How much electronics do we need?
Posted On: Saturday - March 18th 2017 10:29AM MST
In Topics: Cars Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity
The title sounds appropriate for a post written by a curmudgeon, hence that is one of the topic keys for this post. However, though not an "early adopter", I understand the value of electronics and computer technology, when they are implemented for solid reasons. When they aren't, it falls under the topic key
The productivity gains from computer hardware (electronics) software (commonly somewhat-erroneously termed "technology") have been tremendous of course. At my current job, some of what we have been doing on paper in this industry for 75 years(!) is very tedious and is being replaced by software this very month. This change not only eliminates much tedious paperwork but also improves quality control of the changes to the paperwork. Everything can be checked daily now to make sure the (former) pages are up to date. We are also eliminating a tree a week or so, if that matters to you. (Yeah, there are plenty of pulp-wood trees around - this part doesn't concern me, but I just hate to see waste of any kind, just on principle.)
Let's look at how this computer tech. morphs into computer tech. stupidity, shall we? I have more examples for later, but this one is something related to cars, a slight interest of mine, and I've been wanting to write about this for some time. (I can stay off politics for a post here, which is good.) This friend has a fancy BMW, made in the Spartanburg, S. Carolina plant- yea! to that part. Yes, he does make a lot of money, but he's no stranger to working with his hands, which doesn't unfortunately go together normally with making a LOT of money but has to do with my point.
Because, you know, it is too much hard work to rotate these switches and move the lever up and down,
the windshield wipers on this vehicle turn on/off automatically based on rainfall, or any water, detected on the windshield. Yes, that's "cool". It's the new miniature and inexpensive sensors that play a big role in making many "apps" (meaning computer programs) possible. The available computing power and amazingly compact and large amount of cheap memory are part of this, but the sensors are also critical. This rainfall on the windshield example needs a sensor that may have been much too cumbersome and expensive to make the system possible in the past. However, think about many other "phone" "apps" (well, the quotes are for "phones" really meaning handheld computers and "apps" short for applications, meaning computer programs - I don't like this stupid terminology either!) The smart-phone screens' display staying right-side-up relies on a tee-tiny gravity sensor and the exercise programs that count your paces use accelerometers, which, once in these devices, can be used to make lots of cool ideas into reality. The possibilities are endless, because any kind of logic and data storage needed is almost assured to be doable with the massive calculation power and memory.
Let me go back to the "cool" wiper system. It failed. My friend brought the vehicle to our honest and extremely capable mechanic friend. Well, it's not the wiper motor. Oh, but the control system for the wipers has a freakin' "windshield wiper computer". There's a 100 bucks that might fix it, but you know electronic car parts can't be returned. If it's not the source of the problem that $100 is a complete waste unless this mechanic, with a small likelihood, runs into another BMW with this problem AND that computer as the culprit. Then, there are the sensors.
After quite a while with the car, the mechanic told him this may take a while with quite a bit of troubleshooting. This BMW owner drove for something like a year after that with non-working wipers and became an expert in the use of rain-X (which IS pretty cool stuff!)!
Yes, as I said, my friend makes a lot of money, and rightfully so, I might add. However, it doesn't mean he is too lazy to turn windshield wipers on and off when he drives in the rain.
Just because the auto-wiper system is "cool" and CAN BE made, does not mean you NEED TO MAKE IT! That's something the BMW management should have thought about when these computer geeks brought up this idea. It's like they WANT the cars to go in the shop regularly after 100,000 miles for $1000 repairs that would have been $100 fixes on a simple system. (Hey, .... wait a minute!)
We are a long way from KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid, but a short way from Peak Stupidity.
* NOTE: Topic key "Computer Tech Stupidity" has been changed to "Artificial Stupidity", 2/3/18 - Editor.
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Of course the Russians love their children, you dumb bass player!
Posted On: Thursday - March 16th 2017 6:13PM MST
In Topics: Music The Russians Pundits
I hate it when another pundit puts down an idea that I had before but never put into a post. I am referring to some words in the latest great Ann Coulter column "Ann Coulter: Let’s Make Russia Our Sister Country!". Now, I will warn my readers right here and now, or better yet, give you a "heads-up" (hahaha, pun intended) that the column on VDare has a picture of Russian ladies on top (not sure if that comes with the Ann Coulter column, but well worth your time.)
Anyway, (concentrate, concentrate!) Miss Coulter does a great comparison, as we have also, in a paragraph in this post about the "Neocons" of comparing the leftists opinions about Russia now (they are evil!) versus during the entire time it was the Soviet Union (give Communism a chance!).
Just a snippet from the great column:
Have you guys heard of the Evil Empire? Now Democrats are hypersensitive to a Russian leader’s flaws?
Liberals were cool with the show trials, the alliance with Hitler, the gulags, the forced starvations, the shooting down of American planes and goose-stepping through Eastern Europe.
But that was when the Russian leader was Joseph Stalin or Nikita Khrushchev—not the beast Putin!
Back then, liberals were spying for Stalin (Julius Rosenberg’s code name: “Liberal“), the U.S. president was calling the bloodthirsty dictator “Uncle Joe,” and The New York Times was covering up Stalin’s infamous crimes. In the storied history of fake news, the Times’ Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for his false reports denying the Ukrainian famine, in which more than 7 million people were deliberately starved to death.
As far as the Times is concerned, those were Russia’s halcyon days!
Back when Russia was actually threatening America with nuclear annihilation, Jimmy Carter warned Americans about their “inordinate fear of communism.” Sting sang that “the Russians love their children, too.”
OK, that last part, that was what I'd thought about a number of times in the past - Sting's lyric from his song "Russians" from back in 1985. OK, who's Sting? Yeah, one of those one-name musical artists like Madonna, or Bono, whom PeakStupidity reprimanded heavily in the past for running his damn mouth about stuff he doesn't understand, which is the crux of this post also - just Ann Coulter beat me to it, by that much!
Here are the lyrics in question:
Mister Krushchev said, "We will bury you."
I don't subscribe to this point of view.
It'd be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too.
Of course the Russians love their children, Sting, as almost all parents do, but that has no bearing on your statement about the Cold War, which is why you should have just concentrated on the good melody and your great bass guitar. Mr. Krushchev indeed said "we will bury you" in a speech back in the 1950's, as he pounded his stinky shoe on the podium (musta been pissed). We thought, especially by the late '80's, that this guy was wrong, but the way things are going now, with the lefty infiltration of media, government, and education, he may have been right. We may yet get buried, just not in the way we imagined during the time of Sting's song. OK to the point,
Listen, Sting, the Russians could have loved their children to death back during the Soviet Union/ Cold War era, but what did that have to do with the fact that they had no control over the Soviet government? Back then, that was in contrast to the situation in the United States (I can't say that now, sadly). So, if Mr. Krushchev and the inner party had decided to go ahead and try to bury us via the use of ballistic missiles tipped with thermonuclear weapons, the Russians and Americans could have kissed their children lots, but many of us would also have been kissing our asses goodbye. You need control of the usually psychopathic people that rise to the top of any big government - they don't give a rat's ass about your children, see?
