Enemy A - Christian Michael Exoo
Posted On: Thursday - March 18th 2021 8:29AM MST
In Topics: Commies Internets ctrl-left Anarcho-tyranny
The excremental piece of work Exoo is not necessarily Enemy #1 of the good American people. I just used A as there are a lot of them, and this is the first post of this kind.
Patriot Pundit Jason Kessler writes occasionally on VDare, or, I should say, VDare puts up his writing occasionally. Mr. Kessler experienced the hardcore Anarcho-Tyranny at Charlottesville, Virginia 3 1/2 years back. He has kept us up over the years since with the injustice, including lots of information on the complete railroading of James Fields, the driver of the muscle car that backed up over some unfortunate fat broad.
Both Mr. Kessler and the good folks at VDare have been getting very sick of the ctrl-left's methods of ruining non-violent civil people they don't agree with via doxing. VDare would not be in business (of immigration patriotism) without the internet at this point. They have some smart guys that have been helping the older not-so-"tech"-savvy writers and the site keep their writing out in public. They used alternate social media platforms, sometimes as back-ups for now, alternate email servers, alternate payment methods, and even give out a long code for use in case their URL is pulled down from the DNS servers. (It's on the site somewhere, I think in an administrative piece by Lydia Brimelow.)
Mr. Kessler has gotten rightfully pissed enough to start Doxing the Doxers. Peak Stupidity is 100% with him on this. In particular, because they have been Mr. Kessler's enemy on a personal basis, in this hopefully first of many articles, he doxes a handful of antifa Commies.
I won't repeat the whole article, and we don't embed tweets here. I urge the reader to do Mr. Kessler a favor and learn what these people are about. They are all scum - that's the gist of what I've learned - scum from privileged backgrounds, some having grown up with well-off ctrl-lefty parents and others with well-off more conservative parents who these scum have disowned... well, after taking advantage of that privileged background.
The guy up top, Chrisian Michael Exoo will be dubbed Enemy A by Peak Stupidity to keep track:
Christian Exoo is the leader of “Deplatform Hate,” a cyberstalking campaign that seeks to force social media, fundraising sites, and email marketing services to deplatform patriot political dissidents.More details:
Exoo goes by several noms de guerre on Twitter, including Antifash Gordon and Dox Savage, which he uses to encourage his tens of thousands of followers to deluge businesses with requests to fire or evict working people [Meet the Undercover Anti-Fascists, by Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone, February 14, 2021].That's who he this guy is and an idea of his privileged life. You'll have to get more info to fill in the blanks down here from screenshots of tweets in Mr. Kessler's article, but here's some of what this guy does:
Maybe that’s because the uber-privileged Exoo family never has to worry about unemployment or homelessness. They are cocooned in a web of wealth and nepotism at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.
Christian Exoo’s father, Calvin Fred Exoo, is an emeritus professor at the university as well as a writer at Leftist outlets Salon, TruthOut and Huffington Post.
Calvin Exoo teaches at St. Lawrence, so Christian gets a job in the library. Calvin writes for Salon, so Christian writes for the website, too.
And wouldn’t you know it, Christian’s Mommy, Diane Exoo, an attorney, is or was an assistant adjunct professor at St. Lawrence University.
St. Lawrence doesn’t post faculty salaries online, but Glassdoor.com lists average base pay for a professor emeritus at $167,483 per year, excluding benefits.
For an attorney, average base pay is listed as $107, 549 per year.
This would place the Exoo family in the top 5 percent for household income in the United States; median household income in 2020 was $68,400.
No wonder Exoo feels entitled to dox the rabble, the Deplorables, the great unwashed: fire[My strike through corrections - sorry Jason] Per Mr. Kessler*, here are Christian Exoo's words regarding his own job description:fightersmen, nurses, mechanics, and teachers. Working stiffs. Even when none of them have been accused of violence, breaking the law, or even making a racially insensitive comment.
Thus Exoo has targeted a firefighterman, not accused of unlawful conduct, and a public-school teacher who attended a protest of which he, Exoo, did not approve.
He’ll even attack a target’s innocent family members. In the case of a Florida nurse, Exoo promoted a campaign by “Panic in the Discord,” an Antifa Doxing collective, to target the victim’s wife and their newborn baby.
They publicized the baby’s gift registry and published photos of the infant.
Then they directed a mob to contact the family and their employers.
“I don’t just stalk fascists. I also get them fired, de-homed, kicked out of school, etc.” He then incites violence against his victims, “It’s really satisfying to punch a racist. They bleed nice, too”.It's not that civil 1980s time anymore with debates on the House floor between Tip O'Neil and Newt Gingrich. (OK, whomever!) It's not even that tumultuous 00's time anymore in which web sites insult each other with dirty language. It's political wartime now, and Christian Exoo is one of the enemies of the American people.
* Mr. Kessler says this quote comes from Andy Ngo's Post Millennial, with a link to this year-old article. However, I don't see that quote there.
Amusingly, that article is an opinion piece trying to smear Christian Exoo based on his talking to underage girls at the grocery store and making offensive remarks in front of a black transgender guyrrll(?) that made himerrr uncomfortable. Haha, very amusing. That's not quite the way you take care of someone like Christian Exoo.
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The Daily Stupid headlines, by Adam Smith
Posted On: Wednesday - March 17th 2021 7:08PM MST
In Topics: Humor
I'm taking it kind of easy this week, so far. In this case, commenter Adam Smith put together this excellent hilarious newspaper graphical spoof that just made my month. It's not just the hilarity but the thought that went into this. A majority of the regular commenters here are guys that I know got here from the Unz Review site and, more precisely, Steve Sailer's blog.
Mr. Smith's headlines reflect our Peak Stupidity favorite pieces of stupidity along with the pieces we see Mr. Sailer humorously and snarkily discuss daily. That golf architecture bit is one that I give Mr. Sailer shit about occasionally just in fun. The main headline is from a comment I made recently.
This is a nice present for St. Patrick's Day. It says more than a week of our posts. Thank you so much for spending the time, Adam!
PS: I felt the need to do the arithmetic for number of issues since sometime in 1875. It checks out.
Comments (6)
March Mask Madness - Part 3
Posted On: Wednesday - March 17th 2021 7:07AM MST
In Topics: Kung Flu Stupidity
This one is another dream induced post, the first one, from before Christmas, being here. Hence, we've got the purposefully-made fuzzy image here. (I couldn't find one to exactly represent the dream scene, and, as for taking a real one, well, I don't see the same thing outside much anymore, thankfully.) This is just a small thing, but there is one Kung Flu related point here.
