Tariffs in American history
Posted On: Friday - July 27th 2018 11:43AM MST
In Topics: Trump Economics US Feral Government Taxes
Peak Stupidity leans pretty hard toward liberty and libertarianism, and here are 70 posts to prove it. The free trade concept that Libertarians seem to LUV, LUV, LUV is one with which we may need to agree to disagree on. Under that very same "Liberty/Libertarianism" topic key linked-to above, many of the posts are more Constitutionally oriented than anything. The sets of Constitutionalists and Libertarians should have a yuuuge [OK, enough, Ed.] overlap, you'd figure, since our Founders believed strongly in liberty. I don't know anymore...
I have yuuuge respect for the Founders of the United States, I'm sure the smartest men to have ever started a country. Sure, not many get a chance to, kinda from scratch like that, but you're not likely to see the likes of intellects like Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams.... ever again. The thing is, our country, for most of it's existence, HAS had tariffs in place, and, in fact, they were the main source of US Fed-Gov. income, back before Amendment XVI allowed taxes on individuals. It worked pretty damn well, as it seemed to be enough, but small enough not to allow for the beast of a Feral Gov. that we have now to exist. Pat Buchanan's columns* have seemed kind of out-of-date lately, but I really liked his latest, Did Tariffs Make America Great?, which is a short history of tariffs during the lifetime of this country ... well, right up to where Ben Stein above, pictured in our favorite movie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Since it's sequencial and there's not that much of a summary, please read the whole thing.
For America over the last 2-3 decades, the problem has not really been just free trade, but it's been very unfair trade with lots of countries, one mentioned just yesterday, in fact. The bigger question, besides just getting a fair deal, it that of protectionism via tariffs. The two sides are simply:
Pro Free Trade - If you protect industries, consumers will miss out on better deals, like all the cheap China-made crap, but also American industry will find parts and raw materials from abroad more expensive. With the overseas competition stifled, there is definitely an incentive for American manufacturers to make junkier stuff (think US auto industry pre-1980).
Pro Protectionism - American consumers can't buy a whole lot when they don't have good jobs to begin with. As Mr. Buchanan quotes many of the Founders and historic American icons of industry saying, along with what I've been saying for years, the wealth of a country is very related to how much manufacturing it does (vs. service industries, including F.I.R.E. ").
OK, you can read these arguments written much better elsewhere, so I'll quit there. However, the reason this important issue is finally being discussed is President Trump's pushing for tariffs and a better deal for our trade with China. President Trump brings up MANY issues that should have been brought up long ago. That's one great benefit of having this man in office, whatever frustration the Peak Stupidity blog has had with some of his tweets, but more importantly his choices for whose advice he listens to. President Trump's bully pulpet may be disorganized as all hell, but he says things that nobody would have the guts, smarts, or more likely, integrity, to talk about before.
In addition, on the tariff and unfair-trade issue, this stuff is indeed up in Trump's wheelhouse. Some of the rest of his leadership method has failed because it's NOT all about making deals - one needs principles and principled people around. This stuff IS about making deals, so it's nice to have this guy in place.
On this issue, I've leaned heavily for a while toward the protectionist side. Pat Buchanan's short history on tariffs has helped my decision some more. Between the trans-nationalist Libertarians and the Founders of America, this is a no brainer - I'm gonna go with the latter. Come on, Libertarians, tell me: $10/hr coffee barista jobs, and big money, Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, and Education help the economy by .... anyone ... anyone ...
* The column linked-to in that post was very interesting. However, Mr. Buchanan, as much as I agree with his principles, seems to write as if it's still the 1980's as far as civility in politics goes. I'll write another short post on this.
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CCR - "Wrote a song for Everyone"
Posted On: Thursday - July 26th 2018 6:08PM MST
In Topics: Music
From a band who made the most great music in only 4 years together that I've ever heard, this one is a ballad. If you are not specifically a Credence Clearwater Revival fan, you may not know this one. It is off of an album called Creedence Country, a compilation released way later than the band's time, in 1981, which really has only 3-4 country tunes out fo the 12 songs. They are Lodi (the only well-known one), Cotton Fields, Lookin' for a Reason, and aguably Cross-tie Walker, the last one featured on Peak Stupidity.
Anyway though it's a ballad, it's still got the great John Fogerty rock voice, and the great guitar. The guitar and bass still sound out during the singing, and, of course, nothing against Doug Clifford on the drums. There's something about this song that just says "1960's turmoil" even though I wasn't there, and it's not real specific in the lyrics. Those guitars have got that great tube-amp sound, and maybe that's the evocative part. I listen to this, and out of nowhere, can just picture a world in which nothing was certain and things were going to change for good or bad soon. It's the situation we are in today, but WHERE IS OUR GREAT MUSIC LIKE THIS?!
"... somebody said it's different now. Look, it's just the same."
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CONSENSUS!
Posted On: Thursday - July 26th 2018 5:48PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Science
No, wait, SCIENCE! It's a real shame Peak Stupidity has featured the Thomas Dolby song Blinded Me with Science already on our post about the recent solar eclipse. The biggest piece of stupidity associated with the Global Climate DisruptionTM scam that I have been sucked back into writing about lately is the use of the belief (there's that belief again) in CONSENSUS as a part of the scientific method... well, at least when it comes to a specific topic in Climatology. No, having a consensus of the theoretical experts in a field to close the book on a theory is wrong. Science does not work like that.
Scientists and research engineers publish the descriptions of their observations, experiments, and theories in "papers" in the appropriate journals for their fields. These papers are formatted in generally the same way, with a quick Intro., or "abstract", math that describes the theory in question, descriptions of the experimental or observational set-up, presentation of results, conclusions, and then a quick summary. We've written before in this and this post, both descriptions of how science/math-illiterate journalists, and subsequently politicians, make use of nothing but the summary, the only part of a paper they can read, if that. They don't get the assumptions involved, the still-needed work, and the limitations and uncertainty in the results. That's most of the reason that the climatology topic in question has gotten to be so altered and distorted from the real science.
Now, the scientific/engineering papers number in the thousands that come out in various fields weekly, and the sum total for a field is called "the literature" (yeah, it's an unusual use of that word). The literature in a field is an on-going narrative of what people have been thinking, doing, and discovering. People in any specific field are supposed to, if not reading all the papers in their specific field, at least keep up with what the journals have in them, and thoroughly study the papers that relate specifically to their areas of research. OK, got all that? Let me get to the point finally.
As an example, you've got a bunch of papers coming out on, let's say stress analysis of reinforced concrete, a subset of stress analysis (a big area) and also of concrete construction techniques (also a big area). One of them says, that a certain new type of analysis results in these basic technical formulae that will work for this type of design. If an engineer who's got something to do with that specific area sees a problem with ANY part of the experiments, analysis, or results, he will speak up during peer-review, or at least have to write something to correct it and publish that. Everyone is in this field together, and you can't have erroneous information out there. At last resort, someone else uses this paper to continue the work in some way, and realizes that the basics are wrong.
If there are 20 papers on this new technique, and variations thereof, that have been published, then THEY HAVE TO AGREE! It's science, or engineering. If any of them do not agree, than there must be reasons why they don't, engineers have to figure out why, and the erroneous stuff must be removed from "the literature" or corrections issued. There can be no such thing as "well, 17 of the 20 papers on the new method reinforced-concrete stress analysis say it works, and only 3 say it doesn't. That's good, 85 %!". It could be determined that those 3 papers all had problems with the experimental or observational methods, the same or different problems. OK, fine. However, if even ONE paper that doesn't agree can't be rebutted, then there is a real problem. We can't trust any of it, YET, until some smart guy gets to the bottom of it.
You may think "hey, this guy is arguing FOR consensus", come to think of it, but that's not the meaning of the word as used by these climate guys. They use the term to describe how most of the pre-eminent scientists say this or that, but leave out the fact that the "deniers" have NOT BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY REFUTED. How can they be, in a subject that purports to understand how the earth's climate will change in the future, when THERE! IS! NO! WORKING! MATHEMATICAL! MODEL! OF! IT!, DAMMIT!? Their consensus means that these scientists speak up at big conferences and to the press with small factoids of their results and tell everyone that there is no need to understand anyone else on the topic - case closed. If they spent the time to scientifically refute all the science that does not agree, then they wouldn't have time for the fancy press conferences, as that's a bunch of work, as it must leave the "denying" scientists satisfied, that "yes, indeed we see the errors you have pointed out." That's how science SHOULD work.
