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 - '26 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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Drinking the Kommie Kool-Aid - 40 years back - Part 1
Posted On: Friday - April 26th 2019 2:27PM MST
In Topics: Commies California History Socialism/Communism
40 years ago this past November 18th, that is. Man, I HATE missing these anniversaries, as there's something about it being "this exact day XX years ago" that makes a story like this that much more interesting. So, it's 40 1/2 years ago now from the day over 900 Socialist/Communist cult member followers of Mr. James Warren Jones drank cyanide-spiked Kool-Aid* and died at their remote commune in the jungle of a place called Guyana.
This Wikipedia article on this "largest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until September 11, 2001" reads pretty fairly. I remember this news story that even long before the internet, 98% of Americans were surveyed to have heard about This long ago for me was a time when I was too young to really put things into perspective. In other words, I heard about an airliner crash and thought maybe that happens every week, and the same with this story (along with the eruption of Mt. St. Helens a year or two later).
It was a big, big cult era, that decade of the 1970's. I can picture some of the adventurous, maybe overly-open-minded, people that realized at the end of the 1960's (~ 1972) that no, your brain is not going to last long on this LSD, or that following The Dead around supported by the selling of beads and drugs, and an occasional gift from Mom is just not a long-term career. They'd already helped win the internal Cold War for their side (not ours) by starting the mass infiltration of the institutions. What other kind of weirdness could they get into while they were still young?
The country was still less populated, much more free, and wild, to where any unorthodox ideas could still be put into practice without Big Feral Gov't clamping right down. Maybe others were too young during the '60's and wanted to have some fun. The free sex could not be had at non-existent protests anymore (maybe a few anti-Nuke ones), so the next best thing might be joining, or better yet, starting, a cult. The girls join due to their ditziness and awe of anybody charismatic, and guys will follow. It wasn't all about sex, especially the Jim Jones People's Temple cult in this story, but it's gotta be nice to be worshipped as the Head Philanderer and others can aspire to be Assistant Head Philanderer or at least Assistant TO the Head Philanderer. Maybe, just life is not treating you right and this guy really sounds like he knows his shit about life. As Johnny Cougar sang a decade later, "You'd better stand for something, or you're gonna fall for anything".
Yeah, cults were all over the place, it seemed in that era, some no more than churches a little bit wackier than the Unitarians, but others that involved mass kidnapping. Of course, like anything throughout the 2nd half of the last century, this stuff seemed to all start in California. For a very humorous take on that, Peak Stupidity recommends the 1980 movie Serial with Martin Mull.
I like those '70's sunglasses. Bring them back, fashion designers.
These People's Temple folks were on the more serious and political side. The charismatic Jim Jones was much more political than some cult leaders and in no small way either. He met with the California state politicians, supported by a number of them, and even Presidential Candidate Walter Mondale. He had some good recommendations from Rosalyn Carter, the 1st lady at the time. Now, Peak Stupidity may throw the word "Commie" around more than some readers may think appropriate. In this case however, as one can read in that surprisingly fair Wiki article, some time in the mid 1970's Mr. Jones, who'd been a Marxist since the 1950's in Indianapolis, Indiana, decided to take the group full-out Commie. No more feel-good Socialism only for his flock, the People's Temple built their commune down in "Jonestown", Guyana, in S. America to implement the hard-core sort, the type where, at some point they had to threaten people to keep them from going home.
I don't remember hearing of any of the political aspect of the Jonestown Massacre when I learned of this on the TV, but I can't blame the media, as it was just too long ago. However, the Wiki page discusses Jim Jones' fondness for the government of North Korea(!) and discussions with, and invitations to, political figures from the Soviet Union.
Was it a matter of building an idyllic People's Paradise in a non-fertile tepid jungle not working out finance-wise? Well, they did use the Social Security checks of the older black ladies to obtain sustenance from the bad Capitalist world. (- 2/3 of the residents of Jonestown were Afro-American - the term in use then - to be historically correct.). Thanks, LBJ and FDR! Oh, speaking of the finances, though. The cult still had some money in the bank upon mass suicide/homocide day, and that was arranged to be sent to the Soviet Union to help the Communist Party out ... hahahaaa! I'm not sure if it got there. Man, what a crazy time those '70's were! A note from the wife before she drank the Kool-Aid:
I, Marceline Jones, leave all bank assets in my name to the Communist Party of the USSR. The above bank accounts are located in the Bank of Nova Scotia in Nassau, Bahamas.What a big money sink that Communism can be. To each Commie sinkhole according to its needs, from each Kool-Aid-drinking fanatic according to his Social Security check.
