Scamming America: The Heartwarming Story of the Tolentino Family
Posted On: Monday - July 27th 2026 6:58PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Media Stupidity Anarcho-tyranny Female Stupidity
Weirdly, I'd had this article slated to be discussed here on Peak Stupidity "any day now", though I came upon it in early May, but the writer's name is one I just came upon again yesterday. (No, I didn't remember, but) this Drew Pavlou was also the writer mentioned by Unz Review commenter YetAnotherAnon, an interesting and informative British guy, in this comment regarding overseas projection of Chinese Communist Party power, in Australia. Now there's another post to be written "any day now".
The substack site I came upon in May is called Drew Pavlou's Iceberg Journal, and it contained his article The Heartwarming Story Of How New Yorker Writer Jia Tolentino's Parents Ran A Human Slavery Ring. Miss Tolentino is no relation to Quentin Tarantino, so, Steve Sailer, you can quit reading right here. She's not even Italian, so I'm no longer craving some good meaty lasagna with the appropriate wine and unlimited breadsticks.
Nevertheless, "Progressive" New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino is kind of fetching in that picture... from what I can see. She's Filipina, her parents having gotten to America via Canada, as seems to fairly often be the case these days. She grew up a Southerner, in Houston, Texas, was a Pi Beta Phi perfect little sister at the University of Virginia and sang in the a cappella group The Virginia Belles even.
Rather than sticking with the Greeks and settling down as a woman, young Virginia Belle Jia Tolentino went off with the Peace Corps for a year in Kyrgyzstan (whaaa?), and, worse yet, went to grad school at Michigan in Fine Arts. That's not what ya' do... but I suppose this explains how one becomes a wacky progressive, such as:
Appearing alongside far-left agitator Hasan Piker for a New York Times podcast, Jia admitted to repeated acts of shoplifting against ]["from", it should be] Whole Foods, before encouraging her readership to go out and commit theft: ‘‘Everyone, try it. See what happens.’’I'll pass. Now, I don't think it applies to Miss Tolentino either, but there IS that dilemma about whether a man should let his family starve or break the law by stealing a loaf of bread... might as well be some kind of fancy gluten-free bread while he's at it. Of course, Jia Tolentino does not provide for a family, there is EBT now, and well, it's not about that...
Jia encouraged people to steal from the Louvre, before effortlessly pivoting to endorse Luigi Mangione’s infamous murder of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.Sure, if your family is REALLY hungry, you can sell some of that art and take them to the local Parisian Olive Garden for unlimited soup and salad... and breadsticks. It's only right.
But, friends, that's not what I'm here to write about someone writing about today. Mr. Pavlou's article is about the sheer gall of this Progressive woman having ANYTHING at all to say about ANYTHING since her parents were up to no good, some silly human trafficking thing ... she reckons it was just a minor story that is causing too much of a stink for her years later...
Thanks, but I'll let Mr. Pavlou tell me the rest.
In a since-deleted blog post, Jia described the situation as a ‘‘reputational time bomb,’’ which I guess makes a lot of sense given the slavery.I like the snark out of this guy!
Jia writes: ‘‘Around the time I was born, my grandmother founded an agency placing nurses from the Philippines in U.S. hospitals that were experiencing a skilled labor shortage.’’No
She then spun up a cute story about how her grandmother and parents lovingly helped Filipinos migrate to the United States in search of better opportunities, only to be crushed by the forces of evil American racism and white supremacy: ‘‘This was Texas in the years following the Patriot Act, and basic human and constitutional rights did not seem to be granted to brown non-Americans accused of such serious crimes.’’
Now, the only problem with this story is that her parents ran an actual slavery ring.
I decided to go and read the court documents.
Her parents trafficked hundreds of immigrants into the US, then threatened them with deportation if they spoke out against abusive living conditions and predatory loans that forced them into a kind of indentured servitude or modern day slavery.
Her parents ultimately stole almost $2.8 million USD in fraudulent visa fees before being indicted on 40 counts of money laundering, conspiracy to smuggle immigrants, and visa fraud.
Mr. Pavlou continues:
According to court records, the fraud worked like this:Hence the Eye-talian sounding name, Tolentino. If you're gonna be a mobster, you need to sound like a mobster. "It's Boss Tolentino on the phone, says he's just bustin' some balls." "Never go against the family", he says, as he strokes his imaginary whiskers (cause he's actually Oriental).
The Tolentino family took school administrators on free trips to luxury beach resorts in the Philippines.
In exchange for the luxury holiday, school administrators would then ‘‘interview’’ Filipino teachers and agree to hire them to their school district.
At first, the school district promised to employ 55 teachers.
With this preliminary order, the Tolentino family charged each of the teachers $10,000 for a non-refundable deposit and extracted a promise to pay up to 50% of their US salaries for their first few years of employment.
Before even making it to the US, most teachers were therefore placed in debt roughly equivalent to two years of median family income in the Philippines.
This debt quickly became crushing because the Tolentino family business Omni Consortium worked with a predatory loan shark company called Blue Pacific to deliver loans at an annual interest rate of 60%.
Blue Pacific - this illustrious beacon of justice - required that each “recruit” have a co-signer in the Phillipines: co-signers were threatened with jail-time if “recruits” were unable to make monthly payments.
Most teachers then promptly failed to make monthly payments, because the Tolentino family failed to secure their promised employment.
Far from being forgiving of their trafficked slaves in such adverse circumstances, the Tolentinos decided to punish non-payment by charging an additional 10% penalty to the loan payment, plus an additional 5% interest.
If you see lots of excerpts from one article in one post on this site, and we're not fisking the whole thing, you can bet it's very very good writing. Drew Pavlou did a nice job, and I recommend you read the whole thing. You'll enjoy it. Mr. Pavlou concludes:
So the lesson is this: if you really MUST enslave Filipino teachers while boasting about breaking the law and killing your political enemies, you have to at least pay lip service to progressive pieties in the pages of the New York Times and New Yorker.Well, I mean, after the trial they lost a couple of big properties, $80,000, and the '96 Mercedes and '99 Beemer. Ouch! I sure hope they dug up the cash from under Carmela's oregano plants.
I'm gonna back up and include a little more:
Zero consequences. She continues to lead an epic, cool as fuck life in a $2.5 million Brooklyn mansion while writing for the New Yorker. You have to respect it, the fact that she lives without limits, without any moral guardrails. Nietzschean. BAP pilled in many ways.What a country! You don't have to be Italian anymore to run a mob racket, and you no longer need sailing ships to run slaves. Even recent immigrants can do it.
Where it becomes a bit unfair, though, is that she insists on bitching and nagging the rest of us into servitude and submission. Her family are allowed to operate epic baller Andrew Tate trafficker-slave ring operations, but God forbid we take a fucking sip from a plastic coffee cup.
Scamming Americans and scamming America - that's what most immigration has been about.
PS: Some of these enslaved folk were able to get "T" visas and become yet more immigrants who may or may not ever act like Americans. The "T" doesn't stand for Tolentino.
PPS: Interestingly, after writing a diatribe, I, Thee Dread in her book Trick Mirror explaining how marriage is a bad deal for women, Jia Tolentino married a long-term boyfriend and has had 2 kids. Hopefully the man of the house won't really have to steal bread from Whole Foods to support the two youngsters after the property tax payments on the Brooklyn mansion, you know, with Mayor Mandami and all stickin' it to the
Comments (3)
Get your kicks on Route 66
Posted On: Saturday - July 25th 2026 3:26PM MST
In Topics: Music Americans Geography Peak Stupidity Roadshow
I got a brochure recently that taught me that Springfield, Missouri was the birthplace of Route 66. One would think the road would have started at one end or the other, Chicago, Illinois, or Los Angeles, California, likely the former because LA was not so big a place a century back. OK, but a century ago, in 1926, a stretch of Missouri Route 14, going from St. Louis to Joplin was designated the first stretch of the famous US numbered highway Route 66.
That's the full route, all 2,450 miles of it. That's obviously not the most direct route - one can go across the whole country on one of the southern routes in about that distance - but there are cities to pass through and mountains to avoid.
A Chicago to LA Great Circle route, the shortest distance without tunneling through the Earth, something Peak Stupidity discussed long ago, would look like a curve toward the north instead. It would arc up north of a straight line on the normal map projection through northern Iowa, a bit of S. Dakota, across NW Nebraska, SE Wyoming, the NW corner of Colorado, NE to SW diagonally across Utah, and a bit NW of Lost Wages, but I don't know exactly, not having a globe on my person today.
Alas, no not really, the numbered US Highway system was upstaged starting in the mid-1950s with the Interstate System, an amazing job in that old can-do country of ours.
There are plenty of US numbered highways extant, of course. I don't think many a Peak Stupidity reader would be more than 10 or 20 miles from one, unless he's out in the real boonies. The most famous US Highways are probably the US-1, Key West through Maine (nearly) east coast route, the US-2 across the whole country on the northern route, and US-101 up from Los Angeles, mostly a bit inland up California, then across the Golden Gate, more up through California, then up the Oregon coast, more inland in Washington and up the west side of the Olympic Mountains, across the north slightly inland from the Juan de Fuca Straits and back south on the east side of that square-shaped mountain range down toward Olympia. I can't remember for sure, but I think Washington State got smart and didn't hold to the large-scale N-S system on the signage, i.e., if you're heading west from Port Angeles, signs will say US-101W. Anyone here sure of this?
As for the venerable Route 66, you can't get quite as many kicks anymore on the REAL old road.
Here's a nice site describing that some of the original road has been incorporated into new numbering, some has been realigned or bypassed, and there's even a dirt portion. Please don't bring your GPS (as the only commenter on that page desired)! Where are the kicks then, I ask you?
Hey, and these guys below didn't write* the song, and they weren't even Americans! Yet, how could they not fall in love with the place back in 19 sixty-
Well, if you ever plan to motor west,
try to take my way.
That's the highway
that's the best.
Get your kicks on Route 66.
Well, it winds from Chicago to L.A.,
more than two thousand miles all the way.
Get your kicks on Route 66.
Well, it goes from St. LouisBobby Troup, King Cole, Crosby, Manhattan Transfer, the Stones... all got their kicks, singing Route 66.
down to Missouri.
Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty.
You'll see Amarillo
and Gallup, New Mexico,
Flagstaff, Arizona.
Don't forget Winona,
Kingman, Barstow, SanBernadinoBerdu, ...
Whoa, Route 66 was only 38 years old when Mick and the Stones sang this! Now it's been a whole century... and these guys are still playing... this song? Something's really off here.
* It was written by one Bobby Troup way back in '46, about a 10-day road trip to Hollywood the aspiring songwriter and his wife Cynthia took in their Buick on part of the US-66 from the US-40 rest of the way to LA.
Comments (10)
First Amendment Exception for the Worst Word in the World
Posted On: Saturday - July 25th 2026 8:21AM MST
In Topics: Race/Genetics Anarcho-tyranny Legal Stupidity Morning Constitutional
Remember young Mom Shiloh Hendrix? She was the lady that had some words with a Somalian "newcomer" at a park in Rochester Minnesota last year. Peak Stupidity kept our readership up on her viral story in May of '25, with Shiloh and the Somalians and Parable of the Good Somalian.
