Instapundit: Still Neocon after all these years?
Posted On: Wednesday - February 1st 2023 4:58PM MST
In Topics: Websites Pundits The Neocons
I had to shrink the screenshot to include Professor Reynold's name, so, in case it's hard to read, that was:
I’m in favor of bleeding Putin into helplessness, but not in favor of outright war.[Facepalm] Will this guy ever shed his Neocon ways? He's generally a Libertarian and Conservative, but he just can't get it through his head. If it doesn't affect the US directly, what the President of Russia does is NOT OUR BUSINESS!
We've been through this stuff before. We have a good example from 20 years ago with the Iraq war (Gulf War II). Yes, I was fooled for a while thinking that there just MUST be something these State Dept. or high Administration officials know about Iraq and weapons aimed at us that I don't. (That they had anything to do with 9-11 was never a thought of mine.) Well, America had been the sole superpower for a decade and a half almost, so Neocons like Glenn Reynolds were use to it. "Get rid of Saddam", we heard from everyone, "He treats his people badly." "Spread democracy there." We could do anything, apparently.
Law Professor and Godfather of bloggers Glenn Reynolds is a bright guy. How could he not learn anything from the Neocon foreign policy stupidity of America's over the last 20 years? Sure, he's worried about WWIII now. He's rightly against the stupidity of Zhou Bai Dien here. However, that one line about Putin tells me that he just doesn't get it. It's not America's job to "bleed Putin into helplessness". NOT! OUR! BUSINESS! GET IT?
The Don Surber Substack article that Glenn Reynolds linked to is pretty good. In general, the bloggers at Instapundit are on the same page. I don't think Mr. Surber is one of the site's regular bloggers, but he is linked to quite a bit. (There are a few handfuls of sites that Professor Reynolds links to very regularly. This site is not one of them, unfortunately*)
I would hope Glenn Reynolds would agree with at least most of what Don Surber wrote. The good Professor has been a real Neocon regarding the Ukraine/Russia war though, right from the get-go. We noted that in our early-on post Peak Stupidity on the Ukraine. C'mon, Instapundit!
Since the title of this post may have gotten a song lodged into many of our readers's heads, and we've not posted music in a while, well, it's not really apropos the post, but whatever. Paul Simon was a great songwriter.
Now I sit by my window, and I watch the cars.
I fear I'll do some damage one fine day,
but I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers.
Still crazy after all these years.
Still Crazy After All These Years was the title song of his 1975 album. That was 5 years already after the duet of he and Art Garfunkel split up.
* "Instalanche" is what the bloggers of yesteryear would call it when their sites were linked-to by the widely read Instapundit. I'm not sure our servers or database could handle one.
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Special Needs Delivery
Posted On: Tuesday - January 31st 2023 7:57AM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity Muh Generation
This post is about the latest generation, so to speak, of communications. The anecdote itself is about a delivery of building supplies from the local big box building supply store.
It turns out, if you have a business account/card from the store, delivery - this was about 20 miles - is only 20 bucks as opposed to $75 without one. Not only that, but the savings of 5% on the amount of wood and concrete I bought brought the total down to below what I'd have paid without my friend's card, not to mention my labor and that it wouldn't even fit in my truck.
I also noted the nicer, more professional, service I got at this counter, as compared to at the normal registers. It may have helped that there was a new, pretty motivated, from what I saw, crowd there, consisting of 2 White guys and a very friendly Hispanic girl. Bingo! I got the girl. Her English was pretty good... up to the point of the story here on the communications.
You must arrange for the delivery half-day period. OK, that was no problem, as there was no hurry. I would need some notice to meet the delivery guy the next Wednesday afternoon (Noon to 4 P) though, at least 1/2 hour, but better yet, 45 minutes, The girl said she'd type in a note about 2 hours. We worked on the notes together on the computer terminal, as her English was not good enough to allow non-ambiguous notes for the driver.
Wednesday morning, yeah, at the coffee shop, at 10:15, I got a call: "Hey, I've got your stuff to deliver first, I'm on my way to REDACTED [number] REDACTED street now." Oh, man, that was the wrong address, first of all, the billing one, not where the stuff goes. "What happened to 'Noon to 4'?" Very luckily for me, I got a White guy, someone I could work with. (The ability to communicate, and without drama, is a big part of this point.) The driver was very decent about the whole thing. "I'll be at least 45 minutes, as I've got to load up something myself" I told him, along with giving him actual, REAL directions that involved turns and landmarks. "You'll have to wait about 10 minutes, is all", and, sure enough, he'd been there for only a short while, and he did a nice job putting the materials where I wanted them with the big fat-tired fork-lift.
My problem is not with the driver. He was a friendly, conscientious guy. I nicely tried to figure out with him where the communications problems lie (with this post in mind, in fact). "They put my stuff on the truck last, so if I couldn't deliver it first, we'd have had to do it another day." I tipped him 10 bucks, and all was well.
However, I think about this stuff and wonder: "How in the world did we all get things done before mobile phones?" OK, there's a customer-arranged timetable in the computer, with notes and everything. That can be texted, IM'd, whatever, all over the place, including to the driver. All that doesn't do a hill of beans worth of good, if nobody USES that information! Why was the truck loaded that way? Did anybody make use of that timetable at the store? I suppose that kind of thinking is simply out of the question nowadays.
Yes, this generation of communications can get information anywhere in milliseconds. This generation of people, on the other hand, seems not bright enough to USE the information in these communications to make things work. Without everyone having mobile phones with which to sort out the screwage, things wouldn't get done at all. #SAD
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Chinese v American U-Students - Round 2: Current Campus
Posted On: Monday - January 30th 2023 8:38PM MST
In Topics: Commies University China Americans
(Continued from Round 1.)
This round, a comparison of the political actions of university students here versus in China, was supposed to be the post. However, I got carried away with that look back at half a century ago - actually closer to 6 decades as of publication date.
One could go back to what is, believe it or not, more than half way back to that time of protests and turmoil here and the Cultural Revolution there, the Tiananmen Square protests of June 1989 (33 1/2 years back vs. 54-58) for a minute. I do remember the event. There was momentum from a decade already of political reforms by Chairman Deng Xiaoping already. The students must have assumed they could accelerate a transition to the liberty and freedom that were still somewhat of a thing in the West. It took guts to go up against the Chinese government (doing the bidding of the CCP).
It's not that I think there's really a lot of understanding of the principles of liberty in the Middle Kingdom, maybe even by genetics. Those students stood up to authority in a way I haven't seen much from American students, who, at the time of Tiananmen Square, were still in a calm learning environment - say, from 1973 to 2008, before our own Cultural Revolution got cranked up.
The recent protests against the Chinese Gov't's/CCP's ridiculous and Totalitarian Covid~Zero stupidity was another instance of political bravery. The university students there, if not at the forefront of this action, played a big part. (Ironically, the idiotic face diapers may have helped them out to some degree in avoiding detainment. Supposed, the Orwellian "Skynet" style AI/surveillance network can do successful facial recognition even of people wearing the masks. I'm not sure I believe that.)
Then, the students got sent home early for Spring Festival to put the kibosh on the resistance. Unlike when Johnny Cougar fights it, authority doesn't always win, and they Chinese authoritah backed off the Covid~Zero stupidity.
In the meantime, the American universities have been undergoing Cultural Revolution 2.0, which is getting increasingly Communistic,Totalitarian, humiliating, and plain stupid. There are parts of it that already top the stupidity of China's Cult-Rev 1.0 half a century back. As I wrote in "Round 1", I'd read a dozen books on the Chinese version of this stupidity a decade (maybe it was a dozen years) ago. At that point I still pondered how the Chinese people could have let that shit happen. As I watch the blue-haired loud-mouthed freaks and soy boys drowning out speakers that trigger them and the tearing down of statues and paintings of tradition and history, I no longer wonder how it could have been let to happen in China.
The thing is, in China, with an all-powerful "leader" and massive State apparatus, it wasn't as if an anti-revolutionary group would have made much headway before being sent to rot in a dungeon in Peking. Sure, one wonders if the young population could have decided to keep in their minds the upbringing and love of their parents rather than falling for Mao's Red Book and joyfully reporting the Capitalist Roader ways of their parents and shaming them with big-character posters and pig's blood. I don't know how much choice they had.
Though much more free to do so, the American university students today have generated a pitiful amount of pushback. There are a few Conservative and alt-right groups on the campuses. They are nowhere near as powerful as the ctrl-left.
It's very hard for me to imagine my being in the classroom today and putting up with the abuse the normal/White male students do. It's hard to because in a technical field that long ago, nothing of the sort ever happened. The students and Professors, 90-95% American White people and men, respectively, were Conservative. I couldn't imagine it any other way.
The Humanities side of the campus was more left wing, but the Communist-style talk and actions of today could not be imagined still. (I and a friend of mine had this idea to audit* a class and call out the Professor on any point of opinion we didn't agree with. Ahhh, regrets...)
It's sad that American students value that likely not-so-valuable "education" they are putting up with over the great feeling they'd have if they were to speak out and actively resist the wokeness. They've got those grades or even suspensions or expulsions hanging over their head, as they put up with all the humiliation in their quest for that invaluable piece of paper. (Well, it SHOULD mean "non-valuable"!)
