Paul Westerberg - Dyslexic Heart
Posted On: Friday - February 15th 2019 8:56PM MST
In Topics: Music
This is some recent music, by Peak Stupidity definition, having been released in 1992. Dyslexic Heart comes from the soundtrack of the movie Singles.
Paul Westerberg had been in a band called The Replacements, but none of the songs by the band rings any bells for me. This one is just very catchy with the possibly-a-little-too-cute lyrics.
"You shoot me glances, and they're so hard to read.
I misconstrue what you mean.
Slip me a napkin, and now that you start,
is this your name or a doctor's eye chart?
I try and comprehend you, but I got a dyslexic heart.
I ain't dying to offend you, I got a dyslexic heart.
Thanks for the book, now my table is ready.
Is this a library or bar?
Between the covers I thought you were ready,
a half-angel, half-tart.
Do I read you correctly, lead me directly.
Help me with this part.
Do I hate you? Do I date you?
Do I got a dyslexic heart?
You keep swayin', what are you sayin'?
Thinking 'bout stayin',
or are you just playing, making passes?
Well, my heart could use some glasses.
Try and comprehend you.
I got a dyslexic heart.
Do I read you correctly?
I need you directly.
I only went this far.
Do I love you, do I hate you?
I got a dyslexic heart."
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Ship of Fools - book review - Part 2
Posted On: Friday - February 15th 2019 8:28PM MST
In Topics: Pundits Books
(continued from Part 1)
First come our apologies for taking so long for the 2nd part of our review of the very entertaining Ship of Fools by Tucker Carlson. I would say informative too, but that'd more apply for readers who have not kept up with the political blogs, your Ann Coulters, Pat Buchanans, Steve Sailers ... Peak Stupidity, and so on and so on. There's not too many of the pieces of stupidity pointed out by Mr. Carlson, and the points made thereabout that wouldn't be already known to someone keeping up a bit.
The 2nd part of the book, exactly half by page numbers, is commentary, with good examples of the stupidity of a) free speech, well, lack thereof, b) race relations, and c) feminism and genderbender nonsense. (I think the items in (c) could have been attacked separately.) In fact, the second half of Ship of Fools could just be one long essay on Peak Stupidity.
"Shut Up", They Explained is not an original piece of snark, but then lots in these chapters are not original observations. They are put together with good examples, and summed up nicely though, with Tucker's explanations. I did not realize until reading this book that the ACLU had been (till recently) such an EXTREMELY stalwart defender of US Constitution Amendment I for a century running. The reversal of the left's beliefs in unfettered free speech per US Constitution Amendment I to become an Orwellian program is well-demonstrated by examples.
However, I don't think Mr. Carlson got around to the real explanation for the changes. He reckons that the modern media and corporate giants don't care about civil disagreement on matters of opinion, with a right for everyone to have a say, is simply due to those elite's distance from the regular American people. If you recall, this was the explanation for the US Feral Government's failings in the areas of the immigration-invasion and foreign interventionist policy, discussed in the first 2 chapters and discussed in Part 1 of our review. No, the real explanation is that the same people who wanted to destroy traditional America during the time of the free speech movements of the 1960's, still want to destroy it. They needed unfettered speech then, against the establishment. Now they ARE the establishment, so they need to shut down any arguments or complaints by their political enemies.
In Diversity Diversion (see, the title gives away Mr. Carlson's explanation), the deep racial divisions in modern America and bias and media/government encouraged hatred against white people is explored. The author's heart is in the right place, but I'll say this chapter and the next show his guts are not quite there yet. Mr. Carlson is very, very careful in his wording regarding de-segregation, even seeming to support (in hindsight) the forced-busing in Boston, Massachusetts in the '70's. (It happened all over just as tragically, but the violent situation in Boston was particularly mentioned.) Martin Luther King is the fall-back position (uggggh), as Mr. Carlson discussed the change from the idea of judging men by their merits to judging by their color, as is pretty much the current situation, i.e. tribalism.
I mentioned Steve Sailer's ideas before, and the writing that makes it seem Tucker Carlson has at least read the guy. The 11 1/2 page (5% of the book!) evisceration of one Tah Nehi Coates (not even TRYING to spell his fucked-up name right) is an instance in which I can't help think the author has read at least of few of Mr. Sailer's dozens of posts* on this affirmative-action author. Mr. Carlson even denigrates the same line "...releasing the eldritch energies." - no, none of us know what it means. By AA, I don't mean Coates is on some quota plan, but (read the book) he is described as a pretty lame author, yet is put on a pedestal by all except a few intelligent blacks and by those whites who want to show-off how much they understand bad (the other) white people are, for reasons of ... insanity(?)
Tucker does a nice job illustrating the hypocrisy of the elites (Hildabeast, Mayor of NY City, Chief Warren, Maxine Waters, etc.) living in lily-white neighborhoods while preaching "diversity is our strength (another Sailer specialty). However, he still holds back, and seems to believe that it would all be OK if we just went back to treating people equally. I don't really think that's gonna cut it, but I understand Mr. Carlson's reluctance to tell the whole truth. He would no longer have his podium were he to go a bit farther, and we'd all be the worse for that.
The book's explanation for the problem here is that this is a "divide-and-conquer" strategy of the elites, though it's not mentioned if this is some actual plan or just their common way of thinking. Again, I don't agree. There are many blacks who have the kind of hatred that leads them to want to tear down the country. They don't need encouragement once they've gotten the law and institutions all on their side, as is the case. Forget it, Tucker, it's tribalism-town.
The chapter on the feminists also pulls a few punches, unless Mr. Carlson is a bit naive. He describes the early feminists, Betty Friedan, in particular, as NOT being harmful to society. He describes the current woman-dominated university and women-as-more-successful lower-ed worlds as just the result of fair treatment as prescribed by those early feminists, with no thought to the matriarchy that enables this stupidity. It's just the current feminist nuts, the completely hypocritical ones (again, described with many great examples) that the author has a problem with.
Mr. Carlson does a good job mentioning the culturally-suicidal effects of having men earning less and being less successful than potential female mates. However, without pushing back on the whole matriarchy system we are under, it seems like he is no conservative in this respect. I guess he never said he was.
The genderbender stupidity is in the latter part of the same chapter, and Tucker describes the stupidity as well as anybody, though it's not a hard thing to do. On this and the extreme feminist stupidity, he does not offer an explanation connected to the new elites. It's blamed simply on the unhappy people who make up the feminists. It's just another way to destroy the nation, so personally I would tend to think it'd be the same people that have been destroying the nation in the previously-discussed ways.
Lastly, on the 5 decades-ago good fight for a cleaner environment in America, in contrast to the situation today, Mr. Carlson again makes some good points. In They Don't Pick Up Trash Anymore, the great theme is that all the sensible things, such as just physically cleaning up, have been dropped for the theoretically "important problems" such as Global Climate DisruptionTM and such nonsense because the latter don't require any actual physical work and, more importantly, they are problems with no solution in sight, hence no end, hence continual funding forevah! Plus, it's important that the immigration invasion continue, so ties between immigration and destruction of the environment have been "nipped in the bud", though not in this book.
One more thing, as I have not really done much of a summation of Ship of Fools here (I think it'll be one more, much shorter post). I did note that Tucker Carlson, though often humorous in his writing, included an actual joke in this chapter. While pointing out that environmentalism is an establishment thing now, he writes:
Go to San Fransisco and see for yourself. Walk through Sea Cliff or Presidio Heights or any affluent neighborhood in the city and ask the first five people you meet if they consider themselves environmentalists. If only four say yes, chances are the fifth doesn't speak English well enough to understand the question.Haha... shades of Ann Coulter there!
Whewww! That's where I stand in my reading of Ship of Fools. A short conclusion will appear shortly.
* BTW, Steve Sailer's posts often demonstrate the PC and anti-white stupidity around us, such as the rantings of this Mr. Coates. I can't say it is a reason, but I could not blame Mr. Sailer one bit if part of his reason for having written so many posts on the guy is anger toward the unfairness of it all. Sailer writes with great insight, yet gets no public acclaim and drives a late-90's model Honda (nothing at all against Hondas - they've got great solid engines in those things, but that's not my point). In the meantime, Coates gets called one of the top 50 writers of the century or some such crap and makes millions. Nope it's not right. Oh, and BTW, Steve Sailer is still in favor of some affirmative action, so maybe is not quite so insightful.
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Don't ask me no questions ...
Posted On: Thursday - February 14th 2019 7:34PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor US Feral Government Southern rock Educational Stupidity Taxes
... and I won't tell you no lies.
Possibly very obviously, the previous post on taxes came out of thoughts generated during my perusal of the forms, due it being that time of the year. It's not like I spend a big deal of worry on this business. One does what one can during the year, if there's anything that can help lower the bill, but otherwise it pretty much is what it is. In my case, it's been fairly simple for a while, and I was in a habit of doing the work at a bar near me during half-time of the Superbowl, back when I was a little bit more into the Bread and Circuses. Yeah, I rounded off numbers to the nearest 10 bucks, then later $100 bucks, I did the arithmetic on a couple of cocktail napkins, and sent the thing off. Like I told the IRS, it is what it is. "No respect, no respect, I tell ya..." is my mutual relationship with the IRS.
