Inflation with pick-up trucks
Posted On: Tuesday - March 15th 2022 12:47PM MST
In Topics: Websites Cars Economics Americans Inflation
The preposition in our post's title here may may our readers wonder. Isn't it "Inflation of pick-up trucks", as in a discussion of the recent increasing size of Americans' pick-up trucks? Or, is it "Inflation in pick-up trucks", as in inflation in the prices them. We will rant on the former and mention the latter, but the idea of this post is to discuss the effect of recently increasing* inflation on those drivers with these big-ass pick-up trucks.
This may be one of those posts that will piss off a number of readers to the point of never coming back here for our elucidation of stupidity. People don't like some random rightwing ranter dissing their choice of vehicle. I! GET! THAT! However, I will note here that I have friends who drive big-ass pick-up trucks. The one I speak of is not much the object of this post, since he can well afford to have bought his brand new one with cash**, one of the big GMCs, for what I recall was $50,000. He can well afford to feed it too. So, keep in mind the caveats I'll insert as to who I'm either worried about or, should I say, of whom I'm really wondering about his mind-set.
There've always been some big pickups around, used on the farm, ranch or by those in trades which require hauling a lot of stuff. I don't know when it because the thing to just have a pick-up truck as one's personal vehicle even without any particular good use for it, but I'd say it was the middle 1980s. That's when I'd see those new model small Nissans and Toyotas driven by office workers and such. So as not to be just a complete polemicist here, I did look up some US sales numbers. The following graph jives with my memory.
"WTH?!", the reader might readily exclaim, "that was only a small rise".Yes, but the category "light truck" includes vans and SUVs along with pick-up trucks My memory, which usually serves me well, is that that middle 1980s bubble was for those small pick-ups (gas was till high, but on the way down), while the rise from the early 1990s was of the SUVs, starting with those Isuzu Troopers, Jeep Cherokees, and Chevy Suburbans.
Since gasoline has been relatively cheap and also stable in price since the big ramp up from 1999 through 2008, the REALLY BIG TRUCKS seem to have risen up from novelty vehicles to standard issue. People have the big ones that tower over sedans and even more so over sports cars, quite dangerous for the latter especially, in a collision. Some of them look like they'd need a ladder to get into! Some even have those duallies on the rear too. (Is that really for spreading the load, as on a bigger, working truck, or is it for looks?)
Hey look, if you're out there hauling hay bales, or carrying cinder blocks and bricks, pulling a horse trailer, sure, knock yourself out. Otherwise I do wonder whether the sales of these things is for show-off value. Are Americans all so well-off still? You could have fooled me... well, until I see a quarter of the parking lot filled with these things hanging into the nearby spaces.**** Maybe, I'm wrong, but I'm not. (h/t Hotel California-era Eagles)
What about the gas to feed these new big trucks? When searching for information on the gas mileage of these behemoths, I came across a cool site called Fuelly that has gas mileage distribution graphs for loads of vehicles. This is more than just a web site, as it's another of what I'll dub here UPC (User Provided Content) organizations. One can sign up*** and enter one's mileage readings and fuel amounts after gassing up. It's a cool idea, I gotta say. The users, since maybe they can't use calculators, or simply like to have an app for everything they do in their lives, get out information and nice recording, storage, and graphical output of how their vehicles are doing. The website gets traffic by providing a service of accumulation and crunching that information from those users who've joined to give long-term, multiple vehicle averages of mileage for each those many different vehicles for everyone to view. What's nice is that, rather than relying on opinion (as with reviewer content) or lots of erroneous data, since each "member" has in interest in getting a good fuel mileage number, he'll be careful to put in accurate info.
Well, that was a hell of a digression (but a cool idea!), so I'll note that, though there are many more gas-saving features (cylinders that get put in stand-by mode, etc.) realistic mileage estimates are in the high teens at best, though YMMV (HA!!) At $5/gallon gas, that starts to get expensive. Let me not start with that hundred dollar fill-up talk, simply because that's not of much use, when there's no ONE tank size. One may indeed encounter a $100 fill-up now, with a 25 gallon gas tank that is just below 1/4 on the gauge, and over that in California.
It'd be more useful to make a few calculations on the costs for big-ass truck drivers who have regular 5 day/week jobs that live out in exurbs. Lots of people live that way - it may be closer to the norm than any other life style. Let's take a 15 mile trip each way to work with 4 other 20 mile round trips during the week. At 18 mpg, being generous, and still $4.50/g, that's 230 miles, 12.8 gallons, and $57.5 bucks weekly. Since a working month has a couple of more commutes, we're talking about $250 in gas money monthly. Maybe the wife doesn't need that big truck to show off with, so she drives a different show-off vehicle that gets 25 mpg, maybe doesn't go as far to work, and with trips to shuttle the kids around just adds on another 50 bucks. Then, there's the occasional 500 mile round-trip outing to get to the beach, the mountains, or the extended family's place. That'll be a $300 to $400 monthly gasoline bill.
Back to the truck itself. I did a cursory search for the price of these things, and I'd say the range of $35 to $55 thousand is what drivers are paying for these things new, without extreme option packages. They are not your 2000 Ford Rangers, which, though I haven't owned one, are one of my favorite models, looks- and functionality-wise. I'll have to to price inflation of the trucks elsewhere, as I have done no shopping in my life for ANY new vehicle save one***** and never have bought one.
Americans are stretching payment schedules out fo 7 years now! That should bring the payments down, right? Well even at the lower end, at $40,000, and an interest rate of 2%, one they may be offering, thanks to that most generous Federal Reserve Bank,
A family with one of these behemoth or any gas guzzler for that matter, using it as a regular driver, will pay a thousand bucks monthly for use, but that doesn't include the big insurance, property taxes, and oh, the other car! (Hopefully the other has somehow been paid off, and I am not even counting maintenance for the new vehicle - you gotta do oil changes and such, at the least.) You ain't getting away without $1,200 monthly for transportation, for 7 long years. How do most Americans think they can continue to live like this? That's pretty much the only point of this post.
PS: BTW, I should have done the gas cost calculation using the average American vehicle yearly mileage of 12,000 miles that I've seen in various places. My estimate doing rectal extraction and this quick calculation of my own turned out to be using 11,960 miles. Man, I'm good.
* Peak Stupidity has been well aware of the general level of price inflation in the American economy for years, increasing annually at a 4-5% PSIPI (Peak Stupidity Inflation Post Index), compounded. There are quite a few posts now with our Inflation topic key, most written well before the "I did that!" era.
** It's more a matter of cash flow/financial strategy, so I don't know for sure if he did buy it cash.
*** Honestly, as much as I appreciate the idea and of the participation, signing up for things in general is just something I'm not inclined to do, much less the giving out of information to strangers. (They probably don't need VIN's or really anything, so likely there's no real privacy worry. and it'd be nice to help.) I also can do my own calculations without needing a web site to do it for me.
**** I will note that back after the time of the gas "crises", there were all kinds of efforts to punish people for driving bigger vehicles, such as the making of smaller parking spaces.
***** I came close, but it was the property tax I'd be paying that sealed the deal, well lack thereof.
Comments (31)
Would you rather be nuked or globally warmed?
Posted On: Saturday - March 12th 2022 10:32PM MST
In Topics: Music The Dead Humor Global Climate Stupidity World Political Stupidity
Yes, this one comes straight from Steve Sailer, who snarkily asked last week "Wouldn't Nuclear Winter Stymie Global Warming?" in reply to some tweeting idiot.
Really that Carl Sagan "Nuclear Winter" thing was seen to be the results of some worthless mathematical modeling as bad as the
Here are your options:
Hey, I'd love to someday do some scuba diving on a reef and maybe swim with the dolphins, but I mean, we've got bigger fish to fry ... . OK, let's just take a poll. I've been polled before, so now Peak Stupidity will get in on the other end of that action.
Would you say you Agree, Somewhat Agree, Have No Preference, Somewhat Disagree, or Strongly Disagree, with the following statement?
I’d rather wake up tomorrow to searing heat, a blast wave, a poisonous radiation dose, and long term cancer-causing nuclear fall-out rather than the Climate! Crisis!.
Pick from the following. Multiple answers are allowed:Remember that old "Doomsday Clock" that was just a few minutes or seconds from midnight a number of times during the Cold War? Well, that site says 100 seconds right now. I really think that thing should have been recalibrated long ago. Aren't these guys atomic scientists? They should be able to read that atomic clock then, and set this thing back to 11:30 or 11:45 - it takes time for those ballistic missiles to make it across the old DEW line.
[ ] Seas will rise! Tornadoes will wash up on the beaches! Insects will devour our iPhones!
[ ] I love Greta so much, but I just wish she would just smile more, like Marsha Brady.
[ ] I drive a Prius with a nucular-hardened electronic control panel, permanently tuned to NPR.
[ ] It’s the Kung Flu I’m worried about. Omega is coming. We need more floor stickers, NOW!!
[ ] We’ve got 2 tons of beans in #10 cans. We need more desiccant. It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity!
[ ] What was the middle one, again? I can’t get good internet down here in the bunker.
We've had 3 decades, since the end of the Cold War, during which the Doomsday Clock was put away and left to run out its batteries. Now with the Deep State having aggressively pissed off Russia for that whole time and with things getting a little heated, people have pulled it back out. Only thing is, nobody knows how to work on it anymore. The H-1B visa atomic lab scientists are Chinese or •Indian and don't know how to turn a screwdriver.
In comparison, I notice that there's no Doomsday Clock for the Climate! Crisis!. It's hard to figure an accurate timetable when you don't have a working mathematical model!
OK, well, to bring back Cold War memories, let's feature this old Dead song about The Day After, called (Walk me out in the) Morning Dew. This one was not an original, having been written by Canadian Folk singer/songwriter Bonnie Dobson back in 1962 - 3 years before the Dead was the Dead. That's the case with lots of Grateful Dead songs, but don't they always play it better?