Please be sure that these assets do get to the USSR. I especially request that none of these are allowed to get into the hands of my adopted daughter, Suzanne Jones Cartmell.
For anyone who finds this letter, please honor this request as it is most important to myself and my husband James W. Jones.
This is so interesting, and I have more to write about geography a bit, the shootout, including murder of a US Congressman at the Jonestown airstrip just before the mass death, and, of course, the much-used idiom that has been possibly the only good thing to come out of that sick cult/gulag in the jungles of South America 4 decades ago. They'll be at least a Part 2. Please read the whole Wiki article if you have 1/2 - 3/4 hour - it's wild, wacky stuff.
* OK, it was actually a cheaper version of flavored sugar water called Flavor Aid, but when you're Communists living in the jungle, you have to sacrifice for the Motherland. I'm gonna stick with "Kool-Aid" for the story, as it's been 40 years, and people ain't gonna change a whole expression now, dammit.
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Word Scramble gone wrong
Posted On: Thursday - April 25th 2019 8:47PM MST
In Topics: Humor Educational Stupidity
Firstly, this evening, I'd like to apologize to Peak Stupidity readers for having an almost blog-free week so far. Between traveling and simultaneously getting hung up arguing with people on other blogs, there've been nothing but 2 posts this Tuesday so far. I will try to write more tomorrow.
For now, it's just this kid's simple word scramble puzzle (goes along with some homework, or it IS homework) has got me really wondering about those in the Big-Ed bidness.
I wouldn't think it'd be very hard to make these puzzles. Just write in the letters for the words you want the kids to find and then fill in the rest. Oh, yeah, check to make sure you didn't actually spell something you'd rather not teach right now. Sex Ed is not till 3rd grade now, right?
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Lousiana Lou and Three-Card-Monty John - Allman Brothers
Posted On: Tuesday - April 23rd 2019 8:02PM MST
In Topics: Music Southern rock
This Allman Brothers' song is from the album Win, Lose, or Draw, which even though from back in 1975, was just a tad after the band's prime. Two of the band members, Dwayne Allman, lead guitarist, and Berry Oakley, bass player had died from motorcyle wrecks just 1 year and 3 blocks apart in Macon Georgia in 1971 and 1972, respectively. They still had Gregg (who died 2 years back), Dickey Betts, and the rest, so it's still good stuff, just not well known.
"Now 3-card-monty is a gamblin' game,
2 black aces and a pretty red queen.
Keep your eye on the lady, and lay your money down.
Watch the fastest hand you've ever seen."
Yeah, it doesn't have to be cards. A guy in the back of a city bus had 3 half walnut shells with a piece of foam, and I was to watch where the one with the foam ended up to win 10 big ones (long ago, and it would be a Benjamin to me now, at least). I didn't know they cheat! I lost my money, and it took till 5 minutes later before I realized that the foam was in the guy's hand the whole time. It's not like getting him to show me anything would have gotten my $10 back, as there were 3 of them, and I didn't know the neighborhood.
Gambling (oh, wait, GAMING) is one thing - cheating is another.
Gregg Allman — lead vocals, Hammond organ, clavinet and acoustic guitar
Richard Betts — lead guitar, slide guitar, lead vocals and acoustic guitar
Jaimoe — drums and percussion
Chuck Leavell — piano, Fender Rhodes electric piano, Moog synthesizer, clavinet and background vocals
Butch Trucks — drums, congas, percussion and timpani
Lamar Williams — electric bass
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Fraser Anning of "Strileya" and the feel good picture of the year
Posted On: Tuesday - April 23rd 2019 7:35PM MST
In Topics: alt-right/MAGA ctrl-left
"Two thumbs tucked in!" - Roger Ebert's Krav-Maga coach.