The other run-ins with US Feral Government officials are pretty much the decadal censuses that are stipulated in the US Constitution. I can't argue with:
The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.To "enumerate" is defined as "vb 1 : to determine the number of : count 2 : list". I'm fine with that, as you're gonna need that for representative, cough, yeah right, cough cough, government. However "in such Manner as they shall direct by law" clearly means to allow for different methods of counting. It says nothing about more question on how many toilets we've got working in the place, heating via electricity or gas, or anything else. I have never filled out any such "long form", only a short form. However, I recall a couple of times, long ago, in which a man came by in person and asked a few questions. "One guy and one cat" was all I was required to give him, and that's what I gave him, and the cat was cool and he never said a mumblin' word.
This form-fill-outing is something I have just about had enough of, even if it's not for the Feral Government. A while back, the elementary school's registration form was on-line. There was no other option. OK, that's supposed to save the freakin' planet, so, yeah, let's see how that goes. Well, readers, the damn thing was 1/2 hour long, with a whole lot of questions that were none of the school's business. I'd have been glad to have put that "NOYB" or just a nice "N/A" down, but the forms would permit neither those nor blanks for the answers. I was FORCED to make up numbers and other answers.
I could very well see someone from the school district at some time in the future using my "lies" to try to embarrass me or get me in trouble. It's too bad that I did have to make up stuff, but then their website-builders ought to have let me skip the questions, or just quit asking stuff that you don't need to know about.
Lynyrd Skynyrd put it best, in the great Southern Rock guitar classic off of Second Helping back in 1974:
Don't ask me no questions, and I won't tell you no lies!
"So, don't ask me no questions
And I won't tell you no lies
So, don't ask me about my business
And I won't tell you goodbye."
For some reason, I'd always thought this song was a cover of some old-time country song, but nope. It was written by Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington.
Ronnie Van Zant - lead vocals
Gary Rossington - guitar
Allen Collins - guitar
Ed King - bass, slide guitar
Billy Powell - keyboards
Bob Burns - drums and percussion
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2018 Income Tax review
Posted On: Thursday - February 14th 2019 12:42PM MST
In Topics: Trump Economics US Feral Government Taxes
Yep, Peak Stupidity does movie reviews, with no background in "film", book reviews of books that we don't have on hand, and now, reviews of IRS tax forms! Too much excitement? Too soon? (Before you can plead ignorance for this year's
Changes made by Congress a year ago last Christmas, as pushed for and signed by the Trump administration, were discussed at that time in Merry Christmas from
For a family business in which itemized deductions formerly just had to top $12,000 to start to matter, this new deal is a bad deal.
That was a recap. What I noticed and had not mentioned in that > year-ago post is that the simple child credit*, not childcare, etc, but just an amount PER CHILD, has gone up from $1,000 per kid to $2,000. That (see the footnote*) means the extra thousand per, is equivalent to a $4,500 or so deduction, so I will recant my statement about more kids being a worse deal. This extra amount overrides that loss of an exemption by just a tad. (The changes then, are just about a wash there no matter what the number of kids, and that $12,000 additional S.D. minus $~ $8,000 for 2 parents gives a $4,000 gain in deductions - say, $900 off the bottom line.) Also, this credit can be used for a family making more money than was the case in 2017.
Peak Stupidity does not claim to be a tax-accounting site, but still we apologize if the reader has held off having kids due to this slight oversight. As they say on youtube, "We own NOTHING! Don't sue! There's no point!" [Thank you! - PS Legal Department spokesman Dewey Cheatham.]
Keep in mind that the rates in tax brackets itself are lower at the middle class level by a few percentage points meaning 10% or so, which is not insignificant. (They are a tiny bit higher at the lower levels, as a 10% rate on income up to $18,000** (ADJUSTED income, i.e. after deductions) is now a 10% on up to $9,500, then 12% on up to $19,000.) Those who say that bill was another deal favoring the corporate and rich-man's world are wrong. It may be, I mean, but it helps the small guy enough to matter.
Now, here are a couple of points on the simplification: First, I don't see how anyone can really see this stuff without LOOKING AT THE FORMS themselves. No, Turbotax, etc, can do a fine job, and one can experiment with different scenarios, and your accountant can try to explain what's going on, as if you care (you just want the tax at a local minimum!) However, that all is no substitute for seeing the boxes and numbers in front of you.
This relates to the 2nd point, as, see that form up top? Yes, that is the whole 2018 1040 (not "-A", or "EZ", mind you), which has always been 2 pages. I suppose some stuff could have just been shifted, but possibly a lot has been eliminated. Good. Was that not Ronald Reagan's big quest? He said it should be on a postcard, and yes, he probably did make the joke that it would simply say:
a) How much did you make last year? ___________Man, I miss old Ronnie!
b) Send it in.
Are these new tax rules really a simplification to get rid of all those loopholes that the corps and the richies have got accountants and lawyers for? Seriously? No, that'll never happen until we scrap the whole damn deal. Ronnie Reagan would completely agree with Peak Stupidity, of that I have no doubt.
New 1040 out. Bon appetite, boys!
* A credit comes straight off the taxes, off the bottom line, the tax to be paid, that is. A deduction comes off the top line, the wages/interest(hahahaa!), so is worth much less. If one's income is such that his marginal rate is the new 3-points-lower 22%, the case for most of the middle-class, then a credit is worth ~ 4 1/2 times as much as a deduction.
** I've used the married-filing-jointly numbers
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The New Stasi - same as the Old Stasi?
Posted On: Wednesday - February 13th 2019 5:26PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness History Race/Genetics Orwellian Stupidity Socialism/Communism
... back when we analyzed poop by hand, and WE LIKED IT!
STASI in German meant something to the effect of "Ministry for State Security". It was arguably* the best, or worst, if you are a decent human being, spy apparatus of the other side of the Cold War, the East Bloc (no "k") as it was known by in the West. There is an excellent movie from 2006, The Lives of Others that gives a great feeling of the terrible nature of life under such a spy apparatus. (It's no documentary, just a great movie with a plot and all.)
I will defer to Wiki for a minute, since the Editing King, at least, doesn't seem a real Commie of any sort and this didn't sound too biased at first glance.
The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) or State Security Service (Staatssicherheitsdienst, SSD), commonly known as the Stasi was the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies ever to have existed. The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities throughout the city. The Stasi motto was Schild und Schwert der Partei (Shield and Sword of the Party), referring to the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) and also echoing a theme of the KGB, the Soviet counterpart and close partner, with respect to its own ruling party, the CPSU. Erich Mielke was the Stasi's longest-serving chief, in power for thirty-two of the GDR's forty years of existence.Only in
One of its main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants, and fighting any opposition by overt and covert measures, including hidden psychological destruction of dissidents (Zersetzung, literally meaning decomposition). Its Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung) was responsible for both espionage and for conducting covert operations in foreign countries. Under its long-time head Markus Wolf, this directorate gained a reputation as one of the most effective intelligence agencies of the Cold War. The Stasi also maintained contacts, and occasionally cooperated, with Western terrorists.
In 1989, the Stasi employed 91,015 people full-time, including 2,000 fully employed unofficial collaborators, 13,073 soldiers and 2,232 officers of GDR army, along with 173,081 unofficial informants inside GDR and 1,553 informants in West Germany.
For now, the Stasi-style operations within the HOMELAND have been unofficially contracted out to the Social Justice Warriors, which have till now been treated as unpaid interns. That may be changing. Mr. Allan Wall, one of the many great VDare writers**, posted Not a Satire: Black College Students to be Paid to Pore Over Old Yearbooks Seeking Racism last week. Please read Mr. Wall's article, but here's a quick excerpt of his (from Slate website:
Here’s a unique idea spawned by the blackface scandals in Virginia this week: A group of activists from Richmond has put together a GoFundMe to pay students from historically black colleges and universities to go through yearbooks and look for evidence of “racist behavior and imagery” on the pages of present-day Virginia state officials and candidates for public office. Community organizer Chelsea Higgs Wise and another activist, Bob Bland, had the idea for this project on Monday; as of Friday morning, the GoFundMe had raised about $6,000 of its $10,000 goal.This is the best best we have come up with for a Stasi so far? Activists from "historically black" (white people don't want to go there) colleges will be funded to look into the pasts of politicians and officials of the government of Virginia***. Alright, alright, that's just for starters. Will they even spend any effort and gas, or money on ebay, to go back and get these yearbooks - aren't they on-line now? Knowing young people, I think the most they will do is sit down at a computer, or on their phones as they sit extra-long at 4-way stop signs and google up whatever odd stuff they can find, white people in black face, black people in whiteface, yellow people in brownface ... lots of possibilities, along with "most likely to succeed ... in the KKK" "most likely to succeed in the FBI, then the KKK", ...
[SNIP]
This GoFundMe, sponsored by a group on the other end of the political spectrum, looks to systematize this kind of grassroots research into politicians’ backgrounds. The researchers plan to start with state-level elected officials in Virginia—those that are facing re-election in 2019 or 2020, as well as those that community members flag as possibly having (as Wise put it in a phone call) “the kind of implicit bias that could be shown through their yearbooks.”
Next, it will be looking through the decades old comments, posts and tweets of those who aren't in official office. Still right now, I'm not very impressed with the operation, which is a good thing indeed.
