Turning America into Haiti - it's not a mistake.
Posted On: Friday - October 15th 2021 3:33PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Globalists US Feral Government ctrl-left Anarcho-tyranny
Peak Stupidity would like to link our readers to, and excerpt most of, a VDare article or two every day of the week. Immigration stupidity is still the most used topic key of the site, as the immigration invasion, legal and illegal, is an EXISTENTIAL one. However, you can just read VDare.
Something struck me in the latest James Kirkpatrick article on that site, because he understands something that Peak Stupidity has been saying for a long time. In Biden’s Immigration Disaster: None Dare Call It Treason. But What If THEY Call It War?, Mr. Kirkpatrick discusses the usual Anarcho-Tyranny and the newest Immigration Stupidity (OK, EVIL) of the newest caravans of Haitians, Guatemalans, and pretty much whoever wants to just enter our country. It starts with the revealing of one traitorous dual citizen* scumbag, going by the name Irineo Mujica, who is encouraging and even arranging these invasions.
Let Irineo Mujica, who is reportedly leading one of these caravans, speak for himself—migrants are coming “with or without papers” and that they are “ready for war”.I won't go through the whole of Mr. Kirkpatrick's article. You can read it there, but bring your blood pressure meds.
There's the part that stood out for me, in bold:
And it has set loose more than 100,000 illegals, regardless of Covid vaccination status, while simultaneously pushing massive pandemic restrictions on actual Americans. This isn’t simply a mistake. It’s a deliberate attempt to turn America into the Third World, so the Left can reign over one giant Haiti.That's the deal! I've written this before: The Globalist elites of the world don't want to have to deal with any hold-out countries, with lots of White Middle Class people. These people tend to start competing businesses with better ideas. They tend to form political associations of all sorts that interfere with Big-Gov/Big-Biz business as usual. They vote wrong, if you let them, or if you don't make a big effort to overwhelm them with fraud. (Hey, it's more work than you think!)
The Globalist elites want to have populations such as those that have been in Latin America, Africa, and most of Asia, for centuries. They can throw some bones to them, if they feel like acting like the good guys occasionally - it's a feel-good thing. Maybe some other times they want to put the hammer down by finding an excuse for some additional hard-core Totalitarianism, for the people's own good - most of the peons don't freakin' know any better, and the ones that do can't do squat-all about it.
They've got to get rid of that hard-working, intelligent White Middle Class though. That is TOP PRIORITY.
I'm glad to read someone else, especially on a great website like VDare, write this out. I will quibble with Mr. Kirkpatrick that's it's not only leftists who want this. Besides the Commies, there are others who would like to destroy traditional America.
* Which, IMNSHO, is a stupid concept to begin with. Pick a side.
Comments (4)
Most Frightened Nation Status
Posted On: Friday - October 15th 2021 2:46AM MST
In Topics: Books World Political Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
The formerly-United former Kingdom they still call The U.K. was recently lambasted for being formerly-non-hysterical too by what is to me an unlikely source. In the City Journal (a publication of the Manhattan Institute) there is a good anti-panic article by one Lionel Shriver. If the reader is wondering where he has heard that name before, it may be from right here on Peak Stupidity.
Peak Stupidity is no literary website in any sense. The writing is not hifalutin, and writing about letters and men or women of letters is just not (usually) going to bring out the stupidity we strive for here. Just as with our movie reviews, I write many of them because we spent the time watching them and may as well get some posts out of them. More relative to this post, as I've mentioned before regarding movies, I would say that I don't really care to follow certain actors or directors, as I don't really follow book authors in general. If the actors in the movie are believable, that's that, and if the book is good, I may want to get another by the same author if recommended to me, but I've been disappointed when doing that.
I'd never heard of Lionel Shriver before, but I'd gotten the recommendation for her '16 prepper novel, The Mandibles, from a John Derbyshire post. After a 10-page worrisome start (I thought the author was a flaming feminist from the opening), I found this story good enough to write a six, that's 6-part review: Introduction -- Part 2 -- Part 3 -- Part 4 -- Part 5, and Conclusion.
In this case, because the writing was so good, I did take a recommendation from a commenter here to read her dark novel We Need to Talk About Kevin - that's the review and write a short note about the movie based on it. I was not disappointed one bit.
One more thing in this long intro. of this post. I wrote "unlikely source" up top about this anti-panic article by this same writer because, even as good as the two novels were, this is a NY City and London "based"* lady, and one can see that anti-provincial attitude that one would expect. I mean, in We Need to Talk About Kevin, the narrator actually writes something about the New York Times that could be an old New Yorker cartoon.
I never wrote that Lionel Shriver is not a smart lady, though. Her recent long anti-Kung Flu PanicFest article about the UK, The Most Frightened Nation, is well worth reading. Mrs. Shriver is completely against the hysteria and the precedents in Totalitarianism she sees there. She even uses that word as Peak Stupidity has, so I'll excerpt a sample from her conclusion:
But the most enduring damage to the home of Magna Carta may be political. The transformation of the United Kingdom is permanent. Its citizens can never again characterize lockdowns and other previously unthinkable government edicts, such as “you’re forbidden to leave the country,” as unprecedented. The state has established precedents galore. The public is already being softened up for the return of repressive measures in some form this autumn, even if only to control a surge of flu.Oh, yeah, this is right up our alley here!
Going to the beginning of the article here, Lionel Shriver points out a book called A State of Fear about the situation in the UK by one Laura Dodsworth. iI's a book that Peak Stupidity happened to mention due to its being the subject of a Russia Today article in this post from Spring '21. That's where she got her title from.** She doesn't mince words about her distress at the change in UK society:
We’ve all been through our own Covid hell, so I thought I’d share with my fellow Americans what it’s been like across the pond. As I’m a writer, my daily routine in London hasn’t been all that crimped by lockdowns. Instead, the most painful aspect of the pandemic for me has been having my opinion of my adoptive country radically transformed for the worse. It’s tempting to reach for my mother’s most lacerating verdict when I was a kid: “I’m so disappointed in you.”I'm sorry, but I have to insert here a big "I told you so." For someone who seems to think the New York Times is a fountain of wisdom, maybe you should have paid a little attention to the Conservatives and Libertarians in your de-dopted country, Lionel Shriver. Your great writing could have helped our cause. Oh, NOW you see what the left is up to, over there in Oceania. BTW, the very next paragraph after this just excerpted starts:
I’m loath to pile on to the New York Times’s long-standing hate campaign against Boris Johnson,...I'm not arguing with her reasoning that comes after that, but again it's all
OK, small rant aside, the meat of this article gives a myriad of sickening descriptions of pieces of stupidity not only put upon, but ASKED FOR*** by the British people, put in place during their version of the PanicFest.**** Truly, the place is being run as if it were a Kindergarten, with the level of intelligence in the posters, slogans, and programmes to match. Any anti-Panicker should enjoy the whole thing (in a macabre kind of way), so I won't excerpt any of this.
There's more great anti-Panic goodness in this article too, as Mrs. Shriver makes many of the same points that we anti-Panicers have been making for a year and a half - about the push to log as many COVID-19 deaths as possible, the co-morbidity question (she doesn't use that term), the very low infection fatality rates, the switch from reporting deaths and hospitalizations to reporting "cases", and the many flip-flops in the narrative about spread by contact, no, spread by aerosols, etc. It's not just that all the strongly recommended (as the writer puts it, they like to confuse law with recommendations) policies with rectally extracted numbers are ridiculous, but it's that way too many British people seem to follow and believe all that crap.
OK, well, there's:
It took a surprisingly long while for media wags to observe that the purpose of the NHS is to protect the people, not the other way around.Hahahaaa! Yeah, you can take the woman out of the NYC leftist intelligentsia, but you can't.... I mean, how did this NHS get away with logging deaths as FROM COVID when they're not, and sensationalizing things, and cherry-picking, and all that? Perhaps it's because they are a huge government entity that answers to no one, could that be it? Good luck with the NHS, lady.
What I get from her writing, is that Lionel Shriver does take the Kung Flu as a serious virus but much closer toward "it's just the flu" than "it's Black Death 2.0". However, one more important point here is that the writer does not write anything about the controversy about the Kung Flu vaccines. She seems to be totally down with them, noting that nearly 90% of Britons have been vaxxed. She is missing the latest big story with her confidence in these experimental and often dangerous vaccines, but I'll give her credit for using common sense regarding we un-vaxxed. It's very much along the lines of the rare common sense attitude of Ron Unz about the subject, as we noted in Ron Unz comments with some comment-sense.
Lionel's Shriver's article is a feel-good article in one sense: As sick, juvenile, and Totalitarian as British society has gotten, we can be just a little, teensy bit more proud of our country. No, just a little, teensy bit - I don't need to hear "USA! USA! USA!" That is, not yet anyway, but with some good news on big pushback against the jab, the tide may be turning, and we may yet still have something to be proud of. On the other side of the Atlantic, the UK has received Most Frightened Nation status.
Please read and pass on this excellent summary of UK Kung Flu PanicFest Totalitarianism! It seems like one can't go wrong reading the writings of Lionel Shriver. Thank you so much for this one.
* The "based" thing is just another bit of noticing by Steve Sailer. The Globalist elites and the usually ctrl-left underlings don't exactly "live" in places, but they are "based" here or "based" there. They are anything but "based" in the new sense used by Conservatives.
** Our title here is a take-off of the "Most Favored Nation" status used by the Globalist American government help ship American manufacturing to China via highly unfair trade policy.
*** Regarding the polls Mrs. Shriver cites in the beginning, well, I've been polled, and let me tell you, if they ask the stupid types of questions I got asked, the numbers may not mean a whole lot.
**** As with the British version of The Office, they have the talent, but it just doesn't all translate well culturally.
Comments (9)
Semi Off Grid
Posted On: Wednesday - October 13th 2021 7:00PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity Preppers and Prepping Americans Liberty/Libertarianism
Those of us who see what's coming and don't want to have any part of what America is turning into have thoughts about prepping and living "off the grid". "Off the grid" can mean a lot of things. When used here on Peak Stupidity, it does not usually mean literally off the electric grid, off any water and sewer service, or even dropping out completely from participating in the American economy. It's a nice thought though, right?
