The case of the jacked-up jack
Posted On: Wednesday - September 16th 2020 6:52PM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap General Stupidity Curmudgeonry
I'd had another fisking of feminism post in progress, to be completed later on, when I got interrupted by daily life. This stupidity is on me, but I don't have a category for that. I had a nice easy-going car project going on, the bleeding of the brakes. After running into a snag, it was all going nicely, and I was headed toward the 2nd brake.
My 9 y/o boy got on the jack to lift himself into the air (nothing new - I showed him that a coupla' years ago), after I'd gotten the car jacked up for my 2nd wheel. As soon as I realized I'd need to bring the car back up a bit more, after getting use of the thing, I realized the jack didn't work right. Fluid was leaking internally as the jack kept backing down.
Crap, I knew it right away! "Did you turn that thing the wrong way?" (Too far?) He admitted to such, and I knew it must be something with that release valve, activated by rotating the handle. One thing I HATE HATE HATE is getting interrupted from one job due to having to fix a tool in use, and this job was going smoothly at that! Peak Stupidity covered this bit of curmudgeonry near our blog's beginnings, in Brilliant plan by Chinese Communist Party Cadres pans out well. That post was a semi-facetious conspiracy theory about the Chinese and the Cheap China-made Crap (our very first topic key, per the dBase, haha! Wonder why?). Hey, it's a damn sight better than a lot of other conspiracy theories I've read of recently.
OK, here's the stupidity on my part - it's not about the jack. "Please don't try to fix it", said not my wife, but my inner voice. No, that wasn't some female alter-ego ready for an operation, but just my common-sense telling me not to take on another project. See, I have had another brand-new floor jack sitting in a box that came from China via harbor freight. As (another post coming!) I like to keep the good old American-made stuff, though, I wanted to fix this thing anyway.
I would have sworn this trusty old jack was made in America, as I know I've had it since 1996. How I know that year exactly, without looking in any records, is that I remember what year it was, due to what I was doing there, when I smashed into a farm implement after which my tie-rod was bent so badly that I could barely, well scarily, do 50 mph down the highway, by the auto parts store for the jack, and make it home. This jack has done a stand-up job for that whole 24 years, whenever I needed it. It deserves to live, man!
OK, so I dove onto the web, youtube, diagrams, whatever, but I can't really get to the gist of how this valve works. I even found the paper manual from the day I bought it, and there's no good diagram. It does happen to say "don't turn the handle more than 3 turns the other way". Damn, but what gives then? It's a seal or a steel ball has gotten out of place, or something ...
This really ruined the evening. I did apologize to the boy for being mad, as I never told him not to screw with it (literally) in this manner. "Clockwise to tighten, got it?" It's just a thing that happened that will produce likely another white elephant-like thing hanging around, if I don't figure this out soon. I can go right back to my brake job tommorrow with my new made-in-China jack, but, yeah, this one was made in China too.
That is really surprising. I have a good general memory for when I noticed the proportion of products being made there. As Peak Stupidity noted also in Inflation and Chinese Imports and Exports, the quality of Chinese-made goods was better 20-25 years ago. I don't think it was as good as American stuff, especially for really engineered products, but shirts from Wal-Mart seemed to be pretty damn good (some have just worn out in the last 5 years).
My theory is this: In the early part of the giveaway of American manufacturing and know-how to China, the cheap labor alone could keep prices down with Big-Biz making the same or higher profits. However, "you can't stay in business if you don't keep growing", one of the bigger statements of bullshit I've been hearing over the years, meant that something else had to give to keep corporate profits steadily increasing. That was quality.
I apologize to any Chinese readers for attaching the "Cheap China-made Crap" topic key to this anecdote of the jacked-up floor jack. Really, this was a great product. That's why it does not deserve to become a white, well, rust-colored elephant.
Now, what the heck this has to do with the price of tea and crappy floor jacks in China is anybody's guess. More stupidity will come tomorrow. There's always tomorrow, tomorrow ...
Comments (3)
Remote controls - No more hunting
Posted On: Tuesday - September 15th 2020 10:09AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Humor Curmudgeonry
Just for the record again, this blogger has been off the TV for over 2 decades now.* All posts regarding TV in the current era here are from the occasional bouts of boredom that have caused me to pick up a remote control at the hotel room on a trip. I wanted to add this post as a bit of curmudgeonry, after having written that post on Saturday about TV remote controls.
This one goes back to a TV show itself, in the old era when Seinfeld was on the air once a week, the humor was not particularly PC at all (at least on that show - they often made fun of PC), and I had a TV receiving analog signals. Jerry Seinfeld has impressed me in that he has always kept the humor clean. Peak Stupidity doesn't stick to that standard, as you may well know, but we appreciate a comedian who can do that and still be funny as hell.
I found the exact clip I had in mind. It's from the Seinfeld show, as the show would have a bit from Jerry's stand-up comedy act, either at the beginning or end.
That'd comedy gold, Jerry! Anyway, the problem with this hunting mode of surfing through the no longer 30, but more like 357 channels now is you can't even do that now. See, TVs are computers now. (Hell, almost every new thing you buy is a computer - yeah, that coffee machine - it's a computer, that bottle with the sparkling water in it - it's a computer, OK, maybe not the latter just yet.) The TVs are computers so that they can have more functions, some possibly added after the design process and manufacturing.
That's all very well, but what I've seen a few years back in the hotels is that, as computers, the TVs are not very fast in switching channels anymore. I don't know why. WTH is it doing during that time, not the rotating of an antenna up on the roof anymore, right? 3 to 5 seconds go by before you see what's on that you don't like. Well, this just ruins that hunting for us guys, even if we liked any of the shit they got on there!
Throw it away, at least the cable payments! Then, you can pop in ("pop in", huh??) movies from the library and only waste 10 minutes a piece on the PC-agenda ones till you find something worth watching.
* I don't write that because I'm proud of it. I am, but it's to avoid readers thinking I'm bullshitting them, and the fact that I try to promote getting off of idiot plate.
Comments (8)
Ron Unz Comments - Part 2
Posted On: Monday - September 14th 2020 4:39PM MST
In Topics: Websites Pundits Liberty/Libertarianism Kung Flu Stupidity
(Continued directly from the previous post.)
The particular comment by internet mogul Ron Unz that I wanted to comment on was not under the post regarding reporting on China (just making this clear). It was under one of his own articles, this one 31,000 Words Missing from The Atlantic and The New York Times Sunday Magazine w/ Addendum. I just skimmed through that article*, because the comment in question was under it, but I hadn't read it before.
The article, is one in a series of many on one Ron Unz's conspiracy theories. Hey, I don't knock that stuff in general, but this one is nothing but a side distraction to the point about the American Kung Flu response that I want to mention here. His theory, that he's railed about almost since the beginning of this business in March, is that the virus originated in a US lab and was purposefully spread via a sports team that happened to have an event in Wuhan, China back last fall. I'm glad Mr. Unz at least admits to being no expert in virology, but that makes this theory nothing but conjecture based on circumstantial evidence.
In some of his recent articles, including this one, the point is that the US Media (one discussed the Wall Street Journal's take) is ALMOST on the case. They just left off the part Mr. Unz knows about. OK, now anyone's railing on the Lyin' Press is just fine with me. For the life of me, I just don't get why Ron Unz, of all people, had this big faith in the media and self-designated healthcare experts regarding the highly erroneous predictions of the severity of this virus. Now, he seems to have backed off without an apology or explicit correction. It's HIS site, and that's what we bloggers do, right?
Let me now (finally!) paste in the whole comment. It is a reply to commenter JackOH, who from all I've read from him under Steve Sailer, is a pretty mellow, reasonably on-the-ball guy (the inner excerpt is JackOH from before):
The (my-)bolded part is the main problem I have with this thinking. I'll get to that shortly.I’ve read little of Ron’s stuff about the COVID virus, but his repeated use of “crazy”, “stupid”, “rogue”, “incompetent” to describe some of our leadership elites has me thinking of a deeply embittered patronage hack I know who’s driven by revenge, I suppose, for decades of petty humiliations, a strong need to settle scores with his tormentors, real or imagined, and who has no sense of public service in his being. I think he may be the only man I’ve met who ought to somehow be referred for a psychiatric eval to determine fitness for work.Well, I don’t think that’s a very fair appraisal. Frankly, my critical adjectives may be much too mild.
I think the Covid epidemic plus accompanying lockdowns are shaping up to be the greatest disaster suffered by our unfortunate country since the Great Depression, perhaps even since the Civil War.
The Chinese published the genome of the new virus on January 11th, and within a couple of days Germany and various other countries had created test-kits and begun mass-producing and using them to check for outbreaks.
However, our own government refused to use the German kits and decided to have the CDC create their own, which took extra time. Then we discovered that the CDC kits produced were all defective and we had to start from scratch. Therefore, for several weeks we had no means of testing for the virus, and even afterward, test-kits were in extremely short supply. This allowed the virus to spread invisibly for a month or two, leading to many of the later outbreaks, in NY and elsewhere.