Consensus is for politics, and even then it's usually a crock.
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The Chinese are not happy with their > 20 year-long unfair! trade deal with America
Posted On: Thursday - July 26th 2018 6:46AM MST
In Topics: Trump Global Financial Stupidity China Americans
Zerohedge articles, even if they are not really that intelligently written, are always good for the comments, provided the topic is ripe for them. 5 days back (yes, I know... no, we don't care) ZH posted:"Worst Case Scenario" Looms As Chinese Overwhelmingly Ready To Boycott US Goods In Trade War. At least they put "worst case scenario" in quotes, because that's a humdinger.
Man, since Bill Clinton sold out American manufacturing in the mid-1990's for some bling from the poontang dynasty, or something undisclosed, the Chinese have been getting one hell of a favorable deal on trade between our countries! I don't say that just due to what the HUGE deficit with them is and has been, but if you know something about the import/export business, you know that it's not at all fair, favoring China greatly. Someone thought it would be good to lift them more quickly out of their hole dug by hard-core Communism. Hey, they would have been OK in the long run, as long as there were no other Maos and Misses Maos, but our policy just eviscerated American manufacturing, that was on a much more slight decline, as it was before this move.
Peak Stupidity has never had that much admiration for President Trump as a "deal-maker". That's not all that is needed to even try to MAGA. However, he does know a bad deal when he sees one. He also probably realizes that, corporate political posturing aside, we have lots more to gain than lose by adding tariffs and tying to make our trade with China more fair. We appreciate his effort on this matter, as it is one in which we need a deal-maker not a sucker on behalf on Americans.
The Zerohedge writer seems to worried about the Chinese being upset about the matter. I don't see a problem. What are they going to boycott, for cryin' out loud? KFC? McDonalds? It's just as well - they don't know how to cook that shit right to begin with over there - too much soy and vinegar doesn't make a Big Mac taste like "2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun" - yeah it's that "special sauce" - ancient Chinese secret, huh? Seriously though, America does have manufacturing, but most of it is NOT consumer goods headed to China. (Yes, our industrial shipments include, of course, those Boeing aircraft, which the Chinese are trying their damndest to copy, and will not need Boeing soon enough.)
Most of what we ship over there is commodities. Lots comes over not on container ships but in the holds of bulk cargo ships. I've seen those big grain elevators in Seattle that hold the crops from E. Washington and the Idaho Snake River valley transported via hopper cars, then loaded with a huge-ass hose into the holds. Maybe the Chinese CAN produce more of their own soybeans, wheat, pork, and (in 50 years, when it can all grow back some) lumber to make furniture to ship to us. However, the price will be much higher. They can replace those imports with stuff out of S. America, Canada, etc., but these are commodities, so without our exports, again, the price will be higher.
So go ahead, pissed-off Chinapeople, do your worst boycotting and buycotting (see also Part 2, and Part 3). Throw those firecrackers, if you still know how to throw after playing soccer, ping-pong, and bad-freakin'-minton all your lives. You all have had one hell of an unfair advantage for more than 2 decades. You have no reason for the indignation other than ignorance and stupidity.
I am not in 100% agreement, but here is a typical on-the-mark comment on ZH, this one by one "Harry Lighting" of parts unknown:
Harry Lightning, Mon, 07/23/2018 - 00:17A beyond-broke country like America can't keep working within an unfair trade environment with the 2nd, soon to be 1st, biggest economy in the world. What can't go on, won't go on.
You hit the nail on the head. The Chinese people still need to eat, and if they stop importing US food, they will have to buy the same food from a middle man country that buys the American food, marks up the price, and sells it to the Chinese. Result : rampant food inflation in China.
On top of that, a country that is starved for capital because of all the debt it has piled on while accumulating trade surpluses would see half a billion dollars a year of capital drained from its vaults as its trade surplus turns negative.
The difference in all this is that the Americans can produce internally everything they import from China, but China cannot do the same. Food is at the top of that list. So while Americans would see an increase in the cost of the goods they now import from China, that would be offset by the huge savings of capital by reducing their trade deficit, along with the multiplier effect of the money spent domestically staying within the boundaries of the US. Wages would rise and then consumption would follow suit, providing a strong impetus to their economic growth.
China on the other hand would lose capital as they would see their trade surpluses reverse into deficits, and would have an inflationary spike not offset by rising wages. Consumption would plummet and production would follow suit.
Frankly I am surprised at the economic ignorance being displayed by whatever Chinese government officials who are providing source information for articles such as these. The Chinese should be shutting the fuck up, accepting the initial round of tariffs without saying a word, and going on to enjoy a continued substantial trade surplus with the Americans albeit at a lower level of profit.
Instead, these officials are letting their nationalistic egos get in the way of more intelligent responses, which in the end will destroy their economy.
I chalk this foolishness off to inexperience on China's part with respect to trade differences. In the twenty five years that they have become an exporting power, they never had to deal with difficulties between themselves and the clients to whom they export. They have been treated with kid gloves, basically being allowed to sell anything they wanted into America without any obstacles. So now that they have to adapt their trade policies to a more difficult situation that challenges their unfettered access into American markets, they are caught like deer in the headlamps., not knowing how to respond. It is in such times that emotion takes the place of wisdom honed by experience, and truly catastrophic mistakes are made. That is what is developing in China today, as evidenced by the report in the article above.
What surprises me also is that the Chinese nationalistic fervor, fueled by a desperate urge to be seen as a world leader in trade who can dictate the rules of transaction, is being allowed to get in the way of what many of the younger Chinese government bureaucrats were trained in American and European universities to know is the wrong response to tariff imposition. It just shows that China remains ruled by the elders, one generation removed from the revolutionaries, who feel more comfortable relying on their revolutionary reactionisms than on classical economics that were taught to their sons and daughters.
This is typical of young dynasties, they always make some critical growing pain mistakes as they develop a history. How they recover from such mistakes will determine the prognosis of their governance. The Soviet Union approached such a crossroads in the 1950s when Stalin passed, and they adapted to a new paradigm that differed sharply from the Bolshevik structure that Stalin had enforced. In so doing it allowed their dynasty to continue, only to make a lethal error some 30 years later when they faced their second major test and failed.
Many of the countries that embraced communism in the post war era ha d similar challenges and failed them. Castro's Cuba and today's Venezuela are classic examples. Depending on whether the Chinese come to their senses before it is too late, they may be the next developing dynasty to implode over a critical error. The next few months will reveal that outcome.
Comments (2)
Global Climate DisruptionTM Left/Right Divide
Posted On: Wednesday - July 25th 2018 6:56PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity ctrl-left Bible/Religion
Look at yourselves! You don't even belong on Planet A, and no, you don't have a Plan-B, but your ctrl-left Commie leaders have one - it doesn't involve you.
Some comments made under that that Steve Sailer post on Global Climate DisruptionTM, actually written by one of the commenter on another thread, bring up this short(er) post on the subject. Basically, I read that conservatives (that means, I guess, real ones, not GOP, Conservative, Inc., etc.) are stubbornly sticking to the wrong side and the left is on the smart side of this "issue". The line, in the otherwise decent short post, was:
It does drive me crazy how doctrinaire conservatives are about climate change.Doctrinaire, my ass, it's the left that treats this hoax like a freakin' religion. Is there, in general, a conservative/left-wing divide on the issue of how the earth's climate changes, and why?
The political aspects of this GCD business have been detailed specifically in this 5-part series - separate from the math-modeling stuff - way back in the beginning of 2017 --- Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. Additionally, the entire thing is highly political, so most of the rest Peak Stupidity blog's articles on the topic are political in nature.
Why does a scientific question have to be political? Yeah, lots of science questions get religious, and beliefs tends toward the conservatives. However, this is ostensibly about the climate of the Earth. There's not much religion involved, that I can think of. Do we see big discussions on CNN and in Congress about the temperature and consistency of the earth's mantle? How about the rings of Saturn? Do we all get bent out of shape discussing quasars, quarks and black holes, even those of us who DO know what the heck those are? What about material science? I haven't seen any protests out in the street about creep in reinforced plastics. Why not, dammit?
