The Gnu Gnomes of Zurich


Posted On: Saturday - March 25th 2023 1:12PM MST
In Topics: 
  Genderbenders  Humor  Global Financial Stupidity  Economics  Big-Biz Stupidity



It was at least 15 years ago when I read a book that was just called Money, I'm pretty sure, but maybe with a subtitle. This interesting book had a chapter about some of the big financial dealings that have been going on for centuries in Switzerland, a country known for chocolate, clocks, precision machinery, neutrality, and big Finance (the latter 2 of which may clash on occasion.) That chapter in the book about money was called "The Gnomes of Zurich".

I didn't figure they are real gnomes, because I guess there's gno such thing*. However, one can picture these guys in little caves in the mountains, deciding the fates of many with their Big Finance wheeling and dealing. I'd figured they're kind of like elves, but without the free-spending ways of, say, Santa's ones.



If you've been keeping up with the latest banking crisis, with more to come, there's commentary about whether focusing on the DIE initiatives may have just slightly distracted the big cheeses at Silicon Valley Bank and others from concentrating on the actual point of their business, screwing over the little guy , errr, coming out ahead from the borrowing and lending of money. Well, the house of cards is all coming down anyway, as Peak Stupidity has been maintaining for 6 1/2 years. It's interesting to see what/who is important to these Big Biz fools though.

Gnomes, Bitchez!!



There's this big global investment firm that's been around for 167 years called Credit Suisse. They've been having problems lately too. Besides the silver and gold bars that are minted by these money-men, I don't know too much this outfit. However, knowing of their being headquartered right there in Zurich, Switzerland, I picture some of those Gnomes of Zurich employed at the place, per my imagination and that one book, gnome sayin'?

Regarding the travails of Credit Suisse, Steve Sailer posted a hilariously titled post a few days back regarding one of this company's head honchos, Don't Worry: Credit Suisse Is in Strong, Exquisitely-Manicured Hands. What he and John Derbyshire** also (partly) were commenting about was one high-level manager named Pips Bunch. "Pips Bunce is Head of Global Markets Technology Core Engineering Strategic Programs at Credit Suisse."***

The thing about Pips is that he is gender-fluid. He is a she part of the time, likely based on odd/even days of the week.

I’d always pictured gnomes as looking a lot … well not like this at all!



That is Pippa Pig Bunce, Credit Suiesse's CRO. In this case, CRO doesn't stand for Chief Risk Officer, as one might think. It just sounds the same to our non-German-speaking ears, but Peppa Bunce, looking here more like a gnu than a gnome, is the Chief Risqué Officer.

Thank you, thank you! We'll be here all week. Oops, that's till now, so look for more Stupidity goodness next, week, still at a sporadic level for now. Enjoy the Spring.


* There are real gnus, aka wildebeests, however. I do not refer to the good open-source software people in the title though.

** The writer John Derbyshire used to work at the very place, not as a gnome, but as a geek. and, no, they are not exactly the same thing. He posted his thoughts on the DIE banking programs in As A Former Credit Suisse Risk Management Shlub, I Ask: Is DEI Bringing Down the Banking System?

*** There is zero engineering going on there, so they ought to drop the use of the word - one of my pet peeves.



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Merrick Garland - The Potomac Regime's Lavrentiy Beria


Posted On: Saturday - March 25th 2023 6:24AM MST
In Topics: 
  Commies  US Police State  US Feral Government  Totalitarianism



I want to thank commenter E.H. Hail for clueing me in on the recent story of yet more Americans being taken Political Prisoner by the Potomac Regime for the events of 1/6/21. I saw the number 2,500 - to be reached - in a search result blurb by The NY Times, but I will not click on the old defunct "newspaper of record". The Gateway Pundit keeps up with this, and it's been I being remiss about checking there daily. His latest post is TUCKER Shows MSNBC Video of Trump Supporters on Jan 6 Throwing Things at Capitol Police – They Were Doing This Because Police Were Killing Rosanne Boyland. Rosanne Boyland was one of 4 Americans known to have been murdered that day by Regime police. Peak Stupidity has only concentrated on the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by Capitol cop Michael Leroy Bird, as that was the most clear-cut murder.

The guy in charge of Federal prosecutions is the head of the Department of Justice, the Attorney General. Zhou Bai Dien appointed SCROTUS-wannabe Merrick Garland to this position officially on Jan 20th of '21, but the news of this selection came out 2 weeks earlier, on Jan 6th. How timely!

I waded through the wiki file on this guy for "just the facts, Ma'am censors". Here's my quick take from that:

Merrick Garland has spent a long career in the Federal legal system. (I'm not gonna label it "justice".) He was mentored and employed by various high-up justices, most of them left-leaning. He'd get his better jobs when the Democrat party had the power to employ him, and sometimes go back to corporate litigation** or academia (at his Alma Mater, Harvard) during the years when he was not on the Feral payroll.

As a prosecutor,. Garland got involved heavily in the Oklahoma City bombing case, and whatever else was considered "domestic terrorism" (Yes, that does fit the OK City deal, but who the real terrorists are is still an open question.) Though normally completely opposed to the death penalty, Garland was instrumental in seeking the death penalty for Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Was he told to put that one to bed?

As a judge, Garland has tended to side with the Feral Government when it comes to regulation (siding with government agencies) and when it comes to "National Security". He likes the 1st Amendment but not so much the 2nd.

The long ratcheting-upward career of Merrick Garland kept slipping when it came to the grand prize, appointment to a position as a Supreme Court judge. In '09 President Øb☭ma had him as one of 9 finalists to replace David Souter, but wise Latina Sonia Sotomayor got the job. During the next year, Judge John Paul Stevens retired, but, though Republican cuckolds like Orrin Hatch supported Garland even, Øb☭ma appointed Elena Keegan. By this point, one might well have wondered exactly what Merrick Garland thought of Affirmative Action. Suck it up, cupcake!

That's not all, as far as Garland's tough time clawing and scratching for SCROTUS. When Judge Antonin Scalia died under somewhat mysterious conditions, BTW, in Feb of '16, Øb☭ma nominated Garland (first out of 3 lame-ass picks) for the job. Finally! Well, except Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a rare moment out of his shell, went along with other Republicans who had already stated that that they would not consider any nominee put forth by Øb☭ma, and that a Supreme Court nomination should be left to the next president of the United States.

Under McConnell, the Senate's Republican majority refused to consider Garland's nomination, holding "no hearings, no votes, no action whatsoever" on the nomination. Per Wiki's political scientists and legal scholars, this was "unprecedented". It's called playing hardball. The GOP ought to play that more often.***

Poor, poor, Merrick Garland. They stole his dreams and paid him with regret the position of Attorney General. It may have been better, with less regret, for Americans if this guy had gotten onto the SCROTUS. He wouldn't have nearly the power he now has.

Was he appointed due to his expertise, so to speak, in dealing with "domestic terrorists"? Bai Dein's, or whoever's, decision could very well have been made right on that day, 1/6/21. He is ultimately responsible for the taking of simple protestors, trespassers, and at the worst, rioters, as Political Prisoners for years now without trial. In the meantime, as we all know, a whole summer (in some places, still ongoing) of burning and looting in big cities around this country by antifa Commies and BLM thugs resulted in almost ZERO punishment. Some of them are getting paid off by city governments for their "work" in this destruction.

All the people that Wiki quotes say that Merrick Garland is a most brilliant legal mind. Does he not see the hypocrisy and unequal treatment of the J6 vs antifa/BLM, not to mention the blatant violations of US Constitution B.O.R. Amendments VI and VIII? Well, he's a brilliant legal mind, so he can work the system well. That doesn't imply he's a person of integrity who will apply the spirit of the law.

He's not. Merritt Garland is an evil individual. Where does this come from? How'd he get on this evil vendetta against the White population of America? From Wiki, this is kind of weird, but interesting:
In April 2021, Russia imposed sanctions against Garland, including prohibiting him from entering Russia. This was in retaliation for U.S. expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats, a sanction imposed by the United States against Russia for its SolarWinds hack, aggression against Ukraine, and interference in the 2020 U.S. election. [Ahhh, geeze... that last was the HUGE purchase of $100,000 in Facebook ads by some Russian dude or something. This is SERIOUS.- ONE! HUNDRED! THOUSAND! DOLLARS!]
There's the over-a-century-old feud going on, see, between the Garland family, that's Garfinkle at the time, and the Russian Empire. Per Wiki, Merritt's grandparents fled said Russian Empire early in the 1900s, to come here and foist a fortunate grandson on the American people.

The big excuse for the taking of what may be 1,500 or so MORE Political Prisoners is this White Supremacy angle, as if there's any group of these bigger than 2 people in America that isn't composed of Feds. However, whatever it is, protests about election fraud, pushback against the Population Replacement project, refusal to be berated and eliminated under DIE, it's all White Supremacy nowadays. The apparatus to enforce this evil is something I could have warned the reader about 21 years ago, 'cept I didn't have a blog. Motherland Security and the War on Terra provides the method for the Totalitarians that infest the Potomac Regime.

The writers on Wikipedia seem fine with all this. A current nominee for the Newspaper of Record (along with The Babylon Bee), The New York Post, takes a different view from that of Wikipedia - Merrick Garland’s deranged ‘one-sideism’ on terror by a guy named "The Post Editorial Board. (Just give your name next time!) Thank you, NY Post. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees this evil Attorney General for what he is.

I'm pretty sure everyone but the seriously stupid, your AOCs and Nancy Pelosies, know that there was no Insurrection and these people were generally harmless. (The Regime cops who killed 4 is another story) This is in contrast to the "harmlessness" of the massive antifa/BLM riots and arson. That's not the point though. Merrick Garland knows too - his point is to warn patriotic Americans that, next time they think of protesting the Totalitarianism of The Regime, they could most easily be taken Political Prisoner and held for YEARS in a Washington, FS gulag under terrible conditions. Even 2 years after the fact, they can just be taken. ("Show me the man ...) Best to stay out of it and let it all happen... collect your measly paycheck and eat ze bugs... that's how they want you to think.