Similarly, government officials told people not to wear masks, then later changed their minds.
Now the more conspiratorially-minded people believe our elites deliberately allowed the virus to spread in order to destroy the American economy or reset the stock-market or something. Most Flu Hoaxers believe the government deliberately did those things even though the virus isn’t very dangerous, and that the lockdowns are intended to destroy freedom or something.
I’ve very skeptical of those theories, and think the problem was mostly sheer incompetence. But whether you believe our elites are extremely incompetent or that they’re diabolical, I’d say they deserve a great deal of criticism, don’t you?
• Agree: Godfree Roberts, Wizard of Oz, Derer [Heh, there's old Godfree!]
• Replies: @JackOH
This criticism of "our" government is fine, at first glance. There were all kinds of screw ups, reversals of plans, highly erroneous prediction, and, yes, we have no manufacturing base, so we're bound to suffer when the SHTF (not actually the case this time). On the latter, that is especially a problem that we outsource most of our manufactured products to a country we are on the outs with.
On the first 3 items, though, Ron Unz is missing the point. This is not supposed to be China. If it were 1985 right now, and Americans were told this and that is happening and we need to do this and that, most would be still of the mindset "you try and make me!" You don't have to go back too awful far into the past to get to when Americans weren't such obedient bootlickers of government and the "experts". The "emergency" powers of the Governors would not have been meekly complied with years ago. Who cares if some US Government experts in this or that try to put the scare in us? It's the Americans like Ron Unz here getting suckered by all that BS that were and still are the problem.
On to the bolded section now: That's rich, Ron Unz getting on others for being conspiratorial-minded. Mr. Unz is the guy with the conspiracy theory about the US spreading the virus to China first, never mind that I guess "we" (the Deep State) didn't consider that viruses can go both ways across the ocean.
If you've read here for a while, you will know that I don't think that the Chinese purposefully spread the Kung Flu virus. (I sure wouldn't rule it completely out, though.) That's not what Mr. Unz claims we think this time, though. Most of us whom Ron Unz calls "hoaxers" don't think or spend much time thinking about whether the US Government planned this out either. That's missing the damn point entirely. It's the RESPONSE, stupid! (Yes, directed at high IQ Ron Unz.)
The response to what people with some perspective understand is another virus out of the Orient, maybe a nastier one in some ways, but just one of these every-decade-average phenomena, is what we've got a real problem with. Was the response planned out to fuck over the small businessmen and average American working stiff? Well, you couldn't have planned that any better, but that's a conspiracy theory that I'm not down with, as of yet. As Peak Stupidity has written many times, and not just about this particular Infotainment Panic-fest, it's likely just the same stupid and sometimes evil people in the Lyin' Press, governments, and other institutions being on the same page with their thinking.
Here's the real arrogant stupidity coming at ya': "... and that the lockdowns are intended to destroy freedom or something." Yeah, "or something". Uhhh, yeah, telling people they must stay in a specified location, telling them whether they can have their businesses open or not, how far apart they must stay from each other, and that they must wear diapers on their faces per un-democratic government edict is most certainly about freedom. You'd basically have to be some kind of high-IQ moron to believe otherwise. Freedom of movement, freedom to transact, ... hell, these are the basics even before you get to free speech, freedom of association and all the rest.
Well, the guy never said he was a Constitutionalist.
Most of us "hoaxers" aren't that concerned with where the COVID-19 virus came from and how it spread. That's because we have the perspective that told us back in March that this was not the Big Deal it was being made out to be. We are concerned, OK, not concerned, but EXTREMELY PISSED, that this minor disease is being used to LOCKDOWN the country, throw it into depression (a lot earlier than we were gonna be ready for), and turn Americans into silly-looking mask-wearing retards! Get it straight, Ron Unz!
* BTW, this article looks very interesting and doesn't concentrate solely on Mr. Unz's COVID-Conspiracy theory.
Comments (4)
Ron Unz Comments - Part 1
Posted On: Monday - September 14th 2020 12:41PM MST
In Topics: Websites Pundits
It may seem kind of backhanded or catty for Peak Stupidity to comment on the man Ron Unz, as he is VERY GOOD as allowing all kind of comments critical of everyone and everything on his own blog, with multiple orders of magnitude more readers. However, I've written to him before, most recently on the subject of this post, the Kung Flu healthcare stupidity, and got blown off as a "nutty right-winger" (can't recall the exact phrasing right now). Hey, it's for the best, as he made occasional small threats to us "COVID hoaxers" that he may curtail our comments. As a true stalwart of free speech, and I don't say that in jest, he never followed through*, at least for me. I've been trying to stay out of his hair there, but a few snide remarks, not made to him, slip out occasionally ;-}
I shouldn't have to write this again, but for the record, I appreciate the ability to comment there immensely, as it's become a hobby. That does drive some traffic to this site, most especially when I point out that girly pictures may appear (amazing, but we can't NOT click so easily!) Secondly, and this is arguable from our commenters, to me unz commenting is the best system I've used, or attempted to (for some bad ones).
Mr. Unz himself, and his views on the Kung Flu are the subject here. If he were to read this, I say again, argue with me without just name-calling and a quick dismissal, and I'll keep it on your blog, dude.
Besides operating a highly-functional website that indeed offers "A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media", Mr. Unz publishes some of his own material, usually pretty long indictments of American history and politics and plenty of conspiracy theories of all sorts, and I don't write the latter as disparagement at all.
Additionally, Mr. Unz writes comments himself pretty regularly. He's got every right to say whatever he wants, of course, insult his (non-paying) customers, ban people, if he so feels, etc. Other than under his own articles, my observation is that Mr. Unz skims comments and chimes in whenever the mood strikes him. There's nothing wrong with that except when he argues with commenters of which he's read only a small percentage of what they've written. Of course, he can't possibly read all the comments written under all the large number of articles he publishes.
OK, whatever. After reading a thread under an article called The Rising Cult of China Experts, by one Thorsten J. Pattberg, I saw a couple of decent comments by Mr. Unz. I clicked on his name to see what he'd been writing lately.
First off, though the man will go off on commenters, sometimes with the exasperation that comes with knowing "I've already explained this stuff!" (in one of his many articles) sometimes, I think he really does try to be fair. A great example is the idiotic hard-core revisionism on China by the Commie writer (on unz.com!)Godfree Roberts. Mr. Roberts, having never even been to China (he sells ex-Pat relocation advice/services to/in Thailand), not only extols everything modern-day China (OK, I guess), but has got the gall to extol the virtues of the 40 million-Chinaman-starving Chairman Mao. His stuff gets just laughably stupid, as it's not like this history isn't known by Americans and the Chinese people.
Mr. Unz calls out his own contracted writer, Mr. Roberts on Roberts' writing that nobody starved in China during the "Great Leap Forward" and that the Cultural Revolution there improved the hell out of the place. Along with this pure stupidity, comes a commenter with the handle "FB" who extols all things Russia (OK), but rails on everything American. This guy is actually a pretty smart guy involved in the aerospace industry, claiming to be a test pilot. (Not likely, just because his comments show him to be mentally unstable - at least in the US he should not get any kind of FAA medical certificate.) Now FB has written multiple times that the Great Depression 1.0 in our country caused the starvation of millions of people. What the hell is this stupidity? We have parents and grandparents who were there!
Anyway, way off my subject here, I'm giving Mr. Unz credit for notching down his slight kookieness level, and trying to set people straight. I'm glad to see this, because I was really wondering about him ...
OK, I have not even gotten to the healthcare stupidity and a comment I noticed by Mr. Unz. It is also fairly reasonable until just one paragraph in which I see that, like quite a few other Americans, there's a basic point they JUST DON'T GET about this Kung Flu healthcare stupidity, and what you and I have against it.
However, I try to avoid essays of the size of Ron Unz ones, mainly just for the website format here. I will get to my point later today, I promise, along with another more frivolous post I wanted to put up.
* Well, there was a commenter MikeAtMikeDotMike that did tell us on here and on Mr. Hail's site that he was prevented from (some?) commenting. I'd like to hear the latest on that, but I think he gave up on the unz site, as I believe Mr. Hail has also.
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Stay away from the remote!
Posted On: Saturday - September 12th 2020 6:53PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Big-Biz Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
It's the thing now. Hotels are putting stickers here and there, showing that this and that have been thoroughly sanitized, and now there's the wrapper around the TV remote control. Since Seinfeld reruns don't come on TBS anymore, or hardly ever, even if there's no blog post to write, the TV need never come on anyway.
However, I noticed the blue wrapper shown above* a few weeks ago, while on a trip. I guess every one of the buttons, most of which I wouldn't press simply due to the fact that I can't make out what the stupid icon means, were scrubbed down for COVID cooties. I feel sorry for the housekeepers for probably getting lectures weekly about new cleaning policies to cover the hotel's ass from lawsuits and/or to comply with the Governor's latest whim before he changes his mind again about your being able to do business.