Now, all that said, I forgot to mention that this guy Sting was a member of a 3-piece band called The Police before his really good solo career. It seems that whenever the lead singer is also the bass player, the sound is just really great. Think of Rush (Geddy Lee on bass) and The Beatles (McCartney on bass).
Rather than post a youtube embed of "The Russians, in keeping with PeakStupidity's incessant lecturing about the melody and sound being much more important than lyrics anyway, we present The Police's "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da":
Because the bass guitar makes this song as great as it is, you've just gotta have some decent woofers to really enjoy this.
CRANK IT UP TO 11, BITCHEZ!
(light posting is gonna continue for a few more days here.)
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Running on empty due to stubborn pride
Posted On: Wednesday - March 15th 2017 12:44PM MST
In Topics: Humor Geography Peak Stupidity Roadshow
This short story is from way, way back, to when I traveled everywhere in this here land.
On this trip I had been cruising northwest out of Corinth, Mississippi. It was time to gas up the old V-8 Camaro (actually not that old back then) by Olive Branch, MS, just south of the Tennessee border. I knew the vehicle very well already, and it gets 21.5 mpg, windows down or windows up, rain or shine, on the highway @ 70-75 mph. The gas tank is rather small, I would say, and I don't think it holds more than 15 Gallons useable. That doesn't give it much of a range; I'd normally start seriously looking for gas at 250 miles from fill-up. Out on the Nevada back roads, I'd just stop wherever there was a gas station.
It's great to get off the main roads, but the I-40 seemed like the best way across Arkansas from my present position toward somewhere way out west.
Well, here I come up to the Mississippi Bridge on the I-40 and I see this big sign, with the same words as our file photo below, except without the disclaimer at the bottom, and right overhead all the westbound lanes.
WTF?? (I guess this was the late 1990's). I was so pissed to see this this creep lauded on an expensive highway sign, that I resolved myself not to spend a single buck in the state of Arkansas on this trip. That meant gas, nabs, anything. OK, there were already about 15 miles through the SW corner of Tennessee that I'd driven and now I was at AR mile-marker 282 with 0 at the Oklahoma border - kind of dicey right from the start. It really did become worrisome looking at the fuel gauges into Ft. Smith, but I wasn't gonna stop. I'd been keeping my speed down both to get slightly better mileage and to avoid a ticket that would cause me to also spend money in the state. I came in on fumes off the first exit with gas in Oklahoma - made it - screw you Clintons, you're not good for business!
Was it worth it? Who knows, but it made the trip interesting for 1/2 a day.
As a postscript, as I cruised across the great state of Oklahoma, I needed to get gas again about 250 miles across the state. Next big town: Clinton, OK! OK, OK, it's not the same guy, I told myself.
This story only came to my mind when I read about an Arkansas legislator who wants to remove the Clinton name from the Little Rock Adams Airport:
State Sen. Jason Rapert says some pilots are not happy about flying into Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, and that the name of a former president who was impeached for having sexual relations with an intern should be removed, according to the Associated Press.
Yeah, not happy at all - I know the feeling.
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Alison Kraus - I'll Fly Away
Posted On: Tuesday - March 14th 2017 9:05PM MST
In Topics: Music
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Feminists and Moslems - Like cats inviting dogs to their houses. (Part 2)
Posted On: Tuesday - March 14th 2017 6:32PM MST
In Topics: Feminism
The first commenter on the Steve Sailer post mentioned in the last PeakStupidity post wrote:
Could be something to that. Similarly, the more modest female dress is said to lessen intrasexual competition. It also probably acts as a barrier to the temptation of adultery. Many societal benefits. We shouldn’t be so quick to turn up our noses.
As far as explaining the appeal to Western women in particular of a Muslim takeover, we cannot discard as a primary factor Western men’s abdicating their role as men. To name one example, their unwillingness to defend group territory and resources from invasion. That cannot be attractive to women.
I hear this point brought up a lot, that men here won't control their women, but here is the reply:
See this is where I’ve got to chime in again with a plug for us libertarians/constitutionalists again – I know I’m sounding like a
This part, from the commenter, "...we cannot discard as a primary factor Western men’s abdicating their role as men. To name one example, their unwillingness to defend group territory and resources from invasion." leaves out a lot of background.
Men have a very good reason to not get involved in a deal that could wipe out many years of their lives based on a court ruling. Portions of your life have indeed been taken from you when your money and other assets are stolen and “redistributed” – this money represents months or years of your labor, and unless you have a job that you just love most of the time, that means months/years of your life have been taken.
How did this scam of no-fault divorce, family court BS and all come into place? People did not make an effort to stop government growth (all of it, local, state, and Federal). Granted half of the voting public is women, so we put ourselves in a pickle by allowing this suffrage thing 100 years back.
I cannot blame young men with any means at all for not wanting to commit to a 50% or more chance of losing a big chunk of their lives, and also, even worse, having their children taken from them and raised wrong. The way men should have taken care of this is to have not let THE STATE become the beast that it is now. How can you fight this beast nowadays?
The high risk for shortening of one’s effective lifespan is only part of the only reason marriage is a bad deal for men. Within the marriage men have lost a lot of the control of things (getting to the commenter’s point now). All it takes now is for the woman to be not pleased with everything for her to threaten, or go through with separation or divorce, knowing the state will take up the slack via some type of redistribution scheme.
That could put the man in a bad spot, depending on whether a) there are his kids involved and/or b) if he has lots of assets and time invested. Due to the implied threat to his ability to raise his kids properly and to his accumulated labor the man will have no leverage and therefore, even before any big trouble, feels he can’t control his wife to any degree that is really necessary, especially with regard to her associations and any idiotic feminist politics and that sort of thing.
Yes, many women really don’t intend to act like they are a threat and there are many good ones who will never have any part in that type of behavior, but there is no way to know that for sure ahead of time.
To summarize, female suffrage and leftist/feminist ideas of men leads to lack of control of government growth, which leads to the welfare state, excessive regulation/control of what used to be family business, and a police-state restribution apparatus that one man cannot fight. This leads to a lack of control of family lives by men, which leads to women getting major control of society, which leads to eventual collapse.
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Feminists and Moslems - Like cats inviting dogs to their houses.
Posted On: Tuesday - March 14th 2017 6:10PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Feminism
I really searched hard for a 4-panel cartoon that would have been great for this post, but the one above was funny anyway.
Steve Sailer, on unz.com posted What Feminist Islamophilia Is Really About yesterday.
