Inflation by Deflation - building materials version
Posted On: Friday - September 14th 2018 7:39PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Economics Inflation
In our very first economics post, Inflation by Deflation, Peak Stupidity concentrated on Dannon coffee-flavored yogurt (guess I was kinda hungry at the time for 6 OUNCES, dammit) In The Destructive Power of Inflation we mentioned ice cream (also pretty tasty, so ...) In On Inflation, Oil, and Roofing Shingles, however, I wrote that it's difficult for the manufacturers of the major building products to do the same thing, that is, reduce sizes for the same price items in what I'd call cowardice by the marketing people.
Roofers, framers, and other tradesman have worked with certain standard sizes for a long time, and those sizes make for standard methods and structures. Roofing shingles, for example are now made in metric (SI) sizes, but they will only be used with others in those same unit on the roof. It'd be a problem to repair a metric-shingled roof with English unit shingles in 3-foot sections. For either unit stuff, though, were they to be shortened or narrowed by even a little, that would truly make trouble for roofers' calculations. It's still not so bad in their case, as they don't have to really fit with the rest of the building materials. A new roof could be made, but roofers don't like math that much.
Now, let's talk 2 by 4's ... 2 by 6's, 2 by 12's, fried 2 by's, sauteed 2 by's, knotty 2 by's, rotted 2 by's ... [OK, END GUMP NOW! - Ed.] Where do they get the name "two by four"? How would you know, as it's been 3/4 of a century since the cross section of one measured 2 inches x 4 inches? A 2 by 4 cross-section is 1 1/2" x 3 1/2". (No the length in feet is what is written so there's that, at least!) The 1 1/2" width dimension holds for all of this type lumber (through 2 x 12 etc.), while the longer dimension of the cross-section is 1/2" shorter than the nominal. We are now used to that.
BTW, I have read about the "inflation by deflation" of this lumber as having happened in WWII times or so, but I measured lumber in a 60-odd y/o house that is in between. It was either 1 7/8" or 1 3/4", though I believe it was the latter.
The thing is, I figure the corporate marketeers can't change these without big, big problems and pushback. They are used for framing of houses, the heart of residential building. If you reduce the 3 1/2" side even a little, that would mean house wall thickness change. It would make home repairs and upgrades a real bitch. (Yeah, one COULD use thicker drywall to match, but... nah,...). For both dimensions though, especially the 1 1/2" one, building codes would have to reflect these changes, as this would make the bending and buckling calculations built into the codes wrong. Structures would obviously be weaker, but I'll go into that more a bit later. If more "2 by 4's" were needed, at closer spacing, for the same loading, that would wreak havoc on use of the sheathing materials.
Plywood, drywall, paneling, and other sheathing material all come in 4 foot x 8 foot sheets. They can't change that either. That would screw up even new houses, though providing extra work for architects and engineers.
Finally, let's get to the reason I wrote this post - "One by's". Yeah, they haven't been 1" thick since I've been aware of my surroundings, but always 3/4" thick. If you want wood that's 1" thick, you've got to go buy "Five Fourths". That's just getting stupid, when you think about it, but I guess the building supply stores really didn't have another option for a name - "Real One By" lumber would make one wonder about the other stuff. OK, I'm used to 3/4" thick x 1 1/2" wood for use in outdoor table tops, etc. I hadn't had a use for the stuff in for long time, but I bought some recently. It looked a bit thinner, but then I'm a curmudgeon and all, so I should give them the benef...
Look at that fine print! (OK, yeah, I had to reduce it for the blog.) That 0.656" thickness used to be the 0.75" (3/4") dimension! I see even the width is less than 1 1/2" now. The difference in thickness is quite visible, and I measured it to check. Yep! BTW, it's not an odd number, that 0.656", it's just 21/32" - closer to 5/8" than 3/4". This is no small difference. To explain that, let me get to what I promised higher up here. This material will usually be used in a way that loads it in bending (as opposed to axial loading, etc.) As much as I want to get into the formula to explain, this post may have hit the limits of our reader's boredom tolerance already. I'll boil it down to this: In bending the "strength"* goes as the square of that thickness. This new, deflated, stuff has < 77% of the strength in bending as the old stuff. There's your inflation.
Do these marketing bastards really think that nobody will notice this stuff? It's not even the hidden inflation, due to the fact that they were too cowardly to just mark the price up, that perturbs me the most. It's that I've got to rethink what I want to build with, and I can't repair old stuff with the new... oh, maybe they are brighter and more evil than I thought.
* I put "strength" in quotes because that usage is accurate but not technical. Technically, the highest stress in the wood in bending occurs at the outside, it's this stress that goes up inversely with the square of thickness (linear with the other dimension, BTW). We should think of the strength of the material as a property of the stuff, whether, in this case, say yellow pine or poplar. We end up with higher stress in the same strength material which means colloquially "lower strength".
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9/11 - Never Forget?
Posted On: Friday - September 14th 2018 10:35AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity US Police State Anarcho-tyranny
... if it's still business as usual?
Peak Stupidity is up to nearly 100 posts or so related tagged with the Immigration Stupidity topic key. A big, probably more intractable problem of America's immigration stupidity is visa-overstaying. We have harped on this a number of times, most recently in the post The America motel - they can check in, but ....
The Anarcho-tyrannical ridiculousness of Police State America's treatment of Americans vs. foreigners can be seen with its non-immigrant-visa policy or lack thereof. As an American with a blue passport coming into America, or just a driver getting pulled over for rolling through a stop sign, you often get the 3rd degree, and "the law is the law - I have no leeway." Or, try just not filling your Fed income tax form out a few years in a row. Yeah, we have a strict rule of law for American citizens but then don't make any effort to keep track of when foreigners, supposedly visiting for tourism or business, don't make it out of the country on time, if at all. I don't see that the IRS is all over their asses.
Michelle Malkin, one of our favorite pundits with the usual caveat for women, wrote about this topic just the other day in her weekly column. She relates this problem to the 9/11 attack. Now I'm not so certain about the real story, but the 19 Moslem hijackers sure are the Fed-Gov's story, and they are the ones that Americans reckon (haha, the government, haha) should fix things so it never happens again.
If nothing else too complicated, such as idiotic anarcho-tyrannical stuff like TSA strip searches of Americans, at least you'd figure this: Since it's pretty much the sole reason the Fed Gov was formed, for a common defense, you'd figure we'd have secured the entries and exits to the country via:
1) Curtailment of legal entries to the country by people from countries we've pissed off enough to hate our guts (or they naturally do).
2) Control of the borders and ports.
3) Tracking of legal entries and exits by foreigners.
America has let massive numbers of students from Saudi Arabia in to "study" here, many more than before 9/11, and that is true from other Moslem countries too. Number 1 has been a complete failure - hey, "failure" is probably not the right word. Nobody in Big-Gov besides PresidentTrump even brings it up, so it never got started. Number 2 was never implemented, resulting in the election of Donald Trump who's pretty much failed so far. Number 3 is just now being talked/written about, except by your VDare types, and maybe patriotic insiders deep down in the Border Patrol/INS/ICE etc.
