Epic AlGore Climate Calamity™ Rant: Boiling the Oceans with A-Bombs
Posted On: Wednesday - April 5th 2023 7:31PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Globalists Environmental Stupidity Science
It'll take me a while to get sick of this one:
Let's take it from (near) the top:
The accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by six hundred thousand Hiroshima class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the Earth! That's what's boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers [great for innnertubing! .. in a lawnchair, BTW], and creating these rain bombs!No, that's not rain, that's spittle.
The exploding of 600,000 atomic bombs a day sounds like a lot of energy released. As Peak Stupidity has noted along with commenter M (under the previous post) and others, the solution to pollution is dilution. Well, energy is not pollution, but the idea is still that the Earth is BIG, and we are small, even with our atomic bombs.
Let's do the math. The internet says that the world's oceans take up 325 million cubic miles.* That times 5,280 ft/mile cubed gives us 4.78 x 1019 ft3 of water. At 64 lb/ft3 for seawater, we get 3.06 x 1021 lb. I want to go SI now, so that's about 1.4 x 1021 kg of seawater.
Let me take that number from yesterday of the energy released from 600 thousand of those measly old 15 kTon A-bombs. It's 3.8 x 1016 kJ. The assumption here, to be give all credit we possibly can to Mr. Gore, that ALL the energy from these bombs is transferred to, and stays in, the oceans. It'd be better if we detonated those 600,000 A-bombs underwater come to think of it, as in some of that old Cold War era testing. Al Gore would probably want it this way.
The specific heat of water is 4.2 kJ/kg-K ( It varies a tad with chemistry, P, and T, but I'd be happy with just one significant digit for this sort of thing.) ΔT = E/mc gives us a temperature change of 0.0000056 C or 6 1/2 millionths of a degree C daily.
I don't know the average temperature of the oceans, but in Al Gore's favor again, we'll use value on the high side, say 25 C. It's a 75 C rise to get to 100C. That'd take, let's see now ... hmmmm... oh, about 32 thousand years, but remember, that's assuming NO heat transfer to the atmosphere is occurring, an utter impossibility. Wait, but even that wouldn't get the ocean boiling. The energy during all those 32 thousand years of exploding 600,000 A-bombs daily being transferred to the seawater is what's called "sensible heat". That's energy input to raise the temperature of a substance, not to change its phase. The "latent heat" is the latter. For water, this latent heat of vaporization (liquid to gas) is 2,200 kJ/kg. To take the oceans from 100C liquid to 100C vapor (at atm. pressure) would take another 3.1 x 1024 kJ. 1.2 x 10-8 of the ocean would be boiled daily, so there's another 222 thousand years we've got, or about 1/4 million years in all, before the oceans boil. Whewww...
Or, we could stop the economy, so's we wouldn't do that 600 thousand A-bombs worth of energy damage to the Earth each day. I mean, come on, you don't want your great (x 10,000) grandchildren, down from Traverse City to St. Pete, to not be able enjoy a day at the beach, do you? "The water is boiling! There are no hockey games on, they've got Krispy Kreme instead of Duncan Donuts, and I'm sitting here talking to these rednecks about college football at the Early Bird Special gummin' down my creamed corn and drinkin' sweet tea!"
Preacher Gore, we appreciate your enthusiasm for the Religion of Climate Calamity™ so much. However, I don't think we need to worry about the boiling of the oceans right now. The Earth abides... same as it ever was... same as it ever was... same as it ever was!
* This does not include the 3% of the rest of the water on Earth that's not in the oceans. The AlGore didn't mention the Great Lakes, so I believe our readers in Duluth, Chicago, Muskegon, Marquette, Detroit, Buffalo, Rochester, and Traverse City can rest easy at this point.
Comments (34)
Epic AlGore Climate Calamity™ Rant: Heating up the Atmosphere with A-Bombs
Posted On: Tuesday - April 4th 2023 9:50PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Globalists Environmental Stupidity Science
We haven't heard from Climate Calamity™ alarmist Al Gore in years. That's because we make that extra effort not to. This video I came upon, though, was like looking at a slow-motion carbon-neutral train wreck. I couldn't look away. This is from the WEF at Davos, as former Vice President and proto-Greta Al Gore hung out pontificating with the carbon-positive jet-setting Globalists.
I'd like to comment on every stupid thing Mr. Gore said in this rant but there's no time... from what they tell me. The end of the planet is nigh.
Now, I did a a quick look on Wiki for info on Al Gore just to see if he was this drop-out I'd read about. Really, the facts of the bio give not so bad a picture of the man. Of course, he was a silver-spoon politician's son brought up in Washington, FS and placed in the St. Albans School for the rich and pampered. He could have been one of those "Fortunate Sons", but he enlisted in the army and went to Vietnam - as a journalist - in order to avoid the stigma, knowing already he was going to be a politician.
Al Gore did finish his school at Harvard, but had done poorly (C's and/or D's) in his science classes, hated math, and graduated with a degree in... what else?: Government. Per Wiki, "In his senior year, he took a class with oceanographer and global warming theorist Roger Revelle, who sparked Gore's interest in global warming and other environmental issues." How could this one class make the man into the raving, ranting deluded lunatic he is today?
It wasn't like he was in a seminar class with Greta Thunberg. Professor Roger Revelle was a real scientist, a pioneering oceanographer before, through, and after, the WWII years. Dr. Revelle's work in Oceanography had him studying this "Global Warming" THEORY (mind you - they were more honest then) from the standpoint of the oceans, of course. His idea was that the oceans can absorb this CO2 that was being worried about. Eventually, after the increasing saturation of it (remember partial vapor pressure, etc?) the ocean water would absorb CO2 less readily. Yet, Dr. Revelle was called the "Father of the Greenhouse Effect", and seems to have been the Climate Crisis guru that Al Gore needed to back him up for his Earth in the Balance book. Revelle died in '91, just before Al Gore's VP campaign with Bill Clinton.
Gore's alarmism worked for a while, but it wasn't so alarming to me and thinking Americans yet, as the Globalists and Communists had not gotten ahold of it as a weapon to ruin economies with yet. For Al Gore to still show his face in among the ranks of the Climate Calamity™ Crowd really takes a lot of gall at this point, due to his (D in) Science predictions being shown to be, to put it nicely, unsound. HIs most precise one (precision is not accuracy), from his Inconvenient Truth movie of '06 said that within the decade there would be no more snows of Kilimanjaro. No, it still snows there. More broadly, there was a 75% chance (in '06) that within 5 years - by '11, then - that during "some summer months" the polar ice cap would disappear completely. You can't get a good model out of that guy.
Let me discuss the money-rant from the video here though:
The accumulated amount [of CO2] is now trapping as much extra heat [ENERGY, damn you!] as would be released by six hundred thousand Hiroshima class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the Earth!I'm not really sure when this accumulated amount started, but let's go with the statement as is. I looked up the kilo-tonnage* of the "Little Boy" atomic bomb. It was a measly 15 kTon bomb. There are nuclear bombs that release 60 Megatons, 4,000 times as much, via a fusion reaction, as those Hiroshima ones. (Hell, you can't even GET those old fission bombs anymore. ebay might have a few old aftermarket ones, but do you really know if they're gonna work?)
[Cannot find the proper Alt key for spittle - Ed]
Exploding 600,000 old fission bombs of questionable shelf-life every day is a lot of work. Why not explode 150 of those big ones? Exploding 150 of these "Tsar Bombas" each day would be easier, and we could pummel certain blue cities with them daily in the process. Either way, for alarmist Al Gore calculations' sake, the energy released by those 600,000 15 kTon bombs is 3.8 x 1016 kJ.
I was pleased with myself for having calculated the mass of the atmosphere by using the surface pressure (15 lb/in2) times the surface area of the earth (there's a g in there), and its matching within 10% the number I later found on line - ~ 5 x 1018 kg. The simple energy accumulation of "sensible heat" is E = mcΔT, rearranged as ΔT = E/mc**, so I get a temperature increase of 0.0076 C.
I didn't do this just for the fun of it, but to show that this whole comparison is not what Mr. Gore thinks it is. Did he think he was comparing a steady input of energy (the daily bombs) to some rate of energy accumulation in the atmosphere? He says "accumulated amount" referring to CO2 which has supposedly warmed up the Earth a tad to a new equilibrium. I think he means to say those 600,000 Little Boy A-bombs are adding energy to the atmosphere at this daily rate, thinking this means "the Earth", however that control volume is described, will heat up daily. If that's the case, that 0.0075 C/day = 2 3/4 C yearly. Not hardly! Even the most extreme Climate Calamity™ scaremongers don't use that number. We are not adding the accumulated amount of CO2 every day anew, and even if we were (we guys with large-cabin BizJets to take us to places like Davos, that is), there wouldn't be a continuous linear effect.
Assuming this 600,000 daily A-Bombs worth of energy - that 3.8 x 1016kJ/daily - was calculated by someone who knows his ass from a smoking A-bomb crater in the ground, the accumulated CO2 has raised the T of the Earth by 0.0076C. That's not worrisome enough for the Globalists and Communists. Should we be using the Tsar Bombas instead. Right now we have a Climate Gap? I don't really know what to do about that... really... other than... OH. We need money!
I believe ranting Crazy AlGore erroneously means the former, a rise of 2 3/4 C yearly, so that's why he's worried about the oceans coming to a boil. We'll do the boiling oceans calculation tomorrow. This is kinda fun!
* It's a weird measurement unit alright, but it means the amount of TNT exploded that would release the equivalent energy. A kTon "yield" = 4.18 x 109 kJ.
** c is the specific heat. I'm simplifying, as there are 2 variants and I'm just taking it for Nitrogen gas. It doesn't vary much, and it is a nice round 1 kJ/kg-K. (K could be C too, as we're talking temperature differences.)
Comments (7)
The internet from China, circa 2017
Posted On: Monday - April 3rd 2023 10:42AM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites China
Peak Stupidity has strayed from our mission lately, wading through the weeds of geekland. This has involved the recent posts about the growth of various websites and the internet itself (at least the www portion), as per Graphical history of the most visited web sites and It's all page views nowaday. I wrote those 2 to expand on some thoughts in the curmudgeonry post Peak Search Results. No, the internet is not stupid. Is it making people stupid? Yes. So, we're not totally off mission here, and getting back to it.
In the comment thread under the post linked-to above, Mr. Hail brought up a few questions about the access to American (foreign, in general, I guess) websites in China. I can vouch only from 2017 and back a decade, but I will start with a quick discussion of the situation from '07-'09.