Beside his quoted paragraph from the NY Times (of course), here is his theory:
I’m starting to think that the appeal to American liberal women of the idea of the Muslims taking over is that if Society makes me wear one of those tents, I can be both a hot-looking (because all the other women will have to wear them too) woman of mystery and I won’t have to lose those last 15 pounds.
Sharia law is a small price to pay for that.
I'm not knocking it, as some of his psychological ideas for the motives of people may be right on the money. I still tend to think that the lefty women (they'd all be feminists), along with the liberal men, mostly just support bringing Islam in big-time to this country in order to help thoroughly screw over the white males, especially Christians. I don't think they particularly like Islam at all, but Sailer's theory may be an additional motive on the women's part.
I imagine these women won't really be able to talk about how little regard Islam has for them until the time they are looking at their own bodies from the front, without a mirror - at that point there ain't a whole lot of time to say much, before the blood has drained out.
(The comments on the Sailer post invited many comments about feminism in general, so I will post that separately - next post.)
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~ 85 Grand owed per family averaged over the world...
Posted On: Monday - March 13th 2017 8:42AM MST
In Topics: Music Global Financial Stupidity
... and that's the low-ball estimate. How are we getting out of this without some major financial pain? *
Mike Snyder's article from his economic collapse blog has the average amount over the world that people are in debt, per person, based on the estimate of $152,000,000,000,000 total amount. (Yeah, it sounds very precise, but there's no way to get an accurate number to the nearest trillion(!)), so call it "in the low hundreds of trillions".) The value in this PeakStupidity post's title is per family of 4, which is a better number to think about, since most kids can't write out checks for any appreciable amount.
ZeroHedge has the article also, as they link to Mr. Snyder quite a bit. Again, I link to ZeroHedge for the comments there.
According to the International Monetary Fund, global debt has grown to a staggering grand total of 152 trillion dollars. Other estimates put that figure closer to 200 trillion dollars, but for the purposes of this article let’s use the more conservative number. If you take 152 trillion dollars and divide it by the seven billion people living on the planet, you get $21,714, which would be the share of that debt for every man, woman and child in the world if it was divided up equally.
So if you have a family of four, your family’s share of the global debt load would be $86,856.
Very few families could write a check for that amount today, and we also must remember that we live in some of the wealthiest areas on the globe. Considering the fact that more than 3 billion people around the world live on two dollars a day or less, the truth is that about half the planet would not be capable of contributing toward the repayment of our 152 trillion dollar debt at all. So they should probably be excluded from these calculations entirely, and that would mean that your family’s share of the debt would ultimately be far, far higher.
Of course global debt repayment will never actually be apportioned by family. The reason why I am sharing this example is to show you that it is literally impossible for all of this debt to ever be repaid.
We are living during the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and our financial engineers have got to keep figuring out ways to keep it growing much faster than global GDP because if it ever stops growing it will burst and destroy the entire global financial system.
Bill Gross, one of the most highly respected financial minds on the entire planet, recently observed that “our highly levered financial system is like a truckload of nitro glycerin on a bumpy road”.
And he is precisely correct. Everything might seem fine for a while, but one day we are going to hit the wrong bump at the wrong time and the whole thing is going to go KA-BOOM.
The financial crisis of 2008 represented an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, but instead we just papered over our errors and cranked up the global debt creation machine to levels never seen before.
This is a nice short article that emphasizes the Global aspect of Global Financial Stupidity, of which we are nearing the peak. There's a rock wall on the other side, unfortunately, that climbers would probably call a 5.8-5.9. This is one you'd really want to rappel down were it an actual mountain. In the financial world, it means that in a short time period your "money" will quickly slide in value to not nearly the buying power you thought you had, you will have to bail on some assets that you are used to having, and the future will all of a sudden look less rosy, as if you whipped off your rose-colored glasses.
While you enjoy the great old country song by John Conlee, here is more from Snyder on the political aspect of the American portion of this impending doom:
Trump is going to find it quite challenging to find the votes to raise the debt ceiling. After everything that has happened, very few Democrats are willing to help Trump with anything, and many Republicans are absolutely against raising the debt ceiling without major spending cut concessions.
So we shall see what happens.
If the debt ceiling is not raised, it will almost certainly mean that a major political crisis and a severe economic downturn are imminent.
But if the debt ceiling is raised, it will mean that Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress are willingly complicit in the destruction of this country’s long-term economic future
Complicit, sure, but Trump doesn't have much choice. Even a Ron Paul could not have gotten us out of the hole, but he would at least have told the honest truth about it, and about what we need to do to prepare.
* Quick answer: We're not. Man, economics is easy - I should have majored in that (would have definitely met more girls that way).
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Another great English artist
Posted On: Saturday - March 11th 2017 8:22PM MST
In Topics: Music History
How can one argue with PeakStupidity's view that 99% of all good rock and pop music was created in the English-speaking world? The English themselves could take most of the credit. Listen to a different Mr. Stewart from last week's Rod Stewart. Al Stewart was a pop/rock musician who wrote about, no, not girls, not cars, not touring on the road with people bitching about my long hair, no, no, no .... about HISTORY. Possibly he was the only music artist to make a career out of "History Rock".
More catchy tunes by this guy will be coming later on, some that you'll know, but here is one that tells some history, as either Al, or a guy named Peter White, plays with a classical guitar sound. This one starts out slow, but it's a great song.
In case you listened to the whole song/story, no we're not pro Commie Soviet Russian here. The song isn't either - it's told from a soldier's point of view.
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Zerohedge post about university student loans
Posted On: Saturday - March 11th 2017 7:58PM MST
In Topics: University Humor Global Financial Stupidity
This post on ZeroHedge is a good follow up to my simple anecdote about the restaurant near me taking university meal cards, as the students can just see it as "it's all part of the deal - my
Zerohedge says: 31% Of College Students Spend Their Loans On Spring Break. Were you on the main page of the site (probably page 5-8 now as they post incessantly over there, and we are NOT!A!NEWS!SERVICE!) you would have seen a small photo of the a string-bikini clad (WAIT... stay here for a second, will ya?) on the stage among the college kids on spring break. Here's the problem - half of the time that you click on a ZeroHedge article based a bit on a girly picture on the main page, it WILL NOT BE BLOWN UP or existent on the page for that particular post. OK, that's not the real problem, is it?
The real problem is that living the high life for 4-6 years is not worth it, if you are not in a serious major like engineering (even that possibly not) and will have a debt the size of a mortgage, but BEFORE you even buy a damn house. However, you may never end up paying this loan, at which point it isn't a problem anymore - well for you, but it sure is for the taxpayers and sons of taxpayers. This high life, though the eating out per our post is just a small symptom of the problem, when it involves going to Mexico or the islands on spring break, using student loan money is really pushing it. Here are some numbers from Zerohedge's source LendEDU (from the name, they're probably "Luvin' it") followed on Zerohedge by one of their few decent graphs - Zerohedge is not generally good with graphs!