If you've seen/heard this story already, I apologize for finally getting around to Fraser Anning. If not, please take the 50 seconds to watch. This ctrl-left kid, most likely incensed by a guy who tells the truth (a big no-no these days), with his assumption of getting a pass from major media and all other parts of today's institutions, did not see this coming. That's very enjoyable. It's not just that we see someone stand up for himself, a feel-good theme of a large percentage of old Western and other action movies. We all appreciate that. However, it's also important that these leftists and Commies get to feel some physical pain now, as we really don't want to wait for them to get into positions of power, then purged or killed in the next endlessly-on-going revolution. No, there's too much misery for everyone else that takes place. These people must feel physical reprisals for their own acts of violence ASAP.
Before I discuss Australian Senator Fraser Anning, let me point out something about that young kid in the video. What was the point in taking his own video? Was that being streamed in case the big camera video was not shown? That could be the case, but the problem for him was having his left hand tied up with the stupid phone. At least he could have tried a block if he'd have both hands free. I'm not defending the guy, but I just stay amazed at how these pieces of Artificial Stupidity called smart phones stay attached to young people as body-appendages. I don't know, but I'd have dropped the phone before I took the first punch, yet this guy held onto it even after a hit to the face! I don't think he dropped it until he was tackled. As the cops were taking a statement(?), he looked dazed, which was probably just due to his being without his phone.
Anyway, "hey man, nice shot!" That's the kind of stuff Americans expect from the blokes down under. I don't think there are many traditional Americans who've ever said a bad word about the Aussies. For various reasons, I guess, we like them. We know they aren't all Crocodile Dundees, but the wildness of the place and people (at least what used to be the vast majority of Australians) seems to us to be a step above us as Americans, with the Brits, and Canadians even moreso, not having the same mojo. It probably has something to do with their ancestors of 200 years back having been convicts.
Don't get your heart set on Australia as an ideal bug-out location, though, Peak Stupidity Preppers. Most of the guns were banned, or at least made difficult to obtain, almost 25 years ago, and their immigration-invasion policies are not a whole lot better than the Immigration Stupidity here. Only being a big continent-level island has made it still a slightly better situation (though not with the Moslems, it seems) than here.
This is why a man like Fraser Anning, who somewhat-fortuitously made it to the office of Senator down there (representing Queensland) is such a joy to hear from. You don't get his kind of truth-telling from a high-office holder in any country very often. Perhaps that he's in the Australian parliament can ONLY be explained by luck. By the way, I just learned that this guy who threw that quick left jab at "Egg Boy" is 1/2 year from being 70 years old!
From the Aussie version of the Lying' Press we read the latest from Fraser Anning, on the carnage in Ceylon (now gay-sounding "Sri Lanka"):
I also said during Christchurch, that whilst Muslims had been the victims, Muslims are usually the perpetrators in terrorist attacks,” he tweeted.[My bolding]
Senator Anning finished off his bizarre rant by warning Australians there will be more terrorist attacks here if the government continued to allow Muslims to enter the country.
He even went as far as telling people they would “face death” if they didn’t heed his advice.
I don't see the bizarreness here. Yes, they are usually the perpatrators. Yes, of course there will be more attacks the larger your Moslem minority (for now) becomes. Yep, lots more than 290 people "faced death" in Ceylon a coupla days back, but "only" 290 people died. Face your Moslem problem, or face death - no, that's not really bizarre. I guess what Senator Anning tweeted was bizarrely truthful, if you want to put it that way.
Oh, one of Fraser Anning's tweets said:
“Almost 300 dead due to Islamic terrorists in Sri Lanka. Where is egg boy now?”Very good question, Sir. Looking for his phone?
Godspeed, Fraser Anning! You are a real Australian, the way we remember 'em.
PS: I really wanted to discuss Senator Anning's 8-point policy or agenda that I'd seen somewhere. (There was only 1 point I thought was Socialist nonsense, but the rest was good stuff.) Looking through duckduckgo links after a search based on "policy", "agenda", etc. showed me that the hate against this guy from the ctrl-left is IN-tense. They really can't stand a guy that stands up for his white countrymen. He's been de-facebooked and such, and all this makes me like him even more. Well, the discussion on actual policy will have to wait for another post, if I can ever dig it out of the hateful bullshit that the search engines pull up.