It was 3 in the morning in Manchuria, meaning I was wide awake. China is about half a day off from America, time-wise, depending on your time zone and daylight/standard time. The young lady was slumped over the counter asleep. I had to nudge her to get service. Doubting correctly that a White guy would know any Mandarin, the girl held up 2 figures, and we both understood for an hour. Whoa, whoa, wait, it's not THAT kind of story and Peak Stupidity is not THAT kind of site! This was an internet cafe, and she meant 2 元 - equivalent to 30¢*, for an hour on-line.
I could get to any site I wanted to, such as my yahoo mail accounts and my favorite political blogs at the time - The American Spectator, VDare, Gun Owners of America, etc.
This was anonymous too. I'd just handed the girl coins or bills for the 2 . Flash forward only 2 years, and these same places wanted to see an ID, which they took and made a copy of. That means for me, a driver's license that nobody in '09 would know what to to with. For Chinese people, that meant one's National ID Card - motto: Don't leave home without it.
I realized that I've already discussed this to a lesser extent in Dashed high-hopes for China - Part 2. (See also Part 1.) Let me get to Mr. Hail's comment.
The year 2017 was the last time I was in China. The connection on this regular old desktop computer was not great, but I spent time going to my decade-later normal websites. yahoo.com (for email): No problem. gunowners.org: No problem. vdare.com: No problem. unz.com: No problem. google.com to search for peakstupidity.com (but of course!) and write posts (didn't have the commenters then): No problem. youtube.com: Bzzzzzt!! That means embedded videos and all else too. One cannot view youtube videos in China.** This was either before bitchute and rumble or at least before this blogger had heard of them. I would guess they are blocked too.
Actually, I don't remember if any message came to the browser, but the browser window or frame was blank. This was a shame too, as I wanted to share some favorite music of mine with a guy there, while in the country and from back at home. Also, as I noted, he could have read Peak Stupidity, but without the videos, you can't get the point of 1/3 the posts.
Here's my take on the whole deal there. The CCP can control Chinese content from China. It can probably control Chinese content from the rest of the world pretty well. These people, though, even with some real English ploficiency, are not going to understand the snarky humor, and subtle and even overt points that Steve Sailer makes. It's beyond them. Why not block Gun Owners due to "the People don't have the guns.", then? Maybe they figure that most Chinese people can't read English, so it's not worth the trouble to go through all these sites.
Ironically, I've been on occasional hotel lobby computers that had certain pages of Steve Sailer's and other Unz Review writers blocked. It was weird, as one blog post of Sailer's, for example, would be OK, but another not, and I didn't see the point. Someone "called" them in? Yet in China, I could go all over the site. Now, had I posted not so nice remarks about Winnie the Pooh-for-life or the CCP FROM China, who knows?
* It still is, approximately, as the government pegs the Yuan to the Dollar.
** That is, unless it's changed since '17. Maybe the CCP has new censorship software that can handle youtube now..
Comments (11)
It's all page views nowadays
Posted On: Saturday - April 1st 2023 10:25PM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites
C'mon guys! Whaddya' need a refresher course?
In case the reader is wondering, yes, Peak Stupidity will keep using that bit from airplane mechanic Fletch right on through the life if this blog!
Anyway, when listing the various metrics that can be used to rate the popularity of websites in yesterday's post Graphical history of the most visited web site, I neglected to give one other standard metric - that would be "page views", meaning the number of times visitors' browsers requested any of the pages of the site in question. A "visit" could include many page views by the same IP # within a certain time frame.
Commenter Hail had a long interesting listing of some of the things he noticed in the video. One of the caveats I would bring up relating to number of site visits is that that metric is not always a great measure of web site popularity or use when you compare, say, google to yahoo. The latter being what they called a "portal", someone may have gone there, read 4 news stories, then logged in and read his email, then used the search feature to find another site. Later, on google he may have pulled up that front page and did one search. The reading and use of those dozens of yahoo pages comprised one visit, as did the one page on google.
I will answer Mr. Hail's post in the comments tomorrow. For now, we've got to sign off for the week. Thanks for reading and writing in. Those posts to to come that we keep referring to, more on MTG v AOC, that post on (actual) greenhouse heat transfer, the UK PanicFest unrealized story, and others will come eventually. Have a good night!
Comments (23)
The latest Papal Bull from So-Called Pope Francis
Posted On: Saturday - April 1st 2023 7:47PM MST
In Topics: Bible/Religion So-called Pope Francis
(Graphic lifted as is from VDare.)
Peak Stupidity has been blessed to have not read a thing in quite a while about so-called Pope Francis. His name came up again today though in an Allan Wall post on VDare. Of all the writers on the VDare site, Mr. Wall is the one who comes across to me as the most low-keyed. If he sounds pissed, well... A couple of days ago, he posted Vatican Document Repudiates The "Doctrine Of Discovery" Are All Western Hemisphere Nation-States (Including The U.S.) Illegitimate?. He excerpted some writing from the Associated Press:
The Vatican on Thursday [March 30] responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the theories backed by 15th-century “papal bulls” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.Writes Mr. Wall:
A Vatican statement said the papal bulls, or decrees, “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.
Papal bulls ”have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith”? Really?Not being Catholic, I wouldn't know. It's nice not to have to pretend the so-called Pope has some divine right to put out a (bunch of) bull. More from the AP:
On Thursday [March 30], these Indigenous leaders welcomed the statement as a first good step, even though it didn’t address the rescinding of the bulls themselves and continued to take distance from acknowledging actual Vatican culpability in abuses. The statement said the papal documents had been “manipulated” for political purposes by competing colonial powers “to justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesial authorities.”Mr. Wall again:
It said it was right to “recognize these errors,” acknowledge the terrible effects of colonial-era assimilation policies on Indigenous peoples and ask for their forgiveness.
Is the Vatican saying that all post-1492 Western-founded colonies which became nation states of the Western Hemisphere are illegitimate?Any bishops or cardinals reading the blog today? (I haven't gotten around to checking for Vatican IP numbers.) Listen, please learn this now, and learn it good: YOU! DO! NOT! HIRE! LATIN AMERICANS! FOR! THE! POSITION! OF! POPE! Most religious leaders there are Liberation Theologists, which means they are Communists. If you're having a hard time recruiting, get Vatican HR to interview in Eastern Europe again, Africa, Newfoundland, whatever, but just don't go Latin American.
So-called Pope Francis has been stupidity working against Christianity by encouraging mass immigration. Now he wants to cancel the history of and pride in everything Western civilization accomplished over the last 4 1/3 centuries. Now there's some papal bull from a real papal bullshitter.
Comments (4)
Graphical history of the most visited web sites
Posted On: Friday - March 31st 2023 6:00PM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites
After writing yesterday's post on web search sites over the years, I was trying to find a graph of the increase in the number of pages on the web, that is separate html, asp, php, whatever files. That's by no means the only measure of growth of the www.
My metric would be be better than the simple # of sites, as amazon would only count as 1 for the former count, while there a probably millions of different pages that can be viewed (either as flat html pages or as put together by the server-side software like asp, etc.) However, those 2 measures tell us what's out there to look at but not what information people are getting, with viewing it being yet another matter.
One could go by # of bytes sent across the
There are the other standard stats that are kept up with, such as number of site visits per time, number of visitors per time, and then, number of unique visitors over a given duration.* Peak Stupidity gets those from our hosting company.
It's the first one, number of visits, in his case, per month, that we can watch on the great video HERE.
The site I linked to does have some interesting writing too, but the video is below:
This video is great for showing who was who from 1993 to 2022, almost 30 years. One must remember that the horizontal scale is continually getting larger. Sites may show relative decline - the bars will shrink - yet the are still growing in number of monthly visits. I thought about it, and this was probably the best way to do it, with that huge growth. Engineers would suggest a log scale, but most people wouldn't get that. If you kept the same linear scale, you'd see tee-tiny bars on the left for a couple of decades.
Enjoy this cool graphical history of the top sites over time!
Oh, I'd suggest keeping the sound turned off. I didn't like the music. It's not at all necessary.
PS: Most of the various stats on internet size don't take into account intranets. Many companies have thousands to millions of pages for their employees to browse. Without giving access, they wouldn't be hit by the web crawlers, and those company's servers would not provide stats. (Maybe on total bytes sent around via the ISP somewhere?)
* This latter one is not quite like a rate. 10 unique visitors in a month doesn't equate to 120 unique visitors a year.
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[UPDATED - late 03/31:] The same video is now embedded here , from Adam Smith's own youtube channel. And no sound too! Thanks again!
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Comments (21)
Peak Search Results
Posted On: Thursday - March 30th 2023 5:20PM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites Curmudgeonry
There is such a thing as a search in the real world, but we mean on the internet here. I left that out to keep the title short, as I did, just as importantly, the world "useful". We're talking Peak Useful Internet Search Results, really.
Has this peaked? From my experience it most certainly has. This is the case for searches for non-political, information, while the direct censorship, delisting, unfair ordering, etc. are a whole 'nother story, that's not the subject of this post.
I can remember the very first internet search I ever undertook. It was neither a search for girly pictures or for cat videos. It was a search for "Northwest Territory shirts". Sometime in 1994, I'm pretty sure, I was trying to stock up on well-made flannel shirts from these people and the store (K-Mart or Target) no longer carried them. I didn't expect to buy them on-line and, in fact, couldn't imagine doing that. I just wanted a company phone number or anything to lead me to more shirts. That search was unsuccessful. Not enough information was on the web yet.
As an aside (which I'm pretty sure I wrote about already, but speaking of bad, actually MISSING search programming, I can't find it), I had no idea what was going on with a computer on the internet in those mid-1990s - til about '97. I went to this one hour "Intro. to the Internet" class at the library that confused me even more with talk of "The Archie" and "The Veronica" and "The Gopher". (Thank you, Alarmist.) All they needed to tell me was: "You are using the 'browser' program. It displays the information coming through the modem with special formatting to show this web 'page'. That formatting stuff is called 'HTML'. The search engine is just another website that has some programming which sends another web page back to you." 5 minutes of that sort of thing would have sufficed.
That leads me to another quick digression, one which is also in the footnote of the link above. Search "engine' is the term they use. I hate that. Software people love to appropriate terms that come from the real mechanical/electrical world. It makes them feel like engineers, which is the BIG ONE, that use of "engineering" for what's not. I'll use search "site" or "program" instead of "engine". None of these search sites are "a machine that converts energy into mechanical force or motion.".
That "Archie" thingy, as I just now found out, was one of the very early search engines. I'm sure I got around on the internet for stuff after that shirt search, but, without a computer at home, I can only remember any real use of these sites starting in 1998.