This type of wrapper should have been on remote controls at all hotels, at bars, and at every home in the country for the last 50 years. Rather than let us know we are safe from the Kung Flu, they should have red warning labels on them, every one:
* And, man, was it a bitch to slide that thing off in one piece for later scanning for this post. That glue is viscous and vicious, both.
Comments (15)
Valerie - The Jerry Garcia Band
Posted On: Friday - September 11th 2020 7:41PM MST
In Topics: Music The Dead
Commenter Mr. Ganderson cheers up the readership with some music from The Jerry Garcia Band. This is a live recording as are a majority of the (full) Dead songs that Peak Stupidity features. That's the way you've got to hear these guys. (Their only studio album was Cats under the Stars.) This one is from June 17th of 1982. Does everyone remember what he was doing that summer? I do.
I'll admit (shamefully to Mr. Ganderson) right now, that I've never that I know of heard any music by this 20-year-long side project band of Jerry Garcia's. I don't really miss Uncle Phil's stupendous bass all over the place, but that's only because on laptop/table speakers you hardly get any bass. There's nothing like Jerry's other band, though.
I liked Valerie right away. The lead put me in a place to where I didn't even know it was over till well into the next verse.
I wish I could have seen these guys, or, better yet, The Dead themselves, back in those years.
Comments (4)
Catch a germ, and you're sitting in the back of a van ... ♫♪♪
Posted On: Thursday - September 10th 2020 8:19PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Anarcho-tyranny Kung Flu Stupidity
" ... surfer girl, surfer girl"
Well, this Kung Flu stupidity is getting Laugh Out Loud funny. From commenter Adam Smith with the link, the UK Daily Mail* reports to us Female surfer is dragged away by hazmat-wearing officials and arrested on Spanish beach after going in the sea while infected with Covid-19. Save the Whales, from COVID-one-niner!
As lots of us Americans have noted by now, this Kung Flu is not quite the Black Plague 2.0. The young people, especially those in shape like this one shown below, yes, really in shape, the buttocks, thighs, if she'd take off that neoprene... oh, yeah, they really aren't being harmed by this virus in the least. (See the Ron Paul video in this morning's post for some more regarding the college students.) Yet, governments around the world don't want to sound stupid by admitting they've been utterly wrong, so instead they will enforce the laws to the hilt, making them look stupid.
The perky perp, name withheld, known only (to me, anyway) as Little Surfer Girl, was detained and arrested for the crime of DISOBEDIENCE. The police at La Zurriola beach in the Spanish northern city of San Sebastian must have told her to come in after that next wave, but that wasn't her wave. You've got to catch YOUR wave, and you're sitting on top of the world. She was told it isn't safe!
"It's really hairy out there, Ma'am. This is COVID's beach."
"COVID don't surf!"
"What do you know about surfin', son, you're from goddamn Salamanca!"
Local reports said the unnamed woman had worked as a lifeguard at San Sebastian's famous La Concha beach this summer and colleagues were the ones who phoned police after spotting her in the water.Ahaa! Her old friends ratted her out. Perhaps it was about a jilted ex-boyfriend, some sort of Baywatch type drama. Or, were they jealous that they had to stay on the beach while she got to ride some really gnarly waves?
Photos published by a local paper showed two people in hazmat suits escorting her on the sand in a neoprene top and bikini bottom with a face mask on.Did they mention she had on a neoprene top and a bikini bottom? Yes, they did, twice. Then, there are the pictures.
What a juxtaposition of the world of freedom and the world of Kung Flu Totalitarianism! You couldn't photoshop up an image to make government look so petty, cowardly, and stupid.
"Code RED! Girl with neoprene top and bikini bottom. All units. Put out an APB, Danno, she's left Waikiki. I want a Hazmat team on her, Chinn."
"I'm on it, Stebe!"
"It's not just a fad, cause it's been going on so long,
(Catch a germ. Catch a germ.)
They said that we'd all be dead 'fore long.
They'll eat their words with a mask and glove,
and watch 'em, they'll detain us with a push and shove.
When you catch a germ, they'll all act like it's the end of the world..."
(Wrongo, youtube guy - it was 1963, not 1966.)
That great falsetto voice is from Mike Love, a cousin of the 3 Wilson brothers. The Beach Boys were:
Brian Wilson – vocals, bass, keyboards
Carl Wilson – vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, bass guitar, keyboards
Dennis Wilson – vocals, drums, keyboards
Mike Love – vocals, percussion, saxophone, electro-theremin
Al Jardine – vocals, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, banjo
Bruce Johnston – vocals, keyboards, bass, percussion (not with the band till 1965, so he wasn't in the group when they recorded this song.)
* Warning: This article is floating-ad city. Stuff is moving all around the screen, almost as if it's designed to not be able to be read. The page needs a good 10 minutes before it gets out of ADHD mode!
Comments (8)
Kung Flu truth from my man Ron Paul
Posted On: Thursday - September 10th 2020 7:00AM MST
In Topics: Pundits Liberty/Libertarianism Healthcare Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
Ron Paul is so damn refreshing to listen to. How did a guy with this much perspective and common sense ever make it to Congress? (Grandfathered in?) I will make an effort to watch these Liberty Report videos weekly, or whenever they come out.
The thing about the man too, is that he stays so cool and calm. Sure, he was more of a firebrand in the past (there's a clip I've seen of him on Donahue) and he's now 80-odd years old. However, he does have see the daily financial, political, cultural, and physical destruction of the country knowing more than the rest of the political class about all of it. He did his best when in office, so he has that satisfaction, at least.
I hope all the readers will find time to watch this 1/2 hour show, seeing as it's the liberty-minded stuff plus information on the Kung Flu Panic-fest. If you don't, I ask you to just fast-forward right to 23:16 and pause within the next 5 seconds. You’ll see a chart of COVID cases and hospitalizations at 16 big universities. The case column has numbers from a hundred and something to over 1,400 (Go Carolina!*) The hospitalization column has ZEROES. Yes, ZEROES in every column. Total cases is over 11,000. Of course there is no “deaths” column either, as one would have to be hospitalized first. People aren't just keeling over from the Corona, as awesome to see as that might be.
Maybe I'll put that chart up in another post, if I can find it. At least half of the university students near me are wearing masks. Did they see that chart? Would that matter?
* Idiocracy reference there.
Comments (3)
America's Kung Flu recession, women hardest hit! - Part 2
Posted On: Wednesday - September 9th 2020 6:47PM MST
In Topics: Feminism Economics
(Continued from Part 1.)
I'm sorry, readers. Any donations sent in over the last few days will be sent back with interest accrued. I can't fisk this stupid broad Chabeli Carrazana's feminist article for money and still hold my head up high. This is like shooting fish in a barrel or beating up on the KISS pinball machine that'd give me one credit and a quarter out the slot when I kneed it in the cash-box even though I could kick it's ass without any help. I'd feel dirty taking any money for this. [Just SHFU! - Ed.]
Yeah, they'll be a Part 3 too, as this is easy blogging, and the article doesn't have one single paragraph without enough stupidity to deserve mention. Let's just start off on the last sentence we left off on:
She [could-have-been-happy-Mom Ellu Nasser] was collateral damage in what has become America’s first female recession.Yes, men NEED to be the primary breadwinners. Otherwise, girls will not usually marry them, and for most, it will not be so easy to get laid. Then, any kids produced will be illegitimate and raised partially by The State. Most men and real women don't want that.
For the first time since they began a consistent upward climb in the labor force in the 1970s, women are now suffering the repercussions of a system that still treats them unequally. Men are still the primary breadwinners. Women are still the primary low-income workers, the ones whose jobs disappeared when coronavirus spread. Mothers in 2020’s pandemic have reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers to care for children in a nation that hasn’t created a strong caregiving foundation.
When the economy crumbled, women fell — hard.
What's with this "caregiving foundation"? That's absolutely not "a nation"'s job, it's YOUR job. You are a woman, right? (No offense, but you gotta do your due diligence these days...) "Caregiving foundation"? Oh, yeah, that's the People's Daycare of Mao-era China or something Pol Pot may have come up with, isn't it? No thanks. How about your acting like a woman, and problem solved? (Oh wait, sorry 'bout that, I will just listen some more.
This year, female unemployment reached double digits for the first time since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking women’s joblessness. White women haven’t been such a small share of the population with a job since the late 1970s. And women of color, who are more likely to be sole breadwinners and low-income workers, are suffering acutely. The unemployment rate for Latinas was 15.3 percent in June. For Black women, it was 14 percent. For White men: 9 percent.Unemployment numbers don't mean a lot when you look long term. The BLS goes by unemployment claims. Who goes down to that shithole government facility to begin with?* Anyone who has passed the point of getting payments is off the rolls, and Whá-lá (as the French write), he is no longer unemployed. Where is the unemployed man? I beg of you, show me unemployed man. [/Babu Bhatt]
All the while, women continue to earn less than men, with White women making 79 cents on the White male dollar, Black women making 62 cents, Native American women making 57 cents and Latinas making 54 cents.