However, often we just mean not participating in the standard American Bread & Circuses, not being a paycheck-to-paycheck indebted worker drone, and, as you can read here, doing what one can to put NOTHING of value into this farce of an economy and Feral Government that does nothing but screw us left and right.
Let me interrupt, in his week-later revision:I didn't just MEAN to post this a couple of months back, but I DID post this a couple of months back! Geeze, Louise. I did not remember as I looked through some Unz Review comments last week. I though "hey, time to put this guy's one up." OK, well, I do have different commentary this time, so if YOU don't remember either, feel free to go read that other one - the commenter John Grusko's comment is there too in its entirety.
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That is why I advocate an entirely different paradigm.
Instead of “help your friends”, I say “hurt your enemy”.
Instead of “give till it hurts”, I say “force your enemy to give till he hurts”.
If your method of “fighting back” is to give money to “the cause”, you just make yourself a piggy bank for grifters – impoverishing yourself while enriching cynical frauds.
On the other hand, there are no downsides if you STOP giving our money to known and open enemies.
Wall Street:
Don’t give them interest. Instead of borrowing, save and buy with cash.
Don’t give them insurance premiums. Don’t carry any form of insurance, just live a careful and healthy lifestyle.
Don’t give them rent. Blackrock is on its way to becoming the only landlord. Don’t make your adult children pay rent to Blackrock. Let them live at home while they save to buy their own house with cash.
Hollywood:
Cancel your cable subscription, cancel your Netflix subscription, don’t go to the movie theaters, don’t rent from Redbox etc.
Sell any and all Hollywood related merchandise currently in your possession.
Federal government:
Eliminate (alcohol, tobacco) or minimize (gasoline, guns & ammo) your purchase of goods subject to Federal excise tax.
Never visit DC – don’t give the DC local economy a penny.
State and local government (if you live in a blue state):
Eliminate or minimize purchases of goods subject to sales tax (junk food, fast food, “durable goods”)
Refrain from any home improvement which would increase your property tax.
Don’t visit NYC or any other ultra-liberal area as a tourist. Never give the bastards a penny!
Academia:
Tell your daughters to get married instead of going to college, and tell your sons to use higher education strictly as vocational training, with the explicit goal of paying as little as possible. Emphasize that an Ivy League degree now carries negative prestige in your eyes.
Mainstream media:
Cancel subscriptions, and don’t click on their websites (eliminate their click-count based advertising revenue)
Big tech:
Use a $5/month “kid phone”, delete your facebook account, cancel your internet access, use the library for free internet access.
Big Pharma:
Eat healthy, stay hydrated, exercise, get a good night sleep, and when you are very old and its time to die, just lie down and die gracefully. There is no need to ever give a penny to the so-called “Health Care” industry, staffed with murderers who perform abortions, perverts who perform sex change operations, and drug dealers who sell Oxycontin.
Basically stop paying for things which not only give you no benefit, but do actual harm to you. Save your time, save your money, avoid the mental strain of being subjected to enemy propaganda, all while depriving your enemies of revenue streams.
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This is a very nice summary of good practices for Americans who want to live like conservative Americans should. There's at least one of his prescriptions that I don't agree with, but it's not any kind of stumbling block. I will probably write another post soon with my take, or at least my compliance matches, with the prescription of this Semi Off Grid lifestyle from Mr. Grusko.
Thank you, John Grusko, for this very helpful comment!
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[UPDATED 10/19:] There's a
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Comments (3)
Happy (belated) Columbus Day!
Posted On: Wednesday - October 13th 2021 5:50AM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness History Holiday from Stupidity
529 years ago
It's too late for yesterday, but Celebrate Columbus Day today in some way. Call up an Italian friend (I've been meaning to call the guy anyway). Put out a hit on another one. Eat some pasta. Go sailing ... but not after too eating too much Marinara sauce. Just don't give me any of that Indigenous People's BS, at least not today, please.
PS: Yeah, it was yesterday, dang it! I set an alarm even, on my phone, but it was my old phone.
Comments (5)
Russia Today on Fauci: How the Fauci Stole Christmas
Posted On: Tuesday - October 12th 2021 7:06PM MST
In Topics: Books Poetic Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
I would say "hey, it's just a poem", but then he DID steal a good part of Christmas 2020. He's only trying to this year. In this article, not really a "Part 2" from our previous post after all but taken from the same Russia Today article, we compare Anthony Fauci to the Grinch of Dr. Suess fame.*
(That line above is from the movie, not the book.)
The shear arrogance of this guy is amazing. From the Russia Today article:
White House health adviser Anthony Fauci has insisted that Covid-19 is not being spread by untested immigrants. [Yeah, yeah, we've already covered that piece of stupidity] He also claims the virus remains such a threat that traditional Christmas celebrations might need to be canceled.My bolding for a good reason.
Fauci earned backlash for insisting Covid-19 remained such a problem that a traditional Christmas with family and friends might need to be canceled again this year. “It’s too soon to tell. We’ve just got to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months,” he said.Anthony Fauci must have the biggest gall bladder this side of the Jurassic Era. I mean, he's got a LOT of damn gall to assume that Americans are ready to listen to him! We have no obligation to listen to some 40-year US Government medical expert, no matter if he were an intelligent guy! However, after a year and a half of Fauci's back-and-forth pieces of erroneous important advice and many claims proven already to be false, how does he get off assuming ANY Americans are ready to heed his advice? Oh, well, I guess he may know that there are a lot of stupid people out there, but we're not all stupid.
“I guess I’ll just have to put off deciding whether to celebrate the birth of Christ with people I love until Anthony Fauci tells me it’s okay,” author Andrew Klavan tweeted in reaction to Fauci’s Christmas comment.This latest arrogance shows Anthony Fauci indeed acting like an Ayatollah by issuing prophesies, edicts, and fatwas left and right. The people are expected to obey. Fortunately we are not yet forced to subscribe to his or any other sect of the Corona Cult.
Others blasted the health official for being a “Grinch” and waved away his advice.I'd have figured that was coming. The Dr. Suess book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a 64 y/o children's story with that now famous Grinch character who was bound to be compared to Anthony Fauci. After just reading the book quickly on-line, I would have to say that the Grinch comes out very favorably in a comparison. After all, the Grinch learned the meaning of Christmas when he heard the singing in Whoville Christmas morning even after he had taken away all the presents. I don't think Dr. Fauci, in WuFluVille, has learned a damn thing after his year and a half of stealing parts of Americans' lives and traditions.
but the Grinch, who lived east, in a big Blue ville, Did NOT!
The Grinch hated Christmas, but loved the whole Wu Flu season!
Now, please don't ask why. We all know what the reason.
It's partly that his head isn't screwed on just right.
Additionally, perhaps, it's that he loves causing fright.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May be that his heart is two sizes too small.
Whatever, we're sick of his panic from flu's,
Before this next Christmas, this asshole will lose.
Staring down from his podium with a Pro-Panic frown,
at the warm lighted windows below in our town.
He knows every Who down in WuFluVille below
is busy right now, telling Fauci just where he can go.
"And they're throwing their masks out!" he snarled with a sneer.
"Tomorrow is Christmas! There's not enough fear!"
Then he growled, with his Fauci fingers nervously jabbing,
"I MUST find some way to stop Christmas by blabbing!"
There are still way too many overly-compliant sheep in this country. Even many of them, however, have to to see that this Dr. Fauci is entirely too full of himself and not worth paying attention to. The tide is turning.
* We are BIG, BIG fans of Dr. Suess here at Peak Stupidity. We reported on some ridiculous PC-based censorship of a few of his great children's books a few years ago in Every day, from here to there, crazy broads are Everywhere., Dr. Suess Revisited, and, regarding the same book as this post, How the Grinch Stole Back Christmas - by Mr. Joe Long.
Comments (4)
Russia Today on the Ayatollah Fauci: The Anarcho-Tyranny
Posted On: Monday - October 11th 2021 3:42PM MST
In Topics: US Feral Government Anarcho-tyranny Kung Flu Stupidity
In the comments under the previous post, Drinking the KOVID Kool-Aid, commenter Hail, of the Hail To You blog, used the term "Ayatollah" to describe the position or status of Kung Flu Panicker-in-Chief Anthony Fauci.* The main point of his comment is here:
An ayatollah is someone above the politicians and the nominally elected figures, someone guaranteed to be in there for life or as long as he wants to hang around (Fauci has been in his high-ranking spot 40+ years and is now eighty but will not retire), someone VERY well treated and honored by the regime and regime-system loyalists (Fauci the most highly paid government official; a pop-culture celebrity recently voted Sexiest Man by some magazine), someone who guides policy and culture on behalf of the One True Religion.Yes, Anthony Fauci has been in the US Feral Gov't a very long time. Unlike the old Ayatollah Khomeini who took over Iran in a coup back in 1979**, President Trump could have flat out fired the guy at any time. However, as per Mr. Hail's description, this guy was an institution, this respected medical EXPERT. Again, President Trump, even with all his bluster, had TOO much respect for the US Feral Government Establishment.
That's how the Grand Ayatollah functions in Iran. This is exactly Fauci's position, starting in some time in February or March 2020, and with no counter-revolution by the Anti-Panic enemies of the coroga-god, he was locked in by April or May. Grand Ayatollah Fauci of America.
I wrote recently that I'd hardly heard a word out of this Ayatollah Fauci's mouth, thanks to the magic of a digital TV coax cable that's been broken and swinging in the breeze for half a decade and a short, well, 22 year, hiatus from cable, TV, likely to be extended indefinitely. I've watched a few clips lately on youtube and embedded tweets, and I know have an even greater distaste for the guy than before. Hell, my distaste for Ayahotllah Fauci is greater than I think I had even for that other Ayatollah way back. (Sure, he made people cover their faces, stay indoors at times specified by edict, and stick their asses in the air to face True East a few times a day, but he did not approve of genderbending and forced injections of foreign substances into humans***.)