The simplest tasks that these new Stasi members will undertake will use technology so powerful that the old East German Stasi members would have been creaming in their knickers, nay, partaking in Party Circle Jerks on short notice, were they to even think about it. They'd have been calling each other in the middle of the night on the land-line phones, then having meetings at headquarters, which would sound thusly:
"My patriotic comrades, I have thought of some wonderful ideas while in the outhouse this evening. This could not wait for tomorrow! We will make Herr Mielke so proud of us."It's a whole lot easier nowadays to dig up dirt on people, with lots of it provided willingly or ignorantly. OTOH, even the best of us are having a hard time keeping our lives private enough to even compare with perhaps suspect # 1 in Cold-War era Communist East Germany (no, it was - seriously - the "Democratic Republic of Germany").
"My first idea will save our hard-working field officers so many hours every day. See, we will provide phones to all of our population."
"Whoa now, hold on Comrade, even inner-party members such as myself just got our first phones this year. My beautiful black bakelite machine is so conveniently attached to kitchen table. I only haf problem when using outhouse, so I must turn zee volume up very loud, and run into house with my pants still down for possible important Party directives. It is amazing that Communism has given us such advanced technology vs. the Western Capitalists, but we don't have enough phones for all Democratic Republic of Germany ... right now there are 146 of them in central supply."
"No, no, you misunderstand. See, my idea is have something called iPhone, it is computer, Comrade. One need not even talk on it, like your advanced land-line, but can type like telegraph, but in color. People will send each other information. We intercept information and, Violas! (and Cellos, please), we will have such information that takes a thousand Comrade-hours in 10 minutes! People will name names. They will give out their sex organ descriptions. Imagine, Comrades, we will no longer have to tap hotel sewer pipe during 1st night of Capitalist Americans' stay to scrutinize bowel movement for information. Naive proles will send this information on their personal wireless, WILLINGLY!"
"Nah, iss ridiculous! Why will un-patriotic citizens give out such information? We must hold ear to wall for hours at a time right now, and citizens still talk in whispers and sign language, un-patriotic swine that they are! I have crook in my neck since wonderful Soviet Motherland secured our country for Communist society back at Yalta, Comrade ... that time building Berlin Wall did not help either ..."
"Aha, that is my brilliance, if I do say so myself. Citizens will join clubs and use internet on computer. They will spend much time for people to LIKE them so much and FOLLOW them, so they will tell us their secrets for purposes of blackmail on computer, saving us so much fieldwork and patriotic adultery-spy-sex."
"I still do not understand. Are our people not already LIKED by Big Brother? They can FOLLOW Big Brother, Comrade, and even better, he LUVS LUVS LUVS them."
"No, these [LIKES] are buttons on a computer. They will not be real, but people will stay on spying system for many hours daily to make sure they are LIKED and can FOLLOW The Lives of Others". [ ... wakes up, "Sheist, still in outhouse! Such a pleasant dream it was! And what the f__k is Komputer?!" ]
Here's one more quick tidbit from the Wiki article about the time after the fall of Soviet/East Bloc Communism:
Numerous Stasi officials were prosecuted for their crimes after 1990. After German reunification, the surveillance files that the Stasi had maintained on millions of East Germans were laid open, so that any citizen could inspect their personal file on request; these files are now maintained by the Stasi Records Agency.It doesn't say anything about beat-downs - hmmm, maybe Wiki could use a new Editing King. Anyway, the modern SJWs may want to read a little Wiki, if nothing else, and learn what happens when the Commies finally get ousted. They should have a chat with old Nick Ceaușescu, using a medium and ouija board, of course, as his countrymen finally executed him on Christmas day 30 years ago. No, I don't mean ... I'm just sayin', is all ....
It's a really good thing our governments, universities, media, and other institutions are filled to the brim with incompetents. Otherwise, this Orwellian crap would already be beyond the level of East Germany in the heyday of the Stasi.
* I mean, if you want to argue, as that's just what I've read a number of times.
** Mr. Wall, with his fluency in Spanish and decade-or-more experience of living in Old Mexico, normally writes his "SAID IN SPANISH" columns, his interpretation of speeches and media output in Mexico, not originally meant for American eyes and ears, along with many other insights from his great knowledge of the Hispanic political scene and its connection to the immigration invasion of America.
*** You're supposed to do that BEFORE you elect the people - Democracy 101, people.
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Virginia Governor Northan as Branch Manager Michael Scott
Posted On: Tuesday - February 12th 2019 6:32PM MST
In Topics: Humor Political Correctness Race/Genetics
"“There’s so much deep division in our society,
I tell ya what—it’s got me spooked.”
(Caption stolen from a Generic American unz.com commenter - big hat-tip!)
If you have been keeping up with this type of news, the constant digging up and airing of grievances (yeah, Seinfeld "Festivus" clip will have to appear elsewhere), you may be familiar with the Ralph Cramden, no Northam, case. The stupidity of this one is almost self-contained, as the Democrat-squad Governor of Virginia has been the most anti-white politcally-correct bastard to begin with, so Peak Stupidity has no problem seeing him squirm after accusations about a 1984 photo from medical school. Medical school, yeah. "No, I don't think I'm gonna ever let 'em cut on me."
He has insisted he will not resign the Governorship. Peak Stupidity doesn't care either way. The whole thing is pretty humorous (although the Stasi-ist digging up of silliness in people's backgrounds will be the point of an upcoming more serious post). Governor Northam's apology press conference was supposedly disjointed and provided a good view of the lack of "gravitas" (there's an oldy) with this guy, but, again, I didn't watch. His suggestion of his demonstrating the Michael Jackson* moonwalk to prove his bonafides and solidarity with the people of the urban persuasion sounded like the guy below, who has no TV wife to give him that surly "there will be no more sex if you don't stop right here" look. I'd have gone to youtube for the moonwalk.
This is perhaps the most hilarious The Office single scene that I can remember. To give the background, Michael Scott, the white guy there, is boss of the office. He got in trouble from corporate for doing a Chris Rock imitation, and so the black guy you see has been paid to run a sensitivity-session for the ~15 person office. (See, Michael Scott likes to always run the show, and hates that this guy gets to talk to his employees to begin with.)
You will not regret the 1 min 45 sec. of your time wasted.
(Look at Michael Scott at 0:45 to 0:48 - he takes the re-enacting thing very seriously - this is why it is my number 1 favorite funny show of all time.)
On that same Steve Sailer thread, commenter Mr. Anon adds:
What? O.J. Simpson joke ... too soon?The governor still contends that he is not in the photograph of one person in blackface and another in KKK robes but could not say how it wound up on his yearbook page, nor why he initially took responsibility for it, other than to say that he was “shocked” when he first saw it on an iPhone the afternoon of Feb. 1.Governor Northam further stated that he would spend the rest of his term trying to find the real minstrels.
* There's another guy that used to be in blackface ... way back in his ABC-123 days. After that he got better(?)
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Ship of Fools - book review - Part 1
Posted On: Tuesday - February 12th 2019 9:00AM MST
In Topics: Pundits Books
Four months ago, Peak Stupidity posted a review of a review of our #1 youtube pundit Tucker Carlson's recent book, Ship of Fools. That post points to a very good VDare review by Jake Bowyer, along with amazon.com reviews. The latter were mostly just political arguments, as amazon review of anything controversial become, though amusing nonetheless. The book wasn't then out yet for perusal by the PS editorial staff, but the library finally had a copy available (for some reason, we did not get sent an advance copy in the mail - damn Postal Service!)
This will be split up into two parts, simply because I've only read 1/2 of it yet. It's very quick, easy, and enjoyable reading - don't get me wrong. I read 1/2 of it in < 2 hours yesterday and I just wanted to discuss it while it's fresh (very different from most Peak Stupidity book reviews, I'll admit).
The "Ship" is our nation, and the "Fools" are not the American people (though many are!) but our elite that "run" the place. Mr. Carlson's introduction lays out his theme that the elites of our country don't feel any "noblesse oblige"* toward ordinary American-heritage Americans. Tucker inserts his explanations of why that has become the case in various places.
The first two regular chapters are descriptions of how America is off the rails in terms of immigration/dieversity and then foreign warmongering. This is very much why Steve Sailer had written some months ago (very hard to find right now) that Mr. Carlson could have read his writings on unz to get his background. That's not saying (by either PS or Steve Sailer) that he DID, as ideas can come independently. Two things come to mind to support it. One is a sentence about the Lazarus pro-immigration poem bolted somewhere on the Statue of Liberty (well after it's reception from the French in 1876, BTW) as if it were a part of the Constitution. That's almost "straight from", though maybe "just like" is the case, Sailer's "Zeroeth Amendment" meme that he uses a lot. The second is the first two main chapters themselves. They are basically and evisceration of the "Invite-the-world/Invade-the-World" behavior of the American elites broken into the two parts (in that same order, too)!
In these two chapters, the reader here will immediately recognize all the stupidity in both those realms that has been destroying American society and political/economic respectability, respectfully, over the last 5 decades. It is good reading, with a few anecdotes of Mr. Carlson himself and some of American political history that one may have not heard of. That was all very enjoyable.