I figured, End of Story. This poor White woman said THE WORST WORD in the WORLD at the playground one find day after being angered by a common black habit of little ones not taught well by their parents, theft. Then, she received the usual extreme cancellation treatment and threats for that, had to move out of town (cause it's THE WORST WORD in the WORLD) and received over $800,000 in small donations from helpful fellow White people.
I thought the story was over until...
Shortly after I saw that, I read more from The Gateway Pundit: Verdict Reached in Shiloh Hendrix Case After More Than Eight Hours of Deliberation.
A Minnesota jury has delivered a split verdict in the disorderly conduct trial of Shiloh Hendrix, finding the 37-year-old mother not guilty on the count related to her words directed at the eight-year-old Somali boy who was stealing from her, but guilty on the count stemming from her comments to the man who filmed and confronted her at a Rochester playground.GP bolded it, so why not here?
For some reason, the charges were Disorderly Conduct. I'm no lawyer, but that charge usually doesn't apply to simple arguments or shouting matches between 2 individuals alone.* However, it sounds better than charges of offensive speech, at least to anybody who's read one certain document and honestly sworn to uphold it. Blogger Nicholas Stix, writing on substack now, has more of this story than I will write about here.
These words from the Somalian Sharmake Omar illustrate the crux of this matter:
After he began recording the incident, Omar said the woman’s reaction surprised him.See, some Somalian welfare migrant is entitled to lord it over a poor White American, in her own land. White people must know their place.
“I thought she was going to deny it and walk away when there was a video, and she saw that I was recording. She doubled down and even tripled down now,” Omar said.
There are words, like "nigger", that we're not to say, and young Shiloh had showed the utmost in gall and lack of awareness of her place in multicultural America. By saying a word only niggers are allowed to say, with Mr. Omar being such an honorary and also de facto nigger, White Miss Hendrix had gravely sinned. Then, SHE DOUBLED DOWN!
Denying she said "nigger" and walking away is what would be expected. What Shiloh Hendrix did was not back down to the very real threat of ruination of her life for her outburst after being sick of badly parented black children messing with her and her son. That took real guts. However, her life did get ruined, until the support of thousands of White people. Now, if White Americans generally didn't back down per this example, the power Somalian Omar had in his hand that day, and also this day during this trial, would disappear.
Anarcho-Tyranny held sway in court, though, this day. Without getting into the legal aspects, it seems as though the reason Miss Hendrix was found innocent of the first charge was lack of proof. Nobody had cameras out yet. The second charge was for the utterance of his Worst Word in the World by the defendant on camera. Ipso facto, there's your proof - guilty of
This Minnesota court has ruled for an unprecedented special exception to US Constitution Amendment I for the WWW. I don't recall its ratification by 38 States. This special exception for the word nigger should be reviewed by the SCrOTUS - all we need is 5 out of 6 overriding opinions, after we subtract out the dyke, the spic, and the nigger.
* Per Nick Styx, Minnesota law does have one example of this charge that's close:
“Minn. Stat. 609.72 – Disorderly Conduct: Prohibits abusive, obscene, or offensive conduct that reasonably causes alarm or anger, including racial slurs and aggressive public behavior.This is enforcement of "Minnesota Nice", I suppose, but no, not for non-White people. Nah, they are not expected to be Minnesota Nice, don'tcha' know?
Comments (20)
Roots Stupidity - Beware: The internet can be wrong!
Posted On: Wednesday - July 22nd 2026 5:23PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Internets Music Artificial Stupidity Science
We've been into politics here, most of the time, because, as the man paraphrased, "You might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in YOU!" We'll get back to one of our niche topics, the stupid pick of someone's sister Darlene for US Senator and the special GOP Primary that's heating up. We'll also talk Communists some more.
Let's get back to our roots today, though, with 3 items of stupidity.
1) Yahoo units:
They locked me out of my long-term emails a year ago, so yahoo is of no use to me. I'm not sure how I got to this headline. Florida dumped half a million oyster shells into the Gulf of Mexico [sic]. No one expected the results to be this good..
Besides that "Florida", the place, can't DO anything at all, but PEOPLE in Florida can, this half a million number seemed ... a bit fishy. I think, and perhaps the yahoo headline writer should have, "Does it make sense?" I can imaging a thousand oyster shells barely filling up a 55 G trash can at the restaurant. 500 trash cans full of shells is something a spot in the Gulf would not even notice. The article itself says 500,000 tons though, dumped over a 17 year period. That's 30,000 tons from Florida restaurants yearly, ~80 tons a day, something that "DOES make sense".
Those yahoos have no feel for numbers. Put them on the political beat or email customer care. Those Florida naturalists, BTW, did a nice job with the reefs off Cedar Key, as reported by real reporters. The fish, turtles, and dolphins are lovin' it!
2) Answers.com:
This web site has answers to your questions. In response to a stupid question, you can expect a stupid answer, even from The Internet. However, I didn't ask what I think is a stupid question yet got a stupid answer nonetheless. It's not supposed to work like that!
While playing around with simple Carnot Cycle COP calculations for our post The Warmth of Collectivism v The Coefficient of Performance, I wanted to check myself on 459 degrees on the Rankine scale being equal to standard room temperature, 68F and 20C. It'd been a LONG while. I remembered 459R, but was that 459 = 0 C, a common value one might want, instead of Room T? Better
The most promising results blurb that came up was for my question (expecting AI, but it was useless) was from this Answers.com page.
Me: "What is room temp on the rankine scale?""Room Temperature" has a specific meaning in Science, not just, say, the temperature in a room in our house before we ended up on window units only. The range in Fahrenheit is reasonable for yes, some rando family's average living room, and the Rankine range would have matched it if it weren't off by 100! Anonymous got it wrong 16 years ago, and whoever updated it 2 years back didn't fix this erroneous information.
Anonymous
∙ 16y ago
Updated: 5/23/2024:
Room temperature on the Rankine scale is approximately 560-570 degrees Rankine. This corresponds to around 68-77 degrees Fahrenheit on the more commonly used Fahrenheit scale.
I hadn't seen the front page of answers.com till just now, while getting an image. OK, that explains it. Next time, I'll have to make use of that other website, RightAnswers.com.
Hah! I had a real problem finding "drunken Indians by the road" images. "Drunken Native Americans by the road" worked MUCH better!
3) Full-Blooded Alcohol Content:
American Indians, "Feather Indians" or "Casino Indians", if you must, have a big problem with the firewater. That's unfortunate, because they like it so much.. which is... that's the problem.
Via The Gateway Pundit, which has some really sensational stuff at times, we got to the News Nation Now site with an incredible, make that non-credible, story about 2,000 Indians being missing or dead in Arizona. Arizona Medicaid fraud case: Up to 2,000 Native Americans dead or missing, attorneys say. That would be heap big story, if true. Perhaps it's really a handful of Indians, but, anyway, they were kidnapped and drugged with alcohol and what-not by people scamming them for $Billions in Federal "care" money. The stupidity in the reporting is apparent early as who those evil people are was never mentioned (but something tells me they are not your standard-issue Arizonans).
For the sake of this post, though, here's a real nugget of stupidity contained within:
Wood described one victim found with a blood alcohol level of .543, more alcohol than blood, who he said was dumped on the street outside a sober living home.Look, I'm no biologist, doctor, nurse, "First Responder", or any other kind of "Health Professional". I'm no State Trooper, Precinct Captain, Special Victims Unit Leader who drives the black van, or any other kind of LEO or other armed member of the Zodiac. I had to take a written driving test at 16 y/o - not sure I could pass it again right now - but I don't know how old I was when I understood that "blowing a point oh 8" does not mean 8% alcohol is in my bloodstream but only .08% is*. (Seems like a pittance - I'm not sure what the big deal is.)
Writers Jesse Weber and Tatiana Carter, hell, anyone who writes about drunkards, really ought to know this, so as not to be off by a factor of 100 in his article. I know it's just stupidity, but that could be interpreted as very racist toward our Indian brethren. OTOH, I gotta respect ANYBODY who can drink so much that his blood alcohol content achieves the level of 54.3%. I'd be babbling on, jumping out of moving vehicles, and eventually visiting the Porcelain Goddess for an hour or two just at that last .3%!
54.3% Blood Alcohol Content - I ain't livin' long like this....
Rodney Crowell wrote this one, but Waylon had a minor hit with it in 1979.
* By mass, I think, not volume. I'll check.
Comments (11)
Please, please, Mr. Postman, look and see...
Posted On: Tuesday - July 21st 2026 6:20PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '26 Music Trump US Feral Government
If Peak Stupidity has seemed Manic-Depressive lately, sorry, it's BiPolar now, on one certain topic, well, let us explain. We're back and forth on President Trump because we cannot stand his personality while we still appreciate the work the Trump-47 Administration (not all the one man) has been doing on Job #1.
Even that goes back and forth from pole to pole in the news, as nearly every policy move made outside of the worthless UniParty-run Congress is rejected by a judge, allowed again by another judge, rejected again... and so on. Most of what we read about and get excieted about doesn't make it through this "process", but then some does. That's out of hundreds and hundreds of policy efforts.
The biggest WIN, by far, has been the closing up of the southern border as tight as it's been in about 3/4 century - The Epoch Times via Zerohedge, says the Border Patrol Records 14 Straight Months Of Zero Releases At Southern Border. "First, you gotta stop digging." is that 1st Law of Holes.
Since that UniParty crowd in the House of Representin' has been making every effort to NOT pass the SAVE act that requires ID and citizenship for the act of voting.* Again, Trump & Co. have changed policy to work around this refusal by working with the US Post Office, which IS, after all, one of the very few bureaus of any sort specified by the US Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 says, and I quote:
The Congress shall have Power...To establish Post Offices and post Roads;The Executive Branch is in charge of administering all this, so we now read that we are the "forth" stage again regarding the USPS and their being tasked to double-check the delivery of mail-in ballots: Trump Admin Wins HUGE Court Battle Over Mail-In Ballot Rule that Requires States Submit Voter Lists and Ballot Barcodes Before Postal Service Will Deliver Federal Ballots. (That the Gateway Pundit is excited doesn't mean so awfully much. Every title's in CAPS, they're always excited, and stories are always, DEVELOPING!, BREAKING!, HUGE! or some other such sensational thing...)
We're hoping this one stays in place long enough for times like this, November 4th of '20. The image is from our post Is it all gonna come down to Philly or Carson City?? Send lawyers, guns, and money ...
The election cheating by the D party will continue, and it'll only get worse if the DSA folks (more about them later this week) take more power. The latter folks only need that ONE win by a hair, and then there will be no more elections** on which anyone need worry his pretty little head about cheating.
We had a great postman until 3 years ago, but now we've got the D.I.E. guys (one is nice enough to bring catnip though). Will they follow the policy down at the Post Office?
These type of people are nervously sitting on the edges of their fat asses about it.
This brings back a vivid memory - Please, Please, Mr. Postman was probably one of the first 5 pop music songs I every heard on the radio. Before my time, it was a Motown hit for The Marvelettes, and apparently The Beatles sang it a couple of years later. I missed that, and, sorry, I like the White Bread version, with the great double (tenor and baritone) saxes and the great guitar lead by one Tony Peluso. DisneyLand looked kind of normal too half a century back.
