Sound of Freedom: Movie Review by Mike Tre
Posted On: Friday - August 11th 2023 6:07PM MST
In Topics: Movies Race/Genetics Bible/Religion
A movie titled Sound of Freedom came out on or about the 4th of July this year. Our family being far from avid movie-goers, I had not heard of the movie but perhaps once in reference in the iSteve threads and then maybe a headline or two somewhere.
Our track record in support of Hollywood as a family had heretofore been Angry Birds* ~ 7 years ago and First Man** ~ 5 years back.
My wife dragged me to this one due to a) her hearing of the Woke left trying to squash the movie because of the overt Christianity in it and b) 2 (out of 3) tickets being free ones burning a hole in her purse - not as big a hole that a $10 bucket of popcorn couldn't fill. I'd completely forgotten to write anything about either the controversy or the movie itself. Then I came upon Mike Tre's review in the comments under a Steve Sailer post. This was very much along the lines of what I would have written too.
Let me introduce Mike Tre, paste in his review of Sound of Freedom, and then provide a few comments.
Unz Review commenter Mike Tre is a guy that TUR, Peak Stupidity, and the Hail to You blog had as an occasional commenter with the handle MikeAtMikeDotMike. Mike, with that older handle, was very much with us in our arguments against the Kung Flu PanicFest back 3 years ago (a tad more). IIRC, he even had anti-Panic comments deleted or not published by the usually free-speech stalwart Ron Unz. (Or was it Mr. Sailer too?), hence the handle change. Mike seems to be a solid Conservative and race realist.
Here's Mike Tre's review (Caviezel is the star of the movie.***):
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It’s interesting that Steve has yet to mention the movie Sound of Freedom, which is an important movie for not just the obvious ones, but for the reasons not explained.
The topic of SoF is legitimate. From a technical standpoint, the movie itself really isn’t that good. Caviezel is a weird guy, and that has worked to his advantage in past roles (JC, a homeless man, and Edmund Dantes) but for playing a straight like Tim Ballard, at times he comes across as creepy as the perps he is chasing. The movie tries too hard to pull on the viewer’s heartstrings, with Caviezel tearing up at every predictable opportunity. The climactic scene is clunky, forced, and wildly difficult to believe regardless of how loyal it is to the true events. It’s almost a rip off of the final act of Apocalypse Now.
IMO, the most significant underlying message of this movie is that it advocates the white replacement theory, as well as the “anti-racist” theory. The two children that Ballard, a US DHS agent (a fact that is completely omitted in his wikipedia bio), is attempting to rescue are Honduran. According to the movie, he quits his job at the DHS so he can continue searching for one of them in Columbia. Ballard abandons his family, which consists of his wife and SEVEN children, for several months while he searches for this girl.
So in my mind, the fact that a HOMELAND security agent is given tax dollars (he does eventually quit when those tax dollars dry up and receives funds from a foreign millionaire) to search for foreign children in foreign nations is an absurdity. Further, the fact that this man leaves his 7 biological children fatherless for however many months to rescue one Honduran child is, if not wildly reckless and misguided, downright evil. The movie goes through lengths to illustrate the dangers Ballard faced, so this is a man who was willing to make his wife a widow and leave his 7 children fatherless over the fate of a foreign child in a foreign country. That is literally insane. The absurdity is driven home when during the movie, Ballard receives a text from his wife saying “I feel like she is one of our children.” Is there a word for this type of suicidal self marginalizing? How does this man’s children feel about being set aside for some stranger? Ballard is a religious fanatic, and that fanaticism has translated into casting his own family aside in order to seek some twisted sense of justice and divine recognition. It’s pure narcissism.
The film makes sure to show that all but one of the pedophile johns who solicit these children are white men (The final boss is a Colombian rebel), because rich white men apparently solicit underage children in Central American slums, and a reference is made to how a large majority of Central American children are trafficked into the US to be used by the 1% (read: rich white men).
Caviezel then delivers a monologue at the end of the credits referencing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and how the Civil War was fought to end slavery, and blah bl,blah blah blah. It’s basically a massive helping of white guilt followed by asking for donations by scanning the QR code on the screen so that someone else might see the movie “who can’t afford it”. So he really does take that pay it forward crap seriously. No mention of the Pakistani rape games in Rotherham, or any other place where young white women are exploited for sexual abuse throughout the world.
All in all I lost a lot of respect I once had for Caviezel, as this is a man who does not understand nor stand up for the freedom of his own kind.
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Here are some remarks, one quick one first that's the only one about the movie itself, rather than the story:
The emphasis of Motherland Security as The Good Guys doesn't sit well with me. It's the name, and it's the TSA, I guess. The organization has enveloped the old ICE, Customs and Immigration, all that, so, some actually appropriate US Gov't functions do lie within.
Another style of human trafficking, that done under orders of the Bai Dien administration****, is more of what Peak Stupidity cares about. The odious sex Trafficking is another story, one that I would like to get some more numbers on to put in in perspective. Along with Mike's point regarding the scenes with the White man sex pervert in the movie, Peak Stupidity did note a more realistic PIC poster - I've seen it many times now, not just in Kentucky - in our post Truth in Trafficking Triumph.
Regarding some perspective, I've never heard of any instance of this horrific crime from any source other than the government and big media. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but, of course, the Government/Lyin' Press finger points at the White man. Before watching Sound of Freedom, I was under the impression that the Super-Elite "PizzaGate", Epstein Island "touring" people were whom this movie is pointing a finger at. That was a partial draw for me, besides the rare push from my wife. After seeing it, that didn't seem like the case.
OTOH, I did not see that whole monologue by Mr. Ballard at the end. I recall some words on the screen about Uncle Tom's Cabin, which just drove home the fact that I really did need to head out to the lobby to take a piss very badly. The thoughts that I was going to miss preaching of the sort I was not really up for were something my bladder was perhaps in tune with. Brain-Bladder-Barrier-Breach, Bitchez!
Finally the key point Mike made about Ballard's leaving his big family in limbo to save (first 2, then) one Honduran child, no matter how terrible her situation, is a very good one. These thoughts were in my head as I watched. I could have written something similar but not better than this Mike Tre review. Thank you, Mike.
* Besides that the characters were semi-famous to small kids at the time, Angry Birds had come somewhat recommended by Steve Sailer - big movie-goer and critic he - due to its Camp of the Saints-like theme.
** This movie had the story of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo XI mission to the moon. Albeit with perhaps a few more non-White-male faces in Houston Mission Control than in reality in 1969, this was no Woke flick by any means.
*** Regular readers here will know that, though I like plenty of movies, especially older ones (less chance of PC/Wokeness), Peak Stupidity doesn't do Hollywood worship. I know the director is important, but I honestly don't care who makes what, acts in what, or is the Key Grip. It's just entertainment, they are just movies, and those jobs are just jobs. (Key Grip, well, I never have gone and looked that up. Don't care, see.)
**** More in the post This Human Trafficking is HUGE. We're gonna need a bigger
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[UPDATED 08/23:] Ooops, Mr. Caviezel was NOT the director - he was the star, playing Tim Ballard. One Alejandro Monteverde was the director.
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Comments (16)
Good things come to those who wait ..
Posted On: Wednesday - August 9th 2023 6:40AM MST
In Topics: Race/Genetics Educational Stupidity
...from the working man's money.
A week ago Saturday, I'd indicated there'd be a post about those who make bank on tax money after writing about taxes. This isn't the same exact bundle of confiscated money. The former post was about Feral Income Taxes, while this one is about a big payoff of NY City tax money - NYC collects taxes in any kind of way, shape, or form one could imagine. Either way, this is redistribution of money from those who earn it to those who don't. Some might call this a form of reparations among others the White Man has been paying for years. We are those some people.
Yet again, VDare's John Derbyshire has written about this too, but I'd already grabbed the image a few weeks back and we're stickin' to the plan. Mr. Derbyshire writes very well, and you'd probably want to read his Race Denialism—The Evil, Poisonous, Scientifically Illiterate Doctrine Of “Disparate Impact” Strikes Again on the $1,800,000,000 lawsuit payout to ~5,000 NY City teachers by the NY City taxpayers.
What happened see, is that too many White people passed this teachers' certification test, so there just HAD to be something wrong and discriminatory about it. That's what Disparate Impact "theory" says. If there is not equality in outcome, not just opportunity, then someone discriminated against someone, unless, basketball. No, it's always the White Man. We've been through this for over half a century, and we'll see what that SCROTUS ruling does, if anything.*
The NY Post reports Black, Hispanic NYers who failed teacher's test strike $1.8B in NYC settlement.** There are details such as that this money grab started with a lawsuit in 1996 by 4 trod-upon would-be school teachers in a case called Gulino v. Board of Education. - got a lawsuit name to pull on those heart strings, don't it? That started with 4 potential plaintiffs and has ballooned, with different lawsuits that followed to about 5,200.
That's a bit over 1/3 million, but some of the plaintiffs are getting 1 to 2 million bucks out of their efforts. What efforts, besides failing a test? Good question - more on that.
Other top winners include Andrea Durant, 62, of Center Moriches on Long Island, who scored $1,976,787, and the estate of the late Kathy Faye Bailey of Queens, who was awarded $1,975,119.My bolding, cause, well, I am starting to like these NY Post writers more and more - this is by Rich Calder, Susan Edelman, and Deirdre Bardoff. Also, I guess that estate would require a "that was awarded" rather than "who was", but that's just adding to the stupidity. The benefactors from the probate process of the Bailey "estate" - the rest of it is probably the tinted-windowed high-milage BMW with the low-profile tires and 2 cases of MD 20-20 - will get to split $1.975 million because their Mother failed a teacher's certification test in the 1990s.
This suit was settled by agreement during the Communist Mayor de Blasio's last weeks in office in '21. Redistribution, bitchez! What do expect from a Communist? Remember that thing about the scorpion?
OK, look, to be fair here, let's hear from one of those redistrbutionees, shall we? From one Herman Grim, the now-64 y/o winner of $2.06 million:
When contacted Thursday, Grim said he was unaware he struck gold but confirmed the award the following day with his lawyer.You're tryin' ta pay your bills and keep the man off your back, but every day you go to the mailbox, lots and lots of times, cause you don't have a job, that settlement is never in there. 27 years, Mama! Nuthin' but the EBT cards. Whaddya' do? Gotta eat and keep a roof over your head. Maybe there'l be a new mayor, a Communist, if I'm lucky.