Within these main chapters, the big concept from Mr. Carlson is that bad things are happening in American politics because the left (still called "liberals" in the book) have NOT been pushing back against the right on both issues, massive immigration and foreign interventionalism. This is not at all to say that Mr. Carlson is left-wing. If you've seen him on TV or youtube, you'd know better. In fact, he starts off with some humorous stories about his liberal elementary school teacher in 1970's California - great stuff too! As Mr. Sailer had written in his review, Carlson melds elements of the left and right. He is a labor union supporter, discussing the history of anti-immigration farm labor union leader Cesar Chavez in good terms, along with other (at least non-government) unions. On the foreign-policy side, he is not just rightly against the Neocons, but very pacifist in general. The latter is not a bad thing, but in his short political history, he seems to give short shrift to the Cold War, IMO.
It's all pretty even-handed, though. None of Mr. Carlson's "liberal" views are anything like the ideas of the current left in, say, the Democrat squad of The Party. Just glancing ahead, I see that Tucker has chapters that criticize the anti-free-speech Orwellian Stupidity of the modern left along with the Genderbender madness that would not be a real issue in politics in a serious country.
Here's where I have my first problem with the ideas in Ship of Fools: Mr. Carlson discusses how the elite, with their lack of noblesse oblige, are destroying the country for their own benefit. These people are supposed to, per Carlson, lead us better, as the political and business elites did in the old days. In the American politics of the past, he notes that the pro-labor, anti-war left fought the pro-business and more warmongering right** at every turn. Now that they've gotten together within 3 decades*** to all be pro-warmongering and pro-industrial-scale-immigration, the general American public has been screwed. (Mr. Carlson gives a nice page or two to nailing Max Boot and his position as expert on American aggression, with Lyin' Press complicity, is GREAT STUFF. If you've not heard of him, Max Boot, an immigrant from Russia is basically Chief of the Neocons)
Wait, where's the problem, now, the reader may well ask? The problem is that Mr. Carlson comes off as slightly too Statist for me. I've seen a lot worse, and still very much like Tucker Carlson, but his words read as though this "ship" can bet turned around - that we just need to be lead better. I haven't read his conclusion yet, with any solutions (tomorrow, I guess), but his problem description seems to be rooted in our having the wrong elites. Yes, Mr. Tucker, they are terrible. Who voted for these guys? Who supports the big business elites? Do people that support the Zuckerbergs and John McCain have real choices? How much and for how long has the public neglected to worry about encroaching Big Government? Maybe people a lot bigger and more sinister are behind these elites. Possibly they all have too much power due to Big-Government and the resulting Crony-Capitalism (bordering on actual economic fascism). Is it just a matter of the wrong people leading us? I differ with him on this. I'd rather we be lead LESS. But then I'm just some "muh Constitutional" fool.
I'll read the rest of Ship of Fools within a day, time permitting, and get to Part 2.
* It's not that it's hard to figure out the French term, meaning "the obligations of the nobles/elites", but I included this as-of-yet unread-by-me wiki link because the book really leans on that concept.
** The right being more pro-war was really only the case during the Cold War, anyway.
*** A small quibble here is that Carlson says "one generation", which would mean only back since ~ the later 1990's, but in further writing, he notes "since 1985", so more than 3 decades.
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Legal Stupidity on the back of the phone book
Posted On: Monday - February 11th 2019 6:52PM MST
In Topics: Music Feminism Legal Stupidity
Yes, there are still phone books where I live. OK, at least there are yellow pages. It's just that I'd thought I'd have to scrounge for other types of material for shooting experiments, as that was pretty much all they've been good for, since the internet and cell phones. There was an interesting ad on the back:
Names redacted to protect the innocent (bloggers, not the lawyers).
Look at that, the husband looks pretty mean and tough. The poor, cute (from the profile view, but probably overweight below the ad height... oh, which is probably why the guy's had enough) lady is very innocent. She needs the help of those smiling, always-glad-to-help for FREE (... and contingency fees) nice gentlemen who'll be like knights on white
Peak Stupidity has been around for, what, over 2 years, and has not even had the time to point out the "Legal Stupidity" (brand, spanking new topic key!) yet. It's a big one. In the family court realm, it is very closely tied to feminism, which has pushed the idea that women should initiate divorce whenever the mood strikes them to say that they are not happy or fulfilled, or Cosmo magazine tells them that. These sleazy lawyers are glad to take full advantage of that. Breaking up families is not something that concerns them, as those BMWs aren't going to pay for themselves.
I bet those guys won't be so tough after the SHTF and men have had enough of this shit. Please, corporate gigs and defenders of the Constitution aside, Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be lawyers ... take it, Waylon & Willie:
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Rounding up for the Army?
Posted On: Saturday - February 9th 2019 3:43PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Economics US Feral Government Big-Biz Stupidity
Unless by that you mean, creating widows and orphans.
While visiting a take-out eating establishment on my travels last week, I was asked if I wanted to round up the change "for the army". "For the army? Are you kidding me" is what ... I wanted to say. "Nah." was all, as I took the advice of a young guy years ago to pick my battles. Really, though, does the US Army need my spare change? Maybe it'll come to that when the financial stupidity stops (though, even then, I'll not be donating my change). Just the visible portion of the US military budget is in the $700,000,000,000 range yearly. Let's see, my 85 cents is exactly 12.1 x 10-9 %! Quantum physicians, or even quantum physicists, for that matter, don't like to deal with numbers this insignificant. No, I'd rather use my change for half a pack of peanut M&Ms, thank you, Ma'am.
I've given change to the late Dave Thomas's establishments, almost every time I've gone to Wendy's over many years, as that money is to go to help kids get adopted. Peak Stupidity has rightfully given Big Business in these "pages" lots of grief, but I make an exception for lots of privately owned or owner-dominated businesses. I feel that Wendy's would make a lot better use of my charity than the big charities like The United Way, and the US Army would be in a class by itself in wasteful "charity" cases.
Another thing was that I use cash a lot, something I recommend for multiple reasons (see Chipotle - no credit, no debit and hold the E. Coli, along with Cash is King - Part 2 and Part 3). Hmmm, I did wonder one thing first, than another thing:
1) Did the young woman just not like making change? I know math is hard and all, but ...
2) I began to wonder later on, if I'd have heard the same request were I using a card to pay. I'm not sure I'll get a chance to check that out, but I might. Who makes the effort to check - on both ends of the transaction - if it's done in cash? How do I know this money is really going to I-corps, 1st battalion, 2nd division, 101st Airborne?
It's probably mostly for reasons that I don't like how the American military is using the hundreds of billions of dollars to "defend" our country that this thing pissed me off. I'm not thanking the troops everytime I see a guy in military garb, as this is not the big one, WWII, and many say even that one was not a proper use of the US military - that's arguable for sure. No, I'm not at all thankful for your service in Afghanistan or Iraq, Syria, Yemen or a hundred other places. Sorry, it's not personal. I know most of you are doing a good job at what you're doing, but it's not the right thing. Some are putting their butts on the line too, with a few getting maimed or killed, but it's not for the right thing. I'd rather you all be at the southern border of the US, actually defending something.
From what I've seen though, the cash is flowing pretty well to you all too. Other than special units and airmen, I know most are in it just to get training in skills on the taxpayer's dime, get some college money, or it's really your only way forward. That's fair enough, but let's be honest about it.
Peak Stupidity will just have to present this same song by the Ben Folds Five that we already featured way back in a university bubble post, as Mr. Fold's lyrics are excellent. The song covers a lot, but it applies so much to this post that, well, you've just got to listen to it AGAIN!
Ben Folds explains his thoughts about joining the Army:
It's from their album called The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner.
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Snowden - movie review - Part 2
Posted On: Saturday - February 9th 2019 2:28PM MST
In Topics: Humor Political Correctness Movies Orwellian Stupidity
(continued from Part 1)
The last post ended with my promising to bad-mouth the non-political aspects of the Oliver Stone-directed movie Snowden about, you guessed it, Ed Snowden. I did not mean to imply that the movie sucked by any means when I wrote that, along with the diatribe on the poltical slant of the movie (toward Ed Snowden, with which I agree, but toward the "mainstream media" with which I surely don't!).
This post is just about a some details that I was amused about, mostly involving the computer-geek screen scenes. If you've seen
The suspenseful scene near the end of Snowden had so much of the usual gimmicks, I figure these are written in some kind of geek-movie-makers psuedo-code or something. Look, geek-movie protaganists - if you find yourself in this situation, where you're still in the middle of hacking or downloading some files, and the mean-ass boss who will fire you or have you arrested is coming around the corner, here's what you do: MINIMIZE! MINIMIZE! oops, minimize. Maximize some window of your shopping cart on Amazon or the tracking info on your UPS delivery to "the focus". Anything! Oh, there's little pop-up windows, you say? Do you know how to run a process in the background? I don't know - you're the geeks! Just don't get me so worried next time! Every movie like this has got my heart rate up to 150 bpm and blood pressure up to 150 mm-hg as I fear "OMG! When will the program finish?! Your boss is 5 ft from your office and closing!" Geeez, that was close.
Listen guys, I don't like Windows any more than you do. Could you not get into the shell, or open up that "run" window that looks like the old MS-DOS? GOT
Oh, they want it like this?? NEVERMIND!