Going back to 1948 and right on through 1972, most America women were happy to be at home raising their children, supporting their husbands, and participating in the community. They did not seem to think of themselves as unemployed, and, yes, their folks WERE overjoyed, as a matter of fact.
OK, so you want white woman to be a bigger share of employed people and "women of color" (more about them coming) to be a bigger share. Hey, just what the heck are you gettin' at here?
Now we hear this 79¢ on the dollar bit again, oh, and 62¢, and 57¢ (wait, what, for stringing beads or serving drinks when I push that button on top of the one-armed bandit? That'd be easy money for a paleface), and 54¢ on the dollar. Can we put this stupidity to rest right in the here and now, please? If I could hire a white woman for 79%, or better yet a squaw for 57%, of what a man makes, for the same work, taking the same number of sick and maternity days, with no 4-day bad spells during which I must hang out on the corner of the roof of my plant**, why wouldn't I do just that? Are businessmen just trying to lose money? No, this has always been an apples-to-oranges comparison. Check out data for the exact same jobs and same experience level, and even with the "women troubles" you'll be paying the same or higher - it's often higher to land this token woman employee to begin with.
What women in America are living now is the consequence of years of occupational segregation that kept them out of managerial positions, stuck in low-paying jobs with few safeguards like paid sick leave. When a third of the female workforce — the grocery clerks, home health aides and social workers — became “essential workers” this year, they were faced with difficult decisions about preserving their health or keeping their jobs. The rest found themselves more likely to be in positions that vanished overnight, like the housekeepers and the retail clerks, or on the margins, in the jobs at risk of never coming back.Whoa, wait a minute. These "essential"*** workers are the ones that didn't get sent home. Haha, so at least they got to decide whether to get hysterical or not. OTOH, men in these positions were thankful to keep their jobs because they don't want the wife and kids to leave on them later in the year. There was no decision for them to make. Those housekeepers would be better served heading back to Guatemala, and the rest making that little money could think about being really nice to a man, so she might get married or stay married. There. Problem solved, or was that not what you wanted?
Oh, "occupational segregation", I like that! It rolls right off the tongue like "Yes, Mrs. Nasser, I too enyoyed the Carrazana article" off the tongue of the Guatemalan housekeeper. That's what they pay writer Chabeli Carrazana the big bucks for over at The 19th.
I noticed that in every single part of this article that there's absolutely no concern for what men need to work for and how their employment prospects are. I guess married women who DO depend on a man so they can live as a woman are of no concern either.
Together, the losses threaten decades of steady, hard-won progress.Good! One woman's progress is another man's destruction.
Nasser felt her loss most on the days when the constant run of doing dishes and cleaning up meals made it feel like her life was on hold. For the fall, she’s patched together some homeschooling with a retired teacher for her kindergartener and a handful of other kids from her Austin neighborhood. Her 9-year-old will return to private school.I guess the husband gets tired sometimes of fixing things on the house, or getting the bills in order, or other chores, but he probably doesn't complain - no time to. For the high-class working woman though, doing dishes and cleaning up meals is for the
Having a child care option is what helped her say “yes” when the call came in late July re-offering the position she passed up in June. She acknowledges again and again that she is luckier than most. She was able to make the difficult decision to leave the workplace — and then return — because her husband earns more than she does and they could afford to send their kids somewhere. Many women won’t have that this year.
“It’s a simultaneous feeling of guilt that we are able to do it,” she said, “and sadness that this is the situation we were in.”
Hey, I did like that one part about getting other kids into a homeschooling group. Why not keep that up? Oh, it's not part of the narrative - she was likely worried about being called a "Bible Thumper" or worse for that. So send them back to the $15,000/year school and pay for child care from someone who is no relation. Your husband can always up the hours to 120, but you say your job can do it. Did you work out how much you'd save by staying home with the kids, not needing a fancy 2nd or 3rd car, and then there's
Mrs. Nassar could do worse than to buy a 16 y/o book by a former blue-squad Presidential Candidate and former Indian squaw called The Two-Income Trap. That would clear this all up for her, and support another Socialist to boot.
OK, I intend to fisk every single paragraph of this feminist article if it takes all month. There will be more than 3 posts.
* I had one opportunity to collect some money during a summer, but I went in, and the smell of bureaucracy depressed me so much, I just walked right out ... and bought more Top Ramen, Mac and Cheese, and green Jello.
** For the reference, the reader could either read an old Peak Stupidity post or Proverbs 25:24. (This is the King James version of Peak Stupidity, if that helps you decide.)
*** Quotes are around "essential" because it's a bullshit Totalitarian term, not because just because it's in the excerpt. I give credit where credit is due, no matter what stupidity it's embedded within.
**** Withholding will be lower than it ought to be if she's making less than her husband, as her employer doesn't (and shouldn't) know how much he makes. The withholding gets levied on her total, a smaller amount by far than their combined income, so the husband gets a big surprise when he sees that W-2 with the 2 numbers - "Wages, tips, and other compensation" and then "Federal income tax withheld". Uh, oh, we're gonna need a
Comments (2)
Peak Constitutional Amendment - XX
Posted On: Wednesday - September 9th 2020 11:39AM MST
In Topics: US Feral Government Morning Constitutional
Continued from Amendment XI, Amendment XII, Amendment XIII, Amendment XIV, Amendment XV, Part 1 on Amendment XVI, Part 2 on Amendment XVI , Part 3 on Amendment XVI, Amendment XVII, Amendment XVIII, Part 1 on Amendment XIX, Part 2 on Amendment XIX, and Part 3 on Amendment XIX.)
It's been near 2 months since our last Morning Constitutional, so we are getting backed up here at Peak Stupidity. I will warn you right now that this post will be pretty boring. (We're gonna get through this, dammit!) Boring, however, is good when it comes to Constitutional Amendments, from our survey so far.
Amendment XX is completely "housekeeping", or administrative details, of Presidential and Congressional term scheduling and odd situations resulting from the deaths of the President-elect or candidate in process. Here is the full text:
Section 1There is not anything to be "interpreted" here, which is always a good thing with Laws of the Land, or any laws. Still, the Interpretation page of our usual source on matters Constitutional, The Constitution Center has some background about the impetus for Amendment XX. (The direct text I pasted in came from this page of the site.)
The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
Section 2
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
Section 3
If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
Section 4
The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
Section 5
Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.
Section 6
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.
We're going to start at the end and work backwards here this time, by 2's anyway. Sections 5 and 6 were written simply to set the proposed Amendment's effectiveness date and ratification time limit.
Section 3 is a fix for a problem that hasn't occurred so far, even before the ratification in 1935. Article II, Section 1 (Executive Branch) doesn't get into that much detail to cover this, so this was some foresight by the writers. The debate on Amendment XX was probably as good a time as any to put this in. Section 4 deals with a candidate dying during the voting process. Who cares? We can always find a more evil lesser of two evils. That's never been a problem, but whatever.
Sections 1 and 2, by changing and setting new dates for Congressional sessions had the effect of greatly shortening the length of lame-duck periods for outgoing Congressmnen (especially proportional to total time in office). Per the interpretive discussion, the old way was:
Read together, the Clause stating that congressional sessions shall start in December and the resolution declaring that terms for the first President and members of Congress would begin in March created an anomaly. Each new Congress would not meet for its first regular session until thirteen months after its election and would convene for its second regular session a scant three months prior to the end of its term. Further, because the terms of a new President and new Congress began on the same day, unresolved presidential elections would be decided by the old Congress rather than the new one. Because the two provisions creating the situation were embedded in the Constitution—one directly and one indirectly—the schedule could only be changed by a constitutional amendment.The "lame duck" problem is having Congressmen/Senators no longer beholden to their constituents other than by honor (hahahaa, but it WAS a thing in the old days), having lost an election but in office and able to vote anyway for a period. This was noted to be a problem very early on in this Republic. In the 1st 3 decades, 18 bills were introduced to change the schedule, written as proposed Constitutional Amendments. Nothing got passed for almost a century and a half because, well, that lame duck session was just great if you were that lame duck:
As odd as the old congressional schedule’s delayed start and lame-duck session might look to modern commentators, it served the interests of lame-duck lawmakers. As critics of the schedule observed, once a legislator lost or did not stand for re-election, a lame-duck session gave that legislator an opportunity to legislate without being responsible to voters. Outgoing Senators and Representatives could offer votes in return for executive-branch appointments, reformers charged. This was especially true for members of the House of Representatives, whose terms were shorter and turnover greater than for Senators. The House therefore became the center of opposition to constitutional amendments designed to eliminate the lame-duck session.There is nothing new under the sun, people.
There's more background behind Amendment XX being finally offered up, that is, the important sections that greatly reduce the length of time lame duck Congressmen/Senators are around:
Efforts by Republican President Warren Harding to push a ship subsidy bill through a lame-duck session of Congress in 1922 gave renewed impetus to the cause of limiting such sessions and brought Nebraska Republican Senator George W. Norris on board. The ship subsidy bill, a centerpiece of Harding’s America First program, was designed to expand the nation’s merchant marine fleet by subsidizing the construction of cargo ships by private companies. The legislation was opposed by labor and farm groups as a “grab” by commercial interests and the shipping industry.The story goes on from 1922 until the ratification in 1935 with Senator Norris of Nebraska being part of that long push for this change.*
I told you at the beginning this was going to be boring, right? However, now that we've looked into it, let us celebrate one Constitutional Amendment that WASN'T designed or unintentionally created to change the system of government to the detriment of what our Founders created.