Just on the issue number 3, which is not even known about by most Americans, and we are talking 700,000 people overstaying their visas just in 2017! Read the article for more of the numbers. Back to 9/11:
Did you remember that five of the 9/11 hijackers—Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Satam al-Suqami—carried out their killer plot after overstaying their visas, evading detection and avoiding deportation?This was 17 years ago. It's not quite like the reaction to Pearl Harbor by Americans and the Fed-Gov in 1941, is it? No, I don't want more wars; don't get me wrong. What was the point of all that? However, a country has every right to control who resides in it, just ask ... like, every other one that's not in Western Europe. The 3 points above are simply what it would have taken to prevent another 9/11. Mrs. Malkin writes:
Did you remember that other radical Muslim members of the Terrorist Visa Overstayers Club? They include 1997 New York subway bomber Lafi Khalil; 1993 World Trade Center bombers Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh and Eyad Ismoil; 1993 New York landmark bombing plot conspirator Fadil Abdelgani; convicted Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad; and U.S. Capitol bomb plotter Amine El Khalifi, whose visa expired in 1999 and who escaped Homeland Security's notice for 12 years before he was arrested in 2012—just blocks from the Capitol building donning what he thought was a suicide bomb vest.
Did you remember that a year after the jihadist attacks that stole nearly 3,000 innocent lives, the 9/11 Commission urged our government to build a biometric entry-exit program to track and remove visa overstayers—who comprise an estimated 40 percent of the total illegal immigrant population?
For 17 years, America has engaged in a collective ritual every Sept. 11: Hang flags, light candles, bow heads and make vows to "Never forget."I'm not playing their game. Our Feral Gov, or the high-level people at least, tell me I should submit to the Police State, because "Never Forget", while most of them know the simple steps it would take to do this. That just doesn't jive with their ideas to replace the American people with a more subservient and diverse population in order to become the 3rd-world oligarchs of their daydreams. They don't want to take the necessary steps to fix anything, as they don't really care. I'm not going to pretend I care either, every 9/11. That's why I'm writing this on 9/14 - I forgot, and I don't care.
Then, every Sept. 12, it's back to business as usual: See something, do nothing.
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6 Degrees from Kevin Bacon
Posted On: Wednesday - September 12th 2018 7:29PM MST
In Topics: Humor Political Correctness Media Stupidity Race/Genetics ctrl-left
As happens often in the pundit, or any other world, sometimes I think of a humorous association, but another puts it on-line before I get a chance to write. I documented a case of this once before in the Peak Stupidity post "Of course the Russians love their children, you dumb bass player!" regarding a reference to lyrics in a Sting song. This time, a great article by the VDare writer James Kirkpatrick, Unless the GOP Learns to Handle Anti-White Race-Baiting Attacks, It’s Done—and So Is the Historic American Nation (comments here on unz.com) uses the 2-decades(?)-old "6 degrees from Kevin Bacon" meme that I'd thought of already regarding current ctrl-left/PC happenings. I think it's "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon", as Wikipedia says, but that doesn't make as much sense, and "meme" was an unknown word during the Kevin Bacon era - we were more footloose back then and didn't need freakin' memes to get through the day.
Back to VDare and a guy names Darren Beattie, a speechwriter who was fired by President Trump's administration for having appeared at a an H.L.Mencken (a long-ago well-known curmudeonly columnist at the Baltimore Sun newspaper) honorary-club meeting. The guy was fired solely due to the drudging-up of this 2 year-old association with a perfectly decent organization, but one the Lyin' Press feels doesn't support the narrative. On VDare a coupla weeks back, the head of the site/organization, Mr. Peter Brimelow, is featured in this great interview (voice or transcript - but the podcast sound wasn't so good, and you can read a transcript in 20-25% the time of listening). Mr. Brimelow, along with discussing President Trump's leaving Mr. Beattie out to dry, also talks about TV financial pundit, now Trump advisor, Larry Kudlow. Mr. Kudlow was given the 3rd degree by the Lyin Press apparently for having been at his own dinner/birthday party when Peter Brimelow attended (year after year that is, as they were acquaintances and Mr. Brimelow, who is anti-immigration and pro-white-people, was invited).
Do you understand the reason for the site name, Peak Stupidity yet? The ctrl-left is now of the opinion that one's entire past, down, I guess to toddlerhood, is fair game for a "2 minute hate", if one has been associated with any one of "the wrong people" at any point. It's not just about marriage, business partnerships, mafia families, or direct relatives anymore. These associations can be as tenuous as "hey, this Peak Stupidity blogger bought an alternator from a guy at AutoZone whose sister's manicurist's step-dad had two (not just one, but two) employees who's granddaddies rode for the Klan". You can find something on anybody this way, and that gets us to the Kevin Bacon meme.
The point of the Kevin Bacon humorous line was that, per mathematicians versed in set theory, game theory, or some crap where you don't even need to know arithmetic, everyone is related in some way, with ≤ 6 degrees-of-separation from Kevin Bacon*. Why Kevin Bacon? I guess because he was FootLoose, I dunno?!
This association via 6 or more degrees means that everyone is fair game for a struggle-session from the Lyin' Press or anyone of the ctrl-left. They can get you on anything, even if you've been living in the backwoods of Fennario for most of your life. Now if you were raised by (Dire) Wolves from the get-go, then maybe they may have to back off a bit, but that's only due to fear, and the incorrigible political-incorrectness of wolves.
What can we same people do to fight this latest tactic of the ctrl-left. As usual, KISS, as in, Keep It Simple Stupid, is the mantra to follow: "We found out that your Dad employed a lawn boy whose brother's TV repairman's great-great-grand-father-in-law was THE Grand Wizard of the tri-states Ku Klux Klan, a guy named Kevin Bacon, coincidentally. What do you have to say to us about that?! The public demands an apology.". "Fuck you." KISS, remember.
In the case of Mr. Kudlow, he seems to have somewhat denied Peter Brimelow ("denied" as per a different Peter in the New Testament sense), though I'm not sure if he waited until after sunset, so there's that. Mr. Brimelow was very diplomatic and understanding of his former host in the article.
Now, see, I've got an idea from this. It's better than the 2-word solution recommended above, even. If you are a Peter Brimelow or anyone else who the Lyin Press and ctrl-left have a problem with, you are really at kind of an advantage. Let's make lemons into lemonade, people. (I believe there's an Alinsky Rules for Radicals rule on this one too, but it's just turned around to fit with the vicious way the left thinks - "Let no crisis go to waste", that's their ticket.) Mr. Brimelow now can attend, invited or not-invited, the birthday party of anyone he doesn't like and effortlessly put the kibosh on his career prospects. He can ruin the careers of whole sets of party-goers, warehouse employees, softball teams, stoners, and so on, just by attending, working, pitching, and toking respectively.
What power Peter Brimelow now has! At this point, Peak Stupidity can only dream of this magic power to destroy people by showing up. It's the sort of power that could defeat Superman, Spiderman, and the Incredible Hulk, all together, not to mention the Karate Kid. Trade in your Kryptonite for the power of the hated. You can help get Peak Stupidity on the road to attaining this power by at least supporting us in our quest to be added to the HATELIST, for the price of a single double-cappuccino grande whipped latte a day, with extra whip cream ...
You must remember now, Mr. Brimelow: With great power comes great responsibility.
- Connor Sun Tzu, Poontang Dynasty
* OK, at least if you are in the movie business, per the fairly interesting Wiki page. You may need to go to 7 if you know someone in the movie "BIZ", but I really doubt even that.
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Peak Oil
Posted On: Tuesday - September 11th 2018 8:16PM MST
In Topics: Economics
The post on inflation of building materials was leading me to write just a bit about "Peak Oil". I should, then, if nothing else, because our website name uses a take-off on that term as its meme. Peak Oil, as a concept, peaked out around 10 years ago, when oil had peaked and the gone way down.