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Kids and the running broad jump
Posted On: Saturday - April 20th 2019 7:26PM MST
In Topics: Humor
There is no topic key here for child stupidity, as there's really nothing wrong with it. It's whom they be. Secondly, we'd be pretty hard-pressed to justify criticism of a level of stupidity that is usually significantly higher than that of the average American Liberal-Arts graduate student. I'm writing about 6 year-olds here.
It's just a quick observation here to round out the week: Did you ever watch a kid working on making a longer running broad jump or trying to make it into the middle of a big leaf pile? He's tried it once but wants to do better. "I'm gonna go faster this time, watch me!" He walks 50 ft away and runs like hell, for a kid. "Did you see that, Daddy!? OK, wait I'm gonna go even farther." Then he runs 100 yards away. In his mind that much farther will result in that much more speed. All this stuff about speed vs. acceleration is still well into his future.
The kid turns around, then runs 50 yards, gets tuckered out, and limps it in toward the leaf pile. Enough of that, time to dig holes now to find buried treasures. What a nice time!
If not on a trip Monday, I want to write about the Aussie Fraser Anning. Thanks for reading.
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Peak Stupidity Reparations Plan
Posted On: Saturday - April 20th 2019 11:24AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '26 Humor Race/Genetics
Peak Stupidity has noted as of late that the Blue-Wing of The Party has been bringing up the sensitive but important issue of reparations due to people for the practice of slavery. Now, in this case, they seem to ONLY be concentrating on that slavery practiced (well, they got pretty good at it) by the Southern American States plantation owners back from 400-odd years to right at 155 years back. There doesn't seem to have been a whole lot of talk out of the "Old Pharts" and "Young Turds" jockeying for position in the race about, I dunno, slavery at the time of the Bible, Arab slave ownership of millions of Europeans and black Africans (the latter going on through this day). Is it that I don't watch enough TV and just missed all of that?
It's a real fixation, I tell you, as probably a majority of us living in America today have had some slave ancestors of various sorts. You take your Hispanics - the Indian blood that makes up 1/2 their heritage is from ancestors for whom perhaps being held in bondage was the least of their worries.*. People with that Slavic background, well, you've got some street cred already, "Slave-ic", get it? You've got your leggy supermodels whose leggy supermodel ancestors could have easily been held as white sex slaves by, well, anybody, hell, who wouldn't? Jews have had ancestors held by Egyptians, Hittites by Caananites, Arkites by Girgashites, Sinites by Hermaphrodites, and more recently, Hindu-H-1Bites by Microsoft Windites. That's the big picture that many are not seeing.
Peak Stupidity, having that big picture view on slavery, realizes that for Americans today, there is really nobody who should have anything to bitch about. However, if we are going to narrowly focus on the Black American slavery from 155 years ago, we will set out our very generous compromise offer here, if only to appease the obviously very-concerned members of the Blue-Squad candidates, who have been slavishly working to extract more taxpayers' money for the proper causes. Our plan, and yes, it's a generous one, is ONE MILLION DOLLARS of reimbursement to every living American who has been a slave. That money will be collected from all living Americans who have owned black slaves, with an option for a payment plan with monthly reparations coupons. Not every former slave owner can come up with the money required by next April 15 (the cruelest day). Of course, reparations contributions will be pro-rated based on years of slaveholding practices, while reparations payouts will be pro-rated by years of jumping-down-turning-around-picking-bales-of-cotton.
Peak Stupidity makes this offer in good faith, should we be elected to Congress and appointed to the House Appropriations Committee. I will warn readers, however, that this offer is our final compromise. Rejection of it will cause us to revert to our previous offer:
Sound like a deal? Excellent. Though no slave owner myself, I will contribute in the interest of harmony of all races. Just keep reading while my brother Elwood writes out an American Express traveler's check on the dashboard of the car. I'm just gonna go over to the car with my pen here ... where my brother's gonna ...