This adjective "doctrinaire", coming from "doctrine", is used to describe conservatives only from some memories of 50-100 years ago or more, I guess, because otherwise it doesn't apply. If you go back to atheism vs. religion or more specifically evolution vs. creationism, yeah, the conservatives were the ones believing in the doctrine, the Bible, while the left wanted nothing to do with it. The ctrl-left, however, has painted the conservatives with this doctrinaire brush unfairly for many years, right up through 2000. I can remember them still talking about the conservatives wanted to make the US into a Theocracy during the G.W. Bush election, when the only Theocracy coming will likely be that of Islam, if we don't nip that in the bud.
Conservatives' religious beliefs don't lead to very conservative political beliefs, at least at the Church level, nowadays, anyway, as the Conservatives really just would rather be left alone by the ctrl-left and governments. The problem really is that, though they don't want to be involved in the political world, the political world wants to be involved with them.
Nowadays, as described in yesterday's post (linked-to above, and I may need to add more to that yesterday's one), it's the left who have chosen Global Climate DisruptionTM as their religion. Their beliefs in whatever scientists, journalists, and politicians spout out about the matter are pretty damn doctrinaire, the doctrine being the sacred hockey-stick temperature graphs, the barely-understood conclusions of climatology papers (maybe they should have a priest who can read graphs and calculus for them!), oh, and that one tree ring from some forest somewhere. The issue may be breaking left/right in a reverse manner of the long-ago religious arguments and conflicts. That is one part that causes the divide.
I suspect another reason brought up by my questions above regarding why the other science questions have not been politicized. On this GCD issue, is it possibly the fact that, if one can make use of (dissipation of) energy via combustion something that must be controlled, then one may control a whole lot of the economies of the world? Hmmm, maybe that's it ... more control of the world. What leftist wouldn't want that? The conservatives have seen the massive amount of politicking on the issue, and are smart enough to wonder why the ctrl-left is on about this stuff so vehemently. That puts the left and right at odds on the once-staid field of climatology.
Finally, the 3rd reason for the divide is simply that the conservatives in general are just plain not as stupid as the left, so GCD politics break on a left/right divide on stupidity levels ... as in high/medium.
Yeah, there's a divide alright. I don't think you can settle this one with a little reasonable scientific logical discussion anymore. It's gotten to be a religion for the left, and they freak out and cry when our karma runs over their dogma (I kinda always liked that bumper sticker).
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The Social Security Scam, errr, Scheme(?) - Part 1
Posted On: Wednesday - July 25th 2018 9:28AM MST
In Topics: History Global Financial Stupidity US Feral Government The Future Healthcare Stupidity Socialism/Communism
Per Peak Stupidity's post on "Peak Rich Old People last week, there should be some follow up on this, one of the biggest of Big-Gov's schemes to "help the people".
That's Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the biggest instigators of the American welfare state - was he just the Franklin-the-Baptist to Lyndon B. Johnson in that respect? (oops, that would make LBJ into Jesus, and I don't want to think about that ...) Social Security was put into law more than 8 decades ago, in the mid-1930's. This man, as President, did not make the laws, as we should all know. However, he was one of the more powerful presidents, arguably* the most since the Founding, excepting Lincoln, and none have been more since then. This man presided as administrator of the executive branch (supposedly, that was all) during Great Depression 1.0**, and most of WWII. It was > 12 years going on 16 when he died - I wasn't there but I'm pretty sure we were better off with Harry Truman.
Because of the terrible state of the economy during the bulk of the 1930's, Roosevelt could push lots of welfare schemes on an easy-do-dupe population. The causes of the depression can be discussed (see there's ANOTHER post) later, and whether this man had anything at all to do with ending it or postponing the end of it, also. There were real problems and people in very bad shape, and this one was going to be, if anything, a "no-cost" (hahahaa) deal for the government, aka, the tax-payers. There's no reason that private "social insurance" plans could not have been implemented, but it's one area, due to the long-term trust required for a business to work, that people felt Big-Gov should do the job. Yeah, more on this trust a bit later.
Now, a long-term reader would probably know that this blogger is/was (lots more in the past before the site formatting/scripting started to suck) a big reader of ZeroHedge.com. Just about ANY kind of financial scheme, Big-Gov or Big-Biz, is called a Ponzi scheme on ZH. They do go a bit overboard in that sense, as a true Ponzi scheme is planned from the beginning to be (there's that word again!) unsustainable. That means that only those getting in at the beginning come out ahead financially, as there's no wealth generation, or not enough, to cover those suckers joining later on. I don't give any of the Socialists much credit, but for SS, I don't think the plan was for it not to keep running - Big-Gov shuts down NOTHING (look under Start, Head). The problem is that the unseen future changes to the demographics of the American population would eventually turn it into not just a Ponzi scheme, but a mandatory Ponzi scheme. Nobody has to join AmWay, right, or (one of my favorites) the un-youtube-able classic scene from The Office about a pyramid scheme? If you work, officially, not as an illegal alien, you are put into this plan from DOLLAR ONE.
Back in the 1930's life expectancy was not as high as nowadays. This is due to smart guys and scientific advances and is IN NO WAY an effect of Big-Gov, which has a major NEGATIVE effect financially and otherwise. People died on average at 65 years of age. Therefore, even with plenty of old (usually) ladies living to 80 and collecting a decent sum, there were a number of others to match that were forced to pay in, yet died before collecting a penny. That situation has changed drastically, not a bad thing at all! It's just not good for this plan of retirement at 65 with a reliance on the US Gov't with a nice account with your name on it.
That brought up just a short aside, about SS, but not the monetary aspect. The politicians of that day promised that "No, this SS NUMBER will not be any kind of national ID number." See, we were a more free country back then, as a) privacy was still an understood concept and respected, and b) the politicians at least gave lip service to the idea of no "Papers, please!" (Part 2 and Part 3) totalitarian government, yet nowadays nobody blinks an eye at giving his life story to The State. See, promises from some of those individuals may have meant something to them, but an individual doesn't run this scheme. It's a few million gov't muck-mucks and bureaucrats that may have told you something 20 years ago, but that means nothing to anyone now. Your SS card is appropriately named, and sure enough is the most basic form, YET, of a national ID number. If any number is gonna' be tattooed on your forehead or set into a chip, the 9-digit SS # will be first. In a way this does relate pretty well to the post, in that again: more about promises and trust in a bit.
The baby boom generation was a big boon to the SS scheme, as the large numbers of young people entering the work force in the mid-'60's through early '80's, and not retiring for 40-odd years after, paid in lots of money for all those years. In case you don't get a paycheck, it's 7% off of the 1st buck through over $100,000 now, and your employer (which might be you) pays an equal amount in. Keep in mind, your employer's payment may as well be yours, as he could have given you that amount in pay otherwise. Yeah, so things went swimmingly for a good while there, even with the longer lifespans of people retiring then and already retired, but now we've got loads of people wanting to collect some of "their" money.
Here's a graph of the ratio of payers to payees over the years. Yeah, it's all projected from ~ '15 on, so you can't trust more than 10 years of that. Demographic data is pretty good, but I don't think America, much less social security, will be around then in the same form.
The next part of this discussion will cover more of the big-time accounting on the SS mandatory-scam, one big trick in budgeting in 1998 or 9, and the problem with trusting the government to "be there to help you."
* Hey, that's what the comments section is for - arguments.
** There's that gloom and doom that we all love.
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Global Climate Stupidity revisited - is it a religion now?
Posted On: Tuesday - July 24th 2018 8:22AM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Bible/Religion
The Peak Stupidity blog has plenty to write about, but got distracted via some discussion time on that old pillar of stupidity, the Global Climate DisruptionTM hoax, (2nd time we've fallen for that this millenium! /Maxwell Smart] ) In addition, I did want to clarify our views of another scam, not as egregiious, but just wide-reaching, and that's the scheme known as Social Security - I got ready for that one, but I was boring even myself thinking about it, so STAY TUNED for that one later in the week.
It's this Steve Sailer post that started more discussion and brought to mind that there are still intelligent people that have just been so drawn into this constant LP/Elite/Government brainwashing that it's almost a religion to them. BTW, my argument is only with the part of Sailer's article that takes the GCD seriously, not his overall point that immigration invasion proponents are in complete cognitive dissonance about environmental effects due to increasing population (see, Toward Sustainable Stupidity). I've got otherwise perfectly rational people who've been so sucked in by the GCD predictions, the erroneous terminology, and the worship of scientists as some sort of gods, arguing with anyone who has seen through the bullshit over the years, or never bought into it in the first place (ahem, yours truly).