There were a few parts to the theory. One is about the question of reserves and lack of big new finds of crude oil. That is something for the geologists to argue, and I'm not one of them, along with the concept of abiotic oil (i.e. whether you - the earth that is - need dead organic matter to make the stuff). Another was the fact that oil is getting more expensive to obtain - they'll be no point when it comes down toward needing one barrel of oil to extract one barrel, of course. This is still somewhat arguable, as if you have other cheap, NON-TRANSPORTABLE sources of energy for oil extraction, if the equivalent in energy of a barrel of oil can produce one barrel of crude there still may be a point.
That brings me directly to the next part of the peak oil theory. People need transportation, and the economy itself does (think of transportation of those building materials, along with everything else). Oil-based fuel has been the best thing going for a century now. Peak Oil assumes that will remain the case. In transportation, you must bring all the energy you need with you, so you need an intense form of energy storage like the chemical energy in gasoline and diesel. The "lower heating value" (a technical term I don't want to explain here) of gasoline is 115,000 BTU/gallon, or to mix the units (for better understanding, though) about 35 kW-hours/gallon. I used mixed units so the reader can compare this form of energy to electricity, as measured by the meter and seen on your bill. If used efficiently, that gallon could power a decent-sized house air-conditioning unit for the day. Even today, batteries can't come close to this amount of storage. Peak Oil was the big thing 10 years back, and batteries were worse then.
However, innovations can really change the whole direction of the economy sometimes, and maybe battery technology will be one such innovation. Can batteries compete with gasoline and diesel? There's no theory that says they can't, as gasoline if just made of a bunch of molecules that react (via combustion in this case) to release energy. If one could make even a single use battery that used a chemical reaction that released that much energy per unit mass, it'd be a hit. Granted, the point of a battery is to not release that energy in an explosion (though it's been known to happen!) In gasoline these explosions happen in the cylinders. We'd rather have a steady controlled reaction, such as in batteries. With the complicated engineered designs to make this happen, we end up with batteries that are too expensive to be single use, but luckily they aren't. If we could carry a high-energy-density source with us, then that energy could be obtained for charging from any source, abundant coal, nuclear, solar or whatever, yet the peak oil worries assume oil is absolutely necessary for transportation.
Many detractors of Peak Oil would, or may still, bring up the point that innovations will eliminate the need for all this energy period. I think that is where the Peak Oilers bring up a very important concept that I am convinced of. You need the energy, no matter how advanced your economy. Robots may be picking crops, building cars and houses, doing it all, but the energy to move things, dig to extract materials from ground, manufacture parts, etc. can not be reduced. You can get more efficient but the 1st law of thermodynamics kicks in. Anything that takes work, as defined by physics, dissipates energy. There's no getting around this one. Going back to the point of the last paragraph, though, if it weren't for that pesky important transportation usage dependence on oil, all this energy could be obtained from any source
It may be easy in hindsight, or maybe still not be, to discount the people who promoted the view that big economic problems were/are on the way due to Peak Oil. Things didn't look so good a decade ago, with the high prices discussed in the gasoline-inflation posts here and here. Other than the fracking techniques, a great boon to American energy independence, but probably not a long-term solution, there's not been anything, such as big new finds, to prove the Peak Oilers wrong on the one part of their theory, that we are slowly running out. However, if energy storage in the transportation field can compete with fuels made from crude, maybe the prices won't shoot up again, enough to crank back up the Peak Oil websites and worries. In the meantime, inflation, the topic we've been on about for a couple of weeks running, is still heavily dependent on the price of oil.
OK, Peak Stupidity does not intend to be a kinder, gentler Zerohedge.com, so we'll have to get off this inflation topic pretty soon. They'll be just one or two more, hopefully interspersed with the harder-core varieties of stupid. No, we'll never run out!
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Send in your payment - STAT! (more doctor stories)
Posted On: Saturday - September 8th 2018 8:41AM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Movies China Healthcare Stupidity
oh, put Dr. Gupta on the sign-in log, will ya, honey?
In a continuation of some of Peak Stupidity's Doctor humor (see here and here), I'd like to talk billing, if I may. We've got lots more we can say in derision of the healthcare system in America, but it's not anything about the doctors, just the Socialism (to compare to "RED" China, read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of our personal expose of free-market (gasp!!) health-care in the Middle (or mid-lattitude, far-east) Kingdom).
A larger doctor's clinic can easily have 20% of its employees just involved in billing. If it weren't for our government-regulated disaster of a system, these decently-paid people could actually be doing something constructive, not like this:
I had been involved in a minor accident and was not on any sort of health plan. I'd paid most of the bills I'd gotten (not too bad in those days) within a couple of months. That's when I got another bill, this one for radiology work. It wasn't bogus; I'd gotten x-rayed and a radiologist had to look at the pictures. My problem was that this bill had big red bars on either side and told me "THIS IS OUR LAST WARNING! YOU MUST MAKE A FULL PAYMENT BY JUNE 18TH OR BLAH! BLAH! DEADBEAT BASTARD!" (I may not have remembered the exact wording from 2 decades back.). This was the first I'd heard about it, that was my problem with it. I'd gotten a number of other bills, but nothing from this office until this nastygram. Now, keep in mind that this was a while back, to before much of the Artificial Stupidity, hence I was able to get a live person at the hospital who got a live doctor on the phone, who I'm sure thought it was more important than what I was about to say.
"Hey is this Doctor Freeman (I couldn't tell you the real name if I wanted to, due to my memory), this is [the Peak Stupidity lead blogger] (also, not a real name)." "Yeah, I don't know you. What's up?" "Man, I got this $220 bill for radiology from you. I'm gonna pay it, but you're acting like I'm some kind of deadbeat. It's telling me you're about to call a collection agency. It's the only thing I've ever gotten. This is the first I've heard about it." "Oh, see that's not me. I've got a billing office that does this stuff." "OK, well tell them to get their shit together and lighten up on the threats." "Uhh, yeah, I'll try to get them to do better." [Hangs up, thinking "who keeps transferring these calls?"]I do hope he wasn't in the middle of something, but he's the boss of it all.
It can get worse than that in this screwy non-customer-oriented "industry". With the big confusion on who actually pays for what, the customer does not often bargain, or even care, about the financial aspect of any service rendered. Sometime you do though. You may wonder about the extreme prices on these bills. (Did I explain the part where you're paying for illegal aliens too? That's part of it.) You may get harrased for no good reason like me, and take it maybe too personally. Have you thought, even, about whether you've been billed for services never even rendered at all? Did you remember all the doctors, general and specialist, that you saw at the hospital, or let me say "saw you"?
This is not a real phone call of mine, but it could very well be someday:
“Hey, it says I owe 400 bucks for treatment by a Neurologist named Gupta. I never saw the guy!”In China, it's very possible that you could call a prostitute to come to your hospital room after hours to render a service of some sort. Yes, it is a freer country in some ways. I also could believe you may get a bill for one who never took off her skimpy nurse uniform or panties, nor even came in the front door of the hospital. Because cash is king over there, you'd probably not be liable, but can you imagine the bill:
“Sir, calm down. Dr. Gupta saw you on the afternoon of the 9th, while you were still under. That’s why you didn’t see him. He assessed you.”
“Assessed, my Ass! How do I really know this Dr. Gupta did anything?”
“Sir, he assessed your torso. Trust me, the computer says Dr. Gupta wasin the area playing 18 holesthere. We can come up with a payment plan, if that’s the problem.”
“Oh, yeah, you can send me .jpegs, or send this bill to the collection agency, your choice!”