Grim said he's in disbelief but the money can't come soon enough because he's racked up serious debt on his Queens home and credit cards.
Further on:
He couldn't recite examples of why the test was biased.
But [former potential Jaime Escalante] Germ recalled hiring private tutor and studying for it during the early 1990s, before failing many times.Haha, I don't want to actually BE Steve Sailer here, but I coulda' come up with something good here too...
I get a feeling from this that those NY City taxpayers who have 25-40 y/o grown up kids but never had the means as the upper class folks did to get them the hell out of government schooling in the 1990s have come out ahead on this whole thing, sudden $1,800,000,000 or not. The guy got tutoring for a freaking standardized test, failed many times, and he wanted to teach our kids? Nah, I'll pay my share, thank you very much.
"I can't tell you how many times I took them. A lot! A lot!" he said.That was Herman Grim yet again, a Grim taste of what we're dealing with. He took the test a lot!, so he's entitled to be a school teacher. See? Desperate impact [typos not intended, but sustained without objection, your Honor]. That's what we're dealing with now. $1.8 Billion ain't the half of it. Money ain't even the half of it. Still:
But the cost to taxpayers is expected to be significantly higher because they’ll also be footing the bill for many of the plaintiffs to collect pension checks based on time never worked after they reach retirement age, plus their health insurance.Don't forget the lawyers, please. Someone, please, think of the lawyers! (OK, I found it - the lawyers are getting $43 million.)
As of Friday, 225 people who failed the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test used for teacher liscensing from 1994 to 2014 had already been notified they're getting settlements of at least $2 million, according to an analysis of Manhattan federal court records.I'm a math type. If by "award" he means each as a single payout to an individual, or yes, estate, then we're just talking in the range of another Billion. NY City sounds like it's got plenty of $ to spare. If each is a payout to another group of 225 or 5,200, well, "Peak Stupidity to New York: Drop Dead!"
Court rulings found the exam violated civil-rights laws, allowing far more White candidates to pass.
The case is expected to generate hundreds of other future million dollar awards.
The funniest part of this story, as John Derbyshire emphasized, was the 27 years ago. What the heck have these people been doing for this whole time? I might have spent just one year out of those 27... errr, wait for it, studying harder?! Starting another career, perhaps? Just plain getting a job at some point? Doesn't daytime TV get old after a while? Congratulations, disparate impact victims! Victims of redistribution by Communist New York? GTFO. We've told you over and over ...
PS: The New York Post, which is closer to any kind of "newspaper of record"*, has this story, but my "hosting country" does not seem to like this publication. My quote are short because I had to transcribe them from a telephone.
* College admissions is a beachhead, I guess, but that specific instance of AA doesn't concern me very much. It's the enhanced version of AA, Wokeness, (the enhanced AA being just a part of Wokeness) that is bringing this country toward 3rd World competency.
** The NY Post pulled "a fast one", as the NY'ers put it, with their on-line story, haha. That's nothing to do with the facts, though. I will make a very short post on this.
*** One of Instapundit Glenn Reynold's bits is to refer to The Babylon Bee as such.
Comments (8)
Global Boiling explained
Posted On: Monday - August 7th 2023 7:07AM MST
In Topics: Humor Global Climate Stupidity
This meme comes from long-term steady commenter Alarmist.
He doesn't get around to writing very much about the long-term Climate Calamity™ deal that's gone from a scientific discussion to a massive political issue and Totalitarian control effort over the last 35 years, but Steve Sailer has a good short and sweet post up on it: NYT: "When the Novelty of Skiing in California in August Wears Off, the Terror Sinks In".
Not to criticize too harshly at all, as his attitude is heartening to me, but 2 things:
1) He seems a little late on that NOTICING of his that "Global Warming" has become "Climate Change", as he does give the right reason why. My recollection on the change of terminology is more like Global Cooling (1970s) – Global Warming – Climate Change (been that for 10-15 years, I’d guess) – The Climate Crisis (time of Peak Greta ~ 19) – Global Boiling (couple of weeks ago).
2) I don't know that Mr. Sailer realizes the 2nd part of the big picture - the use of this "issue" as a way to implement more Totalitarian control - control of energy production, distribution, and use, moving on to agriculture... by definition, it doesn't end. Mr. Sailer has noticed how the Lyin' Press - his favorite, of course, for purposes of example, being the NY Times, uses weather phenomenon to push the agenda, that's all.
Thank you, Steve Sailer, and thank you, Alarmist!
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[UPDATED 8/11:] Fixed last sentence of (2) which was missing pretty much most parts of speech.
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Comments (9)
Brother Jukebox
Posted On: Saturday - August 5th 2023 3:17PM MST
In Topics: Music
This is the other song by Paul Craft, that I alluded to on Tuesday. I previously had no idea it was written by the same songwriter who wrote Midnight Flyer (done by the Osborne Brothers and then The Eagles).
When it comes to sappy-lyricked country music, you can't do better than Brother Jukebox, as performed by Mark Chestnutt. I still have the one album on CD by Mark Chestnutt Too Cold at Home that I bought about the time it was released in 1991. I like it but haven't listened to the album in almost 3 decades.
Sounds good. Maybe "sappy" is not the word for it, but that's a country music thing, whatever you call it, this analogy that he has in the chorus:
Brother jukebox, sister wine,
mother freedom, father time.
Since she left me by myself
you're the only family I've got left.
Good songwriting by Paul Craft!
That's the blogweek, Peakers, and I again thank you for reading and commenting. It was about 1/2 entertainment this week and half serious stupidity. (Taxes could count as both, I guess.) More seriously, next week, we'll get to the population implosion, some of the other topics mentioned last Saturday, a movie review by Mike Tre, aka Mike@Mike.Mike, Global Boiling memes, and something more on South Africa and S. Africans, the White ones. Have a wonderful Sunday!
PS: This song was also recorded by Don Everly of the former Everly Brothers back in 1977.
Comments (12)
Last year's tax (preparation) burden
Posted On: Saturday - August 5th 2023 8:16AM MST
In Topics: US Feral Government Dead/Ex- Presidents Taxes
This was to be part of the previous post, but it was already too long. This image below is of another graphic that appears yearly in the IRS 1040 Instruction book .pdfs. This one is in there one page prior (107):
In case it's hard to read, this is the "Estimated Average Taxpayer Burden for Individuals by Activity". Haha, well, doing the taxes is not exactly what makes us beasts of burden owned by the IRS. It's the money - though that's only #2 in the top-5 list of the evils of the Feral Income Tax, per Part 3 on Amendment XVI, in our Peak Constitutional Amendment series.
We've done this post before, in '22 - Peak Stupidity beats national time-wasting averages.
In that previous post I mentioned that this tax-burden information is something that came out of the Reagan Administration, I'm pretty sure. Old Ronnie really did want to cut government, whether people today believe that or not. What those people might want to "search up" is that President Reagan dealt with a D-controlled Congress the whole 8 years, so it's not like he could actually implement everything he wanted.
I remember that President Reagan was bent on simplifying the Income Tax system, if he couldn't eliminate it. A little bit changed for the better on the former, and the latter was of course out of the question. Reagan also wanted Feral regulation paperwork in general cut, especially as it burdened the individual or small business. Hence, this chart, as at least now we know how much of our time this paperwork is to take. (Well, nobody figured on the internet. Turbotax, though, had started up in 1984.)
I see that I, were I average, per the IRS, I am supposed to have spent 3 hours completing the forms, but also another 5 hours on other tasks, planning and record-keeping. Nah, the plan is to get this crap done sometime in mid-April as quickly as I can. The record-keeping is shove all the stuff the comes in late January into a file in a drawer.
Then, I delegate the paperwork to the kid.. [Wipes hands of whole matter.]
Then, he screws up 2 things on the State form, so I re-delegate the paperwork in the form of an amended return.
Interestingly, the 2 numbers in that previous post (from the Washington Examiner), average time spent, and opportunity cost, are way different from what the IRS says. For the average of all taxpayers - gotta assume they're not counting Big Biz corps - the IRS says 13 hrs, of work, while the W.E. study says 24.9 hrs. The IRS says $250 in opportunity cost, while the W.E. study says $800. Note the income the IRS takes as average: $19/hr. The W.E. study uses $32/hr. The IRS ought to know average income, right? Or is it that nobody has updated this table in years. That's probably the case.
The IRS 1040 Instruction booklet: Bring it to the beach this Labor Day weekend. Two thumbs up!
Comments (2)
The Bi-Annual Peak Stupidity IRS Pie Analysis
Posted On: Friday - August 4th 2023 7:57PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity US Feral Government Taxes
It's not quite a yearly thing, but usually around income tax time, near the cruelest day, Peak Stupidity has been known to display the pair of pie charts that appear near the back of the IRS 1040 Instructions .pdf. Who else reads through the whole thing? (Beats the New York Times, as is the case with cough, cough, some people ...*) They are simplistic, and the categories in the latter are vague, but the 2 pie charges of Tax Revenue and Expenditures, along with the actual totals underneath, give me an idea of these numbers. Most especially I am interested in what looks like a little slice of that pie, the "net interest" being paid.**
Here are previous posts with discussion of these pie charts: Quick glance at the budget from US-Gov crack Green-eyeshade boys (discusses the '15 budget), Comparison of '15/17 US Government Budgets ('15 vs '17), EXTRA, EXTRA, IRS tells all! (in .pdf 1040 Instructions) (with the '19 budget). That's kind of nice, because this we're doing every odd-number year. That was just by chance!
The forms one fills out in April, or when he gets around to it, of '23, are for the '22 tax year, but the year before that seems to be the latest year the IRS can get the numbers for.
Those previous posts have more discussion, but for this post, I want to concentrate only on the 5% slice of pie again. Under the graphs, page 108 of the 1040 Instructions .pdf, 3 numbers are given. Verbatim:
In fiscal year 2021 (which began on October 1, 2020, and ended on September 30, 2021), federal income was $4.047 trillion and outlays were $6.882 trillion, leaving a deficit of $2.775 trillion.Because it's a cute pie chart, there's just one significant digit - 5% - for "net interest", so keep in mind that calculations should be rounded to a number that's good only to 10% (That 5% should mean it's from 4.5% to 5.5%)
That 5% is of the $6.88 Trillion outlay pie, coming to $0.344 Trillion = $344 Billion (we'll round off at the end). That's the numerical value of net interest on the debt paid in '21.
How much debt were "we" paying interest on that year? For total debt, I used numbers from the simple table on this page, one I want to write more about. It says the national budget debt was $29.6 Trillion in '21. I don't know if that was at the beginning or end of the fiscal year. This is just back-o'-the-envelope stuff, so again, I don't care.