Peak Stupidity has 40 (as of this writing) posts with the Global Climate Stupidity topic key, but it's the 1st 15 or so, written more than a year ago, that tried to explain the problems of modeling the entire earth's climate, the political involvment in this business, and the massive amounts of stupidity in the dissemination of the science by idiotic reporters. The reader is hereby referred to those posts, and I don't have the heart and time to do it all again now. Let me just harp here on the use of bogus terminology and how this affects the people who "buy-in" to this scam.
It's the use of "carbon neutral", "carbon footprint", the inert gas carbon dioxide as a "pollutant", and "emissions" that are the worst of it. I've been told that CO2 is a pollutant because everything is bad in big doses. Uh, huh, but not water. Yes drowning in it causes death. Once can drink too much in one sitting and die. Does that not make everything on earth a pollutant, in fact? I brought up water, though, because H2, one of the only 2 PRODUCTS (not byproducts) of combustion is EMITTED every time something is burned. It also blocks certain wavelengths of space-bound radiative energy off the earth. But, YOU! DO! NOT! TALK! ABOUT! THE! WATER! VAPOR! (that's the 1st rule of Climate Club - 2nd rule - AL! GORE!).
No, whatever the effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide is, the stuff doesn't directly kill anyone, in amounts 10 or 100 X what is in the air now. It is not a POLLUTANT and generation of the gas by whatever mean being called EMISSIONS is another way of pushing the "we're all gonna die" business (true, we are, but ...). Why not call House BILL R-XXXX a pollutant because it happens to let YYY company trash out the ZZZ river? Carbon Dioxide levels indeed have an effect on ONE PROCESS in 100's that would need to be part of any seriously-predictive model of changes of the earth's climate. The stuff is in no way hurting us, that's all there is to it.
That's the scare that 30 years now of this stuff (oh, ~ 30, since they switched it from cooling) has put into many bright people ... and otherwise. Once you've got it into your mind that "Carbon [sic] is bad .. mmmkaaay", it becomes like a religion: "Don't burn that - you're KILLING THE PLANET!". "Mother Earth doesn't like those big SUVs!" Also, if it's gonna be a global religion, as most try to be, and indeed, by definition world climate modeling IS global, then why don't you people care that we've just shopped all that emitting and polluting over to China, India, and Bangladesh? I noticed that the Paris Accords (thank you, the Donald!) didn't put ANY limits on the economies of China and India - that's like the Moslems saying you can't drink and women can't drink and/or drive, unless you do it in America (oops, well, yeah ...)
As I've written to people about this subject, I've got nothing at all against good science, including in the field of Climatology. Advancing the field by studying cloud cover formation/albedos of clouds, ocean current changes, CO2 level changes in the oceans, humidity levels vs, types of ground cover, radiation spectra of various ground covers, upper-level wind effects on the concentration of atmospheric gases .., etc. * is a good thing. People who are somewhat nerdy could discuss these topics at cocktail parties, with some relation to the real world: "Yeah, we think that'd raise temperatures near the eastern coastlines a degree C or so ...", "That would mean there should be more hurricane activity, but there's a whole lot more to understand ..." - just calmly, without the whole unnecessary "sky is falling" part, because, that's just it, we don't really know. How do we know we don't know (besides reading those > 1 dozen PS articles)? We've already had those BS predictions made by Lyin' Press and globalist elites, telling us 15 years back how there'd be no more snow in the US within 10 years, telling us 12 years back hurricane seasons were going to be viscous (reverse-spoiler-alert - we had 10 years of benign tropical-stormage in the Atlantic.), etc. We know it's bullshit because we have memories.
"Oh, but the models are getting better." "We have reached a CONSENSUS." (That'll be a whole nother post, there). Back to the scientists, the field of Climatology has been polluted with the emissions of the grant-mongerers and lovers of the limelight. Why does one want to make small money teaching class, work on the computer all day, read the heavy math, and go to a few conferences that no one ever hears of,, as an honest job, when one could be employed in SAVING THE PLANET? (Yes, it's the same job, but done with an added emphasis, a core competency in hyperbole and dishonesty). Think of how proud Mom and Dad will be of their son who is not just some adjunct at Rhode Island E-Northeast Tech, but is SAVING THE PLANET. The couple down the street too, is even more proud of their daughter, who is both getting her Masters's in SAVING THE PLANET, and getting married soon (he promises) to her Professor, coincidentally!
* Are you getting the impression that the topic is very damn complex?!
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Help Peak Stupidity reach our goal!
Posted On: Saturday - July 21st 2018 9:23PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Music Websites Humor Orwellian Stupidity Southern rock
You don't even need a Paypal account. You don't need an envelope, or even money to put in it. All we ask is a few minutes of your time. It's the time it takes to drink a cup of original-roast vente latte each morning, so long as you don't sit on your ass for an hour doing it. That's all it would take for you to pick up the receiver (WTF is a receiver?), make that one critical phone call, and harass this fucking guy:
Please, for the love of all things stupid, you CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE! See, for Peak Stupidity to reach the poor masses of the world, we must be recognized as a legitimate, bonafide Hate Organization, and that's where you come in. That one phone call (each morning), with a strongly-worded suggestion to the world-wide arbiter of hate and love, the $PLC - Southern Poverty Law Center, can make the difference. We MUST BE RECOGNIZED in order to properly serve the stupidity market as a Non-Governmental Organization, and that requires a hate-listing. Yes, the Peak Stupidity blog should be on lists sent to influential jourolists, on the hate heat maps, in $PLC press releases, on their website, anywhere folks come looking for someone to hate.
It is important for the reader to understand that you, as an individual, don't need to actually hate anyone to participate. The word "hate" itself has changed with the times. It is OK that Peak Stupidity may actually not hate any particular people - to be listed as a hate organization gives us the right to be HATE HATE HATED by other people who are doing this HATING out of LOVE. They may protest, try to shut us down, leave unreadable viagra ads in the comments, whatever it takes to eliminate our opinions, as having opinions proves that we are hateful. Any disparagement or physical violence from such a lofty and powerful hate-aggregator such as the $PLC against Peak Stupidity is only proof of the goodness of that richly-endowed non-governmental, non-profit organization.
If we don't make the Southern Poverty (really?) Lie Center's hate list by end-of-fiscal-18, we will literally be beside ourselves. A devastating blow like that may even cause clinical blog-pression to the point where, just out of spite, we will consider posting Doobie Brothers music WITH Michael McDonald or more movie reviews.
In the meantime, we'll keep our fingers crossed, and hope to post that framed, notarized, page of the hate-list very soon.
From the Southern Poverty Lie Center, we move swiftly to some Southern Rock - here are The Outlaws with Green Grass and High Tides. Turn it up!
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London, England's Chinatown and a bifecta of Peak Stupidity
Posted On: Saturday - July 21st 2018 8:27PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity China
I'm sure we'll have a chance to discuss more of these, but this story from London, England has an intersection of two stupidity flavors that have been already discussed at Peak Stupidity. Those are the stupidity of the Foodies and Chinese illegal immigration, specifically situations like America's China to King Buffet pipeline.
The Lyin' Press, UK branch, discusses The immigration crisis facing London's Chinatown. Lest you think that there are too many Chinese immigrants, and it's good to see an article on that, well, on the first thing, you'd be right, but you'd be called naive by anyone wise to the Lyin' Press. Nope, this story is about resistance to raids on Chinese restaurants in London's Chinatown to round up illegal alien Chinese waiters/cooks/etc. See the Foodies want their authentic food, cooked and served by Chinese people who don't know a lick of the Queen's English, and don't even know there is a Queen, most likely. See, this is critical. No matter what you think that piece of meat may actually be, and no matter that there is a strange lack of cats roaming in that entire neighborhood, this shit is authentic, man, just like old Canton, or a ride on the a ride on the Peking ferry. ('ceptin' you can't say "Peking" anymore, much less "slant-eyed lady who took me on deck and bit my neck".)
Well, this rounding up of people due to their invasion of your country is not cool with some of these illegal Chinese with the gall to lay down in front of vans about it.
Tensions came to a head this month when immigration officers clashed with protesting crowds, resulting in an elderly woman being taken to hospital. The woman was filmed as she lay down in front of an immigration van as crowds gathered.You'd think these people would've learned a thing or two since that late unpleasantness at Tiananmen Square, downtown Peking 3 decades back. Sure, vans don't have steel tracks, but if it were one of those extended 3 ton Ford Econolines? I mean, lady, you're no spring-roll chicken anymore ...