The introduction paragraph of that Amendment XX interpretation page says:
If awards were given to constitutional amendments for quietly doing their job without generating litigation or public controversy, certainly the Twentieth Amendment would be a contender for that prize. Ratified in 1935, it has never been the subject of a Supreme Court decision and has rarely been interpreted by lower courts.I like that. This was a well done amend, something you won't read about here often, and, yes, I know that "amend" is not a noun, but I'm trying hard to attract more Millennial readers.
* I don't know too much about this Senator Norris other than the dam in Tennessee (he was a sponsor of the act that formed the Tennessee Valley Authority. I just read a bit on wiki here. He was a supporter of Amendment XVII, so that's an immediate big strike against the guy, but a few years later the Senator was one of only 6 Senators to vote against the Declaration of War against Germany in 1917. That about makes up for it, plus his efforts to reduce the power of lame duck Congressmen.
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We can work it out.
Posted On: Tuesday - September 8th 2020 7:18PM MST
In Topics: Humor Female Stupidity
I ask the reader to note that there are 2 separate Topic Keys here, Feminism and Female Stupidity. They are not at all the same topic.
The stupidity of feminism has involved people of both, hell, all 102 genders, that we have now. Female Stupidity, the topic of this post, well, we all have our flaws. For any possible female Peak Stupidity readers, if it makes you feel any better, most of the stupidity described on the site is male stupidity, since men still make the world actually go round. If you want to be so involved with making the world go round, then you need to own up to your share of stupidity too.
If you have a problem with any of the posts, I'm here to read the comments and just listen. I won't try to fix anything for you, especially typos. I'm just here for you.
Man, this video just nailed it! [Groan!] The comments under the youtube video of the most popular clip (didn't use it because of annoying subtitles), here, are a hoot. Yes, there are women chiming in in support of the attitude of the woman in the video.
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America's Kung Flu recession, women hardest hit! - Part 1
Posted On: Tuesday - September 8th 2020 10:30AM MST
In Topics: Feminism Economics
(Sorry about the quality of the text - I played around with this to fit it for a while.)
This Kung Flu Panic-fest scam of a response has started what could be Great Depression 2.0, but we don't know yet. Now, if you've read our many posts with the Global Financial Stupidity Topic Key, you know that Peak Stupidity has expected the SHTF economically for quite some time. It is inevitable, but we wonder here if this Panic-fest has been the trigger for an early arrival of said depression.
We will pivot from the general COVID nonsense, riots of blacks and Communists, and movies for a bit toward the old subject of Feminism. There is the Kung Flu connection in this one still. An outfit, I think just a website really, called "The 19th", obviously named after one of our many least favorite Constitutional Amendments*, is specifically worried about this "recession"'s effect on woman.
Per "The 19th", we are in America’s first female recession. After reading the article, I can't help but wonder if this could have been lifted from The Babylon Bee or somewhere. It's not LOL funny like the BB posts, but it lays out everything that is wrong with women in the workplace and the feminist perspective regarding working women/women working, but just as if the writer is intensely serious about this. Hell, I think she is!
It was weighing on her — the prospect of starting a dream job in the middle of a pandemic, alone, her husband away 100 hours of the week helping fight COVID-19 inside a hospital infected by it. Her two boys were at home, without a teacher, with assignments, walking in on her work calls, interrupting her, passing her sticky notes, requesting — no, demanding — her attention every hour they were awake.First off, yeah, well, I mean...
“If you come in, I will lose my job,” she told her 6-year-old in desperation, trying to keep him away.
Her husband was the hero. He was saving lives. She was the terrible mom — “the worst mom ever,” her sons told her — and the terrible worker.
If this woman's husband is working 100 hours weekly right now as one of those healthcare HEROES we discussed, she shouldn't need to work for money right now. She damn well OUGHT TO be staying home with the kids. It sounds like they like the attention they are finally getting from their own Mom rather than from the Day Care attendants/babysitters. Is that not a positive thing for her?
What the hell kind of Mom is she? Her husband is working 100 hours weekly, so doesn't have the time, while the kids are bored shitless when this Mom could have assigned them some homeschooling work. If Mrs. Ellu Nasser (got her name on the 3rd paragraph) is a business hotshot, then doing a little work to set up a small program with a schedule ought not to be hard for her.
In three months, Ellu Nasser watched as her white-knuckled grip on the labor force slackened. She drank more, ]there ya' go, Mom, that'll do it!] before giving it up altogether in March. She told the dream job at a major consulting firm that her family responsibilities would get in the way of her work performance, so she couldn’t begin June 1, their agreed start date. She slinked back to the part-time gig she had consulting on climate change. And then in June, she gave that up, too.Hahaaa! The part-time Climate Change job was it? I didn't know one could work part-time on preventing the climate from changing. It sounds like a full-time job requiring 100 hours a week by a full TEAM of guys. Does a part time gig on "the climate" pay any better than stocking shelves at Target?
I wish I could say that this consulting firm of whatever sort would hire a man who is trying to feed a family, not avoid his family, since Mrs Nasser declined the position. However, I'd guess another man, especially a white man, still does not have a chance in hell. Maybe even an ordinary single white women wouldn't, as the name Nasser makes me figure that was what clinched it in the first place.
For exactly one day, the relief was overwhelming. Then, worry.It sounds like Mrs. Nasser's work is more important than her children. What kind of women is she? Being a stay-at-home Mom, as in real mother to her kids was "collateral damage", she says. How sick this Western World is becoming!
“I kept wondering, ‘How long will the personal choices I made around COVID-19 hurt me permanently?’” said Nasser, 42. “I would like to be working for 25 more years. That’s a joy for me. My work is not separate from who I am as a person.”
Nasser was a stay-at-home mom for the first time in her life. She was collateral damage in what has become America’s first female recession.
I'd saved this article in a tab over a month ago, and, upon reading it again, this one gets me so angry at the feminists and feminism that I will have to continue in a Part 2. No, this sick article by one Chabeli Carrazana, Economics Editor, is no spoof. To me this article is a treatise on the evils of feminism. There is a lot more to this article, so I will continue this fisking** in earnest very soon.
* See also Part 2 and Part 3.
** If you're not familiar with this ancient-blogging-era term, check out A Visual Fisking of Cortez the Killer for some background.
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Aloha Steve and Danno
Posted On: Monday - September 7th 2020 7:29PM MST
In Topics: Music TV, aka Gov't Media
It's a song from a band I'd never heard of before, Radio Birdman, till a silly exchange of comments on unz yesterday. It's a punk band from the mid/late 1970s from Victoria, Australia.
Hawaii-5-0 was a TV show on for a span of 12 years, 1968 to 1980, about a fictional State law enforcement agency of Hawaii. The star characters, Mr. Steve McGarrett and Danno Williams have been mentioned before on Peak Stupidity here and here (the latter with a nice "Book 'em, Danno" moment). Yeah, I've seen my share of the 5-0.
The show also had a great intro./theme song, which was very common in the 1970s - they really worked on that back then. This one was a trumpet instrumental with good drums composed by one Morton Stevens, played during the great scenes of Hawaii that included the big breaking wave. However, the real guitar/surf-music sound version was recorded by the well-known band The Ventures. A video with their version (really a combination) is here.*
Because of this song, with Hawaii and Australia being arguably being the twin surf capitals of the world - don't argue with me, argue with a surfer - Radio Birdman because of this song became somewhat of a cult-band for surfers, long after they quit playing.
How the Radio Birdmen were able to receive the TV-show Hawaii 5-0 down-under in the first place was the "miracle" of network TV, way before the internet. This was a punk band, which very often means they have a good sound with a fast rhythm, but not really a good melody. I hate to say it, because I like this one, but that's the case here. As for the old video footage, as much as I'd rather see/listen to Radio Birdman than Madonna, most would agree that Madonna has the better choreography as far as the dance routine. Who cares?
In this case, though Peak Stupidity still maintains (see What makes a good song) that, IN GENERAL, the lyrics to a song are the last thing that matters,other than choreography in the video, the lyrics here do make the song. That is, if you are a fan of the 5-0. I first thought these guys were being ironic with it, but from what I read, they really liked the show. The guitarist played the show theme song in his solos, extended it just a bit, and did a great job. The lyrics at the end go on with "Book 'em, murder one."
I'm not a big punk fan, but Aloha, Steve and Danno is just a cool song from an era with lots of cool things still going on. They had a cool name too. As we've heard from commenters Adam Smith and Mr. Anon recently (here and here), Victoria, Australia is now ground-zero of the Kung Flu Panic-fest 2.0 face mask Totalitarianism... along with the rest of the extremely un-cool PC bullshit that goes on all over the Western world.
