Empire of the Summer Moon - Book Review - Part 1
Posted On: Tuesday - May 14th 2019 5:46PM MST
In Topics: History Books
The title of the book is in reference to the great fear the Comanche warriors put into the white settlers due to the extreme savagery of their raids on their lonesome homes and ranches in the woodlands and later great plains of the Republic/State of Texas. They tended to happen more during the full moon in the warm season, a "Comanche Moon".
As has been the case lately, the recommendation of this book came from a commenter on a web site somewhere, most likely unz.com. Empire of the Summer Moon by Mr. Sam Gwynne, is about a number of mostly-forgotten parts of the American history of "manifest destiny". As the eastern portion of the continent had been settled for quite a long time by English settlers (at least what is now the US portion), the ever land-hungry settlers had moved well west of the Mississippi River by the middle of the 19th century (1800's).
This book relates the engrossing story of the push of the white man into eastern, central, and eventually northern Texas, while the horse-riding Comanche tribe of Indians fought for "their" land, along with more specific stories of the kidnapping (one of thousands) of Texan Cynthia Ann Parker at 9 years old by the Comanches, her having gone native, and her Indian Chief son Quanah, who was an adult during the end of these fierce Indian wars and the final settlement of the tribes in Oklahoma. The specific stories are interesting in themselves, but it's the general theme of the book, which, to me, is about the unfathomable divide between those desiring ultimate freedom as savages versus those desiring civilization and progress that is its best feature.
Mr. Gwynne writes well, and he relates the many individuals and organizations, such as the real Texas Rangers, in an entertaining way, often flipping back and forth between the Indian life and the white settler life. He gives a nice compact history of the settlement of the (at one point) Republic of Texas, and a history of the Comanche Nation of Indians along side it. As for Texas, we learn of the amazing bravery and individualism of these settlers, mostly from the East, along with many Germans of course. They wanted their own big pieces of land, no longer an easy/cheap deal back east anymore, along with the freedom that comes along with not having a neighbor anyway in sight. In eastern Texas, still well-wooded and not that much different from Louisiana, Arkansas, etc there were plenty of troubles with Indians already. It was the move onto the high plains, land that was so foreign to white people that it both awed and scared them, that put them squarely in a no-compromise position with the 5 tribes of Comanches. For the Texans, these largely-unmapped, treeless expanses of grassland went on virtually forever, but they had been the home of the nomadic Comanche tribes for a full century.
The Comanches did not just magically originate from some Indian Adam and Eve in the high plains, which is why I put quotes above around "their" land. Nobody particularly owned any of the land per our 2 or 3 millennia-long Western understanding of ownership and property rights. That was kinda a big part of the problem between the white man and the Indians even back east and and as far back to that shady Manhattan Island deal. Back to the book now, the author described how the " Nermernuh", "the people" in Comanche-speak, morphed from a poor hunter-gatherer tribe up in present-day Wyoming around the headwaters of the Arkansas River in the Wind River Range, who hadn't advanced a damn bit in 1,000 years, into fierce, mobile, bands of warrior in 125 years (1625 - 1750). What happened? Horses. The Spanish introduction of horses into the New World resulted in their slow dispersal to first northern Mexico, then what's now New Mexico, where the Apaches started riding, and finally up to present-day Nebraska where the author reckons the Comanches were introduced to horses by the mid-1600's or at least by 1680. That allowed them to become mobile, and it was likely the huge buffalo herds of the southern plains brought them farther south.
There was something about that particular group of Indians, but they took to the horse like no other had and better than the white man ever did. (Keep in mind, with no science, no literature, no construction, and so on, what else WAS there to do over a century's time?) Mr. Gwynne describes the particular best practices that the Comanche used to make use of their many horses and also their extremely agile ridership, ability to hunt with arrows from horseback, and their ability to make war using the horse to great advantage. The latter ability outmatched all other Indians and the white man until the Texas Rangers and their own special advantage they came upon.
I'd like to give even more background here, but the reader can go to that amazon.com link above and read 1000x more information than I could possibly give in some of the > 2,600 reviews. Why this review-post is even here on Peak Stupidity is just to explain some of the fairly negative posts on the Indians of the pre-Columbian Americas that appear (here, here, here, here, and here, for example) and, of course, because I spent the time to read the book, so I may as well put a coupla posts up on it - time is money, or something...
I will recommend the book highly right now, but for more on the stories of the savage Indian attacks on the white man (per the author, much more brutal even than those back in the East), the individual story of Cynthia Ann Parker, her "searchers",and her Indian Chief husband and son Quanah, along with comments on the really basic important theme here, there will have to be 2 more posts, I'm guessing.
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On Schools, Race, and Billboards
Posted On: Monday - May 13th 2019 8:41AM MST
In Topics: Race/Genetics Educational Stupidity
There is a big intersection a couple of miles from our house that has a certain big billboard, always advertising for one particular expensive K-12th private school.
(Note: This is a file photo - not the school in question.)
Now, I imagine the school and the advertising company that owns the billboard have a nice working arrangement, as the billboard stays covered, literally (see kids, that's when you use "literally"), and the school can keep their nice spot - it should be a good deal for both. The school changes up the image up there once a year or so, I suppose, but it's the latest iteration that has me writing this post.*
The newest ad up on the billboard reads "It's time to start thinking about middle school." That's pretty simple, straightforward, and innocuous, right? There's nothing wrong with it, but I really think Steve Sailer's writing, along with my knowledge of the neighborhood(s), has given me an understanding of the real thoughts behind this simple advertisement.
Firstly, here are some details: One of the nicest neighborhoods in town is about 1 mile from the billboard. In fact, it's too nice a neighborhood to HAVE a billboard of any kind too close by (understandably, Not In My Backyard! - unless you've REALLY got a good deal...) Besides being, by my guess, one of the top 10 busiest intersections in downtown, it's about where you'd want to put it to attract the eyeballs (as those ad people say) of people from that nice neighborhood.
This well-to-do neighborhood has a couple of good elementary schools, though one is slightly better than the other. What do we mean by good? What do most people mean by good? The students are mostly white with a few Oriental kids, and not many black and Hispanic kids (not too many of the latter around this particular area, on the census-tract level). That's just the truth of the matter, and even diligent black parents would have to admit that, if none of their friends were listening. Keep in mind, I'm writing about ELEMENTARY schools here first. Middle school starts from 6th grade. Even if your Kindergarten - 5th grader is NOT at a good school, especially toward the beginning thereof, it's not like the disruption and violence are much to speak of. Sure, your kid may pick up bad habits and ways of talking, and he may have a few more stories than if he were at the good elementary school. He may get picked on, even, but the kids are still little enough to where it usually doesn't amount to much but tears. The disruptions from the bad kids are smaller and less worrisome.
The kids at the middle school are bigger, as it goes through 8th grade. Trouble can be more serious. In the neighborhood in question, there is one middle school, formerly known to be one of the best around. It's changing, as the bad neighborhood, pretty close to a ghetto is not even 3/4 mile away from the heart of the good neighborhood. As I drive by often, during the recess times, I notice that there are loads of black kids. Sometimes, the kids are mixed up, sometimes there are 50 white kids grouped up, and sometimes 50 or more black kids. Any white or Oriental parent driving by there with kids in the district is going to get just a little, uhhh, concerned, if I may. The Moms will just get a bad feeling, while the Dads may start counting and calculating.
Nowadays, of course, the information is all out there, on websites like Great Schools and School Digger. The parents will get these numbers and start musing about how life may be for their kids once they get to middle school, maybe next year. That's where the billboard comes in.
The school in question was built long ago, within a couple of years after school integration, along with a whole bunch of others that still play each other in football, basketball, and baseball. They no longer have any de-facto discrimination against certain crowds that their schools were built to get the kids away from. However, the high tuition does the job pretty nicely. The chances that the few high-tuition-paying black parents have real thugs as children is still fairly small. Since they do have a few Non-Asian-Minorities (the ones they don't want) here and there, until this latest billboard, which is more words than photo, every other billboard up there would have one token black kid to show "hey, see, we're a great school, and it has NOTHING, NOTHING, I TELLS YA, to do with what kids go here... NO, NO, NOTHING AT ALL!" (Of course, they can't fit that on the billboards, hence the smiling kids' faces.)
To put this all together, the ad seems focused toward parents in the nice, richer neighborhood that may have kids for whom middle school is coming up, this year, maybe next. Yeah, the two elementary schools are pretty good, though even your bad ones can be tolerable, but hey, have you looked at the middle school they are slated to attend? You may want to think long and hard, look us up, and get some money together, some real money. "Start thinking about middle school." With my new Sailer-induced thinking, it also has that "dog whistle" at a frequency that good parents can hear: "You'd better WISE UP, JANET WEISS!"**
* This is something right up our favorite unz.com blogger Steve Sailer's alley, involving race, schools, and even marketing (his former profession, though he was not an "ad guy" at all).