1) Nitro (2 mg) - 120 元
2) Defibrillation (10 min) - 85 元
3) Medical O2 ( 100 litres) - 150 元
4) Shenzen number 4 prostitute (2 min, 18 sec) - 1100 元
5) Number 8, "Spicy Taiwan Beef" (2 portions) - 22 元
(Patient discharged on the 18th with all vital signs trending up.)
This Suicide is Painless scene is from the 1972 movie M*A*S*H*, not the considerably lamer successful 1970's TV show, adapted from the movie. In the show, this song, a nice tune, is just a 1 min or so instrumental, as the intro.
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
Posted On: Friday - September 7th 2018 8:55PM MST
In Topics: Music Movies
The networking algorithms that youtube uses are pretty amazing, I've got to admit. I'm not sure if "networking" is the right term, but I mean the software that makes picks of videos that relate to the one being viewed (and seen on the right margin. As I listened to She's so High, youtube displyed this next one in the margin. It so happened that I had been thinking of this one right just as I had been trying to remember enough of the last song to look it up. It turns out it was from a few years earlier. I don't like being mind-read like that, but all it really is is a big database relating the connections in youtube viewers' heads, with enough data to try to reproduce those connections for viewers.
The song is Breakfast at Tiffany's by a band called Deep Blue Something. As far as I know, it's the only song by that band I've ever heard, and it's been a long while. The guy doesn't have a really strong voice, but it's just a very decent tune:
You say that we've got nothing in common,
no common ground to start from
and we're falling apart.
You'll say the world has come between us.
Our lives have come between us.
Still I know you just don't care.
Chorus:
And I said what about "Breakfast at Tiffany's?
She said, "I think I remember the film,
and as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it. "
And I said, "Well, that's the one thing we've got."
Breakfast at Tiffany's is a 1961 movie starring Audrey Hepburn as the famous-named character Holly Golightly and Goerge Peppard as Paul Varjak, with Tiffany's being a big and famous Manhattan, NYC jewelry store. The movie is not Peak Stupidity material, so no review here, besides, don't pay good money for it, but it has a great song of its own in it. That would be Moon River, which, unfortunately, I'd first heard sung by "Edith Bunker" in an old episode of All in the Family. (Do you know the introduction song of that show? She sings like that, as a joke.)
This is the original from the movie, back when some actresses were taught to be singers, I guess, because Audrey Hepburn doesn't have a strong voice either, come to listen to this again. It's another very good melody though, written by a guy named Frank Ocean. BTW, don't let the hair in the video pic. fool you, Audrey Hepburn looks pretty hot in the movie.
Moon river, wider than a mile,
crossin' in style someday.
My dream maker,
heartbreaker,
wherever you're going I'm going the same.
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On Inflation, Oil, and Roofing Shingles
Posted On: Friday - September 7th 2018 10:13AM MST
In Topics: Economics Inflation
If it takes 50 posts, by gosh, Peak Stupidity will cover this topic of inflation, with a 30-year guarantee, or until peak stupidity, whichever comes first. The roofing shingles above, not usually a topic of political blog discussion, bring up 3 points here related to the topic of inflation that I've been pounding on for weeks now.
This could have been inserted back into the post Real life inflation anecdotal-data(?) from a week back. I had just forgotten to, as I wrote the paragraph about lumber prices. Here is another building material for which I have an even better memory of the price. Roofing shingles are sold in bundles of 29 3 ' x 1 ' sheets of the 3-tab type. 3 bundles make what roofers call a "square". It's one of those terms that is not very precise but just grew out of the industry, so you just use it. What one "square" is, is enough to cover an even 100 ft2. That makes calculations pretty easy. Got 3,000 ft2 accounting for slopes, overhang, ridges, valleys, and scrap on a medium-sized house (maybe only a 2,200 ft2 house, as far as plan area)? You need 30 squares, hence 90 bundles.* "That was easy." Nah, not totally because the math sounds way off - that 29 shingles/bundle x 3 ft2/shingle x 3 bundles = 261 ft2. Don't forget overlap. I'd always though overlap was about 50%, but it must be more like 60% - it's been a while.
OK, this is not a roofing blog, so let me get to my point - the inflation. I'd done a project in the mid-'90's, and then another almost-same-sized one in the later '90's. The price may have changed 50 ¢ or so, but it was somewhere around $6.50 per bundle. I seem to recall a price right at $6.66, in fact. That is cool not as a reference to the AntiChrist. (I just somehow can't see the AntiChrist coming from a roofing background.), more just that it made the calculations even easier - $20/square - meaning $20/ 100 ft2 of roof covered. Things were really cheap then, as when I anticipated a roof job coming about 18 years later, for which I would spring for materials, I took a look around and was aghast at prices 3 - 4 times higher. Now the 1990's work was pretty much before the "architectural" style came along, but I'll compare apples to apples, just the plain stuff which can still be obtained. It's now about $22 per BUNDLE, not SQUARE (3 bundles), on the plain stuff. That's 7% annual inflation on this building product, that is a widely used in a big industry. You've got to replace the roof more than you replace the lumber.
As I was buying the roofing materials, a friend and I were agreeing with the fact that one would expect it to go up in concert with oil prices. The stuff is mostly made of asphalt (with some inexpensive gravel in there). Let's just look at the crude oil by-the-barrel price on the 1st oil-price post (red curve). Just do an eyeball smoothing of the mid-'90's numbers and then one of the 2012 +/- coupla years period. $18/barrel up to about $70/barrel is an increase of near 4 times. How interesting! Yeah, I'm glad something makes sense. These shingles, along with lots of building materials (lumber, brick, and especially low-cost products like cinder blocks) also cost a lot to transport. Well, sure enough, when oil goes up, transportation costs go up. This is why oil is and has been such an important part of the economy. Will it be in the future though? (uhh-oh, I see a Peak Oil post coming ...)
Besides my excellent memory of the prices of this fairly unchanged product (non-architectural roofing shingles) and the point about oil being a major part of the economy, hence its price being very important, I had a 3rd point I'd wanted to mention. Roofing shingles are made a certain size that is pretty constrained. This makes it harder for Owens Corning to skimp on the size, as is done for food products, such as yogurt and ice cream. Change them from 3' x 1 ' to 2.75' x 11 " and you're really gonna piss off some builders and DIYers. Lumber has that same "problem" (a feature for most of us) too, to some degree - they can't change 2 x 4's right now without creating a lot of havoc, but that won't stop Big-Biz from trying this surreptitious style of inflation as much as they can (more on this coming.)
* If I have any female readers left by this point, I'd be amazed. Since there are only guys reading from hereon in the post, I will alert you to an upcoming post with a Chinese "cyborg-girl" with big tits. Don't lose this URL!
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Is Sarah Jeong of the NY Times tweetworthy?
Posted On: Thursday - September 6th 2018 2:16PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Media Stupidity Race/Genetics ctrl-left Female Stupidity
Though the Peak Stupidity blog may not catch up on the tweets from one idiot to another, excuse me, current events, in much of a timely manner, this writer did read about the lady in the above pic, and her racist tweets, and the uproar, or lack-thereof, therefrom (I used to be pre-law) a month back. Steve Sailer, at his iSteve blog on unz.com gets on a compulsive roll sometimes (kinda like PS with inflation lately, huh?). He had a series of posts on Miss Jeong, of which this, this, and this are just 3 for starters. (There are at least 3 more - scroll towards 08/02 - 08/04 here.) Mr. Fred Reed* had a fairly good column too, called Cruelty Legitimized. NYT Hires from Caligula’s Basement.. I just don't see a reason to be particularly timely on this. I've got my thoughts though, so here goes:
Yes, Sarah Jeong is this (occasionally) purple-haired ethnic-Korean SJW type who had recently tweeted a series of "I hate white people..." statements that would have caused a white man to go straight to jail or at least get fired, if he'd said the same about purple-haired Korean "gals". I don't really give a damn what the lady tweets. None of this seems to appear in my inbox, my real mailbox, or anywhere else I'm supposed to see it at. It's not a problem for me in that sense.