According to the LendEDU poll, 30.60% of college students with student debt claim that they are using money they received from student loans to help pay for their spring break trip this year. For reference, you can use student loan funding for living expenses.
The National Center for Education Statistics calculated that 20.5 million students will be attending college this year in the United States. Orbitz reported that 55% of students will be going on spring break. Using this data, we can roughly calculate that 11,275,000 students will be going on spring break this year. And, it is estimated that 69% of all current college students use student loan debt by the time of graduation. By doing some additional arithmetic, we can calculate that roughly 7,779,750 student debtors are going on spring break this year.
Factoring in our data, and assuming the claims made in our survey are accurate, this means that 2.38 million students are using money received from student loans to pay for their spring break excursion this year.
Many of the comments will most likely be statements of strong dismay over
It's all gonna end it tears, as one could say about a lot of things. Looking on the bright side, per PeakStupidity's
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So sad ...
Posted On: Friday - March 10th 2017 7:51PM MST
In Topics: Music US Police State Curmudgeonry
A Warren Zevon song played on the radio today, and it brought back memories of some good times. The thinking was along the lines of the stuff, with an attempted explanation back in the very first post of this blog, about what it means to be a "curmudgeon"? Is it that everything seems to be much better at a younger age, just because on hasn't experienced so much BS from people yet, or things really have gone downhill bigtime. Of course, it could be some of both.
The song "Werewolves of London", though popular almost a decade earlier, happened to remind me today of a Halloween music concert in the early 1990's. That time, in my mind, was before I started noticing, by the middle of that decade, that every single step change to society via law, was a step away from freedom. Though nothing like the 1970's, even in the early '90's I remember that the police state mentality in this country had not taken hold much yet. I think we may have gotten driver's licenses glanced at going into the concert hall that night, it wasn't made into a serious deal. You could smoke in there, and though I don't, I didn't see a problem with it. Nobody searched through anybody's stuff! Nobody was automatically photographing license plates of cars in the area. Whatever phone calls you made, from the pay-phone, were nobody's business and not snooped by Big Brother.
I realize in writing this just now that I can not give all the details of just the various differences that would show the freedom we had back then. Also, what does all that have to do with that particular fun Halloween concert/party? I don't know. I had a home-made costume that I made while we had a party earlier on the porch, and then, one guy in there was dressed like a woman with curlers and kept doing the "I've fallen and I can't get up!" routine from a current TV commercial - that was his costume, and it was a riot. We were fairly drunk.
I can't get the thoughts from my head during the time this afternoon listening to Warren Zevon into any kind of coherent writing to explain to anyone younger what freedom felt like. So sad ....
I know, some of the stupider Trump tweets (he needs to quit that shit) say this "so sad ...." thing, but this is no tweet. It's so sad, what we have let happen.
Warren Zevon is gone from the world too, but he wrote some great stuff; we have featured his "Excitable Boy" already.
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Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
Posted On: Friday - March 10th 2017 6:41PM MST
In Topics: Commies Lefty MegaStupidity Global Financial Stupidity Liberty/Libertarianism
James Kirkpatrick of VDare has an article contrasting treatment of Trump supporters, conservatives, and white people in general by the law to treatment of the hard-core lefties and differently-colored peoples: Diversity Is Strength! It’s Also…Increasingly Unequal Justice For Whites, with quite a few examples. The ongoing low-level battles between the new radicals (same as the old radicals) in Berzerkely, California has been in the news.
Yeah, PeakStupidity does not pretend to be a news site, per say, so this is a few days old. During the latest violence by the anti-free-speech lefties out there, some Trump ralliers had one guy who was set up for a little bit of defense this time, which is good to see. Mr. Chapman was not out to kill anyone, and he just had a decent-sized stick, a shield, and a helmet (see, 2/3 defensive pieces) with him, and he ended up kicking a little ass when the lefties attacked the peaceful crowd of President Trump supporters. From James Kirkpatrick, with links de-activated due to laziness:
America is not bound by blood or culture, we are told incessantly, but by a dedication to certain “ideals.” As we can’t even agree on what those ideals are, all that we have to hold us together is the law. But now, it appears that even equality before the law has become a meaningless expression, as the post-American managerial state is selectively enforcing the law depending on who is committing a crime.
Witness the case of Kyle Chapman, a.k.a. Based Stick Man, a.k.a. the Alt-Knight. Chapman was among the thousands of Americans who rallied in support of President Trump last weekend. As “anti-fascists” had vowed to violently disrupt the protest in Berkeley, California, where they had already rioted to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking, Chapman came prepared with a stick and a helmet.
When the “antifa” attacked, the police did nothing, so Chapman defended his fellow demonstrators. Needless to say, while many of the masked antifa who attacked with weapons were let go, Chapman was arrested for multiple alleged felonies [Trump supporters have Stick Man’s back! ‘Hero’ arrested protecting ralliers heads to court, by Samantha Chang, BizPacReview, March 7, 2017]. Trump supporters have since raised over $65,000 for his legal defense at WeSearchr.
Chapman has not yet been formally charged, but the police are saying such charges could be coming soon [Demonstrators Arrested at Berkeley ‘March 4 Trump’ Rally Await Charges, by Rhea Mahbubani, Elyce Kirchner and Pete Suratos, NBC Bay Area, March 7, 2014].
This guy's got a lot of support behind him, but still, if he were to really be put away for a while for defending a hitherto peaceful protest it may put a damper on further single-man operations like this. The governments (at all levels), the Lyin' Press, much of the judiciary and some of the police are arrayed heavily against any one individual and small group that would have the audacity to defend himself/itself. On the other hand, even disregarding the cuts, bruises, or even hospital visits, the till-now peaceful conservative or liberty-loving crowd is not doing itself any favors by being above reproach while some are getting their asses beat by these commie bastards. It looks cowardly even though it's not. Also, if there's to be a speech to be made, you've got to keep these commies out of the way somehow.
More from the article, after the many examples of widely differing treatment under the law between the sane people and the left:
The late Sam Francis’ concept of anarcho-tyranny appears more relevant every day, as illegal aliens, Leftist protesters and anti-white ethnic activists operate in a kind of twilight zone unrestrained by either law or morality.
President Trump’s election is the last chance the Historic American Nation has to restore some semblance of the rule of law in what was once a First World nation.
If President Trump and Attorney General Sessions are deterred from cracking down on Leftist protesters and illegal immigrants, it will only further the collapse of America into chaos. The managerial state may continue to persecute dissenters from the Right, but it can do nothing to stop the collapse of America’s civilizational order.
I will explain here why crackdowns on the flaunting of the rule of law from on-high may not be the last chance to stop this anarcho-tyranny (a great term, BTW). Right now the country, though slowly failing economically, has still many people, mostly on the conservative side and the side of liberty, who still have decent jobs or a promising degree and significant assets in terms of houses/land, and functional families, to where they have something to lose were they to be arrested or hurt really bad. With the financial slide, being slowly documented in the Global Financial Stupidity topic key, going on, things will not remain in this state.