** Sorry, obscure Rocky Horror Picture Show reference there. Janet Weiss was actually a reasonably-hot Susan Sarandon, going back, well,yeah, QUITE a ways.
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Monty Python's Commie Quiz Show
Posted On: Saturday - May 11th 2019 1:55PM MST
In Topics: Commies Humor
I'd wanted to put a longer, more serious, post up that has solidified in my head. However, the historical ones take a lot outta ya', so I'll just present this fun video.
Video of the Monty Python group of 5 or so British comedians is funnier to me now than at the time. I think I missed so much of the humor somehow, probably too young to get it. One could put of 10 or 20 great scenes from each of 2 of their movies, Monty Python and the Holy Grail from 1975 and The Life of Brian from 1979 that are stand-alone humor. Peak Stupidity has already embedded videos from the latter movie here and here, with maybe a coupla others I can't find just now.
This is outta nowhere, with a young Eric Idle, and whoever those other 4, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Che Guevara, and Mao T. Tung(?), really are:
I'll get to some more serious, current, and original posts on Monday. Thanks for reading or laughing.
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They (still) shoot congressmen, don't they?
Posted On: Saturday - May 11th 2019 9:29AM MST
In Topics: Commies History US Feral Government Dead/Ex- Presidents
That was some line from some movie that I don't really care to look up, except with the word "horses" where Peak Stupidity placed "congressmen". It still rings true for America just as whatever its point did in the movie, I guess(?). Anyway, I did want to follow up on my promise at the bottom of the 3rd Peak Stupidity post on the Jonestown Massacre of 40 1/2 years ago. (See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 of Drinking the Kommie Kool-Aid - 40 years back.) I had written in a footnote under the 3rd part that US Congressman Leo Ryan of California, from the Frisco* Bay area district that "housed" the People's Temple Kommie-Kult, was an interesting character himself.
(Gotta love that 1970's hairstyle on her!)
"This was 1978... it was a different time you understand..."** Really, 40 years ago, the US Feral gov't, along with that of the various States, indeed had a different kind of people. Was it that we had almost twice the representation (one congressman for maybe 60% of the constituents as now based on that barely 200 million population)? I think the quality of Americans themselves was so much better that not only would it randomly result in better men (usually) as representatives versus the modern-day psychopaths, but voters wouldn't fall for the total douche-bags so easily.
What's striking about the biography of Leo Ryan is that we read of a representative of the 1960's - 1970's, pretty representative (get it?), though well left of, I'd say, most congressmen at the time, who spent his time for the benefit of the Californians of his damn district! What a concept! Just think of the people in that office today and what they care about most.
Let me back up just a bit. Leo Ryan, born in 1925, was a submariner in the US Navy, for 3 years, during WWII and a bit after. Nowadays, military veterans are a much smaller subset of the people in high office. You'd think Congressman Ryan would have been one of the conservatives, but, for his time, he was a fairly far-out lefty, as would be expected from that specific part of California. (Southern California, other than in the Hollywood area, had many millions of strong Conservatives back then, hence the election of Ronald Reagan as governor twice, etc.). He was a far-out lefty, but that's for the late '60's and the '70's. Reading through that biography, he was not just some spouter of Social Justice Bullshit - the guy practiced what he preached. As a CA State Assemblyman, he was concerned about education in California after the Watts (S. Cal) riots in 1965, so he became a substitute teacher to see what went on. Colleagues called his method "experiential legislating", and it sure beats running one's mouth with no experience like 90% of the fuckers up in office today (most now were lawyers).
In 1970, Assemblyman Ryan took on a pseudonym (this was a different time, you understand ... there were no cameras/facial-recognition every damn where...), got himself arrested and thrown into Fulsom prison ("Hey, I'm
As a US Congressman, one of Leo Ryan's interests was in reining-in the CIA, trying to put it more under the oversight of Congress with his Hughes-Ryan Amendment (to the "Foreign Assistance Act" of much earlier). I'm sure it was already too late to stop the Deep State from metastasizing, even in 1974, but do you think any congressman of either color-squad gives a damn about this stuff now? (No, Dr. Ron Paul has been out of office most of this decade.)
About the only thing, at least from the Wiki biography, that sounds like today's typical non-constituent-related, typical California-lefty BS, was Leo Ryan's trip to Newfoundland, way on the other side of the continent, to study the killing of the seals. Hey, if you care about seals, you can see them right in the late Congressman Ryan's district, in the Pacific freaking Ocean. I'd like to think otherwise, but that stuff sounds like the modern way of our "representatives" and I imagine Leo Ryan did not pay his own money for this seal-cation.
Let's converge toward the material of the 4 Jonestown posts now, as this brave (for a congressman) man headed down to (at first) Georgetown, Guyana. I know, I know, it sounds like a Rush song, but Leo Ryan had to go serve "the People, of the Temple ...", as along with a decent contingent of them still in his district in San Francisco, there had to be 5, 10 thousand close relatives/friends of the 900-odd Californians in, and trying to get out of, the now-Kommie-Kult work Kamp down in the jungle. Word did not come out via emails, tweets, and facebutt posts, as "it was a different time ... you understand ..."[ENOUGH - Ed]. Would a representative do this now, or just have his favorite General call in airstrikes and then the Army Corp of Engineers to bury it all?
The farther-away plane is the DeHavilland Twin Otter. The one in the foreground looks like a Shrike Commander.
After bucking the Jimmy Carter administration, who seemed to LUV those Kommie-Kultists (1st-lady Rosalyn had met Jim Jones before), Leo Ryan arranged to head down there, finally taking a flight*** with a delegation to Georgetown, the Guyanan capital, on Nov. 14th (of 1978). The group had a hard time making headway, Jim Jones refused to communicate with his group on the radio from the camp 150 miles away. It was 3 days before the small delegation from California and 9 journalists, a coupla Guyanans, totally 15 or so, took off in a Twin Otter to the airstrip at Port Kaituma. The rest of the story is in that 3rd of the 4 Peak Stupidity posts, but also in the Wiki article on the congressman linked-to above.
(Again, I love those '70's sunglasses too.)
I'd written in Part 1 of the series on Jonestown about the lack of perspective of a very young person on the news. I didn't realize how much of a huge deal this was, and I also didn't realize that the shooting of a congressman was not a monthly or yearly, uh, habit. That was my excuse then, as I would not have wished any harm on this lefty (for the time) California representative to the US Congress. Nowadays, I have no such excuse. There are probably a majority of them for whom I wouldn't feel at all bad about, were they riddled with bullet holes in some shithole jungle somewhere. It's a different time .... you understand ...
* I'm not sure if anyone really said "Frisco" even back in the time of Jonestown, other than in the movies.
** OK, I've got more humor off youtube coming, but I'm not sure anything yet has topped the Not-Ken-Burns-narrated 10 minute video on the "Negro American Space Society of Astronauts, NASSA", where this line came from.
*** There was a Day the Music Died-type situation involved here, as Leo Ryan's friend, Congressman Dan Quayle from Indiana (later VP of the US for 4 years with the elder Bush - 89-92) was invited to go, but couldn't make it. I bet he felt later like Waylon Jennings did, who did not get on the single-engine Beech Bonanza with Buddy Holly, the "La Bamba" kid, and "the Big Bopper" that cold night 2 decades earlier in Clear Lake, Iowa. No shooting, of course, just a VFR pilot who though he could scud run and lost control quickly in the clouds.
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"I fell over a burnin' Richard Pryor..."
Posted On: Friday - May 10th 2019 4:09PM MST
In Topics: Humor
From what I've just read, other comedians dub him one of the top stand-up comics of all time, but I'd never really liked Richard Pryor a whole lot. I came upon the video below, which reminded me of Mr. Pryor's setting himself on fire* right around 39 years ago. I apologize for just getting around to blogging about it, as I was in no position to do so in June of 1980. ;-}
A guy by that goes by the name of "Marty McFly" (yeah, I get it), who seems to live in or know the Northridge neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley of southern California where Richard Pryor lived for a long while, wrote an interesting post about the background comedian and specifically the running-down-the-street-on-fire incident that lots of people like myself heard and laughed about.
Well, this version of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire just cracked me up, after a commenter named Reg Caesar posted it in comments under a Steve Sailer article. I was going to go for a Monty Python embed, but that'll have to be tomorrow, along with more serious posts.