By about that time, you had your yahoo's, your alta-vistas, your infoseeks, your lycoses, your excites, your askjeeves (later just ask), and even your dogpiles. Yeah, and I don't know who picked the name of that latter site, and that one gathered info from other search engines. Only 3 of those I was able to write here from recall memory, and my search just now had others that I didn't include because I just don't recognize them now.*
It was really hit-or-miss with the searches then. I felt lucky fo find good results for a page that wasn't on a regularly-used website, say a popular news site. There was also not THAT much on the web in the late 1990s, compared to today. One of the sites I listed above was a cut above the rest though, but when google came along, it all changed. Hate 'em now, sure... definitely, but it was really nice to have a good chance of getting useful results by using google. That's how the company became successful, by giving useful search results.**
We got into the heyday of useful internet searching. The programming behind these sites got more and more sophisticated, and the www has contained a greatly and ever-increasing amount of information on it since the beginning. How would we get to a peak in this searching business though?
On results pages, I find that there is just too much chaff now, distracting me from a target that may be on page 17 (which most of us never look at). I see 3 factors:
1) The big sales sites often take up the top spots. This happens not just when I put in a noun for something that's for sale on the web, but even when I put more terms in that make it obvious I'm not looking to buy said thing.
2) Websites that create search-matching blurbs that are bogus. This is the most annoying to me, as, same as with junk mail, I hate being the sucker that clicks there. You put in "Virginia laws about blah" and it'll have just that in the blurb. The site will have some basic information about the laws on "blah" in general, but will not have "Virginia" in it. This blurb will show up with Tennessee in it if your search with "Tennessee laws about blah".
I don't know how these ones work. The web crawler program has got to find both parts on one page, and how does the blurb that you won't find on the site get put into the database as it appears by the search programming? These assholes must have some clever algorithms, but I detest their wasting of my time just as with the clever of the junk mailers.
3) An inordinate amount of information on the web. That should be good, of course. You may very well get 20 blurbs that are pretty close to what you searched for, but you can't find the right extra word(s) to help the programming pull out what you really want. Maybe it's just asking too much, or, I'm not doing it right.
Getting useful results from an internet search has gotten harder over the last few years. When was Peak Search? I say, somewhere in '10 to '15, but you all let me know your ideas on this.
Finally, even with the best and most honest search programming in the world, back in September '18 Peak Stupidity compared Search "Engines" vs. Real Experts, and concluded that sometimes the latter can save us googles of time.
* BTW, the wiki page on older search engines did a terrible job.
** Successful as far as customer usage, that is. As far as google's success as a spy operation, well, I and most customers didn't understand that yet. Many people still don't.
Comments (27)
Give People Money: The book
Posted On: Wednesday - March 29th 2023 5:00PM MST
In Topics: Humor Economics Books Socialism/Communism
While writing the Gnu Gnomes of Zurich post last week, I tried to find that book called "Money" (With some sub-title likely) on-line, just to refer to it. I had no luck.. However, this is a screenshot of a title that was listed on the 3rd or so page of my search for "Money"*:
My first thought was "Oh, man! I didn't know the Babylon Bee published books, too." But no, this is no joke. I found that author Annie Lowrey means it.
Imagine if every month the government deposited $1,000 into your checking account, with nothing expected in return. It sounds crazy, but it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time. Futurists, radicals, libertarians, socialists, union representatives, feminists, conservatives, Bernie supporters, development economists, child-care workers, welfare recipients, and politicians from India to Finland to Canada to Mexico--all are talking about UBI.For those 2 bolded categories, yeah, well they might be TALKING about it, but almost always with the use the word "retarded" somewhere in there. India, Finland, Canada, Munich, everybody's talkin' 'bout
Hmmmm, UBI? "Give People Money" sounds so stupid, it just might work!
Wait, though. Didn't this country have some pretty recent experience with a Proto-UBI. It went on for most of a year during the Kung Flu PanicFest, with the help of $4,000,000,000,000 or so nicely printed out by the FED. I don't think you'll find very many Americans, even Economists and book authors, who were very impressed by the results of the experiment. (That is, excepting those right in the midst of it, getting that $600 weekly for months at a time in Summer of '20, idling away the hours watching Netlix, reading Peak Stupidity, and occasionally going outside to help out in some peaceful protest or two.)
Yet, still, 3.86 STARS out of 5. And, she's got a sequel! How do you explain the readership?
About the author:Ohhh, that explains it.
Annie Lowrey
2 books 49 followers
Annie Lowrey is a contributing editor for The Atlantic. A former writer for the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, and Slate, among other publications, she is a frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. Lowrey lives in Washington, DC.
* The caption is from a 2nd search later on, for this post.
** Without the internet, I know only one guy who would have had a slight chance of being able to give me the name of the band for this music reference. The band was called M, and (Everybody's talkin' 'bout) Pop Muzik is from 1979.
Comments (9)
Mr. Jones and me
Posted On: Tuesday - March 28th 2023 5:46PM MST
In Topics: Commies History Movies
This is a short movie review, since I just watched a very good political/history flick called Mr. Jones, as recommend by someone on-line. (That was probably on unz.com, but if it was here, please speak up - I'd like to thank you for this one!) This movie is from 2019. IMDB lists two other movies with this title, a 1993 one with Richard Gere as a Manic/Depressive guy and another 2013 one that says: A young couple moves to the woods and soon finds their nightmares and reality colliding.. (Hmmm, a prepper movie? - I may look for this one too.)
As for our post title, well, that's a pretty decent Counting Crowes song* from their heyday. I added "and me" also because I'm pretty down with the truth-seeking Mr. Gareth Jones, the star and actual historical character. He's my type of guy.
The story of Mr. Jones took place in the year 1933. Gareth Jones had recently been a foreign affairs advisor to fellow Welshman and former UK PM (1916-'22) (David) Lloyd George. Mr. George was of the Liberal Party, but not much of a big figure anymore by this time. Mr. Jones was let go by Lloyd George, on good terms, and he decided to do, or continue to do, freelance reporting. After having conducted an interview with Adolph Hitler, which amazed everyone in the movie (just timing) and got Mr. Jones rightly worried about the man, he decided to just up and interview Josef Stalin. Spoiler alert: That didn't happen. (Because this is history, with maybe some embellishment, I don't have any hesitation to include spoilers in the review of this movie.)
Gareth Jones obtained a visa and went to Moscow. This is where the movie's antagonist and real-life antagonist of things good and truthful comes in. That would be New York Times "Man in Moscow" and Pulitzer*** prize winner Walter Duranty. Giving the reader a Wiki reference here might seem a dumb idea, as their bias on not-exactly-factual stuff is too much. However, one might go there to see an example of Walter Durantyism in action on his own page. I'm sure the average Peak Stupidity reader knows that Mr. Duranty was a knowingly duplicitous booster of USSR Communism.
With a little messing around with his job recommendation letter from Lloyd George that he carried, in the age before White-Out, no less, Mr. Jones, got himself out of Moscow and on the way to the Ukraine to check out the breadbasket that was "Stalin's gold". What he saw there was horrific.
The situation was not as the foreign hobnobbing reporters and the Soviet handlers in Moscow had claimed. People were starving in the Ukraine in the event now knows as the "Holodomor". The Ukrainians were being forced to ship the grain they had grown there up to other parts in the USSR. Not only that, but it was bitter cold. The scenes here are bleak and extremely sad.
In this one scene from the movie, Gareth Jones is helping load a few bags of stolen grain, so as not to stand out as a reporter.
Multiple millions died there and then, from 1932-'33. Mr. Jones was an on-the-scene witness. Once he got back to Moscow after a harrowing journey, he had it out with Mr. Duranty, other reporters, and the Soviet apparatchiks.
I won't give you the whole of it, and also, other details from history were left out of the movie. The rest involves the verbal battle back home of "truths" between Duranty with his lies and Mr. Jones with his actual truth. Mr. Duranty won this in the short/medium-run, but I hope and think that Mr. Jones (long dead via murder in the USSR on another trip at 30 y/o) will win in the long term. This movie is helping.
Walter Duranty is made to look even worse as a man as I had thought of him before watching the movie. I also had no idea before about the countervailing efforts of Gareth Jones. There was a long and important period of time, the whole 1930s and right on through WWII, when the terrible effects of the Communism in Russia were not known well by the world. It was evil men like Walter Duranty - his reasons varying between wanting to live the good life and pressure - who were a big part of this.
In the range of 2 to 5 million people are believed to have been starved by someone more evil than the lying Duranty. That'd be USSR leader Josef Stalin. This was done to hide the economic failures of Communism*****. There are 2 factors of the evil here of Communism itself.
1) It can lead to the economic devastation like the Holodomor. Things something like this happen about every time Communism is tried.
2) That Communism must include Totalitarianism to continue to reign long means that there can be men with the power to make something like this happen.
Movies showing the evil of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis must number in the hundreds. Those that show the evil of Stalin and his Commies are very few. I applaud the makers of Mr. Jones for their excellent work. That this movie is only 4 years old is very surprising.
2 thumbs up from Peak Stupidity! Caveat: This is not a date movie. (Unless your date is also a member of the John Birch Society...)
PS: Seeing as this IS a review, OK fine: The casting, the lighting, the set decorations, all the production values****, they're fine. As long as a movie is not blurry, jerky, or woke, I don't care about all that.
There is a very pretty woman involved (playing one of the reporters), but nobody gets even to 1st base with her in the movie. (It was probably better in real life or off the set.) It's bleak******, but it's history.
* That song came out almost 30 years ago. I never understood the meaning of the lyrics, but it had a good melody.
** I really wonder if the use of the term "journalist" in conversations throughout this movie was historically correct. Was the term in use in 1933? I remember "reporter" being used during my early lifetime.
*** For my whole life, I thought it was "pull-it-zer", but they pronounced it "Pew-lit-zer".
**** Thanks you, Alarmist, for the term.
***** Some claim a genocide factor too. I don't know.
****** One other thing besides ** that I think may be off is this: Would the Ukraine in March (when Mr. Jones was to arrive per the visa bureau lady) be THAT cold and snowy then? Maybe it was an extra hard winter.
Comments (7)
The future's so dark, I gotta wear night vision goggles
Posted On: Monday - March 27th 2023 2:56PM MST
In Topics: Music China The Future Orwellian Stupidity Bible/Religion Female Stupidity iEspionage
There may be gleaming bright trains, planes, and cities in China, but that title describes what I see for the future of the place. Peak Stupidity knows more about the Middle Kingdom than your average American, so we have commented extensively about the place. The reader ought to know that we try to be fair. We call out stupidity worldwide, most of it here in America, because WE LIVE HERE! Also, per our Peak Stupidity apology to our Chinese readers, we have had plenty of good things to say about the country, when it fits.