This one is from their concert in the Winterland Ballroom (San Francisco) on October 18th of 1974, but if Mr. Ganderson can recommend his favorite, I'll switch them out.
Do they got any
Thanks for reading and commenting, everyone! Peak Stupidity will resume on a lighter note early next bidness week. How can you get any heavier, man?
Comments (36)
Kung Flu Stupidity anecdote Quad-pack
Posted On: Saturday - March 12th 2022 7:43AM MST
In Topics: Kung Flu Stupidity
A week ago Peak Stupidity asked the question "Is the Russia/Ukraine War another piece of Infotainment?" in the affirmative. Mr. E.H. Hail, of the Hail to You blog agrees - if you haven't already, check out his latest post - In search of a “Ukraine-War-Panic”–“Corona-Panic” Venn diagram*. It's not nearly the same issue and likely a somewhat more serious issue for the world, but for Americans it has become the next piece of Infotainment.
It's kind of nice how they segued from the Kung Flu PanicFest to the next one so smoothly. What's nice for me is that, simply put, I don't care that much what Vladimir Putin and the Russians do in the Ukraine**, and, at the same time, people are lightening the heck up about all the Covid nonsense here. That latter is the case at the government and Big Biz levels too, in addition to the (formerly?) normal people.
However, that doesn't mean the stupidity doesn't stick around for a while (on doorknobs, exercise machines, our hands, you name it). After that introduction let me get to the anecdotes. What was nice is that this was all in one morning. Want to start a blog about stupidity, readers? Get outside for a few hours.
I will have to get my first Covid-19 test of any kind. I have not been worried about the Kung Flu for myself*** and had no reason to do this before. It's required for something I've got to do at the doctor's. It was pleasant to talk to the nice cute white pharmacist girl, who must be new to that store. I knew I could have an actual conversation, and she gave me all the info. I had one more question though: "Oh, how much does it cost?" "It's free." "Really, how's that?" "It's covered." Well, OK, "Covered by who? Oh, OK, the taxpayers. Cool." No use getting into a rant, but I've heard of this "free" testing before. Incentives, anyone? More tests = more "cases".
Next, to the haircut place. After going through the usual stressful rigamarole about "Are you in the computer?" "No, I'm here for a haircut." "We've got to put something in the computer.", and my thinking "I know what you can put into that computer.", we got going, and I finally noticed that nobody told me to put a face mask on. This is pretty new. The girls in there still all wore them.
That leads into the check-out girl at the grocery store, a little bit later. She was new too, and also fairly cute, hence the reason I ended up in that line - just a habit. She had no face mask on. That was DEFINITELY a brand new thing. This store has been overboard with the Panicking since early on. I even wore a face mask in there some of the time for a couple of months back in early summer of '20, as I thought they WOULD kick me out for sure otherwise. Then, I didn't, anymore and they gave up trying to hand me one at the entrance.
I asked this young lady about it. "Oh, they finally don't require these face masks anymore? That's got to be nice." "No, they aren't required." She was obviously new, as I find it hard to believe that every single employee for the last 2 years had been wearing one on his own. "Well, it seemed everyone had to have one till now." "No, you don't have to have one on, but anyone can wear one if they want." You don't say! "Well, yeah, sure you can wear whatever you want." What the heck ...?****
It'd be a hell of a thing for businesses to start banning these masks right now. It'd be kind of fun to do so for one's own business, but it'd sure look stupid for this particular grocery store. Discussion about the banning of mask wearing was in the comments here under our recent post Covid Conversations. As a serious Libertarian, I think private businesses have every right to ban them (especially banks), but I don't agree with laws banning face masks. Though it's unfortunately been the left, in particular, doing this before the PanicFest, to me wearing face masks can be a small impediment to the continued implementation of the Orwellian Police State - see The masks of the Antifa - a question of anonymity.
Let me go back about 5 minutes from this 3rd anecdote to the store itself. Mask wearing was down. I'd say it went from 85-90% last week to under 50%. As I've noted in posts such as Menstruation Nation, this seems to go in cycles. The moon is a waxing gibbous right now. Give it a few days.
I hope these face diaper cycles will end soon. Are we approaching mask-o-pause?
PS: Yes, the site is loading very slowly today. Please accept my apologies. I have no idea why.
* From his title, one can see that Mr. Hail is interested in analyzing the people who have been sucked in (or not) by this latest 24/7 mediafest.
** Though I can see the next Cold War coming, brought on almost solely by the American Deep State. Do we have the money this time? (Quick answer - NFW!)
*** I've been exposed to everybody and every thing for 2 years. I don't take ANY of those extra hand-wringing hand-washing precautions that my wife sucked me into for a while near the beginning anymore. If this thing will still infect me, let me tell you, it's not much more contagious than ingrown toenails. (Or, I got infected, and it didn't do squat - more likely, I'd say.)
**** A [sic] tag should be next to that "their" for 3rd-person singular, but I was trying not to interrupt.
Comments (14)
US Border Patrol Deploying To Poland For “Operation Ukraine Support”
Posted On: Friday - March 11th 2022 10:21AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity US Feral Government
Peak Stupidity has not before copied our post title directly off the title of another article or post. However, the stupidity here speaks for itself in the title, just as well as I could write one.
In this case, the article with that title is on VDare, as written by a recent addition to the great VDare writing staff a guy going by the pseudonym Former Agent. Well, that's clear enough! They have some very experienced people writing at VDare, many with lots of inside information. Obviously, "Former Agent" would.
Here is his take on the evil/stupidity by the US Feral Gov't. The basic news is from this short Human Events article*. From the article:
“The Office of Field Operations is seeking volunteers to assist with the possible evacuation of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and their immediate family members from Ukraine,” the memo reads.Now I apologize here for mentioning this article before with an erroneous idea of it. I had confused this operation with what Mr. Agent writes about later on in his post. I'd written that the BP was in the Ukraine there to teach border patrolling. (No, that was in Iraq.)
“Eligible employees who volunteer for this situation may be selected to serve a temporary duty assignment in Poland to facilitate travelers for entry into the U.S., to include providing guidance and problems resolution to other government agencies,” it continues.
Evacuation of Americans does seem to be a legitimate use of the US Government. However, is it the best use of manpower to have the Border Patrol do it? Hell it's EASY to get into the US. That's the problem. Regarding this international duty, Former Agent writes:
It will get them off of diaper duty, they will get a good deal of per diem money, and they are not likely to wind up as front line troops. Now, what they will be doing there is another matter, and if their help will do any good at all is debatable. Our Agents were deployed in Iraq ostensibly to show them how to secure their border. Since our own border gets breached daily by thousands of people, we probably should be taking lessons from foreign countries on how to secure a border, not the other way around. I guess the hubris of thinking we know better is still strong."Hubris"? Nah, they know better. There's more, and I like this part:
My colleague asked the Ukrainian what happens if you do in fact try to catch the illegal alien, but the alien simply outruns you. We frequently encountered fit Mexican teenagers, and our often out-of-shape Agents were not going to run them down in brush (areas where you can drive up on them are another matter). The Border Guard looked surprised and responded, "You shoot."You do, but in a serious country.
(That's new fence between the rest of the Ukraine and Crimea**. I'm sure there's more to it than just the fence. It's not that hard to have a real border.)
We've got hundreds of thousands coming across some months now, and not just Latin Americans - there are Africans too. It's nothing new. President Trump had just arranged a 4-year slow down. The picture above is from a '14 DC Clothesline article entitled ISIS Says, “The US-Mexican Border Is Now Open”, And Are Planning On Crossing Into The United States Through The US-Mexican Border.
نرحب بالجميع!!*** The replacement of Americans is going swimmingly. The elites of the Feral Gov't and Deep State are just rubbing it in our faces
* Boy, that publication has been around for a while. BTW, VDare is great with linking, but I had to strip out a long-assed code that was on the end of the URL of the link to Human Events on VDare. This retired agent may not be so web-savvy to have noticed that.
** I'm not taking a side in the war there. NOT! MY! BUSINESS!
*** That's "welcome, all!" in Arabic, per the Duck. I could just go read a sign at the Unitarian Church to get the spelling right.
Comments (7)
Inflation indexed to the Rockford/Davenport basket of goods
Posted On: Wednesday - March 9th 2022 7:57PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Inflation
(Not quite the scene I watched, but good enough to bring back memories.)
If you've read either this or this Peak Stupidity post, or both, you will know we are on a Jim Rockford (The Rockford Files) kick, which brings us back nearly half a century. There is also one portion of the recent post President's Day and other PS tidbits in which we mention this show in the context of inflation.
In that discussion of the show I brought up a scene involving hot dogs. It was 2 gourmet hot dogs, mind you, bought inside a fancy financial center office building, and we noted that Jim was stuck with the bill of gasp, $6.36! That gave us a long-term compounded inflation rate of 2.6%, but the problem was that it's hard for me to get an apples-to-apples comparison to those gourmet hot dogs.
The show had a running gag of Jim Rockford not only not getting paid, but getting stuck with the tabs too. In the 4th-to-last episode of Season 1, where I stand now in my viewing (OK, I lay back on the couch, actually), there's a scene with Jim's lawyer Beth Davenport. (The actress is Gretchen Corbett - pretty and 1970's-ish). In this case, the tables were turned for a bit, as she got stuck with the bill while Jim ended up eating BOTH hot dogs. Then, she complained and Jim paid her most of it.