"We" (gotta keep putting it in quotes, because I didn't ask for ANY of this shit!) paid $0.344 Trillion on $29.6 Trillion. (We'll finally round here.) That's STILL only a 1.2% rate! Why the exclamation points? I like 'em! OK, it's more than that. Each time Peak Stupidity gets into the financial stupidity*** and interest rates, we go all doomer on the reader, because we think of these pie charts.****
What if the FED quit holding rates in the basement? At 8% interest, that 5% would be a nearly 35% piece of the expenditure pie. It would be an even bigger chunk of the revenue pie, as that one is always smaller (the difference being the annual accumulation of debt, called the deficit). When 50% of all taxes go toward paying interest on the debt - no principle - well, America will look like one of those deadbeat credit card borrowers. We've got 5 cards that we're paying not even the minimum payments on, with daily calls we've got to keep blocking, and a 6th card is in the mail, one we applied for to help us pay off those other 5.
There’ll be a vicious cycle. They can’t seriously cut anything but “Defense” without financially hurting government dependees, which are probably a majority of Americans. The deficits will get that much higher, instead of 20-30% overspending each year, they’ll get to 50% regularly, with no PanicFest of other excuse. Instead of going but 5-10% yearly as now, that total debt will go up by numbers like 20-25%. At constant interest rates, the share of the budget spent on interest will go up to swamp the whole deal.
Well, we all know that interest rates HAVE been going up (not left naturally, but done by the FED to try to fight inflation). I will refer you to this comment by the astute Unz Review commenter "Res" right here for commentary on this and another graph. Forget the projections past today, but note that, from a 1-2% range, the long-term interest rates had a spike to 8% in '22. I don't pretend to know exactly how these numbers fit with the Federal Treasury net interest rates but they surely go together.
Why didn't we up and have that crash that Peak Stupidity keeps doomering on about? Well, that 8% interest rate was the top of a narrow spike, for one thing. However, to me, a crash can't NOT happen. I can't say what week or month. When the world sees that this US dollar is not supportable by anything real, there'll be a psychological tipping point. Seeing that we are paying 1/3 or 1/2 of our budget on interest to bondholders and acting like that deadbeat credit card holder I described above may be that point for the finance crowd.
Now that rates are staying at least somewhat higher, will the IRS keep putting that informative pair of pie charts in the back of the 1040 Instructions book? That might scare some people. It still might though, because I don't know who else in the world actually reads the instructions! Actually, I don't either, but I like pie and pie charts.
* That refers, of course to Steve Sailer. In fact, he got 3 posts out of the stupidity contained therein within a day, and his resulting commentary is very entertaining.
** It's not like there are payment coupons and such, but this is about how much is paid out in bond interest, the difference between bonds sold and redeemed, etc. It's complicated. I don't care.
*** We use the Global Financial Stupidity topic key often even on this US budget stuff. It's kind of late to make a another one, this country is still big enough to where a crash here will affect the world, and then, what country can you name in which there isn't a whole lot of financial stupidity these days?
**** There's also a 2nd problem that will occur with natural higher interest rates - the stock market won't be propped up by people with no safe investment options.
Comments (3)
Calvin Coolidge inaugurated as US President 100 years ago this minute.
Posted On: Thursday - August 3rd 2023 12:47AM MST
In Topics: History Liberty/Libertarianism Dead/Ex- Presidents
Peak Stupidity has been glomming posts here and there off of John Derbyshire's writings on VDare. He's a great writer and tells a good story when he's got a story.
This one I want to use here is from his post last week noting It’s 100 Years Since Calvin Coolidge, Who Signed The 1924 Immigration CutOff Into Law, Was Sworn In As President!. About half of John Derbshire's VDare posts, "Diaries", transcript pieces from his podcasts, etc. make it to The Unz Review here, where one can make comments. This post on Silent Cal Coolidge does appear, right here.
Now, VDare's primary and almost sole focus is the immigration invasion. That's why Mr. Derbyshire appears there, and it fits that his take on President Coolidge is that Silent Cal's signing of the 1924 Immigration Act was his best act in his term as President.
We may have mentioned it since, but Peak Stupidity's being big fans of this President was something we noted in our quick discussion (not a review) - Amity Shlaes on President "Silent Cal" Coolidge. I did read her book on the Great Depression 1.0, years ago, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, so I mentioned that she also had written a book called Coolidge.
I don't know why I haven't read Miss Shlaes' book on him, but I already know President Coolidge was one of the handful or two of Presidents who didn't make himself a liar when he swore to the oath on inauguration day. Any President who is criticized for "doing nothing" and just, like "administering the government" or something is a real Libertarian/Constitutionalist - a guy I can admire.
President Harding, another in one of those handfuls of the good guys, IMO,
had gotten sick while in Alaska and ended up dying some weeks later while the VP Coolidge was up in Plymouth Notch, Vermont at his family's place. Mr. Derbyshire tells the neat story of this simple small-government America change of power, as little as there was, and downhome inauguration in the wee hours of the morning after a phone call from Washington, DC.
Rather than take the story from John Derbyshire and retell it, I will do something better than him, which is to post this at 02:47 EST*, an even century after the quick inauguration was held by 4 people at Mr. Coolidge's family home in Vermont.
PS: OK, I cheated. I did get the time zone thing, but then, short story even shorter, I couldn't do this at 03:47 EDT, so I'll doctor up the database.
* That's 03:47 EDT, but they didn't have this mess back then. That's 3 hours earlier in the summer from the Peak Stupidity standard of Mountain Standard Time, so it's (well, I'm gonna make it!) 00:47 MST.
Comments (20)
Global Boiling - turning up the Climate Calamity™ to HIGH
Posted On: Wednesday - August 2nd 2023 5:15PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Globalists
Over 15 years ago, Doctor Al Gore told us the Earth had a fever. That's nothing a few days rest and another Ice Age couldn't handle. We've long passed the point of know return on Professor Gore's mathematical model predictions. By his standard we might as well continue driving our SUVs when the weather permits, keep the fireplace going all winter, and maybe sit in front of it listening to REM, kissing our asses goodbye. (Not sure about the fever, but it's supposed to start with earthquakes, snakes, and aeroplanes... yeah, that's right.)
Al Gore has been quiet as of late, probably just enjoying his sea-level beach house in California and occasionally flying on a large-cabin biz jet from one place on the feverish Earth to another. Then little Greta came along to give us the updated picture and what had become by then a flat-out Climate Crisis!™
A couple of years after the debut of Greta, in Spring of '20, the Kung Flu PanicFest came along and gave officials and journalists around the world something to panic about, well, a good well-believed excuse anyway. Crises were declared worldwide. I really thought for about a year or more there that the Global Climate Stupidity was going to fade away. We didn't hear from Greta even from the un-LOCKDOWNed Sweden. What a breath of fresh air (with a few tenths of a percent CO2 mixed in)!
I was premature in my thinking. (OK, flat-out wrong. They will not just quit.) Over the last year, this flavor of worldwide stupidity has been cranked up, recently to 11 on the volume. I refer to the latest change in the name for this alleged crisis, from The Climate Crisis to Global Boiling. I mean, it wasn't just Al Gore or Greta using the term - this comes straight from the Secretary-General of the Unified Nations, the U-freaking-N, you know, those people, and the one guy, who are there to lead the world.
The newest SecGen, as we call them, of the UN, is a guy named Antonio Guterres*, another foreign grifter occupying prime real estate in NY City. Formerly a long-term member of Socialist International, the one thing he's got going for him is he's part of that Portugal fad. CNBC reports ‘The era of global boiling has arrived,’ says UN boss, as White House announces provisions to protect workers from extreme heat. In other words, it's summertime. It's not just any summer, though. It's summer in an era of a big Globalist agenda of Totalitarian control of the economy and the population.
Now this next thing is simply hilarious. The caption below the CNBC picture (that I can't get just now) says: "As one construction worker wipes his brow, two other roofers work under a 90 degree temperature at a housing complex under construction in Clarksburg, Maryland on July 26, 2023." See, this intrepid reporter drove all around Clarksburg to find a roofing crew that were not obviously illegal aliens, and got up on the roof of a building with his 35mm to snap a picture of a guy on the roof wiping his brow. What a scoop! 90 degrees in the summer! Sake's alive, Andy!"
The "National News" asks the burning question Global boiling: What is it and should we be worried? What is it? It's the newest term for this excuse to clamp down on the peons, but it was really a poor choice. "Global Warming" works - you figure they mean average temperatures around the world - not counting the core of the Earth and shit, but most people get that. "Global Boiling" on the other hand... WTF?!! Can the whole globe boil? The oceans can and WILL, per the AlGore**, but what about the rocky mantle and then that inner moon-sized core of solid iron and outer core of molten iron? I'm not sure about the rock - volcanoes could tell you - but the boiling point of iron is 5180 degrees. That's in Fahrenheit. Mr. Guterres is a sophisticated European and world leader who works in SI units, so it's actually only 2860 degrees in Celsius. Hey, stranger things have happened than the boiling of the Globe.
OK, turning down the stupidity to SIMMER now, that National News article says:
This year it has led to record air temperatures across Southern Europe and wildfires in tinder-dry woodlands in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Croatia – as well as parts of North Africa –Those must have been the areas predicted to have record high temperatures and/or dry air by '23 or so by the mathematical models. Wait, the mathematical models DID predict this, didn't they?! I mean, or do we continue making after-the-fact predictions until we get a working mathematical model of the entire Earth's climate?*** Now wait, let me let them finish that though:
- although some fires are suspected to have been arson-related.I've read about regarding other wildfires too. What exactly do we have going on here? Is the arson a concerted "Reichstag Fire" (heh!) effort to accelerate (heh!) this new panic-stage of Global Climate Stupidity? Or is it just the usual non-assimilated mass immigrant fire season in progress, as in Paris? (In our case, it's most often non-assimilated Hispanics who don't care for Smokey the Bear and his crap about not throwing cigarette butts out of car windows.)
The short article explains the new term to us:
The concept of global boiling reflects a transition from global warming, towards a more intense period of heatwaves, climate-related disasters and extreme weather patterns.There's nothing new there. Conflating weather with climate, but only when it's bad weather has been a technique of the alarmists for decades, even when it was called "Global Warming". However, the next term, "Climate Change" (man, I almost miss it!) incorporated that technique already, long ago, 15 years, maybe?