Now, who's funnier, the writer of this parody, or Richard Pryor? Sorry, Pryor fans, but I vote for this guy:
I'd completely forgotten that here was another fire incident with Michael Jackson and a Pepsi-Cola commercial (1984). Man, I hate to LOL at this one, because it was completely accidental (special effects explosions went off early) and the man got 2nd and 3rd degree burns. I'll just put it here anyway, due to a hell of a good crack about the both incidents.
This was a great opportunity for both men to give back to their people as they later came together to support the IGNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND.
Thank you, thank you ... I'll be here
* We'd always heard accidentally via free-basing cocaine (I honestly don't know what that means, which is a good thing). However, from my reading just now, he WAS doing cocaine, but he wanted to end his life and purposefully poured 150-proof (75% alcohol) rum over himself like a drunk Buddhist monk - or this fool. I just remember hearing that his hair was on fire, as funny as that was (yeah, sometimes he was funny), but, no, his polyester suit, soaked with rum, burned him pretty badly. As I wrote in the self-immolation post linked-to just above, that's about the most painful thing there is.
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[UPDATED 5/13:] I just had to add a line from unz commenter "AceDuece" about a Michael Jackson hair-on-fire incident. LOL, Indeed!
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"At least he made the trains run on time!"
Posted On: Friday - May 10th 2019 1:52PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Race/Genetics World Political Stupidity
That's what the supporters of Italian WWII-era Fascist Benito Mussolini would say about him. Now, over in France, they need a leader (doesn't specifically have to be a Fascist) to make the trains even stop at the stations!
(Hey, that's a tweet. Did I just make a tweet then? I am SO proud of myself!)
To add to Peak Stupidity's post back on Tuesday, Italian Media "Property" roughed up by ungracious guests of the country, we wanted to explain the part of the story regarding what this lady was in this no-go/no-stop zone reporting on to begin with. It has to do with thousands to millions of what they call "migrants" in Europe. I suppose they were invited, after all, by some
It's the usual immigration stupidity story here, so rather than discuss the same stupidity as has been been covered quite a bit here, I'll lead this post in a somewhat different direction. That is, do any readers remember talking to Europeans 25, maybe 30 or 40 years ago? You may or may not have gotten into any discussion about American race relations, but European people I talked to back then did not understand what America has gone through with this. I don't blame them - they wouldn't know with no experience. If you wanted to discuss history, no, Europeans knew (and know) even less about the causes of the War of Northern Aggression and that sort of thing than most Americans do. Hey, that's to be expected, no problem.
What would bug me is the arrogant attitude that many had about things that they could not understand. American white people had put up with a lot and tried a lot of things to help, and to get along with, black people over the last 50, but arguably 165, years. Not much has worked. Yet, you'd hear from English, French, or German visitors (or talk to them on that trip overseas) that "your country is great, but what's the deal with all that racism stuff?" "Why do you have all those deplorable racists treating black people so mean?" It came often in with the English condescension (because, just with that accent, they SOUND smarter!), the French snootyness (nose in the air - "you ave to treat zeeez people nicer, like we would in Fronce") or the German air of authority ("We haff no Nazis now. You are zee racists.)
I kind of wonder what some of these, now middle-aged, volks haff to ... [Stop that! - Ed] say about the situation, now that they have a large unassimilable crowd of un-like people in their midst. Would they think back to their words of yesteryear and understand they were wrong? Maybe they would tell me that their situation is different, that these Moslems and blacks in Europe are just not assimilated yet, but in America we are still just racists, sticking to the narrative. I don't know, but it's another case of schadenfreude for me, as some of them must be wondering if their situation matches large portions of American cities, and I'd like to head over there just for a quick "I told you so".
At least here in America, no matter how bad the violence and destruction of society has been, the trains still will stop at all the stations! It may be simply a matter of lots of places where trains stop being places in which the non-violent Americans may be packing concealable .380s*.
* New York City, with the biggest (and oldest) of the subway systems in America is a "gun-free" zone for anyone not a criminal or politician. That doesn't stop everybody, such as an old hero of mine, Mr. Bernie Goetz.
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Peak Lunacy or Peak Stupidity?
Posted On: Wednesday - May 8th 2019 6:33PM MST
In Topics: Music Movies
Which will come first? Of course, this very site is your complete resource for all things stupid, so we will lean toward Peak Stupidity, to align with our business model.
However, just staying on the internet and reading the daily stupidity here in America makes me think that the lunacy may indeed be peaking along with it. The root "lune" is from Latin, meaning something to do with that moon up there, which is known to bring out the crazies when full. I always liked the scenes in Cher's/Nicholas Cage's 1987 movie Moonstruck with the talk about the full moon. (Yeah, it's a chick-flick, but a favorite nonetheless, even with the lunatic Cher in it.)
Pink Floyd is not really in with the style of Peak Stupidity's normal music, but Brain Damage/Eclipse, which I always thought was called Dark Side of the Moon (till just now!), written way back in 1973, fits these current times pretty well. What with the outsourcing of the funny farms, this stuff hits even closer to home.
Dark Side of the Moon was one of those "concept albums", as most by this unusual rock band were. Back when there was this thing called "the charts", this album remained in the top 100 of the rock album charts for something like half a decade(?)!
The lunatic is in the hall.
The lunatics are in my hall.
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor,
and every day the paper boy brings more
And if the dam breaks open many years too soon,
and if there is no room upon the hill.
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too,
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear,
you shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes,
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
Pretty much, that's present-day America, minus the paper boy. Posting will have to be fairly light again through the weekend.
Pink Floyd:
David Gilmour – vocals, guitars, synthesizers
Nick Mason – drums, percussion, tape effects
Richard Wright – organ, piano, electric piano, vocals
Roger Waters – bass guitar, vocals, tape effects
PS: There is no dark side of the moon, as this body rotates at the same rate as its revolution around the Earth, ~ 28 days. There is a Far Side though, 90% of which could never be seen by man, until American and Russian space probes photographed it in the mid-1960's.
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Italian Media "Property" roughed up by ungracious guests of the country
Posted On: Tuesday - May 7th 2019 6:28PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Media Stupidity World Political Stupidity
Breitbart today posted this story, reporting that:
An Italian TV reporter and her cameraman were assaulted during a live broadcast whilst covering the living conditions of African migrants hoping to break into northern Europe in search of higher welfare payments.Explain to me again, Lyin' Press, why there is anything of benefit for the people of Europe for taking in people like this? I had though Chairman Merkel had explained this to us, but the reasoning of that evil Commie broad eludes me yet again.
What this reporter was doing at this no-go-zone subway station* was reporting on the mess there from these newcomer "Italians", and that would be another good post for tomorrow, with some points that VDare (especially writer Brenda Walker, on the human factors side) has been pointing out for years. The lady pictured above got roughed up by the unwelcoming and ungrateful newcomers, pissed off about not enough welfare, you know, after all they've paid in over the years and stuff.
Just after the reporter told viewers that she and her team “don’t want to disturb [the migrants] further”, the camera was visibly shaken and appeared to have been turned on its side, causing Parisella to alert the Matrix host Nicola Porro that her party was under attack.I hate to say it, but the Lyin' Press really needs some of this treatment. What else will it take for them to quit being the sackhangers of the Globalists who want to eliminate the European and traditional American peoples?
Following Porro’s warning to the TV journalist to “get out of there”, Parisella could be heard running from the station before the assailants caught up with her.
“What do you want? You’re crazy!” she said, and emitted screams of terror.
“Oh God, Francesca, get out of there,” said Porro, before instructing the Matrix producer to alert police to the attack.
From the Matrix studio a few minutes later, the presenter explained that “Francesca is upset but well. [Assailants] destroyed the camera and beat up the cameraman ..."
According to local media, a 37-year-old man hailing from the Ivory Coast has been detained in connection with the attack. The alleged aggressor was known to police for a list of crimes including domestic violence and was ordered by the prefect of Rome last September to be deported.Yeah, WTF is new? Nobody seems to follow those deportation orders anymore. It's not much different from getting a parking ticket, I suppose. They're not going to come looking for you unless you kill a few people or cut the heads off of the parking meters, in the latter case.
* I mean NO-STOP, really, as the "Metro" train drivers say it's not safe to stop there. That is amazing! They may as well fill in the whole platform portion with fill dirt, so you don't have to clean it.
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Healthcare Billing via Rectal Extraction - Part 2
Posted On: Tuesday - May 7th 2019 10:05AM MST
In Topics: Healthcare Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity Scams
(continued from Part 1.)