I got a good view of the hot dogs*, so I can do an estimate here. Two regular hot dogs and 2 coffees, bought at an outside stand, were a dollar forty. First of all, who the hell has coffee with hot dogs? I'll let that slide for now because I'm trying to do accounting here, not social commentary. The shows I'm watching are from Spring 1975. I would guess those 2 dogs and 2 coffees at some place with no atmosphere but our generic atmosphere would be (2 x $3.50) + (2 x $2.00) = $11 nowadays. I'm not sure on the coffee. I'm no a coffee drinker, especially not with freakin' hot dogs!!
Here come's Money Chimp. He says 4.5% inflation with compounding. Does that not go along with the numbers Peak Stupidity has come up with in many of our other posts on Inflation?
As we all can see, that is changing for the much worse now. We should all be stocking up. What's the shelf life on hot dogs and coffee? How about Beth Davenports? Without her, it wouldn't be the same anyway.
* Jim seems to eat hot dogs or tacos mostly, so I don't get as hungry watching The Rockford Files, as I do watching The Sopranos with that great Italian cooking - at least Tony thinks so, and who am I to argue?
Comments (32)
Covid Conversations
Posted On: Tuesday - March 8th 2022 8:33PM MST
In Topics: Music Southern rock Kung Flu Stupidity
(Covidiot wearer removed per Peak Stupidity legal team advise.)
Now that the newest Infotainment*, the 24/7 Ukraine/Russia war, is in full swing, the Kung Fu PanicFest seems to have lost momentum. Yes, as Yogi Fauci would probably retort, "it's not over till it's over."** Theres's still a whole lot of stupidity out there.
I was waiting for the elevator in a hotel to go downstairs for breakfast. This guy comes up to the elevator wearing one of those thick black cloth masks. I suppose I started this because, when the guy said "good morning" back to me, it was almost unintelligible. It's ridiculous. Since I knew who the guy worked for (there were a lot of them staying), I asked "Are they still making y'all wear those face diapers?"
"Isn't it still illegal in the State of REDACTED to not wear them?" the guy said, muffledly. Man, that just set me off. "It shouldn't be illegal in ANY State to not cover your face with one of those!" I told him how I only wore one in the certain places I absolutely have to for my job without getting fired and that the whole thing was stupid.
A young (nicely mask-less, but unfortunately not bra-less) woman got on at the next stop, and at the ground floor (pretty fast elevator) the guy gets off while saying "Then you've never had COVID!" Well, not that I know of, I haven't, but I've never been tested and I haven't been sick in a long time, but then I've been around all kinds of people for the last 2 years wearing the face mask only those times when required. I looked at the girl, saying "I would have gotten it by now. I'm not worried." "I had it", she told me and "It was like the flu" in answer to my "How was it?"
It occurred to me after the guy went around the corner, and I noted to the girl "then why is he so worried?" I mean, even if it had been terrible for him, wouldn't he be pretty immune? Is he going to wear it the rest of his natural-born life? She didn't know either. It was nice to converse with a normal person.
There was the guy and one of his colleagues eating his breakfast, without masks, of course, but 3 ft. apart. We'd been in the elevator 3 ft. apart. (Hey, what can I do? They pulled up all the stickers!)
The guy didn't like my non-compliant attitude very much. Oh, did I mention that the outfit this group at the hotel works for is part of the US Government?
Ever since this conversation with a Covidiot, and I thought about this post, I've had this great Atlanta Rhythm Section song on and off in my head. It's from their 1973 studio album Back up against the Wall, but I really, really like their live Are you Ready? album***, so here's Conversation from that album.
Conversation,
getting so hard to make.
I try to communicate,
but I can't get through.
And I don't really know how it happened.
I have tried, but I don't understand
how we ever let it get so out of hand.
I've got the Southern Rock topic key here, as they were a Southern Rock band. This is not so much rock music as a ballad, but it's still got that certain sound.
* I'm not saying it's not serious, but for Americans, it's still infotainment.
** I think it's over in terms of most of the population's mindset. However, the precedents of Totalitarianism have been set, and won't they be easier to implement again next PAN-DAMN-DEMIC?
*** Peak Stupidity has featured at least 2 others, those being Sky High from this post about inflation and Playin' that Georgia Rhythm.
Comments (18)
Image selection difficulties
Posted On: Monday - March 7th 2022 12:42PM MST
In Topics: Websites Media Stupidity Orwellian Stupidity
I'm sure it's just Peak Stupidity's lack of search foo causing this.
A couple of years into this blog, I and a commenter realized around the same time that having images at the top of posts was a good idea. I'd noticed that VDare, one of my favorite websites, did this most of the time. I guess the idea is to visually get the idea of what one is writing about in the reader's head early, or some psychological process that I don't feel like thinking about ...
Because I hate google, I use it only for searches of - you guessed it - "Peak Stupidity" and variants thereof, in order to help stay up top. I know there are plenty of other good search engines out there, but I use duckduckgo for most, but have found out that bing is better for images.
I guess the way it works is that the search software looks for page with the words one has entered and shows the images from these pages. (On bing, once I click on a specific picture, I'll see a link, though sometimes it strangely doesn't have that same picture on the resulting page.) I am pretty amazed sometimes though. "Digital clock in hotel room" or something gets me what I want. The most specific of image searches results in an Alamy stock photo quite a bit, unfortunately, as I don't want that logo across the one I use for a post.
Anyhow, as I looked for images on the Canadian trucker protest, it hit home how this bing image search screens them "for me" based on politics. I'll try all kinds of combinations of what I do want, such as "Ottawa crackdown", but they'll get me nothing that I want most times. I understand that the wrong word means the software may not find much, but is it more that bing doesn't want to use a page with that terminology to get me an image? Even when I DO try to use the "correct" terms, the ones I think it would rather "see", I'll get biased imagery (not in the photography sense involving exposure*).
I mean, why the Rebel flag, of which I'd read there was but 1, if any? Was it that lots of internet users pulled up that page, or it wanted to show me the side of the story I'm supposed to support? It's not like the appropriate images aren't out there on-line. I've seen the on the pages I read, but I've got to make an effort to save them at the time.
They are not making this as easy for me as it should be. I suppose it's still easier than it would have been in 1975, hitching a ride to the protest, lugging my SLR with the 500 mm telephoto lens around, and taking the images myself to bring home to get developed hopefully only a couple of weeks later to put on my site. Wait, what's a site?
* Does anyone even know, or need to know, that term anymore?
Comments (19)
Seattle Mazda drivers left stuck on NPR
Posted On: Saturday - March 5th 2022 9:19PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Cars Media Stupidity Artificial Stupidity
This story is funny on a few levels, one of them, the irony level, heard best up at 11. So, turn it up!
In early February of this year, various '14-'17 built Mazda models had lockups of their "Infotainment"* consoles. Those consoles run lots of the controls and almost all the features on modern cars. Actually, it was more like continual rebooting due to an error and forcing the drivers to listen to NPR. Hahhhaa, more details in minute...
Peak Stupidity has railed on the "smart" everythings under this Artificial Stupidity topic key plenty of times, and How much electronics do we need? is one on artificial stupidity in cars in particular. We also have posts about people's extreme reliance on GPS rather than things like maps and signs.
It kind of comes together in this story, as the cause of the problems was from digital radio. Maybe this is obvious, but I never put much thought into where those song titles and album cover images that appear on the console screens when one listens to the radio come from. They are just files sent digitally along with the music signals. I've found more technically detailed articles about this bug, but this The Verge article gives us the basic info that the (or "an") image file from the Seattle NPR station KUOX was missing an extension (such as .jpg). The software in those Mazda model-year's electronics did not have the proper error checking, so the whole units will crash and start up again. It must be that the radios return to the station last listened to (that's smart, but it used to be you just didn't touch the knob or pushbuttons), but that's as far as I got into the details.
The other features will not work**, and the radio would do nothing but play NPR station KUOX. Some users, or that'd be DRIVERS, reported they couldn't even listen to CDs, the back-up camera wouldn't work, and (not in the article linked-to here), even the GPS wouldn't work. OMG! How would you get anywhere?
If an unexpected software bug was going to affect a city, wouldn't you expect it to be Seattle? And, if it's going to affect Mazda drivers in Seattle, wouldn't being stuck on NPR be pretty much the best outcome?
The Verge writer Umar Shakir is begging for an updating system for these car consoles. Personally, I don't think I want to drive a car that DOES updates. If my console is busted, I could, like, think thoughts in my head, look at signs, follow the map I brought and just freaking drive, not operate a computer! I can do that at home.
Long ago, in "All Things Considered", it's been a long road to Peak Stupidity, we discussed NPR radio (oops, is it small letters only "npr", now?). The commentators are left-wing as all hell, but they are very soothing about it. It's quiet and calm, pretty much the opposite of a hip-hop station, with that White Wokey goodness.
What I'd be most worried about, having my radio bricked to KUOX - npr, is my safety. That stuff will put you right out, not something you want on the open road ... It ought to rile you up and get your blood boiling as they are completely against your conservative traditions, but since they talk so nicely... soothing ... no, we are Socialists and hate your kind, but we don't rant or yell about it ... we like listeners like you ... we're just trying to calmly explain that ... yeah, and this one, Nina Totenberg maybe, sounds so educated ... like a young sociology graduate student... perhaps she works at the campus library when she's not on the air ... maybe a bit shy, she should probably take off the glasses and... not sure what she's talking about ... I bet she would look nice in the right outfit... yeah, something about equity ... there between the stacks in the reference section way in the back... oops, sorry Nina, I dropped that world equity atlas ... do you mind ...
HONEY, WATCH THE ROAD!! WERE YOU ASLEEP! AND WHY ARE YOU RED IN THE FACE?!
Speaking of bricks, yeah, this Ben Folds Five song is a sad one, but very good.
We can't end the blog-week on such a sad note, so here a much more upbeat song off of the same 1997 album, Whatever and Ever, Amen, from this Chapel Hill, N. Carolina band. This one is called Kate.