You know how dreams can be. Often the dream scene locations are from way back in the memory banks. I was on the porch of a house we lived in long ago. It was fairly rural, with no houses directly next door, no outlet to the street, hence not many pedestrians. Two young men with wearing Kung Flu face masks walked by, maybe 10 ft from the porch, not really matching the reality of that house, in which it would have been 50 ft or more without being on our property.
These guys were on the road though. I was disgusted by the stupidity of it all, walking down a nearly rural road with anti-COVID masks on. I said some words to this effect, right at the guys. Well, they didn't take too kindly to that and came over onto the property right up next to me on the porch. My first thoughts were to tell them to get off my porch. Since I was sitting down still, I wasn't in a good position to fight them (yet), as it looked like, the way we were talking. I had my thoughts about that, but I also realized I was in the wrong here.
I've got to mellow out about this. "Well, you guys were not on my property, so, you're right - it's not my business. Sorry to be rude." Hey, I'm a Libertarian and was that sort even at the time I did live in that house. When you're in the wrong, admit it to yourself. (Plus, 2 against 1, and I was sitting down!) After I said "sorry", these two were reasonable guys, and they were pretty friendly. As it goes with men more than woman, that was that, end of story, so, still sitting down, I shook one of the guys' hand.
I woke up soon after (or I wouldn't be able to write this post, as dreams go away so quickly from the conscious part of the mind, at least). "Hey," I thought, "that guy, one of the two of them with face masks on outside in the sunshine, shook hands with me from about 2 ft away. What IS the point of this whole thing. Did these guys see the stupidity there?" I couldn't ask, as the dream was over,. It'd just be asking myself anyway, and I know the answer.
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You're droning me...
Posted On: Tuesday - March 16th 2021 6:42PM MST
In Topics: Humor US Police State Orwellian Stupidity
... sung to the tune of Tom Petty's Jammin' Me.
From Instapundit, presented with only a little comment.
The nice comment at the top is by Charles Glasser, one of Glenn Reynolds' sub-pundits, from March 14th. Hey man, nice shot!
Mr. Reynolds is a pretty good Libertarian, and I guess he picks those with similar views to be his sub-pundits (he's got quite a few of them now, one or two handfuls). I like his featuring deals like this.
This tweet and picture are from Portsmouth, Ohio, in southern Ohio right on the Ohio River 30 miles or so downstream from Ashland, Kentucky. It looks like that beer bottle got pretty close. I'm no lawyer (Professor Reynolds is), so I don't know what the laws are about flying objects and property rights. I think we should have the option to buy airspace along with our land property (and often underground rights). How high would it go normally, if we are not under the traffic pattern of an airport? 500 - 1000 ft. above ground level would be reasonable.
We can't do much about those satellites that supposedly can read license plates from orbit. OTOH, I don't think they can't just focus on on one given area on demand, as you see on the Jason Bourne movies*. Will drone battles be a part of the next Civil War?
* See also Part 2 and Part 3.
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America's Kung Flu recession, women hardest hit! - Part 8
Posted On: Monday - March 15th 2021 4:21PM MST
In Topics: Feminism Economics
(Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.)
I apologize from the get-go, readers, for this one. Peak Stupidity has a contract to fisk this feminist article, and, by gum, we're gonna finish fisking the article! Let's continue where we left off about 5 weeks ago:
But while workers wait for Congress to make a decision on child care — particularly ahead of the upcoming school year — many working mothers feel paralyzed.If this were written about about working women from families barely making it, and needed the wife working, well, I feel for them. It often turns out that the cost of outside childcare, meals out, clothes, and another reliable vehicle (insurance and tax go with it) doesn't help the family come out ahead anyway. For this problem, you've got 3 fingers pointing right back at you, feminists. Once women had entered the labor force in big numbers, the labor market in certain fields was flooded and wages haven't kept up. Everyone wanted to keep up with the Joneses, but for the working poor now, the Joneses are that welfare family with a single Mom getting WIC, Section 8 and the whole gamut. You may not even keep up with them, financially.
Jenny Galluzzo, co-founder of the Second Shift, a platform that matches professional women with freelance and consulting projects, said the site has seen four times as many applicants since February as women try to make up lost work hours with part-time consulting work.
Beyond that, most women tell her they’re just waiting.
“You can’t plan ahead in any concrete way. And that stress manifests itself because you don’t know how to interact with the workforce. If you’re out looking for a job, how can you know what job to take because you don’t know in two months what your kids’ school situation will be?”
No, but author Chabeli Carrazana only seems to care about "professional women".
Galluzzo said. “I worry for women because we’re taking an undue burden of all of the care and the invisible labor. I worry about all the strides we’ve made just being set back.”Isn't it also an undue burden to be the only ones to be able to birth children to begin with? I've seen women in labor and it's not invisible - it's visible, loud, and icky. Whose idea was that? We need to make some strides....
What we are seeing play out is years of keeping women from positions of power where they could have turned their lived experiences into policy, said economist Olugbenga Ajilore with the Center for American Progress. It’s years of child care being a “women’s” issue — not a priority.What?? We have women's lived experience as policy right now. It's called the Kung Flu PanicFest (at least by this blogger). Talk to Dr. Fauci about priorities or the hysterical women who have been living this PanicFest experience. And, yes, childcare IS a women's issue - it's their main damn job in life. How can they not get this? (They know they are the only ones with vaginas, right? Ooops, all apologies to Bru-aitlin Jenner here.)
“If we have more women in the economics field, if we have more women in Congress, child care would not be on the back burner,” Ajilore said. “When we think about women leaving the labor force, we’re not just losing economic output but we’re losing that contribution limit. They shape the culture and the way you do business, the way we think about things. That’s what we are losing with this.”I don't really see much economic output out of economists. Along with that, women's contribution to the economy is very minimal when we get to productive contributions to the economy, where guys design, build and maintain, like, actual STUFF. Women in the workplace are extremely-disproportionally in fields that don't involve real productive work. These would be your article writers, women's studies professors, economists, and especially the hated HR Ladies. Don't make me link to those posts again - I swear I will!
In many ways, though, coronavirus has served as a magnifying glass, bringing into sharper focus issues like child care that have long been ignored — and employers are responding. Companies that once resisted flexible work set-ups, and particularly remote work, are starting to embrace the idea.OK, working remotely may work pretty well for some. For some women, they can then take care of the kids while "working", mute themselves and have camera failures during the zoom meetings, send important emails out at 2-hour intervals to show their presence in the workspace, and eventually just stay with the kids all day, not even noticing the paychecks not showing up electronically after a while. Yeah, I can see this model indeed working in the long run...