I don't think it would be a problem for those writers/commenters that I've read on the subject either, but for the fact that Miss Jeong is a writer for the NY Times. "Nobody's got a gun to your head, forcing you to read that rag..." many would say, including Peak Stupidity. However, it's the hypocrisy that has got many upset about this woman's stupidity. She did not get fired from her employer, the NYT, even with this obvious record of "hate" speech (hey, I don't agree with the whole concept; that's why the quotes). That's still the NY Time's business, not mine. The hypocrisy is the guaranteed outrage that the NY Times would have if the situation would have been reversed. Even a dog-catcher, had he tweeted blanket anti-Korean Heets (hate-tweets) of this kind, would have been HOUNDED (I swear I didn't even have to work on that!) out of his job, assuming dog-catching is still a job somewheres.
It's not just hypocrisy that's the problem though. It's the cowardice and stupidity of those that are in the right on the subject of free speech. As an example from ~ 5 years back, you've got your supposedly conservative magazine, The National Review, that fired the excellent writer John Derbyshire for writing a checklist type of column (called The Talk as just advise to family members to avoid being hurt by black thugs. It was a perfectly civil response to some black writer's ass-backwards imbecility in writing something about what black people have to be afraid of from whites, and therefore to avoid them. (yeah, right!!). Was The National Review editor just stupid or more like cowardly? I think it was a bit of both. He was stupid enough to think that Mr. Derbyshire's article didn't belong in his "conservative" publication, but also his cowardice made him fire the man in order to avert the anticipated heat coming down... from, say, the NY Times. The ctrl-left plays hard-ball on the dirt, while the conservatives play whiffle ball on rubber mats. That's why we've got Sarah Jeongs out there spouting anti-white tweets while being gainfully employed by the "paper of record".
There's an immigration aspect to this too, and that's lots of what has angered the folks on the right. This girl was born in America, seems to hate the place, yet doesn't seem to want to go back. If I happened by strange, missionary, or diplomatic circumstances to have been born in China, I can't see myself going around the place writing and talking about how I hate the slanty-eyed Chinamen (and slim-figured Chinawomen), without also seeing myself in a musty non-wifi-enabled dungeon in downtown Peking... if I were lucky! The woman has a lot of gall, I'll give her that ... and stupidity, perhaps in equal amounts.
Lots of the time, when it's women writers coming out with this stuff, it really has nothing to do with any problems she's got with the (for-now still) majority population of her adoptive country. It may have nothing to do with politics. You've seen this business before if you know any women, period (or, for that matter, know any women's periods). It's not just these writers and tweeters. Lots of times with women, the anger is about something TOTALLY unrelated that you'll only begin to hear about after 5 hours of argument, over the course of a week, if you're lucky! Imagine the same deal done via twitter, and you've got one Sarah Jeong. Sarah Jeong, per the articles and comments I've read, liked the white guys romantically. She got dumped at least once, and nobody really likes that. Is that what this brewhaha is all about? Isn't that why we shouldn't care what women think or write on politics, at least women younger than 55. [Editor - when does menopause start and how old is Ann Coulter? STAT!]
Let me put it this way, as a couple of pictures are worth a couple of thousand words, right, and I'm only at a few hundred: Would you receive Miss Jeong's type of tweets from the girl below?:
I don't know who she is, but she's pretty damn tweetable.
* Of course, Mr. Reed had to get his digs in against Americans from his bug-out locale. Hey, he's right on the point that most Mexican women are less feminist-brainwashed than American women, but the Americans aren't all Sarah Jeongs either, and, is Sarah Jeong an American anyway? More on Fred Reed. I'm getting sick of him.
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She's so high ... Tal Bachman
Posted On: Tuesday - September 4th 2018 7:46PM MST
In Topics: Music
Peak Stupidity could put "boomer" music up every day of the week and we wouldn't run out until well after peak stupidity, believe you me. I use that generational appellation kind of in jest, as some of the young people like to pigeon-hole (now, see, there's a boomer expression) everyone within a, what, 25-year age range? It's not like I've never done that - see Are the millennials Retarded?. Yeah, OK, it's tempting to generalize, but one thing the millenials can't say is that boomer music sucks, such as we can about the worthlessness of today's Billboard top 100 (what? Billboard doesn't exist anymore? But, but, Kasey Kasem said ...")
Nobody can come on here (on the comments perhaps) and tell us that the previous generations didn't make great rock music - listen to Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, ElO's Time, Billy Joel's The Stranger, or 10,000 other albums and go ahead and write back in the comments (PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO START COMMENTS WITH "PS" IN CAPS for spam control.)
Occasionally, though, something really good gets through from more recent times. In the store, I heard some song with a male high-pitched part that reminded me, and got me struggling to remember this song, as I probably hadn't heard it since it was big in 1999. "like Marlon Brando... something, something... and Aphrodite ..." It took 10 minutes to accumulate enough out of the brain registers to look up "she's so high song", and I GOT IT! This is a good one from one Talmage Charles Robert "Tal" Bachman, a Canadian. I had no memory of that name at all. It turns out this guy is the son of Randy Bachman from both The Guess Who and later Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Here's She's so High from Tal Bachman:
"She's blood, flesh and bone,
no tucks or silicone.
She's touch, smell, sight, taste and sound.
But somehow I can't believe
That anything should happen.
I know where I belong,
and nothing's gonna happen.
Yeah, yeah
[Chorus:]:
'Cause she's so high...
high above me, she's so lovely.
She's so high...
like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, or Aphrodite.
She's so high...
high above me.
First class and fancy free,
she's high society.
She's got the best of everything.
What could a guy like me
ever really offer?
She's perfect as she can be.
Why should I even bother?
[Chorus]
She comes to speak to me.
I freeze immediately.
'cause what she says sounds so unreal.
'Cause somehow I can't believe
that anything should happen.
I know where I belong
and nothing's gonna happen.
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah"
[Chorus]
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Government and Big Time
Posted On: Tuesday - September 4th 2018 10:43AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Globalists China Geography
That's not "the big time", but Big Time, like Big Gov, Big Ed, Big Biz etcetra...
Jean-Claude Juncker, titular* head of the European Union (not shown above, might might as well be) has come out with a proposal. The EU, he says (some Irish news web site), should stay on Daylight time, with no "falling back" and "springing forward". That's probably a good idea, in my opinion to be presented in a bit here, but part of that opinion is that it really should be none of Commissioner Junker's business. This one is just a small thing, but it's just very ironic that Commissioner Junker noted how "we carried out survey ..." and then "I will recommend to the commission that, if you ask the citizens then you have to do what the citizens say."
Oh, yeah, Junker, did you do a survey on submitting to foreign invasion from Africa and the Middle East? How about a survey on whether nations can opt out easily from your bureaucratic, domineering EU shitshow? I have not seen the results of such surveys, as of press time. You Euroweenies in Brussels have a lot of damn gall with this "ask the citizens" bit on Daylight Savings Time. It's not quite the big, existential question for the European people as is their replacement by people of the 3rd world. I believe this is tiny tidbit from the masters to the common dogs under EU control to make them believe that "You are the EU".