Thanks for reading and writing, Peakers! More of the tail end of the Kung Flu stupidity next week, at least one more post on the war that we are trying to avoid writing about, and maybe that Georgia Guidestones stuff? I don't know. Have a peaceful Sunday.
* The article that I link to here even uses that word.
** I wonder if the environmental control system only works off this panel too.
Comments (7)
Is the Russia/Ukraine War another piece of Infotainment?
Posted On: Saturday - March 5th 2022 4:29PM MST
In Topics: The Russians TV, aka Gov't Media Globalists Media Stupidity World Political Stupidity
There are way too many articles/columns with questions for titles*. In this case, I do this because I'm really not completely certain here.
The timing of this all-encompassing (of people's time) BIG STORY of the Russian attack on the Ukraine is suspect to me. If the Kung Flu itself has not run its course, but it likely has long ago, the Infotainment PanicFest seems to have run its course. I don't see nearly as many headlines with the words "cases", "Covid", "Delta" "whatever the next new one is" in them. "Russia", "Ukraine", "nuclear weapons", yeah, more of that.
Then there was the story that I and other patriots DID CARE about, the Canadian truckers protest, something I hope still will lead us down the road to more resistance to Globalism. I don't read much about the final disposition of it all. Will we read headlines about lawsuits won by truckers for their confiscated driver's licenses and rigs and basic rights violated? I don't think so. I think the Globalist elites want that sort of thing to be memory-holed.
The reason I ask a question in the title is that I am not sure whether this war has been purposefully made into Infotainment in order to squash the growing ideas of rebellion, and I don't know whether this war possibly DOES deserve being THE BIG STORY.
Yes, there are nukes involved. They are on the Russian side only, the Ukraine having given up their weapons per the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. The terms of that agreement, with the West guaranteeing security in return (but nothing about the country joining NATO) are another discussion. If the West were to stay out, though, there would be no nuclear stand-off** so it's not 1962 again.
Secondly, is the story big because "white people like us are at war"? That question has been brought up, both by those for whom it is a reason to follow the story and those who think that's all racciss, and you can't go around thinking like that. Personally, I'd agree with the former to a degree, and isn't this as important as the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s in which lots of Africans died, and we heard about it every day? Whatever happens is not that all important for us here, is it?
I lean toward this being, yes, another piece of Infotainment.*** It's a big enough story to be in the news, but it seems to have taken up all media's time. Perhaps just the timing was right, and like the Kung Flu PanicFest started just over 2 years back, it's again about not letting a "crisis" go to waste. Is this a crisis for America? NO. Neither was the Kung Flu virus.
What are some crises for America? Well, lets's see, a big and accelerating population replacement program by the Feral Gov't (even including Human Trafficking by the Presidential Administration), the accelerating destruction of the US dollar and the 1970s-style inflation back with us, and the anti-White man and anti-traditional-America Cultural Revolution on in full swing are crises. More overarching is the Globalist and Communist elite's purposeful encouragement of all that and more, for the purposes of eliminating the vestiges of a Middle Class. ...
When the actual people try to make an effort beyond the futile ballot box to do something about it, ... well, where's the story? I'm not reading much without making an effort.
If I were the suspicious type, I'd think the American Lyin' Press' fixation on all things Ukraine and Russia is a way to bury the story of the American convoy nearing the Federal Shithole as I write.
So, YES.
* An Unz Review commenter says that any writing titled with a question will explain how the answer is NO. He explained it pretty well and even had a source and some term for this. It could take me a while to find that one ...
** Did the West then leave the Ukraine in the lurch? Again, that's not Peak Stupidity's area, when, after all, our goal is not to write about this!
*** See, contrary to (*), maybe not.
Comments (4)
Who shall deliver us from this Neocon Senator,
Posted On: Friday - March 4th 2022 2:40PM MST
In Topics: The Russians Humor History US Feral Government The Neocons
oh wretched Americans that we are?
No, no, no, FBI, you've got Peak Stupidity all wrong! We do not exclaim this in the sense of Henry the 2nd of olde England. It's 850 years later. In this current more civil era, we don't use such inciting statements. We are simply referring to next term's GOP primary, past the current era in fact, in March of AD 2026.
However, the Senior Senator from South Carolina is under the impression that it's perfectly OK for a sitting United States Senator to call for the assassination of the leader of a foreign country. Our country is not at war with Russia either, however that's defined these days. The country is not a threat to us.
It's been over 3 decades since Russia has meant the Communist USSR. Since that time, the Neocons have done their best to box the country and its long-term leader into a corner. Vladimir Putin, no matter what you think of him personally, should have been dealt with diplomatically. All the old Soviets and Chairman Mao were dealt with diplomatically.* Yet, the American Neocons are drunk with power and war.
These 100 big shots have been in a high position in the one true military superpower from 1989 till recently, Senators such as Miss Lindsey (along with his gratefully** dead colleague Juan McAmnesty) are used to being the collective neighborhood bully. This Feral Government bully could say and do anything with everyone else scared to strike back. It never lasts though. One day, some kid will up and slug the bully in the face. If this kid ends up being Vladimir Putin, running a country with 10's of thousands of nukes, we're gonna get a big collective black eye.
The olde Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 12th century was annoying due to his excommunicating the living out of everyone. Senator Graham, with his multiple attempts at immigration amnesty for millions and his support for American wars of aggression around the globe, is much worse a character than Thomas Becket.
It's probably much too late in the game for voting as a solution, but, just for old time's sake here, will no South Carolina electorate ever deliver us from this meddlesome piece of crap? We don't need Royal Knights headed to Canterbury this time. We just need conservative South Carolinians to get out to the voting booth!
Nah, the only people who can fix this are the South Carolinian people. Easy to say, hard to do, since hardly anybody votes in the primaries. If you don't want to live in darkness, be poor, and then live in darkness again, step up to the booth, Sandlappers!
To doctor up another line from the olde Henry II/Becket saga, from contemporary monk Edward Grimm: "What miserable drones and traitors have we voted in and promoted in our GOP who let their people be treated with such shameful contempt by a light-in-the-loafers Senator!"
PS: The phrase in the title is the popularized version of what Henry II is said to have said. It comes from Romans 7:24 - - "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
* The shoe-banging was from the other side.
** For Americans, that is.
Comments (17)
The March 1st Bing Wokegraphic
Posted On: Wednesday - March 2nd 2022 7:54PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Feminism Race/Genetics
This is only part of the reason that I normally use duckduckgo for searches. If nothing else, as in, if they are BSing us about the privacy thing, at least you get a blank screen, with no distractions to the eye but the duck. I have found, though, that bing is best for searching for images. That was the reason I arrived at the bing home page with the graphic shown above on March 1st. Bada bing, Bada Boom, one blog post, coming up.
I bring up the date, because black History Month, formerly known as "February"*, was over before yesterday - the groundhog can come out of his hidey-hole. It is now Women's History Month, as of yesterday. Was this graphic meant to bridge the gap between 2359 on BHM 28th and 0000 Mar 1st? Well there are seconds, and fractions thereof, and time is not an integer. Was the combination black and women graphic made to cover the small interval, let's call it ϵ, that covers the gap to the precision of the atomic clock standard. As ϵ goes to 0, Σ approaches infinity, Σ representing stupidity., of course, or something like that.
I don't know what the deal was with that picture. I think it's something old, as only one of these "soldiers" is overweight. This scene was probably before the new Army slogan came into being, Be more than you can be.
* H/t to the late Sam Francis.
Comments (9)
Federalism - What CAN'T it solve?!
Posted On: Wednesday - March 2nd 2022 6:31PM MST
In Topics: Americans Liberty/Libertarianism US Feral Government Poetic Stupidity World Political Stupidity Morning Constitutional
In the case of the ongoing downfall of the United States and very possible dissolution of the Union (whether openly or de facto), perhaps that old time Federalism, so in fashion for well nigh 2 centuries, could help solve our problem.
As commenter Hail pointed out two posts ago, Steve Sailer has a post, taken from his latest Takimag column*, advising us to be very wary of a break up of this country. (The idea here this time - as Mr. Hail noted that Mr. Sailer has written something like this before - comes obviously from what's going on with the Ukraine and Russia.) Steve Sailer says "Let’s Not Break Up the USA".
Lots of us beg to differ. No, the break up of the country will not be a picnic. It could turn out to be something we on the right might regret, something even worse than we are experiencing now. The column gives the reasons. The money quote is:
Whether you blame poor Ukraine’s current agony most on Russia’s obvious aggressions or NATO’s subtle machinations is a matter of opinion, but the lesson is clear: If you can avoid it, don’t be Ukraine.Mr. Sailer even quotes George Washington surprisingly, about foreign entanglements.**
In reply to this line, Mr. Anon noted:
What if the alternative to being Ukraine in 2022 is being Cambodia in 1976?(The rest of his comment was equally good.) Damn right. However, why don't we at least consider a solution that a real student of American history and the US Constitution might come up with - Federalism!
Before I read Mr. Sailer's column I did a quick ctrl-f (in the iPad sense) for the word “Federalism”. Nada.
He talks about the problems of having many small separate countries, as far as foreign interference. Well, there WERE many ALMOST separate countries in this land until not that awful long ago! They called ’em “States”, and they still do, even now, when they are behaving and being treated like nothing but districts or provinces by the Feral Gov’t.
The Founders of this country were smarter than most. Even though this country was run entirely by White Men, a big majority of British extraction, with real Federalism again, this ultra-diverse Tower of Babel might be able to hang together. The Founders created the Federal Gov’t for the main purpose of a common defense. That’s all it SHOULD be for!
There is far too much diversity at this point for this place to stay together as it is. I would not want to be part of the Totalitarian Police State, a Yugoslavia on steroids, that it’s going to take to keep it together. (That’s what it’s been becoming for a long while, accelerated by the problems of the immigration invasion and “civil rights”.)