“We have been fighting for the ability for women to work remotely and flexibly for years. It’s the number one thing women want for employment and companies have now been forced to see that that model works,” said Galluzzo, from the Second Shift. “And when the economy comes back and jobs are more plentiful and our kids are in school, I see this as ultimately a benefit because you don’t have to convince people any longer that [flexibility and being remote] works.”
OK, we'll knock the rest out with one more post soon, hopefully with a good conclusionary rant. I've got a lot more important things to post about.
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Gasoline prices update
Posted On: Saturday - March 13th 2021 9:40PM MST
In Topics: Inflation
(Kind of continued from our Sept. '18 posts "Recent history of gasoline prices" - Part 1 and Part 2.)
The changes over the years in the price of gasoline seem to always stay in my head, going back to the 2nd OPEC "crisis" of 1979. Why do I remember the prices? Well, I buy gas regularly. Most other people do too though, but, as I've written recently, I guess many people don't wonder why but just pay.
I've run into this a whole lot lately as I keep seeing prices make serious increases as if this were 1980: "Why is it higher? I haven't had a claim." "Well, things are just going up." You'll hear this all the time if you question something that you don't see has any particular reason to be higher in cost than last month. "Things are going up." "They just are." As with inflation in general, the real story is that the US dollar is becoming worth less and less. That's all. Let's talk gasoline now.
Where I live, besides those crazy low prices in April or so (a friend got some for under a buck a gallon), I recall that 87 Octane was under $2 for approximately 6 months. It was slowly creeping up for a while, but the prices have been increasing more quickly over the last 2 months.
I won't repeat the whole long story from the 2-part post linked to above. It goes back to the 1960s. Gasoline stayed fairly stable for most of the '10s decade, when I thought it would slowly creep up due to the decline of the dollar. Fracking was going gangbusters, though, and others told me gas would never go up again - keep the SUVs and old muscle cars. That was the point, a few years back, when I decided that I'm going to quit pretending I can know the why's of oil price changes.
The Kung Flu PanicFest and subsequent drastic decline in demand due to LOCKDOWNS and a huge amount of unemployment caused, of course, the sharp dip that we are pretty much out of. This is about the normal price now:
OK, i dig it. Prices are going back to that "normal" pretty stable price zone of $2.20 to $2.75, where they were for a decade. No, but I've been hearing lately that we are in for big increases in the price of gas, maybe going up to the levels of the highs in '08 and '12. Will it go back up to 4 or 5 bucks?
I wrote at the end of that 2-part series that those prices are really not extreme when you deal in real money. That is especially true 9-13 years after those last high prices. At $4/gal two silver dimes will get you most of a gallon of gas (0.93 gallons at today's spot price). Same as 50 years ago, in 1961, when they still minted silver dimes. Same as it ever was.
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Go, Tucker, Go!
Posted On: Saturday - March 13th 2021 10:28AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Pundits Race/Genetics Anarcho-tyranny
What would we do without at least this guy?! I mean that even for us non-TV-watchers. Watching his clips on youtube makes me think that not quite 100% of the Lyin' Press is the enemy of the American people.
VDare's Allan Wall steered me, here to the Fox News website, where one can either watch the 16 minute segment from Mr. Carlson or read the transcript regarding Everything the media didn't tell you about the death of George Floyd. Now, Peak Stupidity readers have probably all read just as much as Tucker has learned, from VDare, iSteve, and even got details from pre-pulled youtube videos. The rest of the country is not necessarily so informed, and Tucker can help a lot.
I am not going to follow this whole trial, seeing this for the infotainment that it really is. We'll probably have a few posts on it now and then, but for right now, besides the Tucker segment, John Derbyshire already has a piece of his Radio Derb podcast up on the Unz Review called The Chauvin Case—David vs. Goliath in Minneapolis…and In America. Besides his opinion, Mr. Derbyshire steers the reader to a couple of sites written by lawyers in which this case can be followed, Andrew Branca on Legal Insurrection and Scott Johnson on the PowerLine blog.*
Haha, lawyers and rule of law - are they still a thing? Everyone knows that everyone involved in the trial has the shadow of more rioting around the country hanging over him. I don't care what riots occur in Minneapolis or elsewhere, the guy Chauvin deserves justice. I don't have my hopes up. The O.J. thing was almost 30 years ago. Racial relations are sure not any better now.
What comes to mind first when watching this shocking truthfulness from Tucker is controlled opposition. No, wait. That's not my thoughts - it's just that every damn time I read about someone heard telling truth like this, the first words out of bloggers and commenters typing fingers are "Controlled Opposition!!" What the hell? Sure, a guy like Tucker doesn't go too far. Right now, if he did, he'd be off the air, and we couldn't hear ANY truth from him (at least the TV watchers couldn't).
Is the controlled opposition, more than just the useful idiots that are going to write or spout the stupidity that is all they know and those who know the constraints put on them, even real? I'm starting to think that the only people who ever accuse others of being controlled opposition ARE the controlled opposition. Then, remember, Peak Stupidity chalks up more things to stupidity than pure evil. We may be wrong.
I wanted to paste in an excerpt, but it's hard to use just one part. I ask the reader to read the whole thing, or watch. Reading takes about 20% of the time, at most, but it can be nice to listen to a sane voice too.
Since that Fox News segment, I've read of another great Tucker Carlson moment on iSteve yesterday, in Pentagon: Press Secretary Smites Fox Host. That's a subject for another post sometime, though the reader may want to read the quick one here, Warrior Outreach.
* I'm not linking, because, though I think I liked the former, I'm not sure about the latter blog. Anyway, Derb's got plenty of links, which is VDare is VERY big on.
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C'mon non-experts! It's ALL layering these days!
Posted On: Friday - March 12th 2021 5:31PM MST
In Topics: Kung Flu Stupidity
(See also Part 1 and Part 2.)
Listen, I thought you commenters here and some of the guys on Unz Review threads were just joking. I don't "do" current events, so I wouldn't have read anything about this, had I decided to look into your (I believe one of Mr. Smith''s) comments some more.
It's been at least since 6 months since I first stated at my workplace that they are doubling down on this stupidity. Nobody wants to admit he's wrong. We're all like that. I! GET! THAT! [/Tucker, and more from him tomorrow] The voluntary donning by people at big risk is one thing, but this face diapers for everyone business was stupid to begin. The "experts" forcing this stupidity on us have been proven wrong before. Often times it's obvious that they've been wrong, as they've reversed themselves on their recommendations. "Well, you said this last month, and now you say the opposite, so you were wrong AT LEAST once."
Rather than admit they've been wrong about these face diapers being important in stopping the Kung Flu (and without even worrying about the horrible effects on a normal society either, BTW), they have been doubling down. "Yeah, wearing one of them, as we've recommended for most of a year, doesn't cut it. Let's go to 2. If that doesn't eliminate the Kung Flu in this Decade [pronounced with an accent on the 2nd syllable, JF Kennedy-style], then we'll got to 3, 4, I don't know. The sky's the limit, and plenty of Chinese manufacturers are all geared up, making high-quality face masks - I mean, Quality is Job One over there, right?