Our take on the quickly rising Orwellianism in China being that's being enabled by the amazing level of electronics/sensors/software of today's world is mostly contained in our 4-part review of the book We Have Been Harmonized by German writer Kai Strittmatter. See Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 and Part 4 . If you want to scare the BeJesus out of yourselves, read the book, not just the review.
Thanks to the commenter "Truth" on The Unz Review , I got to see the 5-minute video (shown below) that really drives home just a part of what's going on.
HBO's title is China’s "Social Credit System" Has Caused More Than Just Public Shaming. I'm glad someone gives a damn enough to make a video like this without extolling the system shown. Take a look:
Commenters on unz.com humorously compared what's going on in this village in China to the experience with Home Owners' Associations. Though they joke, they may understand this as I do, that with the use of the electronic systems, this is not just HOAs on steroids. This is 1984 II: Big Brother Strikes Harder.
This is what hard-core busybodying and do-gooding can come to. I don't think Miss Zhou Ai Ni is doing this just for the 50 bucks a month. That won't get you anywhere in China these days. No, Information Collector Zhou LIKES doing this.
You'll see what this is coming to near the end, when it comes to being able to buy (and I assume sell too). Well, Information Collector Zhou's neighbors don't have to wear bar codes on their foreheads, as we had thought would be the way of Revelation back in the 1980s and '90s. They don't even have to get an implanted chip, as far as I know. They just can't do much without that piece of iCrap iEspionage on them, in addition to dealing with the human espionage lady.
I understand the point of and reason for the existence of Equifax and the financial credit scores. Then, there came CarFax* with some scores on our cars, which I don't want much to do with. Now, the Chinese have social credit scores. Hey, I have been doing very well over the last 20 years with a financial credit score that reads: "- - - ". (No data.) I try to deal with local friendly mechanics who don't care about my CarFax. (If you're not planning on selling the car, it seems an intrusion into my privacy.)
From an encounter with the usual problem neighbor recently, I see I might have a problem keeping a social credit score of more than 400, using about the same scale as Equifax (and the others). How does one live with a low one of those? You're gonna be hungry. You'd have to live in cave in Yunnan with the Kung Flu bats in order to maintain dashes.
At 2:03: “Now in our community, neighbors get along very well. There are no fights.” Yes, everyone's got it bottled in nicely. Everything will be all nice and serene, in these villages ... till it isn't. One episode of the old 1990s comedy Seinfeld covered this. Lloyd Braun explains the future of China, if this stuff continues:
BTW, I didn't see subtitles at that spot, but I swear I heard this busybody Big Sister's name as Zhou Ai Ni. How appropriate is that! The given name (last 2 syllables) mean "I love you." Yes, they all love you, Big Sister Zhou. Sure, that's why they're smiling. It's not because this may as well been a particular one of those Twilight Zone episodes come to life.
To end the post, how about some music? Just in case you somehow missed the better of the1980s pop music (what, were you not born yet or something? That's no excuse!), here is the song from which our post title was taken.
The band had a clever name - Timbuk 3. This song from their 1986 debut album Greetings from Timbuk3 was this American band's only hit. Timbuk 3 was not your usual pop band at all, officially consisting (at the time of this album) of the husband and wife duo Pat and Barbara MacDonald.
* Dang! There's ANOTHER post I meant to write.
Comments (10)
The Gnu Gnomes of Zurich
Posted On: Saturday - March 25th 2023 1:12PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Humor Global Financial Stupidity Economics Big-Biz Stupidity
It was at least 15 years ago when I read a book that was just called Money, I'm pretty sure, but maybe with a subtitle. This interesting book had a chapter about some of the big financial dealings that have been going on for centuries in Switzerland, a country known for chocolate, clocks, precision machinery, neutrality, and big Finance (the latter 2 of which may clash on occasion.) That chapter in the book about money was called "The Gnomes of Zurich".
I didn't figure they are real gnomes, because I guess there's gno such thing*. However, one can picture these guys in little caves in the mountains, deciding the fates of many with their Big Finance wheeling and dealing. I'd figured they're kind of like elves, but without the free-spending ways of, say, Santa's ones.
If you've been keeping up with the latest banking crisis, with more to come, there's commentary about whether focusing on the DIE initiatives may have just slightly distracted the big cheeses at Silicon Valley Bank and others from concentrating on the actual point of their business,
There's this big global investment firm that's been around for 167 years called Credit Suisse. They've been having problems lately too. Besides the silver and gold bars that are minted by these money-men, I don't know too much this outfit. However, knowing of their being headquartered right there in Zurich, Switzerland, I picture some of those Gnomes of Zurich employed at the place, per my imagination and that one book, gnome sayin'?
Regarding the travails of Credit Suisse, Steve Sailer posted a hilariously titled post a few days back regarding one of this company's head honchos, Don't Worry: Credit Suisse Is in Strong, Exquisitely-Manicured Hands. What he and John Derbyshire** also (partly) were commenting about was one high-level manager named Pippa Bunce. "Pips Bunce is Head of Global Markets Technology Core Engineering Strategic Programs at Credit Suisse."***
The thing about Pippa is that he is gender-fluid. He is a she part of the time, likely based on odd/even days of the month.
That is Pippa Pig Bunce, Credit Suiesse's CRO. In this case, CRO doesn't stand for Chief Risk Officer, as one might think. It just sounds the same to our non-German-speaking ears, but Peppa Bunce, looking here more like a gnu than a gnome, is the Chief Risqué Officer.
Thank you, thank you! We'll be here all week. Oops, that's till now, so look for more Stupidity goodness next, week, still at a sporadic level for now. Enjoy the Spring.
* There are real gnus, aka wildebeests, however. I do not refer to the good open-source software people in the title though.
** The writer John Derbyshire used to work at the very place, not as a gnome, but as a geek. and, no, they are not exactly the same thing. He posted his thoughts on the DIE banking programs in As A Former Credit Suisse Risk Management Shlub, I Ask: Is DEI Bringing Down the Banking System?
*** There is zero engineering going on there, so they ought to drop the use of the word - one of my pet peeves.
Comments (16)
Merrick Garland - The Potomac Regime's Lavrentiy Beria
Posted On: Saturday - March 25th 2023 6:24AM MST
In Topics: Commies US Police State US Feral Government Totalitarianism
I want to thank commenter E.H. Hail for clueing me in on the recent story of yet more Americans being taken Political Prisoner by the Potomac Regime for the events of 1/6/21. I saw the number 2,500 - to be reached - in a search result blurb by The NY Times, but I will not click on the old defunct "newspaper of record". The Gateway Pundit keeps up with this, and it's been I being remiss about checking there daily. His latest post is TUCKER Shows MSNBC Video of Trump Supporters on Jan 6 Throwing Things at Capitol Police – They Were Doing This Because Police Were Killing Rosanne Boyland. Rosanne Boyland was one of 4 Americans known to have been murdered that day by Regime police. Peak Stupidity has only concentrated on the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by Capitol cop Michael Leroy Bird, as that was the most clear-cut murder.
The guy in charge of Federal prosecutions is the head of the Department of Justice, the Attorney General. Zhou Bai Dien appointed SCROTUS-wannabe Merrick Garland to this position officially on Jan 20th of '21, but the news of this selection came out 2 weeks earlier, on Jan 6th. How timely!
I waded through the wiki file on this guy for "just the facts,
Merrick Garland has spent a long career in the Federal legal system. (I'm not gonna label it "justice".) He was mentored and employed by various high-up justices, most of them left-leaning. He'd get his better jobs when the Democrat party had the power to employ him, and sometimes go back to corporate litigation** or academia (at his Alma Mater, Harvard) during the years when he was not on the Feral payroll.
As a prosecutor,. Garland got involved heavily in the Oklahoma City bombing case and whatever else was considered "domestic terrorism" (Yes, that does fit the OK City deal, but who the real terrorists are is still an open question.) Though normally completely opposed to the death penalty, Garland was instrumental in seeking the death penalty for Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Was he told to put that one to bed?
As a judge, Garland has tended to side with the Feral Government when it comes to regulation (siding with government agencies) and when it comes to "National Security". He likes the 1st Amendment but not so much the 2nd.
The long ratcheting-upward career of Merrick Garland kept slipping when it came to the grand prize, appointment to a position as a Supreme Court judge. In '09 President Øb☭ma had him as one of 9 finalists to replace David Souter, but wise Latina Sonia Sotomayor got the job. During the next year, Judge John Paul Stevens retired, but, though Republican cuckolds like Orrin Hatch supported Garland even, Øb☭ma appointed Elena Keegan. By this point, one might well have wondered exactly what Merrick Garland thought of Affirmative Action. Suck it up, cupcake!
That's not all, as far as Garland's tough time clawing and scratching for SCROTUS. When Judge Antonin Scalia died under somewhat mysterious conditions, BTW, in Feb of '16, Øb☭ma nominated Garland (first out of 3 lame-ass picks) for the job. Finally! Well, except Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a rare moment out of his shell, went along with other Republicans who had already stated that that they would not consider any nominee put forth by Øb☭ma, and that a Supreme Court nomination should be left to the next president of the United States.
Under McConnell, the Senate's Republican majority refused to consider Garland's nomination, holding "no hearings, no votes, no action whatsoever" on the nomination. Per Wiki's political scientists and legal scholars, this was "unprecedented". It's called playing hardball. The GOP ought to play that more often.***
Poor, poor, Merrick Garland. They stole his dreams and paid him with
Was he appointed due to his expertise, so to speak, in dealing with "domestic terrorists"? Bai Dein's, or whoever's, decision could very well have been made right on that day, 1/6/21. He is ultimately responsible for the taking of simple protestors, trespassers, and at the worst, rioters, as Political Prisoners for years now without trial. In the meantime, as we all know, a whole summer (in some places, still ongoing) of burning and looting in big cities around this country by antifa Commies and BLM thugs resulted in almost ZERO punishment. Some of them are getting paid off by city governments for their "work" in this destruction.
All the people that Wiki quotes say that Merrick Garland is a most brilliant legal mind. Does he not see the hypocrisy and unequal treatment of the J6 vs antifa/BLM, not to mention the blatant violations of US Constitution B.O.R. Amendments VI and VIII? Well, he's a brilliant legal mind, so he can work the system well. That doesn't imply he's a person of integrity who will apply the spirit of the law.
He's not. Merritt Garland is an evil individual. Where does this come from? How'd he get on this evil vendetta against the White population of America? From Wiki, this is kind of weird, but interesting:
In April 2021, Russia imposed sanctions against Garland, including prohibiting him from entering Russia. This was in retaliation for U.S. expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats, a sanction imposed by the United States against Russia for its SolarWinds hack, aggression against Ukraine, and interference in the 2020 U.S. election. [Ahhh, geeze... that last was the HUGE purchase of $100,000 in Facebook ads by some Russian dude or something. This is SERIOUS.- ONE! HUNDRED! THOUSAND! DOLLARS!]There's the over-a-century-old feud going on, see, between the Garland family, that's Garfinkle at the time, and the Russian Empire. Per Wiki, Merritt's grandparents fled said Russian Empire early in the 1900s, to come here and foist a fortunate grandson on the American people.