Take back, Lady Gaga, take back COVID-19!...
Give 'em all some place to go ...**
Got to get a line to Danno.
Got to pick up his gun.
Get out an APB.
Chinn is going to tell you why.
Government says it's high priority.
Washington say's so too.
Tell him to get here fast.
50's on the move.
[Chorus]
Steve I gotta say Thank You,
For all you've done for me.
The nights are dark and lonely,
When you're not on TV.
There's an agent in the field.
I want to have him tailed.
He's staying at the Hilton.
He should be staying in Jail.
He's working for the KGB,
And here's his dossier.
The Feds won't be happy,
If this guy gets away.
[Chorus]
Don't talk about espionage.
Hands on a bale of White.
Steve is one cool guy.
Danno's gonna tell you why.
Steve and Danno, they made the scene.
The agent had done his deed.
They saw the stiff, They saw the gun.
They said "Book him, Danno, murder one!"
[Chorus]
Book him, Danno, murder one!
Radio Birdman was:
Rob Younger – lead vocals
Deniz Tek – guitar, backing vocals
Chris Masuak – guitar, backing vocals
Warwick Gilbert – bass
Ron Keeley – drums
Pip Hoyle – organ, piano
* The confusing part in the youtube clip linked to is that "Music Composed and Conducted by Richard Shores" at the ending credits. I believe that means other songs in that particular episode or the show in general(?).
** Shades of Tom Petty - You're Jammin' Me.
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Scene from the Kung Flu Summer re-Panic - Part 12
Posted On: Monday - September 7th 2020 12:29PM MST
In Topics: Humor Peak Stupidity Roadshow Kung Flu Stupidity
This is a 3-in-1 post for this ongoing series, as none of the segments is worthy of a whole post. They do all fit in with the road trip we just got back from.
I like the back roads when their reasonably fast and straighten out the route that the interstate would take us. We had to slow down for this one particular town, maybe officially a city, but barely. It has a really nice downtown, well the residential part, at least, with those big houses kept up nicely (lot of those seem to be lawyers' or real estate offices though now). They had us down to 25 mph, meaning 30-35 is fine. (I can't drive... 25!) That is due to the place being too small to have any dedicated traffic cop.
This big electronic sign at a church no less, just doing its part for this world, told us that masks must be worn within the town/city limits. That don't concern me none*, as we moseyed through in our vehicle. I am pretty sure, too, that the laws like this, whether State, city, or county, specify the requirement to apply to establishments of business, etc., not just being outside walking down the sidewalk or on one's lawn. (Perhaps readers could comment in on that.)
The USSA is not like Mao-era China or Soviet Russia. Here, the totalitarianism gets everywhere, including small towns. We are nothing if not organized.
Secondly, what do I see a block later on the other side but 2 people, just 2 people outside at some type of lawn antique sale or what-not, both wearing masks while ~ 8ft. apart. Are they scared of THE LAW or scared of the Kung Flu? I dunno. There was no reason to stop for us except well out of town at the gas station we make a pit stop at each time. "Masks on", per my wife. Let me tell you, that was not a bad idea at all, as the bathrooms stank to high heaven! I think mine did filter out the biggest of the stink molecules (some of them are apparently very big, with high Octane ratings.)
Lastly, as we drove on a stretch that was not interstate, limited-access, but pretty fast 4-lane highway, a jeep passed us. It was one of the original style ones with all the glass/plastic but the windshield off or rolled up. The man driving had no face mask, but the young woman with him did. They had to be doing 75 mph or so, and the road was pretty wide open - no COVID germies flying out the exhaust of the previous vehicle could get 'em.
This is more of a Peak Stupidity Roadshow topic for another post, but this driver was one of the passing-lane hogs, missing the concept of how the 4- or higher lane is supposed to work. That was fine on this day, but once the road opened up more, I felt the need for speed kick in. We were back up to where we went beside the jeep to their right. Now, I don't know, can one see through the windows of modern vehicles much, especially the back**, but I may have shaken my head involuntarily upon their passing us the first time, and could they have read my 9 y/o's lips as he said "seriously?" after seeing the mask?
All I know is that the mask was off the lady now. Maybe they had entered a non-COVID zone, per an app of some sort. Could it have really been that some locations require mask-wearing, and the lady was Miss Super-compliant? Gotta make it to the county line. Seriously? Hopefully, she just saw people around her hauling ass down the road too, no less, not wearing them, and common-sense entered her mind again. Or, the boy-friend was just plain embarrassed.
Site note: All of the posts in this series and a bunch of others have the Healthcare Stupidity Topic Key attached. I could have made up a specific "Kung Flu" key, but if you've looked, you may have noted that the keys are pretty general. (Yes, we need a search function badly!)
Firstly, I do want them to be more general, rather than have many hundreds, but I really didn't expect this COVID nonsense to go on for this long. I wonder whether this will be like 9/11, in which the government fall-out will be with us forever. As with the TSA, the CDC will be affecting us personally for 20 years, or till the nation is done, whichever comes first - I know where I'd put my money. This was discussed in COVID / TSA twin peaks of stupidity .
* Hat tip, George Thorogood's landlady.
** There are 3 factors, even the normal glass is tinted more than in the past, the windows (hence, visibility) are quite a bit smaller, and there is more curvature. The latter factor goes back a long way though.
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My 3 cents
Posted On: Friday - September 4th 2020 7:20PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Curmudgeonry Economics Kung Flu Stupidity
We couldn't have found a better title to pick for this post. It was a softball right over the plate. See, we at Peak Stupidity usually spend a lot of time on this sort of thing, explaining why the software is still on Rev 0.1.
I looked at the bank statement today. Luckily there were no bogus charges, ones I've had to cancel a debit card for, as there have been more of them lately. Nah, it was just this odd 3¢ deposit. Whaaa? It was on the same day, hence the same time, when I had cashed some small checks while I was there.* The line of text was clear enough though: "Change left from member". ("By member" seems like better English to me, but what do I know? I'm no banker.)
I know exactly what happened. I just don't carry pennies anymore. If I get any in change, I leave 'em. That could be in the trays and such like the example up top. If there's absolutely nowhere to put them, I'll throw them in the bushes. I always like to think that a little kid might be excited about finding them, so long as he's young enough to never have heard of the Federal Reserve. Normally there's some place to leave a few pennies, even if just on the counter.
The problem I've run into is that the cashiers will often grab them and put them back in the till. I don't bother to argue anymore, but my point is to leave them for someone who wants to use them to avoid getting any pennies back. So, I'll slide them to where the cashier can't reach them... only tryin' to help, Ma'am.
That's what happened, but the teller spent the effort to put these back in my account. First of all, sure, that's very nice, I guess. Additionally, it being a bank, the employees are required to be very fastidious, so the numbers come out right. That probably was the point, but someone could have thrown them in the trash. Then the numbers would be right to the penny again. They've got to know I'm not gonna do a uey** after driving a mile away, put a face mask back on, and come back in to get the 3¢.
It's that face mask part I just mentioned that makes me wonder if this was yet another artifact of the Kung Flu Panic-Fest (Season 2!). We can't have another customer touching those pennies, so put on some gloves, spray the pennies down, wipe them good, then very carefully, let's get them into the cash drawer. Whewww! Virus narrowly averted!
* Our healthcare plan company sends roughly 5 to 15 dollar checks of odd amounts almost bi-weekly, even with no trips to the doctor, thankfully, for which I could see some sort of odd rebate at least. I don't know, I don't want to know, I have better things to do then pore through their paperwork, and I'm sure they come out very well on whatever's going on.
** I could not think of how that could possibly be spelled. Thanks, wiki!
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Lesbians at the coffee house
Posted On: Friday - September 4th 2020 7:26AM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Humor
A long time ago, a guy in a local country music band told the audience he that he felt like a "lesbian trapped inside a man's body". At the time, I thought that joke was the funniest thing ever. (It's still up there near the top.)
In our movie review of Rocketman in the previous post we had some criticism of the blatant homosexual scenes in the movie. This hilarious video is one I came across in the unz.com comments (what's new?) a while ago, but now is the time for it.
I'd never heard of MadTV, but then I don't know what goes on on TV anymore. These guys took that joke and made it into one of the funniest skits I've ever seen.
PS: This and the previous posts are really not about "genderbending", though we have that topic key attached. Elton John never claimed to be anything but a man. He was often pretty close to a tranny is the old sense of the word, as in "Transexual Transylvania", which, BTW, is another musical, but the viewing of, viewers of, and movie itself, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, are so weird that it's really in its own genre. "Movies in which you dress as characters, yell back at the screen, sing along, and throw foodstuffs at the screen at appropriate moments" is just too long. Anyone? Bueller?
We just don't have all the topic keys for everything so have been labelling some posts with keys that don't apply exactly. It may be time to add 5 or 10 more all at once, but it would require going through almost 1,600 posts to see what applies. Ugghhhh!