The website Russia Today, a kind of Bizarro World 1960s >Washington Post to counter the Bizarro World American Pravda, is a great source for a little balance. Last week, they published an article titled ‘Not driven by immigrants’: ‘Grinch’ Fauci mulls canceling Christmas due to Covid, rejects accusations of migrants spreading virus.
The caption says:"Migrants are lined up and processed by US Border Patrol in Roma, Texas". "Processed" means "hey, you're supposed to come back for a hearing in a couple of months. We'll send a certified letter to your new address." Man, it's got to be frustrating to see this if you are a truly legal immigrant, as opposed to an anchor baby.****
Just the title alone show it, but then the article starts off with the following, which simply shows that Anthony Fauci is a blatant liar:
fWhite House health adviser Anthony Fauci has insisted that Covid-19 is not being spread by untested immigrants. [I will leave out one sentence that came and put it a later post to discuss it, as with the 2nd part of this RT article title.]OK, Fauci, if that's the case, then NONE of us are spreading it. After all, Americans have a majority of compliant citizens under Anarcho-Tyranny (for now!) that are still wearing face diapers (oh, the "refugees" have them on for the pictures, but did they wear them all the way from Guatamala, Haiti via Chile or anywhere else?), using hand sanitizer and wipes as if they have their entire 401(k)'s invested in the sector, and still don't conduct business as normal. Americans are getting tested, inspected, and injected or else rejected. These people at the southern border are spreading and BEING SPREAD by the Refugee Resettlement Racket all over the country. Yet, "Covid-19 is not being spread by untested immigrants". I don't care whether you're an Ayatollah, you're a lying sack of shit, Anthony Fauci. Most of us know this now.
During a Sunday interview on CNN, Fauci was asked about a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll that found 55% of Republicans partially blame the spread of Covid-19 on immigrants and tourism.Really, how about with the Blue-squad? Even today, some of them might also have the common sense that says "OF COURSE, immigration and tourism is partly to blame!" How do diseases spread from one country to another after all? Well, OK, you're the doctor? (How long since this guy took his last boards? That's what I want to know.)
The survey follows scrutiny of the Biden administration over tactics at the US-Mexico border, where White House officials have admitted many migrants are not required to be tested for coronavirus and are subsequently released into the US with a notice to attend court at a later date.I really don't know how many Americans are still too ignorant or stupid enough to not see the blatant lying out of Anthony Fauci. This is just one subject, but we've seen a year and a half of, if not flat-out lying, pure rectal-extraction-based prescriptions from the Ayatollah of the Corona Cult, now a variant sect, having split off from the Covid-Classic, or sheee- it sect recently. More from this liar:
Fauci said he did not see any connection between the spread of the virus and immigration. “This is not driven by immigrants. This is a problem within our country, the same way it’s a problem within other countries throughout the world,” the infectious-diseases expert said.I'm pretty sure the RT writer was being facetious in adding that that "the infectious-diseases expert" part! Hey, the poll you spouted said "partially", Fauci. You can't say immigration (or tourism) is not a factor. If nobody came into this country from mainland China for a half year before March '20, would the virus have spread the same way, as in New York with a vengeance?***** "No connection"? GTF out of here!
More will come on Peak Stupidity regarding the rest of the stupidity and arrogance of Anthony Fauci seen in just this Russia Today article, but also on the subject of some much needed hard pushback. Right now we seem to have let ourselves be shamed by this Ayatollah, just as America did 42 years ago, with those 52 hostages held for 444 days. There was the humiliation of the failed President Carter-directed Operation Eagle Claw. At some point Americans elected a leader to stop the humiliation. This time, it's not going to help to simply elect another President. We tried that in '16. Many leaders will have to step up this time and depose not just this Ayatollah, but all the would-be Ayatollahs of America that belong to this evil cult running the country more quickly into the ground.
* Per Mr. Hail's comment, this was the best term he's heard, not of his own coining.
** Shah Pahlavi was on "vacation" in the US for medical treatment for a myriad of problems, including leukemia, and the Ayatollah, soon to be a big thorn in America's foreign policy side, had been amassing power for a few years already. He arrived from exile in France to take over Iran.
*** Sure, human substances into goats maybe, but that doesn't cause blood clots in either party, ya' gotta admit.
**** Peak Stupidity is against the legal version of the immigration invasion too, but it's just a point to be made.
***** Any regular PS reader would know that we don't take this bad virus season as the Black Death 2.0. However, we don't make the stupidity - we just report on it.
Comments (15)
Drinking the KOVID Kool-Aid
Posted On: Saturday - October 9th 2021 7:43PM MST
In Topics: Bible/Religion Scams Kung Flu Stupidity
Peak Stupidity thanks commenter The Alarmist from the idea for this post and the two images.
That's quite a resemblance there, not necessarily in facial structure but in the crazy preacher sense. The guy on the left is the late Reverend Jim Jones of the Jonestown, Guyana branch office of the People's Temple, and the woman on the left is the Acting Reverend of the New York State Governors office of the People of the Jab. The former was quite the fanatic, as the latter is now.
At least Jim Jones, the fanatic on the left, and his 900-odd followers who drank the Kool-Aid and died down there in the jungle of Guyana had an excuse for their stupidity. They were Communists**. Yes, that's one aspect of the story of that cult from 43 years back that seems to have been forgotten. In case you don't know anything or just don't remember very much about that event of no-longer-so-recent American history, Peak Stupidity conveniently wrote a 4-part series about Jim Jones, the People's Temple and the Jonestown suicide/massacre of November 1978. As usual, we missed the anniversary date by THIS much (about 5 months).
See "Drinking the Kommie Kool-Aid - 40 years back":
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
We also had a follow up post about the shooting down in Jonestown of California Congressman Leo Ryan - They (still) shoot congressmen, don't they?
If you watched the 2 minute video of Kathy Hochul, the fanatic on the right, in our post High Priestess of the Branch Covidian Social Justice Climate Cult., I ask you, is Kathy Hochul's behavior of wearing a "Vaccine" gold necklace not one of the best examples of what E.H. Hail noticed *** long ago, the Kung Flu panickers being nothing less than members of a religious cult?
Per Mrs. Hochul, we have all been blessed by God with THE SCIENCE, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the experimental vaccine. Dogma can be a little contradictory at times, what with the "don't wear masks", "wear masks", then "double down on the masks", the mandatory business shutdowns but permissible BLM riots, and the wiping all hell out of all surfaces, followed by not bothering to do so. It's a lot of ritual, so one needs a leader like Anthony Fauci or Kathy Hochul for guidance.
At this point, the cult members worship the idol of the experimental vaccine. The reader may be aware, BTW, that Peak Stupidity has been railing for a long time about the other pieces of the PanicFest stupidity, but we haven't done much writing about the vax. There is data out there on the dangers of it, but I will let others write about it. We write about it here in order to point to the big attempt to make taking this vaccine mandatory as being one of new Totalitarian measures to be used to not let this crisis go to waste.
This fanatical acting Governor of New York could be the leader of this cult, just as the fanatical Jim Jones was leader of his over 4 decades back. Kathy Hochul would have to oust current cult leader Anthony Fauci first, of course. Maybe a convenient jab in the shoulder would do it.
Yes, there is a big resemblance between these two fanatics. If only the Kung Flu Cultists could find a place down in the S. American jungle to create their own COVID-free Utopia. I mean, there are plenty of places that could use the business. There are two other Guiana's even, just to the east, for crying out loud. Pick a spot and leave the rest of us the hell alone!
Good night, loyal readers. There will be more Kung Flu PanicFest-Season 3 stupidity coming next week now that it's gotten to the top of the charts again.
* It was actually Flavor Aid a cheap substitute for low-budget Utopians.
** Seriously, they were, and not just in the sense that I call these young antifa thugs and the whole ctrl-left Communists. I mean that these guys tried to live the Communist lifestyle there in the S. American jungle.
Just as an example, Reverend Jone's wife Marceline Jones, wrote the following in a note just before she drank that Kool Aid: "Leave all bank assets in my name to the Communist Party of the USSR.". As I recall from reading about it 2 1/2 years back, this amount was $800,000 or something like that, the last of the savings built up by cashing in the many older Utopian ladies Social Security checks. That almost ONE MILLION DOLLARS. I didn't write that with an image of Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, in my head either. It WAS a lot of money back then, probably enough to keep the whole city of Moscow in borscht for a week or two.
*** This article of his was part 12 of his 13-part series: Against the Corona Panic.
Comments (15)
Overheard: Customer Care Confusion
Posted On: Friday - October 8th 2021 7:42PM MST
In Topics: Americans Big-Biz Stupidity Customer Care
This is the 2nd post based on something overheard in an airplane cabin, and in fact, from the same flight as the previous one, Walking in Memphis. Peak Stupidity has a whole topic key to steer the reader toward stories of Customer Care. We use that term sarcastically, as this latest incarnation of what was previously called "customer service" does not really involve much caring on the part of anyone involved - the Big-Biz outfits who arrange for it, the agents themselves, and the customers who have to put up with it.
The latest trend, as I have found out through a number of calls recently - 2 were discussed in the post Has "Customer Care" just been fully outsourced? - seems to be an acceleration of the outsourcing of customer care operations, and to even more far-off locations with more far-off people with more far-off accents.
The guy I heard was likely talking to one of these newer operations. We were parked at the gate, mostly boarded up, when I heard the fellow in a seat somewhere behind me. (It was too crowded to really stand up and look for him.) From his side of the conversation, I learned that he had left something reasonably important in either his AVIS rent-a-car or the rent-a-car counter in the terminal. He was on the phone with one of these what they call "representatives" now, and sometimes "associates". The call was not going well.