In the video, which has since gone viral, the van moves forward as bystanders push it back, helping the woman to crawl out of the way. The Home Office later said she was only taken to hospital as a “precautionary measure” and was not injured.
He adds: “The woman was an elderly lady who is deaf and she was trying to plead with officer not to take away a worker, who is believed to be from the same village as her ... She was kneeling down and begging.”It's almost as bad as down in S. Texas - not content to just put kids in separate facilities, this time they're separating villagers even! Such cruelty .. makes a Chinawoman wonder why she bothered coming in the first place.
Wu says: “We need to recruit Chinese chefs over here ... generally the direction of the government is moving toward the idea that you need to train up local people but it takes years to train someone to understand what Chinese food is, let alone give them the skills they need to cook it.”First you've got to know what the food is, is that what you're trying to tell me? You mean to tell me there WAS NO General Tsao? All this time I'd thought he was the guy who ordered the tanks to roll ... over those people. What about sweet&sour chicken, cashew chicken, orange peanut chicken .. chicken with fly-lice, chicken with Y-rice ... sauteed ... zzzzzz .... steam-chicken-gumbo ... dorra-a-poun ...? Listen Foodies, I've got two words for your future: recipes, youtube. That's it. You can find a cute Chinese lady on there to teach you how to cook anything you want and avoid changing your entire country into something unrecognizable. It seems well worth it to me. Plus, think of the kitties.
Lee says: “Chinese cuisines all over the world is getting multidimensional and improving ... but in the UK it’s going backwards as we don’t have enough people. When a chef retires there is no one else to take their place.”
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The Master Bullshit Artists
Posted On: Friday - July 20th 2018 5:17PM MST
In Topics: University Big-Biz Stupidity
This is some more stupidity that has existed in the Big-Biz world, at least in the American portion, for a long time. This is just a short post that's been waiting in the wings a while.
Sure, one can come up with a fun take on any acronym or abbreviation - BS, MS, and PhD all have their own. The Masters in Business Administration, or MBA is just one that'd I've had a problem with for long time. It's not your Education Masters ... no, no, nothing that bad. They teach you a little bit hear and there, and if it were just about the beginning (only legitimate part) of economics, some accounting, etc., I feel it'd be a respectable degree, though why Master's level (just normal certificate inflation, I suppose)?
The problem is that MBAs are hired for high-level positions in big business in which the assumption is, because of that "Business" in their degree name, they are assumed to magically just know about ANY business's workings, well enough to run departments! Why, because they know how to make graphs, write reports, kiss ass? There are aspects to most fields of endeavor that can take decades to understand very well. Many of the small tricks, problems, bits of knowledge, etc. can only be learned via working the bottom-level jobs that any particular business is all about. It doesn't have to be an extremely high-tech business, like Boeing's commercial airplane group. It could be a large call-center operation. Who would better really know the problems involved than someone who's been (usually rightfully) harassed-back on the phone every night for the last 6 years?
If it's an auto manufacture, is it really smart to hire an MBA who's run an airline for the last 5 years, and before that, a chain of hair salons? How about a guy who's been on the line, assembling pieces of cars, then doing Q/A for a few years, then working as an engineering/project manager, or maybe as an actual engineer after that? How is going to know what the hell really goes on around the place? Who is hiring these MBA know-it-all? Oh, that's right, it's the HR manager, who, themselves, were MBAs. It's just another of these big clubs, as Mr. Carlin used to say, and if you do a real job, you ain't in this one either.
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Apocalypto Now! - Movie Review
Posted On: Thursday - July 19th 2018 9:06PM MST
In Topics: Humor History Movies Race/Genetics
We've just got back from seeing Apocalypto at Peak Stupidity's usual venue, that couch there, about 5 ft. behind me. This movie was made in the year 2006, at which time, our reviewer's thoughts were to the effect of "nah, Apocalypto later.", hence the late review and the post title as we will review Apocalyto Now!
To keep this one more in line with a standard Siskell/Ebert type movie review than is standard Peak Stupidity fare, we will first talk about the cinematography. The movie is REALLY BLURRY! That can be a big drawback and had this reviewer this close () to
Yeah, so it was blurry because it was a shoddily-made free youtube video. What do you readers want? If you want a review on a clearer version of this movie, then we expect expenses paid, and that means a gallon bucket of popcorn and a large fountain drink for each one of the entire editorial staff, along with some tokens for the soft-toy grappling crane game in the lobby before the show. Think about that for next time.
Next, the casting: I had no idea Mel Gibson was in the movie until told that well after our youtube screening. Listen, all the faces of these Mayan and other savages had weird-ass warts, tattoos, strings, and various pieces of 1400-era materials strung throughout their faces. It's not pleasant! A young Cameron Diaz could have been in this, errr, film, and I wouldn't be in love one bit with all that facial crap. It just doesn't work for this particular, and any other, cast. This also makes it hard to keep track of who's whom in this Mayan savage vs. somewhat nicer savages movie, which is woefully typical of the pre-Columbian savage conflict genre. The good guys had blue paint on 'em, if that helps at all.
Here's the thing: This movie depicts gruesome, but admittedly historically-true scenes of Mayan sacrificial beheadings and sacrificial non-clinical open-heart procedures. Now, perhaps it's just the queasiness of this particular reviewer, as I can barely stand to watch scenes of those sacrificial anodes in the Corrosion Engineering supplemental learning DVDs. It's just a movie, right, and maybe Cortez, Pizarro, and all those other Spanish conquistadors were just telling the Queen and themselves a load of BS in order to justify grabbing hundreds of metric shit tons of gold off these poor bastards? Ya think?
Well, as archaeologists have been determining lately, the stories of these huge piles of 10's of thousands of human skulls were on the money after all. They've been finding evidence of the atrocities committed by the savage American-continental Indians before the white man came over to set them straight. (I don't have links, but would like to point out more of this later.) That's what makes the movie Apocalypto something different from the usual horror-suspense date flick, which tend to involve babies that come out of the womb with grown fangs or guys like Freddie Kruegger. This pre-Columbian stuff is real, man! Put down the smuggled-in gummies and Now&Laters for a minute and think about some history.
I think historians and readers of history may have been too hard on the Conquistadors, who are themselves seen as worse than the English and French in North America is terms of treatment of the pre-existing "folks". Perhaps the Spaniards, who may or may not have had a cameo appearance in Apocalypto (spoiler alert), were just plain disgusted by the nasty savagery they saw in their half of the New World. Can one really blame them for just deciding to kill as many as they felt like and letting the Sun God sort 'em out? Plus, these Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, what-have-you, weren't doing a lot with all that gold and silver they had either - no sound money, not even fractional reserve lending. "A tribe of fools and their money ..." as they say.
This is a still a movie review, so historical politics and political correctness aside, let's wrap this up. Once the blurriness has been accommodated for, and the beheadings and heart-ripping action were in the past, Apocalypto could be viewed as nothing more than one long car chase movie, just like The French Connection but with barefoot chases through the jungle instead of American muscle car chases through downtown Chicago, and a guy who may or may not have been Mel Gibson instead of the hackneyed Gene Hackman. Same-old/same-old there.
Apocalypto on youtube, a delight for organ meat connoisseurs of all ages!
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Immigrants doing the Cannibalization that Americans JUST WON'T DO
Posted On: Tuesday - July 17th 2018 7:51PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Media Stupidity Bible/Religion
There some pretty sick stuff that goes on in this world, and this country, but thankfully, it's still fairly rare. Some of the gruesome acts of violence though seem to be more original and sicker and most of these that I've read about have been performed by immigrants from various locales. (Yes, but ... but "the new cuisine!") Sure, we always had our babies born of the devil that'd start eating people on Day One, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacres, but those were movies, keep in mind. I think the gruesomeness has been bumped up to medium rare.
Speaking of chainsaws, then, Steve Sailer posted a link to the Los Angles Lyin' Press story Man Suspected of Attacking Wife with Chain Saw Was Deported 11 Times What I linked to is iSteve's quick commentary post and the reader comments. Because this is still a medium-rarity, and this just doesn't seem like what would go on in our own families, we can make jokes about it, and the comments contain a few good ones. I wish Zerohedge had covered this one - comments there would be hilarious.
First of all, what this "suspected" crap? I mean how hard is it to tell whether the wife was sawn up by a chainsaw vs. what? "Detective, what's this look like to you?" "Well, I'm no handyman, mind you, but the cuts are not straight enough for a table saw. I think most miter saws don't have the depth to get the whole torso. True, they've got those radial-arm saws now ... saw a great deal one last week at Home Depot, but I can't tell if it's just gonna be another piece of Cheap Chin... where was I? I'm leaning toward an 18"-bar Husqvarna at this point, until we, ahh, get more leads.".