I want no part in BEING together with many of these people period. It’s not just the policies but the fact that my labor is being stolen for the use of those with opinions and lifestyles anathema to me that makes me want out. Simple solution: Devolve the power back to the States and people where it belongs, per Amendment X.
One of the silver linings to have come out of the Covid PanicFest*** was the visibility of, and a modicum of respect for, Federalism again. Go Gators! Go Governor DeSantis!
Now, the first argument against my comment would logically be that this country is not divided politically along anything resembling State lines, such as in 1860. We are not only mixed in with each other to the level of counties, but we are mixed together right down to the level of voting precincts. It might take a decade or a couple of generations, but “experiments in democracy” (in some cases now, something else entirely) CAN STILL WORK. People can vote with their feet. It's not easy at all to leave the land one's had or regions one's lived in, even for a generation, much less 5 or 10. However, Americans ran off in the first place. They can do it again.
The hitch with the plan of reverting back to Federalism is that Federal power would have to be taken. That’s where the worries about violence come in. It will not be given up easily. The stupid bastards that let the Feds usurp State power over the many years are responsible for any bloodshed involved there.
Hey, if Federalism could come back in fashion, how bout hoop skirts Ragtime music, and Coca~cola made with REAL cocaine? Just as importantly, how about REAL MONEY? The great limericist**** of the iSteve comment crowd, Eustace Tilley (not), promotes Federalism much more poetically, with these 2 nice ones: :
A Phlebotomist Party would striveHis 2nd one even brings back some of that olde tyme spelling:
For a Washington barely alive.
Kill Amendment XVI:
A New Switzerland seen
With the sovereign states free to thrive.
Congrefs no Law shall enactThank you, even if you WERE Eustace Tilley!
Using Force to keep Union intact;
Nor shall States beggars be,
Nor be serfs, but be free;
Nor the Dollar by Magick be backed.
* His weekly Wednesday Takimag columns are some of his best writing, IMO. I think he spends quite a bit of time on them.
** Yeah, well that's water under the bridge. When you let your central government get out of control over (arguably) a whole century, you're way beyond the point of being able to control all that.
*** I'd say the highly increased awareness of homeschooling is another one.
**** Sorry, spell check, it's stayin'!
Comments (19)
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Posted On: Tuesday - March 1st 2022 6:01PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity The Russians History World Political Stupidity
From another commenter, I used this line in previous post to explain why I am a Friend of Vlad right now, when it comes to the goings on in the Ukraine. That can be a good principle to use in wartime, and it's cultural wartime right here and now. However, it does have its drawbacks, as we can see from just 2 examples, which happen to involve some Mr. Putin's and my same crowd - Russians and Americans.*
Those 3 up top are, of course, British PM Winston Churchill, US President Franklin Roosevelt, and USSR Premier Joseph Stalin at the famous Yalta Conference in February of 1945, held to decide how Europe would be run after the war was over**. Of all places, this meeting*** was held right where the trouble is now. Yalta is just northeast of the southern tip of the Crimean peninsula, on the shores of the Black Sea.
I'm sure the conference was not all friendly-like between "Uncle Joe" and the other two men, but Stalin and the USSR were allied with America and the West due to the goal of first and foremost defeating the Nazis. "The enemy (Russia) of my enemy (Germany) is my friend."
That the United States that formed this friendship with this miserable government of the USSR, which had been Communist for 2 1/2 decades already, is something that was based on the idea that the US MUST be in this war to defeat the Nazis. Much of that is due to the Socialist FDR.
Was it that FDR sympathized with Communism, or was it (more likey) that he absolutely wanted us in that war and the Nazis defeated. There's a very good argument that America and Western Europe to boot, should have stayed out and let the Germans and Soviets fight it out.
That argument aside, America sent much war materiel over a few years to the Soviets well before the troops were in battle in Africa and then Europe to split the effort in defeating the Nazis. After the few years of the war, by 1945, it was already obvious that this friendly relationship wasn't going to last. Within a year the American, British, and French administered regions of Germany were West Germany, and the Soviet sector was East Germany. Berlin was similarly divided.**** One year after the end of our "friendship" with the enemy of our enemy, the Cold War was officially on, if one can base it on Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech of March '46. 3 years later, both sides had nuclear weapons which were aimed at each other's lands in various ways and in greatly increasing numbers over the next 4 decades.
The same nations, but in a different configuration, were involved in a similar "enemy of my enemy" less than 4 decades after that first friendship deal.
One of the hotspots of the Cold War was Afghanistan. As with America in Vietnam, it started with politics and revolutions and then "advisors", but the Red Army invaded the country in earnest in the Fall of 1979. America had a problem with that, of course, and supported the opposing forces.
Afghanistan being a Moslem country, it was one of the many varied groups of wild jihadis, the Mujahideen, that the US decided to make friends with as the enemy of our (Arch-) enemy, the USSR. Maybe nobody translated it, or maybe nobody cared, but "Mujahideen" means "strugglers for justice" or "doers of Jihad". Hey, I don't like the sound of that! The latter meaning is worrisome, but then, so long as they don't come here ... and we don't have a reason to come there... except for those "advisors" showing these Mujahideen fellows how to use Stinger surface-to-air missiles to take down the Soviet helicopters that were a mainstay***** of their operations, they shouldn't be any problem for us ...
As a quick aside, there is a pretty good movie named Charlie Wilson's War that covers some of this story. Charlie Wilson was the Texas Congressman very involved in setting this all up and he was involved in lots of such subterfuge over the years. This Tom Hanks movie, made in '07, was based on a book by George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of our Times. I haven't read the book, so I don't know how close the movie keeps to the book, hence how accurate, and who knows about the book either?
OK, so we all know how badly their Afghanistan venture ended for the Soviets (along with all this other general history that almost all readers are surely familiar with). Some say this war in Afghanistan was part of the reason for the downfall of the USSR, but I doubt it was more than a small part of the big picture.
Well, a decade after this war started, there was no USSR. Just over a decade after that, this old "friend" of America was, if not the culprit, blamed for the destruction and death in NY City.
This "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing just doesn't always work out for the best after a few years have gone by. Was it worth it each of these 2 times? In the 1st example, it should never have been the case in the first place, our friending the Commies of Soviet Russia. If they'd fought the Germans without the huge help of America, or the Nazi's had beaten them, we'd have saved ourselves from that expensive Cold War and the MIC expansion that went with it.******. In the 2nd example, we know from hindsight that our friendship with the that crazy Mujahideen crowd didn't help us much in the grand scheme of things. For both of these examples we ended up with a bigger enemy than the initial enemy for which we'd befriended them.
What about the idea from the previous post, that we patriots befriend Vladimir Putin and Russia? They are the enemy of our enemies, the Feral Gov't, Deep State, and Globalist/Communist elites. In this case, it's not like we're in a position to do anything but root for them though. We patriots don't control anything of the apparatus of the Feral Gov't that is involved in the conflict. We're going to have to win this cultural war (for now) here on our own. That is, unless the country ends up breaking apart, a plausible scenario, and then will the anti-Globo-homo Russkies be on the side of us patriots? We'd be lucky if they don't loot the place, but it's be much more likely that it'd be the Chinese doing that. ******* The Golden Rule of much of the world is "He who has the gold, makes the rules."
PS: What the hell, man?! This was supposed to be a quick post.
* Yes, that IS an Al Stewart album. If you knew that, you are a fellow history-rock fan.
** There were also deals made about places and events in the Far East. Regarding Europe, the winning of the war by the allies was a sure thing, with the Americans/British/etc having gotten to the western border of Germany, and the Russians 40 miles east of Berlin.
*** The "Big Three" leaders had met together before in Tehran, Iran in November of '43, and did again in Potsdam, Germany in late July of '45, well after the German surrender.
**** The story of the Berlin Airlift of '48 - '49 is something else, if you like aviation.
***** There are so many parallels to the Vietnam War, that the Soviets ought to have been pretty wary of taking on the whole project. (Well, they didn't have American-supported and home-grown protesters taking over university campuses and stuff, OTOH.)
****** Would we have had the Cold War with the Nazis? That's alt-history or alt-right speculation. I don't know, but the question is pretty interesting.
******* YES! You're in luck. Peak Stupidity has a 6 part series on Will America be looted by China - Part 1: Intro -- Part 2: Housing -- Part 3: Big Biz -- Part 4: The Fruited Plain -- Part 5: The Wilderness --Part 6: Conclusion - The Golden Rule.
Comments (10)
Peak Stupidity on the Ukraine
Posted On: Monday - February 28th 2022 8:56PM MST
In Topics: The Russians The Neocons World Political Stupidity
It was interesting, and I LUV maps, but why should I have to care?
This could also be taken as peak stupidity OF the politics of the Ukraine/Russia/NATO, and it's really more like Peak Stupidity on why we've NOT been discussing the Ukraine. Simply, it's a big distraction.
I'm more and more inclined to see these infotainment distractions as being planned out by somebody than I used to. Is it the case that, after the Canadian truckers rally and its huge widespread support, the elites are ready to let go of the Kung Flu PanicFest infotainment after a great run of 2 years? Let it all simmer down, so the people don't get too uppity and too organized, is that it? The threat of a nuclear war can scare people just the same as that dreadful, deadly Black Death 2.0, you bet! And, yeah, people have their eyes glued to CNN and the Lyin' Press web sites too!
It really does make a difference for me that I never watch TV*. If it weren't for seeing Steve Sailer's multiple daily post titles about the Ukraine, the latest John Derbyshire article on VDare, checks of instapundit (more on the latter in a bit), and a few other second-hand sources, I truly would not know, much less care, what's going on between that country and Russia.