At some point, for especially young white males, the present and future will not offer enough to make people behave with any worries about "an arrest on my record", or "I could get hurt and be off work a few days". Times are going to get a lot tougher, and though the blame is not all on the same groups of lefties, they are sure not helping things a damn bit by sponging off the few remaining hardworking taxpayers while reacting with violence to a little bit of truth-telling here and there.
People may learn some lessons from the turmoil of the 1960's, but this time I believe it will be the opposite side, realizing "they can't arrest and prosecute ALL of us", and "an arrest on my record is not going to change my life for the worse", or just "this is a lot of fun, and the chicks dig it more than they think of me as a $10/hr. wage slave trying to make a living at 1/2 the standard of living of my parents"
This is what these Soros-supported commies, and all of them all over the media, universities, and government have not thought over well - it's probably best not to push people too far when they don't have much to lose. You do that, and the people might feel the freedom to kick some ass back.
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University of California, San Fran IT Dept - throw a spanner in the hole
Posted On: Thursday - March 9th 2017 8:03PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Music University
University of California, San Francisco Out/In-sources 20% of it's IT department ...
... and there's a whole lot of irony going on.
Michelle Malkin writes, in, A Day Without American Tech Workers, about the IT Department at UCSF being replaced by imported foreigners. Here is the original article from the Los Angeles Times. Hey, it's ironic cause it's true, hahaha (no wait, that's not how it goes.)
UC San Francisco, the system’s biggest medical center, announced in July that it would lay off 49 career IT staffers and eliminate 48 other IT jobs that were vacant or filled by contract employees. The workers are to be gone as of Feb. 28. In the meantime they’ve been ordered to train their own replacements, who are employees of the Indian outsourcing firm HCL Technologies.
The irony comes in as the California universities, even more so then those all over the rest of our country (barring the the Ivies and the Massholes) are so left-wing in administration, teaching staff, and student body, that the people involved have probably all voted and demonstrated for the policies that encourage the demise of the 97 decent jobs that are gone now.
The loss of family-supporting jobs is one thing, but the security of the data seems to also be a concern, and why not?
The university says outsourcing their work to HCL will save $30 million over the five-year term of the HCL contract, which will cost $50 million.
That’s a meager savings of 0.1% of the UCSF budget, which was $5.83 billion in 2015-16. But the key question is what the university may be giving up in terms of system security and other important considerations.
The work being sent abroad isn’t trivial. According to an email sent to the IT staff last July, it includes managing and backing up most of the system’s data; management and administration of its data networks; operations related to its telephones, email and video conferencing; and payroll and financial applications.
Laret says UCSF expects the security of all these systems to be at least as good under HCL as it is now, though he acknowledges that “there are no guarantees.” Breaches of medical systems can be exceptionally harmful; a hack attack of UCLA Health System’s network revealed in 2015 may have compromised personal and medical information of 4.5 million patients.
It's worth reading both Malkin's and the LA Times' (reasonably fair, I'm surprised to find) articles to see more of the irony, especially regarding the nasty dike Janet Napolitano, and also the idea that after UCSF gets away with this, they want to screw over IT people throughout the UC system.
None of this is my main point today. I have a point about the "training their own replacements part". It breaks down into two parts:
A) The financial stupidity is so strong with people nowadays, that nobody has got enough cash on hand to at least make a stand. Quit on the spot and don't look back - that'd be nice to be able to do. I know, "I've got a family, I need the 3 months pay, that I won't get if I don't train this guy". Damn, if you had a year or two of savings, you'd miss that cash for a time, until you sue the crap out of the school for the money and get even more. It's really hard for anyone to stand up to the big guys when he is on a month by month budget with nothing in reserve.
B) If you're gonna be forced to train a replacement, I think, especially as a computer guy, it'd really be time to wreak havoc on the system. You'd be surprised what you could get away with, with no trail or at least no provable evidence of intent. To top it off, you could even make a cron-job (in the Unix world) that would send yourself an email 2 months later with the SUBJECT field filled in "Things are fucked-up, please come back at double pay!", just so's you could save the managers the trouble.
Really, things have gone pretty far beyond being civil and within normal rule-of-law in this country. Were this happening to you, you may think it'd be time to "throw a spanner in the hole", causing some of that Industrial Disease. Here's Dire Straits, with the great Mark Knofler on guitar:
You really should listen to the lyrics on this one - awesome - my favorite verse:
Dr. Parkinson declared "I'm not surprised to see you here.
You've got smoker's cough from smoking,
brewer's droop from drinking beer,
I don't know how you came to get those Betty Davis knees,
but worst of all, young man, you've got industrial disease."
This is off of the great "Love over Gold" album which has the best guitar lead of Mark Knofler in the first cut "Telegraph Road", an epic song!
Oh, a "spanner" means a "wrench" - more British weirdness.
********************************
[Update 10/28/17: Replaced missing video
with live performance one.
**********************************
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Can't even watch Seinfeld anymore
Posted On: Thursday - March 9th 2017 7:38PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Political Correctness Curmudgeonry Race/Genetics
Seinfeld in PeakStupidity's opinion is the 2nd most funny show that ever was on TV*. Granted I don't watch anything off the air or cable nowadays, so if there were a show from the last decade that were funnier, perhaps I could be convinced. The 5 minute compilation embedded in this old post was a demonstration of the political incorrectness of that show, which was part of it's charm. Other clips have been inserted into posts here, and they'll be more to come; hopefully I can find clips to fit in with the posts.
Though I've seen all episodes, many of them up probably 5-10 times over the years, I still like to relax and enjoy this show when I'm on the road at a motel, and it happens to come on TBS in the evening. It's just very familiar, and beats any of the new crap that I've seen flipping through the 50-100 channels once in a month or two when I can't find anything on, on the internet ;-} and am really bored.
It's gotten hard to watch lately due to the commercials. Yes, the commercials. Of course I'll mute the volume, then look at the TV part of the time to see when the show is back on - yeah, I'm not worried about missing something (as I said, 5-10 times!). That worked fine some years back. Now the commercials, even without any sound are so stupidly politically correct and agenda-pushing that it bothers me to even see this crap. Each commercial has an interracial couple like this is mandated. There can never be a group of even 3 white guys doing whatever they've gotta do to sell whatever kind of crap is possibly being advertised. Of course the white guy is always the moron who has something to learn from the others about this new product or service. I don't mind a few like this, but it's bothered me that it is every damn one of the commercials. These commercials really clash with the show, and demonstrate how far through the U-bend of the toilet the media have gone with this PC.