Let me back on up here. The 1st incident of the healthcare billing via rectal extraction was in a way even more vexing, due to the monetary amount, yet more benign-seeming afterwards. We made a deal with a hospital for delivery of a baby (not the Doc's fees, mind you, but just the delivery room, baby and Mom care for 2 days, etc) for over $3,000 to be paid ahead of time. We paid them. Our kid was born, we stayed till the last coupla' hours, and we went home. Deal? Deal!
Two weeks later a bill for also about an order-of-magnitude higher - as I recall, about $23,000 dollars itemized to the penny - came in the mail. OK, that was about 7 X, plus we'd already paid that first amount. I was beyond livid, thinking that these jokers had me believing the whole thing was 3,000-odd bucks, but maybe I'd missed some fine print! This stuff WAS itemized, including all the stuff that was supposedly already paid for before the birth. I had some very bad thoughts at this point, involving burning shit down and so forth. My anger was enough to where I simply tried to forget the whole thing for about a week. Then, I went as far as to get a friend to record a conversation with them with questions about this deal of theirs, as if his wife were about to have a baby too. The deal they told him was exactly as it was explained to me. Then I called the people finally.
"Oh, no, you can forget that bill. The computer just sends that automatically." Fuckin' bloody hell, lady - you call yourselves "health professionals" and you then piss people off enough to be in the mood to come to the office and beat the shit of your whole group?! How's that on the diastolic pressure, bitches? What is wrong with people? I don't care what a computer did, someone made or let it do that. Please see Send in your payment - STAT! (more doctor stories) for a story of my chewing out a Radiologist, at his hospital, on the phone. Yes, I'm dating myself, as that was back when you could get a live person on the other end of a phone and, indeed, figuratively rip him a new one. It didn't even involve false billing, but just a nasty bill that was not warranted, seeing as how it was the first one from the guy.
Now, back to the current case, 1st letter, that 12 large or so was just told to me upon my call-back to be what I owed them, period, no explanation necessary. "We'll discuss your case in a meeting" I was told near the end of the conversation. "No, there's nothing to discuss. I paid my bill that day, beforehand, and I don't owe anything!" See, same thing: I was afraid there'd been some fine print that the nice lady a few weeks back made an effort not to tell me about.
Well, come the 2nd letter, saying that my charity case (WTF?!) had been turned down, so sorry, I was even more angry on the phone. The lady was pretty obstinate about the whole rectally-extracted amount of money and the "Fuck you, pay me!" bit. That's what brought out the L-word. As I explained that possibly a lawyer would be necessary to sort this out, things quickly morphed somehow into a whole different conversation. "Oh, that amount is an auto-generated thing." "What do you mean? I'm not paying any money!" "Oh, no sir, it was just auto-generated - you don't need to pay that."
First of all, is that going to be the new "dog ate my homework" excuse for the 21st century (as dogs really can't eat our auto-generated homework anymore)? "No, no, sorry, you got upset, that big-ass bill was just auto-generated." "No, sir, I know you were told that you owed $50,000 for the neurologist, proctologist, endocrinologist, and 2 aspirin that showed up while you were sleeping* and are slightly upset about this sudden charge. It was just auto-generated, so calm the fuck down, Sir."
OK, finally, as to my suspicions of a real scam here, I thought later: Now wait, do they just associate with hospitals and doctors' offices, rectally-extract** a large number, "auto-generate" a letter, and then just hope that they fool 1 in 10, even just 1 in 50 patients? "Oh, I'd better get on the payment plan" (for this number that came from I-don't-know-where). People are indeed scared to have their credit ratings lowered, as they live on debt now. "Oh, yeah, we can probably do $150/month, though it may go up slightly next year. It'll be OK, Sir."
Possibly a big fraction of recipients of these auto-generations just throw out the mail, possibly lose some sleep, and just figure they don't want to hear about it. Others call up and raise hell. When things get nasty and the L-word comes up, handling of this is a simple as "oh, you can ignore this letter. No, it was just auto-generated." Now, the recipient is so damn glad, he thanks the scammer profusely on the phone, throws out this paperwork, has a few beers to celebrate his relief, and never thinks anymore of it.
It's good work if you can get it. Some of us may investigate some more. I happen to know the Doctor well and I remain pissed off, though at a much lower intensity. I really want to know who caused this computer somewhere to send me a letter saying I owe 12 grand. That's the guy I'm looking for.
* Again, please read that - humorous, I promise you - other Doctor post.
** In case you haven't caught on to Peak Stupidity humor here, that means pulling numbers out of one's ass, or anal cavity in the less-vernacular.
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Modern Auto Stupidity
Posted On: Monday - May 6th 2019 6:34PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music Cars Curmudgeonry
(The picture here is from a complaint about windows not rolling all the way down,
another valid criticism.)
Cars today are not built very much for "cool" looks or fun of any kind. People just don't want that stuff anymore, especially the young people. That's fair enough, as good gas mileage and reliability are more worthy goals, IMO. Reliability HAS gone WAY up since the 1970's and gas mileage increases would have been a lot higher but for the new heavy mandated safety features.
Fine, but could you not have made these new designs for riding with the windows down, occasionally ... ever? I know that people are spoiled and they want the heat at 73 F on this side, A/C for the passenger, both want their asses heated up, the kid in the back wants it cooler and his DVD turned up ... etc. Electronics can do a whole lot now, until ... well, around the time the warranty expires, and all kinds of troubleshooting and workarounds must be done. You should have sold it by then!
Anyway, it's just that these modern cars must have been tested in the wind tunnels or on the road with windows up ONLY. The kids really wanted the windows down on this long trip, and they can do it with a switch push rather than a crank. Man, the car is NOT made for it, especially for the back ones being down. It was OK at 30 mph, but once near 60 mph, the turbulence became kind of intense. It was a buffeting to the point where I felt like I was under a sudden depressurization in the SR-71. Bang, bang, with a period of about a second or two, it went, ... "we're breaking up, Houston ..." The kids could not hear us tell them to "crank" the windows back up with the effect of this buffeting in all our ears, probably eventually to induce nausea and headaches. Oh, you can do it from the front. Don't panic! Find those switches before tunnel vision sets in!
Even riding with the front windows down above 50 mph has a similar effect, though of slightly lesser intensity. Hey, can't I just take in some fresh air and hear better? (The better hearing makes it much safer driving with windows down too, unless you follow gravel trucks!) What the heck are you supposed to do once you finish your banana anyway?*
It's about the side-mirrors, isn't it? Those things are 4 or 5 times bigger in area than they used to be on those 1980's cars. They've got 2 motors, a defogger, a built in signal light, a glued-on super-convex mirror for more visibility ... geeze, don't break one of these - you're in for $200 USED now. Sure, you can see more in 'em, and you need to because otherwise visibility through the narrow windows sucks in the new cars. Anyway, I believe those big-ass mirrors are what causes the turbulence when windows are down, but the manufacturers don't worry about it.
What a world it is now! Things are built for comfort and (what they think is) for safety, but not for any fun.
Johnny Cougar, from his melon camp somewhere in Southern Indiana, complained about it, but I think riding in the rumble seat would be a lot more fun than being cooped up in the modern boxy constrained contraptions of today.
"I could have a nervous breakdown, but I don't believe in shrinks.
I should be drunker than a monkey, but I don't like to drink ..."
It's just plain old rock-&-roll from Mr. Cougar's mid-80's album Scarecrow, which was chock full of great songs. As for car songs, Peak Stupidity has already featured Rush's Red Barchetta, Paul McCartney and Wings' Helen Wheels, and Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
* I think it would be interesting - annoying, but interesting - to get pulled over for throwing something organic out the window. Is throwing an apple core out into the woods littering? "How so, your honor?" (Course, the cop can just lie about it, if the county needs the money that bad ...)
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[UPDATED 5/7 Afternoon:] Added opinion on mirrors.
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Healthcare Billing via Rectal Extraction - Part 1
Posted On: Monday - May 6th 2019 11:37AM MST
In Topics: Healthcare Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity Scams
Here is the long-awaited post (Enjoyed your weekend? Good. Prepare to be pissed.) alluded to in the previous post last Thursday that had raised my blood pressure bigly.
Peak Stupidity has not had a post about HealthCare Stupidity in quite some time, but this one just cropped up. It's the 2nd time I've been through this simply outrageous form of stupidity, and unfortunately probably won't be the last. Lest the more Socialist-inclined reader start off right away in retort to this post with "See?! It's that Capitalism! These people don't care about you. The GOVERNMENT needs to run Healthcare, as they will do everything right and fairly, like in, uhh, with Affirmative Action, Taxes, all that shit ... Oh, but we like to use the term "Single Payer" as not to raise peoples' blood pressure and all as we eeeaase into the wonderful new system", let me pre-emtively let you know how full of shit this idea is.