Yeaaaahhh! [/Cosmo Kramer]
With that initial rant over with, let me discuss this issue for a bit, as something completely different from our normal stupidity coverage, and than segue back to another rant. I got on this subject from Steve Sailer here on unz and the comments thereunder have a good discussion of the pros and cons for different locations (latitudes and longitudes and cultural aspects). Even in the same country, with the same official "hours", people are different. Some people can't get up when it's dark. Some can't sleep when it's still light. Yeah, I GET THAT!
However, no matter what you do with the clocks, nobody is gaining or losing any daylight – we all know that, I hope. The Daylight Savings Time program that was implemented during WWII in the US was done for energy savings, having to do with the "burning" of lights in the evenings. There was rationing and shortages even in the good old US during those years, and the start of a program like this in the still-very-free US shows that indeed, war is the health of the state. Without a big war going on, Americans during the 1940's would have rightly figured "why are our daily schedules any business of the Feral Gov?" Nowadays, energy usage is different in so many ways. Though people may try to frame the DST/Standard Time program as a savings in some way, I'd sure like to see the massive calculations, which would change drastically with location.
I won't get into the details, lots of which are discussed in that Sailer post's comments. I do want to bring up China though: China has one time zone. As discussed some in A tale of 2 Countries (for picking blackberries), that country is not really as wide East-West as you might imagine from the maps, as most everyone is in the eastern 60% – the rest is Tibet and Xinjiang(?), which is just desolate mountains and high desert.
Having only one time zone to encompass a big country** is not some great idea or doing anything magical or smart. It may work well for airline schedules and the like. As far as daily life though, if you live in Chengdu, fairly far west, you’re not gonna start work at 8A when the sun doesn’t come up until 9:30. People and business will make the hours fit the human body. That means people still have to keep track of different hours of people in places that are far apart in longitude when doing business.
There’s no perfect way on this. That’s why we have our retard phones to tell us what time it is along with when our facebook friends had their last bowel movements.
As far as the semi-annual switching goes, why should the government be let to run your life like this, getting you running around the house switching the clocks? It’s a lot more trouble than that (as a computer-type in the comments already wrote) for software, airline scheduling, payroll departments, etc.
If people in Seattle, let’s say, want to have more daylight in the morning in winter for the safety of the school kids, then they can change the school schedule whatever date they want and switch it back whatever date they want. If I run a softball league, I can make the games start earlier in the late fall. You don’t have to go switching the “official” time – just change your schedules to suit the sun and the needs of your students, employees, or softball players.
What is so bad about letting people make their own decisions about when to get up? No, it seems to be all "the government needs to …" and "the government shouldn’t do …" The government doesn't need to do squat. We are intelligent humanoids and can figure out when TF to wake up and go to sleep and what the best schedule for our businesses and leisure activities should be. Don’t let the Feral Government live rent-free in your heads, people! They already steal 2 to 4 hours of the fruits of your daily labor, whether it’s daylight or standard time.
* Peak Stupidity has not had the resources to actually look up that word, but we like the sound of it. We'll try to use it as often as it is appropriate.
** BUT, BUT, CHILE! No, I can't argue with that. It's almost like Simon Bolivar, the guy who made up most of the countries down there, wanted to make at least one place where people would have no excuse for not being on time. Yeah, I know, that's not gonna stop them down there. (OK, I do get the Pacific Ocean/Andes natural borders thing too. It worked out great for the Chileans.)
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Massachusetts Republican invokes Alinsky Rule # 4 - Hilarity ensues
Posted On: Saturday - September 1st 2018 5:20PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Humor ctrl-left
This story out of the Massachusetts legislature a couple of weeks back is nothing world-changing, but it's humorous, heartening, and could be a good lesson for some of you would-be conservative radicals out there. Yes, indeed you CAN be a radical though you are a conservative. Actually, being a real conservative MAKES YOU a radical in this time of Peak Stupidity.
You can see those rules up there at the top. I've never wanted to get into the sick minds of the ctrl-left, Commies, and other scum of that sort, so I don't read this stuff. It's just that, as mentioned at the end of our 6-part series There's Battle Lines Being Drawn. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6), getting our way will involve standing up and sticking together, not necessarily requiring Alinsky's rules.
Rule # 4 though, "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.", does apply to the actions of one Republican (yes, there's at least one) MA State-house member, as documented by a sympathetic radio talk show host. The law being voted on was a silly one about allowing various flavors of gender as options on one's Mass driver's license. It's not the bureaucracy of it, or any real worries about this that are the problem. The problem with deals like this is that they are the ctrl-left's way of demonstrating that conservatives have no say in the world and must put up with the stupidest shit, "because we say so." They want to rub it in your face. That's how confident the ctrl-left is at this point in their work of destroying American society.
The writer of this LifeSiteNews article is a guy named Calvin Freiburger. At his first description of the Massachusetts government, he sounds hard-left, but it's not the case. He does a nice fair job with this story:
BOSTON, August 16, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Legislation to add a “Gender X” option to driver’s license should have been a straightforward task in the far-left state of Massachusetts, but one Republican lawmaker managed to derail the bill by taking transgender ideology to its furthest extreme.Turning a milestone into a millstone - that should be one of Peak Stupidity's rules for Antistu radicals, with a hat-tip to radio host Howie Carr and the good MA-senator Jim Lyons, of course. You see, it turns out there are 70-odd flavors of genders, more than twice the number of Baskin-Robbins ice cream flavors, and more than a full-spectrum box of Crayola crayons (you know, the ones that used to have little crayon sharpeners built in - now that was cool!) This Mass-congressman, Mr. Lyons is a smart cookie, and seems to have taken to heart, or come up with independently, Rule # 4 above. Let's give these D-ctrl-left assholes what they want, good and hard. We need to put all of these 70-odd genders in the bill... uhhh, but it may take a while. ;-}
The state Senate voted in June to approve the measure, which would have also extended the option to learner’s permits and state identification cards. No documentation would have been required to prove an applicant is neither male nor female. “It’s a milestone, bill sponsor Sen. Karen Spilka, a Democrat, said at the time.
Despite the state House of Representatives being just as heavily Democratic as the Senate, however, it never got the chance to send the bill to liberal Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk.
“Since all Democrats must admit that the number of genders is endless, how dare the commonwealth lump all the new genders together as ‘Gender X’?” Carr writes, summarizing Lyons’ facetious reasoning. “Every gender, he declared, must be listed on Massachusetts driver’s licenses! That was Lyons’ non-negotiable demand. No justice, no peace.”
Lyons told Carr he settled on demanding recognition for 73 different “genders,” as that was the number he reached by tallying the number of custom gender options Facebook offers.
Knowing that his liberal colleagues couldn’t rule any of the genders out of order without undermining the logic of transgender ideology, Lyons introduced each as a separate amendment to the bill the evening of July 31, each requiring 10 minutes of debate and three minutes to vote on.Hahaha, I LOLed at the "6 hours in" part, for some reason. The "running out the clock" part is humorous too, but that is standard practice. These places of lawmaking are not quite what you had imagined upon finishing your Citizenship-in-the-nation merit badge.
“Number 6 added as a gender ‘cis.’ Amendment 9 — cis female, 13 — cis woman, 14 — cisgender female, 18 — cisgender woman,” Carr details. “Amendment 21 — gender fluid, 22 gender non-conforming, 23 gender questioning, 25 gender variant, 26 genderqueer.”