Nobody can accuse this cutie with the beautiful 1970s hairdoo of having had a fat ass, that's for sure.
There must be some word today-ayy-ayyWhat a beautiful voice Karen Carpenter had!
from my voters, so far away.
Please, Mr. Postman, look and see,
if there's a ballot, a ballot for me...
[saxophones, at some point]
I've been standin' here awaitin', Mister Postman,
so-oh-oh patiently-eee-eeey,
for just an ink... jet printed ballot,
or maybe more, in trucks on a pallet... oh, yeah...
[guitar solo]
* A funny set of tweets and memes seen lately has compared these voting requirements with that required to allow one to avail himself of unlimited pasta at The Olive Garden.
** We've just seen this with that Daniel Ortega fellow down in Neek-a-rock-whaa**. Nicaragua's Ortega says 'never again' for elections after two decades in power. Wait a cotton-pickin' minute! That guy's been a Communist Strongman (no offense intended) down there since Reagan's time!
*** Sorry, some of the Peak Stupidity writers have their resumes in with the Regime Media. Don't mind them - they're just practicing.
Comments (2)
KDJT(?), humility, United Airlines, and fun with Airport Codes
Posted On: Monday - July 20th 2026 8:19PM MST
In Topics: Trump Big-Biz Stupidity
It's very easy to get extremely annoyed and frustrated at Donald J Trump's personality. Commenter E.H. Hail had something to say in this regard in the comments under the previous post. (Nothing about the Carnot Cycle was discussed, weirdly...)
You may want to read there, but I have a distinction about what's up with this guy that will go with a minor story about airport naming and some BS out of United Airlines' management.
I've called out Trump's ego as something extreme Is the problem just that, though? OK, it's a LOT Of things, but I think that doesn't pin down one of the major things I don't like about him. Maybe General Patton or Ronald Reagan had a bigger ego... who knows... though I doubt it. The problem is not just that. Trump has the completely lack of modesty. That's what bothers me. During the 3rd month of this blog, Peak Stupidity discussed A good trait of Americans, which was Humility, or so I thought at the time, with my example of President Jimmy Carter. (Sure, it's possible that was just his outward persona, but that matters too.)
There are dozens of stories, the big new Air Force Ones, the Whitehouse ballroom, etc, that show this Reality-TV man's distracting himself and others from real work for his ego. This one sounds pretty small: Palm Beach International Airport has been renamed Donald Trump International.
OK, to start with, I'm glad the name hasn't been changed from some guy who long ago BUILT the whole place or something. I've seen too much of that. (Take *Martin Luther* King County, Washington, for example. Sure, take it! It's not the beautiful place it used to be.)
Fine, this is small potatoes, I suppose. Palm Beach is Trump's home away from New York and Washington, FS, and I'm sure he helps the local economy.
However, the lack of humility in this and other stories shows up in WHO pushes for the monuments, renaming, what-have-you. If you're any kind of modest at all, say you're Ronald Reagan, and you really do have an ego (I dunno, not saying) that has you wanting an important airport named after you, you don't go publicly pushing for it. You may hint to some powerful friends that this would be a nice gesture. Maybe you are more modest than that, kind of like a normal person and just hope in your heart that people do appreciate you and name something big after you.
Publicly pushing for it and bullying people about it is unseemly as hell. It's disgusting. Since I've mentioned President Reagan, let me point out a post from late Trump-45 entitled Reaganesque Presidential Statesmanship vs. Clown Act Donald Trump. We also had a 5-part series Ronnie vs. Donnie.*
Long ago (I'll find the post later), I discussed the naming of a couple of airports. President Jimmy (no longer James) Carter had the small uncontrolled** airport at Americus, Georgia (KACJ), closest paved strip to his home town of Plains, named after him. Just as his brother Billy was said to have done, one can just stop the plane and let a guy out with the engine (or both) running, so he can take a quick leak. Nobody cares!
Ronald Reagan, OTOH, did have an important - not so big, but important - airport named after him, Ronald Reagan National (KDCA) near downtown. Washington. Probably it'd be best for you not to tell your pilot friend to hold it at idle, so you can go pee between the taxiways... you know, Terra and all. There's a difference in humility that showed up between these two examples, so what's the big deal about Trump and Palm Beach? He could have pushed for John F. Kennedy to be renamed. Actually, that's something I would have expected! It's that he's so public about his wanting this legacy - there's the complete lack of humility and modesty.
Finally, I'll get to the small United Airlines story. Per The Gateway Pundit, United Airlines Offers Free Flight Changes to Avoid Landing at Newly Named ‘President Donald J. Trump International Airport’ – Company Calls Internal Memo “Poorly Worded” After Exposure.
According to an explosive internal memo obtained by Live And Let’s Fly per FOX Business, United Airlines executives actively instructed their reservation agents to give free pass upgrades to anti-Trump crybabies.An "explosive" memo, GP? Did the memo eat some bad lettuce?
The leaked memo ordered agents to use their “empowerment” to waive fees and offer no-cost flight changes to Miami or Fort Lauderdale for anyone triggered by President Trump’s name!
OK, that's a lot of unnecessary drama there. I CAN see United doing this, though, as UA's CEO Scott Kirby is the woke son of a bitch who said his airline would push for 50% non-White-male pilots as a policy. (I really think NOBODY wants that, when it comes down to boarding 35 minutes prior to departure time.)
UA spokesmen sort of backed down on this "change-fee bias" or at least said they did:
United Airlines quickly went into damage control after the memo surfaced. The company told FOX Business that “the message was poorly worded and not accurate.”(The 4th, but initial, letter K is used for international compliance reasons.) I don't know if that's really backing down or just the realization by Marketing/Sales that this could cost a lot of money if it gets out of hand.
A United spokesperson added: “United customers are able to make changes to a ticket without a fee for many reasons. However, our policy doesn’t allow for changes because of an airport’s name or three letter code.”
"Well, I don't want to fly into Bush Field to go to Houston." "OK, we can re-book you to Hobby Field, no charge." "I'm going to Minneapolis, but I REFUSE to enter a terminal named after an America Firster, that Lindbergh guy!" "OK, but like, we'll have to rent a gate, hire new agents, and have the aircraft taxi over to the Humphrey [there ya' go!] terminal. Errrr, there might be a slight, err, upcharge."
United Airline Management probably feels very good about themselves for helping out the true Trump haters, but the lawyerly/business types don't really want the hassle if everyone getting political on either side were to get in on this action.
Have some perspective, all of you virtue-signaling airline travelers. Imagine if you had to travel weekly on business in and out of Sioux City, Iowa. It (K)SUX to be you. That's what your checked luggage would say. I was REALLY surprised that the city fathers and mothers haven't gotten the code changed since the expression came into vogue. What they are doing, however, is to make lemonade out of a lemon. Per UPI, Sioux City Airport embraces SUX identification code. Nice, Embrace the suck! I like it. They've even got T-shirts.
PS: Palm Beach probably will not change the airport code. Reagan Field is still the nice DCA, obviously "District of Criminals Airport" rather than MIA (was taken, but guess) and Americus is still ACJ for "AmericCus Jawjuh" rather than PNT.
* Intro.
Part 1: The Personalities.
Part 2: Foreign Policy.
Part 3: Domestic Policy.
Conclusion.
** "Non-towered" is the new FAA nomenclature, because it worries people less.
Comments (19)
The Warmth of Collectivism v The Coefficient of Performance
Posted On: Saturday - July 18th 2026 9:42AM MST
In Topics: Commies Global Climate Stupidity Science
Alt-title is New York Commies, energy, and the COP. Should there be a comma before "Commies"? #CommaPlacementMatters!
Yes, Europeans, New Yorkers, and people all over much of the rest of the world are experiencing the Warmth of Collectivism this summer. New Yorkers can't blame it ALL on the new Islamunist Mayor Zohran Mandami though, as this goes back to April of '21. Here's what they've done by shutting down the 3 reactors of the Indian Point Nuclear plant, which sits on the east side of the Hudson River in Westchester Country, just upriver from NYC.
As a New Yorker, one could blame the decrease in CLEAN electricity on Governor Hochul Minh, but I'm not getting into all the NY State politics.
The original anti-nuclear power folks from the 1970s basically caused a half-century hiatus and huge loss of American technical ability in the field of nuclear energy after the zero-fatality accident at the 3-Mile Island* facility in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Some of them are dead now, almost none due to nuclear radiation... from a power plant.
The new Greens though, have used "Carbon", Carbon Dioxide to be more non-retarded in the field of Chemistry, as the bogeyman to hinder progress in, and try to destroy the energy economy. Only thing is, nuclear reactions don't produce CO2. Some Greens know that but are just Reds on the inside, while others are pretty retarded. "Useful Idiots" is a useful term, maybe more so than in the century-ago time of the Communists in Europe.
An avowed Socialist - Communist Light** - like Mayor Mandami will not help matters. He's had his Statist greedy. hand in housing, retail groceries, and more already. If he gets himself involved in NYC HVAC, you NYC dwellers will probably have wished you'd already installed a few window units or mini-split systems.
At this point, this post will transition not so smoothly to some slightly technical details about Air Conditioning, since, well, it's still hot, and we're on 2 window units at home. Who knew? Summer, and this damnable tilted Earth's axis. Why can't we be more like Mercury, or at least Jupiter?! Yeah, OK, they got other problems, I understand. I feel better now.
I got a little bit into the Coefficient of Performance for thermal cycles in Come on, guys, I can't air condition the whole outside a week and a half ago. Here's a bit more.
That's just a random empirical graph of the change in Coefficient of Performance - heat transferred to the evaporator/electrical power for an A/C or heat transferred out of the condenser for a Heat Pump - for some unit. It doesn't imply that all units have those numbers, but there's no free lunch under the Regime's 1st and 2nd laws of Thermodynamics, so we can only get so much higher.
How much higher we can THEORETICALLY get is determined from the Carnot Cycle for the process. That's some theoretical stuff deriving from those 1st and 2nd Laws. The efficiencies of all real physical components much be 100%, meaning the compressor motor (electrical energy to shaft work) and the compressor itself (shaft work to PV work) are that, which they are far from, all lines must be perfectly insulated, heat exchangers (the evaporator and condenser) are ideal***.
But there's more. I'm getting into the weeds here, but I'm pretty sure any REAL working fluid, such as whatever's in these old window units, OR then new stuff per scam legislation, would have inherent irreversibilities - the term that goes with the 2nd Law - such that a unit could not meet the Carnot number even with everything perfect from the previous paragraph.
We really can never get to the Carnot efficiency with any real systems. Now, this stuff comes from the basic theory, and the reader would be barking up the wrong blog to get it here. However, some of the very simple results come back to me. Here is the very simple formula derived from the "roots Thermo":
COPcooling = Tc / (Th - Tc), where:
Tc = Temperature of ambient air on the cool side (inside).
Th = Temperature of ambient air on the hot side (outside).
AND, T's are Absolute Temperatures.****, either in Rankine or Kelvin.
Well, great, so we can get a COP of over 26when trying to cool air to 75F when it's 95F outside! That would be VERY nice, but note the graph above - we can't get close. What's the point then? The Carnot cycles show us the relationships in general. We can see that an A/C unit will work more efficiently when we are working with a smaller ΔT.