The guy had been deported ELEVEN freakin' times! Yet, pundit Fred Reed says a border barrier don't do any good (when he talks his mock country and mocks his former country). I'm sure our "California man" here was coming for the great economic opportunities, but man, after that many economic opportunities, could he not have saved up just a small nest egg... enough to purchase a decent wood-chipper? See the nice midwestern folks would have done this job more easily, efficiently, and cleaner with a full-sized nice trailer-pulled model. Got a job to do, do it right, they'll tell you up in Fargo.. you betcha!
Further up into the Great White North, that's Canada, eh?, they've had their Chinese version of a gruesome killer. A decade back, one Mr. Vince Li not just stabbed a fellow passenger to death on the Greyhound bus, but beheaded the poor guy and then took the time to eat parts of him. He did all this while riding that Greyhound that was just cruising through Manitoba near Portage Le Prairie that night almost 10 years ago in a week or so. Shoot, about the worst thing that I remember while riding that hound long ago, was being told we'd have to stop for a minute and kick a guy off if he didn't quit smoking that joint in the back. Keep in mind, that up in Canada, guns are bad, mmkaaay? Therefore, there was no one on the bus who could have just quickly and safely put an end to this sick act. In the meantime, the driver just kept making the stops ...
OK, sorry, this was real - Vince Li was a schizoid, and apparently voices in his head told him that the Canadian 22-y/o Tim McLean was an alien (who the hell was the real alien there?) and a Bible verse told him so.
Mr. Li had NOT been deported yet, as I guess he was a schizoid doing a job Canadian schizoids just wouldn't do. What he HAS been however, is released from prison, only 10 years after this heinous crime, however. The Lyin' Press, Global Mail branch reports on this in a somewhat fair manner, while the next link I found, a Canadian CBC report from 6 years back, ALREADY TALKING ABOUT THIS GUY'S POSSIBLE RELEASE from prison, is just damn ridiculously oriented toward being "fair" toward this released psycho-killer, who, apparently, will not know happiness, but will be just fine so long as he keeps taking his medication.
The horrific nature of Li's act has demonized him in the public's mind, said Summerville.It is unfortunate that some people that take purchase knives at Canadian Tire, behead their seatmates on the bus and eat part of said seatmates, and demonic stuff like this, get demonized so much. Every! Single! Time! "They'll demonize you when your all alone ... they'll demonize you when you're phoning home ..."
The unjustified public fears about Li will probably keep him in a mental-health hospital longer than necessary, Summerville said.Why all the fear, folks? They don't even have Greyhound buses anymore.
There are no easy answers to the many faceted questions that bombard both families and the media.Wait, I GOT one - lethal injection.
Now, from the first article, on the release of the man now known as Will Baker (so's the neighbors won't know - "he's that Chinese psyco-killer") we read:
He'll be living not too far away from Tim McLean's mother,..."I wonder how good Mom is with a sniper rifle?
Hey, we can make fun of Canadian Stupidity, but we've got the same stuff going on here. Just on the immigration aspect of it, not the healthcare part, read that 2nd article for the interview with the guy. There are details about his coming to Winnipeg from Manchurian China to become.a computer "engineer", but there were no jobs. What was the point of this shit? He admits the Royal Mounties should have shot him dead. If I were the Mom, yeah, I'd have just one job to do, ... maybe some follow-up work out East toward Ottawa.
As is the case on lot of Peak Stupidity posts, I thought this was gonna' be a short one, but I got carried away ... not as much as these two guys here, keep in mind ... I hear only one voice in my head, at this juncture, and it says "keep on blogging, brotha!"
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Passing Peak Rich Old People
Posted On: Monday - July 16th 2018 7:05PM MST
In Topics: Humor Global Financial Stupidity Economics The Future
The Peak Stupidity blog has been off of the Global Financial Stupidity topic for quite a while now. It's not like we don't see the bad stuff coming. In fact, we maintain that financial/economic calamities will be THE cause of a rapid decline of the stupidity we have been documenting so well [if we may say so ourselves - Ed]. The election of Donald Trump may have given us a few years of respite though. I don't mean that this guy will really MAGA - he can't. There is just a lot of confidence right now, due to the President not being a total anti-American, and in fact, happily quite the opposite. That means markets may stay propped up longer than they would have. This post on the financial state of old people has been on the back burner for quite a while, and as a look at long-term trends, all here is still applicable, American president or not.
Of course it depends on you, the reader's, age here, but I have memories of older Americans being frugal, settled down, and sedate. As much as I have bad-mouthed Hollywood and TV for having sold an agenda for a long time now, the old shows and movies still give this general picture, even if one doesn't have any memories going far back. I would say things changed for the better for American older people starting in the early 1980's.
America has had the richest old people ever seen in world history over the last 3 decades, but I think that trend is already on the wane with the Global Financial Stupidity reaching its peak. Again, maybe you can't remember, but it's only recently that the senior citizens do more traveling than yuppie jet-setters, eat out as much as the young foodies , play more golf than corporate management, and put more miles on golf carts than millennials put on their cars. Now, the intention of this post is not to bad-mouth the elders that have been living the good life. I don't fault most of them for it. Things just worked out really well for that generation or two.
The financial and demographic stars lined up for the people retiring about 40 - 10 years back. The financial distribution scheme knows as Social Security was good and solvent for them. I see another post coming right up on SS, but to put it fairly succinctly, as younger people, lots of these elders had not paid in the kind of money the US Gov't confiscates now, and they have been able to get money doled out while this scheme was in its prime, with lots of deposits still for their withdrawals. Then, theirs was a time in which there still were real honest-to-God pension plans from the age in which IBM or GM figured they could cover all this. (They could ... for a while.) The state and municipal retirees had it just as good, with plans beefed-up via government unions in cahoots with politicians who promised the world.
Lastly, interest rates on simple deposits or market "instruments" of all kinds were realistic wrt the time-value-of-money until ten years back when the FED forced them via cheap lending of created money, to the basement. Yes, I am aware that inflation hit the mid- and almost high-teens back in the late '70's and had been fairly high since the elimination of sound money and creation of the welfare state 15 years earlier. The thing is, interest rates rose accordingly, to higher numbers than inflation, as should be the case. The decent amounts of interest that could be earned meant two things:
1) Even if many in these generations were not particularly frugal, simple savings accumulated very well for them at the 5-8% rates seen during much of this time period. Making a nest egg of a quarter million or so in today's money over 30 years was not all that hard for them, and that would result in:
2) Having a decent or even fairly lame (call it $100,000 in today's money) life savings sitting in even the most risk-free investments like CDs would result in interest payments of $1000 to $400 monthly, respectively, with no bite out of the principle - yeah, sure, inflation will eat it away, but we all get eaten away anyway.
Between some sort of, or multiple instances of, pension payouts, SS checks, and interest payments, retirees have had it very very good for quite a while now. It may seem to be the norm. It's likely more of a fluke though. Demographics are changing, Social Security will go bust (again, more in another post) or become fairly worthless, and pensions are becoming a thing of the past.
Enjoy it while it lasts, Golden Girls, and all the rest in your Golden Years. It's been a great ride ... trips twice a year to Europe, the Great Wall, or the Galapagos Islands, big RV's hauling ass from coast to coast at 52 mph, McMansions with 3,500 sq.-ft of space that you can't clean yourself, eating out at Wolfgang Puck's every Friday until 6PM instead of gumming down that creamed corn at the Early Bird special, paying for 575 channels of TV on that 80" screen instead of settling in to fall asleep during The Golden Girls.
It's not gonna stay this way, so don't get your hopes up, you who are not of the 1% or so. We all shouldn't relish what's coming... hell, we may not even be able to afford relish ... on top of our meals of cat food. No, it may not be that bad, but what can't go on, won't go on, as "they" say. It'll be time to read the entire telephone bill again to see where they ripped you off, check prices before you buy stuff, maybe move in with, or at least near, the kids and grandkids. Above all, please don't buy that 50 ft. long RV - you people have cost me enough in traffic tickets already passing your ass on the grades on the two-lane roads!