It's annoying enough, and likely unhealthful, to take in Oxygen through one layer of this resistance, just living, much less exercising hard. Now what, we've got one pressure drop through the first mask, then some mixing with the exhaled CO2 in the spaces in between, then another pressure drop through the inside mask.? It'd be great for heat insulating for those living in Antarctica, don't get me wrong. Let the Antarcticans wear 5 mask layers if it helps. For good breathing, though, well, good luck with all that, Fauci. I hope it sends you to the hospital to be intubated, you dumb shit.
This stupidity wouldn't bother me so much if Big Biz and Government were not enforcing mandatory requirements on us. Big Biz does stupid things. Government does stupid things. That's nothing new. We used to laugh at that. Now, though, they are having the laugh, because the entire Establishment has been infiltrated by the ctrl-left and things have gotten to the point where they can makes us do stupid shit. What do they tell you about the old East Bloc Commies? It wasn't, and it isn't now, all about stupid notions of "the good of the many" or punishment. It's about the humiliation. They have been able to humiliate most of the country. (You've got that occasional stand-up Governor who says "go fuck yourself!" to the President.) Making the average Joe do stupid things just gets these people off, I believe.
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Maybe the dingo ate your baby doll.
Posted On: Friday - March 12th 2021 9:55AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Political Correctness Race/Genetics
Posts come to me out too often to remember them all these days. Often lately, it's at the park where the ideas come from. This time, however, the post has not a thing to do with the Kung Flu and associated PanicFest. This title, BTW, may not make complete sense, but that line, appropriated by Elaine Benice in Seinfeld always cracks me up.
I don't know if my mouth hung open for very long seeing this or not. See, this is a nice neighborhood. Even the couple of black kids (one is 1/2 white) don't seem to have extra aggression or cause any trouble. The park is 90% full of white and oriental kids.
We don't have kids young enough for the plastic slides and all that, but the older kids still use if for tag, battle with sticks, etc. As I walked by that playground area to sit down somewhere, I saw a little white girl, at most 3 1/2 y/o, holding a black baby doll.
Let me make it clear. The little girl was truly white, as in with blond hair even, and, well, just plain white. The baby doll was truly black, not some type of ambiguous color with ambiguous features. I can't tell on the doll in the picture above (for sale at amazon, if you're interested), but the one I saw had short curly hair even.
This girl was at the park with her Dad. I don't recall if I've seen them before, but the skinny, bearded, Millennial Dad was white, and the mom, who may or may not be someone I've seen before, would have to be white.
What the hell was the deal? Seeing as this is a nice area, I would have a hell of a time believing that this girl's parents couldn't afford a white baby doll.* No, this girl was given a black doll as either extreme virtual signaling by the parent(s) or maybe by some friend at a party just to fuck with them. "Hey, I didn't see your girl with my birthday present. You're not racist, are you?" (Mom proceeds to have a long discussion with the little one about how she must carry this around till it breaks, hopefully very soon, honey, or your Dad might lose his job.)
If it's the latter deal, well, things have gone pretty far in this Orwellian country of ours. If it's the former, I think the parents are nothing but sick in the damn head. It's natural for a girl to want to pretend to raise a baby of her OWN kind.** That's it, Mom and Dad, make your little girl sad to show your virtuous nature. Steve Sailer had a nice post on something along the same lines a few weeks back Liberals Have Been Making Children Cry on Christmas Morning Since 1969. That was about forcing stores to keep toys integrated by gender. Sure, that's stupid, but we can get past it. What I saw the other day was sicker than that.
PS: I had a great scene from The Office planned to go along with this video, involving HR guy Toby Flenderson, black employee Daryl, and a black baby doll. Youtube doesn't have it, and neither does BitChute. I don't blame BitChute for PC on this - they don't have nearly as much of this stuff as youtube does. Damn! It would have gone right along with this post - humorous and cringeworthy at the same time. If you are a fan of that show, you will probably remember this one.
* I write that in a joking manner, and additionally, there are probably price controls on this sort of thing by retailers to avoid big trouble. Then there's ebay .... haha.
** If you're an interracial couple with a doll dilemma, I don't know what to tell you two besides "let your little girl pick" Oh, excuse me, or little boy, if you want to do other kinds of experimentation with your kids.***
*** Sorry, the video in that post is again one wiped by youtube. However, there is the info in there to find what I refer to.
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Kung Flu Testing Anal-ysis
Posted On: Thursday - March 11th 2021 7:19PM MST
In Topics: Humor China Kung Flu Stupidity
(Image is slightly old. It's very hard to get file photos of proctological procedures... quite understandably, I suppose.)
Commenter Adam Smith wrote in under this Kung Flu post over a month ago with info on something I would not have believed if I hadn't read it. No, I don't want to SEE it. Per Reuters News, Chinese cities using anal swabs to screen COVID-19 infections. From the capital of the Middle Kingdom:
BEIJING (Reuters) - Some Chinese cities are using samples taken from the anus to detect potential COVID-19 infections as China steps up screening to make sure no potential carrier of the new coronavirus is missed amid regional outbreaks and ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays.First they want to know about the fresh fruits and veggies ("yes, we have no bananas"). Nobody wants new invasive species. Then they want to check if you're a Moslem terrorist. Again, nobody wants new invasive species. Then, they want to check whether you have a fever. That's a symptom of the Kung Flu. Now, they want to see if you have germs in your ass. Let me tell you, Mr. Customs Man, we all have germs in our asses.
A throat swab on a 52-year-old man in Weinan, a city in northern Shaanxi province, showed negative result after the person showed symptoms such as coughing and appetite loss, a city official said on Wednesday, but he tested positive using nose and anal swabs.If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
The Chinese have become very organized and efficient since they shook off the hard-core Communism. I wouldn't be surprised if they had robotic mobile proctology stations built and set up at airports and train stations by now. Failing that, there's this guy:
Hey, I think I know this dude on the left ... he comes through our bank drive-through once in a while ... drives a brown Probe.
"Dr Bendova, calling Dr. Bendova, put on your gloves first, and pick up the white courtesy telephone. You are needed in the Customs hall, stat!"
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The Devolution of CNN
Posted On: Thursday - March 11th 2021 11:27AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Globalists Media Stupidity The Neocons Bread and Circuses
In reply to commenter Buzz Mohawk about CNN on an iSteve thread, I gave my thoughts on what is now a big part of the enemy establishment. I don't know all of the corporate buy-out details and what-have-you, but I do recollect a good bit.