Let me make a digression into lost items for a minute. There's one important point here. When you have lost some small important item, and you are pretty sure where you left it, you take care of it right now! No, not later on. There are plenty of honest people still in this country, but that's not the problem. It's the "chain of custody" a term that is normally used for police evidence or unaccompanied minors traveling, and things like that, which is the important thing. Someone finds the item and makes a conscientious effort to store it somewhere safe. Yeah, but he has to go home or away for that location. "Hey, I've got this lost purse here, in the drawer." Oh, but the next guy remembers there is an area set up for this stuff and moves it. He doesn't tell anyone or leave a note because that involves entirely too much conscientiousness, though he's still an honest guy. You get over there the next day, and even if the original finder is there, he can't find your stuff. Maybe a 3rd party is there, and without any note, he just tells you "we haven't seen it."
I have had the very same thing happen at the rent-a-car return lot, but my item wasn't very important. It was impossible to get anyone at that local office on the phone, even after I found the number. This guy was doing the right thing trying to get to the right person before an hour or two went by on with the flight in the air.
This was a medium-sized city we were leaving, which means the airport terminal had 10 to 15 gates, and the usual line of rent-a-car places downstairs all together. (It seems that AVIS has bought Payless, these other guys bought the other guys, and I wonder if it's all back to about 2 companies right now - all for the worse, I'd say.) Yes, the customer service agent (the term I'll use) obviously could not picture this simple thing. The man was telling him a number of times "no, no, there's only ONE place. It's the Avis office in REDACTED, RD! I need to get ahold of them now!"
The guy in the plane of the phone had started off very calm and polite. He couldn't keep that up. Whoever was on the other end was obviously only trained to deal with things that didn't require serious listening and understanding. Sure, he, or more likely she, could take a reservation, change a reservation, call a tow truck, and maybe take an accident report. Listening to what this guy was saying in plain English about his lost item and trying to get him to someone who could look for it quickly was apparently much too advanced. This was way, way off the script, so whaddya want from him? The last thing I heard was "Do you even speak English?!" I believe I might have smirked a tad.
Yeah, we all have to put up with the crap now, due to Big Biz wanting to have another year of double-digit earnings increases. Who cares if that guy never gets his stuff back? Who cares if people can't get their problems fixed, or if so, only with a lot of frustration, agitation, and harsh words?
That's our country in 2021. Let me contrast that with our country about a half century earlier, in the 1970s. I was a little boy on one of our family road trips to relatives about 3 or 4 hundred miles away. They had diners still back then, as I have one picture (barely) in my head still of this place. The weather was cool and rainy to where my Dad had brought along his gray trench coat. (Trench coats were still in back then.) He had hung it up on a coat rack at the diner, along with many others, before we ate.
My Dad grabbed a gray trench coat to put back on as we left, and I don't know what it was that clued him in, well down the road, that he'd taken the wrong one. The details are rather vague, but there either must have been a name and even phone number on or in that coat somewhere or my Dad looked up and called that diner*, as did the other fellow, because they were in touch on the phone by some point. Yes, people used to arrange stuff like that, before the age of cell phones, as regular human beings and not corporate associates. (For instance, possibly my Dad called the diner and told the hostess "if a guy calls about a gray trench coat, give him this number (at the relatives)".)
The way this call went was: "Oh, well I got yours, because, yes, they do look about the same." "OK, this one fits fine." "That's great. I'll keep this one, and you keep that one. Nice talking with you. Goodbye."
That's the America we had a half century ago. Let's not forget.
* Somehow, because it was in a city far away by then. I think now "how would you have looked up a number without the Yellow Pages for that city?" He may have called "Information", and talked to someone who speaks good English, understands it, and would actually gladly help!
Comments (7)
Ann Coulter keeping it real
Posted On: Thursday - October 7th 2021 7:39PM MST
In Topics: Pundits Race/Genetics
(VDare graphic.)
Wheewww! I spent 2 to 3 hours today reading and writing on this Ron Unz - Is the Tide Finally Starting to Turn on Covid as an American Biowarfare Attack? article. (Spoiler Alert: Who cares?! That's not the BIG STORY!)*
Therefore, I will just post a reference to a great Ann Coulter column (what's new?) today, though there's plenty of posts on the front burner.
They're Not Defending Their Best is about black political leaders and the black "community" in general defending black high-profile criminals and the worst of their criminal underclass in general. Miss Coulter does not use the word "tribal" though and instead blames it all on the politics of the Democrat Party. No doubt, she's got some good points regarding the new Anarcho-Tyranny (also, not a word she uses) that Soros and the ctrl-left have implemented to basically enable black criminals only to get away with, well, murder, among other things.
Miss Coulter does not mince words in this column:
No, there’s only one ethnic group that sacralizes its criminals. See if you can guess which one:The examples of O.J. Simpson, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor follow. Then:
The main problem facing the black community isn’t that a sizable number celebrate its criminals, though that’s bad. It’s that there’s such a sizable number of criminals to celebrate. Why won’t the party that gets 90% of the black vote mention that?Shades of Paul Kersey there.
Liberals have so elevated black people as our moral betters that they have fully adopted the values of disaffected urban youth.Yeah, but, right after that, one reads:
The left firmly believes that African Americans should never suffer the consequences of their actions—even when the act is murder.
Whatever America owes black people for slavery and Jim Crow, it doesn’t owe them a Get-Out-of-Jail Free card.Wait, Ann. We don't owe squat! I guess Miss Coulter is not over the idea of Affirmative Action. Will she ever give up on this small stubborn stupidity remnant within her?
Please don't let that one bit stop you from reading the whole column, if you haven't read it already.
OK, the title here is not completely right, but Ann Coulter is MOSTLY keeping it real.
* Thanks to Dieter Kief for telling me to not spend so much time on that site, or responding to Ron Unz's stuff, at least... though I ignored it, I will heed this in the future. Good advice, Dieter.
Comments (4)
The evil side of Greta at the Trekkie Convo.
Posted On: Wednesday - October 6th 2021 4:15PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Humor Global Climate Stupidity Female Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
I was hoping that another of the few silver linings* of this Kung Flu PanicFest would be that the Global Climate Disruption™ scam would be left behind, for need to focus on the PanicFest. I was hoping the purported young leader of the movement to SAVE! THE! PLANET! would also be left behind, perhaps via getting a life, getting married, having a baby or two, etc.
The last post on Peak Stupidity featuring the stupidity of Greta Thunberg was a music video spoof. This post, Death Metal Greta, has a song that did not turn me on to Greta Thunberg**, but maybe a little bit to Death Metal music. That was from February of '20, and whaddya know, the only thing related since has been an introduction to Black Greta, given name Greteisha Thunberg-Jefferson.
Well, she's baaaaack! The 1st video below is of Greta Thunberg speaking to an audience of Star Trekkies, at a convention. At first viewing, unless you are a hard core original Star Trek series fan, you may very well think little White Greta has completely lost her last couple of carbon-free marbles. Nah, well she is doing an imitation for the real fans of a scene from the scene with Captain Kirk v the kids in the episode Miri.***
Greta Thunberg answers the question of whether there is intelligent life on this planet:
"Build back Greta Betta, blah, blah, blah..."
"What do we want?!"
"Climb muffle muffle stice."
"When do we want it?!"
"Muffle!!"
(It took me a number of times before I could make out what they were saying through those idiotic first generation face diapers. I had first thought it was Klingon.)
I suppose, as long as your audience is hip to it, Greta's talk was kind of clever. We adults, who understand the severe limitations of mathematical modeling, especially untested models of the entire Earth's climate, well some of us do, are like the landing party from the Enterprise, I suppose. We are always saying this, that ... blah, blah, blah, but not coming through to save THE PLANET, as in the show to save the kids from their predicament. Still, the kids, like Greta, need their Captain Kirk to save them.
OK, but Greta, aren't you an adult by now? Perhaps you should stop blah, blah, blah-ing and get in a position to DO SOMETHING. (I really shouldn't suggest this, but) Run for high office in Sweden. Have an electoral campaign by sail, that's the ticket! Then, shut down the power plants other than the nukes to ... whoa, wait, the nukes? Yeah, all we need is Earth-friendly DiLithium. Boldly go to where no politician has gone before, past the Moronic Cluster, beyond even the Imbecile Nebula, to the farthest reaches of stupidity in the known universe. And hurry up about it, we're running out of time, or People Will Die!
One thing I've been surprised about is that I have not seen too much of the use of the Kung Flu PanicFest to support the Climate Crisis narrative. You'd think there'd by some synergy of crises here. What, the deadly Black Death 2.0 spread more quickly because it's hotter out? The increasingly horrible godless hurricanes are spreading the virus all over the place at 155 mph? C'mon, people, you're letting one crisis go to waste, a little bit ...
Greta has missed an opportunity to be a double hysteric by tying together these 2 crises. Maybe by next Star Trek convention, she could ... well, you know, I think Greta has grown up to be quite pretty. She could even look like Marcia Brady if she would smile a little bit more. She's got the hairstyle down. She should maybe not try to save or even think about the planet while on dates too. Maybe by the next Star Trek convo, or the next, or the next one, Greta Thunberg could be Greta Gustafson or Greta Larsson, yeah, with two "s"'s and dots over the "o", barefoot, you know, to keep a small carbon footprint**** and all, and knocked up for the 2nd time with a little baby Greta coming along in 3 months. Man, the female lieutenant Uhura convention goers will be SO jealous - "Why it is always Greta, Greta, Greta?!"
Right now, I think we are just seeing the evil side of Greta Thunberg, as with Captain Kirk at a Trekkie convention long ago. Dammit, Jim, I'm just a country blogger, but youtube only has clips ABOUT the Saturday Night Live skit, but not the full thing itself! Anyway, this is basically what evil Captain Kirk would say to Greta Thunberg:
PS: Something I've learned recently is that Global Climate Disruption™ is possibly obsolete terminology. What was Global Climate Disruption™, and before that, Climate Change, and before that, Global Warming, and before that, Global Cooling, is now The Climate Crisis. If you're gonna get people motivated to elect you, give you their hard-earned money, and yell stuff out in the street, you're really going to want to have a crisis, not just some half-assed scientific stuff.