The big excuse for the taking of what may be 1,500 or so MORE Political Prisoners is this White Supremacy angle, as if there's any group of these bigger than 2 people in America that isn't composed of Feds. However, whatever it is, protests about election fraud, pushback against the Population Replacement project, refusal to be berated and eliminated under DIE, it's all White Supremacy nowadays. The apparatus to enforce this evil is something I could have warned the reader about 21 years ago, 'cept I didn't have a blog. Motherland Security and the War on Terra provides the method for the Totalitarians that infest the Potomac Regime.
The writers on Wikipedia seem fine with all this. A current nominee for the Newspaper of Record (along with The Babylon Bee), The New York Post, takes a different view from that of Wikipedia - Merrick Garland’s deranged ‘one-sideism’ on terror by a guy named "The Post Editorial Board. (Just give your name next time!) Thank you, NY Post. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees this evil Attorney General for what he is.
I'm pretty sure everyone but the seriously stupid, your AOCs and Nancy Pelosies, know that there was no Insurrection and these people were generally harmless. (The Regime cops who killed 4 is another story) This is in contrast to the "harmlessness" of the massive antifa/BLM riots and arson. That's not the point though. Merrick Garland knows too - his point is to warn patriotic Americans that, next time they think of protesting the Totalitarianism of The Regime, they could most easily be taken Political Prisoner and held for YEARS in a Washington, FS gulag under terrible conditions. Even 2 years after the fact, they can just be taken. ("Show me the man ...) Best to stay out of it and let it all happen... collect your measly paycheck and eat ze bugs... that's how they want you to think.
My original point, long lost to this post till now, is that I want to know where and how long ago you'd have to study to have an example of Totalitarianism that we see right in front of our eyes, regarding our fellow normal Americans. Besides GateWay Pundit, check out the videos on J6 Truth site to see this 3rd-world Banana Republic behavior. (Even in those places, this stuff happened only during those swings of the pendulum to Communism and back.) The USSR of much of the 20 century provides an example. China from 1949 till the death of Mao in 1976, but arguably now provides another.)
The treatment of the J6 is simply not America. The Potomac Regime's actions are that of a Communist country. Merrick Garland is its Lavrentiy Beria. "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime."
* As for how it's going for some of these Political Prisoner in the regime gulag, here's a quick story from the same pundit, from over 700 days in there already: J6 Political Prisoners at DC Gulag Leak Heart-Breaking Video from Inside Jail Praying and Singing National Anthem – VIDEO
** Interestingly, one of his cases involved his acting as counsel to an insurance company suing to reinstate an unpopular automatic seat belt mandate. I freaking HATE those things. (At a motel on a long road trip in some '90s Eagle(?), I made the mistake of opening the door when I wasn't quite stopped yet - the thing jammed, and I had to use the emergency latch for the rest of the trip.)
*** Once Trump got in, he nominated Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed by the Senate. President Trump got 3 judges in there. I hope they don't go native.
Comments (13)
Updates/corrections for 4 posts
Posted On: Thursday - March 23rd 2023 9:36AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Environmental Stupidity The Neocons Peak Stupidity Roadshow
First of all, let me say that something political is going on with me right now, which may distract me from any more blogging for this week. That's even with the handful (at least) of posts that are on deck. What's going on may or may not turn into something that will be covered on Peak Stupidity. We'll see.
Regarding 4 of our fairly recent posts, let me add or explain more:
The Religion of Recycling:
In this post, we added an even more gloomy view of the economics of recycling than had been our contention in the old post (with the favorite title of mine) Toward Sustainable Stupidity. We referred the reader to this old post, but I'd completely forgotten an intermediate post on this, which was Make Stupidity Sustainable Again. Luckily there's not that much overlap.
The middle post contains discussion of an article from a writer from The Manhattan Institute. He discussed the economics of recycling, though still mixing in the Global Climate Calamity™ garbage, the latter for which there is NO landfill deep enough!
Trump v DeSantis: Round 5 - The Ukraine/Russia War(mongering):
In that post of a week back in praise of hopefully-soon-to-be-President Ron DeSantis, we included both his and Trump's* responses to Tucker Carlson about the war-mongering that America is yet again involved in. At then end of an excerpt from Neocon Extraordinaire David Frum, I wrote (in bold there too): "This is a Neocon Red Alert: Someone important cares about Americans more than Israel!"
That doesn't really fit, in the case of this particular war. I should have just stated that someone important cares more about Americans than the Deep State and Globohomo wants him to. The Neocons, lots of them Jewish, have this big centuries-long problem with Russia, so that is part of their motivation for having instigated this mess back in '14. Then, the MIC too is also loving it.
Starbucks Wokeness Backfire:
The say, "Go woke, go broke". That's only the case if the
Per the post linked to here, what would be the nicest location near me took out the outdoor seating due to what some may call Typical Teen Behavior. I haven't been back. Our speculation in that previous post was that maybe the drive-up pick-up business is all they need. Nope. I just heard they're closing within a month. Heckuva job, Shultzie!
Potentially lethal combination of Cheap China(?)-made crap and low competence:
Finally, we refer to this non-political post from mid-March. What a relief that is, too. That post was about burned-out red-light bulbs and the hazards there-from. I looked at one of the few intersections that were the subject of this post. In this case, the one at the intersection at the bottom of a hill, with bad sight-lines, the stoplights there ARE LED types.
Yes, one of the red lights is STILL out. It's in the direction of the worst sight-line (to the left, anyway), at the bottom of the hill, in the direction in which the other side with faster traffic as the default green. Watch out! I had thought one of many great advantages of LEDs is that individual LEDs could burn out, leaving plenty to remain, with the unit being replaced when total brightness get below a certain level. Nope, but this one is black. I suppose it's the circuit board, or connection to it, for this one out of 3 in the fixture that is the problem.
I wonder if the LED units last much longer than the old incandescents, as they normally do in other applications.
* From Trump, we got much more the next day.
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[UPDATED 03/24:] Added 3rd item, bumping red-light update to 4.
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Comments (14)
MTG v AOC
Posted On: Tuesday - March 21st 2023 7:36PM MST
In Topics: US Feral Government Geography Race/Genetics alt-right/MAGA ctrl-left
I am just guessing here, but I think the Peak Stupidity audience might be expecting mud wrastling based on our title. I am very sorry to inform you that we have no such video entertainment. Bikini pictures would be some consolation, but I don't see that as a fair contest. MTG has 15 1/2 years on AOC, 48 y/o vs. 33 y/o. Even at 33 for AOC, one may not have been impressed.
Wait, who the heck are these 2 initialed people, you may ask? Good question. The naming by 3 initials has been trending, steeply, for a few years now. You've got your JLo's and such for short in the entertainment biz. Then, too, initials for Presidents got started, when, with JFK? Of course that's THE biggie, but LBJ was common, RMN, nah, didn't roll off the tongue*, and that was pretty much the end of it. Then you, have your AMLO down in Mexico, El Presidente there since the end of'18. He is Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The Latin American crowd kind of likes those long series's of family names, and it was pretty endearing to hear a young Venezuelan lady reel off about 10 of them one time, Marissa de La Costa, Rodriguez Valencia Ramirez Hossenfelder Lopez .. [wait, Hossenfelder?!] del Boca Vista Gomez... "OK, but what do you want me to put below your picture in the yearbook ...?"
These 2, MTG and AOC, aren't leaders of the Free World** though, but the latter IS Puerto Rican, if that helps... No it doesn't really, because she has the 3 names due to hyphenation. She, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, is the daughter of Sergio Ocasio-Roman (known as SOR) and Blanca Ocasio-Cortez (known as BOC), the former being her Puerto Rican Father born in the Bronx and the latter being her Puerto Rican Mother born in Puerto Rico. Why she uses the Mom's hyphenated last name over the Dad's is another question, but this hyphenation crap cannot work out for more than 3 generations. After that, even the initials will be too long to remember
MTG, Marjorie Taylor Greene, uses her maiden last name along with her married last name, like lots of women might do. Using one's initials aside, that's standard American practice, though, per more info below, she may end up dropping the "G".
We'll use the abbreviations ourselves here for most of the post to reduce word count. Getting to the point of this post, these 2 well-known 3-lettered Congresswomen are a hell of a contrast in ideology and American-ness. Slightly coincidentally, both of them represent the 14th District of their States.
Georgia is composed of many small counties, 159 of them. The 14th district in is in the northwestern corner of the State, and is made of 10 1/2 counties (the 1/2 being the western portion of Cobb Country). The biggest city in this district is Rome - where MTG current hails from - with 37,000 residents, the next 2 decent-sized cities being Dalton and Calhoun. The whole district has 737,000 residents, with the '21 demographics shown here:
77.5% WhiteGeorgia's Congresswoman from District 14, MTG, is a 49 y/o White woman who's had 3 children, 1 son and 2 daughters, from her 27 year marriage to businessman/accountant Perry Greene. Just before the end of last year, Mr. Greene filed for divorce. (I'm neither a tabloid reader nor a marriage counselor, but my guess is that being married to a well-known woman who is seen as a radical and being seen one's self as just "Large Marge's husband" is not a fun time.)
10.8% Hispanic
8.9% Black
1.4% Two or more races
1.0% Asian
0.4% other
AND
59.7% urban
40.3% rural
Surprisingly, the voters of this 14th Congressional District, though electing a fire-brand like MTG (we haven't even gotten to that part yet), voted Trump for Trump in '16 by only a 5 percentage-point margin and Biden in '20 by a very slight 0.25 percentage points. Just guessing here, but could those far-from-hard-Conservative numbers be do to the western portion of Cobb County? It's just too damned close to Atlanta for comfort.
New York City alone has 14 of the State's 26 Congressional Districts in it! The 14th district includes the eastern part of The Bronx and part of north-central Queens.*** It has 750,000 residents with the '21 demographics shown here:
47.3% HispanicNew York's Congresswoman from the 14th District, AOC, is, as we noted, full Puerto Rican. That's a territory and one we sure don't need. (As Donald Trump would say, Puerto Rico has been a terrible, terrible deal...) She has not been married, but (per wiki) "During the 2018 election campaign, Ocasio-Cortez resided in Parkchester, Bronx, with her partner, web developer Riley Roberts. They got engaged in April 2022 in Puerto Rico."