Six hours in Lyons had only filed 35 of the amendments, at which point House leadership realized he was running out the clock and there wasn’t enough time before the midnight deadline to pass both the bill and the other legislation on the docket. At 10:45 p.m., they withdrew the bill.
“By now, the few remaining sane Democrats in the Legislature realized that Lyons had done them a solid, sparing them from being recorded on a roll call vote on whether to recognize the genders of pangender, polygender and cisgender,” Carr wrote, “not to mention intersex, intersex man, intersex woman and intersex person.”LOL, AGAIN! I really like this guy Howie Carr too. Hell, that was 1/2 the article already, but one more piece:
"One way or another, progressivism is always a death sentence. So we may as well turn it around and use it on its perpetrators whenever we get the chance,” Conservative Review’s Steve Deace said of the incident. “That doesn’t mean becoming like them, but understanding their con and endlessly harassing them with its real-world applications.”Yep, "becoming like them" is not necessary. However, we just can't all be Mr. Pat Buchanans (bless his heart) as far as civility goes. The other side does not play along.
Please read the whole article, if you've got a couple of minutes. It will lift your spirits.
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Recent history of gasoline prices - Part 2
Posted On: Saturday - September 1st 2018 4:28PM MST
In Topics: History Economics Inflation
(... continued directly from previous post.)
Early 1980's steady decline: It was a man named Paul Volcker, who had been appointed to as President of the FED by President Carter who is the one responsible for getting inflation, including that in oil prices under control. Keep in mind, the FED and removal of dollar from the gold standard are the CAUSES of inflation. Peak Stupidity has no love for the FED. It's just that Mr. Volcker forced or let interest rates go way up to their natural level for the high inflation. This was what slowly and surely brought inflation down through the 1980's.
I first saw gasoline prices get down below a dollar on a trip to Florida where it's cheap (low taxes and possibly good distribution). That was in 1982.
Mid-1980's through End-of-1990's stability: This is one discrepancy between the graph above and my memory. It wasn't just my location as I started to to get around, everywhere. Gasoline stayed stable below a dollar for a decade and a half, with a slight bump during the Gulf War year 1990-1991. I was on a long drive headed across west Texas. You don't just wait until 1/8 of a tank to pull in for a fill-up in the desert. As I pulled up, I saw $1.15 or so. OMG! (We didn't write it like that then.) That was a bad spot, I figured and got 3 or 4 gallons just to get me to a more reasonable spot for gas. Well, the next one 100 miles away was higher than that! What I hadn't think about, until then, was that prices were rising not with location, but time. This was during the build-up to war in the Middle East, and prices were rising faster than I could drive! ... or something like that.
Anecdote aside, this period was in general one of very stable prices, Inflation slowly headed down toward a very low (REAL) number by the mid-'90's, something I'll discuss more in a post about inflation and China. I don't think there was a reason to talk about the politics behind oil production for that long while, with that Gulf War exception.
Early 2000's big steady rise: It was not until 1998 when I bought gas above one dollar again, and that was in an expensive location. From then on, it just kept on a slow, steady rise, going through 2 bucks by 2005 or so, then through $3, $4, sky's the limit on through 2008. The graphs are off on this too. I was there in summer of 2008 when, even in my fairly low-cost locale, you felt like you were stealing gas when the sign showed $4.19 (and don't forget the 0.9¢!). California had prices over $5. Is it that the graphs show prices before tax? That'd explain things.
2008 price crash: When the price crashed down from over $4 to $1.70 or so, I told a friend about my idea about his brother (a trucker) buying one of those 8,000 gallon transport trailers just to store us a bunch. I knew (but was wrong) that it would bump right back up to >$3 soon enough. Well, yeah, there's stabilizer, care of the trailer for later sale.... nah, but it was a thought though.
2010's era of stability: We've had it pretty good. With the exception of a decent bump-up in 2012, I've seen the gas between $2.15 and $2.65 for years now.
I have only one important point to make after all this possibly mind-numbing memory dump. Remember that I wrote in the last post that one could get a gallon of gasoline for 2 or 3 silver dimes, well for 2 or 3 of ANY dimes. Now, if one ran into a counter-clerk inside the station who a) could speak English and b) understands the value of real money,... hahahaaa ... OK, not bloody likely... Just say that you did. 2 or 3 pre-1965 dimes which contain mostly silver* would still buy you that 1 gallon of gasoline.
Let me give a few details on that last bit: The cool thing with that old silver money was that the silver amount was linear with face value (denomination). They all have 90% silver and because the weights of those 1964-and-earlier dimes, quarters, 1/2 dollars, and dollars were made linear with denomination, the silver amount is too. Lastly, except for the Morgan and Peace dollars, the 1 dollar coin weighs in at ~ .8 tr-oz, 1 dollar in face value results in 0.72 tr-oz of silver. Therefore, at a mid-range of the fairly stable $14 - $18/oz spot price of silver, 2 dimes, or 20¢, has 0.144 tr-oz, of it, which fetches $2.30 in our fiat dollars, enough to buy, HEY!, yes, 1 gallon of gas.
Does that last part have anything to say about what is REAL MONEY and what are just pieces of green paper? Indubitably, it does!
(I've still got a few more things, as a summary, to say about the interesting history of gas prices, at the risk of losing a reader or two. I'll put that up next week. Top priority!)
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Recent history of gasoline prices - Part 1
Posted On: Saturday - September 1st 2018 3:55PM MST
In Topics: History Economics Inflation
(Sorry, not the best of graphs, but I'll explain discrepancies during the post.)
Pushing on here in this never-ending series of posts about inflation, I'd promised/threatened to write something about gasoline prices over the years. OK, look, I like graphs, that's the 1st thing. Also, I really do have a good memory for how much I used to pay for stuff, good enough to even correct the data in the graphs displayed here. They were the best I could find on short notice, and show the general trends, but they are off by a bit here and there. Lastly, the price of gasoline, at last when it's not stable for a stretch, is always a hot topic, as the reasons for wild changes can be attributed to all sorts of political goings-on. When it's up on the high side, gasoline or diesel can get to be a significant part of the family budget and change people's lifestyles.
I will just go over the recent history from my memory, with reference to the graphs (in this and the next post).
1960's through early 1970's: I wasn't at the pump during these years, as my banana-seat Stingray didn't require the petrol. However, I can remember a number of things discussed later by the folks. Gas was in the high 20 ¢ to low 30 ¢ per gallon where I lived. People would drive a few miles out of the way to save 2 cents. That was in the 7 - 10% range so why not? I'll tell you why not, sometimes: when your station wagon got 15 mpg, and you drove around for 10 minutes, ... well, I don't know.
That 0.9 ¢ at the end of the price, say 29.9 ¢/gal was significant then, though I don't know when that started (the marketing MBAs were at it even back then!), but at that point we were talking about 3 -5 %, not an insignificant amount. Now it's still $2.659/gal, not $2.65/gal. Yep, I checked recently when I filled up to an even number. The stations don't even bother to put that 0.9¢ on the signs now.
Keep this in mind through the rest of the post, if you would. It took 2-3 SILVER dimes to buy a gallon of gas a decade earlier when all the dimes were silver.