For a couple of days, our house cooled down steadily by a few degrees with the additional unit. It got roughly to a steady-state with a daily cycle within, as it remained REALLY HOT outside. For mid-90s as daily highs, the inside steadied out with about 74F as a low and 80F as a high. They run all day long - sorry, Greenies, mea MAGA culpa!
It cooled off outside, and that's when I thought about the higher COPs that result. The Carnot cycle analysis results in COP inversely linear with higher ΔT. The empirical data above shows linearity also. Then, there's the more obvious factor of a lower ΔT resulting in less heat transfer into the house. That goes linearly too, with an exception for radiative heat transfer.***** We've got both working for us now... AND a few nuclear reactors not too far away.
What this post comes down to is that Engineering can be more fun than politics.
* That was reactor #2. Unit 1 was producing power all the way to '19, and is planned to be restarted in '27. Microsoft wants ALL OF IT.
** Peak Stupidity doesn't see a significant difference between Communism and Socialism. We discussed this long ago in the post Socialism - stuff you should have learned by Kindergarten, to wit:
Now, socialism is often thought of as just Communism-light, a friendly, nice, compassion version. No, no cultural revolutions planned, no mass graves (planned). it’s gonna be neighborly, dontcha know, like in the nice little towns in Vermont or Sweden (before the invasion). We’re gonna all discuss things, over lattes; we’re going to keep it calm and soothing, like National Public Radio, but sure, yeah, at some point we’ve gotta to redistribute some of your stuff. No, no, no, nothing like that, just some taxes that you pay ... well, yeah you’ve gotta pay ‘em... sure.... the tax people are our people... very friendly... what do you mean, “what if I don’t?”... I mean sure, eventually they’ll call guys with guns... but we don’t expect that ... we don’t even LIKE guns!.. Ewwww.
*** "Ideal" here is a tough one to define. All heat transferred is part of the energy desired, but they must transfer it at a rate that fits with the desired heating or cooling of the liquid or vapor, respectively, in the pipes based on flow rate and basic heat exchanger design.
**** It's probably obvious that you'd be using Absolute T's when getting into the Thermo, as the F and C scales are arbitrary, the latter a little less so, but who says the state of water is the be-all-to-end-all? Any unitless index, as the COP is, that comes out differently based on differing units is highly suspect. That's why I don't like BMI - Body Mass Index, as anything very meaningful.
**** That one is a really odd bird. I'm sure a Physicist would not see it that way. Radiation heat transfer goes as Th4 - Tc4. It can be approximated to (Th - Tc)4 for high Th/Tc ratios (over 95%) - hat tip, Unz Review commenter James Shearer.
Comments (17)
A Colonia del Sacramento Gomeria
Posted On: Friday - July 17th 2026 4:50PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Cars Geography Peak Stupidity Roadshow
Peak Stupidity finally got around to reporting on our 1 1/2 year ago trip to Uruguay in this post and that post. The map above, if readable, shows the town of Colonia del Sacramento (Colonia do Sacromento in its Portuguese speaking days - Uruguay used to be part of Brazil), nearly the closest spot across the the Río de la Plata from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
We took a 3 hour or so bus rid from Montevideo west to Colonia for a couple of days' stay. I like the place, MUCH better than Montevideo. Perhaps this is due to my not liking big cities in general. (Fine for a visit, but...)
I'll have more pictures of this small city of 32,200 people in another post. I had to do this once I came across this picture in my files:
I'd taken a 3 hour walk by myself this one fine December Summer morning, so maybe it was 6 miles, allowing the time I took taking pictures. On the way back toward the city, I came across this Gomeria. Ah, this was really funny, almost!
See, I took a 6 week Spanish class many years ago, and from memories of Tijuana too, I know that the suffix "ria" denotes a retail business. A zapateria is a shoe shore, zapatas being shoes (I recall a lot from that great teacher), "cafeteria" comes from Spanish too, well, and gonorrhea an diarrhea have been in the news lately too. You can GET them at a retail business... so yeah, but the humor comes from a couple of old B&W TV shows.
The guy on the left is Gomer Pyle from the old show Gomer Pyle: USMC, a spin-off, as they called it, of The Andrew Griffith Show, in which appeared Gomer's TV brother, car mechanic Goober.* (Hence the phrase "What a goober!")
Now, that's a lot of background just to explain why I enjoyed seeing that sign for the car shop in Colonia del Sacramento. It should have rightly been a Gooberia. End of joke.
At least I THINK it was a shade tree mechanic's shop. I'm not going back to Uruguay just to find out.
But.... there's google maps now! I see 10 or so Gomerias in Colonia, and it's obvious they ARE auto shops. I remember roughly my route, so I can see that the shop must have been what's labeled the Gomeria Nuematicos Colonia on the overhead map, BUT the google car came through a decade earlier. Ahhaa, from the street view the building nearby that looks similar was then the Gomeria Carfer I think, because that first letter was either blocked by a Sycamore-type tree or the Winter northeastern sunrise as the google man drove by. They advertised Dunlap tires.
That old silver Euro-mobile (I KNOW readers here could tell me) was not yet up on blocks. Hmmm, maybe that used to be the google car.
That was an episode of Andy Griffith featuring car mechanic Goober, who took a car apart enough to rebuild it inside the police station. Floyd, at least, is pretty amused.
Well, that was fun!
* Gomer Pyle, played by actor Jim Nabors, appeared at least once on The Andy Griffith Show.
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A California Conservative - What a Concept!
Posted On: Wednesday - July 15th 2026 6:53PM MST
In Topics: Commies California Americans alt-right/MAGA
Peak Stupidity was very impressed with ex-BART director (San Francisco light rail system) Debora Allen, when we learned about her while looking up information for this post last week. The more we read, the more we like her.
The screenshot above is from the short TV news clip of the attempted fare evader stuck like a pig under the new gates BART installed at the stations. The CC text can be seen in which Mrs.* Allen is explaining how fare evading "doesn't surprise" her. Now, of course, she didn't single out any particular race, creed, ethnicity, lip-size, none of that, OF COURSE, but it's obvious she expects we know who she's talking about, and it's obvious she doesn't mind that.
Upon doing a quick search from Debora Allen's marital status - we make an effort to be REALLY old-fashioned here - I came upon some delightful blurbs out of California-oriented websites on the "divisive" Mrs. Allen. She IS divisive, same as a guy who suggested unregulated prices, housing, and employment in 1950s East Germany would have been divisive. California is a one-party Socialist / near-Communist State, and you just can't have people interfering with State control and corruption.
None of the articles I found out of California were anything but biased against a Conservative Californian, because that's who they are. I'll excerpt nearly this whole article by one Rachel Swan of the San Francisco Chronicle**
OAKLAND, CALIF. — An outgoing BART board director known for conservative stances and tense standoffs with her Democratic colleagues handed each of them a parting gift at the last meeting of her term: MAGA hats.
Now, that's my kind of gal! I don't think Mrs. Allen was worried about burning any bridges with any HR people here.
Director Debora Allen, who decided not to run for re-election, put the hats in gift bags that she passed out during a board meeting Thursday, which also included a letter to each board member.I'm guessing she's not going to get hired to work on that new - any year now - bullet train through Bakersfield. They'll probably block her LinkedIn profile.
The meeting opened with speeches by departing board members Bevan Dufty, Rebecca Saltzman, who won a seat on the El Cerrito City Council and Lateefah Simon, who will succeed Barbara Lee in Congress. Allen told the Chronicle she had also been asked to give remarks. She spoke out after Dufty appeared to pass over her and give the floor to Mark Foley, who is not leaving the board.
"I did have some parting comments — did you want me to give them now?" she asked Dufty. He agreed, and allowed her to speak.
"For sure the last four years have been the most challenging years in history for BART," Allen said, adding that she had wanted to bow out in 2020, but that supporters convinced her to stay.
She went on to discuss the agency's financial crisis, which grew dire as Bay Area residents continued working from home. Allen criticized the agency for increasing spending on operations and hoping for a bailout from taxpayers. Additionally, Allen touted her work to boost financial transparency and public safety on BART.
"With all that, I wanted to depart by giving a gift to my colleagues," Allen said. "What do you buy San Francisco Democrat politicians that seem to have everything they need? Well, it took a while, but I think I came up with something that you all might need over the next four years."That's great fun, but she still is really trying to help here. You can only get Fed money by getting onboard... the new ship, which is no longer operated by Captain Brandon, but by Captain Bruisin', your cruise director... (sorry, old The Office fun again).
"I know you all don't think you'll need this, but I bought each of you one of these," she said, pulling back her chair to reach into a bag. Grinning, she whipped out a black baseball cap with President-elect Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.
The real Californians were aghast!
The other directors looked down at their laps. " Jesus Christ," someone mumbled into a microphone.And if one of them handed out Che Guevara berets
I'll skip 3 paragraphs about Debora Allen's political background and future.
After the murder in George Floyd in 2020, Allen made public remarks that appeared to downplay the killing of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer in 2009. Grant's family called on her to step down.I looked Oscar Grant up this time. It sounded like he was murdered by the cops, but I didn't get too far into it. Either way, you don't go renaming the stations - that would confuse everyone, as they are place names.
That episode came two years after Allen's 2018 brush with Grant's family, when she posted a social media poll to ask whether BART should name stations after individuals. At the time, relatives and supporters of Grant were campaigning to name Fruitvale Station in his honor.
It's also eerie that I was thinking early of some station names before I read this, and Fruitvale came to mind.
When Allen passed out her gifts during Thursday's meeting, the board chambers was packed. Among the audience were progressive groups calling for stronger protection against sexual assaults and harassment on BART, and championing BART's effort to rename the Lake Merritt Station for Oakland Chinatown — a symbolic act of racial reparation, Board Director Janice Li said.That's California, the 1980s Martin Mull movie Serial*** on steroids and with much fewer White people.
As Allen spoke, "the mood in the room changed," Li said. She characterized Allen as a divisive public official who had long been isolated from colleagues.That's how it is to be an actual Conservative in California.
"It was saying the quiet part out loud," Li said of the hats. "We knew you harbored these beliefs. We knew you were inflammatory."
Allen said she has had to endure years of snipes from other board members who view her as "either a racist or a Republican when I don't agree with them."
Her letter to Li said: "Your accusations for racism, your constant interruptions and your attempts to silence me didn't bother me much. I know it was all part of the show."That's how it is being a Conservative in California.
Li seemed to reference Allen's letter and gifts in comments she made later at the meeting Thursday.
"Winning is the best revenge," she said. "Especially when it comes to toxic, hostile and uncooperative people."
Dufty described feeling bewildered when Allen displayed a MAGA hat at the dais. He said he reached for Simon's hand.Heh! Again, Serial on steroids. It's just not that funny to me anymore.
"I just needed to center myself," he said. "I asked Lateefah if I could hold her hand for a minute or two."
He paused a beat.
"I'm OK now."
* I found that information - she's on her 2nd marriage. That's just, like, California...
** Haha, that publication was left-wing in the 1980s, but some people I knew called it too Conservative at the time. Those particular people lived across the bay in Berzerkely.
*** We showed a clip from it in our post California Nightmare-in' ....
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Trump meddling in South Carolina's Business
Posted On: Monday - July 13th 2026 10:35AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '26 Trump
I'm getting REALLY sick of this guy!