I try to think back on what commercials came on during the early to late 1990's when the Seinfeld show was on regular TV once a week. I guess I could pull some up on youtube, but I know they wouldn't have pissed me off like they do now. I guess the TBS network don't really care who they turn off, and it's not like I'm a big viewer - I'm guessing I wouldn't buy anything they'd advertise even with a decent commercial.
This explains why people get Netflix, Hulu, Roku, and all that to just get the content they want without the PC crap inserted. Me, I'll just leave the TV off that much longer, which is going to bring it right to 100 % of the time.
* # 1 is The Office.
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Good day to apply or interview for that job
Posted On: Wednesday - March 8th 2017 11:19AM MST
In Topics: Feminism
Per ZeroHedge, America's Women Go On Strike, Pledge To "Avoid Spending Money" (Men Celebrate). Off course, the comments beat the article itself, as is usual on ZeroHedge.
Imagine no women in the HR department today. Apply today! Go to that interview! You could just talk about what you could be doing for the company in this job, and they could tell you straight what they want you doing. Talk money for a minute or 2 and get it done.
If women would stay out of HR, I wouldn't even mind granting them the vote, but only for library bond issues, nothing else.
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The great University textbook scam
Posted On: Tuesday - March 7th 2017 6:38PM MST
In Topics: University Economics Artificial Stupidity Inflation Scams
Somewhere in one of the latter posts on the topic of Universities I promised to write later about the textbook scam that has been going on for a while - thanks a lot computer-tech! (you'd think it'd be helping the students, but the computer-tech has helped lock this scam in place, it turns out.)
Here's a bit of historical data first. Back in the middle 1980's a one-course book for a math or engineering class went for about $20 or less, and sometimes the 8 books or so for English may have added up to the same or about the same (but these were mostly novels, not textbooks). A thick old Chemistry or Physics book that covered 2 semesters were in the high $30's and that seemed pretty egregious.
Here is a 3-semester Calculus book vs. a new one by the one of the same authors as a 2006 edition:
OK, Isaac Newton and Mr. Liebnitz, little Gauss (as our professor called him), and the rest of these brilliant men worked out this great math from 200 years to 400 years ago. This stuff has not changed in any respect, so these many revision changes over just the 2 decades were purely a money-making endeavor and added nothing to the body of knowledge. This is part of the scam but there is more to it, coming a few paragraphs down.
Upon thinking about these prices, one can get deflated inflation figures from the US government that are rigged low to keep any inflation-adjusted transfer payments (especially SS) from rising and busting the budget more than it is already, or one could find real numbers. Shadowstats is one such place; it is a great site that works out inflation, unemployment, and other measures of the economy using consistent methods, unlike the US Gov't B(L)S. Just a reasonable number to use for the 3 decade period in question is approximately a factor of 3, with plenty of exceptional products/services that fall way off of this.
However, think about textbooks. Even if we stick with paper - not necessary anymore - printing technology and more so, word and image processing, have seen so many productivity improvements that the price rise for a textbook should be well under general averaged inflation. Yes, fiction and other non-fiction books at the Barnes and Noble and Amazon have seen a large rise during the 3-decade time period, but that's also needed for pay to the authors. What has changed in the standard textbooks in basic science, math, and engineering that requires a price rise for the same material? Nothing is what. This stuff gets recycled with possibly different graphics and different homework problems. Recently, I have seen lately some average humanities textbooks going for $150! That is just the average price of some regular one-semester book. Actual-paper textbooks have increased in price by well over a factor of 8. Well, OK, at least it should be cheaper reading the whole book on-line or on a tablet. It is to make it, but the textbook publishers don't pass this savings on.
With all this said, the reader must have been thinking "hey, get used stuff, that's what we used to do!" Let's go back a few decades again. Sure, we thought that too - the used books would cost about 75% to 90% of a new one, yet the stores would buy them back from you for < 50%, sometimes quite a bit less. There was a lot of collusion among the few stores too, as prices didn't vary but 5 to 15 cents. The idea of opening up an exchange occurred to me and many others, I'm sure, with some actually getting off their asses and doing it. At the early part of this period, newspaper ads were necessary, and an actual physical storage location would have been required. Even by the late 1980's some young entrepreneurs could have used a data base and just become middle men - no internet, but, hey, phones worked back then, too. I think it kept the publishers fairly honest, but the used market can depend upon the requirements of the professors too - more about this.
See, you'd think that now one could do great business in used books (in the image above see the used one for $20 - don't buy it just yet) to beat the ridiculously high prices and help each other out at both ends, buying and selling. One could use the internet and make it require almost no labor on the part of the middleman who builds said website - sounds great. Here's where the real scam comes in. They've got the courses requiring use of software on DVD or websites in which codes are required to keep use of it for the semester. Sure, the book can be passed on, but when the professors require, for part of your grade, work or reading material from the electronic portions (that require the code), there is not a good way to sell the material you paid for.
I suppose one can do a long night of PRT-SCREENing, even from the electronic materials, to store them and pass on, but I have seen it where the electronics require homework to get done within the secured websites. The code can't be passed on or the software hacked as each version of the DVD, or entry of the website, is kept connected with the student. I think it's locked up pretty well, but I'm no hacker, but I wouldn't say if I were.
Here's where the professor possibly comes into the scam, sometimes not really willingly but out of laziness. Suppose this 18th edition Chemistry book just came out. If the professor will just let the DVD's and website be optional extra study material, students who have just the book can get by. I have seen new additions in which I could find nothing different from the last edition besides, not different homework problems, but just swicheroos of the order of the homework problems at the back of each chapter. The professor can just print out the problems and hand them out or put the problem statements on the university's student-work website, or whatever they may call it, and let the students use older editions. That's not really a lot of extra work to save each student $100 or so and, in the process, fight a bit against this BS. Others might be involved in the publishing of this book and will make sure that you need their new book to pass the class. The last category are those who don't help due to laziness.
You'd think you would read or hear more complaints from the students. I can tell you why not - as this post described, the school loan money is treated by many students as one big credit card with a long deferral time - for a 20 year-old, it's too long to worry much about, life is long. Put it on this semester's loan; after all, it's the same for all of us. This works just fine for textbook publishers, as they can jack the prices to the sky without much feedback.
Nice work if you can get it, and a small but not negligible part of the University Bubble. Al Capone and Tony Soprano both are turning green in their graves from jealousy (and from normal bodily decay, too, I guess).
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Beans, Beaners, and Political Correctness
Posted On: Saturday - March 4th 2017 4:57PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Music Political Correctness
I will put a disclaimer at the top of this post, just because I think this is the right post in which to, not for my conscience, as it does not run the show here. After having written quite a few posts on the Immigration Stupidity topic, I know I may have offended multiple individuals. That doesn't bother me a bit, as this site is a certified Equal Opportunity Offender by the US Dept. of
As often said on VDare, many people aren't particularly anti-immigrant though they may be totally against any (further) immigration, for lots of good reasons. I can't say this for all regions of the globe, but I have have and have had friends from many far-away place. I have good friends who came from the Far East - some long ago and some not, and way back some friends from Latin America and Eastern Europe. In some places where I was not a local, I fit in with them better than local Americans in fact. The people I am talking about fit into America, back when that was just the thing to do, except for the politically correct part, so that works out great for me. Yeah, I'm really not writing this to cover my ass - it's true and needed to be said. Anyhoo ...