And another thing: There's the nice black guy who you know can do no wrong. Of course you've got to have that in any movie now, or you'll be called bad names and never work in dis bidness again. The problem is, that you know everything this guy's gonna do. They can't make the movie any differently for the scenes he's in. Well, of course this guy did the right thing and covered up Mr. Snowden's little jump drive that he dropped with his foot. I saw that coming, so I'm proud of myself. Now, this NSA geek knew sign languages in addition to 7 other verbal languages, per the scene below:
There's this big microphone hanging from the ceiling. Were there no little microphones existing in 2013, as I don't understand the big RCA radio microphone? Well, OK, there's a microphone hanging from the freakin' ceiling, so these guys got the bright idea to say their final goodbyes (as Snowden revealed his intentions to reveal the extent of NSA spying) in sign language! What about the, uhh, cameras, guys?! Just after a scene in which the boss appears on some giant-ass 120" TV screen, and the security is tight as a Hildabeast's ass, we are supposed to believe that there aren't cameras all over the place INSIDE the NSA offices. (I would guess even more than OUTSIDE NSA offices.) You suspense-movie makers need to up your game some.
You can get over that stuff. You can get past the glorification of the Lyin' Press, though that's a little off-putting and requires lots more suspension-of-disbelief (a term we use in the movie-review biz). It'd probably be best NOT to get all your history, recent or otherwise, from the movies, but the Ed Snowden story is worth learning about. He's cast in the movie as the perfectly righteous guy. That's not all the truth, of course. You may learn more elsewhere, but from all I've learned so far, the guy is a hero. I've maintained that since his revelations in 2013. Peak Stupidity wishes Ed Snowden a decent life in Russia, where he currently resides, and gives the movie two thumbs up.
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Another one out of the park by Ann Coulter
Posted On: Friday - February 8th 2019 6:08PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Trump Pundits
Peak Stupidity's favorite literary pundit, Ann Coulter, unlike some we could name, cough, ex-president Øb☭ma, cough, cough, Miss Coulter is a real Constitutional scholar. Maybe she didn't major in it in law school, but she knows the document and lives that document in her writing. As a Libertarian myself, and a Conservative, there has been but one issue I've disagreed with the lady in a decade*. That's a damn good record. Would you marry a lady just for her political views? That's not usually a good reason**, I'd have to say, but were I not married... were I her type... maybe we'll meet in some magical Libertarian bug-out country after the SHTF ... on the beach ... just daydreaming, where were we?
In Ann Coulter To Donald Trump: Hey, Commander! Start Commanding!, she again lambasts the President on his lack of action on illegal immigration across the southern border. I hope her next column will do the same regarding his treasonous talk recently on LEGAL immigration. It would especially help if the guy really does read this stuff by Miss Coulter, as she is a pretty good overall representative of his base, I'd say. Does he really want to get re-elected in a couple of years? He'd better listen to this lady, if he cares about that, or more importantly (for us) what happens to this place.
Please read the whole thing. I'll just include on excerpt with nothing in particular to say about it:
A couple of years ago, an American sailor who had just helped build a school in Ban Nong Muang, Thailand, was proudly quoted in Seabee Magazine: "My recruiter told me to join the Seabees. He said they build schools in foreign countries for kids."The biggest point Miss Coulter made, using writings about, and the document itself, this one,
The U.S. military does these things in other countries but, we're told, can't build a wall in our own.
At this point, our only hope may be for the border states to secede from the Union and form their own nation, so that we can send troops to build them a wall. They could call their new country "YouMustGoBackistan."
is that making OFFENSIVE war was meant to be very difficult, while making DEFENSIVE war was meant to be simple, with action to be taken immediately by the, you guessed it, Commander-in-Chief!
#SAD and #PISSED, Mr. President.
* She is a supporter of Affirmative Action for certain people. Peak Stupidity is dead against it.
** See bottom of this post for more on a Power-Pundit-Couple - nah, it didn't work out ...
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Snowden - movie review - Part 1
Posted On: Friday - February 8th 2019 9:33AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Movies Media Stupidity Liberty/Libertarianism Orwellian Stupidity Deep State
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Prequel (4/09/19): I am amazed at myself here for forgetting that I'd semi-reviewed this movie already right here back in December of '17! That is ridiculous, as it has the "Movies" topic key and I could have searched first. So, the reader may want to go to that previous post first, before reading this and Part 2. I'll give myself credit - the short 3-paragraph review 1 1/3 years ago matches these newer 2 very well.
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I can already see enough coming that I want to write in this post on the movie Snowden to require another one "first thing" tomorrow. Unlike with the review of The Green Inferno which required a Part 2 to avoid Peak Stupidity being a spoiler for the reader, both posts really can't be spoilers as the story of American patriot Ed Snowden should be known to anyone who either follows the Lyin' Press infotainment, or, hopefully, more like keeps up on the real stories on the blogs. It's not a documentary, but "based on a true story" that we can find out lots of details about.
As usual, this is not the review in which you read about the lighting, the cast, and the cinematography. I don't care. However, Oliver Stone, the director of this movie, has got some guts, I'll give him that. I don't say that mostly based on this move, which I'll explain. However, it's the interview embedded below (which I hope is the one I watched already) that shows me he really bucks the establishment movie scene. There was JFK, which was said to be controversial. I have not seen that one, but I'll just say that the JFK assassination has been covered up, yet speculated on, for so long that I think
The politics in the movie Snowden start off early on, as his girlfriend below meets him face to face and they start talking politics. Though medically-discharged from the Special Forces, Ed Snowden must have really been a geek (this is based on a true story, so ...) to start talking politics on the first date - big, big, no-no.
Again, I don't even care to keep track of the actors [what kind of damn movie reviewer are you?! - Ed], but the lady above is Mr. Snowden's steady girlfriend, excepting a few breakups-with-cause until the end of the story. As cute as she is, I really think she should have been just a tad firmer around the body. As
See there you go, now that last paragraph goes in a review! Back to the politics now. The girl actually uses that term "liberal" in the scene the picture above is from, I kid you not. How quaint is that? I don't think Snowden's movie girlfriend means "classical liberal" in the vein of Thomas Jefferson, as much as Mr.Jefferson would have agreed with Mr. Snowden on the NSA surveillance business. From the context in the scene, she meant liberal in the modern sense of left-wing, and I thought the term "liberal" had finally been thankfully left behind. Nope, near the end of the movie, Snowden's big change of heart is supposed to mean he should have listened to his stripper girlfriend and been a "liberal" from the time she
Oliver Stone purports to be anti-establishment in this movie, with the establishment being the Deep State but also the "right" in general. His liberals are the good guys, that want everything out in the open and no brown people overseas randomly droned to death. This is kind of a quaint notion too. Does he not know that the modern establishment is globalist/neocon (with Conservative, Inc. sidekicks) and not in the tiniest bit classically liberal? Is the left now against war and stuff? Does Stone know it's not 1965 right now? Who is this establishment that Mr. Snowden fought against? The movie puts Ed Snowden in a very good light.* Snowden ended up fighting the big state by revealing the Orwellian practices of the NSA. That was a major gutsy move that made him a big target and therefore a fugitive and man-without-a-state. Oliver Stone does shine some light on the Deep State, but I think, as a sop to his movie business colleagues, had to make the good guys out to be "liberals".
At the end of the movie, the British Guardian newspaper journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, holed up with Mr. Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel room, made a big thing of praising the "Mainstream Media" when their big-wig in London decided to air this story. Yeah, "Mainstream Media" were the heroes too! Sure. I think it was more like their worry that they'd be upstaged. Greenwald worked for The Guardian but had been an internet journalist (and real Constitutional lawyer) before that. He represented the new media. If the
See that's the sop to the left by Mr. Stone, showing the Lyin Press, aka Government Media, as anti-establishment, like modern Woodwards and Bernsteins of Watergate fame (or notoriety, depending on whether you liked that dick Nixon).
It gets quainter and quainter. The real TV infotainment footage shown in that movie scene near the end featured the Wolf Blitzers and such proudly railing on the US Gov't's unconstitutional spying on Americans. Yeah, like Wolf freakin' Blitzer cares about the US Constitution. The mainstream media and the left were gonna end the killing of brown people overseas again! Funny, but I don't recall any "Liberal" presidential administrations making a big effort. 8 years of Commie Øb☭ma didn't change a thing. It's not like the Hildabeast would have either. She never even SAID she would change the American warmongering foreign policy (though, granted what the Hildabeast says and what goes through her reptilian mind have no known correlation whatsoever). Going back to her sweetheart, executor of the laws of the land through most of the 1990's, well, that "liberal" started a war to help Moslems kill Christians in Bosnia and had an aspirin factory in north Africa bombed to distract for a minor (for him!) scandal.
Oh, and there was Piers Morgan on the small screen, within the big-screen of this movie. Yeah, this very same gun-grabber was on TV there gabbing about this great development in freedom. OK, right, so we need to fight these Orwellian Deep-State people in the establishment so they don't keep spying on us, but not with guns, though, OK? Whatchu' talkin' about, Winston?
Man, that "movie review" got political real quick-like. I promise to bad-mouth more of the movie itself in the 2nd post.
This is just a short segment with Tucker Carlson, but I can't find the original one I'd watched a good while back. Even so, refuting the Lyin' Press' hatred for "The Russian" and treating President Putin like a human being has got to put him somewhat on the outs with those people and his people in The Biz.