Let's give equal time to Mr. Guterres:
“For scientists, it is unequivocal — humans are to blame,” Guterres said. “All this is entirely consistent with predictions and repeated warnings. The only surprise is the speed of the change. Climate change is here. It is terrifying, and it is just the beginning.”Yes, the speed of the change has indeed increased, as in the 1st derivative, acceleration of the narrative. There's a little more in there too that shows that this acceleration of this formerly creeping Climate alarmism is very likely the newest Globalist control scheme to take over where the Kung Flu PanicFest left off. They may have been a little taken aback by the resistance and eventual complete halting of their program of continual forced vaccinations of the world. The specter of a virus that kills only 0.1% of the people infected is one thing. The whole globe boiling - well, most people ought to be able to see that that's a real problem. Global Boiling it is, then!
I think, at least, I hope, that this mouthing off by Mr. Guterres of the UN using "Global Boiling" may be a bridge too far. It's a ridiculous term that may just bring some on-the-fence people to see that the Climate Crisis™ is a load of hype. Then again, most of them fell for the recent PanicFest. Have they learned anything?
PS: Do you see why we John Birchers have been calling for "US out of the UN and UN out of the US" since the beginning... of the John Birch Society at least? I've only been a member for a couple of years, but that didn't stop me from saying that long ago.
PPS: One bright spot from the CNBC article:
For help with future preparations, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will put $7 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to improve weather forecasting.Good! I like the NOAA. The Apple corporation in always sunny and pleasant Cupertino, California cold really use some guys like you, NOAA.
* Who knew? I sure didn't until this nonsense.
** More on the hilarious GoreRant here.
*** Peak Stupidity has a 5-part series explaining how there's not one, back in our early days with this Global Climate Stupidity topic key.
Comments (8)
Midnight Flyer
Posted On: Tuesday - August 1st 2023 8:40PM MST
In Topics: Music
Our post on the passing of ex-Eagles band member Randy Meisner included one of the songs he wrote and sang for the band. While conversing in the internet threads about best Eagles songs, I listed Midnight Flyer as one of my very top favorites. A few seconds later, I asked myself "who else could that voice be, but Randy Meisner".
This is my favorite by this artist, but Mr. Meisner didn't write Midnight Flyer. It was written by a songwriter named Paul Craft, who, I just found out, also wrote another favorite song of mine. It was also recorded by the famous Osborne Brothers bluegrass band a year or two before the Eagles did. I'll put that one up later this week.
For younger readers, yes, there were trains carrying people around America, not called Amtrak, not THAT awfully long ago. Steve Goodman-written, Arlo-Guthrie performed City of New Orleans is a beautiful song, the title of which is not the name of what was a specific train (as in, the same locomotive(s) and passenger cars) but a specific route. That song laments the passing of the classic passenger railroads in America. They had a long very good run, as did songs about trains.
Readers could probably name 100s of songs about trains, or with trains in the lyrics, but there are also quite a few that mention those old famous specific train lines of yesteryear.
Midnight Flyer is obviously a name for some route there was somewhere. (Seems too great a name to have not been.*) In just the one Grateful Dead song alone, Jack Straw from Wichita, there is the mention of two trains, "Catch the Detroit Lightning out of Santa Fe... the Great Northern out of Cheyenne, from sea to shining sea ..."
I caught up with The Eagles's music well after their "hell will freeze over ..." break-up. On the Border, on which Midnight Flyer was found, was the first album I bought by them, on vinyl. I'd put their 4 country-rock albums in this order of my liking:
1) On the Border
2) Desperado
3) The Eagles (debut, self-titled album)
4) One of These Nights
The old trains were very romantic, but not necessarily the best way to go for America. The music, however, yeah, we should have stuck to the kind of music heard here, like that old country-rock Eagles with Don Henley, Glen Frey, Randy Meisner, and Bernie Leadon.
PS: Amtrak did keep this train route naming thing alive, with a City of New Orleans, a Coast Starlight, etc. It's not the same with the Feral Gov't running the show... not the same at all...
PPS: Again, I forgot that I'd featured this song before. Too good to be new to Peak Stupidity.
* Yeah, it was. One "instance" of the Midnight Flyer was involved in a crash in Winslow, Arizona 101 years ago.
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[UPDATED 08/02 evening:] Mr. Hail noted that the Osborne brothers, one of the most famous bluegrass "combos" recorded this one. Also, I realized I'd post this song before.
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Comments (8)
Hotel of Fear -
Posted On: Tuesday - August 1st 2023 6:49AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Humor
For previous Peak Stupidity Rockford Files commentary see:
Peak Rockford Files
Jim Rockford - In Pursuit of Carol Thorne
Inflation indexed to the Rockford/Davenport basket of goods
Rockford Files: Bug v Land Yacht
Jim Rockford in the days of decent denominations
Rockford Files - cars, smart-ass remarks, etc.
Rockford Files update and one minor POS
The Daily Stupid, edition #53643- Part B, and the near-daily Rockford file
Goerge Floyd indicted for IP theft for "I can't breath!"
Rockford Files: Pizza, wine, and coffee - and a BIG THANKS to our commenters
It's been a whole year. I had to change out DVD players.
After a year hiatus of watching this great half-century-old TV show, from Season 3 to now Season 4, I'd figured I'd passed Peak Rockford Files. One of the episodes of this season (still 1977, going into 1978 soon) was so confusing, I couldn't really follow the plot after 10 minutes in. In one of the episodes I just watched, even Jim Rockford himself said he didn't know what was going on. I completely agreed!
I came upon the episode titled Hotel of Fear * though. I enjoyed this one so much, mostly due to the efforts of the recently-passed Stuart Margolan, who played the shyster ex-con, active con-man Angel Martin, his show given name being Evelyn. Yeah, that's him in the cop uniform in a fancy hotel room above, from this episode.
It's kind of coincidental, but, in some (his?) apartment building, Angel happened to witness a shooting murder, and the perpetrator and he saw each other directly. Being in fear for his life, as is the usual thing with him, Angel told Jim but did not want to call the police about it. Angel had a good point, as, once he saw no way out of this but to get the law involved, it turned out this was indeed a very bad guy, a hitman of the mob named Del Kane. (This murder of that young lady was not a "hit" but an impulsive personal thing. The theme later on is that this guy has gone off the rails and even the mob bosses have had enough of him.)
Because Angel Martin's testimony would be their ace in order to bust hitman Del Kane (who's done 19 of them, AIR), the LA police make the effort to keep Angel safe from getting murdered himself. It's Lieutenant Chapman who's in charge of security for him. I could use readers' input here, as I haven't found this info, but when did the police Lieutenant switch from being Lieutenant Diel to Lieutenant Chapman? Lt. Chapman is a nicer guy, as Lt. Diel had it in for Rockford or any "civilian" and wanted no interaction with them. (I.e., Diel was a more realistic police Lieutenant.)
They put Angel up in nice hotel rooms. That's where he and the show get really funny. Angel was ordering up all kinds of room service meals. At the 2nd hotel, there due to a near-hit on Angel at the 1st one, one of the hotel staff knocked. "It's the eggs I ordered at the last place and never did get." That didn't make a whole lot of sense, but even the actor playing Lt. Chapman was caught smiling at that, by me anyway.
I am so glad that IMDB has the best quotes, as I don't have the ability to watch any of the show as I write, and I'd never have gotten all this right. The very best is when a scared Angel is told to pick out the suspected murderer out of the line-up.
Lt. Chapman: [the cops have brought Angel down to have him look at a line-up] Do you recognise anyone?The title of this episode comes from the plot line in which Angel has taken to working on a crime novel of some sort (I think biographical), at the hotel, with a ghost writer there at one point. He's still stuck at the title, which is not a good sign for a writer. Hotel of Fear is the working title, but Angel feels that Witness for the Prosecution would be much better. He and the rest KNOW that there is already a book by that name. "So, people might see my book at the bookstore instead and get it by mistake, for some more sales." is something like what he said.
Angel: [Angel - always nervous - is more-so than usual] You sure they can't see me?
Lt. Chapman: It's a one-way glass. You've got nothing to worry about.
[Angel - his cheap pants hiked-up past his pot-belly, and slouched over, looks, as Chapman begins to get impatient]
Lt. Chapman: Do you recognise anyone?
Angel: [Angel furiously waves his arms in front of the glass] Well, uh...
[pointing]
Angel: ... he dropped about 15, 20 pounds, but that's Marco. Used to be over at the Hollenbeck station.
[Angel turns and starts walking away]
Lt. Chapman: [Chapman grabs Angel's arm] Come here, c'mere, c'mere... so, you know Sgt. Marco. Now, is there anybody else you recognize?
Angel: That's Stein. [pointing at the glass]
Angel: He used to be a narc. What's he - in robbery/homicide now?
[Angel smiles, Chapman chuckles]
Lt. Chapman: Why don't I just give you a subscription to the precinct paper, that way you can keep tabs on everybody.
Angel: Don't get sore, lieutenant. You asked me who I recognize. I said I recognized Stein and Marco. I don't know Harry's last name, but, uh... there's Whitbeck [camera moves from Whitbeck to the next man - Del Kane]
Angel: It's the man in blue.
Lt. Chapman: What about the guy in the blue blazer?
Angel: [Angel looks nervously around the room] He ain't a cop.
Also from IMDB for accuracy, I can't remember where the following fits into the show:
Angel: Y'know Jimmy, I've got some feelings too. "If you prick me, do I not bleed?"Near the beginning, when Angel went to Jim's trailer:
Jim Rockford: That's Shakespeare!
Angel: [Condescendingly] No it's not. Vincent Price said it on the Hollywood Squares.
Angel: See, here's the idea, Jimmy; if they don't pick the guy up then, I'll spend a couple - maybe three weeks, down in El Segundo, place like that. What happens?Haha, Angel Martin was the least of Los Angeles' worries, were one to look into a crystal ball and see upcoming election results.
Jim [shrugs his shoulders] Mmmm, real-estate values plummet.
Regular readers here would know that Peak Stupidity does not get into Hollywood worship. The Rockford Files is just a great show, with some nice blasts from the past (especially re: the cars). I don't care that much where's he's from and what else he did, but Stuart Margolin as Angel Martin really added the humor to the show and especially this Hotel of Fear episode.
* I hadn't realized it when writing some of those earlier posts, but the IMDB Internet Movie DataBase has done a nice job compiling details for this show and others. I should say, the users providing the "content" have done a nice job.