A difference between Chinese and American universities is that getting accepted is the hard part in China, while getting through the 4 years is kind of a given, from what I've heard personally. That does sound like Harvard, but in most of America the students feel obligated to go along with the political shenanigans to get good grades. However, in China, as I mentioned regarding one anecdote from the Tiananmen Square times, one can still get kicked out, cancelled, or worse.
I don't speak about all of them, of course, but it seems that generally the non-woke, non-Communist portion of the American university students seem pretty cowardly about fighting against the Cultural Revolution 2.0. In a situation that is a complete turnabout from 1/2 a century ago, with the Establishment ctrl-left though and through and no rule-of-law and Constitutional rights to depend on, protests against the Communism may be harder to organize and complete compared to those by the ctrl-left of the past. University learning is a joke compared to that past time, so you'd think there'd be less to lose. OTOH, there's no powerful manufacturing economy as in 1965 to fall back on, if one gets kicked out of college. As of yet, there's no camaraderie to allow one to ignore the threat of arrest, as back in the day for the ctrl-left. (Think of a particular Arlo Guthrie song.)
Perhaps those are good excuses for the lack of action, or reaction, I should say. Still, I can't help thinking that I'd have been raising hell right now were I at the university, rather than putting up with this new Cultural Revolution. Instead, they're all riled up about the Totalitarianism in China, supporting the anti-Covid~Zero protest by the Chinese students.
That's the Fox News headline for this article. We read:
Chants of "Free China!" and "Xi Jinping, step down!" were heard at California Berkeley protests, with one protester holding a sign with a drawing of Chinese President Xi Jinping that read "Death to the dictator."It's really something to hear of Berzerkely students being AGAINST Communism. Still, I would tell the American university students to first "clean your rooms!"
Round 2 also goes to the Chinese university students, both as compared to Americans in the 1960s and to those of today.
* "Auditing" means attendance but without a grade or credit, and this was free for us at the time.
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Lamest blog week evah?
Posted On: Friday - January 27th 2023 7:25PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity
Yes, I am pretty sure it is. I've been on a trip with not any good spot for sitting down and writing Part 2 of of the American v Chinese students or another curmudgeonry dealie involving retail business and terrible communications.
All that's not too exciting anyway, but we've got lots more in store, with continuing Kung Flu stupidity, Climate Calamity™ stupidity, and a discussion of John Stossel's (long-term Libertarian) take on environmental stupidity that confirms and expands on Peak Stupidity's views.
So, if nothing else pops up this week, please accept our apologies. We'll be back in normal form next week. Have a nice weekend, and thanks for the comments!
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Chinese v American U-Students - Round 1: Half a century ago
Posted On: Wednesday - January 25th 2023 3:35PM MST
In Topics: Commies University China Americans ctrl-left
This post was in the back of my mind since the writing of The Chinese people fight Covid~Zero and the Totalitarianism of Xi on the anti-Covid~Zero protests in China back in November that caused the mighty CCP to "STEP OFF!" Brave Chinese university students were a big part of this, as they were part of the big anti-CCP protests in Tiananmen Square (and elsewhere) way back in June of 1989.* Yes, I mean "brave" both times, as the CCP doesn't mess around. Even if it's not being taken away to not be seen again by one's family, the CCP/Government of China can ruin one's future easily enough**.
What have American university students been fighting against these days? I'd say "absolutely nuthin', huhhh, say it again..." What I'd like to do here is compare the student activism in these 2 far apart countries during 2 eras far apart in time, 6,000 miles and 50 years, respectively.*** As usual, Peak Stupidity won't give a long list of examples with stats from somewhere. We'll just compare the general situation in both times and places.
We all know about the crazy 1960s in America, with lots of the turmoil going on at the universities. However, most Americans even today, but more so in the 1960s, didn't know what crazy stuff was going on in China during roughly this same time frame. There was no Tik-Tok, Instagram, and Telegram, or course. Never mind calling California, international phone calls cost serious MONEY, and then, how many people in China had a telephone? With icy relations between our 2 countries from the start of Communism there in 1949 till Nixon's visit in '70, even the newsmen didn't know very much about that big dark hole known as Red China.
Well, it WAS a hole, as Communism had done a number on the Chinese population, with the worst of it being that "Great Leap Forward" of '58 to ''61 (causing the starvation deaths of 30 million). Number 2 in the list of big idiocies there was the Cultural Revolution, not very long after that "Leap Forward", only about 5 years, come to think of it. It lasted for a whole decade.
The American years of extreme ctrl-left stupidity were arguably from '64 through '71, though some may pin it down as ending a year or two earlier. In China, the stupidity lasted from '66 through '76, the year Mao Tse Tong graciously died. It's funny to ponder that hardly a one Chinamen could have imagined the drug-taking, rock-and-roll playing, protesting, university-administration-building-inhabiting, hitchhiking, and bell-bottom wearing of the students in that manufacturing economic powerhouse and biggest military power in the world going on at this time. Likewise, Americans at the time knew that "people were starving in China (so eat your vegetables!)", but could not have imagined the crazy Big-Character-poster-writing, pig-blood-pouring****, parent-harrasing, Manchurian pig-farm-exciling, Little-Red-Book™-perusing in the huge mass of poverty-"stricken" humanity that was Red China going on at this time.
After that digression of sorts, let me mention Chinese university students of that half-century ago era first. Well, that's if one call call them "students". At that time, once Mao and his Commie gang got the young population riled up about the "Capitalist Roaders" and other enemies of what should have been should have great Communist utopia, except for those meddling Roaders, there was no longer much studying going on. University students were sucked into the MOS (Maelstrom Of Stupidity, and, compared to trying to study, it became a better use of one's time to rail against the enemies of Communism, quote the passages from the Chairman's Little Red Book, and rat out and implicate those that needed a good implicating. Intellectuals were sent to do "the people's work" and learn a thing or two about life. (That sounds tempting, though, doesn't it? More on this...)
From what I've read, about a decade ago in about a dozen books on the Cultural Revolution, this was a lost decade as far as higher learning went. You weren't likely go get away from the fun staying holed up in your organic chemistry lab. All intellectuals and even ACTUAL smart people were bad, as Chairman Mao thought about it. They had been the ones flushed out in the '58 "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom" program (and sequel "Then, Mow them Down") Perhaps some of them, the ones not killed or ruined last time, spoke and wrote about how Chinese Communism wasn't all that great.
Some of those Chinese university students, before the Cultural Revolution put the kibosh on studying and intellectualism, would have been called "Liberals". However, that would have been in the sense of "Classical Liberal", as in, Libertarian. They wanted to be able to speak out against the worst of the stupidity of Communism, though I guess coming out against Communism itself was out of the question. The hard-line Maoists were as actual left-wing as one could be. (We call it the "ctrl-left" here, to jibe with the term "alt-right" on the keyboards.)
Now, some would say that the American universities were full of Liberals at the time too. However, that was NOT really in the classical sense, though there was pretension about this. After all, if they get you off the charges of occupying buildings and setting off pipe bombs, those Constitutional rights can be a pretty cool hand. No, they had some legitimate beefs, such as about the Vietnam War, but in general, the protesting and rebelling American university students of a half century back were the ctrl-left, starting the Long March through the Institutions here, while the Long March in China was bearing its bitter fruit 20-30 years after completion (depending on whether you mean the actual march - ending in '35 - or the official beginning of Red China in '49).
While the actual Liberals in China back then were being sent to pig farms and such under the heavy hand of the Chinese Gov't/CCP, the American so-called Liberals had it easy. They were a massive cohort of young people. Though the Baby Boom peaked in the late '50s, the great number of births from 1946 on meant that the later '60s especially had tremendous numbers of young people in college (withy extras compared to normal to avoid the draft too) Being18 to 22 y/o in the late 1960s meant being born from '46 to '51. Society bowed down to this crowd. Sure, the Institutions were Conservative still - even the Universities were until the end of this period. However, Conservatives gave the ctrl-left the benefit of the doubt and respected those Constitutional rights that the ctrl-left availed themselves of... until nowadays when that document is no longer are of use to them.
In Round 1, we see that Chinese university students were basically forced under Communism to join up in a decade long bout of extreme stupidity that in many ways resembles the situation in American universities today. (That is, except for that the Americans join up more willingly.) During that same time, the American university students instigated their part in the Long March to turn American Institutions Communist.
The university students didn't have much choice to resist getting caught up in the craziness half a century ago. In a poor-ass country like 1960's-'70s China, you did what you had to do. It sucked for everyone. Those in those crazy times at American universities DID have a choice to stay Conservative or at least study and get through it all. Yet, on the whole, the students assisted the Long March through this one important Institution, paving the way for Round 2 here.
Round 1 goes to the Chinese students.
One might be tempted, as I wrote above, to understand Chairman Mao's (and later Pol Pot's) wish to be rid of those pesky intellectuals. However, we don't do it that way here, as much as I see his point more as applied to today's American university students. That will segue us into Part 2: American versus Chinese university students in the modern era. Really, that was supposed to be THE post, but I got carried away in the past.