My original point, long lost to this post till now, is that I want to know where and how long ago you'd have to study to have an example of Totalitarianism that we see right in front of our eyes, regarding our fellow normal Americans. Besides GateWay Pundit, check out the videos on J6 Truth site to see this 3rd-world Banana Republic behavior. (Even in those places, this stuff happened only during those swings of the pendulum to Communism and back.) The USSR of much of the 20 century provides an example. China from 1949 till the death of Mao in 1976, but arguably now provides another.)

The treatment of the J6 is simply not America. The Potomac Regime's actions are that of a Communist country. Merrick Garland is its Lavrentiy Beria. "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime."


* As for how it's going for some of these Political Prisoner in the regime gulag, here's a quick story from the same pundit, from over 700 days in there already: J6 Political Prisoners at DC Gulag Leak Heart-Breaking Video from Inside Jail Praying and Singing National Anthem – VIDEO

** Interestingly, one of his cases involved his acting as counsel to an insurance company suing to reinstate an unpopular automatic seat belt mandate. I freaking HATE those things. (At a motel on a long road trip in some '90s Eagle(?), I made the mistake of opening the door when I wasn't quite stopped yet - the thing jammed, and I had to use the emergency latch for the rest of the trip.)

*** Once Trump got in, he nominated Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed by the Senate. President Trump got 3 judges in there. I hope they don't go native.


Comments (3)




Updates/corrections for 4 posts


Posted On: Thursday - March 23rd 2023 9:36AM MST
In Topics: 
  General Stupidity  Environmental Stupidity  The Neocons  Peak Stupidity Roadshow

First of all, let me say that something political is going on with me right now, which may distract me from any more blogging for this week. That's even with the handful (at least) of posts that are on deck. What's going on may or may not turn into something that will be covered on Peak Stupidity. We'll see.

Regarding 4 of our fairly recent posts, let me add or explain more:

The Religion of Recycling:

In this post, we added an even more gloomy view of the economics of recycling than had been our contention in the old post (with the favorite title of mine) Toward Sustainable Stupidity. We referred the reader to this old post, but I'd completely forgotten an intermediate post on this, which was Make Stupidity Sustainable Again. Luckily there's not that much overlap.

The middle post contains discussion of an article from a writer from The Manhattan Institute. He discussed the economics of recycling, though still mixing in the Global Climate Calamity™ garbage, the latter for which there is NO landfill deep enough!

Trump v DeSantis: Round 5 - The Ukraine/Russia War(mongering):

In that post of a week back in praise of hopefully-soon-to-be-President Ron DeSantis, we included both his and Trump's* responses to Tucker Carlson about the war-mongering that America is yet again involved in. At then end of an excerpt from Neocon Extraordinaire David Frum, I wrote (in bold there too): "This is a Neocon Red Alert: Someone important cares about Americans more than Israel!"

That doesn't really fit, in the case of this particular war. I should have just stated that someone important cares more about Americans than the Deep State and Globohomo wants him to. The Neocons, lots of them Jewish, have this big centuries-long problem with Russia, so that is part of their motivation for having instigated this mess back in '14. Then, the MIC too is also loving it.

Starbucks Wokeness Backfire:

The say, "Go woke, go broke". That's only the case if the taxpayers don't errrr, Government doesn't have your back. The Corporate Starbucks wokeness program, including that "successful" Nationwide 10,000-Store Barista-Based Synchronized Struggle Session started 2 years before the BLM rioting of '20. Corporate may be doing alright, but on the local level, this wokeness has at least caused brokeness at now a 2nd location. (That's just that I know about.)

Per the post linked to here, what would be the nicest location near me took out the outdoor seating due to what some may call Typical Teen Behavior. I haven't been back. Our speculation in that previous post was that maybe the drive-up pick-up business is all they need. Nope. I just heard they're closing within a month. Heckuva job, Shultzie!

Potentially lethal combination of Cheap China(?)-made crap and low competence:

Finally, we refer to this non-political post from mid-March. What a relief that is, too. That post was about burned-out red-light bulbs and the hazards there-from. I looked at one of the few intersections that were the subject of this post. In this case, the one at the intersection at the bottom of a hill, with bad sight-lines, the stoplights there ARE LED types.

Yes, one of the red lights is STILL out. It's in the direction of the worst sight-line (to the left, anyway), at the bottom of the hill, in the direction in which the other side with faster traffic as the default green. Watch out! I had thought one of many great advantages of LEDs is that individual LEDs could burn out, leaving plenty to remain, with the unit being replaced when total brightness get below a certain level. Nope, but this one is black. I suppose it's the circuit board, or connection to it, for this one out of 3 in the fixture that is the problem.

I wonder if the LED units last much longer than the old incandescents, as they normally do in other applications.




* From Trump, we got much more the next day.

******************************
[UPDATED 03/24:]
Added 3rd item, bumping red-light update to 4.
******************************


Comments (14)




MTG v AOC


Posted On: Tuesday - March 21st 2023 7:36PM MST
In Topics: 
  US Feral Government  Geography  Race/Genetics  alt-right  ctrl-left



I am just guessing here, but I think the Peak Stupidity audience might be expecting mud wrastling based on our title. I am very sorry to inform you that we have no such video entertainment. Bikini pictures would be some consolation, but I don't see that as a fair contest. MTG has 15 1/2 years on AOC, 48 y/o vs. 33 y/o. Even at 33 for AOC, one may not have been impressed.

Wait, who the heck are these 2 initialed people, you may ask? Good question. The naming by 3 initials has been trending, steeply, for a few years now. You've got your JLo's and such for short in the entertainment biz. Then, too, initials for Presidents got started, when, with JFK? Of course that's THE biggie, but LBJ was common, RMN, nah, didn't roll off the tongue*, and that was pretty much the end of it. Then you, have your AMLO down in Mexico, El Presidente there since the end of'18. He is Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The Latin American crowd kind of likes those long series's of family names, and it was pretty endearing to hear a young Venezuelan lady reel off about 10 of them one time, Marissa de La Costa, Rodriguez Valencia Ramrez Hossenfelder Lopez .. [wait, Hossenfelder?!] del Boca Vista Gomez... "OK, but what do you want me to put below your picture in the yearbook ...?"

These 2, MTG and AOC, aren't leaders of the Free World** though, but the latter IS Puerto Rican, if that helps... No it doesn't really, because she has the 3 names due to hyphenation. She, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, is the daughter of Sergio Ocasio-Roman (known as SOR) and Blanca Ocasio-Cortez (known as BOC), the former being her Puerto Rican Father born in the Bronx and the latter being her Puerto Rican Mother born in Puerto Rico. Why she uses the Mom's hyphenated last name over the Dad's is another question, but this hyphenation crap cannot work out for more than 3 generations. After that, even the initials will be too long to remember

MTG, Marjorie Taylor Greene, uses her maiden last name along with her married last name, like lots of women might do. Using one's initials aside, that's standard American practice, though, per more info below, she may end up dropping the "G".

We'll use the abbreviations ourselves here for most of the post to reduce word count. Getting to the point of this post, these 2 well-known 3-lettered Congresswomen are a hell of a contrast in ideology and American-ness. Slightly coincidentally, both of them represent the 14th District of their States.

In this corner... of Georgia, is the 14th Congressional District, from which comes Large Marge, aka, MTG, aka, Marjorie Taylor Greene... eeen... een...



Georgia is composed of many small counties, 159 of them. The14th district in is in then northwester corner of the State, and is made of 10 1/2 counties (the 1/2 being the western portion of Cobb Country). The biggest city in this district is Rome - where MTG current hails from - with 37,000 residents, the next 2 decent-sized cities being Dalton and Calhoun. The whole district has 737,000 residents, with the '21 demographics shown here:
77.5% White
10.8% Hispanic
8.9% Black
1.4% Two or more races
1.0% Asian
0.4% other

AND

59.7% urban
40.3% rural
Georgia's Congresswoman from District 14, MTG, is a 49 y/o White woman who's had 3 children, 1 son and 2 daughters, from her 27 year marriage to businessman/accountant Perry Greene. Just before the end of last year, Mr. Greene filed for divorce. (I'm neither a tabloid reader nor a marriage counselor, but my guess is that being married to a well-known woman who is seen as a radical and being seen one's self as just "Large Marge's husband" is not a fun time.)

Surprisingly, the voters of this 14th Congressional District, though electing a fire-brand like MTG (we haven't even gotten to that part yet), voted Trump for Trump in '16 by only a 5 percentage-point margin and Biden by a very slight 0.25 percentage points. Just guessing here, but could those far-from-hard-Conservative numbers be do to the western portion of Cobb County? It's just too damned close to Atlanta for comfort.

In this corner... of the Bronx and Queens, New York, New York, is the 14th Congressional District, from which comes AOC, AKA, Alexandria Occasional Cortex ... ex ... sex... :



New York City alone has 14 of the State's 26 Congressional Districts in it! The 14th district includes the eastern part of The Bronx and part of north-central Queens.*** It has 750,000 residents with the '21 demographics shown here:
47.3% Hispanic
22.8% White
16.9% Asian
11.0% Black
1.4% Two or more races
0.6% other

AND

100% urban
0 rural
New York's Congresswoman from the 14th District, AOC, is, as we noted, full Puerto Rican. That's a territory and one we sure don't need. (As Donald Trump would say, Puerto Rico has been a terrible, terrible deal...) She has not been married, but (per wiki) "During the 2018 election campaign, Ocasio-Cortez resided in Parkchester, Bronx, with her partner, web developer Riley Roberts. They got engaged in April 2022 in Puerto Rico."