Comments (3)
The relentless persecution by the ctrl-left Totalitarians
Posted On: Monday - July 31st 2023 4:41PM MST
In Topics: Commies ctrl-left Anarcho-tyranny Totalitarianism
Ann Wilson Smith is a Southern gal with a family history of Southern History. Her Dad, Clyde Smith studied and wrote about Southern, specifically South Carolina, heritage. Ann Wilson Smith has her Southern heritage website* called Reckonin' (no "g") and has also written a book on the Anarcho-Tyranny that took place during and after the "Unite the Right" rally 6 years ago in what was to be a peaceful defense of the heritage, hence, a famous statue, of Robert E. Lee.
She, with 3 articles, and Jason Kessler, with a dozen, have kept VDare readers up on the aftermath of Charlottesville. No, it's not over for the ctrl-left. They will not stop coming after the Americans with lawfare and even criminal prosecution.
Last week Miss Wilson wrote Communist Coup In Charlottesville: Invictus Arrested For Tiki Torch Parade. This Augustus Invictus shown on the right in the VDare image is a flamboyant lawyer with a political bent - Conservative/Libertarian - and somewhat of a "colorful"** past. He's on the side of the Historic American Nation, as VDare calls it, and is on our side.
Mr. Augustus was there in Charlottesville that day, the 11th of August of '17, and he got arrested just a week or so ago, 6 years later on some charges or other. Unfortunately, for the life of me, I can't find out WHAT charges (this article doesn't say), but some of them have been about the bearing of tiki-torches. Yeah, you can come up with anything. 5 others have been arrested THIS YEAR on various charges related to the events that day in '17.
There are Statutes of Limitations for crimes. However, a Totalitarian official like the ones involved here can just go for the crime with the appropriately-long Statute of Limitations that works for him. "You pick the man, I'll pick the crime with the right Statute of Limitations", is the new take by the new Lavrentiy Beria's. The Founders never saw THAT coming.
An important point made by Mr. Invictus is that (he figures) the Charlottesville Anarcho-Tyranny was a warm-up, "prototype" he puts it, for the narrative and aftermath of the January 6th, '21 protest. After J6, the crimes that these over 1,000 protesters stuck in Washington, FS dungeons supposedly committed are things a member of the ctrl-left would not even have been detained for. We have a full record of this from the summer of '20. It's not like there weren't any cameras or microphones around! It's the same story for the alt-right arrestees and prisoners*** after Charlottesville.
Mr. Invictus, as per Miss Smith's article:
It's supposed to be a great divide between a legal prosecution and a political prosecution... Conservatives are really coming to understand Charlottesville was the prototype for J6. You create this alternate reality of what actually happened at the event, and you dragnet prosecute everybody you can get your hands on... Charlottesville was the watershed moment, and J6 was just where everybody finally woke up.Well I wouldn't agree that everybody has finally woken up. Those on our side who know some details should have. The contradiction between what we saw happen in person, heard about from people there, saw on youtube, or read about and the Potomac Regime narrative is huge. The lies are blatant, which works pretty well, I'll admit, on the majority of Americans who still watch TV news and read yahoo headlines.
PS: Who's that Jim Hingeley, you may be asking? He is a Soros-supported "Commonwealth Attorney, I guess a D/A, who was
PPS: "Communists", as used by Miss Smith and often by Peak Stupidity, or just run-of-the-mill Totalitarians? They're not preaching economic Communism (yet), but what's the difference between these people and those who'd done the same in the old USSR, East Bloc, Red China, etc, etc, etc...?
* I've checked it out. There's pretty good writing on there, not much of it very political at first glance. I'll keep up with this one.
** I would go with "checkered" instead of colorful, but without information from someone I trust, I have no idea how politically motivated his past convictions for spousal abuse and such are. It's easy to set men up, especially if you're a woman. UPDATE: See Mr. Hail's comment below. He knows a lot more about this "gentleman". He would go with "narcissistic cult leader".
*** We should not forget James Fields. He received a ridiculous 400 years + life (how's that work?) sentence, for what was manslaughter at worst case. An average American charged with that would have gotten a handful of years max. That is, if it WERE manslaughter, rather than what I think in this case, a panicked man escaping attack whose muscle car collided with a roley-poley.
Comments (4)
Randy Meisner takes it to the limit
Posted On: Saturday - July 29th 2023 7:37AM MST
In Topics: Music
R.I.P. - Eagles bass player, backing vocalist and #3 lead vocalist Randy Meisner died a couple of days back at 77 y/o. He played with the band for the first 5 of the 6 albums during the time I think of as The Eagles' era.* That is during the 4 albums that comprise the best of the country rock band (leaning towrd the rock sound after Don Felder joined for On the Border, and then the blockbuster rock Hotel California album. Tim Schmidt filled his place for The Long Run album and also sang. I like Randy Meisner's vocals better.
Take it to the Limit was a #4 hit song that Randy Meisner co-wrote and sang lead on from the band's 4th album, One of These Nights, in 1975. It's still a great song to me, though it used to get played a lot. I'd rather feature a more obscure song written and sang by Mr. Meisner. On one of the best concept albums of all time, the concept being that of the old Wild West, Desperado, there's his song called Certain Kind of Fool.
It takes a certain kind of fool who likes to hear the sound of his own name.
(I wanted the Desperado cover here, but YT didn't oblige me.)
It wasn't for the money, at least it didn't start that way ... It wasn't for the runnin', but now he's runnin' every day ...
I was still catching up with music albums, a while after the initial demise of The Eagles in 1980. Because I liked the sound so much, I bought one of 3 solo albums Randy Meisner made. This was self-titled, but so was the 3rd of the 3 too. Whaaa?! Anyway, this is the 1st one. I haven't played it in 25 years probably, so when I looked at the song titles on the wiki page, the only 3 songs I recall at all are Take it to the Limit (his solo version) and 2 famous old cover songs.
Randy Meisner wrote some good music and had a good sound. He didn't ever get back with the Eagles.
Thanks for reading and commenting this week, Peakers. The posts on the burner have more on the Climate Calamity™, rebranded yet again, depopulation (crisis or not a crisis?), a spot of Kung Flu PanicFest detritus, something on taxes and something else on those who make bank on them, artifical stupidity of the exercise machines - you thought we were done with all that? Think again ;-} - and various other forms of stupidity. We'll get to at least some of this next week. Have a good weekend, all!
* I know, hell froze over, and they got back together and still play - Randy Meisner has not been with them during that frozen over era, AFAIK, as the replacement bass player, Tim Schmidt was. Glen Frey has passed anyway.
Comments (5)
The Significant Others of the Founders
Posted On: Friday - July 28th 2023 8:57AM MST
In Topics: Humor Political Correctness Female Stupidity Morning Constitutional
The above picture, allegedly painted by one Barry Faulkner, shows the signers and signing of the US Constitution. Mr. Faulkner was commissioned by the National Archives in the mid-1930s to paint 2 HUGE- 37 1/2 ft long by 14 ft high! - murals of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the signing of the US Constitution - for the US Capitol. (More about them here. I've not seen these. I have not planned to ever get to the FS again, but if I were to, I want to see these.)
One thing though, that you may notice in the painting above ... John Derbyshire did, and wrote Feminizing History: Classical Murals Of The Founders With Added Ladies the other day. I don't recall learning in school that there were SOF's - that'd be Significant Others of the Founders - there in Philadelphia that fine day in September of 1787. I suppose I could have forgotten...
Apparently, history revision is the way to go now, I mean, we got Photoshop, after all. Women SHOULD HAVE been there that day, if we'd been a society of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as we are now, so put 'em in. This is as sold at the National Archives store, per Mr. Derbyshire. Getting up to the 37 1/2 by 14 ft murals in the Capitol with, errr, Photoshop?, no, paint, airbrushes, and all that old-timey stuff, well up there on the scaffold, that there's man's work.
I had to modify this modified painting myself due to Peak Stupidity's usual 500 pixel width limit (and still make it reasonable to make out), so I'm missing 3 guys to the (viewer's) left of South Carolina's John Rutledge. That'd be Virginia's John Randolph, Massachusetts' Nathaniel Gorham, and Delaware's John Dickenson. To the right, we just cut off half of Delaware's George Read.*
Who are these Constitution Chicks? I'd say 3 of them are fairly attractive, with 2 being pretty young and busty. Well, Martha Washington seemed to have gained some social status that day. I guess that's John Rutledge's wife too on the left. The one in the gold dress is in between Connecticut's Oliver Elseworth and S. Carolina's Charles Pinkney. I don't know what her deal is, Founder Services? The hottie on the right in the purple halter top with bare midriff showing - wait, I zoomed in, just my imagination runnin' away with me - she's by herself for the photo op, with New York's Alexander Hamilton having his back to her.
I don't know, it might have been a good thing, having the women there. When you're hashing out the last little significant details of a Constitutional Republic, you can really work up an appetite by tea time. One might look forward to some apple pie, fricassees, boiled dumplings (Quaker food, but when in Philly, and all...), probably not hot dogs, but roasted duck, and all of it washed down with some of that non-pasteurized Sam Adams beer.** Tea was probably out of the question, much of it likely pretty moldy after having lain at the bottom of Boston Harbor for 15 years.
On the other hand, that spousal support could have its drawbacks. Back to Alexander Hamilton, he was one the 3 main authors of the document (along with James Madison and John Jay). His wife Eliza could have been there for moral support, as he argued against those there who were more worried about the powers that were to be relinquished to a national government. Just because Mrs. Hamilton is not in THIS painting doesn't mean she can't be in the next one, right there laying down the law to her spouse.
"Look Alex, how long have we spent here in Philadelphia for your little pet project, what do you call it, 'Federalism with Authoritarian characteristics'? You left our 5 children back in New York with the sitter. It's been all summer now that I've had to spend all day being nice to these... politicians! I've got nothing new to wear either. I can't even pose for the next National Archives painting. I'm wearing the same outfit as Martha Washington! Is this thing even gonna make us any money?! End it. Just sign what they got, and let's go home!"
Maybe it wouldn't have been such a good idea. In fact, one wonders who put a bug up in someone's rear-end about the "General Welfare" clause ...
* We've had a thing against Delaware for the last couple of years, for some odd reason ...
** Sam Adams wasn't there that day though. He was not a signer at the convention, and he wasn't enamored with the document, reluctantly signing the ratification for Massachusetts. Likewise, John Hancock reluctantly signed. Mr. Hancock's signature had become part of the language now, but that was from his big signature on the Declaration of Independence, which Mr. Adams signed too.