Do this thought experiment: It's 1985, there's no CNN (or it's not ubiquitous yet) and there's no internet, but, for these same 2 countries, let's imagine the Cold War is already over and the 2 are separate countries, as now. You know what people would know about this war? You'd hear about 45 seconds about it from your favorite anchorman on the 1/2 hour nightly news some nights. There might be an article in Newsweek or Time magazine about it in a few of the issues, if you were so inclined to read these magazines. Your daily local newspaper might have an occasional article from the AP or Reuters that most people would skip looking for the sports scores, crime reports, comics, and obituaries. Who would be talking about this?
This deal has been made to fit the "Russia Bad!" narrative that the press started on to topple Trump (yeah, and distract the hell out of him for 3 years), and The Neocons are for kicking any foreign country's ass that they think they can. (They never learn.) Peak Stupidity already wrote - in our post Anarchy in the UKraine 3 weeks back - what we think of NATO having pushed the Russians into a corner, and that the organization should have been disbanded 30 years ago. The Neocons are drunk with war, and the Lyin' Press is again going along for the views and clicks and additionally for the approval of the Potomac Regime.
The Ukraine has been a stomping grounds for the Neocons and Deep State going back a few years. In this latest round, they've pushed it into a war and a situation that has the population worried about nukes even. There'd be none of that worry if NATO were staying out of this. That post by Steve Sailer I just linked to, along with the latest from John Derbyshire**, Could Ukraine Be Partitioned? Can Russia Survive Exclusion From Eurovision Song Contest? (here on unz.com), has me wondering if lots of people who should know better are being sucked into another big panic.
What really pissed me off on this the other day was seeing good old Instapundit Glenn Reynolds go old-fashioned Neocon on this. I thought he'd gotten over that phase 10 years ago. Along with the usual good Libertarian stuff, it's half "rah, rah, rah, beat that Putin!", with excerpts about the West working against him via big banking, stopping civilian airline overflights*** (now that's going back to the Cold War days that they seem to miss), even Elon Musk helping. Now, Professor Reynolds doesn't always fully endorse the excerpts he includes - he's normally a pretty fair man - but after something from Jim Bennet, of which I excerpt ...
The parts of the American right that are still trying to sell an isolationist line are looking worse and worse. Biden’s handlers are smart enough to loudly insist they will not send troops. The Ukrainians are presenting themselves well and sympathetically. (We should not forget there is a substantial Ukrainian-American and Ukrainian-Canadian population, and that the Pole and Baltic ethnic communities are pretty well engaged, too.) Lots of Second Amendment types are enjoying the sight of a government handing out AKs to everybody. But I have always felt that Anglosphere populations just don’t have the stomach for a genuinely realist foreign policy. We are seeing that right now.(that from Instapundit's own longer excerpt), Mr. Reynold's writes:
I see a lot more lefties claiming the right is pro-Putin than I see pro-Putin people on the right. But that won’t stop them from lying, of course. It never does.Well, Professor, you got one right here. [This is Jim Bennet, mind you:] "Don't have the stomach"? I'd say it's more like "don't have the stupidity" and "don't give a rat's ass"!
I can't say I know any more about Vladimir Putin than the next Joe 6-Pack. I know he's no rule-of-law John Locke. He may very well be nothing but a thug in a high position. What he is though, is a decent capable leader for a mostly White Christian country that America should have allied with soon after the Cold War ended. In old sane America, there'd be no reason his country would be anything but an ally.
Instead now, the US, led by Neocons and the Globalist elites have boxed his country into a corner militarily and tried to spread the Globo-homo agenda. Putin is not putting up with too much of the latter.
A commenter named Charles made a quick comment under the Sailer post I linked to saying that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"****. Vladimir Putin is an enemy of the US Deep State and the Globalists. That makes him a friend of mine in this sense.
Straight from Fox News, with their slant geared toward the right, with the cute lady Member of the Ukrainian Parliament and her rifle. (The left could not do that without looking REALLY hypocritical. What am I saying? That wouldn't stop them.) Yeah, it's still Neocon Central, like the rest.
Chalk up this Peak Stupidity blogger as a FoV! (Friend of Vlad)
PS: Oh, and no matter what else comes out of this, come nukes or high water, it's freakin' Kiev, not Kyiv. I haven't budged on Peking, Canton, and Burma, and if they keep this crap up, I'll revert back to Formosa and Ceylon too!
* if I can help it - see some of our posts on the force-feeding of TV (gyms, auto shop and doctor's office lobbies, etc) here.
** As usual, it was still interesting, informative, and entertaining writing from the both of them.
*** Only 5 years ago, we had tentative plans to visit Russia, when the American airlines had direct flights out of at least NY JFK. We would have loved to see St. Petersburg, maybe just one of many very historical European cities, but one without so much dieversity (at least I'd hoped). Well, that's not gonna happen now.
**** Granted, that doesn't always work out so well, as I'll discuss in a quick post to come - it involves some of the same characters.
Comments (25)
Supreme Court Justice
Posted On: Saturday - February 26th 2022 9:46PM MST
In Topics: Humor
... as reckoned by a 10 year-old.
That is our vibrant Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the 9 supposed experts on the US Constitution we've got right now in Washington, FS.
The conversation with my son started with something from his school about this Hispanic Supreme Court Justice, who has diabetes. I looked it up just now, and she has had Type I diabetes since 7 y/o, so this is no diet problem, and I won't make any cracks. She got dealt a tough hand with that, but that's no reason I should be OK with "wise Latinas" who don't understand the US Constitution being up there.
I told him how the Supreme Court works - they vote, and they write their opinions, dissenting from or concurring with the majority, etc. I explained how there is nothing in the Constitution specifying 9 judges, but that's just how it's been for a long time (since 1869, it turns out).
"It's better if you have an odd number. With an even number there can be a tie."
"Then they could do rock, paper, scissors."
;-}
I'm pretty sure that would beat all hell out of the decisions of the Warren Supreme court.
Comments (15)
When Ann met Donald
Posted On: Saturday - February 26th 2022 6:26PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Trump Pundits
(Still Peak Stupidity's favorite literary pundit.)
I had no idea until I read something a month or two back about the access a pundit like Ann Coulter could have to President Trump. The history of Donald Trump's rise to the presidency is a story of the importance of the existential issue of America's nearly 6-decade-running immigration invasion. This part I still am not sure about, but it is said that Mr. Trump read Miss Coulter's '15 book ¡Adios, America!.* I'm sure Donald Trump would had his own thoughts and anger about this issue before that book, as he does have his heart in the right place, but Miss Coulter's book could have really got him going about the issue.
During those whole four years of the Trump administration, I thought it would be enough of a nice thing if he even kept up with Ann Coulter's columns. I remember her high hopes for the guy, same as the rest of us had, on this issue and others, such as ending the American Warfare State**. I also recall these hopes being summarily dashed, and she gave him quite a bit of time and credit, more than I did. (The VDare folks are ALWAYS optimistic, but they did know a lot more under-the-radar details.) At some point, she'd had just about enough of his major failures on this issue, as I also remember, including some certain tweet VDare put up.
Here's what I had NO EARTHLY IDEA of: From a 4 year old Real Clear Politics article, I found out that Ann Coulter conversed with President Trump in person, at the White House! It could have been more times than the one, also. Sorry, I'm no Washington wonk, so maybe that sounds naive of me. Now that I read/hear about this, it just makes me see this as such a bigger lost opportunity to have saved the nation.
It was something about a "shouting match" between the President and Pundit that made me wonder, "what, in person? When?" The article I read, Coulter On "Obscenity-Laced" Oval Office Shouting Match With Trump: "Total Betrayal" On The Wall gave me the affirmative answer. There's a video in the article (at the bottom of this post too) that shows Miss Coulter talking with Howie Carr, commenter Ganderson's favorite radio(?) guy. I will use short parts of the Real Clear Politics article, with their transcription excerpts:
Coulter also talked about a very heated conversation she had with President Trump in the Oval Office that devolved into an obscenity-filled argument over his lack of action on NAFTA, deportations, and other agenda items.Man, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that one! A fly with an iPhone, of course ... working as a stringer for Peak Stupidity.
"It came out about 6 weeks after it happened," she said of the event.
"And he swore first!" Coulter wanted to make clear.
"Are these reports true or are they fake news that you got in an obscenity-laced screaming match with him?" Carr asked.
"I said you're not doing what you promised to do," she said of the meeting.
"Where's the end of NAFTA? Where's the wall? Where are the deportations? What are you doing talking about the DREAMers?" are some of the questions Coulter said she asked.
And I said that doesn't count. Jeb, exclamation point, would have done that. Rubio would have done that. How is your presidency different than from Rubio would have done?Howie Carr asked her when President Trump started swearing. That was after Ann Coulter compared him to ¡Jeb! Bush. Note that Miss Coulter swore that Trump swore first. Yeah, but is "¡Jeb!" or "Bush" not a swear word? Tough call, Ann. That's one for the courts.
The fact that Ann Coulter with her great knowledge of the immigration problem, was actually conversing with President Trump on the issue has me even more sorry for the lost opportunity of his Presidency. There is no doubt that this favorite pundit of ours reads one of our favorite websites, VDare (she wrote as much very recently regarding their lawsuits), and VDare is THE ORGANIZATION, with THE EXPERTISE on the issue above any other.
If we could have just had a President who strategized with the great knowledge of the problem from REAL experts, instead of a bullshitter with his heart in the right place who relied on Javanka, it all could have gone much differently. I'm positive we wouldn't now have the Human Trafficker-in-Chief in office, doing evil destruction of America.*** (Subtitle of Ann Coulter's book that I and maybe Donald Trump read: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole. Yep.)
Finally, Ann Coulter ¡REALLY ! ¡LIKES! the upside-down exclamation points¡ I'm down with that, as ridiculing these people can't hurt our cause¡
Here's the audio of Ann and Howie Carr on youtube. It's under 15 minutes, and Ann Coulter is always worth the time!