Speaking of The Golden Girls, it may have been the show on prime time, or possibly reruns at that hour, but as a young guy, I can somewhat remember the show due to the following: It seemed like this show came on on Saturday night, and the only time I recall noticing it was at the ski lodge our group would rent. It seems like downhill skiing would not tire you out so much, right? I mean, physics would say that you aren't doing work on the hill, but the hill is doing work on you. I guess it's the non-noticeable fighting off the cold, but we would get so tired after going the whole day. We'd get the fire going at the lodge, drink a few beers, and someone would turn on that damnable TV and The Golden Girls would be on. It would put me right out. I'd wake up and think "and then there's Maude" or something and feel older than whoever the hell the rest of audience was.
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Creedence Clearwater Revival - Jambalaya
Posted On: Saturday - July 14th 2018 7:03PM MST
In Topics: Music
Though this is a cover of a classic Hank William's song, nobody could do a rock vesion BUT John Fogerty and his nothing-but-prolific band (from 1968 - 1972). This video is just up for enjoyment and not apropos of any particular thoughts. It's been a very light week of posting, but coming up next week, at the least, will be discussion of the richest olld people in the world, some immigrant murderers, something about MBAs that I've been meaning to write about, and another fabulous movie review.
Here is CCR's version of Jambalaya - Peak Stupidity has thus far featured the band only once before - see "I'm just a cross-tie walker."
Creedence Clearwater Revival was:
John Fogerty - Vocals, lead guitar
Tom Fogerty - Rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Stu Cook - Bass guitar, backing vocals
Doug Clifford - Drums, backing vocals
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Supreme Court nominee Brent Kavanaugh - good enough for Ann Coulter
Posted On: Friday - July 13th 2018 9:16PM MST
In Topics: Trump Pundits US Feral Government
That means good enough for Peak Stupidity, though I hope Miss Coulter didn't vet this guy in the way that she vetted Romney for president. In addition, though, there was the research that the Federalist Society does on lots of judges. They are like the bizarro-$PLC in that they study and support people who are real Constitutionalists, as opposed to hating on people like that.
I give kudos to President Trump for listening to the Federalist Society, as it has been said, in making his decision. It's good to see in light of his terribly bad picks lots of the time of advisors, cabinet members and heads of agencies of various sorts. You're not supposed to know it all, Mr. Trump, and we know you're no Pat Buchanan in historical knowledge. A good leader picks people he can trust, and I haven't seen a lot that in your supposed advisors and other employees (the entire Executive Branch are his employees).
In our other post on this SC vacancy, Peak Stupidity speculated that an Ann Coulter pick would be ideal just in a way of playing Bad cop/Good cop. I think now that the other way around could work pretty well too. Why not let it slip that if Mr. Kavanaugh does not get confirmed by the Senate, a certain Miss Coulter is on deck. Just the frustration and blood pressure increases of the left into the dangerous, go-straight-to-the-hospital-now/don't-pass-go/don't-collect-your-$200 range is something they'd like to avoid. Just approve this guy, and we won't display Ann Coulter's wit, beauty, charm, and libertarian/conservative arguments to the rest of the general public. Yes, that's a threat. I would so enjoy it, though. An Ann Coulter nomination would probably put me back in the stock market - go long Orville Redenbacher! - and possibly convince me to start getting a few TV signals from over the air again, just for the duration of the hearings, of course.
Let's get 2 more judges in before the end of Trump term 1, shall we? Get er done!
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Voice-mail system displays frustration at Peak Stupidity blogger
Posted On: Thursday - July 12th 2018 5:24PM MST
In Topics: Humor Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity
I suppose Peak Stupidity could just become a total forum of curmudgeonry and never run out of things to write about, but THAT'S! NOT! WHOM! WE! ARE! (notice the strictly correct grammar in our use of this now-ubiquitous phrase.) There are 2 areas which by themselves would never have as running out of stupidity, and those are driving on the roads and customer service, oh, it's "customer care" now. We will get back to politics, shorty, so please don't change your
This customer service experience (!!) involved a call to the government, well one form of government, anyway, in order to straighten out a discrepancy with taxes. My blood pressure was already up 15 mmHg before I even considered the what kind of hassle the voice-menu system would be. See, I DO! NOT! TALK! TO! COMPUTERS! This ain't stardate 2245, and I ain't Captain James T. Kirk. That may seem to be a problem, but almost every one of these systems is set up to respond to touch-tones - touch tones? WTF are those anymore? ... Anyway, you just swipe around with faggy motions on a small screen. (Hell, we used to have TVs bigger than these things!)
The trick is whether you can get away with just mashing one "0" after the next until a live English?-speaking customer care representative condescends to speak with you. That doesn't work all the time. Some systems have been programmed to hang up on you. That comes across as very rude, and it's hard to get back at a computer server farm for that. I spent 15-20 minutes one time trying different combinations of numbers, some times having to re-dial, but I finally got to a human. I was pretty worried about being able to pull the trick again, as my attempts had not been very scientific. I forgot to take notes, as frustrated as I was.
Well, by the 2nd "0" the other day, during my attempted first contact with the tax people, the system didn't hang up on me. However, the 2nd time the computer-generated digital voice signal said "That is not a valid option", it was more like "That is NOT a valid OPTION!" I swear that the voice had some inflection programmed in for the second time around. Is it that much damn trouble for a computer to do something twice!? Ask your average transistor in an array of RAM. That's what they're all geared up to do - the same old shit over and over (x 1 x 1020) again. If this was some programers' idea of a "smart system", well then, kudos to you guys! It'll probably work to get me off the phone. I hate slamming these smart phones down too, as this cheap China-made crap just doesn't stand up to that kind of thing like an old bakelite receiver sub-assembly.
What a concept! Call it "programmable inflection" or "corporate-selectable voice-system frustration levels". They give out patents for anything in software these days, so I will leave this for the readers, no charge.
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Pre-emptive apology for slow posting coming - and The Doobie Brothers
Posted On: Tuesday - July 10th 2018 9:54PM MST
In Topics: Music Southern rock
I just never got a cohesive post in my head over the last couple of days, even though there's always plenty of stupidity to analyze - Analytical Stupidity is our forte, and, in fact, consistent readers of this blog are reminded here, before we all forget, to put in for 3 credits to be applied in lieu of classroom time in STUP 699: Seminar in Analytical Stupidity.
They're be more traveling for the staff coming this or next week, so posting will be light. There are > 700 articles on here, though, if you like this stuff!
As egregiously featured only ONCE before (Neal's Fandango) on the Peak Stupidity blog, here are The Doobie Brothers with straight-up rock-n-roll sound attained before the arrival and musically-destructive tendencies of the jazz-oriented Michael McDonald*.
Here is Black Water, a song that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the MIC organization previously going by that name. This is from a more innocent time, and appropriate for a summer's night. It's not really Southern Rock, as the band is from the SF Bay Area, for one thing, but ... just listen:
This is from 1974, from the album What Were Once Vices are Now Habits. (I think that name is an early criticism of euphemisms, something I'd never thought about before.)
Band Members at the time:
Patrick Simmons – composer, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, lead vocals
Tom Johnston – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Tiran Porter – bass guitar, backing vocals
Keith Knudsen – backing vocals
Michael Hossack – drums, percussion
John Hartman – backing percussion
Arlo Guthrie* – wind chimes, autoharp
Novi Novog – viola
Ted Templeman – producer
Michael McDonald - Nope **
* Awesome, I had no idea Arlo played on this.
** No Michael McDonald, CHECK!***
*** The man who single-handedly ruined the Doobie Brothers, even as a very talented musician, by SCREWING WITH THE SOUND!
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The Stupidity of the Foodies
Posted On: Saturday - July 7th 2018 7:49PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Student and other Snowflakes Humor Curmudgeonry Economics
This post has been on the back burner for 3 months now, and it's time to get it out of my system. In addition, I've seen 4 related comments to my point here on unz.com very recently, so let's get ahead of the game here.
Just who are The Foodies? Well, that's their hobby, eating different kinds of foods, new foods, exotic foods, ancient foods, French food, what have you. There's even a Food Channel with Food Channel outlet stores. Sure, there are hundreds of TV Channels with fewer and fewer people tuned in to each one, so fine. Also, there've been (mostly) guys who could have been chefs in other lifetimes, and just enjoy making the quality stuff, either instinctively or by making reference to various 10 lb recipe books, especially the Italians. I GET THAT, it's one of the big pleasures in life, but you'll see my point about the stupidity of some of the foodies in a bit.