* Peak Stupidity had 3 posts on the 30th anniversary of the events - Freedom in China? On the Tiananmen Massacre 30 years ago. - - Freedom in China, Tiananmen Square, and Freedom in America, and Tiananmen Square and the American Press.
** The one personal account I know is of a promising Electrical Engineering student who supported the Tiananmen Square protests, but only through words and writing, not actively on the streets of Peking. (He was at a university in a far-away province.) He was kicked out of college and not let to re-apply elsewhere. He was a TV repairman down in Canton, last I heard. (And no, he doesn't repair classic Camaroes, sorry.)
*** That 6,000 miles is the great circle route distance from Berkeley, California to Peking China, probably the epicenters of activism. If one takes Columbia Univ. in NY City as one end, it's only 800 miles longer of a distance. (The route from NYC to Peking goes nearly over the North Pole.)
**** The movie Carrie did come out in '76, the last year of the Chinese Cult-Rev, but that was more about hot prom chicks than Capitalist Roaders.
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Kung Flu Vax Sterility - Who knows?
Posted On: Monday - January 23rd 2023 8:26PM MST
In Topics: Media Stupidity Orwellian Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
No, the WHO most certainly doesn't know, neither the band nor the World Health Organization. I'm writing about any possible effects of these gene therapy vaccines on sterility and fertility. Even though this is MY blog, I won't pretend to know one bit about how these "vaccines" could affect sterility in men and its counterpart, fertility (or lack thereof) in women. I wouldn't know enough to understand the biological mechanism is there is one.
Why speculate on it, then? Well, it's the fact that there were attempts made to force everyone to take these jabs, which came onto the "market" (government supply chain?) very quickly compared to previous vaccines. We have no assurance that there aren't some effects, and the risk/benefit ratio for young people is approaching "divide by zero" error. Consider that the "vaccines" don't even prevent the Kung Flu that has not had any serious effect on people of the age best suited for having children (especially women 18 to 28 y/o) anyway, and that there's visible evidence of health risks, especially cardio problems. Yes, risk/benefit is nearly infinite for people in the category
Were this 50, 40, arguably even 20, years back, one would expect the media to feature stories on possible effects, even if it were just speculation. After all "If it bleeds, it leads", they always said - scare the crap out of people, and they'll be back to read more. Some of it may even be true. I suppose this is a different time, and the media doesn't work like this anymore. There's a narrative to keep to, and if a story does not fit it, it not only doesn't lead, it doesn't appear at all in the new Lyin' Press.
When I was reading some of the formerly suppressed tweets while making the post Twitter Files expose the Twitter Ministry of Truth a couple of weeks back, I came upon the screen shots below:
I don't know this Andrew Boston - I'm not even sure I'd even let him cut on me (old Jimmy Buffett line there). Maybe he's a quack. However, he COULD be onto something, and there might be some effect on women too. I'd like to read more, granted not in the form of tweets. More importantly, the young people who DO like to get their news "stories" from tweets, could probably have really used some of this information. Some of the young people, in the biology/medical fields, may have even had some good arguments pro or con.
However, that conversation was made verboten. From the article on the suppressed tweets, including of Dr. Andrew Boston:
"Directly against guidance from authoritative sources..." See, I just don't like the sound of that, not one bit!
Let me re-emphasize right here, this post is not any solid argument about the effects on sterility/fertility from the Kung Flu shots either way. However, SOMEONE might want to discuss this. If this discussion was purposefully suppressed, at least on Twitter, as per the image above, what does that say about the confidence of those that have pushed for the shots to be mandatory? It could be the complete confidence of someone evil enough to have planned for these shots to affect sterility/fertility or it could be the underconfidence of the pushers in the safety of their jabs.
You gotta be stupid and/or awfully sheepishly compliant to put your trust in the claims of complete safety of these vaccines, including long-term sterility/fertility effects, from the "guidance of those authoritative sources." Just like I don't, they don't know... or, if they do, that's an even worse scenario...
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The Extraordinary Select Group of Globalists.
Posted On: Friday - January 20th 2023 8:50PM MST
In Topics: Globalists
The yearly conference of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland ended today. The Globalist Devo set are all returning to where they are based, all around the world, in their (hopefully Carbon-neutral or just slightly positive) Gulfstreams, Challengers, Falcons, and Hawker jets.
One in particular, not even an entrepreneur, Captain of Industry, Big money-man, but a failed politician*, gushed about how simply extraordinary it was that people like him and other Globalists could be together in one place to solve the problems of the world and save us.
John Freaking Kerry? Whoever, it could have been any one of these arrogant Globalists demonstrating that really do believe that the world would be screwed without them. They really believe their shit. They have the answers to the problems... that they're causing, and we must comply, because we are stupid peons and they have so much wisdom and power. (The former is highly suspect, and the latter is there only if we let them exercise it. I plan not to.)
Here will be an often repeated Peak Stupidity point: It's not likely that these evil Globalists have a written out plan to change society with Gant Charts and budget estimates. They do have their conference meetings in Davos and I suppose they discuss their worries about the Climate Calamity™ and such, that is, the worries on our behalf - they know they'll be fine, personally.
What we're really up against is that these Globalist elites all think the same way. They probably don't have any "Population Replacement" white paper to go by, but what's happening sits well with them. They simply cannot stand any White Middle Class, such as what American and Western Europe have had. The White Middle class has disposable income and time. They form their own associations, at odds with the plans of the Globalists. They compete with their leaner, meaner businesses with Globalist Big Biz corps. You can't have that if you are going to stay the Select Group of elites of the world.
It goes the other way too. As these Globalists see the replacement for the White Middle class, those Latin American peons, low wage workers from Africa and who knows where, the feeling gets reinforced in them: The rest of the world's population is nothing but dumb peons that DO need all the help in the world from the Globalists and their New World Order plans.
The stupidest part of this is that these people all mean well. I really believe they do. They aren't inherently evil, well, most of them. However, this combination of stupidity and power results in evil nevertheless. They are on the highway to hell.
* Actually, I don't think any less of a failed politician than a successful politician. Our odds of survival are better with more of the former.
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Senator Joe McCarthy - Blacklisted by History, by M. Stanton Evans
Posted On: Thursday - January 19th 2023 10:34PM MST
In Topics: Commies History Media Stupidity US Feral Government Books
Thanks to commenter Adam Smith for steering us all to an on-line copy of this book - HERE.
Peak Stupidity's review of this important history book by M. Stanton Evans is long overdue. I finished the book months ago, the library might want it back*, and I'm gonna forget half of it if I don't get this going. However, we've had 4 posts already based on certain stories within it, namely Young Commies in LUV - - Did American Commies cause the attack on Pearl Harbor? - - Truman v McCarthy, McCarran, and Ike and Same Stuff, Different Decade....
Published in '07, Blacklisted by History is subtitled The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy. However, there's only a very short biography of the man, less than one short chapter out of 44, called The Caveman in the Sewer**. This book is about the political struggle of this famous/infamous (depending on whether you fell for the 70 year-long lies or not) Senator against Communists that had infiltrated the US State Department and, to a lesser extent, other parts of the US Feral Gov't, in the 1930's through 1954. 1954 was the year he was censured by Congress, and Joe McCarthy died only 30 months later.
In those few biography-oriented pages, we learn that Joe McCarthy was a lawyer, as are many legislators, which soon enough came in handy in his anti-Communist work in the Senate. We also learn about that appellation "Tail-gunner Joe" that the Senator was disparagingly referred to by his domestic enemies. Joe McCarthy was not drafted into WWII, but joined the Marines and did intelligence work with the flyers in the Pacific. He had gone on a dozen or so Photo/Recon missions, occupying the tail-gunner's spot. No, he didn't shoot down any Commies - they were still the good guys, or so we were led to understand, by those American Commies who didn't like that later sniping by Tail-gunner Joe.
Another thing I just now thought of is about the clever idea of the title, as it was the Communists who bitched for half a century later about being blacklisted. Interestingly, there is nothing in this book about blacklisting. That is due to the fact that there was no such thing done by Senator McCarthy. The counterpart to his investigations was the House Un-American Activities Committee which was accused of causing blacklisting in the movie business . This book is directed at the McCarthy story, so only passing mention is made of the HUAC.
I can't cover all the many stories of infiltration, sympathizing, influence, and downright espionage by Communists in the US Gov't of this era that are told in this book. (Those past 4 posts should give the reader a small idea.) I'll just give a brief summary of how this book is laid out and the good (mostly) and a little bad.
This is a LONG book, with 605 pages in my copy. It has 6 sections which I will summarize. Though in the Prologue Mr. Evans describes how difficult it was to find some information, much of it purposefully hidden, removed, or redacted, he includes LOTS and LOTS of details, with 24 pages of notes and sources at the end. (There are only a handful of photos in the book, but the back has photocopies of McCarthy's marked-up list of Communists - historically pretty cool.) Here is that summary:
1) Third Rail: This beginning section of the book describes Joe Mccarthy's relationship with other politicians and the Washington FS social scene, and with the press. It also gives a general summary of all the myriad Communist schemes in the "Red infiltration", with an introduction to some of those traitorous characters.