AOC looks like good baby-making material, physically, at least (at most?) She ought to get hitched soon, because she's 33 and It's not nice to fool Mother Nature! It's not in my plans to keep up with this, though, as, again, Peak Stupidity is not a tabloid. I don't care too much what this broad does outside of the House of Representin'.

Note the stark difference in the demography and geography of these 2 14th Congressional Districts. Those 2 maps on the right-hand sides are pretty much to the same scale, from my guesstimates. The total populations are within a couple of % of each other, as you'd expect for proportional representin'. However, the population densities vary by a factor of 125!

MTG's district: Population of 737,000 in 3,623.8 square miles for ~205 people/mi2.
AOC's district: Population of 750,000 in 28.6 square miles for ~26,000 people'mi2.

That's a whole different way of living, between Queens/The Bronx in NYC and rural land and small towns in northwestern Georgia. Different ways of living require different politics, I suppose. That might be one lesson to be drawn here. That alone would be A-OK too, as long as there weren't people with these politics in positions to mandate them for everyone else.

It's not the only lesson, though one would have to sort out the previous from this next factor by looking at other districts and their voting and representation. That 77% White in MTG's 14th vs the 23% in AOG's 14th means a lot too. Regarding the latter, those other races and ethnicities, even most of that 17% Asian, are simply not up for ideas of Liberty and rule of law, or those Citizenship in the Nation merit badges. You can't assimilate anyone to the olde American values under those numbers.

We've gone over the hard-core Conservative positions of MTG in our post How to use Wikipedia. I like everything about the politics of this MTG, and I like her spirit just as much. Then, AOC there in New York is someone I'd rather forget entirely, for the sake of my blood pressure. We do like making fun of her, as did an 8 y/o imitator.

While MTG promotes God, guns, and freedom, AOC is an avowed Socialist****, Socialism being a gateway ideology to Communism. While MTG supports actual Americans, AOC is a flat-out traitor:
She recalled, "I was the only Spanish speaker, and as a result, as basically a kid – a 19-, 20-year-old kid – whenever a frantic call would come into the office because someone is looking for their husband because they have been snatched off the street by ICE, I was the one that had to pick up that phone. I was the one that had to help that person navigate that system. [Straight outta' Wiki]
Therefore, Representatives MTG and AOC respectively on the alt-right and ctrl-left, are like oil and water. No, again, mud, oil, whatever, we just DON'T HAVE ANY VIDEO! All I got of direct confrontation is this from May of '21:
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene confronted Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside the House chamber on Wednesday afternoon, the latest of several confrontations Greene has had with her Democratic colleagues.

Ocasio-Cortez left the House chamber late Wednesday afternoon ahead of Greene, who shouted “Hey Alexandria” twice to get her attention, according to the Washington Post who reported this first.

Greene caught up with Ocasio-Cortez and began shouting at her and asking why she supports antifa, a far-left activist group, and Black Lives Matter, falsely labeling them “terrorist” groups.

Greene shouted at Ocasio-Cortez that she was failing to defend her “radical socialist” beliefs by declining to publicly debate her. Ocasio-Cortez did not stop to respond to Greene and only turned around once and threw her hands in the air.
In case you are immediately figuring, "hey that MTG sounds like a bitch", well, this is from CNN, so you only read one side of the story. There was a twitter feud between the 2 Reps, if that's your thing. Per Newsweek last summer, AOC Rips Marjorie Taylor Greene's 'Insurrection' Claim as Roe Feud Heats Up. Again you get to read one side, but then MTG was quite right to use the "I" word to show the ridiculousness of its use in referring to the J6 Political Prisoners STILL HELD in the African dungeons of the Federal Shithole. Thanks for turning me on even further to MTG, Newsweek dude.

On the Kung Flu PanicFest issues, MTG has continued to shine, while AOC has remained a typical dullard. CNN was very concerned 3 days after the Ben Epps-sponsored Capitol tour errr, Insurrection! about that all being a SuperDuperSpreader event:
Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Delaware Democrat, was shown approaching the group of colleagues and offering blue surgical masks. The video, shot from inside a safe room where the lawmakers gathered during the chaos, was published on Twitter by Punchbowl News.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Oklahoma Rep. Mark Wayne Mullin, Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, Texas Rep. Michael Cloud and California Rep. Doug LaMalfa were captured unmasked and gathered closely together. They all refused the masks.

Mullin can be heard saying, “I’m not trying to get political here.”
I know, Mark, but to the ctrl-left, EVERYTHING is political.

Another conflict, this time between MTG and some other Congressbroad, reminded me of my own travails, reported here in Showdown in Tuba City. Revolt(ing) dot TV reported on Rep. Cori Bush moving her U.S. Capitol office after Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene “berated” her.
On Friday (Jan. 29), Democratic Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri made the announcement that she would be changing her office at the United States Capitol after getting into a heated exchange with GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia earlier this month.

Apparently, the conflict stemmed from the fact that Taylor wasn’t wearing a mask on her face while in one of the government building’s hallways. The fallout was immediately taken very seriously by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who quickly ordered the location change for Bush to feel more safe.

“A maskless Marjorie Taylor Greene & her staff berated me in a hallway. She targeted me & others on social media. I’m moving my office away from hers for my team’s safety” Bush tweeted Friday.
You can catch the lies of these Lyin' Press fools right away, from the sub headline, which read "Apparently, the conflict stemmed from the fact that Taylor wasn’t wearing a mask on her face." OK, now wait a minute. MTG wouldn't have berated Cori Bush for wearing a mask, as she'd respect Bush's right to be a Hysteric. No, I now know who started this "berating". American Pravda indeed!

Finally, regarding the experime... clots sh ... oh, yeah, vaccine, that's the ticket. MTG (from CNN, and you can tell the bias from the wording just after her name):
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has publicly cast doubt on and spread misinformation about the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, revealed Tuesday that she has not been inoculated against the virus, answering a question she has dodged for months.

“I haven’t been making it public, but I started making it public because it’s such an issue. I’m not vaccinated,” the Georgia Republican said during a phone town hall.

She continued: “I believe it’s up to every single American to make that choice on their own, and the government has no business to tell Americans that they should take the Covid vaccine or not.”
Yep. Now, here's AOC:
In order to encourage community members in Corona to get their COVID-19 shot, Queens/Bronx Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has launched an outreach campaign with a video series featuring community leaders in the area.

Corona was one of the first neighborhoods to be hit by COVID-19 and quickly became one of the most impacted areas in the country. Now that the vaccine is available to all New Yorkers over 16, with some New York City-run vaccine sites accepting walk-ins, Corona’s vaccination rates still lags when compared to the rest of the city — with only 20 percent of the population fully vaccinated as of Friday, April 30.

“I encourage everyone to get the COVID-19 vaccine. It is safe, effective, and free for all. You do not need to have health insurance and no one will ask about your immigration status,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “There is also now no appointment necessary for you to get your COVID vaccine at city-run sites, so you can just walk up. This vaccine is the first step in getting our community reopened and keeping all our loved ones safe.”
Corona is the neighborhood, as in the old Paul Simon song, not the old term for the disease. (Too many jokes and confusion with the cheap Mexican swill, so they dropped the term.)

That was in April of '21. 6 months later, in October, we could have read Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets Pfizer booster jab (revealing outfit in the NY Post image for this one). 3 months after that, yahoo informed us AOC Is Latest Member of Congress to Get Sick With COVID. Dang it all! She should have kept on her mask down in DeathSantis' foolhardy State of Florida during that drag queen show she attended. AOC is all better now though... physically... the rest is unsalvageable.

Who is the winner of the epic battle of the Congresspersons MTG and AOC? Two of our judges have recused themselves due to something about "big knockers, so you know, it's hard... to call it ..." Knockers or Knot, this contest is over, with MTG having knocked out AOC many times. Will AOC get back up out of the mud?

The next and MUCH SHORTER post on these 2 3-initialed ladies will explain why we need some type of national divorce that MTG herself has written about recently.



* Although, per Richard Nixon and The Greatest Comeback - Pat Buchanan, the insiders referred to him in writing as RN. Why not "Mr. Nixon", "the President", or "that Dick-head", I have no idea. It must have been the cool thing.

** Well, it was at the time, for the most part.

*** The gory details are that the Queens portion includes the neighborhoods of Astoria, College Point, Corona, East Elmhurst, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Woodside. The Bronx portion of the district includes the neighborhoods of City Island, Country Club, Van Nest, Morris Park, Parkchester, Pelham Bay, Schuylerville, and Throggs Neck. Nobody cares! Who wants to go there?

**** No kidding on this. [From Wiki:]
Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and embraces the democratic socialist label as part of her political identity. In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, she described democratic socialism as "part of what I am. It's not all of what I am. And I think that that's a very important distinction." In response to a question about democratic socialism ultimately calling for an end to capitalism during a Firing Line interview on PBS, she answered: "Ultimately, we are marching towards progress on this issue. I do think that we are going to see an evolution in our economic system of an unprecedented degree, and it's hard to say what direction that that takes." Later at a conference she said "To me, capitalism is irredeemable."
Granted, I don't know whether she sees the Crony Capitalism (Fascism) as "Capitalism", or she is truly against free markets and the whole thing.


Comments (35)




Anemone - The Brian Jonestown Massacre


Posted On: Saturday - March 18th 2023 5:43PM MST
In Topics: 
  Music

The name of this band is a portmanteau of "Brian Jones", the founder of The Rolling Stones, and the "Jonestown Massacre", a large murder/suicide by the Communist cult led by Jim Jones. The latter was described in detail in a 4-part series of posts here, on or about (so, "about", actually) the 40th anniversary of its occurrence, called Drinking the Kommie Kool-Aid - 40 years back.*

I may have heard the name of this band once or twice, but I'd never heard a thing by them. Commenter Duncsbaby embedded this song in the Unz Review threads, and I was impressed right away.