In America, we have nothing resembling Capitalism and free markets in the Healthcare "Industry". Yes, we did 60 years ago, and yes, China is a whole lot closer than we are right now (See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and a Postscript of Peak Stupidity's award-winning [Here's your plaque, bitch! - Ed.] series on healthcare in China.) What we have here is government control, via Medicare, Medicaid, Øb☭macare, and other government regulation, that has created a huge bureaucracy with an arcane, unfathomable, and asinine system of how medical care is charged and billed. Let me put it this way: A doctor friend has 3 offices with 50 +/- a couple of employees and 11, yes ELEVEN of them are working in billing. That's 20% of the workforce in this non-medically-servicing portion of the business just to wade through the complete bullshit and get the doctors, nurses, and techs paid, and to keep the business running.
OK, now what happened the other day to piss me off enough to make me not fit for blogging (and that takes a lot!) was the receipt of a 2nd letter of 2 so far discussing a large amount of money - something like $12,000 dollars, but exact to the penny - due for a procedure that I'd already paid for. No, I did not need to use insurance, and (Thank the Lord) this was not for a problem, but just a routine every-few-year thing that cost money. I discussed it with the nice billing lady, and the fee was in the right ballpark for what I had to get done. Things had to drag on for a few hours, just the way it worked, there were 4 people (none doctors, but professionals none-the-less) involved, so the ~ $1,500 fee was reasonable. I signed on the line, wrote a check, ipso facto, there's your money, I'm done, see ya!
That was all fine until a few weeks later when I got the 1-order-of-magnitude larger bill, with no specific itemization, just "hey, I pulled this number out of my ass, now, FUCK YOU, PAY ME!" I made the 2nd call, based on a 2nd letter, to this billing company on Friday, in which I invoked the L-word. No, it's neither a four-letter word nor a racial slur. It's much worse than that - I used the word "LAWYER". Things kind of changed after that with my and the nice customer service representative's relationship.
OK, I have not gotten through the whole story in a reasonable amount of time here. This is pretty interesting stuff, though, because now I am under the impression that this may have been a true scam, that is, not a scam like all government/crony-capitalist/Big-Biz con-jobs, but an actual unapproved scam that could be both clever and lucrative. I will expound on that possibility, along with filling in the rest of this story, in Part 2.
This is the modus operandi (they like to use Latin still in the medical field, just to screw with people) of Current-Year billing departments. First, there's the rectal extraction of a large random number, denominated in US dollars. Then, there's the computer-generated* letter with no itemization, from the nice customer service representative named Pauli:
"Don't know how you coulda' had a hysterectomy without ever having a uterus to begin with? Fuck you, pay me! Wondering what the charges are for, since you already paid in full for the ingrown toenail? Fuck you, pay me! You say you've never heard of a Dr. Gupta? Fuck you, pay me veddy much!"
* More on this in Part 2 - "The Peak Stupidity Ultimatum".
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Minor Economic Points / Slow rest-o-week
Posted On: Thursday - May 2nd 2019 3:24PM MST
In Topics: Economics US Feral Government Taxes
I had something in my personal/financial life today that raised my blood pressure so high and rapidly that a blog post out of it is a given! However, I was more in the mood to settle the matter on the phone than write the post, so it'll be forthcoming. There may be no more posting for the rest of the week after this one due to business (busyness?), so this short piece of additions to 2 previous posts will be it for a bit.
Let me put this graph up that I found I'd saved but not included in the post About the Public and Private "Sectors" of about a month back:
I meant to include this graph along with writing I'd completely forgotten to include about pay in the private "sector" vs. the public one (i.e. - see that post - the actual economic SOURCE vs. the economic SINK). You have to go back to before the beginning date of this graph, obviously, which is the year 1999 A.D. to get to the time many remember when there was a trade-off between government jobs vs private jobs. The deal back then was that the real economy paid better because it could, while the gov't jobs paid low but were stable. Yeah, Government DOES NOT DOWNSIZE. That's not all, as it's damn hard to get fired from a job in the government. You have to work very hard at being incompetent - just being an ordinary deadbeat WILL NOT CUT IT.
Therefore, there was that trade-off, and if there were to be some of these UnConstitutional positions to begin with, at least we could poke fun at these low-paid deadbeats. It sure looks like a different story now, as America becomes pretty much as Socialist as the next country.
The 2nd quicker economic point I wanted to make today is on Federal Income Taxes, so you can refer back to Peak Stupidity's Comparison of '15/17 US Government Budgets from tax day, ~ 2 weeks back or just look at the repeated pie chart below:
Just look at the one little slice of spending pie (tastes like mint cheesecake, with all that green) that says 6% for "net interest on the debt". Yes, that 6% is the same number (rounded to the nearest 1 percentage point) as for 2015. No, that's not holding the line or anything like that. That 6% is payments on a number right around $22,000,000,000,000 (22 TRILLION bucks) vs. 2015's 6% of only $20,000,000,000,000 (20 TRILLION bucks). It's 6% of a higher spending number, $3.982 Trillion in '17 vs. 6% of $3.688 Trillion in '15. Therefore, spending (getting out of ass-backwards Wall Street Journal mode now) on interest has gone up from $221 Billion to $240 Billion. These are rounded just due to the imprecision inherent in that 6% (in fact still more precise than we really know). That doesn't seem too bad, as it's only an 8 1/2 % increase. It's near the same, but slightly lower than the increase of the total debt by 10%.
What does that mean? It means the US Gov't is still paying those LOW, LOW interest rates of between 1.0% and 1.1%. Man, I wish I could get a loan for 1.0 to 1.1%! I'd even pay an origination fee for cheap money like that. What would happen if interest rates were let to rise to the natural cost of money right now, say 6%. I'll leave that answer to the reader, as the math is trivial, as our Calcuseless professor used to say. If you like living in solvent countries, uh, maybe you should not do this math until after you've digested your suppers.
Good evening, readers! More Stupidity will appear first-o-the-bidness-week.
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"My My, Hey, Hey ..."
Posted On: Wednesday - May 1st 2019 7:45PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Music
"... that homeless man is here to stay ...."
"Is this the story of Johnny Rotten ....?"
("Johnny Rotten! ... Rotten Johnny!")
A few days back, Zerohedge posted Wealthy Elites Freak Out As Homeless Hordes Take Over West Coast Neighborhoods. In this story, the rich man of the establishment with the complaints (don't they all?!) is none other than former punk rocker of the Sex Pistols, one Johnny Rotten.
No city on the west coast has a bigger problem with homelessness than L.A. does, and many in the homeless population enjoy camping out on the beautiful beaches in the L.A. area at night.Heh! Heh, heh, heh, heh! [/Butthead] Yeah, the Germans have some good, multi-syllablical words for stuff like this ... not hypocrisy, no, we all have a lot of that, so we need that word, but it's like Schadenfreude on Steroids, SchadenFreudenRoid perhaps? Yeah, it makes me feel good that Johnny Rotten is stressed out about homeless people on his property on the beaches of Los Angeles. It's not just that, though ... let me pinpoint it. It makes me want to stick a finger in his face and say "Hey, Rotten, I must have missed your Sex Pistols song about property rights and the Constitution! Haha, yeah, man, young people or the downtrodden homeless should be able to go anywhere they want, right? Screw the man! I remember you young blokes knew everything and hated the establishment. You're the man, now Johnny Rotten, and I'm gonna go piss all over your front walk! Right!"
But of course many of the elite that paid millions of dollars for beachfront property are not too thrilled about this. Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten was a key symbol of anti-establishment rebellion in the 1970s, but now he is freaking out because homeless people are making life very difficult for him and his wife in Venice Beach, and what he recently told Newsweek’s Paula Froelich is making headlines all over the nation…
He told her the homeless situation in his swanky LA neighborhood is so bad that thieves are tearing the bars from the windows of his multimillion-dollar home, lobbing bricks, setting up unsightly tent cities and littering the beach with syringes.
“A couple of weeks ago I had a problem,” the former punk prince opined. “They came over the gate and put their tent inside, right in front of the front door. It’s like . . . the audacity. And if you complain, what are you? Oh, one of the establishment elite? No, I’m a bloke that’s worked hard for his money and I expect to be able to use my own front door.”
Yeah, I've got SchadenFreudenRoid from this news item tonight. I would also like to ask Mr. Rotten, if Neil Young was right, when he said "it's better to burn out, then to fade away ... My, My, Hey, Hey!"