2) Back Story: Section 2 (example chapters Chungking, 1944 and Reds, Lies, and Audiotape) gives the background going back to the mid-1930's about the Communists in the US State department that ran lots of American foreign policy in Asia at a most critical time. I guess there were lots of critical times over there, but this involved the ongoing battle - partially interrupted by the Japanese invasion - between Mao's Red Communists and the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai Shek.
This history was unknown to me until the reading of this book. "Who lost China?" was asked by foreign policy historians for years to come. "Lost" may not be the best word for what happened. These chapters describe infiltrators in the affairs of what was by far the biggest power in the world already to help the Communists gain rule of the biggest population of the world. I don't have room for all the details and the names here, but I note that, after their work was over, some of these people fled to China. It was a travesty that they had been let to operate within the US Government.
3) Blowup: Wheeling, 1950 marked the start of Senator McCarthy's entry to the world of the rooting out of Communists from their holes. Wheeling, W. Virginia is where McCarthy made his first speech on this issue. That the press was against him from the get-go is shown by that their argument against his accusations was about a difference in numbers of Communists on the Senator's list, 205 vs 57. The 2 numbers were of 2 different lists, and McCarthy maintained that he used the correct (lower) one in his speech. This can't be proven, as the one and only recording by a Wheeling radio station was conveniently lost. (There's nothing new under the sun.) Apparently (to the press) this discrepancy somehow discredited Joe McCarthy right then and there. Ha, "I'm just getting warmed up!"
The rest of this section is a description of the "Tydings Hearings", named after D-party Maryland Senator Millard Tydings. Senator Tydings was supposed to be working on behalf of Joe McCarthy's accusations, but he did nothing but minimize the seriousness of it, treat the accused with kid gloves, and obfuscate. In the meantime, Democrat (yes, it was a different era) Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada had attached an amendment to some bill to specify greater scrutiny of employees at the State Dept., but this was hardly ever adhered to. Some bureaucrats did not want to know, and others knew but wanted it to continue.
The whole long Tydings thing was frustrating for Senator McCarthy, but I'd say also for the reader of Blacklisted by History, as this section dragged on too much for, well, THIS reader. It may be just me, as I could not hold in my head all the different people, committees, and proceedings that were described therein.
4) Mole Hunts: While keeping on the timeline of Joe McCarthy's short career in the US Senate, the chapters of the 4th section tell a number of stories of the various investigations of State Department
But a substantial part of the operation could have been exposed in 1945 had steps been taken to follow the tangled threads of Amerasia back in their mysterious sources. In the five-year span between the fix and the McCarthy blowup of 1950, the fall of China was accomplished.As important as China was, the Soviet Union was the Mothership to these people, and the influence these Communists exerted was most blatant at times. From page 407 in the chapter Dr Jesup and Mr. Field, we read this bit that can be learned of elsewhere, without a study of Joe McCarthy's work: Regarding the Institute of Pacific Relations and the American Peace Mobilization:
As seen, this was one of the most blatant front groups ever, created during the Hitler-Stalin pact to agitate against American aid to Britain in its death struggle with the Nazis, then allied with Moscow. Among its projects, in which [Frederick] Field would play a leading role, were calling President Roosevelt a warmonger for his efforts to help the British and picketing the White House with posters saying, "The Yanks Are Not Coming," All this ceased instantly on June 22, 1941, after Hitler invaded Russia, at which point Field and the APM ditched their peace signs and came out for U.S. Involvement in the war against the Nazis. It couldn't get more obvious than that.
5) Hard Ball: Much of the stonewalling and sabotaging of Senator McCarthy's investigation was from the Harry Truman administration. Things looked up for the program of rooting out the Commies once President Eisenhower and a greater number of Republicans in Congress took office in January of '53. This next section has many more stories, but they are less frustrating, as McCarthy had more power and help from fellow Republicans at this point.
The focus shifts from Asia to America for this section. One thing that is mentioned and really stands out about these stories is that Joe McCarthy did not intend to set out on dozens of different investigations of many agencies of the US Government. It's just that one thing kept leading to another.
6) End Game: The final 3 chapters of the book cover the official Senate censure of Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954. The ctrl-left finally had their day. The Senator had 46 charges against him as some kind of pariah and uncivil member of the Senate. 46 charges - that sounds baaad, don't it? It was almost all hoohey, and all but 2 were too stupid to be followed up on, and the Senate ended up with 1. Mr. Evans describes how the remaining one was such hypocrisy, as McCarthy was being charged for behavior the left had been consistent at. It didn't matter about the nasty accusations of his accuser Senator Ralph Flanders (R-Vermont), as he was not on trial there, per their many reminders to the accused McCarthy.
In the end, Ike cucked and supported the censure. Still, less than 1/2 of the Republicans voted against Joe McCarthy. That and the partisan Democrats was enough though. As we learned from Walking through the Fire by and about Congressman Steve King, being censured means one loses lots of power from committee assignments. Personally, I'd stick and hope for the support from my State, but then that was the problem with Amendment XVII - what had been State power became more national.
I urge the reader with the time on his hands to read this excellent history book. One may think it not worth his time to fixate on the travails of one man and one issue from long ago. This story, though, is more broad than just a story of hearings after hearings, minute details of the traitors in the State Department, and all that. This is book is a history of a time when the Long March of Communism through the American institutions was just getting underway. It could have been stopped. With the help of their Lyin' Press arm of the time, the Commies got through mostly unscathed. What we were left with in addition to their successful march is a 70-year duration lie about a good man doing his best to stop the destruction.
PS: Oh, yeah, I'll add some (very minor) cons of the book. The section on the Tydings Hearings is just too much, IMO. Also, about 2/3 of the way through, I noticed more incomplete sentences, as if the publisher changed editors, perhaps outsourcing that work to India. Oh yeah, there's some weird deal in which the author pluralizes "advices" or something like that. (It's been a while - shoulda' taken notes.) These are all mere quibbles.
* What'd old Ronnie say about the economics here? Peak Stupidity's specific example is "if you want more overdue books, get rid of the fines." (One of the lesser-known parts of the de-policing policies in memory of George Floyd, perhaps? Mr. Floyd can rest in peace knowing his next of kin will be able to breath easier knowing there won't be library fines hanging on their necks... I mean the ones that read books... OK, forget it.)
** His chapter titles are very good.
Comments (4)
He's a New World Man
Posted On: Wednesday - January 18th 2023 6:13PM MST
In Topics: Music Globalists
Dedicated to the New World Men of the WEF, meeting in Davos, Switzerland as we post:
He's a tyrant and a bummer.
He's a sickness, turning green.
He's a restless old pedantic.
Wants to rig the big machine.
He's got a problem with his poisons,
but you know he'll claim a cure.
He's gumming up the systems,
his evil nature pure.
Learning to catch and beat up the old-world man,
learning to patch the streets with the third-world man.
He's got to make his own mistakes
and leave for us the mess he makes.
He's old enough to know what's right
and fool enough not to choose it.
He's strong enough to ruin the world,
and freak enough to abuse it.
He's a New World man.
He's a New World man.
He's a twitterer receiver,
tuned to bots and server farms.
He's a pedophile rump ranger,
with a young boy bearing alms.
He's got a problem with his powers,
his minions on patrol.
He's got to walk a fine line
to keep us under control.
Trying to end the day of the First-World man.
Trying to pave the way for the third-world man.
He's not concerned with yesterday.
He knows the end is here today.
He's old enough to know what's right
and fool enough not to choose it.
He's strong enough to ruin the world,
and freak enough to abuse it.
He's a New World man.
He's a New World man.
With all the great music the band Rush made, only this song, from their album Signals, got into the Billboard magazine American top 40 list. Speaking of 40, that was 40 years ago this past Fall.
Comments (6)
Geniuses of F.I.R.E.
Posted On: Tuesday - January 17th 2023 7:20PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity
In a post a few weeks back, something came up that reminded me to write this post. Peak Stupidity has neglected the Global Financial Stupidity topic for quite a while. We figure it's pretty clear that it's all going down, so ... This is the form of stupidity that trumps all the rest, as in, when the Global Financial Stupidity peaks, the other tranches of stupidity will be liquidated likewise (unless, as I've noted before, we go Communist - not an impossibility by any means).
Wait, "tranches", WTF?? That was a segue into our topic today, with that word that may bring the reader's mind back 15 years to '07-'08, the time of the popping of the American Housing Bubble. Wow, it's been a decade and a half! Seems like it was just yesterday a friend of mine was not only blowing off his mortgage coming up on a year, but getting paid a couple of thousand by the bank to not trash the place before he sent them the keys. Yeah, "tranches", as in some sort of lumping together of the 3% down mortgage notes on $350,000 McMansions of unemployed divorcees and Mexican landscaping company CEOs... to be sold as A-rated investment "vehicles" to pension funds in Norway.
It was still a couple of years later, early '10 I think, when I came upon the anti-Global-Financial-Stupidity website named Zero Hedge. I learned a lot reading there and thoroughly enjoyed the comments, which were all about the stupidity of a nation that was economically led by its F.I.R.E. "industries. That stands for Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, and Education. (Some have it as just ending in Real Estate, without the Education "industry tacked on.) Especially with that first one, Big Finance, being on top, that's no way to run a big nation economically, depending on the manipulation of money as one's bread and butter.