* I read the book shortly after it came out. It was well written and enjoyable, but for me, just "preaching to the choir".
** Yes, Miss Coulter had really come across lately as a great Libertarian, and her latest column, Republicans Need To Stop Talking About UKRAINE's Borders, Start Defending America's!, shows that she could be a younger, pretty, fraternal twin of Ron Paul. (OK, no that doesn't work!)
*** It'll be another post, but VDare had something today that is just amazingly, sickeningly evil.
Comments (15)
An optimistic take of the Canadian trucker protest from Timur the Lame
Posted On: Friday - February 25th 2022 9:20AM MST
In Topics: Globalists Liberty/Libertarianism People's Revolt
(I'm pretty bad with this part of history, so I had to look up the handle of this Unz commenter to realize he was the 14th century Turkish/Mongolian conquerer of a bunch of western and central Asia - Tamerlane. Mr. TheLame or Timmy won't do.)
Even with a dozen posts or so on the front burner, I want to get to the slightly more current ones first. This post is a cut-and-paste job from this commenter who participated in a fairly civil (as much as can be had with some people) thread under the Ilana Mercer* column Good vs. Evil: Canada’s Truckers Battle Justine Trudeau for Us All
Tamerlane's comments are more optimistic than most views I've read of the results of the Canadian trucker protest. I can't insert all the comments, even just between Tamerlane and one PeterAUS (I assume, an Australian), as it'd be too long. I'll just put 3 of this best ones here, in order, and you'll have to go to that thread to read some context. This is verbatim:
I wrote a lengthy narrative as to the provenance of the convoy while many readers of this site were in mild confusion about what really was going on. You can access that through my comment stream if you are so inclined.Next:
I will just state the Cliffs Notes version for my reply. They didn’t plan for the situation to evolve as it did. They are not revolutionaries and had no leadership structure because it was basically a joy ride to show their displeasure.
They were shocked by the grassroots support that they accumulated along the way as well as the international support that cascaded in. They stumbled into what a big brain scholar would call a “tide of history”. Then they were honour bound by this support to hold the line and get some basic results.
Being honest salt of the earth types, they then figured that having a meeting with the top SERVANT of the people or someone authorized to make a decision was in order, a little give and take and they will merrily turn around and go home.
They didn’t realize that they had tweaked a global monster’s face, and a monster is not human. And the rest is what we observe today. Faced with overwhelming odds, they still decided to defend. An American might compare it to the Alamo, a jew to Masada.
Either way, their honour is intact.
Cheers-
Yes, I agree with your points and fair commentary and so will try to respond as I see it without the box method. Well first of all, your question about did all who support the Truckers join the protest is an unfair observation because of among other things there are obvious geographical limitations. I think that they even got support from Tibet.And, lastly:
But if you looked at the donation explosion and considered that to be a form of joining the movement, well then yes. As one of the eventual leaders explained in an interview, they set up the GoFuckMe account expecting maybe $40-50K in total to offset costs for fuel and repairs and within a couple of days they had $150K and realized that this was getting serious. Of course you know that in 2 weeks they had $10 million, got screwed and the GiveSendGo collected same that amount in a few days. I consider sending money to be joining. Of course being Doxxed makes it official-ha!
Now about honour not being enough in a fight I disagree. There are many problems someone would have to take that stance. The most obvious would be that then only winners are honourable. A purposely poor example I will give is if a drunken brute husband pummels his long suffering wife, is he the honourable one? Actually that might even work as a metaphor.
To answer your last query, yes they will fully support everyone incarcerated and reimburse everyone involved for lost wages, costs etc… $10 million will easily cover it. It is in the lawyering stage right now and if there was a single tiny shred of humanity in the system it could be resolved in a humane fashion now that the Golem got his way. But evil people don’t roll that way. They enjoy inflicting suffering and wallowing in ghoulish vengeance. So we will see.
I personally think that they won great victories though they may not even realize it themselves. A lot of normies now realize that the (child) Emperor has no clothes. The useless media moved closer to total irrelevance. The goons will see looks of contempt coming at them from even kindly old ladies. Oh, and it may not even be over yet!
Cheers-
All right, I see that am in the proverbial “a fool can ask more questions than a wise man can answer” scenario so let me just make an observation. You seem to frame everything into a military context of tactics, supply procedures etc.. added to a supposed real life example in your own environment so I don’t know if you are ex-military or just a Warcraft nerd projecting real life.These comments are anything but lame. It is a pretty optimistic take, though, with the assumption that Canadian governments still feel a compunction to obey courts of law and such. I hope Tamerlane is right. If so, this is very encouraging. The American trucker convoy gathered for the start in Barstow California a couple of days back and is heading east, to meet up with more convoys coming from other directions. Give your support any way you can... well without getting your money ripped off by the government.**
First off, I thought that we agreed that this was not a planned insurrection let alone an armed one so all your useless questions about logistical contingencies are moot. Totally.
Support within 60 km? Did you perhaps read about the numerous blockages along the span of 3000 km that took place and are still taking place at this time? Did you see people hanging off bridges all through their route? Did you see the non trucker protesters marching through Toronto yesterday? It is called an organic insurrection. It is people who haven’t heard of , let alone read Bukhanin, Bukharin, Lenin, Rousseau, Hobbes or even the idiot Unabomber but know when they have been fucked over and decided to act, tragically as it turned out thinking that they had a responsible government.
Don’t you worry your pretty little head over the legalities, there will be a tsunami of civil suits. With all the video, supported by witnesses and iron-clad chapters from the Charter a lot of them will be successful. The Fed’s lawyers will throw in terms so as to not disclose the details and thereby contain the outrage. The media of course could miss the stories entirely.
The Trucker’s legal entity is filing Federal Charter suits as we speak. This could have very important consequences for the system.Very important if it eventually proves that we are not sovereign citizens. At this point it is the law arguing against the law. No room for nefarious influence.
So you see friend, pending the eventual outcome, the Truckers could have theoretically won the biggest battle for citizen’s rights in Canadian history!
Cheers-
I attended the huge pro-gun rally in Richmond, Virginia in January of '20, and Mr. E.H. Hail attended the anti-mandatory-vax rally in Washington, FS, just a month ago. Yeah, we perhaps both got lucky to go to events that had no agent provocateurs and weren't picked on as "examples to discourage the others" by the Feral Police State. There is something really exhilarating about participating in something big, after spending time reading and writing about all the grief. It must be a great feeling to be in one of those big rigs headed east!
* I used to read her writing regularly, but she has turned me off as of a couple of years back. She seems to be one of those all-too-typical Libertarians who are not Conservatives, in particular by having no clue on racial matters.
** That's the subject that Alarmist brought up in comments, resulting in a post to come shorty.
Comments (7)
The smiling face of evil
Posted On: Thursday - February 24th 2022 6:22PM MST
In Topics: Commies General Stupidity Liberty/Libertarianism Race/Genetics
"He looks like a nice guy.". (That's what they always say after some dude shoots a couple of people in the back - I've said it myself.) He doesn't look thuggish at all, like way too many black guys do. In fact, he was a university professor!
I'd have been glad to have never heard of Tyler Stovall. It's just that I spend (WAY!) too much time on the Steve Sailer blog site on The Unz Review. Mr. Sailer's best material seems to be the posts that display the stupidity of, and refute, material in the mainstream Lyin' Press print outlets. That would usually be either the New York Times (actually, that newspaper should sue Steve Sailer for commissions, finder's fees, something, as that provides half his material!), the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and a few others I also would be much too sickened by to click to them.
Right away, I want to explain that, by "stupidity", it's often more like evil, and, as for refuting material, that's not gonna change a soul's mind- it's the entertainment value he must be after. That's the thing about Mr. Sailer's best posts - they are both entertaining and enraging, out of him and the Lyin' Press, respectively.
I came upon Washington Post: [See?] the Ottawa Trucker Convoy Is Rooted in Canada’s Settler Colonial History the other day. As is often the case, Mr. Sailer doesn't really stand up for principles, such as freedom, etc., but his goal here was to point out the idiotic-sounding arguments of the reporters and their sources, which do relate to race, one of Mr. Sailer's biggest topics (and it's brave of him for writing about it).
This one part really got to me, though it's not the main topic of the post:
The notion of “freedom” was historically and remains intertwined with Whiteness, as historian Tyler Stovall has argued. The belief that one’s entitlement to freedom is a key component of White supremacy.(There is a lot more stupidity on either side of this paragraph, if you want to get the context.)
"Freedom is intertwined with Whiteness", got that? This is not stupidity, but deliberate evil lying. It's not that the concept of freedom and liberty are things only the White man would want. It's just that only the White man has evolved to a level in which he can not only really understand and explain these concepts via reason and logic, but he has the integrity and willpower to uphold them. Others have been riding the coat-tails of all this in the Western World (most especially, the English-descendent world) for years.
There's a reason these people, both the Lyiin' Press reporter and "historian" Tyler Stovall, want to tie the two together. See, the Commies of old did not have it this easy. They could talk about class, but they didn't have a ready-made, Emmanuel Golsteinesque whole race of men who are simply the bad guys. This is the logic the Commies like Tyler Stovall want to get out there: Because “White supremacy” “It’s OK to be White”, or even no sign or slogans but just being or acting White are considered bad now, the linking of "White" to "freedom" helps them explain why "freedom is BAD, mmmkay?"
"You hate White things, right? Yeah, OK, well, freedom is one of them. You need to start hating freedom. We're way ahead of you on this, so let us help get you started. Vote for Totalitarianism - it's anti-White!"