This could have been an addendum to the last post, and I don't have an image handy either, but let me point out the following from The Gateway Pundit: President Trump Says He Wants South Carolina Governor McMaster to Appoint Lindsey Graham’s Sister Darline to Fill Senate Seat. NO!
I don't want, and South Carolina doesn't need, a woman, much less someone's sister!
“I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina. This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!” Trump said on Truth Social.Just fabulous! A tribute.
You have no idea how ANY woman will end up voting even months hence, much less this random family member who you happen to enjoy the company of, or something.
Man, I hope Steven MIller slaps some sense into this guy... within the next 2 1/4 hours.
PS: Here's the catch, something I'll expand on in a post to come. SC Governor Henry McMaster owes Trump a favor. McMaster was a very early Trump supporter and Trump said he purposely appointed Governor Haley to the UN in order go enable then Lt-Governor McMaster to automatically succeed her.
However, Henry McMaster is getting old, and he will no longer be Governor in 6 months, so I'm hoping he gives Trump the finger here and picks someone actually capable and useful.
Well, that's it. Henry McMaster caved to Trump pressure and installed a 6-month placeholder, the sister of this NeoCon.
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[UPDATED 07/14:] Added image and the sorry news.
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No more Invade the World / Invite the World for Lindsey Graham
Posted On: Monday - July 13th 2026 9:12AM MST
In Topics: Trump US Feral Government The Neocons
We will refrain from the name-calling this post. Neither "Lindsey Grahamnesty" nor "Miss Lindsey" will be used today... except just now. That's who he was though. Peak Stupidity has been through this more than once, and we will again refute accusations about "speaking ill of the dead" with the same point we made here 9 years ago in reference to Juan McAmnesty, the late Senator Graham's former pal in Invading & Inviting.
I can't deny that the recent death of Lindsey Graham is most likely a good thing for South Carolina and for the nation. Some are attributing his death to nefarious causes, assassination - this warmonger was in the Ukraine just a day or so prior - by the Russians or Iranians. I haven't been convinced that Graham's death was anything more than of natural causes. People do die suddenly* in their 70s still. We haven't cured that.
It must be said here that, if an assassination really was the case here, Putin or some raghead really did us a solid. As Peak Stupidity has written before with regard to Ted Kennedy and Juan McAmnesty: It’d be a different story if the guy were retired at his home back in Seneca, South Carolina. I wouldn't feel glad he had died. That isn't the case. If this is what it takes to get this implementer “Invade the World / Invite the World” policy out of power in the Senate, so be it, I'm not sorry.
That’s not gloating. President Trump, way OTOH had this to say:
That's great - he comes across as such a gracious man. It's too bad that Donald Trump, who has used every insult in the book on people even on his side, isn't consistently gracious. He comes up with insults, often useless, meaningless ones, for guys like Conservative stalwart Thomas Massie, just because the latter didn't agree with him on EVERYTHING.
You shouldn't speak ill of the dead - we kind of went over that - but that hasn't stopped Trump before when he's discussed political figures of the past. "He will be greatly missed!" OK, that'd have been enough. Either Trump only knows a couple of Americans and hasn't yet met a good one, or, more the case, he knows 350 million great American people, and Lindsey Graham falls under "one of those greatest." I suppose that's not lying, then...
This is particular Peak Pet Peeve here, the lowering of the flags. I'd thought we'd bid Farewell to Kings was about the lowering of American flags to half-mast for the death of ex-President G.H.W. Bush. In The Shutdown and the Flags, I reckoned the flags were at half-mast because there was nobody being paid to raise them. For whom the flags are lowered, don't even ask...... I don't know, I figured that was for Ace Frehley... not sure...
I suggest yet again that those responsible for flag flying and maintenance lower these poles, cut them in half with saws-alls, and re-mount the half-length poles so that nobody has to bother with this again. Flag up, flag half down, it's a matter of attitude.
I don't have a screenshot, but it's the last and more politically important words out of Trump regarding the late Senator Graham's successor that irk me the most. Note the quotes here don't represent anything more than a close paraphrase, but "We have a great successor in mind. We don't want to tell you who it is yet, but we're working on this."
I'd have been fine hearing that "We want a MAGA senator to replace this
No, Trump and his big ego has him acting as if he just picks Senators now. I wish he'd shut up more.
Speaking of the replacement for Lindsey Graham, I think that does deserve a post before it's old news. The Governor, Mr. McMaster, will appoint someone to fill the half-year left open term. Within one month, another GOP** Primary election will be held - I'm kind of hoping the alleged (long-ago) ex-drug dealer wins this time. By then the man (hopefully!) picked shortly by the Governor will have already a slight advantage, and then more of one if he ends up in the General election.
We will get to that, but in the meantime, against accusations we will append a nice Samuel Clemens, aka, Mark Twain quote I came across today:
I'm not gloating. "While I've never wished a man dead, I've read some obituaries with great pleasure." (h/t, ZeroHedge commenter.)
PS: Here is The Alarmist's take on the death of Lindsey Graham on his substack site.
* For something like a cardiovascular problem, it's those who have been more fortunate, as in, they didn't die from a major problem, who are more likely to not "die suddenly" later. In other words, once the problem has been diagnosed after the severe symptoms, any subsequent death will be seen not as "sudden", but as expected, cause "I told you not to
** Unfortunately one in which voters of either party can vote in, although, AFAIK, not voters who've already voted in the D Primary.
Comments (2)
Disco Demolition Night
Posted On: Saturday - July 11th 2026 6:34PM MST
In Topics: Commies General Stupidity Music History China Bread and Circuses
It was forty-seven years today*
Pop music had been turnin' kinda' gay,
They stacked the vinyl in a big old pile,
and blew the Disco records half a mile.
So let me introduce to you,
a night they drank a lot of beers
It was double-header Disco Demolition night-iigght
Compared to the cRap/Hip-hop sound, which is not really music at all, the Disco music of the mid-late 1970s was heavenly. However, it'd come at a time when the very best Rock music was being played and heard. This interruption in the great music was not taken well by many people. Some of the musicians and bands had crashed and/or died, and many remained to come back a few years later, but there was a very good reason to invite the wild folks of the 1970s to Chicago White Sox's Comiskey Park for the famous Disco Demolition Night.
Yeah, this event, organized by Chicago Disc Jockey Steve Dahl, got pretty out of hand, but that was 1970s America. Look at the people. That event at Comiskey Park 47 years back was a hell of a thing, but It was probably not worth the trouble, as Disco was on the way out anyway. It only lasted about 3 years, 4 tops, depending when you consider the start of it.** Unlike, I don't know, say, Wokeness, it WAS just a fad.
Over 6 thousand miles away on the other side of the World, just 3 years earlier, China had only 3 years back exited an era of evil and turmoil that put the Disco age to shame.
The video is 50 times longer, as the mayhem in China lasted 50,000 times longer than that at Comiskey Park, with a million times more people harmed. Disco just sucked. Communism more than sucks. I'm sure the average Chinamen would have given anything to be locked in a discoteque for years rather experience 10 years of Communist Cultural Revolutionary madness.
I've been meaning to put that one up for a while - it'd doesn't particularly fit into this post, but it is unfortunately kind of timely.
Anyway, for more on that long-ago night in White Chicago, here's a longer documentary. Haha, watch that one guy slide down the foul pole! You can't get away with any of this sort of thing anymore... I mean.... unless you're a teen.
The Bee Gees, along with Donna Summer and the Village People (I think they've changed their name to the Assisted Living People) were mentioned by Steve Dahl on that hot Chicago night almost half a century ago. It turns out, before they got too associated with Disco, the Bee Gees - "Brothers Gibb (Australians Robin, Barry, and Maurice) - made some GREAT music. The following, featured on Peak Stupidity years ago, was one of my favorites from the time they were transitioning... that is from good pop to Disco. Jive Talking was a precursor and had a better melody and sound than most Disco songs. Enjoy - have a nice Sunday, Peakers.
(The graphic here shows the infamous Saturday Night Fever movie soundtrack, but the Bee Gees released this song in 1975 off their album Main Course.)
* ... actually tomorrow, but in Iceland, yeah, see?
** As for the end of that musical era, it was pretty clear to me one night. I heard Tom Petty's Refugee and Pat Beaneater's Heartbreaker one night on the radio - this was sometime in 1979. It didn't have to be the best like Led Zeppelin or Skynyrd, but "Wow! They're playing Rock on the radio again!"
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The LGBTQ2S+ -laden Scarlet Lady - Cruisin' for a Bruisin'
Posted On: Friday - July 10th 2026 7:11PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Lefty MegaStupidity
I've been on a cruise ship one time. The sightseeing was good, but if you're gonna get your money's worth, you've got to eat... A LOT. They've got a food bar that's about a hundred yard long. Or, you could have had Bill Buckley or some Conservative think tank people on board for entertainment ... between the trips to the 100 yard long food bar. Or you're there for a romantic week... or you're gay, the 2nd letter of the LGBTQ2S+ deal that was the "theme", if I may, of a cruise on the Scarlet Princess, with stops at such ports as Turkey.
The turkey run didn't work out. Per Townhall, The LGBTQ Movement Just Found Out How Islamic Nations Actually Feel About Them. Townhall put it this way (they do lean NeoCon):
We don't understand the Left's 'Queers for Palestine' movement. It's akin to chickens for Colonel Sanders. Homosexuality is not just forbidden in Islam; it's punishable by death, and we've all seen the horrific videos of what Islamists do to gays and lesbians.It seems as though they sort of condone that sickening practice with boys, but, per their dogma from the Koran and such, Moslems do not put up with official gaiety.
Here in the West, there was a live-and-let-live policy up through the end of the last century. President Clinton's policy for the military in the 1990s was officially (but not, I guess) "Don't ask. Don't tell." IOW most of us still didn't want to hear about it or know about it, but throwing gay people off of buildings was never a thing. I think that was best.
Then, since the turn of the century, deep Wokeness has come around, pushed by the usual suspects, so not asking, not telling, not making it into a big drama, all that was not OK anymore. America and the West were pushed into accepting it all as normalcy. I can see why Turkey got pretty baked about the docking of a cruise ship of over a thousand gay men.
The "Athens to Venice" cruise, which departs from Greece on July 5, was expected to dock in the vibrant Turkish port town of Kuşadası two days later, followed by a trip to Istanbul, according to Atlantis Events, which is organizing the voyage.Yeah, you ain't seen vibrant. I completely agree with the Turkish, except, going along with this same theme of not wanting stupidity pushed on me, I will not call the place Turkeye".
But in a controversial move, local authorities in Turkey said they have canceled the "event" as the ship — which is expected to host more than 1,000 passengers from the U.S. — was chartered by groups "known for behaviors incompatible with the fabric of our society and our moral values."
This is not completely about the right to free association, as it's the country that has every right to forbid whoever it wants entering Turkey. We Americans though, have lost that right to association, the lost clause of Amendment I, since the Civil Rights era - some call those execrable laws of 62 years ago a "Second Constitution". A private port would not be allowed to make this decision based on the "orientations" of the cruise passengers, and one can't even choose to not bake a gay cake in America. I completely understand the Turks' reluctance to be a part of GloboHomo.