22.8% White
16.9% Asian
11.0% Black
1.4% Two or more races
0.6% other
AND
100% urban
0 rural
AOC looks like good baby-making material, physically, at least (at most?) She ought to get hitched soon, because she's 33 and It's not nice to fool Mother Nature! It's not in my plans to keep up with this, though, as, again, Peak Stupidity is not a tabloid. I don't care too much what this broad does outside of the House of Representin'.
Note the stark difference in the demography and geography of these 2 14th Congressional Districts. Those 2 maps on the right-hand sides are pretty much to the same scale, from my guesstimates. The total populations are within a couple of % of each other, as you'd expect for proportional representin'. However, the population densities vary by a factor of 125!
MTG's district: Population of 737,000 in 3,623.8 square miles for ~205 people/mi2.
AOC's district: Population of 750,000 in 28.6 square miles for ~26,000 people'mi2.
That's a whole different way of living, between Queens/The Bronx in NYC and rural land and small towns in northwestern Georgia. Different ways of living require different politics, I suppose. That might be one lesson to be drawn here. That alone would be A-OK too, as long as there weren't people with these politics in positions to mandate them for everyone else.
It's not the only lesson, though one would have to sort out the previous from this next factor by looking at other districts and their voting and representation. That 77% White in MTG's 14th vs the 23% in AOG's 14th means a lot too. Regarding the latter, those other races and ethnicities, even most of that 17% Asian, are simply not up for ideas of Liberty and rule of law, or those Citizenship in the Nation merit badges. You can't assimilate anyone to the olde American values under those numbers.
We've gone over the hard-core Conservative positions of MTG in our post How to use Wikipedia. I like everything about the politics of this MTG, and I like her spirit just as much. Then, AOC there in New York is someone I'd rather forget entirely, for the sake of my blood pressure. We do like making fun of her, as did an 8 y/o imitator.
While MTG promotes God, guns, and freedom, AOC is an avowed Socialist****, Socialism being a gateway ideology to Communism. While MTG supports actual Americans, AOC is a flat-out traitor:
She recalled, "I was the only Spanish speaker, and as a result, as basically a kid – a 19-, 20-year-old kid – whenever a frantic call would come into the office because someone is looking for their husband because they have been snatched off the street by ICE, I was the one that had to pick up that phone. I was the one that had to help that person navigate that system. [Straight outta' Wiki]Therefore, Representatives MTG and AOC respectively on the alt-right and ctrl-left, are like oil and water. No, again, mud, oil, whatever, we just DON'T HAVE ANY VIDEO! All I got of direct confrontation is this from May of '21:
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene confronted Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside the House chamber on Wednesday afternoon, the latest of several confrontations Greene has had with her Democratic colleagues.In case you are immediately figuring, "hey that MTG sounds like a bitch", well, this is from CNN, so you only read one side of the story. There was a twitter feud between the 2 Reps, if that's your thing. Per Newsweek last summer, AOC Rips Marjorie Taylor Greene's 'Insurrection' Claim as Roe Feud Heats Up. Again you get to read one side, but then MTG was quite right to use the "I" word to show the ridiculousness of its use in referring to the J6 Political Prisoners STILL HELD in the African dungeons of the Federal Shithole. Thanks for turning me on even further to MTG, Newsweek dude.
Ocasio-Cortez left the House chamber late Wednesday afternoon ahead of Greene, who shouted “Hey Alexandria” twice to get her attention, according to the Washington Post who reported this first.
Greene caught up with Ocasio-Cortez and began shouting at her and asking why she supports antifa, a far-left activist group, and Black Lives Matter, falsely labeling them “terrorist” groups.
Greene shouted at Ocasio-Cortez that she was failing to defend her “radical socialist” beliefs by declining to publicly debate her. Ocasio-Cortez did not stop to respond to Greene and only turned around once and threw her hands in the air.
On the Kung Flu PanicFest issues, MTG has continued to shine, while AOC has remained a typical dullard. CNN was very concerned 3 days after the
Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Delaware Democrat, was shown approaching the group of colleagues and offering blue surgical masks. The video, shot from inside a safe room where the lawmakers gathered during the chaos, was published on Twitter by Punchbowl News.I know, Mark, but to the ctrl-left, EVERYTHING is political.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Oklahoma Rep. Mark Wayne Mullin, Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, Texas Rep. Michael Cloud and California Rep. Doug LaMalfa were captured unmasked and gathered closely together. They all refused the masks.
Mullin can be heard saying, “I’m not trying to get political here.”
Another conflict, this time between MTG and some other Congressbroad, reminded me of my own travails, reported here in Showdown in Tuba City. Revolt(ing) dot TV reported on Rep. Cori Bush moving her U.S. Capitol office after Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene “berated” her.
On Friday (Jan. 29), Democratic Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri made the announcement that she would be changing her office at the United States Capitol after getting into a heated exchange with GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia earlier this month.You can catch the lies of these Lyin' Press fools right away, from the sub headline, which read "Apparently, the conflict stemmed from the fact that Taylor wasn’t wearing a mask on her face." OK, now wait a minute. MTG wouldn't have berated Cori Bush for wearing a mask, as she'd respect Bush's right to be a Hysteric. No, I now know who started this "berating". American Pravda indeed!
Apparently, the conflict stemmed from the fact that Taylor wasn’t wearing a mask on her face while in one of the government building’s hallways. The fallout was immediately taken very seriously by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who quickly ordered the location change for Bush to feel more safe.
“A maskless Marjorie Taylor Greene & her staff berated me in a hallway. She targeted me & others on social media. I’m moving my office away from hers for my team’s safety” Bush tweeted Friday.
Finally, regarding the experime... clots sh ... oh, yeah, vaccine, that's the ticket. MTG (from CNN, and you can tell the bias from the wording just after her name):
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has publicly cast doubt on and spread misinformation about the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, revealed Tuesday that she has not been inoculated against the virus, answering a question she has dodged for months.Yep. Now, here's AOC:
“I haven’t been making it public, but I started making it public because it’s such an issue. I’m not vaccinated,” the Georgia Republican said during a phone town hall.
She continued: “I believe it’s up to every single American to make that choice on their own, and the government has no business to tell Americans that they should take the Covid vaccine or not.”
In order to encourage community members in Corona to get their COVID-19 shot, Queens/Bronx Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has launched an outreach campaign with a video series featuring community leaders in the area.Corona is the neighborhood, as in the old Paul Simon song, not the old term for the disease. (Too many jokes and confusion with the cheap Mexican swill, so they dropped the term.)
Corona was one of the first neighborhoods to be hit by COVID-19 and quickly became one of the most impacted areas in the country. Now that the vaccine is available to all New Yorkers over 16, with some New York City-run vaccine sites accepting walk-ins, Corona’s vaccination rates still lags when compared to the rest of the city — with only 20 percent of the population fully vaccinated as of Friday, April 30.
“I encourage everyone to get the COVID-19 vaccine. It is safe, effective, and free for all. You do not need to have health insurance and no one will ask about your immigration status,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “There is also now no appointment necessary for you to get your COVID vaccine at city-run sites, so you can just walk up. This vaccine is the first step in getting our community reopened and keeping all our loved ones safe.”
That was in April of '21. 6 months later, in October, we could have read Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets Pfizer booster jab (revealing outfit in the NY Post image for this one). 3 months after that, yahoo informed us AOC Is Latest Member of Congress to Get Sick With COVID. Dang it all! She should have kept on her mask down in DeathSantis' foolhardy State of Florida during that drag queen show she attended. AOC is all better now though... physically... the rest is unsalvageable.
Who is the winner of the epic battle of the Congresspersons MTG and AOC? Two of our judges have recused themselves due to something about "big knockers, so you know, it's hard... to call it ..." Knockers or Knot, this contest is over, with MTG having knocked out AOC many times. Will AOC get back up out of the mud?
The next and MUCH SHORTER post on these 2 3-initialed ladies will explain why we need some type of national divorce that MTG herself has written about recently.
* Although, per Richard Nixon and The Greatest Comeback - Pat Buchanan, the insiders referred to him in writing as RN. Why not "Mr. Nixon", "the President", or "that Dick-head", I have no idea. It must have been the cool thing.
** Well, it was at the time, for the most part.
*** The gory details are that the Queens portion includes the neighborhoods of Astoria, College Point, Corona, East Elmhurst, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Woodside. The Bronx portion of the district includes the neighborhoods of City Island, Country Club, Van Nest, Morris Park, Parkchester, Pelham Bay, Schuylerville, and Throggs Neck. Nobody cares! Who wants to go there?
**** No kidding on this. [From Wiki:]
Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and embraces the democratic socialist label as part of her political identity. In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, she described democratic socialism as "part of what I am. It's not all of what I am. And I think that that's a very important distinction." In response to a question about democratic socialism ultimately calling for an end to capitalism during a Firing Line interview on PBS, she answered: "Ultimately, we are marching towards progress on this issue. I do think that we are going to see an evolution in our economic system of an unprecedented degree, and it's hard to say what direction that that takes." Later at a conference she said "To me, capitalism is irredeemable."Granted, I don't know whether she sees the Crony Capitalism (Fascism) as "Capitalism", or she is truly against free markets and the whole thing.
Comments (35)
Anemone - The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Posted On: Saturday - March 18th 2023 5:43PM MST
In Topics: Music
The name of this band is a portmanteau of "Brian Jones", the founder of The Rolling Stones, and the "Jonestown Massacre", a large murder/suicide by the Communist cult led by Jim Jones. The latter was described in detail in a 4-part series of posts here, on or about (so, "about", actually) the 40th anniversary of its occurrence, called Drinking the Kommie Kool-Aid - 40 years back.*
I may have heard the name of this band once or twice, but I'd never heard a thing by them. Commenter Duncsbaby embedded this song in the Unz Review threads, and I was impressed right away.
The lyrics are few and not that special from what I can make out, but who cares? The sound is great!
This song's called Anemone. and it's from the
I didn't forget that MTG v AOC post, but we got sucked up into Trump/DeSantis week. We'll find out about the Trump arrest, which would really be a BIG THING (another milestone in the transition to Banana Republic). There's a post coming on a near-miss, well near-hit really, from the Kung Flu PanicFest in the UK, and probably 4 or 5 others. Stay tuned! Don't touch that browser Favorites button! Thanks so much for reading and especially for writing in!
*
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Comments (10)
Trump v DeSantis: Round 6 - Quantity of Hatred Generated.
Posted On: Saturday - March 18th 2023 11:46AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Trump Media Stupidity President DeSantis
The higher, the better, of course. I'm not one part of the contingent who hates The Donald, just in case the reader may have that wrong. I like the guy. I like any of the occasional politicians who like Americans.* I just HATE how much President Trump screwed the pooch.