Now, after putting on my curmudgeon hat, I've got to chime in, that in my day we ate what was on our damn plate, meaning our Moms would cook whatever they damn well pleased. Going out to eat was just not as frequent a habit as it is for everyone now, single people, married, with/without kids, etc. Upon getting out of the house, anything filling up my stomach tasted pretty good, most of which was the fast food crap.
It just seems like people used to be as picky as they are today, which brings up a quick story: While eating with a girl friend at a Taco Joint called Taco John's the girl expressed distaste with the tacos. I had already inhaled whatever it was I ate, and it was all good to me - once you've got that salt, fat, and sugar in, you can't go wrong, it seemed to me. "You don't believe me? Do you think this stuff is nasty, or that I'm just being bitchy?" "Um, being bitchy", I observed, just going by history. She let me taste them. Yeah, the meat was nasty, but then I hadn't noticed when I gobbled it down. We didn't have to go find an authentic Mexican taco stand, is what I'm getting at, which eventually will lead to the point here.
The situation is different now. It appears that various and sundry restaurants and bars in every city, large and small, are pretty much the lifeblood of this country's economy. I don't know how they can be, but, again, that's all people seem to be doing. It's the young people as much as anyone that spend every extra cent at all the new restaurants and bars popping up. Many of these young people can only get these kinds of service jobs themselves, making the money go round and round with no savings or investment to come out of it, as I attempted to describe in discussion of the coffee shops (more here). It's one thing if the gens riches - that's French for rich people - are the ones spending the nights and the money out on the town, but the restaurant infrastructure now is enough to cover about everybody. Everyone wants to go out for new authentic cuisine of all kinds. Pajama Boy here may be typical of the Foodies:
Finally to the point, I believe that, though not the primary driver of it, these ever-growing-in-number Foodies are part of the pro-immigration crowd. No, they don't understand that probably Americans could make this same stuff - there is the internet and all with its millions of youtube videos on how to make and do about any damn thing one can thing of. That's no good, I guess. Yes, what I'm saying is that the Foodies care so much about what their next meal out will be, that they are willing to put up with an invasion of the whole 3rd world in order to have enough places to get authentic cuisine. How selfish is this kind of shit?!
This is not some kind of overarching theory of how America got to the sorry state we're in with respect to large-scale immigration. I've already got that pretty much figured out. (This post makes 95 posts with the Immigration Stupidity topic key! Check 'em out.) This is one more reason the Globalist/Elite types do like that high-level diversity, though. They ARE the ones that can fly across the country to stay somewhere mainly to get a meal. "Hey, there are only, like 4 authentic Somalian food sit-down places in all of Fresno. I go there on business twice a year, and, dammit, this won't do! We need to raise quotas and get some more of those hardworking refugees." Just read an airline magazine some time - "Here's the food you can get in Sao Paulo, here's a list of the best Greek restaurants in Auckland, New Zealand." That's the way they are. However, the middle class now eats that stuff up too (pun partially intended).
To hell with these Foodies and their never-ending quest for more exotic people to cook them meals, then import the rest of the family to diversify the town then go on welfare. Could they not just stay inside most nights, brew their own beer, and pull up some cool new recipes off the internet? It'd sure save them some money too, so they could get ahead in life, if that's possible after paying the taxes and other social costs to support all whom they've imported.
One thing the Peak Stupidity blog pointed out long ago in A good trait of Americans is that American used to be known for not valuing this sophistication and fancy things as much as hard work and honesty. There's nothing wrong with living an unsophisticated existence, and preferring melted cheese sandwiches to exotic French cuisine.
Steve Martin, aka The Jerk, explains this very well:
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Boston - Hitch a Ride
Posted On: Friday - July 6th 2018 4:14PM MST
In Topics: Music
This has nothing much to do with the previous post on Boston, Massachusetts, besides the name of the band. The band was from the that city, and an MIT-educated (Master's Degree) mechanical engineer named Tom Scholz was the organizer and leader. With his own equipment, Scholtz created this unique electric-guitar sound that Hitch a Ride here demonstrates the best, in 2 minute long excellent guitar solo that is the 2nd half of the song.
About every song on Boston's self-titled debut album from 1976 is great stuff, and we'll have to put a few more on in the future. Don't let the name of the city deter you from listening!
The following musician list is for the Boston album in general.
Brad Delp – lead and harmony vocals; acoustic guitar on "Let Me Take You Home Tonight"
Tom Scholz – electric guitars, lead guitar, acoustic guitars, clavinet, organ, bass guitar, design consultant, remastering, liner notes, production, engineering
Barry Goudreau – rhythm guitar on "Foreplay," "Long Time" and "Let Me Take You Home Tonight"; lead guitar on "Long Time" and "Let Me Take You Home Tonight"
Fran Sheehan – bass guitar on "Foreplay" and "Let Me Take You Home Tonight"
Sib Hashian – drums except "Rock & Roll Band"
Jim Masdea – drums on "Rock & Roll Band"
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Boston, Mass and the "Stupid Heard Round the World"
Posted On: Friday - July 6th 2018 2:06PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Americans Liberty/Libertarianism Socialism/Communism
Yep, you're remembering your 4th grade history correctly, it WAS the "Shot Heard Round the World" as the spark of the American Revolution occured in Boston, Massachusetts, specifically at the first skirmishes with the British Army in Lexington and Concord. I've got one quick question: What the hell happened to these people?! From the forefront of the spirit of freedom and revolutionary fervor, for decades now, Massachusetts, and Boston in particular, has been the hotbed of all things left-wing/Socialist and even Communist. This is the one big city in the US that makes NY city seem like a rock-solid conservative haven (oh, and Bostonians make New Yorkers look positively friendly and hospitable by comparison, too - the term "Masshole" is almost too civil for that crowd)
What flipped around from the founding of the US until, the time of the Kennedies? Was it the Kennedies themselves? "Hey, they* may be Socialists, but they're OUR Socialists!" might have been the thoughts. The Kennedies are mostly not around bothering us now, and the problem has just gotten worse.
Boston is a BIG University town. I mean, there are many dozens of decent-sized colleges. Could that have something to do with it? One quarter of a million students in the Boston area is the number I've found, and out of 7 million people in Mass, that's only 4 % (call it 5 % with students from other colleges in the state). Students, learning in an environment heavily infiltrated by the ctrl-left, lean heavily left, but lots of times they vote in their home states, if at all. When they stick around after college, it becomes a problem, cough, Berzerkely, California, cough, cough ... This may be a small part of the problem, but it's not enough to explain it.
Was it immigration of a mostly new population? Well, there are still lots of people whose ancestors founded our nation still living in Mass, probably more than in most regions. There was the huge influx of the Irish (incl. the Kennedies, of course), and that may have been a big factor overriding the liberty-loving original populace. You'd think the Irish would have been always pretty understanding of the American Revolution, based on their "experiences" with the British. They've all been assimlated over the 150 years, but then that doesn't mean the British-created understanding of rule-of-law, etc. is in them. There are loads of immigrants there now from all over, just like almost everywhere in current-era America, including lots of Brazilians, but also the entire 3rd-world has contingents.
However, this has been going on way before the large level of immigration had it's big effects (beginning in 1965 with the law passed by, you guessed it, one of the Kennedies - the U-boat commander, I believe it was, often called, at least by us, The Lyin' of the Seabed). This state has been supporting everything left of normal America for a century. Just looking at presidential elections (not the be-all-to-end-all, but Peak Stupidity is not a history site), with the exception of 2 Eisenhower terms and 2 Reagan terms, Massachusetts has voted for the D-candidate in all elections since 1924. The place has been ctrl-left for coming up on a century, it seems. One can't blame it on the new people alone.
New England in general is fairly left-wing, with New Hampshire formerly excepted, though not so much anymore with the influx of Massholes. Vermont has always had the Constitutional gun laws (might be changing just now), but has always been Socialist leaning. What's wrong with all these people? I'm picking on Massachusetts due to it being this particular week, with Independence Day and our history with the shot heard 'round the world. The place has turned into one that we may someday ignominiously recall as having ignited "the stupid heard 'round the world".
from the Warren Nations of the lower Massachusetts:
* BTW, I have much more respect for the ex-President John F. Kennedy than the rest of them, and more than I used to, for that matter. When you compare the man to Richard Nixon in adherence and respect for the US Constitution, JFK comes out way on top. It was the times, of course, too. The candidate JFK would be called far-far-right today, what with his calling for sound money and 40%! tax cuts.
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