* Just for fairness, here's a ridiculous-at-first-glance counterpoint with some neoconnery I didn't know existed in The Federalist (just never have read it before, I guess). by one Rebeccah Heinrichs.
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[UPDATE 4/9/19:]Added 1st paragraph to note that I had semi-reviewed this movie in another post that I had forgotten about!
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12-step programs for all our problems
Posted On: Thursday - February 7th 2019 4:36PM MST
In Topics: Humor
Alcoholics Anonymous was one of the first, I'm guessing, to present this long series of steps to enable one to climb out of the pit that addiction can be. My intention is not to knock them at all here. Peak Stupidity is just glad that it is not another US Government Agency, and I sure hope they don't get money, along with the strings attached, from the Feral Gov. We are all FOR private associations. Other groups, for other problems, have adopted these multi-step programs, some of which are also pretty serious. It's the silly stuff we want to make fun of, and if the struggling AA people, or the Fear of Humidity group* get burned in this post, they'll just have to sweat it out!
off the wagon, back on, back off again ...
Peak Stupidity's current least favorite movie, Fight Club, had these support groups as a part of the plot. Ed Norton, the star and narrator, was in the habit of going to a different one each evening, I think to meet chicks. You'd think it'd be easy to pick-and-choose a girl's personality that way, but he was in it to meet girls that were also addicted to 12-step programs, I think... again, I didn't "get" this movie. BTW, it didn't work out so well (SPOILER ALERT), as he ended up with a skank.
I think this stuff's gone too far. From a site called Sober Nation (yeah, that's gonna happen) we get a partial list:
Cocaine AnonymousFor most of these, yeah, you do probably want to remain anonymous, as it's that or we'd have put you in jail by now.
Gamblers Anonymous
Dual Recovery Anonymous
Emotional Health Anonymous
Debtors Anonymous
Nicotine Anonymous
All Addictions Anonymous
Chemically Dependent Anonymous
Crystal Meth Anonymous
Dual Diagnosis Anonymous
Heroin Anonymous
Marijuana Anonymous
Methadone Anonymous
Pills Anonymous
Prescription Anonymous
Recoveries Anonymous
Bettors Anonymous
Bloggers Anonymous
[Though a card-carrying member, still unfortunately struggling with step 1. - Meeting tonight after this post - Ed.]
Clutterers Anonymous
Emotions Anonymous
Gamblers Anonymous
Hepatitis C Anonymous
HIV AIDS Anonymous
Kleptomaniacs and Shoplifters Anonymous
Procrastinators Anonymous
Recovering Couples Anonymous
Schizophrenics Anonymous
Self Mutilators Anonymous
Spenders Anonymous
Survivors of Incest Anonymous
Trauma Anonymous
Workaholics Anonymous
"Hi, my name is REDACTED of Peak Stupidity and I am ... sniff, I'm ... sniff, sniff... a blogger. There, I said it!"
“Welcome, REDACTED, I bet you don’t last through step 4, you poor bastard.”
“Hey, I’ll put 5 large on that one!”
“Count me in on that action.”
“Whoa, wait guys, is this what we’re supposed to be doing here?”
“Hell yeah, Bettors Anonymous is on Tuesdays. This is Thursday. SIT THE HELL down and let us get our bets in.”
“Hey, Fred, you’re in Kleptos Anonymous, aren’t you? You hold onto the cash – I don’t trust the rest of these sorry-ass addicts.”
Regarding "Procrastinator's Anonymous", was it just set up purely for the jokes?
"Hi, my name is Jimbo, and I'm a procrastinator. I meant to come 5 years ago, but I kept putting in off, and then it took me a long time to find out where they moved the meetings to..."
OK, we're running out of time here, and I've spent too long trying to figure out the joke in this next graphic:
Was that a New Yorker cartoon, because, if not, I don't get why I don't get it?
* H/T - old Bob Newhart show.
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She caught the Katy and left me a mule to ride
Posted On: Wednesday - February 6th 2019 8:18PM MST
In Topics: Music Movies
I really can't say that I know what "the Katy" is, but it must be a train* from the context.
This song brings back a memory of riding in a late '60's model land-yacht on a long road trip to the South - no it wasn't the '60's, but to set the mood, Fred put on (was it on 8-track tape?) the Blues Brother soundtrack in, which got us 50 miles down the road, at least. I cannot say that I like all of "Jake" and "Elwood", the Blues Brothers, music, and I didn't appreciate the movie that awful much at the time (at this point, I think it's one of the greatest farce-type comedy movies ever made - top 10 stuff).
However, this one is a classic blues number, and being no expert on the genre, it sounds like a nice job on it to me.
Now, to appreciate the movie, one could start with this scene, as Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) picks up his brother Jake (John Belushi) out of Joliet prison. Just the way they pronounce the place names in that Chicago accent is part of the charm of the movie. She Caught the Katy is playing, but the top video is the uninterrupted song.
The reader is referred to this Wiki page for all the band members. They ain't putting that band back together!
* OK, it was the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railway - I just looked it up.
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"Learn to Code"
Posted On: Wednesday - February 6th 2019 7:46PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Internets Artificial Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity
... checking one typo-fix took 15 minutes,
we got REAL output on REAL (green & white) paper,
AND WE LIKED IT!
That's a meme - memes are not always images with or without bad-ass frogs. From 3 minutes of reading, it seems the point of this phrase is to parody people, especially in the Lyin' Press, that have been on the immigration-invasion, population-replacement, middle-class destroying bandwagon, with their own jobs safe for the moment, well previously. They exhorted those hard-working Americans formerly in manufacturing and other areas in which huge numbers of jobs have been lost to just simply "learn to code". I don't like the term "code" to begin with, but "coders" themselves use it, so, whatever.
As a quick digression into this, Peak Stupidity has bad-mouthed the "geeks" before and rightfully much of the Artificial Stupidity that many of them create. On the latter, a job is a job, and not everyone can work on a project that's really a good thing for everyone and/or saves mankind. As far as the field of computer science/programming, we have emphasized that computer programming IS NOT engineering, and we really need to crank out that post about it. However, that is not at all the same as saying that there are not very difficult fields involving software development. It's a different kind of thinking than engineering, but can be quite challenging. Kudos to the geeks, then ... those remaining.
That brings us back to the point - yeah, we're told that all those working men whose jobs have been outsourced can just simply program computers for a living. Not all are of the mindset to be able to, but I don't know if that's the main reason for this parody meme. As John Derbyshire wrote on VDare the other day, employment for Americans in this field has been shrinking drastically.
I can look back myself to a time ~ 15 years ago, when there jobs abounded, even for those with no college degree. The fact is, as mentioned in Human Resources - scourge of the Big-Biz world (Part 2 and Part 3), the basics of programming just requires smarts, particularly orderly, logical thinking, and any of the small pieces (new languages, databases, programming environments, etc) can be learned on the job, at night, or over a weekend. (Of course, it takes much longer to have real expertise and be faster at it, but one can get a job done.)
At that time, even though the internet 1.0 bubble had burst, young people could find computer jobs easily. Sure, people realized that a company that built a database-backed website to sell toothpaste on-line was not worth that $500 million capitalization, along with thousands of others. Times were not as heady in that "space". Still, things were being steadily in so many areas of endeavor with advanced software, and worthwhile uses of the world-wide-web were still being developed. I knew a guy at work who told me he was moving to Dallas (a ways across the country from our worksite). "Oh, you got a job there?" "Nah, I got a good friend that lives there ... I'll find a job no problem... maybe I'll hang out a week or two first though." That's how it was, readers! Nowadays, it's about like a 1975 graduate in Art History - better go hit the pavement.
The Immigration Stupidity topic key that we have well over 100 posts on is indeed the major factor in the big destruction of these jobs over this short period. The H-1B work Visa program is nothing but a system of indentured servitude, very much like that of 1700's America for white people. The only difference is the type of work being done. It lowers wages and reduces the job market for a family-supporting American, who could have been all set back in 2005. At the same time, much of the work itself has been outsourced to India, where, out of a billion people, you're gonna find some half-way (OK, 1/4 way decent programmers) to work for 1/2 to 1/4 of the money. One final, possibly smaller factor has been the automation of the software programming and development itself, a job that the smart ones do.
"Learn to Code.". Yeah, well see, that's the ironic thing: Mr. Derbyshire's article refers to the layoffs of programmers at some of the ctrl-left big web-sites. These are the sites that would tell people not to worry about the big changes in the American economy, just learn to code. Upon reading his article, I was amazed at how many programmers you would need to begin with to make a 15% cut at BuzzFeed anything to care about. I'd have thought they'd have 3 or 4, making a 15% cut kinda hard to arrange. There must be many more than that, with 15% out on the streets. What's next for them? I GOT IT! LEARN TO MEME! Yeah, that's the ticket for our new China-beating economy. We can all meme each other, in between all-hands meetings with the super-duper young entrepreneur who is arranging the IPO, and free M&Ms on Wednesdays!
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Good luck streak in Traffic School
Posted On: Tuesday - February 5th 2019 6:55PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Peak Stupidity Roadshow
Yeah, I'm kinda of a posthumous (unfortunately) fan of Warren Zevon, if that title rang any bells, and the music is at the bottom.
