but I voted for the L guy. They weren't Open Borders wackos back then...)
It's been more than a quarter century since that conversation of ours. Even a decade later I could see that he was right - I'm sure I admitted that to him. Well, in the 2 hour-long conversation that Peak Stupidity urged our readers to view, that ZeroHedge-run tariff debate between Spencer Morrison and Peter Schiff, there were some words exchanged that get back to this point about what's good for the World vs what's good for America.
I can't remember every word said, mind you, or every point made, but this was early on, and it was Peter Schiff who brought the wrong side (in any Patriot's opinion) of the issue up. The talk was about "Comparative Advantage", "Competitive Advantage" (for the difference, try to figure it out here) and other Libertarian economic theory/ideology. Peter Schiff said, and I AGREE with this, that Free Trade, on the whole is best for the people of the world. (I'd take that as "on average", and as for "Where is this Free Trade of which you speak?", don't get me started... just yet.) Well, probably so, but is that what's best for Americans, especially right now? Of course not. Shouldn't President Trump be working on behalf of Americans, not the whole world?
I don't recall whether Mr. Morrison made the point exactly that way. That's what the debate came down to, though. Peter Schiff did not come across as an American Patriot here.** Yes, the Libertarian economic theory he defended is right, assuming, of course (NOT!), that each country and each country's businesses play by the rules. No, they don't. The biggest of them all, what Trump's new tariffs (and that debate) are all about, is China. China, the country, does not play by the rules, and Chinese businesses themselves don't play by the rules.
The Chinese government may have some certain agreements with us, all of which have been MOST FAVORABLE, by American Globalist definition, for China, but, even within those bad deals for us, the agreements are evaded purposely by the State bureaucracy. People will tell you that Americans just don't try hard to export to China. They've tried. The Chinese government, in its insidious ways, makes it difficult. Were you to finally get permission and start shipping products, the Chinese will rip off the IP, reproduce the products, and end up selling them to Americans! (That'd be at a lower price too, due to the Yuan being pegged to the US $, for one reason). One tends to give up banging one's head up against a brick wall after a spell...
Secondly, Chinese businesses themselves deal dirty. I suggest again to the reader to take a look at the Paul Milner book Poorly Made in China. Peak Stupidity reviewed this work, basically a description of an experience of frustration on steroids, and commenter Adam Smith kindly linked us to this online .pdf copy. (Speaking of, errr, stealing IP, haha!)
Beyond the cheating and subterfuge behind the Cheap China-made Crap, there is the basic difference between the old American way of doing business and the Chinese way, and most of the rest of the World with it. Olde White Man America was a place where a man's*** word was his bond, and deals really could be completely confidently with a handshake. All that doesn't fly in China ... and not so much in America anymore either.
I've known about the shady Chinese business practices from personal accounts. President Trump is good at seeing scams for what they are. He is quite aware of the scamming of America and American businesses by China and Chinese businesses. That's the RealLifePolitik. You've got to take that into account before you go claiming that sticking with the Libertarian ideology on the benefits of "Free Trade" is the best thing for Trump and America to do.
To summarize this post, it's really 2 separate reasons that Patriots are right and Libertarians are wrong about the tariffs and supposed Free Trade:
1) Whatever good Free Trade does for the World, it is not good for America. We care about America, foremost, because we LIVE HERE! [/Red Dawn]
2) There is NO Free Trade going on 'round here anyway!
PS: Long ago Peak Stupidity suggested the Conservatives and Libertarians just try to get along. See What's the deal with Peak Stupidity - Libertarian or Conservative?
* Yes, I should have, but his dropping out and coming back into the race that summer made me wonder about him. I know better now that he'd probably been threatened by the Deep State.
** I've been disappointed with what I've heard from him lately. In those gold v bitcoin debates (see here - - here and here), though I agree with him on the very point of gold as money, Mr. Schiff comes off too much at times as a salesman for his monetary fund of some sort. (He's with that "Sovereign Man" guy, no American Patriot, and maybe some others.) "There's more upside to come....!" C'mon, man! That's completely in contradiction to your main point, that gold is REAL money. Got 20 oz. today, you'll have 20 oz. tomorrow - same amount of money - THAT's the point.
His Dad Irwin, OTOH, was a real Patriot, having resisted the IRS his whole life and, in fact, died in prison due to this. Peter Schiff has bugged out to Puerto Rico for some odd reason...
*** Yes, that's "a man's" written her not just due to that olde correct grammar but to explain that, plainly, a woman's word ISN'T. It's just like that. It'd have been best to have learned that young, for personal reasons alone.
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