When CNN started out, the first day of June in 1980, the idea was to just play the 1/2 hour news over and over so that people could watch “the national news” at other times than just 6:30P, Eastern, 5:30P Central, etc. Of course, they could update stories over the course of the day, while the big 3 networks had their whole schedule of TV shows for the day, so would have to wait until the next day’s slot, unless a President got shot or a a volcano blew up.
The latter would really piss people off, because when you missed 7 full minutes of Maude for some Guyanan murder/suicide story, you’d have to wait 1/2 a year for the reruns to find out what funny line she said to Walter and whether you missed some cleavage of their show-daughter.. Bastards!*
6 years ago a site called Mental Floss published this short article about the first day of CNN. (That's where the picture above is from, with the husband and wife co-anchors David Walker and Lois Hart.)
I’m pretty sure I was off TV already when CNN slowly morphed (or I didn’t have cable anyway), but they started making different types of news shows. I don’t know how much opinion was in them at the beginning vs. reporting, but now most shows now seem to be more opinion than reporting.
As a couple of commenters on that thread mentioned, CNN got their big "break", as it were, with the Gulf War I in 1990-91. I can remember the coverage of those smart bombs, the retreat of the Iraqis in a rout, and Colin Powell. It was a heady time for Americans, the sole superpower for only a few years at that point, and this was supposedly a just war. It was obviously a good time to test out weaponry, for "shock and awe", which only greatly encouraged the Necons. That was all show to lots of Americans by CNN.
They were married for 10 years, from 1991 to 2001.
This network could not have gone ctrl-left just because of Ted Turner's turning from a Southern gentleman. After inheriting his father's billboard business worth $1 million in the early 1960s (about 10 million of today's dollars), Mr. Turner started acquiring radio and then TV stations. He started working on the CNN network in 1978, it went on the air in summer of '80, but the network has been run by others since just before that Gulf War I time. Turner may have turned lefty (to some degree, not in all ways) due to Jane Fonda, but we can't blame modern-day CNN just on that one radical.
Because they got so big, and they wanted to gain viewers, CNN realized that just news reporting was not enough. You’ve got 24 hours to fill, every day, on and on. The type of stories that would have been reported on 5 minutes one day, and then maybe had additional 2 minute follow-ups for a week back in 1975, became dragged out at 2 hours a day coverage for MONTHS. Much of that would have to be opinion to fill up that time. Dave Letterman used to kid with this word (I thought it was funny), but CNN programming is the very definition of Infotainment. That is our term of use for the Lyin' Press TV media of today here on Peak Stupidity.
There was no room for a real run-down on Ted Turner, but I'll put this quote below from some kind of Doomsday video he had out at some point. From Wiki:
Turner famously stated: "We won't be signing off until the world ends. We'll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event... we'll play the National Anthem only one time, on the 1st of June, and when the end of the world comes, we'll play Nearer, My God, to Thee before we sign off." Reportedly, Turner plans to make good on that promise.No, but CNN is working very hard on that promise, as a de facto branch of the US Feral Gov't and the Globalists.
* Yeah, I wrote that bit about Maude without checking, but the Jonestown, Guyana massacre/suicide was 1/2 a year later than that show ended. Since we spent some time on this, that story, from ~ 40 years later is discussed on Peak Stupidity in Drinking the Kommie Kool-Aid - 40 years back, with a Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Maude's TV-show-daughter with the big tata's was Adrienne Barbeau, dba Carol.
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Checking in on Housing Bubble 2.0- Bubble or just high inflation?
Posted On: Wednesday - March 10th 2021 7:26PM MST
In Topics: Economics Inflation
Wow, it's been 2 3/4 years, or 11 quarters as the economists would call it, since Peak Stupidity posted anything about this housing bubble 2.0 (on the West Coast, at least). Not only that, but I saved the images below 2 months ago to make this post then. I guess we've got enough stupidity to go around.
As with the last 2 times, I get this information from the Seattle Bubble web site, mainly because "The Tim" how writes it has the best graphs to play with. The data is called "Case-Schiller data" because those two economic analysts first compiled this median home price data with their year 2000 index-100 for 20 US cities' metro areas and price data referenced to that year as a ratio. In this way, the trends in the prices can be compared from city to city without regard to absolute price. In that first post (on "West Coast, University towns, minorities hardest hit") I gave lots of info. on the Seattle Bubble site. Here's a repeat of a bit:
This is more information that could be gleaned from regular readings of Zerohedge and sites like that over the last few years. Peak Stupidity would like to give a shout-out, if you will ("shout-out", only phrase heard from Øb☭ma that I liked) to a site called Seattle Bubble that this writer first perused way back in 2005. By the name, this guy, called "The Tim", writes specifically about Seattle, Washington, but he covers the overall scene with housing prices in his graphs - more about them shortly.So, yeah, this guy does the work, and I just enjoy perusing his less-and-less-frequent posts on this Case-Shiller data. Yeah, I just looked - the guy barely blogs anymore. He used to put up the newest (2-month old) data every month. This data is from his post of late August '20, and it has data from June '20, 3 quarters ago.
Unfortunately, I'm not completely consistent in keeping the same regions of the country, as in same metro areas together in these 3 posts. They are in general comparable though, you really don't need the old data, and lastly, I'm not about to do it again today. I'll point out cities for which the legend's color scheme has them way too close to being the same colors.
Oh, that's an artifact at the end of the Detroit curve. It did not just get nuked (just to be sure, you know), as one might gather from that big decline. In general, in real estate it's all location, location, location, but it one day could be radiation, radiation, radiation! ;-}
The higher grey-blue curve is Washington, FS, and the lower one is Boston, Mass.
I'll state here that for most of the country, calling these numbers a housing bubble has probably been a mistake. Sure, they all have been climbing reasonably steeply since housing prices started rising again in '12. Is it just that inflation has been a considerable amount more than the US BLS (or BS) numbers of 1-2% that they've been giving us for decades? Check out our Inflation topic key for lots more on the subject.
I'm glad I accidentally left that national average curve in with each set, actually as the reader can see that curve in comparison. I get a rise of 80% of the C-S index from '12 to '20. That comes out to a 7.6% annual inflation rate with annual compounding, pretty significant. Granted, the start of this was perhaps a low point, but who knows? Starting from 2000 (index = 100 by definition), we get a 170% increase over 20 years. That gets us 2.7% compounded annually. That's higher, but sounds lots closer to the purported inflation rates, but then I maintain that the first half of the '00s did not have very much inflation. It's the last 10 to 15 years in which we seem to be getting pounded.