Upon having a comment blocked from appearing on one of my favorite websites, I had to look back (it helps to save em) and see what was the problem with it. I don't begrudge anyone who runs a site from blocking stuff that may cause a problem in some way the the commenters possibly would not foresee. The comment was not particularly pertinent, but that hasn't stopped me before.
It turns out, from my testing, I had used the word "beaner" in reference to a particular Mexican guy that I can't stand, named George Ramos, or Jorge, if you will. I had only heard of this guy from viewing this video on youtube of Ann Coulter tearing him a new one back in '15 when she was promoting her Adios America book, subsequently allegedly read by Donald Trump - heck you know the rest.
(youtube came up with multiple videos, in case you didn't like that one: "Showing results for ann coulter tears jorge ramos a new one Search instead for ann coulter tears george ramos a new one". ;-)
What was the subject? Oh, beans, beaners and political correctness. We were in a phase in my household in which we ate a lot of beans for health reasons. I mean, 2 lb. of beans in the crockpot with a gallon or two of water, cook for 4 hours, and presto - protein city without the sat-fat. While at the best grocery store for beans - it had 1/2 of one side of a long aisle full, I contemplated the purchase of a new type of bean to make it 8-10 types in the mix. I cannot now remember which type, but upon not reaching the wife on the blower, I noticed a Mexican lady about 20 ft. away in the same aisle.
"Hey, you'd know about beans, right?" I asked. See, I knew that this lady wouldn't mind, because unfortunately, it's the damn Americans (and Euros, of course) who now are the Kings (and Queens, of course) of PC, not the foreigners. This Mexican lady not only told me these beans were pretty good, but she started giving me recipes! I really couldn't remember all of it, but I thanked her and put the beans in the buggy. Now, she might mind being called a beaner because that is just rude, but I doubt if an ordinary Mexican overheard the word he's going to have a cow about it. Most of the time, people are pretty mellow, or the ones without chips on their shoulders are.
Do you really want Political Incorrectness? I'll give you some. This is Wall of Voodoo from the early 1980's - watch it, you beaners, and tell me that this wasn't a great country still back then (even MTV didn't suck!)!
Hahaaa, I can't forget that image of the guy's face coming out of the pot of beans at the end. (ooops, spoiler alert!)
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Toward Peak Neocon? (Part 2 - Unavoidable, one of 2 ways)
Posted On: Saturday - March 4th 2017 8:15AM MST
In Topics: The Russians Global Financial Stupidity China US Feral Government The Neocons
(This post is a continuation from this one.)
Now, I will discuss what the commenter suggested - how can this continue? He is absolutely right that it can't, first of all. Sorry to spoil the ending, but please read on.
As to the neocons and war, there does not seem to be anywhere on the globe that these people feel is off limits for meddling by the American military. In addition to the smaller readily-induced hot spots, there are the powers Russia and China. The neocons either are THAT stupid (possibly) or purposefully ignorant of the fact that Russia != The Soviet Union. They know the Cold War was won, want to take credit for it, but yet really miss it and want to continue the good parts. More on this later, but was there a reason for NATO, an arm of America, to start adding member states and making defense agreements to surround Russia like a game of block-out? What about China - through favorable trade agreements along with sell-outs for cash we greatly accelerated the rise of China economically, and military power has followed. Are we going to fight for some stupid rock islands in the China Sea? As far as the dealings with these 2 major powers, is any of this the things true conservatives would push for? Well, really this has all been written much better by others, such as Ron Paul, John Derbyshire, and best by our own Pat Buchanan.
A little bit of reading anywhere on the internet where common sense exists, say ZeroHedge or PeakStupidity, on the topic of Global Financial Stupidity, especially as our homegrown American version (USA! USA!), will clue anyone into not just the sorry state of our economy, but the worsening trend of that. $20,000,000,000,000 of debt, an order of magnitude more than that in future obligations, and an eviscerated manufacturing base really should be in the minds of anyone proposing more war. Even people who are not neocons that are high up in our military forces up to the Commander-in-Chief Trump himself probably do not really take it to heart that one must have a strong economy to KEEP HAVING a strong military. Note, KEEP HAVING was bolded, as there can be a very long period of drawing off the resources of the past - Adam Smith, who should know a thing or two about economics, observed "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation." There is a lot of inertia to keep our military moving and strong until the bills really come due.
Assembled in USA, some parts Hecho en China
Just think about it, neocons, we've got supply lines from China for all manner of mechanical items and electronics that are necessary for all of our high-tech military hardware and even for the jigs to build some of it that we might build here. Smart young American guys are discouraged to work as engineers as the bulk of the work is overseas and then, we are importing H-1B visa indentured foreign workers to get the jobs that are left. Yeah, you can go into high-finance instead with your math background to write fancy algorithms to buy and sell pieces of paper - that doesn't exactly build up our economic OR military might. Really, what will happen if a hot war starts with China - "Listen, Sec-State, tell Chairman Wen that we will hold the cease-fire until Tuesday afternoon, when Fed-Ex brings the missile guidance parts we need - are you sure you put in the right tracking number?" We all know that our military is only powerful due to the high-tech hardware - the manpower levels are low, but more importantly, morale cannot hold with the military being made into one big social experiment into gender and dieversity - no fighting man wants any part of that shit.
We can not keep this up even if we all wanted to, neocons! The money is there, so to speak, for now, but much being spent is being borrowed, and the lenders will not continue their stupidity once the confidence in the money goes or said lender is at war with us, whichever comes first.
Now, going beyond what the commenter said, here is another point of mine. What if, in terms of the economy, it were 1985 right now, but without the Cold War going on? We did indeed have the economic and the military power to spare (again, were the Cold War over). Could the nation have taken on a big power? We could have won a war, but at a large cost and the Cold War was about stopping Communism from spreading over the entire world, not about some small defense agreement with freakin' Estonia or Georgia. Our military was powerful as a defense - no serious American wanted offensive war against The Soviet Union. There is not, and should not be, a large will for all out war like that of WWII if it's not for defense of the nation.
My point here is that, in all of the smaller wars that have been fought since Vietnam, the US has had an OVERWHELMING advantage in manpower, logistics, air power, all of it. I really don't think these neocon warmongers ever think in their heads about a real war with a country that has a real military, and what that would cost in lives and limbs. It would not be a war of button-pushing killings of this guy over here and nicely taking out that road, village or staging area, while the men and equipment can go right back to complete safety in this base over here, etc. This is all assuming we had LOTS OF MONEY. Guess what, we don't - far, far from it.