How do all those people pay for that super-expensive real estate in NY City without making big money manipulating and trading around other people's money (well, or be in Real Estate one's self)? It's BIG BIG business! It doesn't produce a damn thing though.
Well, this post is about the employment of math whizzes, geniuses, so some of them tell us themselves, in that Finance industry. It seems like such a waste of talent. The illustrious and notorious Ron Unz apparently made a small fortune being employed in Finance there in NY City*. The writer John Derbyshire also spent some time in this field.
What are big-time math gurus needed for? I really want to know. What's going on making all this money at a higher level than the next Joe Finance is computer-run High Frequency Trading and I suppose also some schemes to organize assets in ways that require higher math to figure out.
High Frequency Trading is about making small profits on very short-term jumps or dips in stocks, by making millions of trades of millions of shares in seconds or milliseconds. I'd have thought that just requires good programming skills and lots of computing power. There must be more to it.
Then, all the complicated bundling of assets and leveraging of money must have some higher-level math involved too, I guess, but I also don't see how.
I mean, there's lots of numbers, but where does the high-level math come in, the stuff that would normally be drawn upon to solve physics problems? All I've got for background is the practical calculus through 3-D (really neat stuff) and the basic differential equations. I do know of other strange mathematical fields, with an inkling of what some of them are about.
I think of the idea of tensors. If you know what vectors are, and then you go from there to a quantity that needs 2 rather than just one dimension to make it meaningful, such as a state of stress or strain of that proverbial infinitesimal cube of material, you can see "hey, I get why someone came up with notation and this concept of a tensor". (The tensor allows one to go on up to n more dimensions from there.) Likely, the math was developed to fit the physics, but sometimes the math was worked out by pie-in-the-sky math geniuses and was awaiting a practical use when the physicists or engineers came upon a problem it ended up fitting.
Is there specialized math to fit this Finance work? Did new fields need to be developed?
No matter what, it's a waste of valuable math talent. America's got these bright guys going to NY City to get the computer programs to make more money faster, or arrange for a more profitable leveraging arrangement. Does it make one happy to use these talents to help Big Finance make a killing?
These bright young men could have been involved in new science and new inventions. Nope,this work gets done in China now. If we did want to do it, we don't need bright Americans, as the foreign Chinese and •Indian Grad students dominate the engineering, science, AND math graduate schools here. I guess, like Cadet Mayo in An Officer and a Gentleman, they got nowhere else to go!
PS: This is Peak Stupidity post # 2,500! That's about 6 years and 7 weeks into the life of this blog. This math genius says that's about 1 1/8 posts per day on average. Damn. I coulda' made more money sorting out tranches and programming big VAX machines to do UHF trading. I don't know though. I have a tendency to lose my ass on anything resembling gambling.
* I listened to an hour-long interview with Ron Unz, and he discussed his whole background, including this phase of his life. He was well-spoken, nice to listen to, and so much different sounding from what I imagine some of his insulting unz.com comments sound like in my head!
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Happy Robert E. Lee Day
Posted On: Monday - January 16th 2023 4:10AM MST
In Topics: History Holiday from Stupidity
He was born in 1807, and General Robert E.Lee's birthday is this Thursday, not today. However, one may want to celebrate it today, so as to save some of that "Long-Covid" excused sick bank pay for another time.
Whether you work in an office or not, Office Holidays website says today is the holiday, at least in Alabama and Mississippi.* Since we have respect for neither the race-hustler loudmouth Martin King nor those cucks who voted to make a remembrance of him, Peak Stupidity choses to go along with Alabama and Mississippi and remember the great General Lee.
The Globalists and the ctrl-left want to bury these thoughts, but the real history is that General Robert E. Lee was respected by both sides of the War Between the States, officers and plain old Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks alike. He was respected for fighting for his country (Virginia) and for doing a superb job at it.
I don't think the American military of today has anyone with the character and integrity of Robert E. Lee.
PS: I went through a few biography/history sites to find an unbiased short biography to link the reader to but got nowhere so far. You'd be best off doing a careful search or obtaining an older book.
* Georgia used to celebrate Robert E. Lee on the day after Thanksgiving, but they turned that into the lame "State Holiday", which almost everyone takes off anyway. That particular "Black" Friday may be a good day to visit a downtown retail establishment to observe the latest unpleasantness and appreciate General Lee that much more...
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Music and Humor from REM and Ann Barnhardt
Posted On: Saturday - January 14th 2023 5:05PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Kung Flu Stupidity
... respectively... she was never part of the band... and from his lyrics, I'm not sure Michael Stipe has a sense of humor.
From their album called Green, here is REM's Pop Song '89. I don't exactly know what part about it sounds a lot like Exhuming McCarthy from a year earlier and our previous post, but it does. Again, the sound is good. If you know what Michael Stipe was trying to say, good on ya'. I don't care - turn it up!
Then, from Ann Barnhardt, whose site we discussed a few weeks back here, comes this humorous meme. (I doubt she made it, but she'll put up dozens of good ones.) We all know what's the new drug the meme is referring to.
Thank you all for reading and writing in this week. Besides finally a review of the Stanton Evans book on Joe McCarthy, about events that happened over twice as long ago as the time Pop Song '89" and Exhuming McCarthy were new, I can't tell you what's coming next week. There will be stupidity in spades though. I wish a happy Sunday to all.
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Exhuming McCarthyism - Part 2: Kevin McCarthy
Posted On: Saturday - January 14th 2023 3:57PM MST
In Topics: Commies Music History Media Stupidity US Feral Government
I will insert something here that was meant to be in Part 1. That picture on top came from an '18 Politico article by one Michael Kruse titled Trump’s Strange Tweet About Joseph McCarthy. It has the subtitle "People who have actually studied the disgraced Wisconsin senator describe a man who bears similarities to some of the president’s most notable attributes.".
Haha! Politico writer Kruse brings up the showman personality angle, but even that doesn't really fit what I've been reading about Joe McCarthy. From what I've read he worked hard at his task and buckled down like Donald never could. Donald Trump could never have focused enough to read Blacklisted by History either for that matter, if he reads ANY books at all!
Peak Stupidity has exhumed the term McCarthyism - well it hasn't been buried, so the analogy doesn't quite fit - we've examined it, and the term is a 70-year-duration LIE. Since it's out there, you know, on wikipedia* and all, could we reuse it for someone else? He may as well be named McCarthy. How about this guy?
There was the story recently of the 15 voting attempts it took to get this Kevin McCarthy back into his Speaker of the Houseship. I did some reading on this guy. Man, talk about wikipedia again, even though I'm no fan of Kevin McCarthy, I still had to wade through the very obvious bias.** This California GOP US Congressman (Bakersfield area) is a politician at heart and an unprincipled squish. I wouldn't trust him, but then lots of the Conservative political world knows not to either. VDare's Peter Brimelow, on this most existential issue, wrote Kevin McCarthy, Former Chamber Of Commerce Amnesty Booster, Forced Into Immigration Patriotism, Sort Of .
I don't keep up with these people, but I did read a few items about those 15 vote attempts, as Congressman McCarthy was forced to promise policy stances in order to finally get his gavel. Matt Gaetz*** and others were part of this. Can they get Kevin McCarthy to keep his promises? I don't know, if someone else has a better offer ... donor, Blue-squad or Deep State blackmailers, who knows?
Rather than depend on forcing decency on a guy who doesn't have so much, couldn't they have gotten someone actually decent up there?
Imagine if Peak Stupidity and its followers (and, oh yeah, about 1 million times as many other people) would all start using a new, Kevin-based definition of McCarthyism, such as:
n:Let McCarthyism be defined with respect to Congressman Kevin, not Senator Joe, and let's quit supporting that 70 y/o lie about the latter.
Legislating based on threats of removal by the honest, decent and non-squishy members of one's political party.
Well, we're big REM fans here at Peak Stupidity, but it helps in that we don't take lyrics too seriously. That 1970s-'90 rock band from Athens, Georgia had some great music. In general the trend from this band was that the better sound was in the songs in which Michael Stipe's lyrics were least intelligible, the entire aptly-named Murmur album being Exhibit A. It's not that his voice isn't a PART of that great sound, it's just that nobody needs to know what he's on about to appreciate the sound.
Exhuming McCarthy is from REM's 5th album Document from 1987.**** It does have a very good hook in the chorus about "You're sharpening stones, walking on coals, to improve your business acumen." That complete bit about "Have you no decency?" can be heard faintly at ~ 02:05 into the song. Was the the real recording? Stipes "Exhuming McCarthy" repeated line at the end is backed with "Meet me at the book burning", yet yet another lie, spread here by dupe Michael Stipe. I'm pretty sure Peter Buck (guitars), Mike Mills (Bass), and Bill Berry (drums) couldn't have given a damn about Mr. Stipe's point. It's the sound. (In the many dozens of times I listened to this song during that era, I never once caught either the "no decency" harangue or the "Meet me at the book burning" bit.)