This is the acoustic song, the 1st cut on Neil Young's and his band Crazy Horse's great 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps, fully-entitled My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue), while the same album ends with the high-distortion-electric-guitar number Hey, Hey, My, My (Into the Black). I hope that doesn't confuse anybody.
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No Country for White People?
Posted On: Wednesday - May 1st 2019 7:02PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity TV, aka Gov't Media alt-right/MAGA
Alright! Some things that I read make me so pissed off that I'm even more thankful that I don't have the TV in use with anything but the DVD player (been quite a number of years, too). It's not just that I'm not giving the Lyin' Press the money and attention they crave. It's also that I can vent via a comment on a Steve Sailer post, get the gist of what's going on, and not have my blood pressure go up like it would if I had even a truthful (ha!) infotainment "journalist" tell me some of the stuff I just read. Keep in mind that these flat LCD screens are just not made like the old CRTs - they can easily be made unusable from just the throwing of shoes and/or dinnerware (still, don't throw out that Best Buy receipt - you can fool some of the Geek Squad some of the time ...)
Steve Sailer wrote this afternoon on the latest from the famed Somalian Congresscreature, Miss Omar, out of the great white north side of Minneapolis, Minnesosta, land of the Snowflakes. In Rep. Omar: "This Is Not Going to be the Country of White People", Mr. Sailer comments on some ingratitude of this fucking Moslem Somali refugee that deigns to determine the future of this country. (The frequent reader may see some visual indicators of high blood pressure right here and now!) It's a short post, and I hope the author doesn't mind that I excerpted pretty much the whole thing. Here's Mr. Sailer's as-usual-interesting take:
The Somalis are a pretty interesting group because unlike the Mexicans, who tend to act like, deep down, they know that the Anglos are better at governing than they are, and the Chinese, who tend to act like they’re willing to let the whites run the country awhile longer while they make money, the Somalis apparently love politics, or at least the glorify your ancestors and spit on your enemies part that has done so much for Somalia.Heh! Also, note that some of us don't mind stereotyping people when we notice things, something all of us should emulate.
If you go back only a month or two, many on the alt-right or just conservatives in general were pretty hip to this lady's attack on the US Gov't (Trump especially included) and its policy of treating Israel not only as if it were a US State, but as if it had representation larger than California's. I suppose it does. "Yea! for Congresscreature Omar for calling this out. There's some courage!" Actually, though it would take some courage for anyone else to do this, as "you'll never work in dis (politics) bidness again", and politicians have the least amount of courage next to journalists, it doesn't take courage on this Omar's part. She has her Moslem credentials to shield off criticism in a way that Starfleet Chief Engineer Scotty could only dream of. Either way, "Yea for her. You go, Burkha-grrlll!"
Yeah, how long does that stuff last? Here she comes back as the most ungrateful immigrant the US may have ever had, as of yet, and we've sure seen some ungratefulness. It was in my lifetime when you still would hear "My ancestors came on the Mayflower, and the men fought in wars from the Revolution through Vietnam. In the meantime, your parents came over on a freakin' boat, so STFU about everything!" Now, we've got a refugee who's only here because, per Steve Sailer,:
the genocidal regime in which her whole family was employed (her grandfather at a high level) had made itself so hated by other Somalis that once the dictator fell, it was likely that the public would try to take vengeance upon the Omar family.It doesn't take regular gall for Omar to tell Americans what they should expect in their future here. It takes some special kind of gall, from the gallbladder of a menstruating Grizzly, to enable this stupidity here.
Do we want to take in more of this type of person? Is Steve Sailer's description of the pernicious persecution of her kind reason enough to possibly make for a new "Omar's Law" added to the immigration law? They say head cases make bad law, or something like that, but I think the out-of-control American Feral Gov't would go for making importation of more Omars new policy. Come on, Minnesota Lutheran Ladies, here's another niche market for you. Can you say, "Cha-Ching"?!
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8 year-old does Occasional Cortex
Posted On: Tuesday - April 30th 2019 8:19PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Humor
Little Ava Martinez cracks me up with this, even when I'd only heard the splitting-double Blue-Squad presidential candidate only a couple of times. You should at least hear this A.O.C. lady first, if you haven't, before you watch the young lady below.
Great stuff. Thank you, Miss Martinez, for brightening up lots of people's day!
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Drinking the Kommie Kool-Aid 40 years back - Part 4
Posted On: Tuesday - April 30th 2019 8:08PM MST
In Topics: Commies TV, aka Gov't Media History Media Stupidity Socialism/Communism
In this continuation from the previous post on this wild historical event, I'd like to present 2 of a number youtube clips from TV broadcasts about the Jonestown massacre of November 1978 with Peak Stupidity's commentary.
Firstly, I feel vindicated in what I wrote about not remembering anything about Socialism or Communism in those reports from 40 years ago. I didn't claim in that I knew for sure, but in the 7 minute clip, and the 27 minute one, there is still NO talk about the hard-core-Commie political persuasion of Mr. Jim Jones and his crowd in Guyana, S. America. Interestingly, in this first video, only 45 seconds in, the newsman stated "The words on everybody's lips were 'Shades of Auschwitz" in reference to the sight of (what were then tallied at) 400 bodies. Alright, so you mention atrocities of the Nazis in to compare this to, but NOTHING of Communist atrocities, and, hey, whaddya' know, newsman, hello: The People's Temple cultists were Communists, and everybody knew that! No analogy there? Nothing?
From KGO news in San Francisco, this first video is a very early report on this especially-local story for San Francisco where the People's Temple headquarters still had dozens of people inside. Even a full day later, on this newscast in the evening in San Francisco, 2:30A the next day in Guyana, the body count was still 400 only. Keep in mind, this was 1978. People were not connected as now and not constantly taking pictures and video.
In other words, there were no tweets of:
We all will drink Grape Kool-Aid 2-Nite. Here's my cup! OMG, this is kinda creepy. It's tuff B-ing a Com-E, LOL. Guys, get down here. I'll text Mama good-nite. She's so old-fashion LOL!There was no facebook on which to put ones favorite Kool-Aid recipes either.
I can't fault this news team for not mentioning the political aspect as the story was just about the suicides/murders. Compared to today's spin and constant nitpicking at tiny details to fill up a 24-hour news-day, this was straight-up news reporting. It's an amazing thing to watch. Oh, I don't know about "They [the bodies] are in rows, and very quiet, of course.". WTF? Yes, of course, they are quiet, or we're dealing with more of a Dawn of the Dead scenario than a simple mass suicide/murder.
This next is a more detailed piece from 2 days later from San Francisco TV station KQED, and mostly is set as a panel interview with people in the know about the goings on with the People's Temple. By this point, relatives and close friends of the dead and missing were asking lots of questions and not happy about the cult. Please watch the whole thing if you have time:
Some comments on this one: I LUV those American cars! I'm not sure about that first car, the land yacht, but I'm pretty sure that was a Mustang II in there. (The 3rd generation Mustangs would have been coming out right that month.) The Japs had been making big inroads for a coupla years already, but there was still mostly American metal on the roads. Another thing, I shoulda emptied my piggy bank into the DOW at 805!
Now, about the story, as I wrote above, people wanted answers at this point. Guess what the 1st white guy official shown being asked a question on the street had to defend himself with - "but, but, Martin Luther King ...." Same old bit, even 40 years ago. Then during the panel discussion, Jim Jones' personal doctor, a black guy, defends him by saying the city of San Francisco is a very racist city. This is while he was being interviewed by the black lady host, Belva Davis, with a part-Chinese lady, one Pamela Young (fairly cute), pumping up the diversity. There's nothing new under the sun, I guess. Councilman Willie Brown, still around today(!) is on the show, bullshitting less than the other black guy.
Even with the BSers at the TV discussion (not all of the guys), this was such a straightforward look into this event vs. the spin and stupidity of today's Lyin' Press.
This Jonestown massacre has been a very interesting thing to learn about. If you get nothing else out of this, please remember not to drink the Kool-Aid.
PS: I didn't mention yet, in all 4 of these posts on Jonestown, the 39 suicides committed together in 1997 in the "Heaven's Gate" cult. Yes, it was in California - why even ask? I would have thought that that was only 10-15 years ago. Time flies, I guess. Notice that the People's Temple death toll beats Heaven's Gate by a factor of > 20. Nobody does culting big anymore. It seems only the Communists can pull this big-time shit off, I guess.
PPS: I forgot to include a link to more on Kool-Aid, Flavor-Aid, and the types of poison used. That's just in case the reader may want to get into the cult business. Hey, things may pick up!