The lyrics are few and not that special from what I can make out, but who cares? The sound is great!

This song's called Anemone. and it's from the band's project's 2nd album, from 1996, called Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request. (I figured Wiki doesn't list the band members because it's not a band, it's a project. OTOH, they list Alan Parsons Project Associates. (I don't know, Team Members?)) The Project Leader is Anton Newcombe. They are still touring, per their own site, but to me this isn't concert music. Listen at home, from the couch.



I didn't forget that MTG v AOC post, but we got sucked up into Trump/DeSantis week. We'll find out about the Trump arrest, which would really be a BIG THING (another milestone in the transition to Banana Republic). There's a post coming on a near-miss, well near-hit really, from the Kung Flu PanicFest in the UK, and probably 4 or 5 others. Stay tuned! Don't touch that browser Favorites button! Thanks so much for reading and especially for writing in!


*
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4


Comments (10)




Trump v DeSantis: Round 6 - Quantity of Hatred Generated.


Posted On: Saturday - March 18th 2023 11:46AM MST
In Topics: 
  Elections '16 - '24  Trump  Media Stupidity  President DeSantis

The higher, the better, of course. I'm not one part of the contingent who hates The Donald, just in case the reader may have that wrong. I like the guy. I like any of the occasional politicians who like Americans.* I just HATE how much President Trump screwed the pooch.



Previously in this series, Peak Stupidity has posted Part 1 - Personalities - - Part 2 - Immunity to Kung Flu Panic - - Part 3 - Immigration Invasion - - Part 4 - Tag Team? and Part 5 - The Ukraine/Russia War(mongering).

In some Unz Review discussions, I have been told that Florida Governor and GOP Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is getting money and support from the wrong people. First of all, that may have changed quite a bit since his statement on the Ukraine/Russia war (Part 5). That notwithstanding, yes, the ones mentioned, your ¡Jeb!s, your Karl Roves, and even your Paul [sorry, just through up some of that green candy] Ryans, are THE WRONG PEOPLE, no doubt. However, they are supporting him because they HATE HATE HATE Donald Trump and always did. If something happens to keep Trump out of the general election race (his looming arrest per news I've read being a whole nother thing entirely), these people will turn on DeSantis in the same way.

The Lyin' Press doesn't have to pretend to like Ron DeSantis, as they have picked the ctrl-left long ago - there is no pretense even left in them that they are in some way balanced on the UniParty. I've read nasty headlines already, and let's not forget the HATE against Governor DeSantis for his lack of awareness on the Critical Danger of the Black Death 2.0 , errr, Flu Manchu. He about killed the whole State off, from what I've read in the headlines and in the take by this fucking guy. For this careless disregard of human life, the Lyin' Press and the Panicker crowd of any ideology HATE HATE HATED him for his freedoms.

I gotta admit that Donald Trump has the upper hand in this round. He had a big head start in being hated, of course. That's one thing. Also, because they know the man still can't be bought or blackmailed, the Deep State, Swamp creatures, Neocons, the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads... they all HATE him - they think he's a righteous dude. [He's very unpopular - Ed(itor)]



Yeah, as a commenter put it, supporting Donald Trump is like sticking one's middle finger at the entire Establishment, i.e., the ctrl-left, i.e., the Communists. However, with Trump not being much more than a well-intentioned bullshitter, sure we can just keep that middle finger up as rigor mortis sets in while we are being bulldozed into big ditches by these Commies. No, thanks.

As soon as Ron DeSantis ends up the GOP Presidential candidate - I mean, we have the topic key ready - the entire left will turn on him the same way. I could be wrong - maybe I've been fooled, or maybe he'll be bribed or blackmailed**. Failing that, they will HATE DeSantis just as they do Trump. This aggressive interference with the narrative and plans of the Globalist elite and Commie bastards must not stand!

As for the Haley's, that Indian guy, and the other Neocon-sympathetic goers-along, you'll know whose side they are on when the HATE subsides. Instead we will get the Overton Briar Patch treatment:
Here's how it goes: The ctrl-left will act OUTRAGED at the (supposed) Conservatism, far-far-Rightism, and even Hitler-adjacent policies of the GOP high-office holders. This will be the case even when said GOP high-office holders are the most worthless, traitorous, compromising squishes and not Conservative in the least.

Some of the ctrl-left with what we may think of as having, or have thought of as having,Trump/Bush/Bush/Reagan Derangement Syndrome may really be outraged, but these are the most deluded psychotic sickos. I believe most of them just act like they think said office holders (I include notable Senators and Congressmen too) are actually Conservative. Why come up with these huge exaggerations of the supposed Conservatism of these politicians? It's a tactic of theirs that works very well .

The effect of this tactic is to get Conservatives to actually believe "their" high-office holder is working hard, doing the right thing for them. "If they hate him so much, he MUST be doing a great job!" Well, that can be true, but not if that hate is based on exaggeration, lies, or plain insanity.
Note I included Trump in this one, due to this being a tactic taken with officeholders who aren't actually acting Conservatively.

The HATE for all the Conservative, Inc. squishes will be fake, as explained. For anyone who actually DOES ANYTHING to stop the plans toward Globalist Communism, yeah, it's real, and it's rabid. That's the case for Ron DeSantis and Trump, well, they hate him cause he won that time ... or two. I'd call this round a draw. These two are able to draw equal amounts of hatred.


* He's good people. They're all wonderful people. Wait, I'm starting to sound like the guy , which is something I most definitely DON'T LIKE!

** No doubt it's more likely than with Trump, as Ron DeSantis is not a super-rich known playboy.


Comments (16)




Happy St. Padraig's Day and the flight from American


Posted On: Friday - March 17th 2023 10:47PM MST
In Topics: 
  Immigration Stupidity  Political Correctness  Race/Genetics  Holiday from Stupidity

That's Padraig... or something like that. I'm sick of the multi-culti stuff, even if it's from the Irish, even from people descended from Irish people that came here 150 years ago who know nothing more of that heritage than getting sloshed on green beer once a year... and every other weekend on regular-colored beer.

Peak Stupidity posted thoughts on this last summer in our post Local Multi-culti, thoughts that came from our time spent in the British Isles. There was even that story of a friend of Irish background who gave his best shot at Scotland the Brave on the pipes in our front yard at midnight. (He used to wear and even make kilts, but that didn't mean the bagpipes came naturally ...) Everyone but regular Americans is supposed to be so proud of their people from the olde country.

You're American now though, right? No matter what those old Irish wives tales said, you were always White* and you still are now. So act it, and quit with the damned ridiculous spellings. Meighan instead of Megan? Graeme for Graham? Now, it Padraig? I saw this header on VDare today:



This Padraig Martin has written an important and first-hand account of the Anarcho-Tyranny that was applied in Charlottesville, Virginia at the "Unite the Right" rally* back in the summer of '17. Though this multi-culti business irks me, I won't let it detract from my respect for this guy and my intention to read his book. This "Neil Kumar" post, “Unite The Right Was The Last Day Of The United States”—Padraig Martin’s A WALK IN THE PARK, is a great reminder of what happened and a review of Padraig's book.

Still, Padraig?? WTF? Spellcheck is not helping me it this either. Just call yourself Patrick, man, and be DONE with it!

Steve Sailer has long had an idea he calls "flight from white". Any American who can find some way to be considered other than a White person in the eyes of government or Big Biz does so. This phenomena is fairly new, maybe 30-40 years old, as the various new actual demographic groups or made-up ones, are all treated better than the White man, especially.

Now, even pure White Irish people** feel the need to distance themselves from those plain old Americans. This isn't about AA or any free stuff. The multiculturalist brainwashing has just taken hold.

Well, I'll tell you what. If I were to get this book from the writer, I'd want it signed by Patrick Martin. Otherwise, keep it - you aren't a uniter, of the right or anyone.

H A P P Y S T. P A D R A I G's P A T R I C K's D A Y!


PS: Is that too harsh? I could blame this on Padraig's parents, I suppose.


* Peak Stupidity wrote a number of posts about this travesty and this early reminder by the Regime of what happens when those on the right try to assemble peacefully and in not large enough numbers. (Maybe just assembling peacefully at all is something we can no longer do.)

See Anarcho-Tyranny at Charlottesville.

** Conveniently, VDare has a James Fulford article on this point today too - St. Patrick's Day Is NOT Immigration Day—Irish-Americans Are White, And Being Replaced Like The Rest Of Us.


Comments (7)




Donald Trump's New Statement on the War(mongering)


Posted On: Friday - March 17th 2023 12:41PM MST
In Topics: 
  Elections '16 - '24  The Russians  Trump  World Political Stupidity



I don't know if Trump had already made his March 16th (yesterday) speech or published it, at the time of Peak Stupidity's posting of Trump v DeSantis: Round 5 - The Ukraine/Russia War(mongering). Either way, this is a better attempt at equal time in the question of whether Trump or DeSantis have the better attitude on the Ukraine/Russia war. We can see by the ire of the Neocons later.

I couldn't find this speech/statement in print form, so this is an image. You won't be able to copy parts of it, and I can't either. Thanks to commenter Adam Smith for using software character recognition to get us the text:
We have never been closer to World War 3 than we are today under Joe Biden. A global conflict between nuclear-armed powers would mean death and destruction on a scale unmatched in human history. It would be nuclear Armageddon. Nothing is more important than avoiding that nightmare. We will avoid it, but we need new leadership. Every day this proxy battle in Ukraine continues, we risk global war. We must be absolutely clear that our objective is to immediately have a total cessation of hostilities. All shooting has to stop. This is the central issue. We need peace without delay.

In addition, there must also be a complete commitment to dismantling the entire globalist neo-con establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars pretending to fight for freedom and democracy abroad while they turn us into a third-world country and a third- world dictatorship right here at home. The State Department, the Defense bureaucracy, the intelligence services, and all of the rest need to be completely overhauled and reconstituted to fire the Deep Staters and put America first. We have to put America first.