* The biggest is the increase in homeschooling. This will increase even faster with the mandatory child Kung Flu vaxxing coming.
** Here's a different music video that may turn you on to a different Swedish woman, or two...
*** I'd thought I'd seen all of them over the years, but I obviously hadn't seen this episode. Greta's speech didn't ring a bell. Then, I'm no real Trekkie.
**** Hell, wanna' go all out on this, get your feet bound. Talk aboutcher small carbon footprints, I mean ...
Comments (30)
Old Memphis song ...
Posted On: Tuesday - October 5th 2021 7:50PM MST
In Topics: Music
So said Bob Seger, in an introduction to his version of Trying to Live My Life Without You, but that's not really a top notch song, IMO - the melody isn't much.
The Memphis song I like even more than the more recent (ONLY 30 y/o) Marc Cohn song is usually called Memphis, Tennessee or Memphis Marie, depending on which version. Chuck Berry wrote and recorded this one in 1958. It was played by Elvis, a guy named Lonnie Mack, Johnny Rivers, whose version got to #2 on the pop music charts in 1964, the Beatles, but best of all by George Thorogood and his Delaware Destroyers. That was on their 1985 album Maverick, titled Memphis/Little Marie.
Hank Carter's saxophone is great, but it's still George Thorogood's slide guitar playing that makes this a great version. In case you've somehow never heard this song, or didn't listen closely, the lyrics have a twist near the end.
Hey, I'm surprised that I couldn't find a Dead version of this one. They liked Chuck Berry songs, and they could do a good version of anything. Maybe they did play it sometime, somewhere ...
Back to the stupidity first thing next bidness day. Top priority!
Comments (5)
Walking in Memphis
Posted On: Tuesday - October 5th 2021 2:34PM MST
In Topics: Music Race/Genetics
I've got a couple of posts here just based on overhearing people's conversation on an airplane flight. These posts come out of left field, I'm tellin' ya! I can't stop it either.
In this case, I had been talking to the young man in the middle seat, as I sat by the window (the only way to go, for me, at least). This guy was in his late twenties, just judging roughly by the year he told me he graduated from the university in the town we took off from. I only know that because the conversation started off with college football, like I'm supposed to give a rat's ass. Peak Stupidity has noted already that since you can't even discuss the weather anymore, sportsball must be used to break the ice now.*.
Anyway, I liked the guy OK, but I did want to start back on the book I was reading (Peak Stupidity book reviews stop for no man.) He later started talking to the fairly decent looking similar age woman (also near 30 y/o) in the aisle seat. More power to him, though we had a 3-way... conversation (ha! gotcha!) for a little while. As young people who did a decent amount of traveling, the two were then discussing American cities that had visited for business and, yes, college football games.
No, I couldn't help overhearing as one can't talk but so quietly over the airplane airflow noise, and there were the face diapers of course. There were 2 or 3 cities that one was telling the other about. One of them was Memphis, Tennessee, in the southwestern most corner of that State, on the east side of the mighty Mississippi. "You gotta go to Beale Street, it's great.." was the advice, and this web headline that went with the picture up top advises the same:
Yeah, OK, but as these two young people discussed these attractions, they did know the "darker" side of these attractions and the cities they are in. The phrase "scary part" was used numerous times by both of them, as they gave advice to each other. I guess the word "sketchy", one I used to hear and use a lot, was just not gonna do justice to these areas of American inner cities. They used this term "scary" in a light-hearted manner, as it it was all in fun. Inside though, I know exactly what these people mean. You have just too large a chance of ending up on a news report like the following, if you spend much time in those areas.
Beale Street at night late at night is not the same as Beale Street during the day during some Blues festival. It turns from a "you gotta go there, if you're going to Memphis." to one of those "scary areas". Actually, for downtown Memphis Tennessee, the whole place is a scary area. At night NOBODY walks in Memphis (nobody with any sense, that is). Oh, wait, that was "nobody walks in L.A." from the 1982 Missing Persons song, not Memphis, right? But, it was for a different reason.
Well, I still like this 30 year old Marc Cohn song, no matter how overly romantic he is about the Blues and Elvis, Gospel, and catfish...
Put on my blue suede shoes,
and I boarded the plane.
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain.
W.C. Handy,
won't you look down over me.
Yeah I've got a first-class ticket, [must be nice!]
But I'm as blue as a boy can be.
CHORUS:
Then I'm walking in Memphis.
I was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale.
Walking in Memphis,
but do I really feel the way I feel?
Saw the ghost of Elvis
on Union Avenue.
Followed him up to the gates of Graceland.
Then I watched him walk right through.
Now security they did not see him.
They just hovered around his tomb.
But there's a pretty little thing
waiting for The King
down in the Jungle Room.
CHORUS
They've got catfish on the table.
They've got gospel in the air.
And Reverend Green
Would be glad to see you.
When you haven't got a prayer.
But boy you've got a prayer in Memphis.
[You'd better make one, if you keep walking after sunset!]
Now Muriel plays piano
every Friday at the Hollywood,
and they brought me down to see her,
and they asked me if I would
do a little number,
and I sang with all my might.
She said "Tell me are you a Christian child?"
And I said "Ma'am I am tonight".
CHORUS x 2
Put on my blue suede shoes
and I boarded the plane.
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
in the middle of the pouring rain.
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
in the middle of the pouring rain.
* Here's the intro. paragraph from that old post, SportsBall as the Circuses in the "Bread and Circuses":
What do you do when you interact with someone, knowing it'll just be for a short while, saying in a motel lobby, or sitting by him in an airplane, before he's got all the electronics out and running? "How about the cold weather?!" Nah, that can be a big No-No now, what with Global Climate DisruptionTM being so political and all. Nope, better not talk about the weather! "Oh, Arkansas, huh, yeah, those Razorbacks, blah, blah ..." That's much better. It's what people do now, look at a jersey, hat or just figure from where you told them you're from and start off about football. This is EVERYWHERE now, and I want no part of it.Yeah! I like it when I remember what I wrote 3 years back. That one fits this anecdote very well.
Comments (10)
Just another Maskless Monday?
Posted On: Monday - October 4th 2021 5:18PM MST
In Topics: Music Liberty/Libertarianism Big-Biz Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
It did happen to be a Monday when I was down in the panhandle of Florida, now that I think about it. As soon as I got out of the Ft. Walton Beach Valparaiso (KECP) airport terminal, I don't recall seeing ANY people wearing the face diapers outside, at the gas station, or at the hotel, and especially not while driving their cars. This was a real nice touch of normalcy.
The only place I remember any noticeable face diapering was at the hospital as I visited a friend. That looked ALMOST normal too, and I think that practice may be in existence for a LONG time to come. All it takes is "one person getting infected and ruining it for the rest of us!" Yeah, like hospital air is the cleanest around anyway - far from it - where do most people die, in fact? Yeah, you got it, at the hospital! As with "and boy are my arms tired", that and the original doctor joke never get old.*
Hey, and I stayed there on Tuesday too, so it's not just Maskless Monday out there in the Florida Panhandle part of DeSantis country. How about New York? Will they have Maskless Mondays to complement Casual Fridays? #SoMuchFreedom, you'll get tired of having #SoMuchFreedom!
Next, I will put in this anecdote from a family member in another State. He has worked at the medium sized company for many years. Because the founder/CEO was no MBA (Master Bullshit Artist), but an expert in the same field as my family member, he has been a good CEO from my FM's perspective. That has been the case for a long time.
The Kung Flu PanicFest has changed all that. I realize that the man probably has the pressure of government, Big Biz customers, and who knows who else, to push the COVID experimental vaccines. He's hardcore on it, though. My FM was sent home back in late March or early April of '20. His job was one that could be readily done from home. He was not happy at first with having to do so, just due to that change in environment. However, he got used to it after a time.
Now EVERYONE must get vaxxed, even those who are working completely from home! Even the occasional meetings, which my FM thought were a waste of time anyway, can be "attended" via zoom. Well, it's nice to not be one of those paycheck-to-paycheck-existing Americans, so the FM decided, OK, I'll take the latest retirement package, see ya!
The FM's immediate boss was miffed by this development and really, really didn't want this work to end up being done incompetently by some POS (People Of the Subcontinent?). The way out was a religious exemption, which was really no farce at all. The company came through at the last minute - OK about 4 hours from the retirement acceptance deadline.
Here's the latest thing he told me about it. The end of October is the Drop Dead date ... well, I mean it could be if you and the vaccine don't get along... shouldn't use that term, I suppose... Anyway, anyone who hasn't gotten a medical or religious exemption from the jab by then will be fired. They will also get ZERO severance pay.
OK, I'm no lawyer, so I don't know if there'll be some legal recourse on that one, but my FM's point in telling me this was to note that this CEO is being just plain mean and vindictive with that. If he's a real Believer, I can see him wanting for his employees to be "clean" in some way. No, the vaxxed still spread the same germs, maybe more of them even, and, well, my family member can't spread it though the internet - even Dr. Fauci hasn't mentioned that one yet - but, yeah, they can all feel better ... or GTFO. However, what would the severance pay have to do with it? Is it a further threat to get people to take the jab, or is it about just being a mean asshole? My FM says the latter, and that's a shame how the guy's flipped like this.
Finally, as to stick with the title theme and the 1st segment, we could embed The Bangles Manic Monday here, as that is probably what is (hopefully not) in the readers' heads at the moment. It is just not one of my favorite Bangles songs. I was about to tell you all that Our Lips Are Sealed was, and point you to this post, yet another previous Kung Flu post on the face masks. No, but that was another 1980s girl band - The Go-Go's. They all blend together after a while. Here is my favorite song from The Bangles.
Walk Like an Egyptian was a #1 hit song from the band's 1986 album Different Light, the same album that had Manic Monday. It is not as strong a tune as that Go-Go's song, but it's pretty catchy and has a decent bass line. Three different band members sang lead on the 3 verses, Vicki Peterson, Michael Steele, and Susanna Hoffs, on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, respectively.