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Drinking the Kommie Kool-Aid 40 years back - Part 3
Posted On: Monday - April 29th 2019 8:21PM MST
In Topics: Commies History Movies Socialism/Communism
Spock out."
Part 2 of this series left off with the geography of the location of Jonestown and a bit about the climate, both the climate climate, and the "Climate of Communism", I'll call it now, which is never conducive to the development of higher life forms.
Let me write just one more thing with respect to the remoteness of Jonestown, Guyana, in the 1970's, which many cannot relate to today. There was no internet, and there were no phones, even landlines that don't take pictures (yeah, I know, "what's a landline?" LOOK IT UP on your wireless device). I'm not sure even Port Kaituma, 6 miles or so away, had any phone line. Though the Peoples' Temple Guyana group originally had an office in Georgetown, the capital, all they had for communications from their
A year to a year and a half of misery down in what WAS in reality Communist Gulag (without the tundra, so there was that) was enough to make anyone either ready for a break-out or just plain suicidal. I'll get more to the suicidal part later on. There were members of this cult who wanted out, but this was no easy deal anymore with almost no communications to the outside world. Jim Jones was not going to let anyone badmouth his place on the shortwave, and, as stated in the section on Geography last post, this was the kind of place that America, as THE free-world power at the time BY FAR didn't really give a rat's ass about. Nope, if the "according to his ability" lifestyle, along with the SS checks, was not making life a picnic there, there would be no C-141 airdrops from your Capitalist-Roader enemy of pallets of steaks, frozen foods, toilet paper, and Kool-Aid. (Wait, they were stocked up pretty well on Kool-Aid.)
Like pretty much any Communist country in history, people were trying to get out. It wasn't rubber rafts, as out of Cuba, Philippine freighters, as out of Vietnam, single-seat fighter jets and ballet troupes, as out of Soviet Russia, ladders or hot-air balloons as out of East Germany, or caskets as out of Cambodia, but the place was surrounded by jungle. I was remiss in the last post in not pointing out the possible familiarity of readers with French Guiana by way of the movie Papillon. In the (real-life-based) prison of the movie, the jungle and the remoteness replaced prison walls, at least in the initial sentence/location for Steve McQueen. It was very much the same in Jonestown, a century later, two Guianas away.
With 900-odd members down there, that means likely 5,000 or so fairly concerned close relatives back in California. By some point that summer of '78, many of these people were anxious enough to try to find out what was happening down there. It was enough to get California Congressman Leo Ryan to make a trip to the camp. The Jonestown leaders were alerted he was coming and had prepared a reception he was not agonna forget. Congressman Ryan with a number of news reporters and cameramen left 4 days before the big happening for Georgetown, and arrived at Port Kaituma airstrip 1 day before. As they checked out the place, Mr. Jones, who had become very ill and more delusional than normal over the last year or so, did not trust that the delegation was impressed with the place. Unfortunately, some would-be defectors passed a note to one of the prison leaders mistakenly, rather than to the Congressman about their wanting to leave.
Though he was told that the Congressman was going to give a good report (we'll never know now, but remember, Jim Jones was well-connected politically - the Democrats LUVED him!), Jones did not believe this. As the crew boarded a 6-seat single engine Cessna that had come to pick them up at Port Kaituma along with a 20-seat Twin Otter, a ringer onboard named Larry Layton shot up the rest of the passengers in the single-engine Cessna, as it was back-taxiing for takeoff. With the Otter, it became very much like an action-movie scene. An open trailer towed by a tractor to Port Kaituma got in front of the plane, and Jonestown Kommie-Kultists opened fired with shotguns, pistols and rifles at it. It was destroyed.** The Congressman was hit with 20 shots and died there.***
I guess that was the point that Jones decided he'd made the situation down there unsustainable. If you are going to have lots of stupidity, at least make it "sustainable stupidity" - that's one take-away here. It was about that time, time to "DRINK THE KOOL-AID". Most were dead within 5 minutes.
OH, YEAAAHHHH!
Listen, don't be surprised, readers, but in my day we did very similar stuff. It wasn't for repudiation of the Capitalist system or that sort of thing - it was usually for football or concert tickets (and camping out for 2 nights to get 'em). Yes, we also had big trash cans full of Kool-Aid. They weren't laced with cyanide though, just a number of bottles of 190-proof Everclear, with traces of cut-up oranges, berries, and random fruit thrown in for nutritional value. Yes, we drank the Kook-Aid, and no, we were not the better off for it in the morning either.
If you've read about this story, you may have learned another thing I had not known until now. There had been practice suicide runs a number of times before. I don't just mean "OK, take a swig and imagine you are going to die. Next time, we'll spike this up a notch." No, there was suicide "practice" in which the willing(?) participants were told that the stuff WAS poison, so they took it knowingly. In these earlier cases, Jim Jones was "just kidding", and I do wonder if he had watched the original M*A*S*H* movie, with the pretty well-done Suicide is Painless scene*, made well before Jonestown was built. However, the babies and toddlers were given the poison directly via syringes squirted into their mouths, some by their own parents. How sick! It's one thing to fall for a charismatic cult leader or beliefs thereof, or to leave it all behind. It's another to birth a child in a Communist prison camp, and yet another to murder him to prove your point of stupidity!
Therefore, this was truly a mass suicide for the most part, with those unfortunately little ones and the smart defection-minded ones who didn't make it out being just those eggs that the Kool-Aid Kommies need to make those great omelets with.
I'll mention again here that, OK, it was really "Flavor-Aid" a cheaper version of this flavored sugar water. I don't know why even poor Communists would need to save money on Kool-Aid. I believe it'd still be less than one quarter for a nice refreshing, not particularly thirst-quenching, pint solo cup, at today's prices for the sugar and drink mix. Either drink, the expression stands to this day for anyone drinking from the pitcher of stupidity. In most cases, death doesn't come within 5 minutes, but misery and earlier death for the rest of us come from too much "drinking the Kool-Aid" nonetheless.
* Note, the movie is MUCH BETTER than the later Alan-Alda (basically a synonym for "cuck" now) - starring 1970's - '80's TV show.
** A nice piece of good news was that the 2 pilots were able to fly the Cessna (by that point, not exactly FAA airworthy on paper!) out of that mess on back to Georgetown. Peak Stupidity would love to talk to either of them, if they are still alive!
*** I gotta say honestly that I don't get all broken up about a US Congressman getting shot these days. However, this Leo Ryan was doing something constructive, constituent services, at least, and additionally he was quite a character himself who deserves his own post here on Peak Stupidity.
PS: Haha, for 2 1/2 years. this post had a typo in the title, "Kook-Aid" instead of "Kool-Aid"! Kook-Aid woulda' fit too though.
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The Lehman Brothers Trilogy, Broadway, and the BIG City
Posted On: Saturday - April 27th 2019 6:07PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music Humor
"Hey, which way to OFF Broadway? "I dunno, Pal."
"OK, it's just that we've got to go see a play. What time is it, please?"
"I don't know! I'm not from around here, buddy."
I've been to the professional baseball games. I've been through the Museum of Natural History in New York City (got on an express train north, had to switch back to a southbound local. See I'm not some hick - I know my stuff.) I've been on Broadway. I've seen some shows, what we in the sticks call "plays", that is. It seems like Broadway shows used to be musicals with Liza Minelli or Bette MIdler, shows with dancing girls showing off their legs, show with naked people as in "Oh, Calcutta", the classics by Bill Shakespeare and that crowd, etc ... Now, there's a show about the some bankers, the Lehman Brothers? Really? I know NYC is the financial center, so I guess you'll get that Hedge Fund crowd (How they get so rich just investing in plant nurseries I'll NEVER know!)
Seriously, New York City, you want us to come all the way over there, stay at a friend's
That's not what this post was supposed to be about. Look, I'm just tired of not just the New York City residents telling us their home is something special, but worse, the apologists for our own home towns who feel they must bad-mouth them in order to fit in with the elites.
To address the former, I'll say this: You tell me you've got professional sports teams, the orchestra, the ballet, a bunch of museums... How often do you go to these places? Isn't it just when people visit that you go to these places with them, for the most part? Would it not be cheaper for us to go there for 3 days, do all that, and return home to where property tax is low, and you can get around town without much traffic and harrasment by squeegie men?