Going back to bubble terminology it's the West Coast cities where the housing prices are climbing the steepest. Back to the time since prices bottomed out ('09 - '12) I get San Diego prices up 83% (just above the national average), meaning a 7.8% compounded annual rate, Los Angeles -- 88%/ 8.2%, Seattle -- 109%/9.6%, and San Francisco -- 120%/10.3%. That's steep. They've got the Chinese money coming in over there.
No matter whether it's a bubble that will burst again or we just have pretty high inflation in housing prices, we are getting screwed. All I can do is put on a Ron Paul Liberty Report video, tap my heals together, and say 3 times END! THE! FED!
* Yeah, I did mean to write that. Miami and Tampa? Not Southern.
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March Mask Madness - Part 2
Posted On: Tuesday - March 9th 2021 7:05PM MST
In Topics: Female Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
We are not keeping up with the mask stupidity as much as we reckoned in Part 1 of this "March Mask Madness" series. It's been a week already. Also, I have been informed by Mr. Hail that a few States are truly lightening up on this form of stupidity. (I'm just not a daily news reader per se, so that's why I hadn't written anything here. Things are getting looser in my State, but not particularly with the mask-wearing.)
That's all a good thing, the lightening up on this masking business, but of course, the LOCKDOWN's effects on the American service economy is not something that can just be counteracted with a law or E.O.* We are not just going to quickly snap back to the normal of '19. That's a subject for other posts though, and this is March Mask Madness - Part 2, a quick thought that came to me while writing Part 1.
It's about women in particular this time. I've written already (somewhere, I dunno) about the problem with communicating with people with these masks on. For anything but the thin medical style ones, most people's voices are muffled from just a little bit to being downright unintelligible. That's not a good thing ... unless it's your drill sergeant, I suppose. Commenter PeterIke pointed out in the comments a tweet alleging that even air traffic controllers are being made to wear these. Clear and precise communication is their job, so, if true, this is pretty egregious.
These thick masks have another effect on communication. It's the nonverbal cues that we give off when conversing that also communicate ideas or feelings. See, now that's where the women come into this post, with this talk of feelings. Women are said to have better intuition. I think there is something to this, based on their better abilities to glean the feelings of others from nonverbal cues and tone of voice too. I'm not saying men don't do this, but, hey, try hiding thoughts from your wife vs. vice versa.
I've had an Oriental woman tell me, after living here for most of a decade, that she still had a real problem communicating with American women friends. It's not her English that's the problem. She just finds their faces so much different from those in her country that she cannot read them, as she would like to. She "can't tell if they're lying or not". For most guys, I guess, we go a little more by their track record than the looks on their faces.
Women get a lot out of reading faces. How is that working out for them during this face-diapering era, is what I wonder? I guess the tone of the speaker gets through, as muffled as the words may be, but all those facial expressions are cut at least in half. They've got the eyes and eyebrows, but not the mouth and nose to go by (if you're wearing it right).
This has got to be wreaking havoc with the whole system that women have. Isn't this world of the masked more stressful for most of them? That is, unless they themselves have got something to hide.
"Boy, Melissa sure seemed a little stand-offish just then. I think she's mad about something I said last week." "How do you know, Honey?" "It was the way she... she just looked like ... hell, I don't know. I'm just pulling that out of my ass."
ADDENDUM: Per comments here by E.H.Hail, a Mr. Mark Changizi has written much on this subject. He is a cognitive scientist by trade and science writer whose field includes study of the ideas Mr. Hail had in the comment below. This particular problem (of many) with this Kung Flu masking deal is right up his alley. Here is a site with a thread of blurbs and videos from Mr. Changizi on this subject.
* I hate to even write that term, "Executive Order" - it's kind of upsetting to any Constitutionalist's stomach.
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PS Update: Lifeline Screening still a Scam!
Posted On: Saturday - March 6th 2021 8:15PM MST
In Topics: Music Scams
This post is repeat of the same warning we posted 2 1/2 years ago. I looked over that post, and even then it'd been a couple of years since I got pissed off at Lifeline Screening for their rip-off of a service. I explained this rip-off in that post, so I won't repeat that, but again, just yesterday I again got mail from these fuckers. That takes some gall. Don't they read Peak Stupidity?!
All their mail is doing is encouraging me to write posts about Lifeline Screening being a SCAM, especially because they even had this "FINAL NOTIFICATION" wording on the outside of the envelope. That's something that should be warning enough that you're dealing with shysters (unless you really did miss out on about 6 car payments.. but you got an excuse for everything now: It was the COVID).
John Derbyshire had a post today, taken from his Radio Derb podcast, that discussed a little about the Royal scam over in his old country. It reminded me that it's time for some music from Steely Dan and the Royal Scam. This album from 1976 was the first one I'd heard from this great band.
Kid Charlemagne is about a drug dealer, well more like a drug maker too. Per wiki, the band said that the lyrics are loosely based on the LSD-producing chemist Owsley Stanley, from out in San Francisco in the 1960s.
Normally, I'd just put down Donald Fagen and Walter Becker as the only 2 band members, because they were the only constants. Lots of session musicians and that sort played with them too, but they'd change out. Larry Carlton, with that great jazz guitar lead ought to be mentioned, and here is the band for this particular song:
Donald Fagen – lead vocals, organ
Larry Carlton – lead guitar
Walter Becker – rhythm guitar
Don Grolnick – Fender Rhodes electric piano
Paul Griffin – Hohner Clavinet
Chuck Rainey – bass
Bernard Purdie – drums
Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald, Venetta Fields, Clydie King, Sherlie Matthews – background vocals
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Clothing Selection under Communism
Posted On: Friday - March 5th 2021 7:16PM MST
In Topics: Commies Humor Salesmen Hildabeast China Female Stupidity
You really gotta wonder about women voters. They trend Socialist in general, and once you go Socialist, you're on the road to the hard stuff. Socialism is a gateway ideology. I understand that women vote this way due to FEELINGS and compassion, but if they just were to think a little bit ahead and really envision Communism, they should recoil at one of its worst evils. See, Communists are known to wear "dull, olive-drab clothing", and often clothing selection is limited under Communism.
Women HATE dull colors and HATE HATE HATE wearing the same clothes again and again, say like just 2 weeks since the last time or something. Can you imagine how it was for them during the hard-core Commie era in Red China? It must have been a real struggle session. "Honey, three of our women's Red Guard unit were wearing the same jacket as me, and there were only four of us, and we all had the same hairstyles! It was SO embarrassing!"
"We have both colors, Ma'am, blue AND grey."