Previously in this series, Peak Stupidity has posted Part 1 - Personalities - - Part 2 - Immunity to Kung Flu Panic - - Part 3 - Immigration Invasion - - Part 4 - Tag Team? and Part 5 - The Ukraine/Russia War(mongering).
In some Unz Review discussions, I have been told that Florida Governor and GOP Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is getting money and support from the wrong people. First of all, that may have changed quite a bit since his statement on the Ukraine/Russia war (Part 5). That notwithstanding, yes, the ones mentioned, your ¡Jeb!s, your Karl Roves, and even your Paul [sorry, just through up some of that green candy] Ryans, are THE WRONG PEOPLE, no doubt. However, they are supporting him because they HATE HATE HATE Donald Trump and always did. If something happens to keep Trump out of the general election race (his looming arrest per news I've read being a whole nother thing entirely), these people will turn on DeSantis in the same way.
The Lyin' Press doesn't have to pretend to like Ron DeSantis, as they have picked the ctrl-left long ago - there is no pretense even left in them that they are in some way balanced on the UniParty. I've read nasty headlines already, and let's not forget the HATE against Governor DeSantis for his lack of awareness on the Critical Danger of the
I gotta admit that Donald Trump has the upper hand in this round. He had a big head start in being hated, of course. That's one thing. Also, because they know the man still can't be bought or blackmailed, the Deep State, Swamp creatures, Neocons, the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads... they all HATE him - they think he's a righteous dude. [He's very unpopular - Ed(itor)]
Yeah, as a commenter put it, supporting Donald Trump is like sticking one's middle finger at the entire Establishment, i.e., the ctrl-left, i.e., the Communists. However, with Trump not being much more than a well-intentioned bullshitter, sure we can just keep that middle finger up as rigor mortis sets in while we are being bulldozed into big ditches by these Commies. No, thanks.
As soon as Ron DeSantis ends up the GOP Presidential candidate - I mean, we have the topic key ready - the entire left will turn on him the same way. I could be wrong - maybe I've been fooled, or maybe he'll be bribed or blackmailed**. Failing that, they will HATE DeSantis just as they do Trump. This aggressive interference with the narrative and plans of the Globalist elite and Commie bastards must not stand!
As for the Haley's, that Indian guy, and the other Neocon-sympathetic goers-along, you'll know whose side they are on when the HATE subsides. Instead we will get the Overton Briar Patch treatment:
Here's how it goes: The ctrl-left will act OUTRAGED at the (supposed) Conservatism, far-far-Rightism, and even Hitler-adjacent policies of the GOP high-office holders. This will be the case even when said GOP high-office holders are the most worthless, traitorous, compromising squishes and not Conservative in the least.Note I included Trump in this one, due to this being a tactic taken with officeholders who aren't actually acting Conservatively.
Some of the ctrl-left with what we may think of as having, or have thought of as having,Trump/Bush/Bush/Reagan Derangement Syndrome may really be outraged, but these are the most deluded psychotic sickos. I believe most of them just act like they think said office holders (I include notable Senators and Congressmen too) are actually Conservative. Why come up with these huge exaggerations of the supposed Conservatism of these politicians? It's a tactic of theirs that works very well .
The effect of this tactic is to get Conservatives to actually believe "their" high-office holder is working hard, doing the right thing for them. "If they hate him so much, he MUST be doing a great job!" Well, that can be true, but not if that hate is based on exaggeration, lies, or plain insanity.
The HATE for all the Conservative, Inc. squishes will be fake, as explained. For anyone who actually DOES ANYTHING to stop the plans toward Globalist Communism, yeah, it's real, and it's rabid. That's the case for Ron DeSantis and Trump, well, they hate him cause he won that time ... or two. I'd call this round a draw. These two are able to draw equal amounts of hatred.
* He's good people. They're all wonderful people. Wait, I'm starting to sound like the guy , which is something I most definitely DON'T LIKE!
** No doubt it's more likely than with Trump, as Ron DeSantis is not a super-rich known playboy.
Comments (16)
Happy St. Padraig's Day and the flight from American
Posted On: Friday - March 17th 2023 10:47PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Political Correctness Race/Genetics Holiday from Stupidity
That's Padraig... or something like that. I'm sick of the multi-culti stuff, even if it's from the Irish, even from people descended from Irish people that came here 150 years ago who know nothing more of that heritage than getting sloshed on green beer once a year... and every other weekend on regular-colored beer.
Peak Stupidity posted thoughts on this last summer in our post Local Multi-culti, thoughts that came from our time spent in the British Isles. There was even that story of a friend of Irish background who gave his best shot at Scotland the Brave on the pipes in our front yard at midnight. (He used to wear and even make kilts, but that didn't mean the bagpipes came naturally ...) Everyone but regular Americans is supposed to be so proud of their people from the olde country.
You're American now though, right? No matter what those old Irish wives tales said, you were always White* and you still are now. So act it, and quit with the damned ridiculous spellings. Meighan instead of Megan? Graeme for Graham? Now, it Padraig? I saw this header on VDare today:
This Padraig Martin has written an important and first-hand account of the Anarcho-Tyranny that was applied in Charlottesville, Virginia at the "Unite the Right" rally* back in the summer of '17. Though this multi-culti business irks me, I won't let it detract from my respect for this guy and my intention to read his book. This "Neil Kumar" post, “Unite The Right Was The Last Day Of The United States”—Padraig Martin’s A WALK IN THE PARK, is a great reminder of what happened and a review of Padraig's book.
Still, Padraig?? WTF? Spellcheck is not helping me it this either. Just call yourself Patrick, man, and be DONE with it!
Steve Sailer has long had an idea he calls "flight from white". Any American who can find some way to be considered other than a White person in the eyes of government or Big Biz does so. This phenomena is fairly new, maybe 30-40 years old, as the various new actual demographic groups or made-up ones, are all treated better than the White man, especially.
Now, even pure White Irish people** feel the need to distance themselves from those plain old Americans. This isn't about AA or any free stuff. The multiculturalist brainwashing has just taken hold.
Well, I'll tell you what. If I were to get this book from the writer, I'd want it signed by Patrick Martin. Otherwise, keep it - you aren't a uniter, of the right or anyone.
PS: Is that too harsh? I could blame this on Padraig's parents, I suppose.
* Peak Stupidity wrote a number of posts about this travesty and this early reminder by the Regime of what happens when those on the right try to assemble peacefully and in not large enough numbers. (Maybe just assembling peacefully at all is something we can no longer do.)
See Anarcho-Tyranny at Charlottesville.
** Conveniently, VDare has a James Fulford article on this point today too - St. Patrick's Day Is NOT Immigration Day—Irish-Americans Are White, And Being Replaced Like The Rest Of Us.
Comments (7)
Donald Trump's New Statement on the War(mongering)
Posted On: Friday - March 17th 2023 12:41PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 The Russians Trump World Political Stupidity
I don't know if Trump had already made his March 16th (yesterday) speech or published it, at the time of Peak Stupidity's posting of Trump v DeSantis: Round 5 - The Ukraine/Russia War(mongering). Either way, this is a better attempt at equal time in the question of whether Trump or DeSantis have the better attitude on the Ukraine/Russia war. We can see by the ire of the Neocons later.
We have never been closer to World War 3 than we are today under Joe Biden. A global conflict between nuclear-armed powers would mean death and destruction on a scale unmatched in human history. It would be nuclear Armageddon. Nothing is more important than avoiding that nightmare. We will avoid it, but we need new leadership. Every day this proxy battle in Ukraine continues, we risk global war. We must be absolutely clear that our objective is to immediately have a total cessation of hostilities. All shooting has to stop. This is the central issue. We need peace without delay.Wow! That there's George Washington material! (Well, the last bit being lifted from him, that is...) I mean, even Ron Paul would agree 100%. Let me look over this statement some more:
In addition, there must also be a complete commitment to dismantling the entire globalist neo-con establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars pretending to fight for freedom and democracy abroad while they turn us into a third-world country and a third- world dictatorship right here at home. The State Department, the Defense bureaucracy, the intelligence services, and all of the rest need to be completely overhauled and reconstituted to fire the Deep Staters and put America first. We have to put America first.
Finally, we have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re- evaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission. Our foreign policy establishment keeps trying to pull the world into conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat. But the greatest threat to western civilization today is not Russia. It's probably, more than anything else, ourselves and some of the horrible, USA-hating people that represent us. It's the abolition of our national borders, it's the failure to police our own cities, it's the destruction of the rule of lave from within. It's the collapse of the nuclear family and fertility rates like nobody can believe is happening. It's the Marxists who would have us become a Godless nation worshiping at the altar of race and gender and environment. And it's the Globalist class that has made us totally dependent on China and other foreign countries that basically hate us.
These Globalists want to squander all of America’s strength, blood, and treasure chasing monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they are creating right here at home. These forces are doing more damage than Russia and China could ever have dreamed. Evicting the sick and corrupt establishment is the monumental task of the next President and I am the only who can do it I'm the only one who can get the job done. I know exactly what has to be done.
"We've never been closer to World War III..." Well, nah, I know it's hard to find many tweets from that era, but the Cuban Missile Crisis, and earlier, the whole 1950's (with lots more possibility of a "fail-unsafe" event) had us closer. What's going on now can be de-escalated by anyone who desires to, i.e., all but the Neocons and Neocon sycophants. Ron Paul would do it in an hour. Ron DeSantis would do it in a day. Yes, you too could ... talk about it for 40 days and tweet about it for 40 nights, and still ... Oh, yeah, you like to have a meeting and make deals. That might work, but then, you've been suckered by Neocons before - weren't Javanka your foreign policy advisors for 4 years?
About NATO, no don't mend it, END it. You talked about this same thing 7 years ago - nothing happened. Was that the time you were distracted by "Russian collusion!" for nearly 3 out of 4 years? No, maybe it was something else that distracted you. Then you even mentioned the old cry about getting US out of the UN, and getting the UN out of the US while we're at it... or jack up the rent, if nothing else. Yes, Peak Stupidity remembers. What's this, you're going to finish what you never started?
I just read the current issue of The New American from the John Birch Society. The middle 2 paragraphs of Trump's speech especially could be an editorial in this magazine. I am glad that re-candidate Trump said this. I think he believes all this.
Sure, I agree with all of this, but will a 2nd-term President Trump DO ANYTHING about any of it? Sure, let's talk ... if you want to kick off a correspondence with Peak Stupidity, Mr. Trump, use the handle "Lucy", and I'm Charlie Brown.
* This goes back to the John Birch Society - proud member here!
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[UPDATED 03/18:] Substituted text from Adam Smith via OCR for the images of the speech. Thanks, Adam!