* From back during Peak Stupidity's anti-cannibalization campaign (more here, here and here). I have not kept up with my dues to the NGOs that work hard to prevent the eating of indigenous peoples by other indigenous peoples, but the whole cause is still near and dear to my heart (no, no, you don't want this one ... it's been broken a few times and won't taste like the good stuff.)
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Sign up for Peak Stupidity Alerts
Posted On: Thursday - April 18th 2019 7:48PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Trump Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity
ALERT! ALERT! INCOMING STUPIDITY!
I've about had it with any kind of unwanted information making its way onto the human interface* of my piece of iEspionage, excuse me, "Smart" phone! The sound is hellacious, and probably has been developed specifically to increase sales, as it causes one in 100 pieces of hardware to be thrown out the damn car window per alert. If I'm trying to use the phone, to make, like, a PHONE CALL or something, you're just confusing the hell of of things.
Listen, whomever, I don't want to hear about flash floods, I'm up high. I don't want to hear about tornadoes, as I know what a freight train sounds like ... now, if it's actually a freight train, that could be a problem... I don't want to hear about volcanoes, as I don't know where I'm agonna go, anyway**.
I don't care if Ivanka Trump has just been kidnapped and is being held in a Chinese designer underwear plant in an undisclosed location in Manchuria for 500 BILLION YUAN (no, dollar, qǐng!)***, I don't want to hear about it in the middle of a game of Tetris! Leave me alone, governments!
* If one could call it that, as fucked up as it's been getting.
** Now I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
when the volcano blow.
(It's the title song from the album Volcano from the summer of 1979.)
I don't know ... if the Parrotheads have hung with Peak Stupidity during our 2-year hiatus of Jimmy Buffett music. It's been since the post called I don't think I'm gonna ever let him cut on me.. How can something like this even happen?!
*** "qǐng" is "please" and really, we would be better off without the entire Javanka crowd "in house" for a decade or so, at least.
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Orwellian PC Stupidity and the Line in the Sand
Posted On: Thursday - April 18th 2019 6:54PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Political Correctness California Liberty/Libertarianism alt-right/MAGA Orwellian Stupidity
Peak Stupidity came upon this "Prager University" youtube video just yesterday, which left us with some thoughts about current Conservatism, even the real thing, and its disregard, or disinterest in the US Constitution. The video here, on the sickeningly stupid genderbender-agenda (like that one?) is called Preferred Pronouns or Prison.
At it's beginning, this video refers to a crazy 2017 California law (what's new?), signed by Governor Moonbeam* that dictates use of unwanted pronouns as a crime. This is beyond Orwellian, as how could George Orwell have predicted the level of stupidity we are at today? He didn't have the Super Computers for Modeling this stuff. Common sense alone would not have let him foresee a day when made-up pronouns are mandated to be used for people who can decide their sex on the fly... without even checking their flies, as a matter of fact. We didn't mind California being called the land of fruits and nuts back in the 60's through 70's when it was just some cults abducting a few nubile women, gay people containing themselves to certain bars and Castro Districts, and Governor Browns and such. The old stuff didn't involve so much coercion as the California stupidity of the present day. The fruits and nuts operated mostly in the private sector. Now, the public
OK, now please watch the video if you have the < 6 minutes. I will admit that the narrator is not my type ... of narrator. (Sure, I'm used to Faith Goldy sorts with their shirts not quite so ... buttoned.) The voice is not excellent for a video, but decent. I've seen a lot worse from male narrators lately, and it's good enough here:
The logic here is impeccable. It'a a reasoned approach and uses the basic principles of what free speech is all about to argue against all this stupidity. That's fine. You've convinced lots of Libertarians and Conservatives who are on (this side of) the fence, lady. However, do any of you people (directed at Prager-U writers and producers) really think the ctrl-left and their Globalist-elite backers give a damn about your reasoning? They want to push this shit to destroy what's left of American traditional culture. They enjoy it even more, the more absolutely stupid it all is. It's a matter of pushing the stupidity in your face and saying "eat this shit or we'll haul you away. We really don't need this shit eaten, but this is gonna show you who's boss here, in the current year." They don't need your steenkeeng logic, lady.