Peak Stupidity's take on the high fashion marketing business in 1967 China:
Distraught Chinawoman after a particularly bad day of revolutionary work bumps into high-level Chinaman cadre from The People's Heavy Jacket Factory #2:Now for a man under Communism, if you can get past the family destruction, economic devastation, purges, and gulags, the fashion situation is quite nice. "Sir, my t-shirt, outer shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and shoes are all worn out. I would like replacements please." "Here." "That was easy!" [Mashes People's Stationary Store #1 big Red Guard button]
"Oh, I'm so sorry. It's just that... sob... today was so horrible! During the
People's Red Guard Court, they hung a man for selling flowers by the road, and ... sob... we couldn't get full asphyxiation for 5 minutes... and then, he was so heavy, and I only had one man help me drag his body to the pig trough... then I got my shoes muddy... and ... "
"Miss,... what's your patch say... Miss... Qlin Tang, is it? Let me wipe your tears, I have one more square of toilet paper I'd been saving... but you ... oh, what a nice jacket."
"This is from the People's Heavy Jacket Factory # 2 catalog, Sir. Do you recognize it?"
"Do I?! This jacket is perfect for a hard-working revolutionary. Deep hand-sown outer pockets hold pounds of colored chalk for writing Big-Character posters to hang on the necks of Capitalist Roaders... yet, this jacket, made out of fine American Red-Cross emergency blanket material, is still light enough to wear through all day struggle sessions in those warm Peking summers. The look says 'rugged Communist Revolutionary on a Long March', yet it is elegant enough for a Gang of Four Politburo banquet. Created with fine Chinese craftspeopleship, it features a wide collar, perfect for those nights spent under the stars at a Manchurian pig farm, an inner pocket for that Little Red Book, and comes in blue or grey."
"Why, you're, you're ..."
"Mao Peterman, Miss Tang. You know, a woman like you ... The Inner Party could really use another concubine like you, Qlin Tang."
Here's the original:
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Warrior Outreach
Posted On: Friday - March 5th 2021 2:09PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity US Feral Government
I saw a sign recently in a hotel advertising some "Warrior Outreach" program. It had to do with the soldiers from a nearby Army base helping the community with this or that. Oh, sure, it's great to be charitable, but I wouldn't really call it that. After all, it's the taxpayer's money that supports the whole shebang, in a big way, and they are just spreading some of our money around, errr, charitably. I would keep this in mind next time the military begs for a budget increase, had I any say in the matter.
That's not what ticked me off, though, about the poster and other armed forces wording I've seen. It seems that soldiers, sailors, and airmen in this social experiment of a military we have these days are now WARRIORS!
(This image is from a long-ago post of ours, "There's battle lines being drawn"... The official military.)
If it makes these men and women feel like they are living the lives of Comanche chiefs*, well, more power to 'em, but it's so far from the case as to be ludicrous. Most get into it for employment, training for a useful skill on the taxpayer's dime, a way to travel the world, and/or to save up tuition money. They can get "thank you for your service" accolades from the public and discounts at restaurants and motels. Occasionally, some of them do end up in precarious situations with the backing of still the most powerful military in the world, for the purpose of attacking some out of the way country for the purposes of ... democracy, yeah, that's the ticket.
* That is part 1 of our review of the Sam Gwynne book Empire of the Summer Moon. Here are Part 2 and Part 3
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Good signs from Donald Trump?
Posted On: Friday - March 5th 2021 8:46AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Trump
On the VDare site today I see this encouraging article A Good Sign: Trump Adviser Says The Donald's New Focus Is Immigration. Yeah, that's pretty encouraging, I mean, it'd be if the year were 2017 or '18 or even '20 with a Hail Mary effort, from Donald Trump when he was the FREAKING PRESIDENT!
Lord knows that Peak Stupidity has given President Trump some well-deserved criticism over the years, but then we've praised his below-the-radar efforts too. (See Said in Spanish - Allan Wall with some encouragement, Give Trump a break!, and President Donald Trump: the Bad, **the Good**, and the Ugly with most of the info. gleaned from VDare.) The problem is that, because Trump was no strategic thinker, meaning he got almost no help from the Congress, the American people (because he didn't ask), and even his own staff, most of his moves are ones that are easily and completely reversible.
Zhou Bai Dien started this reversal process his first day in office. "That was easy!" [mashes big red Staples button] In the meantime, I see from this article and a previous one by Washington Watcher II, Trump Hits Immigration High Notes At CPAC, that Trump is all about the immigration problem now. OK, so, in 2 years (because this article is more about '22 elections) we can get some long overdue changes, right? In the meantime, a couple of more million anti-White lefty immigrants will be here, and that's if we're very lucky! If any kind of Amnesty passes, it'll be lots more. So, for 2 years, the GOP can do what they do, which is making sure the ctrl-left gets only 2/3 of what they want done, done. Then, with worse demographics and an D-squad embolden by cheating that can't be fought except by INSURRECTIONISTS!, we'll all go hopefully to the voting booths... Sure, I'm encouraged...
We're not voting our way out of this. It's great that Trump, as an individual public speaker now, is reminding Americans of this existential problem. Many Americans really may have forgotten or think that President Trump had solved this problem. ("Last I recall, he said he would, and he got elected, so... haven't read much about it since ...") I am not at all on writer Washington Watcher II's case. He is one of my favorite writers on the great VDare site, and has, in fact, laid out the evil that is the group occupying the Biden Administration now, just the other day in Touting Their Immigrant Ancestry, Biden’s Appointees Commit To Open Borders—And the Great Replacement. VDare writers are ever hopeful and encouraging, and they can't exactly write about things that need to be done outside the political realm.
I just wrote this post because I couldn't comment on VDare. My comment would have been: "That's great, Mr. Trump, but WTF were you doing the last 4 years, asshole?"
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Trannies in the Movies - Dog Day Afternoon
Posted On: Thursday - March 4th 2021 7:14PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Movies
The movie Dog Day Afternoon was one of the 2 references on which Peak Stupidity based our 1st attempt at a screenplay, in the post All I hear of, is Lady O'Gaga.... This post is not very much of a review, as I've watched many thousands of movies, and I can't be on here reviewing them all. However, there's something woke before its time in that movie, and that recent post made me think about it.
I don't want to spoil the movie for the reader. That's not because I'm such a nice guy but more because Dog Day Afternoon is a really good movie. I'd put it in my top 100 out of those many thousands. The movie is about a bank robbery and resulting standoff on a hot summer's day in New York City. Al Pacino stars as, Sonny one of the two (originally, 3) bank robbers. The other guy is Sal (shown in the images in that Lady O'Gaga post).