However, that these gay men on the Scarlet Lady assumed they would be welcomed into Turkey is where the current stupidity lies in this story. Steve Sailer's discussions about the "Coalition of the Fringes" and the resulting "circular firing squads" are pertinent. Every group of ANYBODY who are not straight White men find it helpful to be against straight White men. They've all got that one thing in common. The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend though. (Then, there's the matter that the gays choosing straight White men as their enemy was stupid to begin with.)
So, yeah, stupid homos, you go support your anti-White, anti-American Mandamis and your Islamic brethren, cause, you all HATE HATE HATE traditional White society together. It's a real coalition you people have formed there! I know none of you like Capitalism either, so when you get it replaced by ... whatever, say Sharia Law, I'd suggest one slightly Capitalist thing though... go long nets. I'm talking those big nets that the old tightrope walkers might have used, to be placed around the tall buildings of New York City... and
Oh, and per The Alarmist's ZeroHedge link under the previous post, develop a taste for Seagull.
PS: It probably took a lot of work by the company, but the itinerary was changed and one of the new ports of call was to be Cairo. Except, oh, Egypt is Moslem too so no can do.
One of the tweets within that 2nd article reads: "They'll still come back to the US and claim they have no rights or some shit." Indeed they will.
Comments (7)
President Trump against the PRP - Asylum Denial rates
Posted On: Thursday - July 9th 2026 6:24PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Trump
The PRP is the Population Replacement Programme.
Here's our standard Disclaimer, one that probably should be assumed by the reader, but we'll continue putting it up top:
The man's an annoying braggart, he talks a load of BS, he knows he should get us out of Iran, but, EGO, and, we think His latest thing, getting involved in soccer penalties and the FIFA, is another stupid distraction that should be none of his business. The foreign player in question was a Bug-Out Baby (remember last week?), the US team lost anyway, and NOBODY CARES about some stupid game in which the players are required to run around a field pretending they have no arms!
All that can be quite the distraction, but then, this is no distraction - this is part of Trump's work against the PRP:
This is great progress. I'd thought that the refugee admittance count was zero with the exception of 17,000 White South Africans. The bar graph shows denial rates, not absolute numbers. One may note that the worst admittance rates, close to Ann Coulter's "It's not over until the immigrant wins", were seen at the end of Øb☭ma's first term and the beginning of his 2nd, with 65% of fake* "refugees" admitted. The 20th Century up through '17 (remember the date) saw admission numbers between 45% and higher, but mostly above 50%.
Though things don't look so bad from '21 - '25 RELATIVELY:
1) The absolute numbers were probably much higher. After all, when your chances are good, and the country all but invites you in, there's an incentive for higher numbers to try to achieve "asylum".
2) Dark Brandon let people in via all kinds of methods. The main way was via entry across an almost wide-open border. (Remember the Border Patrol being ordered to cut through the razor wire on the Rio Grande that Texas had put up?)
'25 got us back down to ~32% admittance, but last month it was down to just over 7%!
There's a lot of strategic planning that went into the achievement of these great numbers, not that I believe Trump is that strategic planner himself. Immigration Judges are making these calls. As VDare used to write about for many years, the immigration judges have been extremely pro-immigrant. They've been part of the entrenched bureaucracy, the Administrative State**.
Well, fire them all, and let God sort 'em out, one is tempted to say. Nah, but the problem has been the process, in which these fake asylum seekers are allowed to come INTO America while their cases are adjudicated. Aaaaannnnd, they're gone... into the interior of America. The Trump Administration has worked to change this policy. Last I heard, yet another leftist judge blocked the effort.
Therefore, it's important to replace these judges as quickly as possible with new judges (last I read somewhere, 10,000) who will (hopefully!) play ball.
As I wrote above, there must be some strategic planning, I suppose by Trump's teams under Steven Miller and Tom Homan. I can see that Trump DOES know what's going on and understands the strategy, at least, seeing as how he mentions all these moves.
I'm sorry, Peak Stupidity sick-of-Trump readers, I too, would rather see someone like Ron DeSanity doing this job. We'll have to take what we got though, so long as he's fighting hard against the PRP. This latest data is very encouraging. I'd like to see 2-3% by the end of the year. Some of them might actually need asylum.
* They're almost all fake. The idea of asylum is that you get out and head to the nearest "safe" country, that is one officially a peace. You don't need to go to North America.
** ... NOT to be confused with the Deep State. See also Will the REAL Deep State please stand up...
Comments (3)
California BART - It's no longer the Pong era
Posted On: Wednesday - July 8th 2026 6:35PM MST
In Topics: Humor California Economics Race/Genetics
I stole that one of at least two puns from the Red State article that Instapundit linked me to.
BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit System. (Why not BARTS?) I've ridden on those trains quite a long time ago but not quite in the Pong era. That's Pong, as in the first video game I ever saw. Well before Space Invaders and Donkey Kong, Pong seemed pretty sophisticated at the time, the end of the 1970s, but for a quarter a game, very pricey. The following video is from close to 3 decades later, but the deal with the corners reminds me somewhat of old Pong:
What one Ms (It's California, plus I don't know) Debora Allen in the video below mentions is the "1970 era" or "Pong era" fare gates that used to be at the BART stations. Interestingly, as I tried to find out whether she is a Miss or Mrs., I found that the former BART Director was far from a D.I.E. hire, born femality aside. Hah, see, speaking of the 1970s, her departure from BART was very much in the spirit of the 1970s, as Divisive BART Board Member Debora Allen Passes Out MAGA Hats to Colleagues On Her Way Out the Door. Hah, nice job! (Imagine Che Guevara shirts or what-have-you - that'd be expected, right along with Ruby Tuesday's coupons.)
In a sign of things to come in the year ahead, as Trump supporters from every basket of deplorables feel emboldened to once again spit in the faces of others and proclaim their dominion, a conservative BART director on her way out gave out a provocative parting gift to her colleagues.Oh, no! Anyway, this fun and provocative lady was NOT to be the subject of this post, but I'll have to have another for her, cause...
The BART board is changing next year with several directors, including Congresswoman-elect Lateefah Simon, moving on.
Allen was notably the only board member to vote against requiring vaccinations for BART employees, and she caused a stir in June 2020 when, after the killing of George Floyd, she tried to gloss over the killing of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer as not "murder."I don't know of this Oscar Grant yet, but wow, yes, Conservative Californians do still exist.
OK, back to THIS post, the video below shows a black woman who tried to scoot under the new BART fare gates that Ms Allen says was one of BART's and her best project in decades.
The viral video of the black lady (she turned her head for a split second, so we know) stuck like a pig under the door is the story of the day for BART. She was told to stay put as moving the gates will only hurt more. This humor is not lost on your Peak Stupidity blogger. That station has got plenty extra gates, and they'll get her out before she gets really hungry. However, there's a bigger story in here though...
This short Bay Area NBC news video starts with who I thought might be Miss Pong actually, but no, she's Jennelle Wang, and then she hands it over to some Hernandez lady. The story has some good Steve Sailer style material that is purposely not completely Noticed™, publicly, by anyone in it, even Conservative Ms Allen.
You CAN still piggyback* if you're quick and agile, but these new glass and aluminum gates have stopped much fare-"jumping" per, let's just call her Miss Pong. They've got numbers. Per current BART Director Liz Ames (also amazingly ALSO White), revenue collected has gone up by $10 million, which will pay off the $90 million fare gate project in a decade or so (well, there's interest).
Maintenance and cleaning costs have gone down too. Maintenance might be lower for now due to the new equipment, but why the savings with the cleaning?
Less [sic - give Miss Hernandez a break - she ain't from around here] fare evaders means less litter and less graffiti... and, she says, "less crime".Hey.... what are you tryin' to say here? The people who weren't paying before don't go in now and they are the ones that littered and tagged the walls and trains and occasionally knifed unsuspecting riders? Look, I don't care who you are, that's there's just plain racisss!
Roll the tape:
There's a 2nd order effect here on ridership. If a lot of those teens - oops, no, I just mean they might be in their teens, you know - aren't riding the BART trains now, the whole experience will be nicer for everyone else, meaning ridership will go and revenue may increase more than expected from just the higher fare collection ratio alone. More nice White people, some maybe even sporting MAGA hats, will result in yet more White people, to the point where BART may yet again resemble the Pong era, an era in which electronic glass and aluminum fare gates WERE NOT NEEDED due to all the White people.
Alas, you can't go home again... even if you don't get stuck under the gate like a pig.
PS: There's a pretty cute black girl who appears for a couple of seconds at 0:43. She seems to know her people, kinda', from what I gather.
* An example shows up at the end of the news story. She's black too.
Comments (8)
Come on, guys, I can't air condition the whole outside.
Posted On: Tuesday - July 7th 2026 6:02PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Humor History Global Climate Stupidity Science
How serendipitous! It was only in the last quarter of the 20th Century that the manager of the buck-fifty movie theater used this line, and I mentioned this snark - most humorous to me at the time - on Friday. The Babylon Bee has picked up on this:
Did I make an arithmetical error? Maybe you can.
I was tired and somehow got the line backward in that post (fixed now), but it's the heating up of the WHOLE OUTSIDE that Climate Alarmist and moonlighting Urban Adaptation Expert Ine Vandecasteele is worried about:
But in the longer term, what happens is, installing more air conditioning actually emits more heat into our environment, so it will actually increase the speed of warming.”I just learned Ine Vandecasteele is not a Dutchman but a Danish woman, so my apologies for the mistake, but she's STILL not from Ethiopia and should know better. She probably does...
How can White people such as your Ine Vandecasteeles and the like have so much disregard for the great White scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries who made the World so much better? The invention of Air Conditioning, something only ubiquitous in America since the last (arguably) 75 years, is an example. It's changed the South completely. We should be very thankful for those White man... who exactly were they?
Wait, wait, didn't the Chinese invent Air Conditioning? You know, they invented everything - they just didn't get around to building all that stuff. I found it humorous that the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), on the page linked-to below, had to mention the Chinese. Back in the 0's AD (yeah, you read that right, the 1st Century), someone built a hand-cranked rotating fan. Sorry, but that's not air conditioning! The Japanese, over the last 20 years, have built those great Mitsubishi mini-split systems, as we show here. I'm sure the China-made ones now are just as good... surely...
Anyway, as for the invention of A/C, the name "Carrier" rang a bell for me. Willis Carrier out of near Buffalo, New York, and, later, his companies developed workable air conditioning systems as early as in 1902 (for a color printing plant), and the name Carrier is well known in the field of HVAC. (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning). However, Mr. Carrier didn't by start using a vapor-compression cycle, and, after looking into it, I see that it was, yet again two AMERICAN White men who invented the process. Though way back in the mid 1700, Scotsman William Cullen first observed that drawing a vacuum over a liquid would create a cooling effect, the ASME credits Americans Oliver Evans and Jacob Perkins thought through the vapor-compression cyclic process in the first half of the 1800s. One John Hague built an ice-making machine based on Perkins' patent and principles in 1882, and working refrigeration systems were built during that last part of the 1800s.