As for the latter, this is what I've seen from people I've known: They've got a visitor from NY City, or another big city. As we drive from picking him up at the airport, the friend has just got to badmouth our town. "Ahh, this place is a dump. There's not even a good Ethiopian Restaurant. The last play here was the High School's senior class play. It'd ridiculous here ... blah, blah..." One of these friends really did move to NY City and has been there ever since, so I give him credit for putting his money where his mouth is. Others are the ones I wonder about - if it's so terrible here, get out. Go ahead, bite the BIG Apple - don't mind the maggots! I've been shattered, shattered, scattered all over Manhattan ....*
Peak Stupidity is not big on the Jazz, but this one has been a favorite. It's George Benson - On Broadway off of his 1978 live album Weekend in LA:
* That's Mick Jagger and the Stones. The lyric is from Shattered off of the Some Girls album.
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Drinking the Kommie Kool-Aid 40 years back - Part 2
Posted On: Saturday - April 27th 2019 4:06PM MST
In Topics: Commies History Preppers and Prepping Geography Socialism/Communism
Part 1 of this story of the 40 year-ago mass suicide/murder of 900+ members of the "People's Temple" in Guyana, S. America ended with some comments on Communism. Let me add a little bit here. In just one look at a local (to the cult's former location in San Francisco, CA) radio station KGO 7-minute newscast made as information was slowly coming through, NOTHING is mentioned about the political beliefs and actions of this cult. I can't help but think that, along with the Geography/Climate of Mr. Jones' pick of a People's Paradise location, it was the realization the Communism, even on a local level, WITH Social Security checks coming in, was not working, that caused them to go voluntarily suicidal (a large majority of them).
I respect a group that want to do its own thing, go off the grid, start a commune, homeschool their children, etc.,, ESPECIALLY with today's oppressive Feral Gov't. Though it was a different situation in the late 1970's, this group had their beefs with the system, and were man/woman enough to follow that Kook down to South America to make a life there. The problem was their solution, or their leader's solution, was Socialism, then hard-core Communism. You can have a commune, and then learn what doesn't work, and eventually end up with a little capitalist town, once you realize the realities of life. If you stick to the stupidity, as most communes did back in the day, you either end up closing down, with all going safely home to REAL JOBS, or you get unbearable misery and then trouble. Other than its remoteness, the location that Mr. Jones picked was not really ideal. I guess he was never in real estate, as it's all about LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION, even if you're a Communist.
Here's the best scale I can give you, knowing your screen may be enlarged:
A direct line from the Venezuela/Guyana border at the Atlantic Ocean to the
French Guiana/Brazil border at the Atlantic ocean.is ~ 350 miles.*
Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana were colonies of Great Britain, Holland (the Netherlands), and France, respectively. In the same order, they became independent in 1966, 1975, and never (as French Guiana is not a colony now, but still a "department" of France). No, independence does not help these people much, except for their collective self-esteem. Well, let me tell you, these place are "out there, man!", as they would have said in that era. Ask an American who's traveled even out of the country a bit if he's heard of any of these 3. I think people would know more country and city names in Africa and the Middle East than in this hole of the world. The capitals, as in most of Central and South America, contain a large portion of the population (even in Chile it's 1/3). Georgetown, Guiana has 1/4 million, Paramaribo** has 225,000, and Cayenne, Fr. Guiana has 60,000 or so. Look on Bing maps aerial view, zoom in, and you'll see that none of these capitals look very modern, and that's with things looking better from the air, in general.
Now, that could be a good thing, or at least that was MY thought, about 35 years after this happening. What a great bug-out place! Nobody knows these countries, the US military doesn't even mess with them, and, though not as far as countries in Asia (which could be a good thing), you don't hear about them. (OK, one exception is the city of Kourou, where the Euro Space Agency Aerospatiale launches rockets, due to it's closeness, 300 miles, from the equator, meaning a higher initial speed.) So, is this the place for the Preppers? Nope, I checked these 3 out as best as I could without going there. The demographics of these places are, let us say, ... unsound. Sorry. Uruguay is the best bet down there.
These 3 countries are all within 6 degrees of the equator. I suppose Jim Jones had jungle fever, but not in the Spike Lee movie sense. His jungle followers including the black ladies, were a large part older people, but as leader of the cult, he would still have his pick of the younger unmarried(?) women. Even under Communism, or especially under Communism, it's from each according to (how she looks in) her jeans, and from each according to his virility.. Mr. Jones chose his location for remoteness along with political deals with the Guyanan government, which was Socialist enough for his liking. It probably helped that the official language of the country is English (from its British past), though most speak Creole (meaning hodgepodge, basically). Bribes were easier this way, as with Communism AND Latin America, yeah, there's gonna be bribery. After 3 years or so of negotiations, bribery, and planning, Jones and a several hundred followers moved down to what was built into Jonestown in the summer of 1977.
Jonestown was about 2/3 of the way from Port Kaituma to Matthew's Ridge.
For scale here, the distance from Port Kaituma to Matthew's Ridge is ~ 10 miles.
It looks like the jungle is taking back the place. Good.
Imagine the change in the climate from the nice temperate climate of San Francisco to that of the jungle of Guyana. San Francisco does have the marine layer of low clouds or fog lots of mornings, even into the summer. However, once that sun shines through, the air is crisp and just about the perfect temperature. Fog notwithstanding, on the nice days, San Francisco is not that humid at all compared to anywhere in the American east coast right up to the edge of the plains. You get those cool nights down into the low 60's, even high 50's, while in the Deep South in this country (not to mention the jungle of Guyana) it never gets cool at night, from mid-May through mid-September. Georgetown at least has the sea breeze, so hangs between 80-85F as highs and low-mid 70's at night. In Jonestown, the temps are not as terrible as I would have thought,but without the breeze and with sweltering humidity and the skeeters that go with it, it had to be a big nasty change for all those Californians. Communism is miserable even in the best locations. In general, it's not the heat, though, it's the stupidity.
OK, readers, I spent too much time on Geography/Climate, cause I like that stuff. Peak Stupidity has run out the clock again, and there will need to be a Part 3, and maybe even 4 (the latter about the media, including some interesting vids.) There'll be more on that mass craziness on Monday. Though you could just read Wikipedia, I hope you like Peak Stupidity's take or slant on this long-ago-now bout of suicidal stupidity.
* I HATE HATE HATE maps without a scale - Google maps has no scale, and I couldn't turn one on for the life of me. Bing maps have scales. Go Bing!
** See? See? Has anyone you know EVER HEARD of Paramaribo? That sounds enticing.
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[UPDATED 04/29/19:] Corrected scale on 2nd map - distance between Port Kaituma and Matthew's Ridge is not 20 miles but 10 miles. Sorry.
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Services are now Products
Posted On: Friday - April 26th 2019 7:19PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Big-Biz Stupidity
Yes, "Services" - that's right.
This is just a short post on a minor piece of stupidity that your Peak Stupidity blogger has noticed for quite some time now - 20 years possibly. It's mostly a Big-Biz thing, but I noticed small companies doing the same. I guess it's good to sound like one of the big boys in your "industry". I put "industry" in quotes, wondering, is much of the business that American corporations do in this day-and-age really industry? I suppose it could be anything involving work, but here's what duckduckgo comes up with first:
industry (ĭnˈdə-strē)Yep, I was right. By this definition, it would not be correct to talk about the accounting industry, the tort law industry, or even the healthcare industry (unless the latter involved BUILDING hospitals). Peak Stupidity has erroneously used the term in discussing the F.I.R.E. "industries" (Finance, Iinsurance, Real Estate, although the "E" could also stand for Education).
n. Commercial production and sale of goods.
n. A specific branch of manufacture and trade: the textile industry. See Synonyms at business.
n. The sector of an economy made up of manufacturing enterprises: government regulation of industry.
This brings me to the point: Services that are called Products. Like I wrote above, it's been really bugging me. "We have a new life insurance product ..." Whaaa? All you're doing is shifting money around into different accounts. You are not producing a damn thing, you know that, don't you? We are providing a good learning product at Elm St. Elementary School, what with all the cutting out of paper stuff, the pasting of stuff back on, the 25 minute (NOT LONG ENOUGH) recess product, and pottery day." It may very well be a good school, and the teachers may be some of the best, but you're not making stuff. "It's the new IBM - we don't make computers, but we have our business consulting products and our support products. Regarding software, I suppose it can be considered a product - that (what used to be a floppy disk, then CD, then DVD) has your code on there. Your programmers produced that. Sure, I'll go for that.
It gets ridiculous, and I know the reader will start noticing this use of "product" meaning "service" business often. "Our product is a good customer experience!" No, dumbass, you are providing a service. There's nothing wrong with that. I believe that the leaders in these industries want to sound like those in manufacturing, as there is more respect for the manufacturing of STUFF. However, due to the American manufacturing base having been mostly shipped to China, there's not so much, so the service companies tell you about their products all the time. Meh!
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