I spent some time in Traffic "School" at various times over the years. Yes, I put it in quotes, as you'll see from these anecdotes. Whom the Highway Department thinks is a bad driver and who actually IS a bad driver are too different things. However, you've just got to humor these people, at least when your points get right on up there. These Sheriff's deputies know what they're doing:
The guy teaching traffic school in the evenings did not really know the numbers, though. He told us that 1 in 3 people in America will die in traffic accidents. To emphasize the tragedy of it all, the guy went through the room with the 20 "students", through the aisles pointing at every 3rd one of us. "Imagine, you, then you ... etc.", as I sat there immediately thinking "that number is totally bogus ... let's see, just to make it easy, if everyone lives to be 100, then that would mean 1/3 of the country, 100 million people will die in those hundred years. That's a million per year. Whoa, but the real number is in the tens of thousands ..." (I believe at that time it was 40 - 50 thousand, but it's been going down.)
Well, see, the guy was otherwise nice, and, you know, did I want to keep my license in this state, or not? However, I must have been inadvertently shaking my head as I thought of his factor of 20 higher number, because he came back to me "you don't believe it?" "Nope, that can't be, man." We both just let it go - don't embarrass or piss off the guy, and what did I know anyway - I was a BAD DRIVER!
You've really gotta think about your numerical estimates some times, with the maxim DIMS, or Does It Make Sense? That wasn't a maxim for this guy, but we all got through it.
Another time, in 2 evenings during which we were to put in 4 hours each, to meet the requirements of THE STATE (this was a different "THE STATE"), I had planned to learn something, maybe not how to drive better, but something. Well, it turned out that both those evenings were really bad days for this teacher, as his favorite basketball team, along with that of most of us students, was in the playoffs on TV. Yep, he brought out a small B&W TV and we all watched basketball. Unfortunately, the games didn't take the whole 4 hours.
Now, it was time for each of us to stand up and tell the class about his traffic violation - OK, his LATEST ONE. Each of us went on about how we talked to the cop, what the fine was, and how many points this violation entailed. It morphed quickly into a discussion of the best way to deal with the traffic cops, with our teacher chiming in with his expertise. He was, after all, a GOOD DRIVER, as he came to class under his own power, far as I know. Anyway, talk to the cop first before he starts writing (not all of it is as applicable in the Police State age), don't say exactly how fast you were going, etc. Man, what a learning experience that was after all, readers! That was the best $200 plus the fine that I ever did spend!
Here's Warren Zevon with A Certain Girl (what's her name? I can't tell ya') from Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School I have not heard this in DECADES! It's not as good as recall, but I still like the originality of the great musical artist, whom we lost in 2003.
Vocals, Guitar: Warren Zevon
Bass Guitar: Leland Sklar
Drums: Rick Marotta
Peak Stupidity has featured Warren Zevon before with Excitable Boy and Werewolves of London
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[UPDATED, Years later:] Youtube lost my great Deputy Barney Fife scene. This one is OK, but ...
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The masks of the Antifa - a question of anonymity
Posted On: Monday - February 4th 2019 7:17PM MST
In Topics: Humor iEspionage
About the only thing I disagree with James Kirkpatrick on, in his article on the ctrl-left/antifa in Stone Mountain, Georgia (see previous post) is on the wearing of masks. The way the iEspionage, aka modern electronics, is these days, showing your face anywhere in public is a guarantee of being ID'd by anyone who wants to look for you. The masks should be perfectly legal, as, if you think of the founding of our country, just as an important example, do you think the Boston Tea Party would have been celebrated 245 years later if the British had ID's and hanged all those responsible?
No, I don't begrudge these Commies their masks, but the alt-right and whomever the other side consists of should be donning their own.
Peak Stupidity will have lots more discussion of the iEspionage that we all pay good money for in the near future. Not to get into it too much today, I will just point out some humorous thoughts about the masks, such as the Guy Fawkes ones shown above, that are so popular. The young people can be seen to be very cash averse. I've seen people of all ages, in fact, carry around about 2 bucks in cash (a bad idea in my opinion), but these Millenials will pull out a credit card to buy a pack of gum. If not that, they will get their nicest, most powerful piece of iEspionage out of their pocket and have a code scanned.
So let me get this straight, Antifa sickos - you've got that Guy Fawkes mask on to be completely anonymous, but you paid for it with your phone. Yeah, nobody can find you now!
Then, you take the mask off, in front of a bunch of cameras, if nothing else, from the phones and other ishit of your buddies, that can send off information in real time to whoever really runs the software in it. You get into your car with its license plates that can be read at every other stoplight or patrol car, and drive home, where you blog on-line about your protest, as the data packets fly through the NSA Utah data center on the way, spending a few nanoseconds getting written onto a Mega-Terabyte capacity hard drive. (Yet you HATE, HATE, HATE those few Constitutionalists that actually want to Make America Great Again.)
If Peak Stupidity weren't so anti-US-Feral-Gov't, we'd take into consideration opening up a mask story, or maybe a mask kiosk. It could be brought to the protests on a small flat-bed to better serve the customers, well, 1/2 of the customers. The other half of the customer base, where the real profit lies, would consist of those nice free-spenders over at the NSA, to whom we would sell a new database file each night. It's a win/win, the kind of bright idea they teach you in the Ivy League business schools, like the ones the Zuckerbergs and other F.A.G.S. drop out of.
No, no, no, we will never find you, masked avengers. We really thought every one of you was Guy Fawkes. Idiots.
(The shame of it is that the establishment doesn't WANT to find them out. If that changed, these people would already be languishing in the #MeInTheAss prisons.)
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Anarcho-tyranny update from Stone Mountain, Georgia
Posted On: Monday - February 4th 2019 6:48PM MST
In Topics: ctrl-left Anarcho-tyranny Socialism/Communism
Lookin' sharp guys - nobody's shootin' back yet, though.
My reading of VDare's James Kirkpatrick's article this morning, Antifa Violence Shows Anarcho-Tyranny Is Spreading. When Will Trump Stop It?, caused a serious rise in my blood pressure. This is not just the silly stuff - the latest bout of Anarcho-Tyranny over in Stone Mountain, Georgia* shows us who the opposition really is - a large contingent of violence-hungry Communists. Sure, as Peak Stupidity has often stated, they don't read Karl Marx, if they read books at all, and they don't talk about the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. They do want to destroy all society and remake it, though, and don't care how many people they have to hurt or kill.
I won't excerpt any of this factually-detailed and smartly opinioned article by Mr. Fitzpatrick. It would just bring my blood pressure back up into the quintuple digits (nah, not to worry too much, I use the real S.I. units of pressure - Pascals), but I do recommend a reading of the entire thing. There was supposed to be a fun post today that's related to the ctrl-left and their actions, but this one's got me pretty down on things.
To sum up this event, there was supposedly going to be a Klu Klux Klan rally near the monument, when in fact there was nothing but a "counter-protester" march of these Antifa types. If you were to watch as much of the youtube videos as you can stand, the thing that would stand out is just the lies from these people. Yeah, they came to fight this KKK that nobody's heard from in a few decades, at the least. President Trump is of the same mindset of the KKK, so if you like him, you are equivalent. The Trump supporters are fascists too, they say. KKK fascists, OK?
These lies are just so twisted and sick that it's really easy to understand how lying is one of the biggest evils. To argue with one of these people, one would have to first argue each premise that his current lie is based on. These Commies are acting violently against what they tell everyone is fascism, but their actions could be considered fascism. The KKK is a downright laughable excuse for their big reason to come out with guns. There probably hasn't been a KKK meeting that hasn't had a quorum consisting solely of members of the FBI since the 1960's! As for President Trump, we can only wish that he would act a little closer to what the ctrl-left is really worried about, which would still have absolutely nothing to do with fascism.
It is amazing to me how damn fast much of American society forget the evils of Communism to where these sick fools are not ashamed to use the term for their ideology.
It's not just that a serious chunk of American has forgotten the evils of Communist radicals like these people. Lots of Americans still would love to kick these people out of town, or in their asses, or at least put up a fight of some sort. The 2nd problem is the Anarcho-Tyranny, as Mr. Kirkpatrick details very well in his article. Every institution of the establishment - the media, the city officials, the police, etc - are completely one-sided in favor of these antifa sickos.
Why? Aren't Georgians fairly conservative? Yeah, but the cops, and people in city government are cowards, just plain cowards. They'd rather let one-sided violence by Commies go on, rather than just possibly get called bad names by the Lyin' Press. You sad, sorry-ass cowards of the Stone Mountain police department DO NOT DESERVE TO LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY! I hope you all are the first people into the ditches, if these people end up having their way in the long run.
* Stone Mountain is the town, but also the big rock hill towering > 800 ft. above the surrounding terrain, with nothing like it around. That's especially due to its huge carving of 3 Confederates, President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, and General Stonewall Jackson on the North side. That ain't no 10 ft. tall statue on a pedestal. My feeling is that this monument to the Confederacy would have been eliminated already, if there was any possible way for the ctrl-left to do that!
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The case of the Gay Hardy Boys ...