Speaking of that sound, this song sounds just a little bit too much like Pop Song '89 from the band's Green album. I should say it the other way around, as Pop Song '89 was released a year later than Exhuming McCarthy, in 1988. I'll embed it soon.
PS: Wikipedia does not give the reader a good impression of Kevin McCarthy, which tends to provide a big point in his favor. For example they don't like that:
On September 17, 2020, McCarthy voted against House Resolution 908 to condemn racism against Asian-Americans related to the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the resolution was "a waste of time", and "At the heart of this resolution is the absurd notion that referring to the virus as a Wuhan virus or the China virus is the same as contributing to violence against Asian Americans."It IS absurd. That's exactly what I'd say! (Though, personally, I like "Kung Flu" and "Flu Manchu", but that's quibbling....) McCarthy comes across pretty well on a lot of issues, but I can see his wimping out on some of them in various places. He's not trustworthy.
* Thank you for your efforts there, Adam Smith!
** Example "McCarthy supported Trump's false denial of Biden's victory and participated in efforts to overturn the results,[7][8]..." Yes, like that's a fact, huh? I'll just find the facts I need for the post, and step over your BS, wiki.
*** US Congressman from the Florida panhandle.
**** My favorite off of that album by far was It's the end of the world (as we know it)
Comments (3)
Exhuming McCarthyism - Part 1: Joe McCarthy
Posted On: Friday - January 13th 2023 1:16PM MST
In Topics: Commies History Media Stupidity US Feral Government
Since I finished reading the book Blacklisted by History about anti-Communist 1940s-50's US Senator Joe McCarthy months ago, a review is really forthcoming ... and also the librarians are getting antsy. This post is not about the book and not too much about the man himself excepting for the now 70-year-long lie that turned his name into a well-known political term with bad connotations. This is really about the Lyin' Press, right there even 70 years ago.
See, Communists in today's America are pretty much out in the open with their stupid, destructive ideas based on resentfulness. In mid-1940s and 1950s American, however, regular Americans gave them no quarter with those evil political beliefs. (OK, maybe an occasional folk singer did.) They hadn't made inroads into most of the Institutions of American society yet. Communists would get nowhere without help from the same detritus in foreign countries, their 1st Amendment-protected organizations, and an occasional American President (FDR). They really didn't like being rooted out from their nests of infiltration and espionage within the US State Dept. and elsewhere in government.
Therefore, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy was their biggest enemy during the era in which he held investigations to try to root them out. Though it SHOULD BE, the definition of "McCarthyism" is not:
n:I don't seem to get that one in my duckduckgo search results for the definition, strangely. Wikipedia comes up first:
"The practice of rooting out Communists infiltrators from one's government."
McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner.This is why I say a silent "Fuck you!" when that donate box comes up during the all-too-often times I use the wiki site. I think it would read OK with just 3 words missing - "false and unfounded". (Where do I sign up for Editor?)
Merriam-Webster says "McCarthyism is :
a mid-20th century political attitude characterized chiefly by opposition to elements held to be subversive and by the use of tactics involving personal attacks on individuals by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges.Though not as pro-Communist, -Socialist, or -Anarchist, this definition needs too much doctoring up for just a simple FIFY. Merriam-Webster is wrong on the use of the wording "personal attacks", "indiscriminate", "unsubstantiated", and "defamation". OK, perhaps that dictionary definition refers to common usage of the term, so it's not really Merrriam-Webster's error, the problem being a 70-year effort of using the term "McCarthyism" in this manner ... because they HATED him then, and the Lyin' Press has always hated the real truth.
broadly : defamation of character or reputation through such tactics
That's a long time for Americans to have heard a lie that has never concerned them personally and hasn't concerned anyone for most of that 70 years. After all, what was McCarthy's point? Was he going to stop them from their Long March through the Institutions? What if the full Senate had stood up and backed him, though, making "McCarthyism" mean "Saving the country from Communists" for the last 70 years? Nope, some were fellow travelers with the Commies, and others were too cowed by the Lyin' Press to back this "false accuser" and "defamer" and generally uncouth rube out of Wisconsin, the latter of which is also part of the lie.
As I'll write about in the review, even the people being accused and questioned about their Communist support in Senator McCarthy's hearings thought him an even-handed, polite, patient, and generous accuser. He was generous in letting the nuttier of them go on rants, and patient with those who kept pleading the 5th on the simplest of questions. (The ones he'd had enough of were those who pleaded the 5th, THEN went on long rants!)
"Have you no decenty, Sir?" was the big sound bite of the time that reverberated down hall of Lyin' Press offices over history.
It was 1954, as the Senator was holding hearings on yet another infiltration, in the US Army, with the "Moles of Monmouth" and goings on at Ft. Dix, New Jersey. Senator McCarthy pointed out to grandstander-style attorney Joe Welch that Welch himself had a 3-4 year CPUSA member (including after Law School) lawyer named Fred Fischer on his staff for these very hearings. Joe Welch went on a rant against McCarthy about his "cruelness" and "recklessness" in bringing this highly irrelevant biographical history of Welch's assistant to the panel. As McCarthy tried to give some background on the Commie-ridden National Lawyers Guild and brought up the harm done to the reputations of his staffers by bogus charges from Welch, Welch said his famous line:
"Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you left no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?"
Decent people seek the truth rather than spread lies. McCarthy's
We've exhumed McCarthyism here, and we've found that McCarthy's legacy term was just another case of
Part 2 will be an effort by Peak Stupidity to, if not bury the term, find another, more correct use for it. There's this guy named Kevin... yes, and we'll embed REM, of course.
* I didn't mean to crop the picture that thin. I can't fix that just now though.
Comments (8)
Starbucks Wokeness Backfire
Posted On: Thursday - January 12th 2023 8:32AM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Race/Genetics Big-Biz Stupidity
It's been almost 5 years since Peak Stupidity mulled over our Thoughts from the coffee shop .... In that post, and one 3 weeks later, Starbucks vs. the Viennese Kaffeehaus, we disparaged the young Millennials who spend lots of time at these place, some like young budding Communists, slamming their first on the table as they rail on the bourgeoisie. (Honestly, they don't know how to spell "the bourgeoisie" any more than I do, so it's "the White patriarchy!" now.)
That's about the time I started meeting some friends at, yeah, the coffee shop, about twice a week. I sure didn't want to support Starbucks, but then the other one near this location is run by a lefty Kung Flu Panicker (the only time it came close to blows). This is actually not much support of Starbucks on my part, as I am not a coffee drinker and the occasional hot chocolate I get is not good for me. My wife has the healthy concoctions that I bring now. (My friends purchase a few things.)
Businessman Howard Schultz didn't start the Starbucks coffee shop chain*, but he made it into the biggest vente latte cappuccino-sipping empire. Apparently, a lot of people in a lot of places have lots of money to throw away on fancy concoctions based on coffee.**
In this Crony Capitalist system of ours, Big Biz Big Shots have got to get along with Big Government. It goes both ways: Make sure tax laws are favorable to your Big Biz and that the regulations hurt your small competitors more than your outfit. Government wants different things from Big Biz. Lately, it's been the globohomo agenda and the workness that Big Biz has been complying with in order to please Big Gov.
When it really came down to it, on the black worshipping requirements, Howard Shultz not only offered no pushback, but he double down on the stupid. It was only a couple of months (in '18) after our coffee shop posts that Starbucks came under the racial worship limelight. A couple of black guys pulled a Rosa Parks - just as with her seat on a city buy, this was a set up too. Set up or no set-up, if you don't buy anything, and you are being nothing but a pain in the ass, the store has every right to kick you out.
That strange concept may have been adhered to somewhat back then, but with the usual coddling of the average precious black troublemaker. However, the culprits were NOT OK with a gift card and an apology though. A big, but short-term anti-White movement was ginned up. Peak Stupidity does not have a post directly about the big brew-haha that resulted after the 2 guys were kicked out of that one Starbucks. We do have a post Starbucks - fake coupons and raising hell about the aftermath, with links to Steve Sailer posts on the story.
The cowardly Howard Schultz did not back up his employees. He went the other way, lambasting the practice of trying to run a thug-free, vagrant-free operation. He pushed it even further. Was that to get in REAL GOOD with the US Gov't, or because he really is a worthless cuck?. In the manner of Mao's Red China during their Cultural Revolution 55 years ago, Mr. Schultz implemented an afternoon long struggle sessions for all employees, closing the stores for it. Peak Stupidity reported Nationwide 10,000-Store Barista-Based Synchronized Struggle Session a Success!
Because he didn't back up his own employees, this is what Howard Shultz caused poor baristas to have to deal with:
Therefore, the manager of our local Starbucks is really careful about kicking out any black troublemakers in the store. He usually calls some local cop. Some of his younger blue-haired, nose-ringed Millennial baristas wouldn't even know how to think about this.
However, it's not been enough. There WAS a Starbucks in a primo spot right downtown. It had quite a big of indoor seating and some outdoor seating. There were vagrants hanging out to the point of too many customers getting bothered and worried, business fell off, and the place closed down within the last year. But that's better than getting the black kids angry™. People can go somewhere else... like the one we go to...