Comments (10)
More on Alleged Mike Pence Stupidity
Posted On: Thursday - July 27th 2023 4:45PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Media Stupidity
Based on a seemingly tone-deaf or plain stupid answer he gave to Tucker Carlson in an interview recently, Peak Stupidity alleged The stupidity of Mike Pence. In the fine conversation underneath, Mr. Hail had another explanation for this alleged stupidity than what Mr. Anon (in Unz Review comments) and I had thought initially.
Please read that previous post, if you want to understand this one, although this will be repetitive of some of the comments thereunder. I'll just start with the appropriate comment from Mr. Hail, as he explains the premise in it:
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-- The meaning of "Not My Concern" --
"Tucker asked Mike Pence, "Where's the concern for the United States in that?" Mike Pence: "That's not my concern."
Sure there's more to this...."
This is my interpretation of the "Not my concern" line:
Tucker was doing a political-polemic-essay interlude of his own, starting at 24:35, using the same tone and moral-outrage style he used to effect on his now-eliminated TV show. This kind of interlude is normally frowned upon for a political panel or debate moderator, even if it seems to inevitably happen these days, and the audience does kind of expect it from Tucker, as would the guests (like Pence).
Tucker's original question was (delivered 25:07-15) was: "Your concern is that the Ukrainians...don't have enough tanks?"
At the point this question gets asked, following its forty-second wind-up from Tucker in polemical-mode, you can see and hear that Pence has a response formulated. But Tucker won't be quiet and let the question hang. Pence is too polite to cut in and interrupt a person speaking. Tucker continues and redirects to a different question. When Pence speaks, he delivers the line he had formulated earlier in response to "That (i.e., tanks for Ukrainians) is NOT my concern." It makes 100%-normal sense in that context.
The notion that someone like Pence would say: "Oh, the welfare of the USA and its loser-people whose lives are getting worse, that is not my concern; I mainly only care about military-deliveries Holy Ukraine" -- this enters the realm of the absurd, or satire; as if a man running for U.S. president would ever say that. The anti-Pence people will claim it was a freudian slip, of course, but it's much-more classifiable as a grammatical slip while being off-balance from a hostile moderator.
The "Not My Concern" controversy reminds me a little of the "Rapists" line from Dernald Jay Blumpf in June 2015. As John Derbyshire has pointed out, Blompf was just stumbling around his words but he clearly meant "They're not sending their best; they're sending their rapists..." But because of the way it came out, the media all quoted it as "They're rapists," i.e., someone who has wide business interests and decades of fame would just out-of-nowhere declare all 60 million Mexican men are rapists ("they're rapists") instead of the actual point he was making about migrants up from Mexico are often laced with bad people ("they're sending their rapists"). Derbyshire declared that this the most momentous misinterpreted "their/they're" mix-up of the 2010s.
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That makes sense. My reply was:
"What was (Mike Pence's) mind doing that whole damn time Tucker was talking? Was he not listening and just simply waiting for Tucker to finish to give that quick answer? That seems kind of ... stupid, in another sense anyway. Is he a robot? Even, I coulda' done better. (I do have plenty of time here to think about it, granted!)"
Mr. Hail replied to explain this behavior, as follows:
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I am reminded of the 2016 R-nomination campaign when Marco Rubio, having been coached on how to release talking-points, repeatedly ignored pointed questions with answers that he had rehearsed. This became obvious when too many nuanced questions were blasted at him and he didn't answer the question. The name "Rubiobot" or "Rubio Robot" began to be heard by pro-Trump trolls (like Ricky Vaughan, a super-troll of the era who retweeted me more than once; Ricky Vaughan is on trial in 2023 by order of Attorney General Garfinkel for a joke about voting by text-message if you are a Democrat).
I don't know that the Rubio-2015/16 case applies directly in the "Not My Concern" mini-controversy of 2023, here. But the general phenomenon of so-called "talking points" is a disservice to political debate. It also seems to have been unstoppable. Everyone does "talking points" now. Even Trump has his own version of them, and his rally material is always the same as he only seldom innovates any real freshened-up talking-points.
It used to be that politicians or other speakers would speak on a specific theme, like well-crafted essays delivered with varying levels of passion in front of audiences, rather than a stripped-down, bullet-pointed "talking points" version. This is a lot like the style of journalism promoted by "Axios," an ideology that says almost all writing should consist of bullet-points without details or elaboration or flair or personalized touch or Peak-Stupidity-style interesting-'asides.'
Some say the use of "talking points" as we know it (to redirect away from actual questions) only began in the 1990s. I don't know how to evaluate that claim.
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OK, well you can't call this a post, as it's nothing but a rehash of the Peak Stupidity comment threads. However, this needed to be said, for the record. Now, as far as an apology, I mean to Mike Pence, well, this - gonna go to the comments again - from Mr. Anon - is pretty much all we got here:
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You could sort of tell from Pence's aspect that he wasn't paying too much attention to what Tucker was saying during his long digression, but rather was formulating his reply - probably to the first question, as you said.
So, perhaps I was unduly harsh on Pence.
He's still a boring cuck though and I still wouldn't vote for him.
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Comments (16)
Depressing weather forecasts
Posted On: Wednesday - July 26th 2023 4:28PM MST
In Topics: Internets Music Websites Curmudgeonry Science
The color of the sky is anything but coal gray, as it was for the 10,000 Maniacs in some music for the depressed*. Hot isn't depressing, Thunderstorms aren't depressing. No, what's depressing is that the predictive ability of weather forecasts seems to be getting worse lately.
Who's actually doing the forecasting that the iCrap devices use for their built-in weather apps? You may recall that Peak Stupidity bemoaned the loss of the site Dark Sky as it got merged with the app borg, in DarkSky goes Dark. After that I was using WeatherBug, and I received other suggestions here about sites. I've since "migrated" to the app out of convenience, which is the problem. Anyway, Wiki says "From iOS 8 to iOS 15, The Weather Channel was used as the app's weather data source. Since iOS 16, Apple has used their own internal forecast data.". I guess Storm Stories and Aviation Disasters aren't the weather anyway, as TWC morphed a few times.
So Apple is using their internal forecast data. Who do they have working in that department? Is that where they put the AA/Woke hires to keep them from fucking up the software? I mean, a few weeks back we did a lot of watering in two different places, as the phone said it was not going to rain until the weekend at the earliest. This was on a Tuesday. It rained like hell Tuesday night, and it rained like hell on Wednesday night. We could have saved on the water bills, but more importantly, on our time.
I know, I know, it didn't rain in Cupertino, California, the headquarters of Apple. It never rains in California, but apps, don't they warn ya', it poured (where we are), man it poured! And yes, I had a window up for OUR town, which is not, for you gleeful doxxers reading this post, Rockville, Maryland either. (Though feel free to assume so, but I'd advise you to not go back and waste another year.)
I do get that chance of rain given in percent means just that, but there was NO rain forecast. I remember Steve Sailer giving lots of credit to the weathermen and their computers a year or two ago for forecasting the time of the start/end of rainfall within 15 minutes. Sure, programs that interpret the progress of radar returns are one thing. I could argue this stuff in another post. However, while searching for Mr. Sailer's post on that, I ran into one from 11 years ago, "the Weather Man Is Not a Moron", in which he wrote "The forecast on the evening news is much more accurate than when I was a boy." That's because there IS no evening news.
OK, no, but there are apps now. Aviation weather has gotten better due to the short termedness of it. The general longer-term weather outlooks I've been looking at on the build-in iCrap app seem to have gotten worse. I've never trusted any predictions out past 4 days, as they ridiculously come out with 10-day forecasts, but I don't trust this app now. Incompetence has even infiltrated Meteorology. If I'm gonna get a bogus forecast, at least I want it to come from Flavia, even if it is for a country on a different continent a decade ago.
* Off that "Alternative Rock" band's excellent album In My Tribe. Holy moley, that's the "new stuff", but it was 36 years ago! (I first heard the alternative rock about 5 years later - sort of a late adopter.)
That post, BTW, has another great song, about Porcelina of the Vast Oceans - Smashing Pumpkins rocked! Was it "The Smashing Pumpkins", as in the adjective "smashing" or "Smashing Pumkins", with "smashing" as a verb?
Comments (18)
Cry the DeConstructed Country - Part 8: As Falls S. Africa...
Posted On: Tuesday - July 25th 2023 5:39PM MST
In Topics: The Future Race/Genetics World Political Stupidity
... so falls America?*
(Continued from Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6. and Part 7)
This should be the last post in this serious with the weird title. (In case it makes NO sense, I was playing off the set-in-S. Africa movie title Cry, the Beloved Country. I haven't seen this one, but perhaps I should. I linked to the original 1951 movie, but there was a remake release in '95.) I will link again to the article SOUTH AFRICA AT WAR WITH ITSELF, written by Michael Witkin, that instigated this series of posts. That article does a good job describing for us how much S. Africa has descended into ruin, first gradually, now suddenly.
Could this sort of thing happen to the good old U.S. of A? No, I mean it couldn't have to the "good" and "old" U.S. of A, but could it to this country we inhabit now? I've seen that speculation of a bleak future, with increasing Black! control of government and society out of commenters on various virtual venues. I've dismissed the idea as many have, for the same reasons. "We aren't a small minority of the population, as South African Whites are."** "We gave the Black! people their freedom 160 years ago and have given them special benefits and "rights" above and beyond for half a century. They shouldn't have any grudges against us now." "We're a Democracy! OK, fine, Constitutional Republic, whatever. This is a whole different deal."
Yes, the numbers are different. S. Africa has a decreasing and always fairly small, minority of Whites, the mixed race people called "coloured" and plenty of •Indians. Here, if not a majority anymore, we have lots of White people in America running the show still. Then, there are a ton of Hispanic residents, not fans of black*** leadership or black residents period by any means, and then there are other big groups in addition - Orientals, our own •Indians, etc. The top-down Regime-pushed program of black worship is not held by most of the population. It's strongest in White people, sad to say, but then, that's only seriously the case with a minority of them. (I mean there, those actually believing the bullshit.)
Let me go back to the above "Yes, the numbers are different." Fertility rates of most groups (I don't know about the Moslems) are fairly low, we keep hearing. However, regarding blacks in America, the Globalists are making it up in volume... in volume of black immigrants direct from the Caribbean and Africa that is. Mark my words, for the ones the census counts - I'm sure there are many illegal ones, who may or may not be counted - you will see some LARGE numbers of BIA or BIC black Americans next census, you know, to keep the pressure on. I've noted before that Big Biz LUVS LUVS LUVS these people for employees. The companies can meet their quotas while getting generally harder working and smarter people. However, big numbers, tribalism and genes trump assimilation, any day of the week, I'm sorry to say.