Posted On: Saturday - February 2nd 2019 9:02PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Humor Books
... and the tweet cut-short:
I guess I just don't know how to read a tweet, but this one trails off into ... meaning what? Luckily, I don't get tweets, so Peak Stupidity would have to be subpoenaed the old fashioned way (catching me on the front lawn unarmed). The one above, though, came via a Steve Sailer post snarkily called Atlantic: "Hardy Boys" Are Intersectionally Problematic. The Atlantic still has a problem with the super-normality of the Hardy Boys, two boy detectives that existed in the imagination of young kids, reading the large series of books.
These Hardy Boy books let the reader try to figure out the mystery first, before the always unusual trick used in a crime is revealed by the 2 clever Hardy brothers. I'd guess the books wouldn't have been as exciting if the cases were taken from the Southside Chicago PD blotter - "It was another case of a 5-count black felon leaving his cell phone at the scene of the crime." Next book in the series: "The case of the Mexican with multiple IDs." Nah, you've got to sell the books. Stupidity and repetition doesn't sell to bright young boys.
When it comes to that sort of reading, I was always an Encyclopedia Brown guy myself. I can remember only one cool mystery of the ice cubes made of ginger ale. While looking this up to check it (amazing, this www!), I was fairly amused by one "topless robot" blogger* who expounded on some of the stories in the Encyclopedia Brown series:
The quiet town of Idaville seems friendly and idyllic at first glance, but underneath that suburban facade is a seedy underbelly of petty criminals: thieves, swindlers, and bullies, all compulsive liars, and all hiding behind public reputations that mask their evil intentions. If not for the crime-solving abilities of Encyclopedia Brown — the nerdiest superhero of them all — Idaville would have the highest crime rate in the nation and thugs like Bugs Meany, for example, would evolve into the rapists and murderers they’re so naturally predisposed to becoming. Of course, Encyclopedia’s ability to solve mysteries frequently borders on the absurd due to author Donald Sobol’s clear disregard for his readers’ self-esteem (many of whom have ended their lives prematurely from being unable to crack these “children’s stories”) ...Heh! I did find my memory of Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Secret Pitch reviewed, not very favorably, I might add.
Back to the case of the Atlantic tweet, even with a revision to these books many years again to bring them up to PC-level, the Atlantic writer wanted more abnormality out of the two boys. Mr. Sailer twarks (tweets snarkfully? No good?) back:
ONE character was gay? Are you serious?!
OK, hold on a minute. Are we talking about the same Hardy Boys here? Now, this whole thing's got me wondering about my sexuality, as Encyclopedia Brown did keep his detective studio really clean, and, per our expert linked-to above, had one "Sally Kimball, Encyclopedia’s pretty, non-sexual, and illogically powerful female companion..." OTOH, there were no mysteries about show tunes or fashion design, so, I think I'm good...
* This blog post was from 10 years back, but I'll have to do some reading to see if the guys still writes (and this well).
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You can't even say "SHUSH UP!" anymore.
Posted On: Saturday - February 2nd 2019 1:26PM MST
In Topics: University Political Correctness China
Just in another of the daily bouts of greivance-mongering that is "who we are" in America today, we have a story from Duke University in Durham, on the Research Triangle, in which a Duke University professor warns students of ‘consequences’ for speaking Chinese . Yeah, Russia Today IS the most unbiased source I could find to read about this, why do you ask, Comrade? The reader may want fo refer to a comment by BernCar on the old USSR media in a post from Thursday.
The only reason I gave so much location information there, is that this school is a hotbed of PC stupidity, yet located in North Carolina - how many damn yankee students attend, in addition to the thousands of foreigners in this story? North Carolina used to be one of the best places in the South, "an island of humility between two mountains of conceit" as described long ago by some dude. Duke is where that huge race/rape hoax involving the Lacrosse team and a crack whore went down - nobody, but nobody rapes a crack whore - man, if only I'd been the D/A, the whole thing could have been wrapped up in an afternoon! I think real Tarheels ought to kick that whole town out of the Research Triangle and find another vertex. (It's been more of a isoceles triangle anyway, and we are all supposed to for equalateralism, aren't we? PC-Geometry, bitchez!)
Anyway, here's the quick gist of it:
A Duke University professor has stepped down, after an email in which she warned Chinese students to speak English on campus or face “unintended consequences” went viral.
Screenshots of the group email, sent to grad students in the Department of Medicine, made the rounds on social media on Saturday.
“PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep these unintended consequences in mind when you choose to speak in Chinese in the building,” Neely warned, telling the offending students to “commit to using English 100% of the time.”As is often the case, there is stupidity here on both sides of the controversy. If you can make out the ex-Professor's email screenshot in the article, she did mention that her point of getting these Chinese students to quit speaking loudly in Chinese was that they were REALLY SPEAKING LOUDLY! It may be a surprise for the reader (even of Peak Stupidity) to learn, but, though individual Chinese people are known to be staid, polite, and quite people, that is mainly just the case in small doses. Those born in America, and having grown up in quiet towns or suburbs, back when there was real assimilation, will be the types you would imagine. However, get them in groups of 10 or 20, when there aren't enough white people around to care about fitting in with, and they can get LOUDER THAN HELL The kids can be the worst - don't keep in your head the image of that 12 y/o chess prodigy. These people grow up where it's LOUD, and they feel the need to be LOUD just to keep up, is my guess. Still, as far as the hearing of foreign languages everywhere, lady, where've you been for the last 25 years - join the party, pal!
Neely’s approach found little sympathy on campus as more than 1,000 students signed a petition calling for an investigation into the incident, according to Duke University’s student newspaper.
Now, on the other side, it would indeed be ridiculous to be told you can't talk amongst yourselves in you native language at college, with the exception of a real immersion school of some sort. The stupidity on the side of the Chinese "guests" here, is just that a big twate-fest (tweet/hate fest? no good?) was started about this, rather than a simple conversation with the professor (quietly, I'd hope, and IN ENGLISH, dammit!). Maybe it IS the tweeting, but people just don't know how to handle things as polite, rational human beings anymore. No, the tweets came flying out of Chinapeople's cheap-China-made tweeters, some of which can be viewed on the article linked-to above, if the reader really would like to understand the problem I've got with some of these ingrates.
Hey, listen, Chinese grad students: Have you all heard of the golden rule? Is that a thing over there? I do realize that it'd be nutty to hear the same as an American studying in China, that one had to speak Chinese or nothing, and quietly at that. It IS the kind of thing, however, that the Chinese central government could do, if it wanted. One could not say the same here. Since the era of Red-Chinese Communism, however, and even during the long climb back, that country would not have been about to kill the goose that laid all those dollar-denominated eggs, not to mention hoping they would get more out of the students than the students would get out of their studies there. If nothing else, the Chinese could legitimately pick up some English, but I imagine the universities there would want the possible technology transfer, accidental or otherwise.
Imagine something like this did happen in China. Things are different now, so, if that happened, I think the American students would just shrug, pack it up, and go home. We're can't be the arrogant Americans anymore, as we are in no position to, since our economy is based on borrowing from these people. Invoking the golden rule, here, I don't think American grad students would have gone on a twate-fest like this. "Hey, this is ridiculous, but it's THEIR country" would have been expected out of me. See, now we get to the difference. Due to the MASSIVE influx of foreigners we have had, even non-citiizens and non-nationals (green-card holders) act like they OWN the place. (Hmmm, more on that in just a bit.) At least, they think that nobody owns this place. Was that attitude taught in their SJW sociology classes (the stuff the Chinese usually try to avoid) or brought with them from THEIR country? Is that Cultural Revolution 1.0 mentality still present in the grandchildren of the originators?
Back to Professor Neely, former Head of the Department of Biostatistics in the Duke Medical School, she has to have been in Academics for a good while to have been in that position. This is important because she obviously is in 1990's mode, as far as her understanding of foreigners (esp. Chinese and dot-Indians) at American universities goes. Things have changed drastically, as Peak Stupidity has documented here and here, with the sheer numbers and attitudes and purposes of the Chinese that attend American schools. There are thousands of Chinese people studying and teaching in ALMOST ALL (maybe not English!) departments at average American universities now. I don't know about the Ivies and the very-top-notch engineering schools like CalTech and MIT. At your average state school, the Chinese run things. You will feel a foreigner as a mechanical engineering graduate student at any large university in America now.
I could write more on that, and have already, so let me put it this way: Perhaps the Chinese students act like the own the places, because they DO OWN THE PLACES. That's something that Professor Neely, with her polite, but kind of unorthodox, note to these students, did not seem to understand. It ain't 1995, when these students were respectful guests, soaking in knowledge at the best Universities in the world, and so proud to come back to China with that piece of paper, no matter how hard the struggle. It's, well, whatever is the current year now, ex-Prof Neely. You don't tell the OWNERS what to do, even if you are in the right. YOU! DO! NOT! TELL! THE! OWNERS! TO! SHUSH! UP!
Just as a humorous postscript, you all have a lot of gall, ladies in the photo. Really, I mean, we should be worried that we may not have any Chinese students to put on the brochures in the future? Wouldn't that make an aspiring but poor high-school student feel MORE likely to attend, just knowing he may be able to understand his professor? Also, what the hell is it with you people about getting pictures taken with your stupid peace signs?! Things are not getting more peaceful, and I've told you about this incessant picture-taking shit before.
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