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Comments (8)
Big Bankers call on Uncle Sam to preclude seizures
Posted On: Thursday - March 16th 2023 6:01PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Global Financial Stupidity
Imagine if the world's bankers had to exist in the free market. The invisible hand would slap the BeJesus out of most of them for such acts as the loaning out of 4 years worth of tuition money to Womyn's Studies majors and the hiring of CROs - Chief Risqué Officers who spend much more time on DIE stupidity than risk management.
It's important that the FDIC* and its Credit Union sister (also Feral Gov't) NCUA at least act like they can insure us all, like more than one of us at a time, for this Ponzi Scheme of an economy to stay afloat for a bit longer. In this latest case, the Feral Gov't seems to be backstopping the SVB and Signature Bank depositors, digging the debt hole that much deeper.
We'd probably be better off if we had a real economic system, with banks, and hell, bankers too, subject to seizures. With our usual Peak Stupidity warning to readers, especially including bankers now, let's all Wang Chung tonight, if only for 4 minutes:
* It has in the neighborhood of 0.1 % of the assets in those < $250,000 accounts it insures. I happened to run into a guy who was a big shot in banking during the Carter Administration and got to pick his brain for a few minutes, including asking him about this.
Comments (13)
Trump v DeSantis: Round 5 - The Ukraine/Russia War(mongering)
Posted On: Thursday - March 16th 2023 8:44AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 The Russians Trump US Feral Government The Neocons World Political Stupidity President DeSantis
Note: A post on the heat transfer from an ACTUAL greenhouse vs the "Greenhouse Effect", just for some closure on this one-measly-piece-of-the-climate excuse for the Climate Crisis™ and the disarming and alarming video by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is in the works. However, I want to do some real calculations (convection, conduction, and radiation), so it may be a while. As I wrote, I'm not being paid for this, so the deadline is the next round-to-it I get.
This post was inspired by the inclusion of a statement by (hopefully future President) Ron DeSantis on the Ukraine/Russia war by commenter E.H. Hail under this post, along with more commentary by Mr. Hail on the necocon feedback. I had not intended to continue the Trump v DeSantis series, but I figure we'd better give Donald Trump equal time, and this fits in. Those previous posts were Part 1 - Personalities - - Part 2 - Immunity to Kung Flu Panic - - Part 3 - Immigration Invasion and Part 4 - Tag Team?. None of them covered foreign policy, so this will help on that score.
For the DeSantis statement, I wanted to find a web source to link to, and, believe me, it took me the 2nd page of the duckduckgo search to get off of the Lyin' Press outlets that would be annoying and biased. Since the New York Post is as close to Peak Stupidity's "Newspaper of Record" status as any other big outlet, here is their article of 3 days ago by Victor Nava with Governor DeSantis' statement - it indeed matches Mr. Hail's post, but with interruptions by pictures and an ad or two. This was not from ON the Tucker Carlson show, but the NY Post article says:
The host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” asked declared and potential candidates whether the US opposing Russia in Ukraine is a vital strategic interest for America; what the US objective in Ukraine is and how the US will know when it has been achieved; should there be a limit on weapons and money sent to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; have US sanctions against Russia been effective; and does the US face the risk of nuclear war with Russia.Here's Governor DeSantis Statement, titled Ron DeSantis says helping Ukraine fend off Russia not a vital US interest
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests -- securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party -- becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration’s virtual “blank check” funding of this conflict for “as long as it takes,” without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.Bravo! I don't think I have anything to add here beside just simply: US, GTFO!
Without question, peace should be the objective. The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table. These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.
A policy of “regime change” in Russia (no doubt popular among the DC foreign policy interventionists) would greatly increase the stakes of the conflict, making the use of nuclear weapons more likely. Such a policy would neither stop the death and destruction of the war, nor produce a pro-American, Madisonian constitutionalist in the Kremlin. History indicates that Putin’s successor, in this hypothetical, would likely be even more ruthless. The costs to achieve such a dubious outcome could become astronomical.
The Biden administration’s policies have driven Russia into a de facto alliance with China. Because China has not and will not abide by the embargo, Russia has increased its foreign revenues while China benefits from cheaper fuel. Coupled with his intentional depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and support for the Left’s Green New Deal, Biden has further empowered Russia’s energy-dominated economy and Putin’s war machine at Americans’ expense.
Our citizens are also entitled to know how the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being utilized in Ukraine.
We cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland, especially as tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year from narcotics smuggled across our open border and our weapons arsenals critical for our own security are rapidly being depleted."
Right, so this guy is "controlled opposition"*, a Deep State operative, or one with the Jewish lobby? I didn't think so before, and I sure don't now. As Mr. Hail notes, the usual ACTUAL opposition, the Neocons are plain freaking out. I'll paste in here a comment by Mr. Hail regarding the Neocon pundit David Frum:
David Frum, the neoconservative, has released an emergency editorial in The Atlantic today attacking DeSantis. ("Is Ron DeSantis Flaming Out Already?" by David Frum, The Atlantic, March 14, 2023.)I had originally thought that "emergency editorial" was Atlantic or David Frum wording, but I like the idea. We should pull right off the side of the road, pull out our phones, and click that Atlantic link STAT! This is a Neocon Red Alert: Someone important cares about Americans more than Israel!
Frum says that Ron DeSantis' opposition to the Ukraine War is reckless, dangerous, stupid, callous, and signals that DeSantis is FINISHED as a politician on the national stage. Frum believes DeSantis is such a poor political strategist and of such weak character that he is "flaming out" before even taking off.
David Frum claims that he suspected DeSantis might have been a traitor to the cause of Holy Ukraine when he declined to greet the returning Florida National Guard members who had, for some reason, been in Ukraine in winter 2021-22. Frum said his suspicion grew when DeSantis refused to "praise" the Florida National Guard members who had been in Ukraine.
The suspicion that DeSantis is a traitor to the Ukraine Cause (and therefore--implied--a traitor to the USA), which had formed David Frum's mind in 2022, was confirmed yesterday with DeSantis' anti-war statement.
"DeSantis’s statement on Ukraine was everything that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his admirers could have wished for from a presumptive candidate for president," says neoconservative David Frum.
Yeah, I know, Ron DeSantis had some meeting in Jerusalem. He does have a mass of Jewish voter in southeast Florida, well, or "voters", anyway. Would they vote for him at all no matter whether he kowtows? Maybe he's figured out, "NOT", and maybe some of those voters will come around too at some point. They are not all followers of your David Frums, Jonah Goldbergs, Bill Kristols and the official political Neocon sellouts**.
Mr. Hail notes:
Bill Kristol, the neoconservative godfather figure, has been on a 48-hour rage spree against DeSantis for the latter's opposition to the Ukraine War. Kristol is said to be seeking ways to ensure DeSantis loses funding.So far I'm very pleased to see the enemies that Ron DeSantis had been making.
Now, what's the word from The Donald? He responded to Tucker Carlson's request for a statement too, per Kent Masing of the Business Insider - Here's What Trump Has To Say About The Ukraine-Russia War. Because it's very hard to get anything resembling a "statement" out of Trump's mouth, I don't blame the site for inserting his answers piece by piece. Here's most of it:
"Both sides are weary and ready to make a deal. The meetings should start immediately, there is no time to spare. The death and destruction must end now!" Trump said, Fox News reported.There are no principles, like the idea of a Declaration of War being required, or George Washington's words of wisdom here. No, Trump is Mr. Wheeler-Dealer! He doesn't need no principles, political strategy and all that. He's gonna set them down and MAKE A DEAL! Oh, go screw yourself with all that, you egotistical bullshitter!
Trump, who is running for president for a third time, said the U.S.'s objective in the Ukraine war is to "help and secure Europe." However, the former president castigated Europe for not helping in the war.
Trump said the U.S.'s limit to providing assistance to Ukraine would "strongly depend" on his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin while insisting that Europe "must pay."
The former president also argued that the U.S.'s sanctions against Russia "have not been effective" in deterring them from attacking Ukraine.Admittedly, he guy makes good political points, comparing what's going on with what we SHOULD be doing. The comment about replacing Biden is one, but would he be just OK with that, were it Ron DeSantis replacing Zhou Bai Dien?
Trump also believed the U.S. faces a high risk of a nuclear confrontation with Russia under President Joe Biden.
When asked if the U.S. should support ousting Putin from power, Trump said it is "more important" to support replacing Biden than supporting a regime change in Russia.
Trump's comments about the ongoing war in Ukraine echoed his previous remarks that he would have allowed Putin to control "certain areas" in the beleaguered country to avoid the conflict.
In his radio interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the former Republican president said he could have negotiated a deal with Russia and Ukraine while boasting that Russian forces did not occupy any region in Europe under his watch.
During his speech at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump said he would solve the Russia-Ukraine war in one day, arguing that he knew what to say to Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.Yes, he's just going to sit them down and work this all out. Bullshit works, apparently... only this is not an Amway meeting, that's the problem.
The clear difference seen here between these 2 men is not necessarily the specific answers to the questions from Tucker Carlson. The clear difference is that one man has a clear idea of the principles that decide this matter as written out in a statement, while the other says he's just the greatest dealer and talker around, so he'll just do all that stuff he's so good at and fix everything. The latter man can't even MAKE such statement, as his style of bullshitting doesn't cover "statements".
Winner by knockout here: Future President Ron DeSantis!
PS: Just out of completeness, I found that Fox News detailed the responses of not just Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, but also Mike Pence and Kristi Noem to Mr. Carlson's questions, in the format of one question at a time. See Republican 2024 hopefuls respond to Tucker Carlson's questions about their stance on Russia-Ukraine war. The already traitorous (to the State of South Carolina) Neocon Nikki Haley's responses were added to this article too.
* I never really thought too much of this whole concept. The only people I think are the controlled opposition are those folks who continually comment negatively about anyone who fights, these commenters, bloggers, or pundits themselves being the closest thing to controlled opposition, IMO.
** Mr. Hail had more on the Neocon hive reaction (I mean, as in "the hives") in his comments:
The periodical "Jewish Insider" has sounded out the opinions of prominent persons who are condemning DeSantis for treason over Ukraine. This group of luminaries is led by Elliot Abrams, the neoconservative thought-leader. Also joining the chorus, per Jewish Insider, are Senators Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Roger Wicker, John Cornyn, and Mitt Romney, and others. Rich Goldberg, a Republican bigwig, is said to donning warpaint as we speak to rally allies to the anti-DeSantis political warpath. Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and "Nikki" Haley have also now lashed out at DeSantis in similar terms. Also condemning DeSantis for treasonous disloyalty to Ukraine is Danielle Pletka. She is of the American Enterprise Institute and is the current Georgetown University chair of the Center for Jewish Civilization.Try to remember these names the next time any one of them talks about "peace".
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