The Bangles:
Susanna Hoffs – lead and harmony vocals, rhythm guitar.
Debbi Peterson – drums, percussion backing and lead vocals, acoustic guitar.
Vicki Peterson – lead guitar, backing and lead vocals.
Michael Steele** - bass guitar, backing and lead vocals, acoustic guitar.
The 1980s were pretty fun compared to now, I don't care who ya' are, or were**...
* What? Never heard it? C'mon, man!
The patient moves his arm 45 degrees at the elbow joint and says "Doc, it hurts when I do this."
Doc: "Don't do that."
** No, don't worry about this if you've watched the video. You're not a homo, and the bassist during The Bangles' heyday was formerly known as Susan Thomas, who chose a stage name of Micki Steele when she started playing in the band The Runaways. I don't know when or why it got changed to Michael, but she is still a she... as of publish date.
Comments (23)
Hail to You is back in bidness!
Posted On: Monday - October 4th 2021 5:39AM MST
In Topics: Websites Pundits Kung Flu Stupidity
Mr. E.H. Hail, of the Hail to You blog, finally has another post up - this one is again about the very important issue going on all around us, the Kung Flu PanicFest. Mr. Hail is a commenter on this blog, but even his comments hadn't appeared for a long time till recently, and his last post on his site had been at the end of February of this year.
I had previously only put a link to Mr. Hail's latest post in a footnote of this Peak Stupidity post on the evil High Priestess of New York Covidiocy, Kathy Hochul. That was unfortunately just due to the fact that I was mostly through that post when I saw Mr. Hail's newest post on his own site. In that post, Tucker Carlson on the "Corona Cult", Mr. Hail continued with his long-ago-thought-out thesis that the people who are panicking over the Kung Flu are basically religious believers of this Hysteria. Mr. Carlson, Peak Stupidity's favorite TV/youtube pundit by a long shot, is down with this theory.
There are 41 comments under Mr. Hail's article already, with that Wordpress system that is reasonably user-friendly*, and is usable without any giving out of real identifying information.
I noticed that the Hail to You blog has a link to Mr. Hail's many comments on The Unz Review site. The comments, here, are in reverse chronological order, which makes sense**. Mr. Hail quit commenting there cold turkey sometime in May of '20, after Steve Sailer, where I knew his commentary from, for the most part, got sucked deep into the PanicFest. As for me, I have had a hard time quitting commenting there.
The reason I saw so many of Mr. Hail's comments just now that I agree with (and always did) without any [Agree]s or many replies from me is that I had also been turned off by the fixation of that Mr. Sailer's regarding the Kung Flu panic. I started reading only his non-COVID posts for a month or two. I did notice too that Mr. Hail and I, and others of you here, wrote comments under the excellent columns by the bloggers C.J. Hopkins*** and Mike Whitney. Both were very much anti-panickers.
We are glad Mr. Hail is back! You are a real asset to the Anti-Panic forces of America.
Peak Stupidity will have our own anecdotal, observational, critiques on the Kung Flu PanicFest, Season 3, this week, along with a few other areas of endeavor within the broad field of stupidity research. It should be a productive week here.
* Well, I mean, no cusswords are allowed, so ...
** Like everything else on the unz site, the functionality is VERY good.
*** C.J. Hopkins' columns were discontinued by unz in April of '21, but Ron Unz is very good about keeping the material available.
***************************************
[UPDATED 5 hrs. later:] I had meant originally to put in the link and commentary about Mr. E.H. Hail's comments on the Steve Sailer blog, ending May '20 or so. Inserted.
***************************************
Comments (12)
The Father Knows Best strategy
Posted On: Saturday - October 2nd 2021 6:24AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Feminism The Future ctrl-left Anarcho-tyranny
This rant is somewhat in reply to our commenter Mr. E.H. Hail, of the Hail To You, as promised, or threatened, however you want to take it, in a comment of mine under this post on the Arizona* '20 Pres. election recount**.
There was discussion about the whole point of even doing all this hard work to prove by the detailed numbers that there was more than enough fraud and "error" to overwhelm the vote margin for Zhou Bai Dien. Yeah, this will set the record straight. It will help in an effort to push election reform in Arizona and maybe other States. Those are worthy goals, I suppose. However, overturning election results won't happen, as we seemed to have agreed, and even further, I really have doubts about the success toward that 2nd goal.
Maybe I am more cynical that the rest, which is due to having my hopes dashed over and over. (Yes, I have worked to help too, to a small degree.) All I expect is for the race card to be pulled out from the bottom of the deck at the appropriate time. I mean, I don't care if your State is 5% black. First of all, they can always import MORE, but in the meantime, whatever your plans are, they are RACISS! No, I can't explain, they just are, and you are a bad person, and this whole bill must be tabled due to RACISS!
Maybe I am too cynical, and this won't happen, at least in some States.*** If it doesn't, it'll have to be due to American Conservatives and patriots learning to use what I'll call the "Father Knows Best" strategy.
I've probably only watched one rerun of that 1950s**** TV show. I do get the idea though, from others, that this show presented actual "Family Values", with the Father actually knowing best and as the head of the family, rather than some bamboozling lame-o as he would be depicted today. Feminism really cranked up in the mid 1960s, along with the rest of the rot, so this show missed out on all that.
My post was originally going to be about "playing hardball" with the ctrl-left (even had an image saved), but that analogy doesn't fit that well. The left does not play by the rules, period, whether we play seriously with a hardball or not. They are not even playing politics anymore, such as one would play it on TV, CNBC for example. The ctrl-left are pretty sure that have this whole Communistic***** society-destroying project down.
The left is not concerned with detailed election numbers. They are not concerned with the arguments about how the next ones can be run more fairly. One can see this in all areas of politics. The left aren't concerned with the spread of the Flu Manchu from Haitians pouring across the border, along with the usual Mexicans and Guatemalans either. (They never were REALLY concerned about the Flu Manchu.) They aren't concerned the the loss of jobs by the American working class. They aren't concerned about the social costs. They want the country flooded with aliens. That's the goal.
I could bring up many other major examples here, but let me get toward a conclusion. It does not do any good for patriotic Conservative Americans to argue with logic and bring up legal precedents and even make legal rulings based on the US Constitution.
That guy got lucky at the library that some black mob didn't kick his ass. That's the way the left operates. They figure they whole Establishment is on their side (well, it IS!), so they can get violent with impunity. Any defense will be met with Tyranny by The State. The problem the right has is that we still think The State will give us justice. If not to us personally, the egregious injustices will get fixed due to rule of law and that stuff. Tell that to the Russian people in 1917. Tell that to the Cubans in 1960. Tell it to the poor Chinese peasants in 1947.
These people want revolution. They want to take your stuff and kill you. We need to deal with them as male adults should with unruly kids. (Well, I hope your kids are not THIS unruly.) Using logic is a masculine trait. Don't get me wrong on this. However, we are not dealing as with normal other adults. We are dealing with adults, los Reseentidos, who are behaving like violent out-of-control children. They must be treated as such.
Here's what we need out of the next crop of real Conservatives in State governments - if there are any with guts anymore: "No, I'm not going to explain anything to you. Stop crying, or we'll give you something to complain about! This is our policy. Don't like it? You can take your stuff and move out of state."
"Oh, Judge Judy of the 9th Circuit says no? She can kiss our asses. Nothing changes. Now, go back to your rooms, in your Mamas' basements!"
Again, I haven't watched that old TV show but once. I'm guessing that TV Dad didn't have bad children like our unruly ctrl-left, so he probably didn't have to use that language.
PS: I know what the regular Peak Stupidity reader may be thinking right now. "Hey, hey, this is
* The post was more specifically focused on Maricopa County, containing Phoenix and the most important, and **the post consisted mostly of Mr. Hail's writing.
*** Whether it is all too late, reforming the voting, that is, is another story, and yeah, it IS, IMO.
**** It ran from October 1954 to May 1960, first on CBS, then on NBC, then on CBS again, in a different country.
***** How 'bout that? Can I say "Communistic", at least? ;-}
Comments (12)
High Priestess of the Branch Covidian Social Justice Climate Cult.
Posted On: Thursday - September 30th 2021 8:39PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity AntiChrist Bible/Religion Kung Flu Stupidity
The title of this post comes from the succinct comment of youtube viewer "The Superior Affection", 3 days back, under the video (below) of the current Governor of New York speaking at a "Christian Cultural Center", aka a Church, in New York City. After the people of New York State were spared any further destruction of society and human life by Andrew Cuomo, this Kathy Hochul character is who they've been burdened with now.*
That appellation for Mrs. Hochul was obviously written with the same idea in mind that our commenter Mr. Hail has suggested** to us early on in this Kung Flu PanicFest. That is, that pro-panickers are part of something resembling a religious cult. (There's discussion of this under this post of ours.)
You may have all seen this one already.
It takes a LOT of gall to go in front of a congregation and exhort them to have their bodies invaded with a highly controversial vaccine based on her purported knowledge of God's intentions. She actually sees the American healthcare establishment, including one Big Biz pharma company, the US Feral Gov't, and this questionable vaccine as blessings from God! We are supposed to just take the word of Governor Hochul, as a conveniently religious person, on this. In the words of one Church Lady back on the TV,
She knows who we are. She's got that vax necklace instead of a cross. Kathy Hochul wants her audience to become Apostles of the Jab. "How do we keep more people alive?" Well, Guv'na, that'd have been a good question to have asked your predecessor... before he got so many old people killed by sending them back into the nursing homes to spread the COVID. You know better now, of course.
As I watched the first 90% of this video (through 01:55), I saw Kathy Hochul as a just another deluded hysteric. She had gotten well past the point of blasphemy of Christianity, so I saw this as deviously using the belief system of the viewers to try to convince them of this delusion of hers that this Kung Flu is simply the worst or most urgent problem of our time. OK, I figured, it's just the severe stupidity that we should be almost used to in this time of approaching the peak. She's just really stupid.