It was Willis Carrier and others that developed usable smaller systems for residential use through the first half of the 20th century. This included the "Heat Pump", which is nothing more than the same cycle with the heat transferred to the inside and heat absorbed from the outside instead of vice versa. So, yes, the condenser coils of air conditioning units transfer heat to the outside world (along with waste heat from the compressor).
How much energy is transferred via convection and radiation from the whole World's air conditioning systems to the Earth's atmosphere? That seems simple enough to find a number for.
It basically is, but I started thinking about the COP, Coefficient of Performance of Air Conditioning units. It's easy to make the assumption that you can't get any more cooling than you have electricity coming in, but no ... the 1st Law of Thermo doesn't say that. Take that proverbial, and useful, imaginary Control Volume around the unit - you've got electrical energy entering, heat from the air entering via the evaporator inside (or through the ductwork to inside), and heat into the air exiting via the condenser outside. The COP is the ratio of the cooling (heat transferred from the inside air) to the electrical input. That ratio can be 4 or 5 in efficient systems. It goes down at the temperature difference between the T of the outside air and the inside air increases.
I know, it sounds too good to be true, but it violates no law. That vapor-compression cycle is a great way to move energy around. In the case of a heat pump, that the COP is much greater than 1 explains why we use them at all. After all, strip heaters turn electrical energy into thermal energy perfectly! Anything with inefficiencies does too, if we can get the heat where we need it. With reasonably small temperature differentials, say, heating a house to 68F when the outside is 45F the COP can be high and we make out well with a heat pump, while with double the differential, it gets inefficient and the strip heaters must come on.
That lesson completed, let me say that in coming up with a number for heat exhausted to the atmosphere from air conditioning the World, the COP doesn't matter. Take another control volume around the whole house. Now we see that if 5 times the electrical energy coming in is coming out via heat transfer, that's a felonious violation of the 1st Law of Thermo. We think for a minute and realize that, at a steady state, the house is of course transferring that extra heat via its walls, windows, etc., or else the unit could shut off for good. ("Don't keep the door open though. Whadda' gonna do, air condition the whole outside?!) Electrical energy in MUST = heat transferred at the condenser + heat transferred from the house.
So, even if this factor of 5 mattered, which it wouldn't so much when compared to that big fusion nuclear reactor up there 93 million miles away (some literary foreshadowing here), we just need the value of electrical power used around the world for A/C to get the heat transferred out. One piece of AI told me it's about 2,000 Terawatt-hours yearly. (That includes simple fans too, but no matter.) That's 2 x 1015 W-hr. Now, with a Watt being one Joule/s and all, another way to put things is that a J = 1 W-second. 1 W-s x (1hr/3,600s) = 1/3,600 W-hr. 1 W-hr = 3,600J. Round up to a nice 1 x 1019 J used in doing air conditioning yearly in the world.
AI also told me that the Sun transfers ~ 1 x 1024 J to the Earth yearly. I really like the easy arithmetic! It tells me all that heat transferred from the World's air conditioning to the atmosphere (and space, but let's not quibble) is 1 / 100,000th of what we get from the sun.
Therefore, Peak Stupidity, in this attempt at an open letter, hereby asks Miss Ine Vandecasteele of Denmark to rest easy. Spend some time away from Brussels, cool your heels at home at 72 or so - for you Euros on that antiquated Metric System, to 22 - and think of this poor blogger with his (now) two window units in place.
We've got 80F and holding steady through the daily high, and it was a HOT ONE today. We can barely air condition the whole house. Just DON'T LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN! I can't cool the whole damn neighborhood, much less accidentally heat the World to speed up Global Boiling.
Comments (8)
Them Quarter-Millennium US Blues
Posted On: Saturday - July 4th 2026 8:09PM MST
In Topics: Music Curmudgeonry Americans Liberty/Libertarianism US Feral Government Holiday from Stupidity
(This might be the signing of the Constitution, a dozen years later.)
Peak Stupidity used the image above back in an early '18 post The founding of America - was it a fluke? We wondered:
Has there been any other time in history when the people have thrown off the yoke of their oppressors and turned the government into something much better, other than the founding of America? You could go back to the time of the Romans and even the Greeks and only then find something close in awesomeness. The closest things were probably the Glorious Revolution in England and other events in the land of the forefathers of our founders.In last year's Independence Day post, we explained:
Whatever we think we can do, let's not give up on it. Looking back and remembering our learning of the original Independence Day in elementary school, we just think of the wonderful end result as a given, and a nice F.U. from the American colonists desiring freedom to the British Lobster-back meanies. It wasn't at all a given. If we reflect more maturely on the scene, we can imagine the feeling of this moment as any man signing this might very well be signing his death warrant, with retribution coming not any longer than some ragtag army could hold off the most powerful military in the World.It's 250 years ago today, a quarter of a Millennium, when these brave men signed the Declaration of Independence. I can remember the Bicentennial (we'd probably write it BiCentennial now) 50 years back.
In today's world what would that mean? What happened leading up to July 4th of 1776 could be compared to current Americans who try to stay off the grid, accumulate guns and ammo, and who don't hold their tongues in blog posts, on twitter, and in podcasts and even (some) using their real names. Some may fight the system in small ways, not obeying the Kung Flu mandates 5 years ago, as a big, visible example, fighting tax bills, resisting REAL ID, what-have-you. A very few did wild impulsive things like fly planes into IRS buildings. None of it is even on the level of the Boston Tea Party. Anthony Fauci was never even tarred and feathered. (It's never too late!)
In today's world, what could we compare to that day 249 years ago, when men put their signatures, meaning, their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, on the line? I'd say that's be akin to Americans making pacts to shoot back when the Feds come to take the guns, the gold, or even the kids. You put your name out there, and if things get to this state, you will be that same kind of target as those men who signed below back in 1776.
It's hard to separate out the curmudgeonry that comes with age from the march of history. HAVE things really gotten worse* for America? I'm pretty sure.
Back during the Bicentennial, Gerry Ford was still President, the high inflation hadn't been "whipped" yet, foreign cars (and motorcycles and cameras) were encroaching into the auto market, the Vietnam war had only been over for 3 years for Americans and 1 for the Vietnamese, there was too much of that silly Feminist business going on already. We posted 3 songs from that era the lyrics of which sound pretty worried - Paul Simon's American Tune - - Neil Young's Coming Apart at Every Nail and Merle Haggard's Are the Good Times Really Over?.
That was nothin'! The grievances Americans have against "their" US Government and the state of the union seem an order of magnitude larger now. (Make that 2 orders of magnitude, when it comes to financial matters!)
Even if it sure hasn't as a Constitutional Republic, I'm amazed that America as a polity has made it to the 250 year mark, a quarter of ONE THOUSAND YEARS. That's a pretty long time. Making it another 250, up though the half Millennium mark, as a going concern is not something I'd bet even a 2026 buck on.
Merle Haggard asked "Are we rollin' down hill like a snowball headed for hell?" It seems like it. Paul Simon said "We can't be forever blessed", and Neil Young sang "Hey, hey, ain't that right? The working man's in for a hell of a fight." America still had a lot going for it then, I see in hindsight. I didn't see what could be a problem at my age at the time. Could a young man today not see the direction we're heading?
I just continued writing after watching the fireworks that Founder John Adams predicted:
I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.The fireworks are as good as ever, but there are fewer men left in America that understand what it all was about.
A Peak Stupidity tradition, since ITS founding, has been to feature The Grateful Dead's US Blues every Independence Day. The song is only slightly political. I usually don't bother with what AI has to "say", but I liked this blurb that came up:
Cultural ImpactThis post aside, we'll try to stay upbeat here on this blog.
"U.S. Blues" is notable for its upbeat and carefree spirit, contrasting with the political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s. The Grateful Dead used the song to celebrate American culture without engaging in political commentary, making it a staple in their performances. The song's playful nature resonates with fans, embodying the essence of the Grateful Dead's music and ethos.
Here was The Dead, just over 2 weeks before America's Bicentennial, singing the US Blues in the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey. Demographically, you won't see anything the kind of crowd present at the 50 year-ago show in '26 Passaic, New Jersey.
Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.
The Dead didn't seem too keyed up in this one, but I included it due to the date, almost at 50 years back.
Oh, just in case the reader has not celebrated this Quarter Millennium yet, hey, be careful out there!
That is from Adam Smith's youtube channel. (Video description: "Dysgenic Fertility is America's Greatest Strength!") Thanks, Adam.
The comments under the last number of "US Blues" posts were great. I didn't even remember that just last year Alarmist and I talked about the term for a 250th anniversary.
* That question asked more generally was the subject of our very 1st Peak Stupidity post.
Comments (18)
It's not the heat - it's the stupidity.
Posted On: Friday - July 3rd 2026 4:03PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Humor Global Climate Stupidity
Alt-title: Heat domes, air conditioning, and Urban Adaptation Experts
The "heat dome" is a term for area under the daily max temperature curve, I think. It's an integral, not an actual dome of hot air. The journalists might even learn some math from this story, so there's that ...
Commenter "The Alarmist", who spends most of his time in Europe, brought up this story under a recent post.
I forget the official stat, but the number of deaths attributable to very cold winter is an obscene multiple of summer heat deaths. Like 60,000 for winter versus 800 for summer in the UK. The last two winters were mild, so there’s a lot of dry tinder for the Grim Reaper if the Super El Niño delivers a cold dry February in 2027.Ha! The deaths due to freezing would generally have the same root cause, the recent influence and taking control of the energy sector of Western European economies by the "Greens". They aren't the old timey California whacko types that may have been humoured* a bit, but didn't seriously influence the economy. Germany shut down all nuclear power based on the - stupid and/or evil, take your pick - plans of these Greenies. (Some of them are the "Watermelons", with lots of red on the inside.)
I don’t know the stat for the Continent as a whole, but France is 8 to 1. USA is 2 to 1 … must be all the guns.
It may be somewhat due to some big futeball cup going on around this country, with the accompanying stories of Europeans getting their first personal views of what America is really like, that the story of a big lack of air conditioning "over there" has come to the forefront. It's said to be from 20% to 30%, roughly, of the residences in the main countries** in the region that have A/C.
I've been there once in the Summer as a young man. At that age, and because I spent most of the time outside, I didn't notice a problem. The next time I spent much time there, almost all in Germany, it was winter. Luckily I didn't freeze to death, I guess...
As a ZeroHedge commenter pointed out, these death numbers might be similar to the problem with the stats - death WITH the Kung Flu vs death FROM the Kung Flu. I guess some of them, death by heat stroke or the converse, a frozen corpse accidentally locked out of the house, are easy enough to determine. Comparisons to the US are unfair TOWARD the US, as we've got more regions that get this type of heat regularly than at least the main Western Euro countries, and, in the other direction, with the extremely cold winters of the Continental Climate zone of the upper MidWest. A good analysis would have to integrate dangerous cold/hot periods over population numbers - fun stuff!
That's not what I am here to do today anyway though. The stupidity that we see here is the REASON that many Western European residents are without air conditioning. Their governments still take the Climate Calamity stupidity very seriously. Europe's Climate-First Policies Fuel Resistance To Air Conditioning As More Than 1,300 Die In Heat Waves. ZH bolding here:
Europe continues to rely on alternatives to air conditioning even as deadly heat waves claim lives across the continent. Officials argue that expanding air conditioning is not a long-term solution.What the ...? Short of terra-forming the planet, or maybe launching the Earth into an orbit 10 or 20 million miles farther from the Sun, air conditioning will suffice for the short, medium, and long-term for those who like to be comfortable.