Except they have removed the outdoor seating where we usually hung out, due to some fight in there - I'm just guessing who was involved. There is not much indoor seating, and the one big table that can seat 8 or very-tightly 10 is half-dominated by a black guy who buys nothing and plays a board game all morning. He's not a troublemaker by any means, but that's still a loss of sit-down business. If it were a White guy, I'm betting he'd have been told to take it elsewhere or buy something long ago.
I'm not sure if this one will stay open if they have to operate without the outside tables. Then again, maybe the pick-up business is their business model now - I don't think that's been the idea in the past though. Heckuva job, Schultzie!
Or, coffee drinkers can make this stuff at home. Sorry, this one is TOO FUNNY to not repeat. (Learn about The Verismo home-brewing system by Starbucks.)
PS: Howard Schultz has not gotten a clue from all this. Here's a recent article: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz: We will hire 10,000 refugees". First went the manufacturing jobs, then the white collar jobs, now the barista jobs ... They DO NOT LIKE US.
* He'd worked at a Starbucks in Seattle as early as 1982, but he started his own coffee shop, Il Giornale, which merged with Starbucks in the mid-'80s. At least one Starbucks had been around since 1971.
** That doesn't explain the purple and green drinks though...
Comments (11)
The Psychology of lying to one's self and OPM Charity
Posted On: Wednesday - January 11th 2023 5:54PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Economics ctrl-left Scams
I came upon this quick talk about an experiment with dice and human psychology the other day. There is more to the video before this portion, an analysis of just what the hell was the deal inside the head of Theranos Gold Dust Woman and bullshitter Elizabeth Holmes.
That's all over with. The lady is in prison for a few years with lots of sympathy due to her having a child. The elite virtue-signalling idiots who put the big bucks into her business probably made it back by now screwing over the working man. She did talk weirdly, but in prison she probably talks a lot more sweetly and wears orange instead of black, which really does match her hair a lot better ...
This post is not about her though. The guy talking, Dan Ariely, is a Professor of Psychology at Duke University in North Carolina. One might call him a Behavioral Economist, per the video notes. That's pretty interesting stuff. This video is only 3 minutes long. The results of his simple 2 experiments are pretty interesting:
What do you think? Here's what I get out of it.
First experiment: It's pretty easy to remember whether you picked "top" or "bottom" for the amount of money you deserve, that is, if you don't lie the researcher or to yourself. Are the subjects that get way way ahead of the average expected payout lying to themselves or lying to the researcher? It can't be both. If they really convince themselves that "yeah, I picked top this time", then they have managed to lie to themselves but not the researcher.
Though directly lying to the researcher is based on greed, the cognitive dissonance that has one lying to oneself is still based on greed here.
OTOH, I see a flaw in the methodology involving memory. After 10 times or so, might you not forget what your pick was this time around, confusing it with last time? I think I might.
Second experiment: When donating OPM (Other People's) Money to charity, the virtue-signalling effect is greater than the greed effect seen in the 1st experiment. Not only that, but it feeelz so much better to cheat for a good cause, truth be damned, that you don't trigger the lie detector.
That's what we see today in the nicer of the ctrl-left crowd. Being nice and giving out money, but, no, not one's own, of course, is more important to them than the truth. The truth won't come back and bite them in Professor Ariely's experiment. In the real world, it will eventually, unfortunately taking down the rest of society with them.
Comments (6)
USA Today PanicFest Infotainment - Vax Version
Posted On: Tuesday - January 10th 2023 7:52AM MST
In Topics: Websites Media Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
Note to geeks: This is not about the Vax mini-mainframe computers. A few seconds ago, that old meaning of the word came back into my consciousness! Let's be clear here.
In our post a week back, The Graphical Truth?, we speculated on the Kung Flu booster shots being worse than the initial shots in causing health problems and deaths for Americans. Note the ? mark though - it's just something that coincides to a degree, the key to all this speculation on excess deaths (besides the problem with the base"line") being how causes of death are assigned.
I can't seem to get through to certain people, cough, cough, Ron Unz**, cough, on the important problem of how good is the data when causes of death are goosed? I have wasted entirely too much time that could have been sleep or blogging time trying to get this across, but worse yet, feeling obligated (somehow) to read through 500 to 1,000 comment threads on this. I mentioned and linked to the goosing of the death counts in that week-ago post.
That post also noted that its 2nd graph came from the venerable, heh, yeah, venerable? USA Today. That page is A-OK though. I am a a sucker for solid numbers but more so nice maps and especially interactive maps***.
The page, Tracking COVID-19 vaccine distribution by state: How many people have been vaccinated in the US?, is not updated daily - note that the two overall numbers above are from almost 3 months back. (I have a feeling the booster or "additional dose" number won't keep climbing very high. Even the most clueless of Americans are seeing the problems.)
They've got a State-level schematic map:
There is no way for our readers to tell without going to the page, which I recommend, but I'd chosen the "Fully Vaccinated" option (making it appear white) when making the screenshot. "Received at least 1 dose" percentages are a good bit higher.
I'm not writing this to do Steve Sailer style speculation on the reasons behind the variation in the numbers. "These people are like this",. "These other people are more like this, so that's why ...", etc. There is a lot more to that, and I don't write to criticize that analysis.
My point here is just to show an example of the later stages of PanicFest entertainment. Back in the heyday of the PanicFest, June 1 of '20, in I miss my Kung Flu TV, and the end of that month, in C'mon guys, it's all CASES nowadays!, Peak Stupidity showed examples of the graphical data that was displayed everywhere -such as the top of bing search results on anything Kung Flu - to keep up the Infotainment. Sports had been cancelled, so what else was there for numbers people to keep up with at that time? Cases, hospitalizations, deaths, IFR etc, etc. This was a big part of the PanicFest. It was the best of times for the Lyin' Press.
Americans were told this
(I had to cut off a note that said: "States are included only if county of residence was reported for at least 80% of people fully vaccinated." That's about reporting, mind you, and that must explain Virginia.)
Interactive maps are FUN! I may not be looking at them for the same reasons as most USA Today readers are, though. I used the nice county-by-county and even voter-precinct-level NY Times interactive demographic maps*** to see how to get away from heavily black areas, probably not something the Times would want to hear. On these USA Today maps, I view dark purple as a sign of stupidity, not success.
PS: If there are any more boosters coming out, the use of which are required for that Fully Vaxxed Platinum Elite Status, will the "Fully Vaccinated" percentages show a drop, as people are older, wiser, and sicker? Instead, maybe the maps will be "deprecated", to keep up morale. In the meantime, Go Rhode Island!!
* We followed up with a correction and more investigation into the numbers in Mortality Addendum and Back to the excess death count - Could it be infants and illegal aliens?, respectively.
** That one is entitled Vaxxing Deaths or Covid Deaths? - there are other options too - but it tries to the heart of the matter. The problem is that bogus assignment of causes of deaths is not part of his discussion. This one has 1,072 comments as of just now. Soon after that Mr. Unz published Obesity and the End of the Vaxxing Debate?, with 552 comments as I write.
I chuckle at that 2nd title. First of all, Steve Sailer and his commenters noticed the obesity angle long ago. Secondly, I supposed Ron Unz could end the debate with a heavy-hand on his web-site, not something he's usually prone to doing in the comments, but, no, the debate is not at all over, at least not the way HE thinks. Finally, I really wonder what Mr. Unz has against those he erroneously dubs the "anti-vaxxers". He's got the live-and-let-die attitude himself, and he told us he had taken a couple of shots early on but no boosters (and he's not planning to).
*** For about 8 years later, I had the same NY Times (also a good page from a bad source) interactive '00 --'10 census demographic comparison map in a browser tab. It was awesome, but the Flash software got deprecated, and things were too hairy by '20 for them to even THINK of making such a thing for '10--'20. What a shame! It was very useful for re-location ideas.
Comments (16)
Two years later, Political Prisoners still held in Washington, FS.
Posted On: Friday - January 6th 2023 5:37PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 US Police State US Feral Government Anarcho-tyranny
It was 2 years ago today, on a cold afternoon in the capital and Capitol of the Potomac Regime, that some Americans, high from a Trump "Stop the Steal" rally, rioted a bit, trespassed on the Capitol grounds, and had a little fun for a few hours. That afternoon and for the next month or more, I really regretted my not having attended the rally - it was a matter of travel arrangements - I would have likely been right on up there, as that's my thing.
I don't write about the complete Anarcho-Tyranny by the US Feral Gov't apparatus that followed just due to my thinking "it could have been me!" Yes, it could have. At first, I figured, "well, could have been on the news and then probably lost my job...", but I see that the Regime has put more hardship on these simple trespassers than I and most Americans would have ever imagined.
There are various of stories of how the incident was instigated by Feds and such - see American Greatness on Feds Had Informants In Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for J6 for just one such report.
That's very possible, but even if that is all true, that doesn't distract me from the sheer Anarcho-Tyranny of the severe punishment laid down on these hooligans and/or simple patriots having a good time in the "People's House". Even the politicians who exclaim "Insurrection!" know full well that there was no near takeover of the US Feral Gov't that day 2 years ago.