Finally, we have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re- evaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission. Our foreign policy establishment keeps trying to pull the world into conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat. But the greatest threat to western civilization today is not Russia. It's probably, more than anything else, ourselves and some of the horrible, USA-hating people that represent us. It's the abolition of our national borders, it's the failure to police our own cities, it's the destruction of the rule of lave from within. It's the collapse of the nuclear family and fertility rates like nobody can believe is happening. It's the Marxists who would have us become a Godless nation worshiping at the altar of race and gender and environment. And it's the Globalist class that has made us totally dependent on China and other foreign countries that basically hate us.

These Globalists want to squander all of America’s strength, blood, and treasure chasing monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they are creating right here at home. These forces are doing more damage than Russia and China could ever have dreamed. Evicting the sick and corrupt establishment is the monumental task of the next President and I am the only who can do it I'm the only one who can get the job done. I know exactly what has to be done.
Wow! That there's George Washington material! (Well, the last bit being lifted from him, that is...) I mean, even Ron Paul would agree 100%. Let me look over this statement some more:

"We've never been closer to World War III..." Well, nah, I know it's hard to find many tweets from that era, but the Cuban Missile Crisis, and earlier, the whole 1950's (with lots more possibility of a "fail-unsafe" event) had us closer. What's going on now can be de-escalated by anyone who desires to, i.e., all but the Neocons and Neocon sycophants. Ron Paul would do it in an hour. Ron DeSantis would do it in a day. Yes, you too could ... talk about it for 40 days and tweet about it for 40 nights, and still ... Oh, yeah, you like to have a meeting and make deals. That might work, but then, you've been suckered by Neocons before - weren't Javanka your foreign policy advisors for 4 years?

About NATO, no don't mend it, END it. You talked about this same thing 7 years ago - nothing happened. Was that the time you were distracted by "Russian collusion!" for nearly 3 out of 4 years? No, maybe it was something else that distracted you. Then you even mentioned the old cry about getting US out of the UN, and getting the UN out of the US while we're at it... or jack up the rent, if nothing else. Yes, Peak Stupidity remembers. What's this, you're going to finish what you never started?

I just read the current issue of The New American from the John Birch Society. The middle 2 paragraphs of Trump's speech especially could be an editorial in this magazine. I am glad that re-candidate Trump said this. I think he believes all this.

Sure, I agree with all of this, but will a 2nd-term President Trump DO ANYTHING about any of it? Sure, let's talk ... if you want to kick off a correspondence with Peak Stupidity, Mr. Trump, use the handle "Lucy", and I'm Charlie Brown.


* This goes back to the John Birch Society - proud member here!

*************************
[UPDATED 03/18:]
Substituted text from Adam Smith via OCR for the images of the speech. Thanks, Adam!
*************************


Comments (8)




Big Bankers call on Uncle Sam to preclude seizures


Posted On: Thursday - March 16th 2023 6:01PM MST
In Topics: 
  Music  Humor  Global Financial Stupidity



Imagine if the world's bankers had to exist in the free market. The invisible hand would slap the BeJesus out of most of them for such acts as the loaning out of 4 years worth of tuition money to Womyn's Studies majors and the hiring of CROs - Chief Risqué Officers who spend much more time on DIE stupidity than risk management.

It's important that the FDIC* and its Credit Union sister (also Feral Gov't) NCUA at least act like they can insure us all, like more than one of us at a time, for this Ponzi Scheme of an economy to stay afloat for a bit longer. In this latest case, the Feral Gov't seems to be backstopping the SVB and Signature Bank depositors, digging the debt hole that much deeper.

We'd probably be better off if we had a real economic system, with banks, and hell, bankers too, subject to seizures. With our usual Peak Stupidity warning to readers, especially including bankers now, let's all Wang Chung tonight, if only for 4 minutes:




* It has in the neighborhood of 0.1 % of the assets in those < $250,000 accounts it insures. I happened to run into a guy who was a big shot in banking during the Carter Administration and got to pick his brain for a few minutes, including asking him about this.


Comments (13)




Trump v DeSantis: Round 5 - The Ukraine/Russia War(mongering)


Posted On: Thursday - March 16th 2023 8:44AM MST
In Topics: 
  Elections '16 - '24  The Russians  Trump  US Feral Government  The Neocons  World Political Stupidity  President DeSantis

Note: A post on the heat transfer from an ACTUAL greenhouse vs the "Greenhouse Effect", just for some closure on this one-measly-piece-of-the-climate excuse for the Climate Crisis™ and the disarming and alarming video by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is in the works. However, I want to do some real calculations (convection, conduction, and radiation), so it may be a while. As I wrote, I'm not being paid for this, so the deadline is the next round-to-it I get.



This post was inspired by the inclusion of a statement by (hopefully future President) Ron DeSantis on the Ukraine/Russia war by commenter E.H. Hail under this post, along with more commentary by Mr. Hail on the necocon feedback. I had not intended to continue the Trump v DeSantis series, but I figure we'd better give Donald Trump equal time, and this fits in. Those previous posts were Part 1 - Personalities - - Part 2 - Immunity to Kung Flu Panic - - Part 3 - Immigration Invasion and Part 4 - Tag Team?. None of them covered foreign policy, so this will help on that score.

For the DeSantis statement, I wanted to find a web source to link to, and, believe me, it took me the 2nd page of the duckduckgo search to get off of the Lyin' Press outlets that would be annoying and biased. Since the New York Post is as close to Peak Stupidity's "Newspaper of Record" status as any other big outlet, here is their article of 3 days ago by Victor Nava with Governor DeSantis' statement - it indeed matches Mr. Hail's post, but with interruptions by pictures and an ad or two. This was not from ON the Tucker Carlson show, but the NY Post article says:
The host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” asked declared and potential candidates whether the US opposing Russia in Ukraine is a vital strategic interest for America; what the US objective in Ukraine is and how the US will know when it has been achieved; should there be a limit on weapons and money sent to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; have US sanctions against Russia been effective; and does the US face the risk of nuclear war with Russia.
Here's Governor DeSantis Statement, titled Ron DeSantis says helping Ukraine fend off Russia not a vital US interest
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests -- securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party -- becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration’s virtual “blank check” funding of this conflict for “as long as it takes,” without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.

Without question, peace should be the objective. The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table. These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.

A policy of “regime change” in Russia (no doubt popular among the DC foreign policy interventionists) would greatly increase the stakes of the conflict, making the use of nuclear weapons more likely. Such a policy would neither stop the death and destruction of the war, nor produce a pro-American, Madisonian constitutionalist in the Kremlin. History indicates that Putin’s successor, in this hypothetical, would likely be even more ruthless. The costs to achieve such a dubious outcome could become astronomical.

The Biden administration’s policies have driven Russia into a de facto alliance with China. Because China has not and will not abide by the embargo, Russia has increased its foreign revenues while China benefits from cheaper fuel. Coupled with his intentional depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and support for the Left’s Green New Deal, Biden has further empowered Russia’s energy-dominated economy and Putin’s war machine at Americans’ expense.

Our citizens are also entitled to know how the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being utilized in Ukraine.

We cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland, especially as tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year from narcotics smuggled across our open border and our weapons arsenals critical for our own security are rapidly being depleted."
Bravo! I don't think I have anything to add here beside just simply: US, GTFO!

Right, so this guy is "controlled opposition"*, a Deep State operative, or one with the Jewish lobby? I didn't think so before, and I sure don't now. As Mr. Hail notes, the usual ACTUAL opposition, the Neocons are plain freaking out. I'll paste in here a comment by Mr. Hail regarding the Neocon pundit David Frum:
David Frum, the neoconservative, has released an emergency editorial in The Atlantic today attacking DeSantis. ("Is Ron DeSantis Flaming Out Already?" by David Frum, The Atlantic, March 14, 2023.)

Frum says that Ron DeSantis' opposition to the Ukraine War is reckless, dangerous, stupid, callous, and signals that DeSantis is FINISHED as a politician on the national stage. Frum believes DeSantis is such a poor political strategist and of such weak character that he is "flaming out" before even taking off.

David Frum claims that he suspected DeSantis might have been a traitor to the cause of Holy Ukraine when he declined to greet the returning Florida National Guard members who had, for some reason, been in Ukraine in winter 2021-22. Frum said his suspicion grew when DeSantis refused to "praise" the Florida National Guard members who had been in Ukraine.

The suspicion that DeSantis is a traitor to the Ukraine Cause (and therefore--implied--a traitor to the USA), which had formed David Frum's mind in 2022, was confirmed yesterday with DeSantis' anti-war statement.

"DeSantis’s statement on Ukraine was everything that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his admirers could have wished for from a presumptive candidate for president," says neoconservative David Frum.
I had originally thought that "emergency editorial" was Atlantic or David Frum wording, but I like the idea. We should pull right off the side of the road, pull out our phones, and click that Atlantic link STAT! This is a Neocon Red Alert: Someone important cares about Americans more than Israel!

Yeah, I know, Ron DeSantis had some meeting in Jerusalem. He does have a mass of Jewish voter in southeast Florida, well, or "voters", anyway. Would they vote for him at all no matter whether he kowtows? Maybe he's figured out, "NOT", and maybe some of those voters will come around too at some point. They are not all followers of your David Frums, Jonah Goldbergs, Bill Kristols and the official political Neocon sellouts**.

Mr. Hail notes:
Bill Kristol, the neoconservative godfather figure, has been on a 48-hour rage spree against DeSantis for the latter's opposition to the Ukraine War. Kristol is said to be seeking ways to ensure DeSantis loses funding.
So far I'm very pleased to see the enemies that Ron DeSantis had been making.