According to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Europe has recorded more than 1,300 excess heat-related deaths since June 21.I'm just wondering why ANY White Westerner should have to ever take a lick of advice from anyone named Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The guy's Ethi-freaking-opian. If I want advice from a spokesman from The Who, I'll listen to lead singer Roger Daltrey. He's NOT from Ethiopia.
What these Eurofools are trying to tell the people is that it's better that they die now from the stifling heat inside their homes than later from a projected couple of degrees C temperature rise, ANY DECADE NOW, from Global Warming. I'd like to see a survey asking the people when they would rather die. They might not agree with their Government officials or Mr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (I'm still partial to Butros Butros Golly!)
But, as the weather gets hotter this summer, the stupidity increases. Remember it's not the heat - it's the stupidity. One Ine Vandecasteele, an urban adaptation expert with the European Environment Agency explains proper use of air conditioning
“It is an immediate response, which can support essentially those who may be vulnerable in hospitals, or in very short term can help. But in the longer term, what happens is, installing more air conditioning actually emits more heat into our environment, so it will actually increase the speed of warming.”Holy cow! Mr. Vandecasteele, who's not even from Ethiopia, doesn't even know or bother with the long-term Climate Crisis theory that at least starts with something real, the radiative absorption characteristics of Carbon Dioxide. The models that purport to use that and EVERYTHING ELSE POSSIBLY AFFECTING THE CLIMATE are garbage, but still, there's a lot of fun Climatology to learn.
This guy says that it's the heat convected off A/C condenser coil fins, and I reckon the compressor waste heat, that is "increasing the speed of warming"... the whole outside.
Well, I might do that simple calculation next week, but the "whole outside" business has me smiling. Long ago, at the dollar fifty movies on a hot summer day like today, one of our friends held one of the outside doors open for a while talking to my brother and me. That can be wasteful when it's 92 outside and you want to keep the theater full of people (emitting 100 W apiece at rest) at 70.
"Hey, close the door, you guys", he cracked, "I can't air condition the whole outside." At that age and time, I thought that was the funniest line ever. I still smile when I think of this, and I use this line whenever I have the chance. It even works in the winter!
Common sense from that urban adaptation expert at the movies in olde America vs. modern European Government stupidity - it's no contest.
* If I'm gonna write about Europe, I guess I've got to write LIKE them.
** We shouldn't count the Scandanavian countries. Like the Pacific Northwest here (where quite a few Scandanavians immigrated to long ago), there is only a serious need for A/C a few days a year. Those people bitch & moan when it's 82F outside with DRY AIR. (That region is like coastal California for 4 months, but with more daylight and... unfortunately, too many Californians.)
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[UPDATED Quarter-Millennium:] I was tired. Not "heat bomb", "heat dome" is the big new thing...
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Comments (18)
SCrOTUS upholds the Bug-Out Baby Scam
Posted On: Thursday - July 2nd 2026 10:44AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Trump US Feral Government Legal Stupidity Morning Constitutional
I gotta give the guy credit. President Trump pushed this as far as he could before the SCrOTUS screwed the pooch. Granted, this decision was specifially about the illegality of an Executive Order* being used to deligitimatize the Bug-Out Baby scam, but this could have been a BIG WIN. Trump is most assuredly not giving up either. Since running his mouth and making smart (and stupid) remarks is his thing, the sarcastic tweet he made hammmers home the stupidity of this, one of the biggest, "legal" immigration scams.
We should have expected a defense of the erroneous "Birthright Citizenship" interpretation of US Constitution Amendment XIV, Section 1 from the 3 Diversitards of The Court. Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson Brown are the installed ctrl-left minions, there to rule for more societal destruction. For an important case like this, legalities mean nothing. These 3 are not bright enough to think that way anyway, likely the point of their having been installed.
Then their was another woman, the supposed Conservative Amy Barrett. Her appointment was yet another Trump boner. Should we have expected that her two diverse adopted Haitian kids would have no bearing on her decision making? ("But, muh compassion!")
Then there's John Roberts. I don't think he's stupid - I think he's been blackmailed. Someone ought to get to the bottom of that. Perhaps he and James O'Keefe could go on a date sometime.
I can't say enough good about Clarence Thomas. I understand that Sam Alito is a very good Constitutionalist too**, but I don't extoll Thomas because he's that "good black guy, see?!" I've read through 1/10 so far of his dissenting opinion on the .pdf for this SCrOTUS Case. What great writing! After reading from Thomas, I really think the 3 Diversitard justices should enter the chambers through a different doorway, off a special SCrOTUS short bus.
Anyway, here's what has enabled the Bug-Out Baby scam for many years:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.It's that "... subject to the jurisdiction thereof..." phrasing that has those pushing the Population Replacement Programme stupidly or more likely purposefully interpeting that as "being here". That's all.
It's true that the whole concept of "birth tourism" and such was not important to 1789 - 1868 America, the latter year being when Amendment XIV was ratified (along with the 2 other
No, this scam was not specified. Section 1 was only about citizenship for the recently freed slaves. The Indians were a different story (see the long Thomas dissent). Anyone else who just happened to give birth here, well, the author of the Amendment himself, one Congressman John Bingham of Ohio explained to the House in March of 1866:
I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen..Now, if this new baby, just born to Chinese parents in a San Francisco hospital, commits a crime somehow, yes, he would be tried by a jurisdiction in the US. However, he's Chinese. His parents owe allegiance to China.
One Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan, Bingham's counterpart, I guess, had this to say in front of the Senate that same year:
The first amendment is to section one, declaring that all "persons born in the United States and Subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside. I do not propose to say anything on that subject except that the question of citizenship has been fully discussed in this body as not to need any further elucidation, in my opinion. This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.You can argue Originalism, etc. until the cows come home, but this was pretty clear. That's what was intended by Section 1 of Amendment XIV, not the Bug-Out Baby scam.
SCrOTUS has let us down. That was expected here at Peak Stupidity. We're (PS and MAGA?) not giving up, as this scam results in a big avenue for BUT, LEEGUL! immigration.
Those numbers are HUGE, but, besides the 10 y/o age of the data, they don't necessarily tell us accuately what's going on with this scam. I got that Pew graph from a '19 article Number of U.S.-born babies with unauthorized immigrant parents has fallen since 2007. Pew at least explains possible inaccuracies itself:
While the Center’s new analysis provides estimates about the number and share of U.S.-born babies with unauthorized immigrant parents, it’s important to note that the legal status of immigrant parents can change over time. For example, parents who have legal permission to be in the U.S. at the time of their child’s birth might later overstay their visas or otherwise become unauthorized. Similarly, parents who are unauthorized immigrants at the time of their child’s birth might later become lawful immigrants and then naturalized citizens. (This analysis also slightly revises earlier estimates published by Pew Research Center.)There's a lot to this. It brings up one of my 2 final points in this extended post:
Overall, around 5 million U.S.-born children younger than 18 were living with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent in 2016, up from around 4.5 million in 2007, according to the new estimates. The number of U.S.-born children has leveled off in recent years, reflecting the decline in births and the decrease in the unauthorized immigrant population since the Great Recession.
An additional 975,000 U.S.-born adults ages 18 and older were living with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent in 2016. That’s up more than threefold from about 300,000 in 2007. (This analysis does not include adults who were born in the U.S. to unauthorized immigrants and were not living with their parents.) The number of U.S.-born adults living with an unauthorized immigrant parent has risen sharply in recent years as children born in the 1990s have come of age. Meanwhile, other estimates show that a rising share of their parents’ generation are long-term U.S. residents.
1) It's great that this scam has gotten huge visibility due to President Trump and this Supreme Court case. However, I have the feeling from my reading that so many Americans think this is something new! It's been going on for half a century or more.
Nothing changed legally recently, but immigration has been just higher generally. I do wonder which would have been a better SCrOTUS to have brought this case before over the last half century. Maybe the answer is none. Commenters may have their opinions.
2) A part of the big immigration apparatus that enables this Bug-Out Baby scam to work to begin with is chain and family migration. It's not like most parents want to drop a kid, whether across the Mexican border or in a hospital room in Seattle, and not plan to be with him. So, they can stay illegally until the immigration lawyer finally wins (in the former case), or go home, let their kid come over when he's older, and have him reunite the family in America via immigration methods. Everyone is legal now... and they will no longer be on that graph, BTW.
* Peak Stupidity maintains that ALL Executive Orders are unConstitutional anyway. However, that's long been water under the bridge, and it's not the time to refrain - as we explained in a long post.
** I'm not sure I trust Kavenaugh yet. Hopefully that miserable comfirmation experience stays with him.
*** The Dead Sea Scrolls are said to be the original Book of Isaiah - you can only see a copy, unless you are special.
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Uruguay: PS and Graffiti in Montevideo
Posted On: Tuesday - June 30th 2026 9:03PM MST
In Topics: Movies Geography Race/Genetics Peak Stupidity Roadshow
This is the 2nd installment of a quick series from our S. American roadtrip, continued from the 1st.
I'll make this one quick. Graffiti abounds in Montevideo, Uruguay, at least in the downtown. I was a bit surprised. I've thought of graffiti as a mostly Black! thing, but then I haven't been around Los Angeles or Miami much in a long time. I suppose wherever you have gangs, they've got to mark their territory, as cats back up and piss on the corners of houses and vehicle trim. I really like how Michael Douglas's character observes this in one of my favorite movies, Falling Down.
I've got my own start/end, but you may want to watch the whole scene for the 1993 movie:
OK, Uruguay, sure, it's in South America. There are Hispanic people there, but I expected more of the "Conquistador-Americans" (h/t, Steve Sailer) per wiki demographic numbers. They don't plaster graffiti everywhere, do they?
That historic building of some sort is right on the waterfront, this coastline that is geographically a curve from the coastline of the 50 mile wide Rio de la Plata to the Atlantic Ocean coast. The wide strand avenue is called the Rambla de ABC, where ABC goes from President Wilson (uggh!) to Charles de Gualle, to Peru, and Mahatma Ghandi has a big stretch of it named after him. (I have no idea what that was about.) Anyway, nobody is taking care of that building, I guess.
Also right there on the Atlantic coast, CCW from the point, that wall has what seems like one of those combination murals and graffiti sessions. You don't want to piss off the home boys, so you act like this is art. They do that in American inner cities too.
That's an architecturally beautiful old residential building, on what should be a pretty corner in downtown Montevideo. WTH, man? I see that these "taggers" don't bother to get higher than they can reach. Aren't our American taggers less lazy, at least?
OK! Now that there, on a park bench on the touristy walk-street downtown, is some graffiti that I would sponsor myself! Maybe someone can help me here. Does that last line read "Communism is death"?
PS: While trying to find the name of that walk-street (it's been a year and a half) on google maps, I took a look around the city some more. (I can look at maps for hours.) We got around but surely not around 90% of the city. Perhaps we got a bad impression as with someone spending time only in the inner city of a Midwestern medium-sized city here. I am hoping reader/commenter Possumman can fill me in on more as his son and family have spent more time in Montevideo.
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