Then, I watched the last 10% (15 seconds). She told the viewers that the reason it's so important to solve this grave problem by jabbing everyone with the vaccine is that we could go on to the more important problem of "systemic racial injustice".*** I just looked it up, and Kathy Hochul is 63 years old. She is no young gullible snowflake with nothing but public school and "higher" educational indoctrination to go by in understanding racial matters. She's been in politics for 30 years and NY State politics for a decade.**** Though her local political positions were in lily-white (96%) Hamburg, NY, it is just south of Buffalo, where she was born, and she's got to have known about black dysfunction and where she could not walk at night. I'm sure she's been to New York City many times too.
"I've seen it. I know it exists." That latter portion on racial injustice consisted of flat-out lying by Mrs. Hochul. The blatant lies right along with the maniacal religious talk make her seem to be a good candidate for AntiChrist. I suppose she could have learned to lie slowly over her 30 year political career. Can an AntiChrist be bred instead of born? I'll have to do more reading.
Either way, all it took was that last bit of the video to change my assessment of Kathy Hochul from stupid to evil.
* Yes, I know that there are plenty of Conservatives in upstate New York, but I suppose the City still overwhelms their vote, considering that in any of the other big cities, there will be the usual white SJW crowd and lots of non-white people who vote overwhelmingly for the ctrl-left.
** Mr. Hail's discussion is on his "Hail to You" site as Part XII of his big series last year on the Corona panic.
I also just saw that Mr. Hail has put up his first post in more than 1/2 a year 2 days back, pointing out Tucker Carlson's adoption of this idea - Tucker Carlson on the "Corona Cult.
*** No, I'm jaded enough to know that there was no chance she might be speaking about some grave injustices being done to White people in this day and age.
**** From reading, I see she has been pretty good on many issues in the past - especially immigration. (She had been against the issuing of driver's licenses to illegal aliens.)
Comments (12)
A story about Gabby Petito
Posted On: Wednesday - September 29th 2021 7:21PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Media Stupidity Bread and Circuses
This post is not a story about what happened to the young lady named Gabby Petito. It's an anecdote and some opinion about the use of the story of Gabby Petito as just more infotainment, as part of the Bread & Circuses Americans are being fed and entertained with as a distraction from the real events of the age.
Who in the heck is Gabby Petito? If you asked me that in your head just now, good on you! It's not that this makes me feel better for also not having heard that name myself before last week. I don't care about that, and I can separate the Bread & Circuses from the real issues. It's that I would be glad to know there are others who still don't know, or care for that matter, about her story for the same reason.
I ended up riding on an airliner on a flight home next to a guy who was suprisingly not spending the flight on his phone apps. Therefore we could have a conversation, and it started off well. That was due to the fact that we both agreed that the face diapering requirement was ridiculous. We talked about that for a minute or two, and then he asked if I had heard about this woman Gabby something. She was missing.
"Nah, I haven't heard of her. I haven't kept up with the local news", I admitted. There had been a college-aged white girl missing and found dead a while back, and it was the usual - killed by a black man. I figured this was something like that. Then, the guy started talking about the boyfriend and Utah, and some other State, and I was getting lost. It did not help one iota in clearing things up that we were both wearing the face diapers upon threat of some TSA-directed punishment by the airline. I asked a few questions because my confusion stemmed from the following: The guy was also going home, so with our both being from the same hometown, I started out assuming that this was a local girl and a local story. Nothing the guy said through the face mask really cleared that up.
I couldn't get it straight until I got home even that this story was not any local story. It is one of these bi-monthly or so pieces of human interest infotainment, like that singer or actress in the islands that something happened to and was in the news for months on end. (See, I don't really know that one too.) Many of these result in so many headlines on the mainstream websites that just from passing through (such as logging off my yahoo email account), I would be bound to see the name a few times.
This fellow passenger has a daughter a little younger than Miss Petito was, so he was angry when he spoke of what the boyfriend had done, or something. I can understand that, as that's one of the goals of this infotainment, to induce emotional involvement that results in MOAR clicks and MOAR viewing time! It's just that, well, this is one story in a nation of 350 (by now) million people! Bad things happen, and one could fill each days news with a story just as tragic, every day till Kingdom Come.
When I got home, I wanted to at least find out the gist of this story, just to clear up my confusion about what the heck this guy had been talking about. The funny thing about it was that there were so many articles, that I couldn't' find a one with just the basics. By the time I got done searching, I no longer cared about Gabby Petito. I cared more about how much time I'd wasted on this infotainment and why decent people like that airline passenger let themselves get distracted by it all.
Sorry. If you need help in finding the girl, and she was seen last in my area, I would be glad to help. Now that I know the girl is dead, I understand how the parents would feel. Otherwise, this is no one I know, in a place far from me, so what do you want outta me? More clicks? A new law about "never again"? Not agonna' do it.
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Los Resentidos
Posted On: Wednesday - September 29th 2021 1:53PM MST
In Topics: Commies History ctrl-left
No, this is not a music post. You may be thinking of these guys, Los Lobos, meaning "The Wolves", a decent band who unfortunately are mostly known for their good cover of Richie Valen's La Bamba. (I guess only Hispanics can do this - others would be accused of cultural appropriation. Yeah, and take off those silly sombreros, frat boys, andele, muchachos!)
"Los Resentidos" is Spanish for "the resentful ones"*. I learned it recently as I listened to a whole hour interview (by Stefan Molyneaux) of a dude named Humberto Fontova that was discussed on Peak Stupidity exactly 2 months back in our post A Cuban's personal history from start of La Revolución. Peak Stupidity mentioned "Los Resentidos" in a post 3 days later called None dare call them Commies. In case you don't recall, Mr. Fontova is an assimilated-to-Cajun (at least he sounds like it) former Cuban who got out of that country in October of 1961 with his Mom, brother, and sister as Castro and his Communists took the country over. His Dad had been detained but was able to get out and rejoin the family. (That story is in beginning of the interview.)
Humberto Fontova was a 7 year-old, as I recall, when the Communists took over, but I'm sure he got a lot of the story from his Dad too. I have this video starting at 56:09, but nothing is stopping you from watching the whole interview here.
Interviewer Stefan Molyneux: "... and left behind are these baleful, gollum-like resentful people, as you point out, Che, a failed doctor, Castro, a failed lawyer and people who just can't get it together ..."
Humberto Fontova (57:40): ".[in the early years] .. nobody ... well, yeah, they called them [Castro and his radicals] Communistas, but mostly they called them Los Resentidos, the Resentful Ones."
HF (58:04): "I'm here to tell you, probably 80% of the people who joined Casto's and Che's movement in early years had never heard of Marx or Lenin."
I've written the same many times about the modern culturally destructive ctrl-left: It doesn't matter that they don't have a clue about the theories of Marx or Lenin. This concept of "The Resentful Ones" is something I'd only mentioned in the 2nd of the posts linked-to above. I wanted to write a little more about this.
Let me first repeat something from the 2nd of those 2 posts linked-to above, about the timeline here. This Cuban revolution, in the history of Communist revolutions, is not recent history:
Let's think about the timeline. It's been 62 years since Castro's Communist takeover, while Castro's takeover was 42 years after the big one, Lenin's Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917. It's hard to believe, but Castro's revolution occurred just 40% of the way in time from Lenin's heyday to today.If you go back to century-and-4-years ago Russia, well, there were likely a hell of a lot of people who had a lot to gripe about. It was a stratified society with whatever middle class it had being pretty dirt-poor compared to the worst of the American ghetto today. Most of society had a good reason to be resentful if they didn't believe the people up in the Monarchy deserved their status. The Communists trying to work their "magic" in 1920s-'30s Germany had lots of people who could have harbored very deep resentments (I know of one particular guy, at least, but then he went in a different direction ...).
When you have a huge middle class like America had up through 25 years ago, it's pretty hard to stir up resentment. Sure, there are the many outcasts in the high school halls and bathroom stalls - be cool or be cast out** - but at some point, one graduates. If you've got your own opportunities, you get that "TECH" job or become an engineer, while the high school jocks become used car salesmen or, worse, marketing executives, and you don't look back. OK, you can go to the reunions with ... well, maybe an escort at the 5 year mark, until you learn something ...
I digress yet again. This is one of the reasons why the Globalist and Communist scum have wanted to wipe out, and HAVE BEEN wiping out, the American White middle class. There are other reasons, of course. Greed and lack of any "noblesse oblige" (see this review of Tucker Carlson's Ship of Fools.***) come to mind. Hatred of competition in business and political power is another. However, if they can make Americans poorer, after all the years of "those boomers" (especially) living large and having a real time, there will be some real mass production of Los Resentidos. There has been, in fact. They are the modern ctrl-left.
In case the reader is just sick and tired of all this "Commie pinko!" talk, well, I'm trying to get a handle on the modern ctrl-left. It would be wise not to let this country go down the same path as Cuba. There are lots of distractions - the genderbending, "pride", black worship, and immigrant promotion are all grave ills of society, of course. They are just all part of the traditional-culture-destroying, society-destroying, work of the modern Resentidos. If you haven't watched, go to at least 58:45 or so, and let Stan Molyneux and Humberto Fontova explain how the situation in modern America is very much like that of the left in Castro's and Che's revolutionary time and place.
PS: I can't roll my "r"s like Humberto Fontova, so bear with me, or keep his voice in mind, next time you read about "Los Resentidos" on Peak Stupidity.
* Yeah, it's probably the easiest language for we English speakers to figure out.
** Sigh ... Rush from Subdivisions if you really had to ask!
*** Also, Part 2 and Part 3
Comments (8)
Mr. Hail on the Arizona '20 election fraud
Posted On: Tuesday - September 28th 2021 4:17PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Trump ctrl-left
...you don't know what you've got till it's gone...
(No, Joni Mitchell wasn't singing about the rule of law, but I am.)