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Rocketman
Posted On: Thursday - September 3rd 2020 7:45PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Music Movies
This is the 3rd of the 2 1/2 movie reviews I intended to write way back after our vacation trip flight. I watched the whole movie, if that's important to you, this being a review and all...
Elton John* was not only one of the best pop music artists of all time, but, with his band, he was close to being one of the best rock artists too. The 1970s were a great time for music, well up into Disco put the kibosh on all that around late '77. Thanks a lot, Brothers Gibb!
You would expect anyone who likes Elton John and his band that much to enjoy the movie Rocketman. It just doesn't work that way anymore, I guess. Everyone has to get creative and shit...
That's actually the same way it used to work when there were things called record albums (or tapes, or CD's even). A band like Fleetwood Mac would have 2 or 3 great albums with not a bad song on the one of them. The concerts would sell out (it helped that the price was $9.50 vs, I dunno, $950?), they'd be on the cover of the Rolling Stone, all that, but then they'd have to go and "get creative". "We are tired of that same formula we've been playing..." [It was called great melodies, good musicians, a tight band, you know, that sort of thing.) "... so we're going in a new direction." "OK, well, there are a hundred other great rock bands around, as this is then 1970s, so See Ya!"
This Elton John movie is very recent, from 2019, and I'd even considered taking my son to it at a small theater. The Kung Flu changed the plan there, but, let me tell you, that was just as well. I'll get to this part a little later.
OK, here's the main problem: This movie didn't have to be a documentary, as Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice. was close to being. That could get boring. Of course, you want the best of his music in there - they had a full 2 hours - so you could have some special narratives of the artist's life, rather than the whole story, with concert footage and such.
No, this album was a freakin' Musical! Wait, you say, of course it's a musical, it's about a musician and you just wrote you wanted to hear the music. No, no, no, this was a musical as in the genre "musicals" (at least the first half was) that included My Fair Lady, Singing in the Rain, West Side Story, The Sound of Music**, Oliver Twist and The Wizard of Oz. I don't like the whole genre. Here's the deal, see, you've got a story going on, but it gets interrupted every 10 minutes by a 3 to 5 minute song. Who does that?! Uhh, the makers of musicals, I guess, but no, I definitely did not expect this movie about Elton John to be a musical in that sense.
The songs that were inserted, as per a musical, were not in order of the story of Elton John either. That alone threw me for a loop. It was the various actors playing the younger Elton John, as a kid, a teenager, whatever, singing or lipsynching the songs. Naaah, that's not what I paid my ticket for. I'd have much rather seen a good musician who looks like Elton John and can sing his songs similarly do it. They can find guys like that.***
Rocketman was a little too much VH1-Behind the Music-like to me. If you can recall, that show documented the lives and music of mostly recently-deceased young artists (drug O.D., helicopter crash, etc.) They had the same formula for each artist or band. After a rocket ride to the Billboard top 10, he (or they) had some bad times with the drugs, with the sex (huh??), and with the rock-and-roll, but he was JUST coming out of it and turning his life around when... cue the ending of Detroit, Rock City. This movie showed all the problems that Elton John had with his life much more than the good times that maybe he's forgotten. Tell me that guy up on stage with the crazy suits and 1,000 pairs of glasses wasn't having a good time out there jumping around the piano! If it was all an act, then, Elton, why didn't you write a Bob-Seger-like number about how bad it sucks to be a famous rock star out on the road?
Lastly, a problem with this movie is the focus of Elton John's being gay for most of 2nd half of the movie. Yes, he was gay, he didn't really mean his lyrics in Grow Some Funk of Your Own, and so on. It was a big deal in his life, though, luckily for the audience of the 1970s, it was just not made into that big a deal****.
There are damn-near sex scenes in this movie. They pretty much are, but for whatever rating it's got, I guess. This is why I'm glad we didn't go to the movie together earlier this year. On the airplane flight, as my son sat next to me watching Angry Birds 2, I had to stop/skip the movie when these scenes were on. It was worrisome, and even without him there, I sure didn't want to see that.
There was plenty of room to tell Elton John's story, along with giving credit to his long-term lyrics-writer Bernie Taupin. There is a bunch of family background stuff, if you want to know that. It's not all bad.
In summary, Rocketman was not an uplifting movie, it did not showcase nearly enough of Elton John's really best music, and the creative format was stupid. I am not a professional movie reviewer, so I ask the readership to excuse the lack of writing about the cinematography, the lighting, and the casting, because I honestly don't give a rat's ass about all that.
This movie could have been much better with all the great music and showmanship it had to work with. If you are a big Elton John fan, maybe you feel like you have to go see Rocketman, but you may be sorry you did.
Here's just a sample of some of the great stuff from Elton John and his band (Davey Johnstone on guitar, Dee Murray on bass, and Nigel Ollson on drums):
(The band really only kicks in at 2:30.)
* His real name is Reginald Dwight, but we'll stick with his music name in this post.
** While discussing this point, a friend told me that this one, The Sound of Music was better in that the music was the story. I haven't seen it, but my parent's had the album.
*** There's a recent musician-story movie done like this, that I can't pull out of my memory for the life of me.
**** Maybe in the tabloids and all it was a big deal. Everything is a big deal in them. Mr. John, or Reggie Dwight was flamboyant as all hell, but he didn't make his homosexuality a political thing to gain audience, as I think was the deal with The Indigo Girls. Well, it wouldn't have worked. People didn't want to know anymore, so long as he wouldn't "get creative".
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Fun with blacks and LEOs in Gwinnette County, Georgia
Posted On: Wednesday - September 2nd 2020 7:23PM MST
In Topics: Liberty/Libertarianism Race/Genetics
The blogger Paul Kersey* has written a lot about the racial demographics of Atlanta, Georgia over the years. From reading him, one thing that sticks in my mind is, for some of the multiple (something like 10!) counties that make up the metro Atlanta area, the ratio of black people to white can change drastically in a couple of decades. (That would be toward a higher number.)
Gwinnett County, to the northeast**, is one, and let me just paste in this bit from wiki:
Gwinnett County is often cited as one of the counties in the US that has demographically changed the most rapidly. As recently as 1990, over 90% of Gwinnett County's population was white. By 2007, the county was considered majority-minority.[My bolding - wiki wouldn't be so bold as to bold it.]
As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 927,781 people, 283,256 households, and 203,238 families residing in the county. The population density was 1,871.2 inhabitants per square mile (722.5/km2). There were 312,896 housing units at an average density of 677.4 per square mile (261.5/km2). The racial makeup of the county was 47.4% White, 28.5% black or African American, 18.8% Asian, 0.8% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 4.4% from other races.
Keep this in mind as you watch the video below. This is straight from Steve Sailer's recent post Georgia Cop Fired for Violating America's Newest Constitutional Right, with it's quick snark by the writer and good discussion, as usual, in the comments. This is not to be a George Floyd or Jacob Blake riot-causing story, as there was no shooting, just a lady getting tased twice, coming out none the worse for the wear and tear... It is true that black people have built up herd immunity to the taser?***
Let me say here that Peak Stupidity, being Libertarian in disposition is not a proponent of the "LEO's" and their "going home safe" to be an excuse for criminal acts that would put other people in jail for life. The point I make, with the hard-core sovereign men, Constitutionalists out to truly defend our rights, etc. excepted for now, is that interactions with decent cops mostly stay decent if both parties treat each other like human beings from the start. Here is one out of the two anecdotes in our post "First Responders!" - The Cops
More than 25 years back, in the big city, I got "pulled over" in current parlance, while walking to the mailbox (one of the rapidly disappearing big blue boxes on street corners) late at night. Keep in mind, though in the city, this was a neighborhood with houses and max. two-story apartments, so there wasn't anybody much around. This cop was walking, at least for a stretch, as he didn't pull up in the car. Already, that was a more decent situation than having the bright lights flashing in my eyes. When the guy asked, I told him, "No, I don't have an ID", as I tried to stand up for liberty even in my younger days. Actually, I didn't used to carry anything but my keys and some cash back then, so very likely I didn't have a driver's license on "my person".When you view the video (you're gonna want to skip some of the boring parts) note that the cop that later got fired here did a good job at least trying to act like a decent human being, to the very lucid and reasonable black lady with the complaint in the beginning and initially with the subsequently-tased-and-arrested woman (I can't use the word "lady" for the latter). The cop at first didn't have enough evidence to go anywhere with the complaint (about damage to the first lady's car). It'd have been easier for him, and he'd still have a job afterwards, if he just kept blowing off this complaint. Maybe it could get passed along, or the complainant may have given up. (Hell, they didn't want to do squat-all when I got a car stolen right next to my place.)
I talked in a friendly manner to the guy because he did not come off like the guys in the pic above, as a threat to me, that is. I had been causing no trouble to anybody, but the guy just told me he thought I might be up no good, in particular burglary. Why? Because I was grimy with dirty, greasy clothes and dirty hands from working on the car.* "Where are you going?" "To mail this letter." I had it in my hands, as the letter would get even greasier if I tried to stuff it in a pocket. "Oh, OK, so you live around here?" "Yeah", and I showed him the return address. It made sense, so "Sorry, see you later." "Yeah, no problem." The guy was doing his job, but what made this a decent encounter with a cop was that he started off treating me like a human being, not a "PERP!", and I treated him like a human being.