That said, also, the ruination that S. Africa has seen is not JUST due to the overwhelming numbers, that is, after they succumbed to Communist and other World political pressure (see Part 5) to let go of their control of their country. As I mentioned, from that original Witkin article, even the current 8% of the population White people there are discriminated against in employment by Affirmative Action. Yes, still! In case you don't recall Part 3, "The intake of white [surgery and medical] students is capped at 2%." The recent SCROTUS decision has many Americans hopeful, but I don't see that alone as enough to push back against the AA-on-steroids that is just one part of Wokeness, as discussed in our post Demographics to DIE
That post mentioned the various other demographics too that have been degrading society from its former state of White-run competence. The problem is simple. Without a majority of White men in the workplace, civic groups, government****, etc, much of the competence and civility we used to see around us in society will be gone.
Well sure, the Orientals can keep things running, as we see in China, albeit while politically letting it go all to hell, and the •Indians can "code" and stuff too, as they close off the jobs that White men could be doing in their own country to White men, as soon as they make inroads. None of this is good for the White man, of course, but will American go to ruin in the way of South Africa? We probably won't need to care at that point, as it won't be our country to worry about.
Assuming we still want to, can Americans stop a ruinous slide into 3rd World incompetence and corruption resembling South Africa? Yes, but it's going to take some backbone. That's really the only thing necessary. People must refuse to participate in the wokeness. The employment aspect of it, the real worry, is being pushed hard by the Regime, but do Big Biz outfits really want to go to the mattresses and to ruin with all this? Do they want electrical power to be available only for small spurts daily due to graft of funds and theft of wire? (Rather than the railroads, as in S. Africa) do they really want bridges to crumble and roads to be closed, impeding the competent and incompetent alike from showing up to work regularly. I don't think so.
People are going to have to stand up, show a little courage, and speak up against the stupidity of letting the Wokeness keep pushing us toward that tipping point... from gradually to suddenly. There's another post I want to write. That's the end of this series. Look at what's happening in South Africa right now, and learn something, Americans. Good luck to all of us.
* Totally off the subject here, but one of the best album titles I've known is jazz musician Pat Metheny's As Falls Wichita, so Falls Wichita Falls. But, I like Geography... and some jazz.
** I don't know if the White Boers were ever a majority of the population of that vast land, but, as per Post 1, the Bantu black population mostly came AFTER the Boers had been there for a while. (Indigenously?) The black people there now came to live in that magic dirt. Somehow, the magic wasn't there in the dirt before the Boer and the English.
*** I'll stop with the Black! bit, oops, here. If readers want it back, it can come back upon request.
**** As I've written before, incompetence in government is not at a bad thing, the way the Potomac Regime has been rolling... trying to roll us, that is.
Comments (11)
21st Century digits
Posted On: Saturday - July 22nd 2023 10:31PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music Curmudgeonry
Look. We're almost 1/4 of the way through the 21st Century. I know. We aren't still writing in COBOL to small databases in which every byte matters. We're not storing programs off our "Trash-80's" on cassette tapes. We've got lots of room for data including 4-digit years. That's not the problem. The problem is that everyone is still saying the "Twenty..." or even "Two thousand and..." before the years in this century they talk about. It's a waste of time, and time is precious. More importantly, it sounds dorkey, and I'm getting tired of it.
A friend mentioned an even worse trend from 5 years ago or so, in which people would say "Two nineteen" for 2019, for example. Then I started noticing it. It was just plain weird. There's no call for that.
Now, Peak Stupidity will write "19" in front of years until it's clear which century we mean. We've gone to using just 2 digits for years in the 21st Century, unless there could be confusion.
Did people in the 1920's still say "Nineteen..." in front of the 20th Century years previous? I doubt it. Let's all go to 2 digits, as we've wasted enough time already with this... yeah, the post too! Oh, and "turn of the century doesn't mean 1900 or 1901 anymore either.
I got that off my chest finally, after 23 years. We don't have a "Pet Peeve" topic key - this goes under "Curmudgeonry", but also music, because there's the Doors song:
The Doors recorded their debut, self-titled album in '66, errrr 1966. This cut, 20th Century Fox is one of the 11 songs on it, none of which I would call a "weak cut". This one isn't long enough for all of the hypnotizing keyboards by Ray Manzarak and guitar solos that take you places by Robby Krieger. As I write, the autoplay function went to Soul Kitchen and then Back Door Man - "You men eat your dinner, eat your pork and beans. I eat more chicken any man ever seen." WTF?! Doesn't matter. These guys are mesmerizing - gonna have to to embed more Doors.
Thanks for reading and commenting this week, Peakers. Have an enjoyable Sunday!
Comments (10)
Demise of the American City - Hartford, CT: Part 2 - Explanations
Posted On: Saturday - July 22nd 2023 10:40AM MST
In Topics: Americans The Future
Part 1 on this topic, written yesterday, had observations only. The explanations are myriad and arguable as to significance, but the demise of American cities IS a thing, one we can all observe if we have memories of only a decade or two back.
Let's go back more than that, to before my memories of the world, to the flight from cities to suburbs. Of course, the automobile and the interstate highway system (meant for yes, inter-state but spurs and loops ended up serving city/suburb travel as much as interstate travel) made it easier for American to have their own "spreads", even if only 1/2 an acre. One fact in this flight I did not understand myself until fairly recently, from my reading of certain non-Narrative-based (or just "based") blogs, is the racial aspect. Going back 1/2 a century it was mostly White flight, not everybody. The reasons for this are likely known to the Peak Stupidity crowd, so I won't belabor the point of getting the hell away from Black! violence and theft.
I can still remember a department store in the downtown of a medium-sized city I know well. It was there in the early 1980s, but, as I recall, just closing down. Yeah, the malls drew the shoppers - think Breakfast at Tiffany's (the movie, not the song) - away from the city, but that seems like a chicken/egg question. Were the malls successful because people already lived outside the cities and needed to drive to shop anyway? Or, were they built because the inner city shopping experience became "not so great" due to the same factor that drove White residents away.
Well, that's the long past. Because medium-sized cities had* government offices one might need to go to, the banks, etc. there was a reason to occasionally go downtown. Then too, there were the office workers. They went to lunch at various establishments near them downtown and had to do errands too. So, downtown was kind of fun - except for parking, about which I could write a book of humorous anecdotes! - during the daytime. At night, unless you were a partying university student, you got the hell out. It got dark and quiet, way too quiet.
Then what? I was pretty late in noticing, so I imagine the trend of lots of housing being built in America's inner cities was happening 5 years or more before I noticed it ~ 2 decades ago. You all have seen the types of buildings. (I didn't see any of this in Hartford that day, but I didn't get around all of downtown.) Those pricey 5 story condo buildings with their coffee shops in the loft-style lobby are not my style, but I don't begrudge the young people for wanting to leave those Sub-divisions for the Bright Lights, Big City** Before these residences, I'd seen huge old brick mill buildings get converted into apartments too. Either way, gentrification, the ousting of ghetto dwellers via razing of old dwellings and the construction of these newer buildings (also the pastel row-house thing), made these parts of the cities safer to live in over a 30 year span or so.
That sounded great then. You can live right there downtown near your job where all the conveniences are and party at night with other young people. They've got the blocked off walk streets for craft beer festivals, and other stuff, which I'll mention at the end...
That one block section, with that fancy clothing store at one corner, was blocked to cars.
The thing is though, as of late, as there are more places to live in them. the cities themselves are no longer all they've been cracked up to be.
I've got to back up here. A factor making cities less pleasant is the slow but sure increase in the number of street people, homeless and/or bums. There've always been the down-on-their-luck, the Wharf Rats, as described nicely by the Grateful Dead (Robert Hunter, to be fair). The situation nowadays involves more than a few established bums and grifters. A factor in the demise of the cities has been the demise of the Funny Farm. See Peak Stupidity on Outsourcing of the Funny Farms and All flew out of the Cuckoo's Nest - an Unforced Error? ***
There's a political aspect to this, and, as usual, the cities of the West coast more than tolerate the mess, and even have encouraged it. The good weather also makes the cities there a haven for the homeless. (Were I homeless, I'd choose San Diego, but I don't know if they'd have ME.) The situation is worse almost everywhere though.
That's a long-term deterioration that could be dealt with. Another is the more recent politically-caused crime wave, motivated by the "Summer of George". This goes back closer to 10 years though, and it's gotten to the point where Black! city dwellers can get away with anything, making things more miserable for everybody. Steve Sailer is all over this, so I don't need to expound much.
All of that damage to American cities might be overcome with political will, of which there is none. The future keeps coming though, and it's the internet that has been part of what could be the permanent demise. The Kung Flu PanicFest consisted of experiments in Totalitarianism, for the most part, but along with those were the experiments in a UBI (Univeral Basic Income)****, which didn't go well at all and also remote work via the internet.
Lots of that white-collar work can be done from home. Is there a reason for big office buildings at all anymore? In the comments under the previous post, Mr. Blanc mentioned that management may not always like this idea. The concept of "hours worked" would have to be changed in the minds of managers to "work done". That's not easy for them, as some work has never actually involved any perceived "work done". Some employees are up to the task of self-motivation and suppression of distractions, and some aren't.
A family member who is conservative in all ways (not a fan of change) did not relish the idea when he got sent home to work like everyone else there during the PanicFest. He's gotten used to it well though, was told to stay away longer than most others due to his successful resistance to the vax mandate, but now got told he HAS to come in (on Tuesdays by one manager, Wednesday by another, so lets call it Tuesdays and Wednesdays). This place is not in downtown however. I'm not sure what will be their plan in the long run.
Remote work saves a LOT of money for rent and other overhead for businesses. True, there are plenty of white-collar jobs that must be done in an office somewhere that involve interfacing with reality. Where it can work I think remote work will continue, if not expand even.
If people aren't doing much working in offices downtown, will they still live there, in those converted former office buildings? I suppose one could work remotely from his condo in downtown too. You get out and about, if it's safe, hang out with other young people for lunch and dinner and the craft beer festival on that walk-street right about the corner... she lives on Pride Street ... lingers long on Pride Street... , got The Doors in my head...
Yeah, that's not so family friendly, as much as they think it is or WISH it would be.