Now, with that said, I am still glad the US Constitution, or what you can make out, out of the shredder, is still ostensibly the Law of the Land. It's not that we're going to be able to keep it effectively the Law of the Land much longer, with our importing of millions of voters yearly who've come from cultures that don't even understand the concepts our Founding Fathers laid down, much less have any inclination to defend the principles over voting tribally.
However, I'll say this: This stuff is worse in formerly-Great formerly-Britain. When the Orwellian laws are drawn up over there, all the Brits can do is argue, but as nothing but skirmishes to cover their continual retreat into a diverse, Socialist, PC hellhole. They have no Constitution to even verbally defend their views to themselves. We have that here. Sure, as I wrote already, the other side DOES NOT CARE. However, we have a line in the sand. Our Founders drew that line. Though most Americans have retreated yards back from our ctrl-left PC bullies over the years, some of us haven't, and we all know where the line still is. Amendment II must be seen as this Line in the Sand. If we let it be crossed, all else is just blustering.
* While writing that post, Full Moonbeam over Sacramento, I really had thought that Jerry Brown was still to be the governor - I found out he'd been replaced in Nov. '18 by the possibly nuttier Gavin Newsome, who was, in fact, sworn in 2 days after my post! Weird.
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Beautiful vs. Ugly Churches
Posted On: Wednesday - April 17th 2019 7:01PM MST
In Topics: Music Curmudgeonry Bible/Religion
Peak Stupidity briefly mentioned the recent loss of much of the original Notre Dame Cathedral. Though not a big appreciator of art myself, I understand how tragic the loss of this beautiful monument of Western Christianity is, having seen the place inside and out about a year back. Along with that work of art, I'd seen some other amazing churches too, most of them in Germany. Honestly, it was the amount of work involved, accomplished in the days before LinkBelts and SnorkLifts, that was the most impressive part to me.
To add to just one of our many curmdudgeonly posts here, and as a follow-up to Modern Church music is not the Rock of Ages, here are some thoughts on churches themselves, as structures, that is. Just a bit of this is discussed in the last paragraph in a Peak Stupidity post on Unitarians, but it was this article, Modern Churches Are Hideous. After Notre Dame, Let’s Start Building Beautiful Churches Again. that got me going. It's by Matt Walsh on the Daily Wire web site that starts off with an anecdote:
My wife and I once walked into a mall in Kentucky only to discover that it was not a mall, but was actually a megachurch. The building looked in every way like a mall and there was, at the time, no religious paraphernalia on the exterior that would have disabused us of this notion. Once inside the structure, the only thing that gave away the game was a young woman in a neon green T-shirt handing out programs. We accepted one politely and promptly left as soon as she turned away.Yeah, it was probably a good decision, as, like I wrote (link above), the music probably sucks too. Mr. Walsh than discussed the beauty of the old churches and the importance of that, along with the difference in that those old churches stand out in the skyline or above a whole town, rather than blending in with the nail salons and title loan joints in a strip mall.
Matt Walsh again:
Is it a church or a rehab center for wealthy drug offenders? I guess we are meant to remain in the dark — and the sermons offered at these places rarely clarify matters. The modern church experience is designed so that you might actually walk into the place, sit through a whole service, and never be quite sure that you attended church at all.I should play the Devil's Advocate here (a perfect use of this idiom, don't you think?) and put in a few points for the little metal "Butler" building with the $2,000 fiberglass steeples* set behind the Best Buy. Listen, not every congregation has the cash to build its own Notre Dame, even with LinkBelts and SnorkLifts, or even a really solid red-brick building. Churches may be in phases of growth and not ready to commit to the long-term location. When it comes down to it, ... wherever 2 or more are gathered in His name... can be a church, even, say, a Home Depot tool shed in the backyard. They're surprisingly roomy, and services can be done with or without the wheelbarrows, used motor-oil bins and riding mower, depending on how the
Even so, to focus on the non-urban churches, where more of religious people reside, in general, how DOES it feel to worship in that strip mall? All the parishioners are going to drive in anyway, these days, so why not put up a nice old-fashioned wood structure, such as the one pictured up top? I am really partial to those kinds. They were everywhere out in the country when I grew up, built usually as a rectangle with two tiny bathroom wings, Men's and Ladies, with a small kitchen at the back, and the sanctuary being the remaining part of the rectangle. Sure, sure, splurge a little and buy yourselves that $2,000 fiberglass steeple*, but I'm not gonna be the pressure-washing committee. Storage can be in the basement, crawl space, or that Home Depot former micro-church in the back.