We all watched something of the months-long '20 BLM/Commie-Antifa burnings, lootings, and heavy destruction, in which nobody received any more punishment than slaps on the wrist, well, except for those 3 guys that Kyle Rittenhouse dutifully took care of. Not only that, but there was serious destruction and threats to the Feral Gov't (executive branch) during the inauguration of President Trump in '17, not far from the site of 1/6/21, same Federal Shithole anyway.
One could argue about what the law says about rioting, is trespassing in the Capitol worse than just burning down private businesses, etc.. - OK, he'd lose, but, face it: We all know these people are stuck in prisons in Washington, FS, guarded by non-caring AA retards with almost no contact with the outside and mostly non-existent due process due to politics. The Regime wasn't really scared of the guy with the horns appropriating the sacred gavel, but they want to make sure any real insurrection is strongly discouraged. This is political. These people are Political Prisoners, plain and simple, by definition.
When I mentioned the treatment of these lost American patriots, an The Unz Review not too long ago admonished me that, YES, we do know who these people are. I thank him, because the media just hasn't been taking much of an interest in this story, as he steered me to a list of (at the time I counted almost 900 people that have been arrested as Capitol Breach perps. That page* has a long table with case numbers, names, charges, links to case documents, location of arrest, case status, and last updated date. I don't know for sure how many are in jail right now. They should have been free long ago.
3 months ago Gateway Pundit reported 34 US Political Prisoners in DC Gulag Demand Transfer to Guantanamo Bay to Escape Intolerable Conditions in Heartbreaking Letter.
Thirty-four US political prisoners of the Biden regime penned a very sad letter this week requesting a transfer to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba facility where they would receive meals, sunlight, freedom of religion, exercise, entertainment, and be treated like human beings.There's a handwritten letter embedded in that page. Yes, this is 3rd-World shit, and these unlucky patriots are seeing it up close. I just wish there was a Free World nation somewhere from which would come journalists to report on the sad 3rd-World tyranny and have a rock band write some song about the Mothers of the Disappeared or something.
These thirty-four January 6 political prisoners have been held for over a year and a half without trial for misdemeanors and trumped-up felony charges.
This group of men have been isolated, beaten viciously, abused, threatened, tormented, and belittled by the guards based on their political and religious beliefs.
The men and women have been without medical assistance, medications, exercise, and most of these men have been held in isolation with little human contact for months at a time.
We haven't forgotten another event of that day. That would be the murder of Mrs. Ashli Babbitt at close range by Capitol Cop Michael Leroy Byrd.
* The big number of spelling errors in this Dept. of Justice on-line document gives me hope. The more stupid AA hires they've got there, the worse their chances are against the American people, when it comes down to it.
Comments (19)
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the glass?
Posted On: Friday - January 6th 2023 2:41PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music Race/Genetics
This is on the glass near the entrance of that bowling alley we went to recently:
Long ago, the signs stated "No shirt, no shoes, no service". I pushed back on the 2nd of the 2 requests quite often one or two summers decades ago, and they usually let this slide. Let's see how much freedom we have lost based on this 6-item sign from today's America.
1) Same thing, with stricter wording. (After all, in the past, one could walk in barefoot and shirtless without making a purchase I guess... per the signs, anyway, but they'd probably kick you out eventually.)
2) That's what happens when you have the wrong demographics or the wrong government. I don't recall the "no weapons" signs in the past.
3) Going back only 20 years, you could smoke inside most places of business, especially bowling alleys. Vaping had not been invented.*
4) Should that need to be said, even today? Alas, yes. You'd think the young black guys would want to Dress for Egress, especially when entering a potential robbery site. I think the signs should encourage this style of dress, so those inclined could be more easily chased down.
5) To the question of whether this would have been seen years ago, yes and no. The time of minimum drinking age or age for purchase of alcohol goes back before my time. However, common sense was still allowed to be used, meaning someone who looked old enough could buy it with no ID required. If your looks were questionable in this regard, you'd get asked. This is one of those battles I picked at a grocery store and lost long ago. Now, it's ZERO TOLERANCE. Great Grandpa must show ID, cause you never know! Or, something...
6) Yeah, this makes sense, as they had food to sell - if you could get past the software, but I don't remember it being spelled out in the past.
Arguably, only 2 of these demands or warnings would have been on the glass a few decades back. It's a private business, but the signs show us a bit about how we've fallen as a country.
Per advice from commenter Alarmist, we have here the 51 y/o classic from the 5 Man Electrical Band:
We've mentioned this song in 3 posts before but never embedded it. Those would be Sign, Sign, where'd they put the sign? ♪♫♬ - - The 5-Comrade Electrical Band vs. the Bee Gees - - and Local Multi-Culti. Some people may know the band Tesla's remake of this song better.
* Right at 20 years back, it turns out, the "e-Cigarette" was invented by a Chinese guy named Hon Lik. So it wasn't just gunpowder, paper, and those fans...
Comments (5)
Twitter Files expose the Twitter Ministry of Truth
Posted On: Thursday - January 5th 2023 9:55PM MST
In Topics: Media Stupidity US Feral Government Anti-Social Media
Per our usual policy of lagging a week, month, and occasionally a decade or two behind, Peak Stupidity will expound a bit on the Twitter Files. Let's picture this correctly in our heads first. The Twitter Files are not hanging files in a metal filing cabinet as obtained by Jim Rockford and his late friend Angel Martin in the middle of the night. They are all electronic, being long-quashed tweets from Twitter servers, emails and tweets among Twitter employees, email and tweet requests and demands by the US Feral Gov't to Twitter employees, and so forth. Since Elon Musk bought the company, he has let this information go free, causing quite the stir.
Due to our long-ago conclusion that Twitter is plain stupid - we have never transmitted any tweets, though we've unfortunately had to receive a number of them due to no other choice - Peak Stupidity is not too bent out of shape about Twitter's purchase, the quashed tweets, the near-monopoly* (of the Tweet Space, if I may) media company's outrages, and its shunning of individuals too truthful for our own good.
I could have gone to 10,000 websites to get material for this post. However, this is not so much about the cancelling and shunning of Conservatives and people with information on this, that, and the other thing. It's about the very practices that this Anti-Social media company (and by extrapolation, likely the other big ones) uses to control what gets written to begin with, by those of ANY ideology about ANYTHING.
From a site called [Your]News comes an "article" about some of these "files", used here only because of the tweet above on it that I'd seen elsewhere really hit home about how Minitrue this whole deal is. I surely didn't pick out THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE for David Zweig's prose. There is only one sentence of freaking prose! This whole damned "article" (see why I use quotes now) is a series of tweets by this same guy. I'm sorry to break this to him, but pasting in a couple of dozen of one's tweets is not writing, and you didn't create an article, David Zweig.
Here is the only line of actual prose by Mr. Zweig, or someone, but, I dunno, it doesn't have a blue check mark by it:
The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19.That's not the half of it, but that's what Mr. Zweig's header tweet was about. (We'll have another post on suppressed Kung Flu tweets.)
Yes, this manipulation of what gets sent and/or received as specified by the FBI, Zhou Bai Dien, Totalitarian medical establishment, and/or the Deep State is high-level corruption, collusion, election fraud, treason, and plenty of other crimes the FBI might come up with, if they weren't in the crowd of perpetrators. It's been entirely one-sided, it seems, with the Potomac Regime using the Twitter Ministry of Truth to suppress information that is contrary to the narratives of the Regime and Globalist goals worldwide.
What is extraordinary here is how many resources the company Twitter uses to do ANY of this kind of work. The company is NOT a publisher, but a free platform for communication by people not working for the company. It's not within the wheelhouse of the Peak Stupidity legal team, but we did learn enough back at the end of the Trump administration to write Big-"Tech" censorship and Section 230 about this difference. I don't know why the company Twitter should have any concern about its users' writings, if you could call it that. Incitement to violence? That's a matter for the law - they can read these tweets the same as anybody. Libel? Sounds like a job for the lawyers.
Yet, I read that Twitter had 10's of thousands of employees either doing the tedious work of sifting through computer-flagged tweets, or writing software to do this flagging, along with warning twitterers and cancelling them. I mean, it's such a big operation that the work was outsourced to the Philippines! As much as our experience with Customer Care in the Philippines has been better than dealing with other foreign places, the friendly voices speaking English over there don't actually understand a lot of English. That they are doing this warning and cancelling of twitterers shows that the Twitter Ministry of Truth is just phoning it in.
It's not even personal. Whatever information the company is told to stop from flowing, there are software "bots" and Filipinas who don't actually get what's going on that send it down the memory hole with a broad brush. As with the Customer Care operations, the software control panel (close up of what was in that tweet**) lets the employees follow a script of sets of questions without any real thinking. It's not even Orwell's Ministry of Truth with some intelligent people against you. Twitter's operation is more uncaring than that about your communications.
None of this should be necessary. Would it have been done without Feral Government involvement? Maybe it still would, with a mass of lefty employees.
The way around this modern Ministry of Truth is simple: Quit tweeting, and communicate like civilized human beings, for crying out loud!
* Who's fault is that, though?
** It's kind of blurry, but this is just to show how it is done.
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[UPDATED 01/06:] Changed the last sentence in paragraph 6 to replace "Conservatives", as per comment by Dieter Kief.
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Comments (8)