Now, what's the word from The Donald? He responded to Tucker Carlson's request for a statement too, per Kent Masing of the Business Insider - Here's What Trump Has To Say About The Ukraine-Russia War. Because it's very hard to get anything resembling a "statement" out of Trump's mouth, I don't blame the site for inserting his answers piece by piece. Here's most of it:
"Both sides are weary and ready to make a deal. The meetings should start immediately, there is no time to spare. The death and destruction must end now!" Trump said, Fox News reported.

Trump, who is running for president for a third time, said the U.S.'s objective in the Ukraine war is to "help and secure Europe." However, the former president castigated Europe for not helping in the war.

Trump said the U.S.'s limit to providing assistance to Ukraine would "strongly depend" on his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin while insisting that Europe "must pay."
There are no principles, like the idea of a Declaration of War being required, or George Washington's words of wisdom here. No, Trump is Mr. Wheeler-Dealer! He doesn't need no principles, political strategy and all that. He's gonna set them down and MAKE A DEAL! Oh, go screw yourself with all that, you egotistical bullshitter!
The former president also argued that the U.S.'s sanctions against Russia "have not been effective" in deterring them from attacking Ukraine.

Trump also believed the U.S. faces a high risk of a nuclear confrontation with Russia under President Joe Biden.

When asked if the U.S. should support ousting Putin from power, Trump said it is "more important" to support replacing Biden than supporting a regime change in Russia.

Trump's comments about the ongoing war in Ukraine echoed his previous remarks that he would have allowed Putin to control "certain areas" in the beleaguered country to avoid the conflict.

In his radio interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the former Republican president said he could have negotiated a deal with Russia and Ukraine while boasting that Russian forces did not occupy any region in Europe under his watch.
Admittedly, he guy makes good political points, comparing what's going on with what we SHOULD be doing. The comment about replacing Biden is one, but would he be just OK with that, were it Ron DeSantis replacing Zhou Bai Dien?
During his speech at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump said he would solve the Russia-Ukraine war in one day, arguing that he knew what to say to Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Yes, he's just going to sit them down and work this all out. Bullshit works, apparently... only this is not an Amway meeting, that's the problem.

The clear difference seen here between these 2 men is not necessarily the specific answers to the questions from Tucker Carlson. The clear difference is that one man has a clear idea of the principles that decide this matter as written out in a statement, while the other says he's just the greatest dealer and talker around, so he'll just do all that stuff he's so good at and fix everything. The latter man can't even MAKE such statement, as his style of bullshitting doesn't cover "statements".

Winner by knockout here: Future President Ron DeSantis!



PS: Just out of completeness, I found that Fox News detailed the responses of not just Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, but also Mike Pence and Kristi Noem to Mr. Carlson's questions, in the format of one question at a time. See Republican 2024 hopefuls respond to Tucker Carlson's questions about their stance on Russia-Ukraine war. The already traitorous (to the State of South Carolina) Neocon Nikki Haley's responses were added to this article too.


* I never really thought too much of this whole concept. The only people I think are the controlled opposition are those folks who continually comment negatively about anyone who fights, these commenters, bloggers, or pundits themselves being the closest thing to controlled opposition, IMO.

** Mr. Hail had more on the Neocon hive reaction (I mean, as in "the hives") in his comments:
The periodical "Jewish Insider" has sounded out the opinions of prominent persons who are condemning DeSantis for treason over Ukraine. This group of luminaries is led by Elliot Abrams, the neoconservative thought-leader. Also joining the chorus, per Jewish Insider, are Senators Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Roger Wicker, John Cornyn, and Mitt Romney, and others. Rich Goldberg, a Republican bigwig, is said to donning warpaint as we speak to rally allies to the anti-DeSantis political warpath. Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and "Nikki" Haley have also now lashed out at DeSantis in similar terms. Also condemning DeSantis for treasonous disloyalty to Ukraine is Danielle Pletka. She is of the American Enterprise Institute and is the current Georgetown University chair of the Center for Jewish Civilization.
Try to remember these names the next time any one of them talks about "peace".


Comments (24)




The Greenhouse and Beyond - Part 3: Summary of Sabine's Story


Posted On: Tuesday - March 14th 2023 10:17PM MST
In Topics: 
  Global Climate Stupidity  Science

(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.)

Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder, from article about "the beauty of math":



(As Mr. Kief has informed us (twice), her contention is that modern physicists - the last 40 years worth - want the math to be nice and complete, making the physics "beautiful", holding up new physics theories.)


In that very long Part 2 post, I don't think I summarized my views on the story of the real Greenhouse Effect per Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder and her take on the Climate Calamity™ very well. Here goes:

I don't pretend to know about the details of radiation heat transfer within, from, and to, the layers of Earth's atmosphere. I don't pretend to know EVERYTHING that would be involved in a model of the climate of the Earth. However, I know enough about radiation heat transfer to know that Dr. Hossenfeld did not include a number of details needed to explain her point to me. These one could have been explained simply, as, yes, she did say at the end that things are much more complicated than what she explained in the 5 minutes of "the PdD version" of the explanation of the real Greenhouse Effect.

In my post, I probably went too much into "shape factors", with not much obvious reason. My point was to note that everything is radiating to and/or absorbing radiation from, everything it "sees". That means these layer of the atmosphere, though, granted, they are nice clean hollow spheres, radiate to each other and through each other. There's a LOT to it, and I am doubtful Dr. Hossenfelder knows that complicated picture.

Even so, let me assume that this science popularizer is absolutely right about everything in the video*. It's a heat balance of the Earth, right? Ein - Eout + Egen = Eacc. Oops, what's the "gen" one? Oh, yeah, the Earth still has stuff going on in the core. Radioactive decay goes on there, and then that big molten ball has a lot of energy to release. If the latter is not counted as "generated", it's yet another part of the model, or should be.

There's that whole Troposphere at the bottom, the very bottom portion being where we live. Weather and climate happen there. "Sure, OK", one might say, "but that doesn't effect this large scale radiative heat balance." Yes, though, there are plenty of effects of the climate down here on this heat balance. Clouds have a different albedo (reflectivity) than land surfaces, for example, and what is their effect on outbound radiation transferred from the surface?

The biggest point against Dr. Hossenfelder's or anyone's alarmism is their assumption the this Greenhouse Effect alone is all that is changing or can change the climate of the Earth. In the Troposphere, all kinds of convection and transfer heat involving freezing/melting, evaporating/condensing water is going on. Nobody can predict the next El Nino or La Nina, and not the biggest Climate Calamity™ we'll ever seen, barring the sun going Supernova, which is the Ice Ages. The interglacial periods are shorter than each Ice Age. Yikes! Shouldn't we first learn the causes of them to know all about those effects before we even start worrying if we should stop "emitting" CO2 or perhaps burn down the forests to help stave off the next one?

To summarize the video and what I now think of Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder:

1) She's not very good at explaining things, at least as taken from what I viewed here.

2) That she just now learned and tried to explain the REAL Greenhouse Effect theory and did a poor job of it doesn't give me confidence that she is worth listening to on subjects other than her field of Astrophysics.

3) She has an agenda on the Climate Calamity™ with the usual oversight of the bigger picture.


* That'd be the theory at least, because that data on Stratospheric cooling did not really show what she said it did.

************************
[UPDATED 03/16:]
Added picture and caption.
************************


Comments (14)




Potentially lethal combination of Cheap China(?)-made crap and low competence


Posted On: Monday - March 13th 2023 5:10PM MST
In Topics: 
  Cheap China-made Crap  General Stupidity  The Future  Peak Stupidity Roadshow



I am not sure that the long-lasting light bulbs in the traffic signal lights near me are Cheap China-made Crap or not. I could ask someone from the city Street Division, but I'd probably have to see one of the bulbs and look it up. I wouldn't be even thinking about this if there weren't more and more burned out traffic lights around.

I think back to about 5 years ago, when I could talk to my son about this. We discussed the problem. It COULD potentially just be my imagination or noticing bias, but I really don't think so.

It's the red light bulbs* that are worrisome. These small intersections have 2 sets of red/yellow/green for each direction, so 24 bulbs total. There is redundancy for each until a bulb burns out.

The yellows don't burn out much, because they aren't on for long. Were both out for one direction, it might be odd for some drivers, hearkening back to I don't know how long, but I would hope drivers would be able to deal with it.

If both greens burn out for one direction, I see even less of a danger, and only a problem with slower traffic, as those who know the intersection would slow to almost a stop before they can see the reds for the crossing road.

If that 2nd red in that direction goes out, it's an accident waiting to happen, by my guess, within the day. These are stoplights within a neighborhood. Most of the traffic is drivers who know there is a stoplight there. Not all of them, however, are good enough drivers to stay off the iCrap and not miss things like this. All it would take is for an unfamiliar or distracted (or both) driver to come through in the direction that should have a red light while a non-defensive driver comes through the intersection in the crossing direction.

Worse yet, many of these neighborhood intersections don't have good sight lines. In other words, defensive driving doesn't help much, unless you drive like Grandma. I don't blame people for loving their trees, bushes, and brick walls, but I don't think all the code is being followed. Due to simply the lay of the land, one intersection has the busier road in an ~ 30 ft. lower valley, as the lower-traffic crossing street comes downhill to the intersection for both ways. There are houses on all corners, and in one direction, you can't see to the left without being IN the intersection. People speed up due to the downhill and their wanting to catch the light. Years ago, probably without burned-out bulbs being involved, my friend witnessed a fiery crash there.

I happened upon one of the city guys once and told him about a burned-out red light. It got fixed within a few days. Now, I see this problem quite often, in fact the usual 2 stop lights I go through in one direction almost always have 1 or 2 of the 24 lights out. This is not the way it used to be. I know that for sure. Things are getting shoddy.

I believe it's a combination of lower quality bulbs and incompetence in keeping up with one of the primary jobs of the city, maintaining the infrastructure. Where's the money going? How big is the budget of the Office of Diversity? Let's get some DIE people up there on cherry pickers before people DIE.