However, I give the cop credit for following up. He really did start off very much in a decent manner with the 3 women on the porch, with another "camerawoman" nearby, that he (based on video evidence) suspected of being the culprits. The idea is that if the women don't want to talk to him in his investigation, they can be arrested as they are suspects. Now, I could see myself starting out with "get off my lawn" and so forth too. I could see myself questioning the legal aspect of what's going on, with not much luck, as I am no legal expert (everyone ought to know more). Once the story was clear, though, I'd be reasonable in my interaction. If you are a guilty serial-killer suspect, well you may rightly have different plans to end this, but this was about keying a car or something.
The problem here was that these women just kept ranting and raving and simply would neither listen nor shut up. Is that the time to just leave it be? I'm no "LEO", so I don't know the rules. I will say that at some point the job has got to be done. Again, this cop was working for the complainant, the lady in the beginning. If the job is EVER going to get done, then you can't leave these people alone forever. Maybe the guy should have gotten his partner first to try to handle the woman, rather than using the taser, but otherwise, it's like Steve Sailer writes: Black people seem to want the right to be able to decide whether to get arrested or not. (Of course, they could just all calm down and be less criminal, but that's a whole 'nother story.)
Here are a few points from the video:
- As an unz commenter noted too, it's funny that the cop asked the boy (complainant's kid) if he wanted to sit in the cop car. Yeah, he may very well, someday...
- At that time, the cop, just trying to be a friend told the kid "yeah, it's a great job" or something like that. Really? In today's Gwinnette County, I think he was fibbing a bit to be friendly.
- The women on or off the porch while the trouble was going on kep yelling "I'm calling the cops!" What do you call that, recursive?
- These are nice, fairly new houses. There are probably mostly good black people there, but it only takes a few bad ones to make it a bad neighborhood anyway. You can't blame all this behavior on "the ghetto".
- Even the calmer of the women just keep yapping, so the whole business takes 10 times longer than with someone calmer who will either call a lawyer, just answer some questions like a human being (not always best if one's guilty, and even otherwise), or get hauled in without 1 hours and 40 minutes going by for the whole shebang, per the body-cam on-screen clock. That last is a MINIMUM, as I don't know if the thing was turned off at any point.
This whole bit of police work went on from broad daylight to full nightfall. Is that what the taxpayers want to pay for? It's so much drama with these people. There's something to be said for defunding the police, per neighborhood request.
* Not his real name, for damn good reasons. The handle is taken from the main character, played by Charles Bronson. in the old series of Death Wish movies.
** Just as with lots of exurbs, the biggest town there, Lawrenceville was a completely separate town in the recent past, with country in between it an Atlants. Exurbs are exurbs because of white flight from the suburbs... don't worry, this is all good news ... for the real estate agents and mortgage brokers.
*** Full disclosure: I didn't develop that joke from scratch. Commenter Rob McX on a different iSteve thread theorized "It seems blacks have evolved to be taser-proof."
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I had a Dream!
Posted On: Wednesday - September 2nd 2020 1:49PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor
No, this one is not some grandiose dream about people living in harmony and being judged by the contents of their characters by a Commie philandering race hustler. Plus, hopefully I won't get shot for writing about it by the Deep State or somebody...
(This is the closest file photo I could get to the scene in my head.)
We don't remember but a small percentage of our dreams, because it's only when we wake up right after that we remember at all. Even then, for me at least, the story and scenes will be gone from my head by later in the day, unlike the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior's one, unless I make a special effort to hold onto them. Sometimes, I'm left with one scene in my head, and only for a few days. This dream was not even anything very weird, interesting, or foreboding - it's probably nothing but an indication that I follow politics too much. Hey, if it's good for a blog post, what the hell.
I was at an outdoor concert with just a small crowd. It was nowhere that I recognized, and then I realized that I was in Ireland and these were Irish people standing around watching and listening. (I'd attended a small outdoor concert in Ireland long ago, from which I still have the free T-shirt somebody was tossing to the crowd. That explains the venue in the dream, I guess.) While we were waiting for the music to begin, one of the band members, the leader I guess, call him Bono, was calling out to the audience to get them excited about the show.
" ... and thanks to the Turks for coming here today!" WTF? The audience hushed up completely. "WTF?" was exactly what they were thinking. "Are there a lot of Turks in Ireland, what are they doing here, and why is this guy calling out to them rather than his Irish audience?" was what I was thinking. I looked around and then saw a few dark guys that I guess were the Turks in question. This small venue was the perfect place to be heard by this arrogant lefty rock-and-roller, and I waited for SOMEONE in the crowd to yell "Shut up and sing, asshole!" Though they were dumbfounded and some of them pissed, no one yelled out a thing, and I looked around at the huge stadium (you know how dreams morph a lot) and woke up before I personally could yell "Shut up and sing, asshole!" Isn't that just frustrating when you wake up before the dream should be done?
I'm assuming this was Bono and U2, so I'd at least like to have heard the long version of Bad* before I awoke.
Any Sigmund Freud acolytes in this Peak Stupidity audience? It's a small venue, so feel free to give your learned opinion on what this all means. Potty training problems when I was a child maybe? My parents playing too much classical music instead of Zeppelin and Cheap Trick? Resentful of my Father regarding my mother's ...
... forbidding me to partake of our psychedelic mushrooms until puberty?
* See Bono, you'd be serving up
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6% dying from Kung Flu alone - Vindication, bitchez!
Posted On: Tuesday - September 1st 2020 7:11PM MST
In Topics: US Feral Government Healthcare Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
(Pic above is from a PJ media article - Instapundit's stomping ground. I'll read them over the Lyin' Press any day.)
"I heard it from a friend who, heard it from a a friend who, read it on Trump's tweet you were messing around ... with the numbers." Even if you are an REO Speedwagon fan, I suppose that was pretty lame. The middle friend was missing, but that's the deal - I don't read tweets, even very important ones from the President, as I don't want to encourage him doing that shit. However, this is a real vindication of what your Peak Stupidities, your Hail To You's, and the rest of, well, anyone on the internet with any perspective whatsoever.
I don't need to show President Trump's tweet directly, as this info. is indeed right on a CDC web page of cause of death statistics, as my friend pointed out.
Comorbidities[My bolding, except for the heading.] Now, in the charts contained therein, you can't sum up all the causes of death on that page to subtract from those listed as COVID deaths, as the site tells you, so I'm glad they spelled it out like this. Actually, I'm quite amazed the CDC spelled it out like this.
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.
That's WAY WAY lower than even Mr. Hail's reasonable 50% guess of how many deaths have been FROM the Kung Flu vs. WITH the Kung Flu. Now, granted, maybe some of these co-morbidities would have resulted in a number of years left for the patient minus the COVID-19 virus. However, it's a pretty good low estimate. That 6% is the deaths that can definitely be chalked up to this virus. At the peak week of this purported Black Plague 2.0 in mid/late April of this year, here are the numbers for known COVID-only deaths vs. the original rectally-extracted ones.
(Ahaa, I just did the arithmetic in my head. My graph-reading was pretty good. There is simply a .06 ratio from the original death count to the (now) middle column.)
Now let me discuss the co-morbidity thing for a bit. It's not like the COVID-19 virus couldn't be a big factor in many of those other 94%. It's just that, for lots of them, the older patients especially, who ARE lots of them, combined problems can go wrong quickly.
If you've dealt with an older family member or friend in the hospital for serious illness (not the same as with young people hurt in a car wreck), you may know how this goes. This one condition requires this treatment, but we can't do that until he gets his XYZ readings up. For that, we will prescribe drug ABC, which does have a worsening effect on this OTHER condition. Additionally, the same drug, that he really needs to take, has a side effect causing this OTHER problem, which hopefully will not be bad enough to stop us from doing that original treatment we were going to do ... It gets pretty sad and/or scary, as things as up in the fashion of a puzzle. Solving the puzzle is the way to get through it all, until something else crops up next month. I hope all you readers can somehow avoid this, but ... as opposed to what, right?
After all that, for some months, if the patient doesn't make it home, then the cause of death must be logged. What was it, exactly? Note that 2.6 average co-conditions. But, we need a code or two, and "old age" is not one of them.
Peak Stupidity has written about the big incentives to log deaths as due to COVID-19. These are on the doctors' side, from money and pressure to conform to the narrative to keep the scare going (also meaning more money coming in) and on the patient/billing side - no copays and deductibles make it a better deal for all involved. See Kung Flu Mission Creep + Goosing the Numbers and Are Kung Flu death counts being goosed for insurance reasons?. This latest information is proof these incentives are working.
It's too late to walk all this LOCKDOWN, business/school/university/Bread&Circus closure back now, high government experts! What's the plan? I don't have one, but for starters, I'd like to see an apology to the whole country by Dr. Fauci on his knees. President Trump has got this one right. Vindicated, Bitchez!
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