Like they say, "he
An insightful scholar and author dedicated to social justice and the advancement of minority scholars, Tyler touched the lives of countless students, faculty and staff in his nearly two decades on our campus,” Chancellor Cynthia Larive and Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer said in a joint campus message. “We knew Tyler as a skilled educator and as a thoughtful, generous, and kind colleague. He will be missed tremendously.”Mr. Stovall got lots of accolades, and he learned and then taught at many colleges. This guy was indeed a scholar, but I don't know how much of that is pure Affirmative Action.
His father was a child psychologist, and his mother directed the South Side Settlement House, a community center in Columbus, Ohio. Both of Stovall’s parents were active in the growing civil rights movement, with activists and guests of their local NAACP chapter visiting their home regularly. Their efforts inspired Stovall’s own political activism, including joining a Race Relations Club at his public high school and giving his first public speech against the war in Vietnam at age 18.OK, we've got another red diaper scholar. Here's the last from him, as he went full Lyin' Commie:
His most recent book White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea earned Stovall even more attention and acclaim. Numerous critics connected the book’s theme that, as Stovall writes, “at its most extreme freedom can be and historically has been a racist ideology,” with the January 6 attack on the U.S. capitol. “White Freedom has much to tell us… about how racism has been built into so many of our systems and institutions, and about how what we see as freedom isn’t really freedom at all,” wrote Brock Kingsley in a piece written for Chicago Review of Books.Here's how a Long March through the Institutions works:
“For me, Tyler should be remembered as a scholar who firmly believed that the writing and teaching of history was a political act,” said Michael Vann, professor of history and Asian studies at California State University, Sacramento, who studied under Stovall for his PhD at UC Santa Cruz. “Throughout his long and vibrant career, Tyler used his path breaking research, critical analysis, and engaging lectures as weapons in the fight for social justice.Sure, you didn't have to take the guy's courses, well unless they were required courses... but you didn't have to go to UC Santa Cruz to begin with, great surfing notwithstanding. We could all just avoid these lyin' sacks of shit, but then:
a) They are spreading their evil lies using our tax money.
and
b) Their "scholarly works" are what the other infiltrated Institutions of American society use as their guides.
Good riddance to this smiling face of evil, Tyler Stovall, and the like. Most of them won't just die off so easily in the future.
Comments (10)
Dr. Robert Malone and E.H. Hail at the anti-vax-mandate rally
Posted On: Tuesday - February 22nd 2022 5:09PM MST
In Topics: Websites Kung Flu Stupidity
I'd meant to write this quick post since seeing the Jan. 23rd anti-vaccine-mandate rally via live-streaming that day. I watched an hour and a half of it or so. I was impressed by a certain part of Dr. Robert Malone's talk.
As the speakers shivered up there on the podium and gave their fairly short talks about medical issues from the experimental vaccines our elites want us all to take, along with their political opinions about the tyranny of this attempted mandate, I was especially impressed with the straight talk out of Dr. Malone about the children.
One could go over the numbers and how stupid it is to try experimental medicine on people who have almost no risk of getting seriously harmed from the disease itself. One could talk about this usurpation of the rights of parents to take care of their children. Robert Malone, however, gave some serious, straight talk to the parents. I won't quote exactly, but the gist of it was this, to paraphrase him:
"Think about what would happen if you let your child be vaccinated or even make this decision yourself. Either way, if some permanent harm would come to a child of yours, you will not only spend the rest of your life dealing with the medical problems, but the guilt and grief will be on you until you die too. Do you want that?"
That's some straight talk there. I was pretty surprised and impressed that Dr. Malone put it this way.
I checked the website of one of the original anti-Panic bloggers, Mr. E.H. Hail's Hail to You, today for the first time in at least a week. I had been wondering when his next post would be and whether it would be about his experience at last month's event. Well, he put it up just today, and it IS. I will read Scenes from the “Defeat the Mandates” rally (Washington D.C., Jan. 23, 2022) and thoughts on its place in Corona-Panic history in a short while.
I hope you all will get a chance to read Mr. Hail's post. I am looking forward to it.
Comments (5)
Tiananmen Square Reloaded: Ottawa, Canada
Posted On: Tuesday - February 22nd 2022 2:45PM MST
In Topics: Globalists Liberty/Libertarianism World Political Stupidity
That title came to me just a few minutes ago, and it's not the main story here. I am more familiar with China than the average American, but that was not the case 33 years back, in the summer of 1989. That was the time of the Chinese pro-Democracy movement*, and, honestly, as discussed in Citizenship in the Nation, I'm not sure how many Chinamen even deeply involved in that movement really understood democracy from a hole in the ground, much less what a Constitutional Republic is about. They were a brave bunch though. I'll give them that.
There are a few similarities though. I will note these in this post, in which, knowing our readers could have been following the Canadian trucker convoy protest on thousands of other sites, I'll just give some opinion on the way it ended.
Here at Peak Stupidity, I perhaps give short shrift to overarching conspiracy theories over the idea of the elites of this world and their followers simply being idiots. Hey, we pay good money for the URL here, so why not stupidity over evil? However, I am indeed coming around to the explanations of more nefarious causes of the events in this time of near-Peak Stupidity. I think in the case of Justin Trudeau vs. these salt-of-the-earth plain old Canadian truckers, it's pretty obvious that this is not just about a moron of a Prime Minister making dumb calls.
This young pretty-boy, the son of likely the most famous Prime Minister of Canada in its history, or maybe the son of a different Communist, is not on his own here. The question of who moves his puppet strings brings up the very public knowledge of his being a star of the World Economic Forum up-and-coming youngsters who are supposed to help implement the "4th Industrial Revolution".
I have not watched the whole video below, but I present just the first couple of minutes to show the introduction by Klaus Schwab, founder of the WEF there in Davos, Switzerland 6 years back.
(Sorry about the captioning. It's hilarious how the software does not know what to make out of "Fareed Zakaria"! "Hey, we paid for Globalist software, dammit!")
The most important thing I got out of this (as pointed out by an Unz Review commenter) is how Mr. Schwab speaks of young Trudeau's "loyalty". He most definitely means loyalty to the Globalist WEF and its plans, not to the people of Canada.
Were he on his own, I think Premier Trudeau may have been pretty open to a friendly meeting with some of these truckers, maybe making a face-saving deal, telling them in Trump-like** fashion how they are all good folks, and that we've licked this Covid thing anyway, so we'll ease off... till next time. These guys like to be popular with "the people". That's not the plan that Trudeau is a part in implementing, though.
The elites know that the PanicFest they implemented, and now the experimental vaccine (experimental not only in nature, but in its forced global implementation) have slowly become very unpopular with too many people. Perhaps they expected the little people to take and get on-board with this new Totalitarianism in the same way the world got on board with that introduced as a "response" to 9/11. This trucker protest may have scared the Globalists.
It's one thing if it's just about vaccine passports and the shots - again, "we can make a few promises and make them go away, you know, slow things down for a while". However, this protest and others to come can easily morph into demands for other changes off of the Davos crowd's "4th Industrial Revolution" script. The "Yellow Vest" movement in France is an example.
The Tiananmen Square "Democracy" protest in Peking, China 33 years back, having started off as a simple demand for less corrupt leaders***, turned into a demand by some for a change in the whole system of government. Call it "protest creep". I would guess the Canadian protests in Ottawa could have crept into some demands about ending the evil population replacement policy, being accelerated big-time as I write. It could have and damn well should have! That's not all we might very well demand either.
The way this Canadian protest ended, with mounted soldiers, who still call themselves "police", breaking up the crowd, and maybe a few bones too, and with the purely Totalitarian confiscation of expensive rigs, bank accounts, and with trials and imprisonment to come, does remind me also of what I learned about Tiananmen Square. I have some inside knowledge of people whose lives were derailed**** afterwards, even though they did not actively participate there in Peking but just showed their support in some manner, perhaps posters in support. Does that sound familiar? Those ministers who work as puppets for the Globalists have come up with punishment for anything they wanted to.
The punishment for acting up is widespread and encompassing, including for those not directly involved: Bought a trucker a Coke Zero, eh? Well, there goes that pension plan you counted on. Hey, I don't exaggerate by that much. The rule of law is being blatantly ignored. I don't see what's going on there in Ottawa as much different than Stalinist actions or that of the Deng government in China.'
One more similarity with Tiananmen I see here is that the Totalitarian regime of the moment used enforcers that are not your standard beat cops. See the military vehicle up top, and note that some of these, errr, troops, have no insignias. The Chinese way was to use military troops from far away provinces that would feel no compunction about firing away at the people.***** It's only going to get worse when the Canadian people (and the same here) are further replaced by foreigners who don't give a damn about them.
Finally, there's a reason the big powers, the Communists of the old USSR, the Totalitarians in China, and the Globalists now, feel the need to clamp down hard. Think about it. Some of the covid/vaccine restrictions in Canada have been lifted anyway, as of late. Why not have arranged a nice friendly settlement instead of how this was ended?
My opinion is that the Globalists are trying their best to prevent anything like this from happening again, due to that protest creep problem. It's not just about the very specific complaints from the little people there up north. They will brook no more little people's complaints from anyone, anywhere. Or ... so they think ...
* Peak Stupidity published 3 posts in remembrance of the Tiananmen Square protests and crack-down on the 30th anniversary of the event. (Occasionally, we set alarms on our phones for these things.) See 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.
** That's one guy that I cannot see being a puppet of anybody. Oh, threatened by the Globalists/Deep State, yeah surely. A sucker for the beltway "experts", definitely. I can't see even the world's most incompetent Globalist HR Department picking out a guy like Donald Trump to do their bidding!
*** Yeah, sure, that works every time. "We just need less corrupt people!" Never mind that the Big Gov. they have no problem with makes corruption inevitable.
**** One was a bright Electrical Engineering student who was nowhere near Peking at time, but due to his support in some manner, was banned from the universities. He ended up TV repairman.
***** China has a real "geographic discrimination" thing going on in general.
Comments (9)