PS: LED-based signals have been around for 25 years, by my recollection, but I've seen rows/columns of the individual LEDs go dark, so maybe they are not working out as well as I figured they would.

PPS: The style of traffic light fixtures in the image above is classic, but there aren't many left around of these all-12-in-one types. We usually have 8 (x3) fixtures instead of the 2 (x12).


* By that, I mean (red light) bulbs, not red (light bulbs), as the colors come from the lenses in front of the clear bulbs.


Comments (24)




The Greenhouse and Beyond - Part 2: Radiation and other heat transfer


Posted On: Saturday - March 11th 2023 5:51PM MST
In Topics: 
  Global Climate Stupidity  Science

(Continued from Part 1)

Here again is the video of German Astrophysicist Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder on the actual process of the "greenhouse effect":



First, I gotta say this: Mrs. Hossenfelder, please, please, consider letting your upper and lower teeth come apart while you're talking! Her English is fine. Her accent is not bad at all. It's just, well, if she would leave a gap for the words to come out... they could come out to me, and I'd have an easier time listening. (It's not THAT bad, but you've got to concentrate more than you should have to.)

This video lecture is all about radiation heat transfer and almost solely about that to/from layers of gas in the atmosphere. Scientists study radiation heat transfer usually to from/to surfaces and to/from fluids (normally gases), and engineers do the same. For the latter, if they actually WORK with it, the results have to be right. That means, ALL processes and effects must be accounted for if any types of models are to match reality. Radiation is one of 3 modes of heat transfer, the others being conduction and convection. There's a lot to ALL of the modes, but we'll get to it regarding radiation shortly here.

Put simply, the idea of the greenhouse effect and Carbon Dioxide is that energy of certain wavelengths transferred from the Earth's surface (again keeping it simple) to deep space are absorbed by the CO2 up there. Those wavelengths blocked are not so much of the spectrum of the incoming solar radiative heat transfer, so the result is more energy staying within the control volume of the Earth and its atmosphere than with less CO2 up there. The equilibrium average temperature of the whole deal gets slightly higher, IF, and that's a big one, all else doesn't change.

What I just wrote is something of a misunderstanding of it all, Dr. Hossenfelder maintains. Besides explaining more about the radiation emission frequency spectrum of the 3 "greenhouse gases", water, CO2, and "meethane"** and the absorption of infrared by CO2 especially - nothing that negates the last paragraph (the "high school" explanation) - the importance of the altitude of that layer of CO2 is what she says has been misunderstood.

Let me use a few paragraphs now to summarize radiation heat transfer. Like all heat transfer, the rate goes up from 0 with objects (in the case of radiation, surfaces or masses of gas) at the same temperature and increases with temperature difference. Unlike in conduction and convection***, rather than the heat transfer rate being a linear function of ΔT (Temperature difference), along with other factors, of course, radiation heat transfer is odd on that score. It comes out in the math that the rate is a function of the difference of T's to the 4th power. Note: That's NOT (Th - Tc)4. It's Th4 - Tc4. If you're wondering about the units, the temperatures must be in degrees Kelvin (K) or, for the English units system, degrees Rankine**** (R) - these are both referenced to absolute zero, i.e. no molecular movement.

Peak Stupidity is about the last place you'll get engineering derivations (almost every single one is based on Newtons's laws and/or the 1st law of Thermodynamics, BTW). Here, though, at least, is the very basic radiation heat transfer equation, from a surface to another surface or to/from the oft-used non-body called the sky: qnet = 𝜎ɛAS(𝑇h4 - Tc4), where

qnet is the net heat transfer rate (units could be Watts) between surfaces.
𝜎 is the Stefan-Boltzman constant, equal to 5.67 x 10 -8 W/m2K4
ɛ is the emissivity of the surface, from 0 for a "white" surface (poor emitter and poor absorber) to approaching 1.0 for that theoretical "Black!" body (a good absorber and a good emitter).
A is the surface area.
S is not in your standard science equation, but this "Shape Factor" is necessary for real-life problems.
Th and Tc are the absolute temperatures of the hotter and colder surfaces (or gases) respectively. A positive rate of heat transfer is always the case from the hotter body to the colder one.

"What's all that got to do with the price of tea in China", you ask? Well, it'll go way up if the seas boils, I'm here to tell you! No, this is likely fairly straight forward to the reader, but let me give you a cool real-world example of one part of this, the Shape Factors that come into play in real life ENGINEERING problems. (I am not completely sure if Dr. Hossenfelder gets this with respect to the layers of gases in the atmosphere, but we'll get to that.)

Take my old muscle car, please , NO, for example only. Once the engine has cooled and the inside air has conducted/convected and radiated to the outside such that the car is basically at an equal temperature, one can consider the radiation heat transfer to the night sky. There is natural convection (the term used as opposed to "forced" convection, meaning in a flowing fluid) convection from the air, and a little bit of conduction through the (fairly good insulating) tires from the ground, but the car surface cools overnight through radiation to the sky too, as the ground does, and then the layers of the atmosphere too. There may be frost on the car, or dew on a warmer night but with high humidity.,

I pick the dew because that's when I noticed, a few times, that the window on one side had dew but the one on the other didn't. This rules out natural convection as the cause, because its effect would be symmetric. What was going on? There's a row of bushes on one side, close to the car. Let me digress from this digression to the Shape Factors. Engineers use the term "see"***** a lot, as in, the car roof sees the night sky about 50%, it sees the house walls for 30% and the bushes 20%, like that, the "S" for one radiative heat transfer path being 0.50 for the sky, 0.30 for the house, etc.. It's more complicated than that even, because unless you have a plane surface with the other components (surfaces or the sky) far enough away, one point on the surface "sees" more of this other surface than another part of that hotter surface does******. Some engineers may divide this up in a common-sense fashion, but for the really fastidious, Calculus, Bitchez!

The side next to the bushes was radiating mostly to them, at a much higher temperature than the night sky. No dew was present. The other side was more in the clear, so it got colder than the other, and it had dew on it... mostly. The really cool part was the portion of window near the side mirror on the dew side. I brought up that this is an old muscle car to explain that it has the old close-in small mirrors. Well, there was a dew-free zone on the window the exact shape of the mirror. How convenient for driving! What will nature think of next? Well, go figure, this portion of the glass was in a sky shadow (yes, cue up Cat pre-Moslem Stevens), radiating to the mirror and mirror housing. Those had an absolute temperature much higher than the night sky, probably near the same T as the window. Oh man, then there's the reflection of IR from the mirror ...

Before I forget, let me add: There are surfaces, and then there is the deep sky. For layers of the atmosphere radiating outward, deep space is taken, if I recall correctly, taken to be at an average of 4 K (way down near absolute zero) for calculations.

The point of all this is to explain to the reader not just that this stuff can get complicated fast, but even in the atmosphere with those nice hollow-spherical layers, everything radiates to or gets radiation from, EVERYTHING ELSE. Dr. Hossenfelder, even in her "PhD version" 2nd half of the video either doesn't really get that, or has explained it poorly. I do lean toward the latter, but she had a chance to explain this when she told her viewers toward the end (16:30) that she had been misled by the arrow directions in the previous "greenhouse effect" schematics she'd seen in textbooks.

OK, now, finally, let me get to the video in a more direct fashion. Much I attribute to poor explaining and some to possible non-understanding. Early on (03:25) and near the middle (10:38), she describes infrared emissions as "light". She's not technically wrong, but if you're going to make this clear, you should be certain to call all of it radiation. Visible light too is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. She knows this, but the non-difference between "light" and "radiation" would confuse the "high school" version viewer. Along with this, near the end of the video, Dr. Hoffenfelder said (about the incoming radiation to Earth's surface at 16:38) "It's converted to infrared radiation...", a really confusing way of putting it. Nothing is being "converted". The ground absorbs energy at some wavelengths and emits at some others. (At least she got the light/radiation bit right by this point.) She said this correctly earlier on (4:40) though.

I get that this science popularizer is not an atmospheric scientist. That does not excuse her, seeing as the video is almost all about the atmosphere, from not knowing what the Tropopause is. In the first half of the video as she tells us, in the "High School version" that the atmospheric temperature decrease with altitude (07:10), she notes (09:30) "If you go further up, it remains constant for a bit..." A bit?! It's 8 to 10 km thick right there in the diagram. In the diagrams her Stratosphere includes the Tropopause. Is that just her wanting to save time? That notwithstanding, what I think is a true lack of understanding on the part of this Astrophysicist is the explanation of the increase in temperature with altitude in the thick (not materially, but geometrically) layer of the atmosphere called the Stratosphere. Much of the 2nd half of the video concerns the Stratosphere.

The idea gas law doesn't explain it, as pressure continually decreases with altitude. Why does the temperature go up with altitude in this layer? "That's because the atmosphere up there absorbs some of the incoming sunlight." (09:40 and 14:45) (Make that "solar radiation", please!) OK, but then during the rest of the presentation, there is this natural assumption that when CO2, or other greenhouse gases exist at higher levels they are at a lower temperature. "... at higher altitudes, where the temperature is lower". At 12:48 she says "if the concentration of Carbon Dioxide increase further, then the emission of more and more wavelengths of the spectrum moves up to higher altitudes, so they move to lower temperatures." I get that the temperatures anywhere in the Stratosphere are lower than the bottom ~5 km of the Troposphere (the entire Troposphere******* is our realm, and where the weather occurs). However, why is this additional CO2 MUCH higher up? If it's just higher WITHIN the Stratosphere, it'd be warmer at higher altitudes. Earlier, at 09:55, we are told: "Pushing the effective altitude of emission up reduces the temperature of emissions, and that brings the system out of balance." (More on those last 3 words to come.)