Lastly, just before that last excerpt from Matt Walsh's nice short article, he mentioned the naming conventions of these modern churches. That strikes a chord with Peak Stupidity additionally, and is right in our wheelhouse with the humor and curmudeonry. Mr. Walsh throws out "Crosspoint" or "New Horizons" or some such thing. Those do sound familiar vs. the once-familiar "New Covenant", "Live Oak Baptist" and more Catholicky "St. Peter's/Matthew's/Mark's/Luke's/John's", "Lady of the Incarnation", "Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Spirit, Northeast Branch" or the "Church of the Sacred Bleeding Heart of Jesus located somewhere in Los Angeles California ..."
Sorry, I couldn't help myself on that one, being a fairly big Stones fan back in the day when this came out, once in a while, on the
It's The Girl with the Faraway Eyes, Mick Jagger's attempt to parody American 1970's country music, which completely backfired, as it's my 4th favorite** song off of that album.***
The Rolling Stones:
Mick Jagger - Vocals, guitar, piano
Keith Richards - Guitar (when out of jail)
Bill Wyman - Bass Guitar
Charlie Watts - Drums
Ronnie Wood - Guitar
* A used 22-footer can be had for $720 on ebay, and a 50-footer for $2,500 (BUY NOW). New ones are made right here in America, in Roanoke, Alabama, NE of Montgomery 10 miles W. of the Georgia border.
** You know, it seems like, in that day, blasphemous songs like The Girl with the Faraway Eyes could be sung, religion could be made fun of (ALL TYPES), yet those who believed would at least be left alone about it. Co-Exist, as they say.
*** That's after Respectable, which REALLY rocks, Before They Make Me Run, and When the Whip Comes Down.
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Comparison of '15/17 US Government Budgets
Posted On: Tuesday - April 16th 2019 8:01PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity US Feral Government Taxes
On the "cruelest day" yesterday, my only fun part about looking over the IRS 1040 tax booklet was taking a look at the budget Income and Outlay pie charts near the back. 2 years back, Peak Stupidity posted Quick glance at the budget from US-Gov crack Green-eyeshade boys. That featured discussion on the financial hole that the US Feral Gov't has been digging for many years, based on the 2015 similar charts. I do appreciate that there was no change in the format. (They consistently seem to leave out any writing along the lines of "pray with us that interest rates never go up", weirdly.)
I'll put them both here for a quick comparison - the changes are fairly small:
(I couldn't include the text at the bottom easily off the on-line book.
The deficit was $665 Billion.)
2015 was a "very good year" with only a $438 Billion difference between the Income and the Outlays. Did I mention that that was on the red side? Is it really anything to celebrate, though, that the hole we've been digging was only increased by 2% versus the 5% seen in worse years? Even stopping the digging won't save us on this, as there's a thing called interest. Interest accumulates even when you've stopped digging, as Chinese bondholders aren't into deferments. In 2017 the US Gov't did not stop digging though, and the deficit was $665 Billion.
I note that the net interest portion of Outlays is still that 6%. A small increase may be covered by the rounding, but either way, it's 6% of a larger pie (the total debt). I'll repeat what I wrote 2 years ago: What if the FED were to let interest rates rise to their natural level (the real market price of money)? Even at a reasonable 7%, this is easily over 3 X the rate the FED sets, meaning interest payments would reach near 20% of the budget outlays. The deficit would have to expand accordingly, as nothing else will ever get seriously cut. The situation would get to the breaking point much faster. So, the FED does what it does, screwing over old ladies, not quite literally, out of a reasonable monthly check to supplement their SS.
The only difference greater than two percentage points between both pie charts for each year is that "Borrowing to Cover Deficit" thing, having gone from 12% of the "Income" to 17% of it in these 2 years. That can't be good for anybody.
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