We've got plenty of other stupidity to post about. The work being done by Trump supporters and Conservatives to prove out the myriad types of fraud and error in many States' in the '20 Presidential election error and fraud is a subject that Peak Stupidity has not been following at all due to reasons I'll put at the end. However, for those who don't read all the comments (hey, what's wrong with you?!) here is a wrap of of this subject, with lots of numbers, for Arizona. Mr. Hail brought up the many problems that stem from in the lax new voting method that allowed mass mail-in balloting. It's in the comments below this post.
************************************************
** Results of Arizona Maricopa County forensic audit of Election 2020 **
In summary:
57,000+ problematic votes were cast and counted, (2.75% of votes cast).
Some of these were definitely illegally cast under law. Most would be rejected under a strict-scrutiny system. The rules were all relaxed, citing --- prepare yourself, this may come as a shock --- citing the ongoing Corona Flu Apocalypse and health catastrophe. Election authorities did their part to Slow The Spread (or whatever) by loosening the rules.
This in addition to whatever effect there was of the mandated mass mail-in voting without spillover into legal grey area on individual ballots, though of course some argue the entire mail-voting system mandate was of questionably legality.
All 57,000+ of these flagged votes are at least clearly in a grey area of legality and some even into a black area of "should have been rejected" --- absent the Corona-Panic's awesome power.
57,000+ illegal or legal-grey-area votes
2.07 million: Total votes counted in the county of Maricopa, including said 57,000 flagged votes.
That is a 2.75% problematic (arguably mostly or all illegal/rejectable) ballot rate.
The margin for the official results for this county--as certified by the governor under a cloud of suspicion, and over objections by the Arizona State Senate--in early December 2020:
Biden:Trump 50:48. The exact gap was 2.17% for the county itself.
Arizona statewide margin, certified result: 49.4% Biden to 49.1% Trump; absolute margin of 10,457 votes. The Maricopa County questionable-ballot rate exceeds the official victory margin by over 5x.
Exit polls suggest two-thirds of all votes counted in Arizona in 2020 were sent in by mail; all polls agree that mail-in voters broke for Biden by large margins. The official turnout in Arizona, as certified by the governor under a cloud of suspicion, was several points higher than normal, reaching 80% in 2020 vs. the mid-70s in other recent presidential elections; only 74% in 2016.
We can speculate on three sources of the +6 point voter-turnout rate, 2016 vs. 2020: (1) mail-in voting encouraging the marginal, lowest-info, laziest layer of potential voters to vote; (2) higher enthusiasm in 2020 than 2016; (3) one form or another of increased level of illegal voting.
If the 57,000 problematic ballots broke 60:40 for Biden, and if every single one of the problematic ballots were rejected rather than counted, and if all other counties' vote-totals were held constant, Trump would have won Arizona by a narrow margin. Trump won in in 2016 by 3.5 points.
US regime media headlines began reporting, early Friday, that the Arizona Audit had "confirmed that Biden won," when in fact what was meant, afaict, is there is no way to tell with certainty that the questionable-ballot margin would be really be 60:40 or not, or even which kind of problematic ballots should or should not be rejected.
The audit firm is not the government. It only worked in an advisory capacity. It is up to state law, in principle, to decide which ballots are to be counted and which rejected. But there are always grey areas requiring judgement calls. And then there are emergencies, for which laws can be suspended --- i.e., here the Corona Flu-Virus Catastrophe, which definitely threatened millions of deaths, they all sang in unison, and voting laws must be relaxed immediately to prevent more piles of flu deaths.
What is sovereignty? As a famous political theorist once put it, the sovereign is he who (or they who) have the power not to make "laws" but to make "exceptions," to decide when to make exceptions (declare emergencies) and when to go by the book. Grey areas on ballots seem a clear case of that, as does much else about the political effects of the Corona-Panic.
Back to the 2.75% questionable-ballot / potentially-illegal-ballot rate found for Maricopa County. Assuming it is correct --- and given the audit firm's triple-checking system and close scrutiny of every single ballot cast and counted, we should trust it --- we still would want to know:
(1) How much higher is it than normal for the same place? For example, is the base rate for this county 0.8-1.0% and then in Corona-Panic Year One it reached 2.75%, a 3x rise in 2020 over the elections of the previous few decades?
(2) Are other places higher or lower in absolute/relative terms? This is much harder to know. Arizona was not even one of the states with the late-night mystery-ballot dumps appearing from big metropolitan-area machines, conveniently appearing just in time to save Biden and make him president.
(3) European elections seem to publish full results including invalid/rejected ballots (sometimes called "spoiled ballots"). Why do I find no comparable data for the Arizona election? Surely they rejected SOME, somewhere. Did they reject ballots
************************************************
Well, I will comment on one aspect, after all. Twice Mr. Hail brought up the use of the Kung Flu PanicFest to change procedures toward the even laxer side This is something we may have all noticed as a general thing. The type of people who understand "never letting a crisis go to waste" (I'll just call them Communists) are very good at this now. Think of some major changes to society based on this ginned-up PanicFest, and you'll see that they were almost all of benefit to the ctrl-left*: The trial period of what was basically a Universal Basic Income, paid for by borrowed or newly generated tax dollars, was one. That has proven to be an intense failure, as Peak Stupidity has attested to regarding the service industry in To the 3rd World - Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu!.
Of course, the newest push for Totalitarianism, with the LOCKDOWNS on demand, was the most egregious and important overall. Yes, this loosening of voting standards even more by most of the States was another way of not letting a (made-up) crisis go to waste.
Finally, the reasons I have not written a thing about the voting audits and investigations is, and I will just paste my comment from that same thread here:
... the reason I'm not following the story is not just that I've been reading on other political issues, or (some days) staying away from it all. It's also that I think the whole effort is hopeless. It's fine to set the record straight, but there is no way the political class will let even a bullet-proof explanation of a Trump victory in Arizona mean anything. They will just ignore the issue. The election results will not be changed, unless it's in the context of a coup (a real one this time).Now Mr. Hail had a lot of more important points to make in reply on that thread**. He and commenter Alarmist also noted that the point of all this is to not just set the record straight but give reports with solid data to be used to reform the election process in those States. I'm probably just too cynical, but where I live, all I would expect out of all that is that the race card would be played by the ctrl-left, who want the window for fraud to stay open, maybe even wider, every single time any legislator came up with a bill to remedy anything. No, we may all know that the reform will have not a thing to do with race. That won't matter. Said legislator will fold his hand against that magic race card.
Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. I would be glad to call State politicians in support of any bill. I am the one who said that some hope lies with the States. Perhaps I need to be in another one that makes me more hopeful.
No matter how I feel about it just writing here on the blog, I'm sure I'd feel better getting out and doing something about it. I'd have felt the most at home with the January 6th crowd***. Contrary to Mr. Hail's point about wanting to have good data to back up your actions, I think we are beyond that now. You either get enough people on your side and change things, whether through politics or otherwise, or you get rolled yet again by the ctrl-left. They don't care about no steeenking data! We've got to start thinking the same way. Don't try to explain things logically to the other side, or even your side. We know when we are right.
* I'll mention one exception that I can think of. That one is the homeschooling. I don't particularly mean the "remote schooling" that was implemented after schools got a plan, but just that this was a nice start for a change in mentality of many parents that "hey, maybe public schooling is not all it's cracked up to be" and "maybe homeschooling is for us after all" and "you don't have to be a crackpot fundamentalist..." (their wording) "... to homeschool".
** Mr. Hail also has a tie-in with the use of the January 6th protest/riot as "insurrection" and the curtailment of moves that were being made at the time to question the electoral vote result.
*** As I told our readers that afternoon, I almost went to it.
Comments (23)
Bring back the old hold music
Posted On: Saturday - September 25th 2021 6:10AM MST
In Topics: Music Curmudgeonry Big-Biz Stupidity Customer Care
Hold music used to be a thing of jokes along with elevator music, which, speaking of the latter, you don't hear much Girl from Ipanema anymore on elevators, or any music, do you? Having music on hold is no assurance for the guy on the other end that someone, well now often another piece of software, WILL eventually "pick up", but it had its purposes. I believe the reason for it was two-fold, to sooth the mind of the caller, as he is bound to get into a worse mood with time, and to assure him that he hasn't been disconnected.
I've been used to hold music, even more so in this age of being put into some phone tree even when calling the local hardware store.* Some of it, even if not The Girl from Ipanema, is reasonably enjoyable. At one job in which I had to make phone calls often to the one same big customer, they had the same nice acoustic guitar piece on there that it made me wonder if someone at that company had written it. I woke up one morning after having worked there the previous evening with a nice acoustical guitar riff in my head. I picked up the guitar to play it thinking this could be a nice original. After a minute I realized that it was the hold music!
Anyway, things always get worse, per Rosenberg’s Law, as commenter MBlanc46 reminds me. They even had to screw up hold music. Someone in marketing got wise and determined that the customer could be sold MORE STUFF while waiting on hold, in fact, the more time on hold, the better. Granted some of the time it's information that may help the caller with what he has called about. Either way, the hold music gets interrupted every 30 seconds or a minute with a voice. This is extremely frustrating, as, if it keeps going steadily, one can relax with the music, having other useful thoughts, or just calm down per its intended purpose, sometimes to the point of sleep. "Hopefully, the girl on the other end can wake me up when she answers", I think.
The voice interruptions are stressful, because every time the voice comes on, I have a quick thought that someone's answering, and I come out of any relaxation. If the phone is on speaker as I do something constructive with the time on hold, then the voice interrupts whatever that is, as it should if it were someone answering.
There's one more thing that goes along with this form of "customer care" stupidity. I don't hear clear signals so much anymore. With the voice-over-IP, lots of connections, and crappy equipment, often the sound is variable in strength with quite a bit of static parts of the time. During some of those times, I think the software has just hung up on me. It's hard to relax, so as to be in a good state when eventually talking to the girl from Bangalore, Manila, Belarus, anywhere but Ipanema.
Big Biz is relentless and does not care how much indignity the customer will experience. Even being on hold is much more stressful than in the days of The Girl from Ipanema:
* Peak Stupidity has been through this one. The smallest of businesses must think it's not professional if they just up and answer the phone when it rings.
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