This blog is favorable toward President Trump, the loyal reader must know by now. His stance on Russia and NATO(partially) shows courage against the neocon establishment. I really wonder about his knowledge about China however. One always reads that this is all negotiation, but 2 things: a) the Chinese don't have our same culture and really have a fixation about not being embarrassed (losing face in their terminology), and b) You really don't use war-mongering as a form of negotiation, but then, hey, I didn't read the guy's book.
The peak of this neocon war-mongering business will come soon, one way or another. We all should hope it will be just due to the lack of ability to fund this stuff and not due to a hard learning process during a hot war.
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Toward Peak Neocon? (Part 1 - Definition)
Posted On: Saturday - March 4th 2017 7:34AM MST
In Topics: The Russians History US Feral Government The Neocons
A commenter suggested that I write a post regarding what I (in all silliness) have just termed "Peak Necocon", as that is, in a nutshell what his idea/question is about. The question from this commenter went "how do these neocons think they can continue their shit? How can it keep going on as the US drains its finances?" Let me first define "neocon"; I'm no Noah Webster, so it'll take a paragraph or five.
The term "Neocon" is, or course, from "neo", meaning "new" and "con" from "conservative", so New Conservatives. Where did these people come from and when? I believe the term came into vogue (no, not "Vogue" with the bikini pics, but just "vogue" - small v) in the late 1980's or so. Though there must be many more followers than proponents of any political philosophy, right now I'm writing about the proponents. By the middle of the 1980's, after a few years already of President Reagan and Americans' final rejection of the left-wing hippy era, conservatism had made such a big comeback, not necessarily in actual legislation and reverse in the slide into stupidity, but at least into the minds of your average American. There had to have been many pundits, media people, and elites of all sorts that, though still holding to their lefty/commie philosophy wanted to retain some power and relevancy.
As written in PeakStupidity a number of times already, we do not think that most of the political "movements" and just really stupid and/or evil ideas being pushed on people are the results of some grand master plans, written or unwritten. There are usually just many people at the same level of stupidity, who think they are at some higher level, that hang out in employment and leisure with primarily others that are at that level of stupid. Many of the neocons suppressed most of their left/commies ideas, but relished the idea of the US becoming THE superpower at the end of the cold war, won by Ronald Reagan with help by millions of mostly American (+ some European) mechanical/electrical engineers, soldiers, sailors, and airmen, with help from the old Pope, the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the Poles - Solidarity and Lech Walesa.
OK, back on topic, once the Cold War was won, the US had by far the most powerful military in the world, much goodwill built up, and still the most powerful economy by a factor of 3, probably, over any other single country in the world. Any true conservatives left by 1990 or so, many of them regular Americans, but in the political world, your Pat Buchanans and such, would and were arguing for our country to stay out of the world's business finally, as the Cold War was won (on the military, foreign affairs level, not domestically, but most of us didn't see that coming!) Not only was it difficult for any part of the Military Industrial Complex to just stand down, there were politicians, elites, pundits, etc. wanting us to DO SOMETHING with this power, and many a allegedly-former lefty could become part of this huge power structure just by not saying "We should not be the world's policeman." and "Unilateral disarmament, Now!" anymore, and by shutting their pie holes on conservative social issues that they didn't really believe in. Lastly, because it must be mentioned, the neocons support Israel, as if it were essential to life in the US because a) many neocons are Jewish and just as importantly b) the middle east is a good place to have wars, as until now, the US military could kick ass fairly inexpensively throughout the region.
I really doubt that all of the neocons, since this type became an infestation by the early 1990's, were from the left as I described, but there were others just absorbed and deflected away from true conservatism onto this new path.
These neocons changed the working definition of conservatism over a few decades, let's say 1990 to now. I see the neocon philosophy as an American phenomena but also as a subset of Globalism, as it fits the agenda of the neocon urge to see one big empire. So, neocons are Globalists, but Globalists are not all neocons, as the neocons, in particular, want the US to be the operator of a global empire.
Part 2 here - Peak Neocon - unavoidable, one of two ways.
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Not exactly living in the shadows
Posted On: Friday - March 3rd 2017 3:56AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity
From Alejandro Lazo, Wall Street Journal:
Daniela Vargas, who came to the U.S. from Argentina when she was 7 years old, was detained by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as she and a friend drove away from the news conference in Jackson, Miss., said her lawyer, Abigail Peterson.
The news conference was organized by attorneys, church groups and the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance to bring attention to recent immigration raids in the region, said Patricia Ice, an attorney with the immigrant-rights group.
ICE enforcement actions under the Trump administration have stoked fears in immigrant communities after large numbers of coordinated arrests across the country in recent weeks.
Agency officials have said they are targeting undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes including assault, murder and drug trafficking. But the agency also acknowledged picking up some immigrants they encountered during those raids who have violated federal immigration law, but not committed other crimes.
From Nelson Muntz, Simpsons:
From Rick Moran, The American Thinker:
My guess is that Ms. Vargas’s press conference may be one of the last of its kind for a while.
It’s one thing to live your life unobtrusively as an illegal alien in the U.S. It’s quite another to spit in the face of immigration enforcement officials by openly defying the law by holding a press conference and bragging about your status.
From AE Newman, PeakStupidty:
In your mind, pick any other country and think what would happened if you, and thousands of other Americans who snuck into said country, regularly held rallies and told [The Mexicans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Kiwis, the French, the Botswanans, the Romanians] "this is what you gotta do for us!" Madness.... madness... I tells ya!
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Every Picture Tells a Story, Don't It?
Posted On: Thursday - March 2nd 2017 6:35PM MST
In Topics: Music China
After reading and discussing China today, the older, English names for countries and for the cities in China came up. PeakStupidity believes the English names were so much nicer and evoked images of the mysterious Orient. For example, would you rather date a girl if she were billed as “a beautiful Oriental lass from Canton, in Cathay in the Far East” or if she were “a good worker loyal party-following comrade from Guangzhou's Tein-hou district of the People’s Republic”?
Well honestly, I’d want front, back, and side-view jpegs anyway, you know, just to be sure. Every picture tells a story, don’t it?
Rod Stewart (in this song) seems to have been stricken by this “slant-eyed lady”, especially after she bit his neck, up on deck of the Peking ferry. How romantic!! (seriously)
This song has no chorus though, just verses:
The lyrics are pretty easy to understand, but here's the one verse in question:
On the Peking ferry I was feeling merry, sailing on my way back here.
I fell in love with a slant-eyed lady by the light of an Eastern moon.
Shanghai Lil never used the pill, she claimed that it just ain’t natural.
She took me up on deck and bit my neck.
Oh, people, I was glad I found her.
Oh, yeah, I was glad I found her.
Listen to that drumming by a guy named Micky Waller!
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