The purpose of cities used to be serious industry a half-century ago, maybe more, but since then and before the internet allowed the type of interactions it does, it was to support company headquarters, government offices big entertainment venues, etc. Can a city be just a place for dense living with no other purpose? That would have been more possible if it hadn't been for the large increase in diversity and the experimentation with all the lefty weirdness that has made the street more miserable. Additionally, all this stupidity costs money. That may have been OK when tax money still poured into city coffers from the office towers. Can the residents alone support the stupidity that they must also live with? Family formation looks like a no-go item in these downtowns, affordable or otherwise. Better get away from the Bright Lights/Big City and back to those Subdivisions. Be cool or be cast out.
Cities have been around since Homo Sapiens began farming 100 centuries ago. Is their time over with? I only write about America here, but that's the way things are headed right now. I could be wrong.
PS: I didn't mention the factor of big universities in the cities. UConn has a small campus in West Hartford and a school of business in downtown, but the big campus is in Storrs, 22 miles to the east, a long way in Connecticut! There's an ~5,000 student Univ. of Hartford, but it's not a college town. Big university campuses can add life and money to a city. This is not so sustainable a business model either, as it's just based on more tax money. (No, not the State funds, but the school loan money coming from the taxpayers, the way it looks ...)
* Even this is going away. Water Department, power company, etc, offices have moved out of downtown, at least a little ways.
** I've always been a big Michael J. Fox fan. His sister Mallory was not too bad either!
*** In a rare style of Peak Stupidity brain fart, I'd written the 1st of those post 4 years before the 2nd one, and I'd totally forgotten by the 2nd. That's happened a few times over the 2,670 posts written.
**** Whatever happened to Andrew Yang, anyway?
Comments (16)
Demise of the American City - Hartford, CT: Part 1 - Observations
Posted On: Friday - July 21st 2023 7:25AM MST
In Topics: Americans The Future
The small portion of a Tucker Carlson interview of Mike Pence that we discussed in our most recent post (Wednesday) included Tucker Carlson's mention of the sorry state of America's cities. Not to repeat the discussion there, but, yes, Pence was right if his point was simply that the job of the President of the US does not include taking care of American cities. OTOH, it doesn't include sending weapons of war to foreign countries fighting other foreign countries on which the US Congress had not voted to declare war either!
I was on the side of President Gerald Ford when he, per the New York Daily New's paraphrase, told then-broke New York City to drop dead in 1975. Were a (God forbid!) President Mike Pence to tell Hartford, Connecticut or any other city in America begging for US taxpayer dollars the same thing, I'd gain a little respect for him.
Tucker Carlson was right in his more basic point that this country is going downhill fast (so it's ludicrous to send billions of $ to the Ukraine). He's right about American cities.
OK, it's great we can say "I told you so" about the left-coast cities of San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, or the Big One, NYC, as their Socialist and Black!-worship policies have come back to bite them in their asses. It's every American city I've been to that is falling fast though. Perhaps there are some trends based on geography, and definitely some political factors, but this goes beyond all that. The world is changing. The demise of the city may be an inherent and important part of the transition into the future.
Due to business reasons, we were in Hartford, Connecticut, and I had a few hours to get out and about. This is not some unique place - it's just an old established American city.
Hartford has been the sole* capital of the State of Connecticut since 1875. It's known as the "Insurance Capital of the World". Hartford was the richest city in the country for a few decades after the War Between the States, but wiki says it's the poorest now. Does that make this post an act of cherry-picking? No, the Cherry Capital is Traverse City, Michigan. OK, seriously, no, because, as you'll see this post is about an outwardly normal looking city, and the observations I'll make here are the same as I could in other cities of the same size that I've been to recently. I just took pictures this time.
I'll make observations only, in this post. I'm sure the PS reader will have plenty of thoughts on the reasons behind these observations, but I'll hold those thoughts of mine until Part 2 tomorrow.
Note in the picture above that the buildings and the lighting look modern enough. The downtown doesn't look run-down at a first and far-enough off glance. This scene is from nearby the other big buildings.
There are SOME people downtown, as this parking lot indicates - this wasn't the peak (trough, really) of the PanicFest - it was a few weeks ago. Where are these particular people, working in some of the offices? With major insurance companies based here and the many State offices, you'd think office work would be a big thing here. Things are changing though ...
Office workers have to eat lunch sometime (around noon, I guess), and they have to take care of errands. That's supposed to be one of the benefits of being in the city - convenience. There were not many people out and about, and hardly any people dressed in office attire.
I am used to medium sized American cities being virtually ghost towns after office hours, due to the pervasive Black! influence in the inner cities. However, I've seen positive changes over the last 2 decades on that score as more people LIVE, rather than just work, in the downtowns. You all know what those standard-issue condo buildings look like - all the same design, high rent, but you've got that coffee shop on the ground floor and maybe a couple of pool tables...
That gentrification (pricing out the ghetto dwellers) has been a good thing for cites , but things are changing again though...
A significant portion of the few people walking around that day in Hartford were bums. The smell of urine was all over, except when the smell of skunkweed overpowered it... a good thing... barely. I came upon this fairly high office tower that is now vacant.
A big sign on the glass in front says that this place is up for residential rental. There's a lot of conversion of office space to living space now. You don't get your balconies and that, but it's all location, location, location, right? That is, if this still IS a good location.
There was me, a couple of bums, and some other guy walking by, that's all, over the course of a few minutes, pretty dead for The Big City. Yeah, "Bright Lights, Big City", we can go out to the bars, wait, what bars? Me, well, I went into a fast food joint. Service was better than it looked like it WOULD be, but that's because I was one of only 2 customers. The place smelled bad and was almost entirely Black! What else does downtown Hartford have for "amenities"?
There is still this fancy clothing store? Isn't that a thing in the big city, shopping, for the nice shapely city women who you may meet at the office and those bars, right?
I looked inside, and there was nobody but a salesman or two in the place. I admit, Sears (as I forgot to mention in that old blue jeans story), formerly, and now Target are where I buy clothes in person. Still, there are people who like these sort of places. I'm thinking Elaine in Seinfeld, but actual real people too.
What is the point of being in these cities now? What does the future hold for them? That discussion will be in the next post (or in comments here - that would be fine).
* Prior to that, there were dual capitals of Connecticut, Hartford and New Haven.
Comments (18)
The stupidity of Mike Pence
Posted On: Wednesday - July 19th 2023 6:56PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 The Russians Pundits The Neocons
This guy is one of the 2nd-tier GOP '24 election candidates, per E.H. Hail here. After learning a bit more than I'd already known about his fake anti-invasion stance, Peak Stupidity dubbed him just Another dumb Trump hire.
The Tucker Carlson video interview of Mr. Pence below that you may want to watch confirms this, especially early on. How could Mike Pence, a guy who was very much aware, associated with, and nearby, the events of January 6th '21 spout the media "insurrection" "violence against the cops", BS narrative? This is something that makes me think he is either an idiot who actually believes the Lyin' Press over his own lying eyes, or a big liar himself. He's a scumbag either way. Personal anecdotes that I've read of him being a good neighbor are one thing, but as a politician, ostensibly on the side of Americans, no, he's scumbag.
But that part is not what the post is about. Mr. Anon, Peak Stupidity and Unz Review commenter, first showed us a small part of this video interview in comments on the latter site. It showed Pence making a seemingly egregious "screw Americans, I'm a Neocon" style statement that wonks would call "tone deaf". We'll put the start/end tags in to highlight just this part, but one can easily watch the whole 34 minutes here too.
I was about to write a post on this one part of Mike Pence stupidity, but Mr. Anon's subsequent analysis of it was pretty much what I was going to write.
Actually, I'll start just a little bit early, to highlight here the Neocon attitude - a real criticism of Bai Dien for not providing enough money and weapons for the war. Unbelievable!
After talking about the disaster areas that are American cities and showing his incredulity about Pence's concern about MOAR TANKS, Tucker asked Mike Pence, "Where's the concern for the United States in that?" Mike Pence: "That's not my concern."
Sure there's more to this, but at the end of my specified duration, well, I don't want to sound like an off-the-boat immigrant here, but, Mr. Pence, where is this Free World of which you speak?
Regarding Mike Pence's longer reply, here's Mr. Anon's comment in its entirety, the blockquote at the beginning being part of a comment by Res (a very astute commenter) who Mr. Anon is replying to:
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The full quote is not nearly as bad (short version: “we can do both”) and is less than two minutes of video, but what was he thinking when he led with that? Adept backtracking or just a malapropism?I think the “We can do both.” was him recognizing that he had just made an awful blunder. Tucker recited a laundry list of all the ills that now beset American cities and asked Pence, in effect, “What about America.” And Pence replied “Not my concern.” Now, Pence might have been speaking in a strictly federalist sense; as the President he is not responsible for local matters. And of course he’d be right to think so. He isn’t, and he shouldn’t be. But while those problems might not be his responsibility, you would think, that as President, they would be his concern.
But even then, the “We can do both” is nonsense. We can’t do both. Pence is a boomer-con who is stuck in the 1980s, where it’s morning in America again, and the US is a “Shining City on a Hill”. Boomer-cons, and their doppelgangers on the other side of the aisle, the neo-liberal boomer-libs, still think of America as that late 20th century America they grew up in. They think that America is an inexhaustible source of money and good-will that can solve all the World’s problems. What the World needs is just a good strong dose of “Murica!”
But we can no longer “Pay any price, bear any burden” if indeed we ever could (fat lot of good that price paying and burden bearing did us in the 1960s, when Kennedy uttered those words). We’re done for. America is a dying empire. And there is only one thing that dying empires do. They die.>
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Thank you very much, Mr. Anon. Those are my thoughts exactly. I'll add this: I wonder how much of a Federalist Pence is anyway, but he sure could have made that clearer. Either way, his adamancy regarding the Ukraine had me thinking it’s 1 of 2 things:
1) This guy is stupid as a post, as he really thinks Russia is our existential enemy, and, as it were the Cold War era, we must be the adults and not let the defense of the Free World get derailed by young idealists.
2) He’s not stupid, but he’s under serious pressure – “say what ever else you want, but support for the Ukraine is non-negotiable, if you want to get anywhere with our money..” (Well he wasn’t going anywhere anyway.)
That's the same question of extreme stupidity vs. lying that I had on Pence's take on J6. Sorry, I wouldn't vote for this guy for sewer inspector.
PS: Another reason I had for posting this video is that I have a post coming on America's cities with one personal experience to share.
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