This is utterly confusing to me. Either there's something more to the explanation, or she's contradicting the established fact she herself mentioned that T's go up with altitude in the Stratosphere. It's the Stratospheric cooling that's her gotcha in this entire presentation as to why she is right and they, those "Climate Change Deniers", are wrong. Yes, this is the point in question at which the agenda of Sabine Hossenfelder comes out in the open. Here's the line:
"If you've ever had the pleasure of interacting with a climate change denier, this is Exhibit A."
(12:17, or start at ~12:05 for more context)
She's a 1967 paper that she says shows that more CO2 increases Stratospheric cooling, which she says has been observed, and she maintains that this shows us that the warming of the Tropopause, questionable as that is, and the cooling up higher, demonstrate that the questionable warming is NOT a function of an increase in solar radiation influx. OK, but, her satellite data upper Stratospheric cooling graph displayed at 16:00 show (with the eruption interruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in1991) a 1.5 C decrease from 1980 through 1996, a level period from then till about 2002, a 0.5 C decrease from then through 2009, then level or a slight increase since. That's not so very conclusive.

In addition to less radiative heat transfer to deep space, wouldn't a cooler layer up high also result in increased transfer TO said layer from material and surfaces below? Of course your milage wavelengths may vary, etc.

Finally, let me get to one more type of wording out of Dr. Hossenfelder that I believe is a combination of poor explanation AND an agenda in the wording. That would be that "out of balance" business that I mentioned, which appears a few times. Whatever you think of it, the Climate Calamity™ theory is a long-term process. Atmospheric composition changes, so absorption and emission of electromagnetic radiation changes, but there's no such thing as anything being "out of balance" involved. Things don't just jump. As concentration gets gradually higher, absorption gets higher (just a vague example), T goes up, so radiation in a certain direction gets higher. A new Equilibrium is established, but the physics don't and can't allow for anything to be out of some kind of balance. That terminology would make one wonder whether this lady understands the idea of changing the equilibrium. She does, I'm sure, but then I think she uses this phrasing as a scare tactic. How about, as she does admit at one point, something like "the temperature at the lower levels will increase this small amount"? The Earth is still balanced! Don't be alarmed! Stay where you are! Stand in the place where you live, now, just ... OK, more REM nonsense at the end there, but you gotta love a Geography song!

Near the end of this video, Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder does note that the whole thing is "vastly more complicated" (14:15) than what she explained here. I can be generous and allow that this means the radiation heat transfer in both directions (inward and outward) within this whole atmosphere and the land cover... ooops, and cloud cover, etc. is taken into account. That is, between everything and everything else.

What if I told you ... what if I told you, though ... that all this modeling is only about the radiation heat transfer and doesn't account for all the climate phenomenon in the Troposphere below? No, God! No, God! Please No!******** Is that sufficient? What if I told you that Dr. Hossenfelder is, in my opinion, no expert on Atmospheric Science, much less Climatology? What she IS, though, is the "What if I told you?" lady to match Bart Simpson's "I didn't do it" guy. She's a popularizer of something, but I'm not buying it.

This was by far Peak Stupidity's longest post EVAH! I will follow up with my discussion, as a repeat of material in posts 6 years go, on how complicated the whole climate modeling idea really is. Sabine Hossenfelder doesn't know the half of it, even if she has somehow been right on the money in this video.


* CO2 is not just sitting there in one layer though, but that's just more of the complications that she glosses over, even in her PhD simplified explanaton.

** Sorry to make fun, Dieter. I can't say I'd be able to give ANY kind of lecture in German.

*** The phenomenon of convection is really a mix of conduction and fluid flow. It gets complicated and unworkable FAST.

**** Spell check doesn't know "Rankine" #SAD

***** A totally different example, this from solid mechanics, might be, "this part sees a bending and torsion loading from ..." Engineers know that mechanic/structural parts don't have eyes, but this is a useful way to discuss things.

****** Oh, and possibly the house walls are warmer than the car, so that portion of radiative heat transfer goes the other way. I know what you're thinking: Criminey!

******* It is much narrower near the poles than toward the equator.

******** I gotta appreciate the Michael Scott clip at 09:02. This is a scene of his reaction on seeing that HR guy Toby Flenderson is not gone from The Office for good after all.


Comments (16)




The Greenhouse and Beyond - Part 1: Sabine "Sagan" Hossenfelder


Posted On: Friday - March 10th 2023 10:28AM MST
In Topics: 
  Global Climate Stupidity  Media Stupidity  Science

Peak Stupidity's illustrious, poetic, and highly-literarily-aware commenter Dieter Kief suggested the viewing of a 20 minute video on the "Greenhouse Effect" by German Astrophysicist Sabine Hossenfelder for our possible erudition. I watched it, and this one is worth a post on, what, with 20 minutes invested already.

I will not present any diagrams, due to laziness and my not getting paid a cent for any of this. I'm not claiming a degree in Astrophysics. I'm not claiming a degree in Climatology. I do know about engineering though, and specially heat transfer/thermo, enough to not necessarily refute or support Dr. Hossenfelder's talk, but to to be able to point out where I think she is missing knowledge and missing the big point on the alleged Climate Calamity™.

The entry to the whole world of Climate Crises is the so-called "greenhouse effect". Our youtube speaker would probably agree with the term "so-called" (but for not as many reasons as I do - more on this) as her main point in her video is that this effect (the absorption by high-atmospheric CO2 of surface or lower-level emissions of IR radiation) is not exactly what happens in a greenhouse. She admits to not understanding the real process till now, and she explains this in I Misunderstood the Greenhouse Effect. Here's How It Works..



From the get-go, that title alone is bound to turn off some skeptics of the Climate Calamity™ narrative, as in "if you didn't understand this till now, Doctor Hossenfelder, why do you expect us to believe you just now got it all figured out?" In her defense, she is neither a Climatologist nor Atmospheric Scientist, but just a country (Germany, that'd be) Astrophysicist, Jim! Mrs. Hossenfelder's field does include the understanding of radiation absorption and emission to the molecular or atomic level. That's what she gets into in this video. She must have detailed knowledge of the Earth's atmosphere to related this to the long-term Climate, as in, the energy balance of the Earth.

This post was to address the science/engineering only, which is all I had in my head until a few minutes ago. Since I decided last minute to look up Dr. Hossenfelder's marital status for the use of "Mrs." vs. "Miss"*, I got some more background on her in the process. The first part of the short wiki page is discouraging:
Sabine Hossenfelder (born 1976) is a German theoretical physicist, science communicator, author, musician and YouTuber. She is the author of Lost in Math: How beauty leads physics astray, which explores the concept of elegance in fundamental physics and cosmology, and of Existential Physics: A scientist’s guide to life’s biggest questions.
Uh, uh, is that what this is about, another "sciencey" person, using the status of the field to push wokeness rather than actually DOING science? No, but she has a good resume, as far as university education, and her work has been actual science... until... Well, yeah, what you see from wiki and what I found on her blog, called Backreaction tells me that Sabine Hossenfelder has designs on being the next Carl Sagan.

Carl Sagan was an Astrophysicist too, an American who got popular in the 1970s and '80s (partly from being on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show) and let it all go to his head. His big, big "nuclear winter" push was the point when his political mind ate up the remains of his scientific mind. Oh, yeah, major nuclear war would be bad ... mmmkaay... we got that. However, his scenario that the fallout, dust, or whatever changes to the atmosphere would cause a deep cold "nuclear winter" was far-fetched. This is when the American public started switching from "Choose Life" T-shirts to "Choose Beer" T-shirts. (That was along the lines of "Nuke the gay whales for Jesus.")

Uh, uh!



I looked over Sabine Hossenfelder's blog, and yes, I see she wants to be a Carl Sagan. It's that same maniacal belief system, with that intelligence and love for science but that inexperience with the reality that the world is more complicated than even she says, and that same attitude that "we should", "Germany shouldn't", or "the world's gonna need to!" do some massive centrally-planned projects and massive changes to the economy based on some cool physics phenomena. Exhibit A: An Air Condition for the Planet: How Could It Work? It's not a 45 Gazilion ton window unit, but still, it's pie-in-the-sky stupidity.

Again, for Mr. Kief in particular here, I want to state that it was not my intention to even look anything up about Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder. My intention was to address the material in the video. I don't know if you'd call this post so far an ad hominem attack of any sort, but I now do know that she's got an agenda besides just popularizing science (of which I've got nothing against, if it's done right - more on that too). There's a point in the video that I can't help feel would be not be at all necessary had this science popularizer not had a political agenda. Perhaps it's more a personal agenda, as she may be going for that Carl Sagan style scare-the-Bejesus-out-of-people fame and fortune.

OK, that latter bit is bordering on the ad hominem. With the scientific points in my head still, I'll end this post here and start on that from here, keeping it all to the science (except that one little thing). If I don't finish that today, it'll be on here tomorrow. I left the video, as the reader may want to watch the whole thing before the next post.


* Yes, I'm (purposefully) old-fashioned like that. I could have just used "Dr." everywhere, I guess.


Comments (18)




Billions Of Lives Saved By Man Wearing Mask While Alone In Car


Posted On: Thursday - March 9th 2023 6:18PM MST
In Topics: 
  Humor  Kung Flu Stupidity

Having the wherewithal and energy to write smart-ass comments here or on The Unz Review is one thing. Getting my stuff together to write a serious post, say on the Climate Calamity™ claims of a German Astrophysicist, is another. It's not like I'm modeling the whole of radiation heat transfer to and from the Earth and crunching the numbers to refute the video (recommended by commenter Dieter Kief) either, but I do have plenty of questions and concerns about the way even this German Professor thinks about the problem.

So, in the meantime, since commenter Alarmist reminded me to check The Babylon Bee for this hilarious post, I did that and saw one of their great videos. The regular reader, at least for the last 3 years, should know that the Kung Flu stupidity is our forte. Enjoy!



Comments (16)