What I remembered is this: Dog Day Afternoon has a scene with a guy who wants to change into a woman. No, the word "transition" was not used, because, and here's the amazing thing, the movie is from 1975! This crazy stuff was brought up 46 years ago. Here's the guy, Leon, talking about it*:
Leon : I couldn't explain the things I did. So I went to this psychiatrist who told me that I was a woman trapped in a man's body. Well, so, right away Sonny wanted to get me money for a sex change operation: but where was he going to get that? 2,500 dollars. My God, he was in hock up to his ears already.Twenty-five hundred dollas! I'm dyin' here, Sal. Haha, that was before the big inflation of the late 1970s through 1980.
The thing is, this scene wasn't at all important to the movie. It could have been left out, and the movie would have been just as good. It just made for a pretty weird interlude. I don't really think the makers of Dog Day Afternoon were particularly "woke", as you'd call it now. I just read information about the book (by Patrick Mann, never read it) here on Goodreads, and this bit is in the book too. Maybe he was the "woke" one. I don't know if the movie makers were trying to push some new thing, as part of an agenda, or to get more accolades maybe, or just be true to the book. Movies don't HAVE to do that though. Some don't even come close, and most viewers don't complain.
Anyway, I hadn't thought about that scene in years, as much as I recommend this movie to people. Dog Day Afternoon has got that one weird-ass scene, but the rest is what you'd expect from 1975 - no PC BS, yea! It's suspenseful, but something of a drama too, with quite a few bits of humor in it. I don't know if it was supposed to be humorous, but this scene at the beginning where robber # 3 just chickens out and goes home is funny to me. This scene will give you a taste of the movie:
* Thanks to IMDB - great website!
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Hail-to-You says "ALL LIFE-YEARS MATTER!"
Posted On: Thursday - March 4th 2021 7:30AM MST
In Topics: Websites Kung Flu Stupidity
Now if we could just get together a small protest group with enough intelligence to understand the math and what E.H. Hail means by that, without real jobs, so they can stay out in the streets for a coupla' months, we could get somewhere with this ... all 43 of us. Nah, I like the slogan, but don't quit your day job.
There are, of course, millions of people who can understand the very simple calculations that Mr. Hail uses to get a low-ball estimate (more difficult to take in other factors that make it worse) of all the life-years lost due to the LOCKDOWNS and other parts of the Kung Flu PanicFest.
In "All Life-Years Matter” — On the Corona-Panic’s social and economic costs vs. Covid-deaths; an Appeal to the Pro-Panic side, Mr. Hail compares the lowest estimate of the damage and basically elimination of social and economic life-years* versus the number of life-years lost due to actual deaths (many only supposedly) FROM the Kung Flu. It's no contest - just in the economic sense, he comes up with the Panic costing 5 to 10 X (30 million vs. 2.5-5 million)** as much.
There are already 24 comments there, so have at it. (I think Mr. Hail's and my Blog-owners/other comment ratio is equivalent to Peak Stupidity's. I enjoy chiming in, and I'm sure he does too.)
* That's not to mention the babies never born, as he does, who would have a full life ahead of them.
** No, don't correct my math. I am just sticking to the very low precision of the numbers, understandably so. Writing "6 to 12" just makes it seem like we have enough precision to say "it's not 5 and it's not 13".
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Is Zhou Bai Dien feeling generous today?
Posted On: Wednesday - March 3rd 2021 6:11PM MST
In Topics: University Global Financial Stupidity Economics Zhou Bai Dien
Note: This school loan business is really domestic financial stupidity rather than Global Financial Stupidity. However, the financial stupidity going on is pretty much global is scope (the government of China, for example, performs many of the same acts of stupidity as does the US Feral Gov't), and, well, you work with the Topic Key you have, or something...
The 2 headlines above give us the gist of the University Student Loan problem in this country. It's a pretty serious amount of money, 1 1/2 Trillion Dollars is. Peak Stupidity was about to get into a rant about the causes of the problem and proposed solution, but I noted we'd done this before, about 1 1/2 years ago, in the series "Student loan debt and forgiveness": Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3*.
The idea of the US Gov't waving it's magic money wand and forgiving these debts has been bandied about for a few years. From a writer name Rick Moran at the PJ Media site, Student Loan Debtors Refusing to Pay Off Debt in Anticipation of Biden Forgiveness. The article gives some facts about the political situation, but the author is wishy-washy in his opinion on the forgiveness "solution". I'd have expected a bit better from PJ Media.
I suppose since Presidents and Congress just blow a half Trillion here and a half Trillion there, I can see why people (other than the students in debt themselves) may think "oh, sure, why the hell not? Poor kids, starting out in life ..." Yeah, well, you may want to go back to our Part 3 of that series linked-to above, but let me give the gist of it. It's not just the money blown by the taxpayers for students to knock out 4 or 5 years at Indoctrination U, some having a big long party in the process.
There are 2 big moral hazards. One is that the students who DID try to be responsible, maybe forgoing all the partying and buying of nice vehicles, maybe working in the evenings and summers to help keep the final number down to only $15,000 or so, have a right to be very pissed off. It's not just that they will be pissed. Socialism pisses off a lot of people by screwing them - "Welcome to the Party, Pal!" No, the bigger problem is that these people will have been taught that "responsibility DOES! NOT! PAY!" and even "responsibility means GETTING! SCREWED!" From then on, I wouldn't blame them if they became just as irresponsible as the rest of them.
Secondly, the Universities will have the current big benefit of guaranteed-to-collect high student tuition due to the US Feral Gov't's loan guarantees doubled down on. From now on, nobody will get all responsible and protest or even balk at tuition increases. "C'mon, don't be a sap - only suckers pay loans back."
The headline of the PJ Media article shows that there is an advance moral hazard, if I may, going on, just due to mention of loan forgiveness plans. I see that "Some student loan debtors have decided to have a “debt strike” and refuse to pay on their loans until Biden acts." Great.
Yeah, student loan forgiveness means College is FREE, FREE I tells ya'! By free we really mean "free" ... till what can't go on, won't go on. The shit WILL hit the fan. We've all read the economist's maxim "there is no free lunch." A Peak Stupidity corollary goes "there is no free lunch, unless you are OK with having pieces of shit that are flying off a fan for lunch."
One more thing that pissed me when I read here, there, and everywhere: Nowadays the President is just assumed by everyone to have powers that were not permitted for him by the US Constitution, such as MAKING FREAKING LAWS! Oh, that's what Executive Orders are about, right? I mean, if the media discussed Presidents using the bully pulpit or pushing for such and such a thing, that would sit better in my stomach. This is the way it is now (same article):
Biden has yet to issue an executive order on student loan debt. Many Democrats are urging the president to cancel $50,000 in debt with the stroke of a pen. But Biden says he would much rather involve Congress in the decision. [My bolding]How very kind of him to involve the Congress! This country's just ... too damn far gone.
*
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