1973-4 gas "crisis": I used the quotes because the media-induced fear of the nation's running out of gas was very high in proportion to the cut-back in production by the OPEC countries (in retaliation for US support of Israel, as I recall). As I'll explain later, crude oil and gasoline prices seem to dynamically unstable. Besides the major short-term availability problem (long "gas-lines" and even odd-even-day purchasing), the price went up from that 2-decade-long-stable 20 - 35 ¢ level up toward 60 ¢/gal quickly. (The nominal price never went back down. That was the point at which families in this still-very-prosperous country had to start to take gasoline into account in their budgets.
A big change that came about from this higher price level was the Japanese capturing a significant portion of the auto. market in the US. This was partially just fortuitous, as the big 4 American automakers were geared up for building the big (gas milage, what's that?) big vehicles, the Japanese had been building small vehicles for a long time. There were 3 reasons (2 regarding gas price):
1) Taxes. The US, with it's still wonderful small-government mentality did not tax the living shit out of gasoline as most other developed countries did. The Japanese had long seen the need to drive economically.
2) Japan never had a domestic market in crude oil, so they were always dependent on imported oil, meaning paying a bit more.
3) Japan is an urban society, and was 5 x more densely-populated as California. Just as in Europe, the cars tended to be small to be useable in the packed cities.
It was really a big deal to see the Japanese cars making inroads. People needed to save money on gas, period. Though most were very patriotic in the day when Jap cars were made in Japan and American cars were made in America, this patriotism broke down. It also mattered lots that Americans were discovering the much higher quality of the Japanese cars during this period. This was still the age in which at 50,000 miles, your car had a good chance of developing major problems already. The new imports from Japan weren't like this. There was no return from this development either.
1979-80 gas "crisis" I can well remember this one. Gas went from 70 - 80 ¢/gal up toward $1.50 in a short period, maybe a few months. This was a time of high inflation in general, and Jimmy Carter got the blame. No, he didn't really help either, but with one exception to that. (More on this shortly.) This was the time of the Iranian hostage crisis. Whether that was the real cause of the oil price woes or not is not something I'm going to get into. I'll just say that the discussion of the politics of oil is just as volatile as the gasoline product.
(... will be continued in the very next post - split up for length.)
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Feminist Cops vs. African "Refugees" - venue: Modern Sweden
Posted On: Friday - August 31st 2018 8:33AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity US Police State Feminism Female Stupidity
The video below shows an attempted arrest by 3 or 4 female Swedish police of one of the new diversified residents of their country. It appears the guy, Mr. Diverse African "Refugee", started off throwing rocks or bricks at the squad car windshield, and it escalated to a 4 minute low-intensity brawl. I can honestly say that I didn't know whom to root for. A better way to put that is that I didn't know which side I wanted to lose the fight more.
In this corner, you've got your female Swedish cops, because, feminism and all. The difference in body mass, muscle mass, and experience should be no factor for this type of job*, right? After all, if equality were to suffer, that'd be much worse than just not enforcing the laws or what-have-you. Sweden has been tops in the feminism stupidity, perhaps number 1 in the entire world. There is GIRL POWER that can be unleashed on a perp, invoked with a few magic words "ISIS, ISIS, ISIS!"
In this corner, you've got your worthless African immigrants, living in these tenement buildings with no jobs, lots of welfare benefits increasing their laziness, and not a really big handle on the concepts of feminism and GIRL POWER. I really can't blame the guy for starting trouble, as he's probably Moslem, meaning that he reckons those ladies should be wearing burkas, not police officer wear, and really should have a male cop driving them around in the squad cars to begin with. Oh, and additionally, there's no particular reason to listen to them because they are women to begin with. Throwing rocks at the windshield of the squad car is virtually required under ISLAM. Plus it's fun, but no, they don't break as easily as you think (been locked out of your car before in the desert?)
Sweden is somewhat under 10% Moslem, and has admitted large numbers of supposed "refugees" from all over, to show they care. Sometimes I think a loss in a small battle, such as these migrants winning of their battles with the cops, especially the feminized sort is a good thing. It often can get the population to transfer something useful into their thick heads, such as "Girl Power is just in the movies? What?" "Our migrants can't assimilate into our society?! What, but, but diversity?" Yeah, it can take a while. A couple of blows to the head speed up this knowledge transfer immensely. OTOH, I'd like to see many of the migrants get the shit kicked out of them and send home.
Let's not spoil the match. With more color commentary to come, (pun unintentional but serendipitous), let's switch to our 2nd-story-window-cam:
Play-by-play from commenter BernCar:
Good Samaritan takes down the malefactor for the cops and they pull him off--"Never mind. We'll handle this ourselves. Just the four of us against one guy. No problem." Then they don't gang rush in a mass overwhelming him even though each of the cops outweighed him by all appearances. So the guy gets loose, decks one of the cops, breaks the car window and ambles off. Dumbasses. I'm like you--it's hard to know who to root for here.I was hoping both sides would get some good blows in. The videographer and his buddy were laughing when the guy threw a good punch in a coupla' minutes into the vid, but at first I had thought they were Swedish. Then, I saw the dark left hand with the bling on it on the windowsill – yeah, I wonder what they are thinking. Exactly what are these people supposed to make of their new home?
Oh, then the guy starts in throwing dirt bombs. That brings back early memories from childhood. I used to love how the dirt would make “smoke” when it landed. No cops were involved, though. There was this incident later, at college, when we had a bottle rocket battle going on across 100 yards or so of “the quad” one night. The lady campus cop came over, and all she could threaten us with was “cut that out, or I’ll … I’ll call some more police!” Man, I miss bottle rockets.
*BTW, a long-term reader would know that the Peak Stupidity blog is not particularly cop-supporting, as we value Liberty more than the average American. I don't like the militarization of the police that has occurred (see US Police State topic key for more.) I'd rather that cops dealt with citizens as human beings, per a recent post, "First Responders" - The Cops. That won't and can't happen much the more diversified America becomes.
That leads to the matter of the "fairer sex" being cops. It's much easier for a bigger (not necessarily more intimidating unless necessary) human being to handle situations that have not, and should not, get to the point of use of firearms. That means not just men, but bigger men. Yeah, it'd be nice if society was so non-violent that the smallest lady could just cite the law and set a troublemaker straight that way. Things often escalate, especially in certain populations, and that's the time the fact that the law-breaker can't beat the cop up can just calm things down. Pepper spray and mace may have helped somewhat in this regard.
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[UPDATED: 09/31 am:] Seeing as my writing was moslty just color commentary (do they still use that term, as I haven't watched the sportsball on TV in years?), I feel Mr. BernCar's play-by-play, or blow-by-blow, as they'd call it in the boxing or unwanted immigrant realm should be in the post too.
[UPDATED: 10/05/19:] Video was gone. This new one should be the same thing.
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TBA may be the "death sentence for thousands of women"
Posted On: Thursday - August 30th 2018 6:44PM MST
In Topics: Trump Liberty/Libertarianism Female Stupidity
Per the NRA mag, America's First Freedom, Women's March Pre-Bashes Trump SCOTUS Pick. What a title that is, so let me explain. These women are too lazy to actually march, so "Women's March" is the just the name of an anti-gun group. The term "pre-bashing" is something to be explained in a minute here, and SCOTUS is that weird-ass acronym for Supreme Court Of The United States. That's really not necessary, as we all know which Supreme Court we are all talking about.
The short blurb says that this group had already made up their talking points against the next Supreme Court nominee before they even knew who the nominee was going to be. That would be Brett Kavanaugh, but the statement by the group had just "XX" as a placeholder and was unfortunately released with everything but the name (of a guy they didn't know yet). They should have use the more common "TBA" for To Be Announced, at least. This just shows the blatant agenda against anyone to be appointed by President Trump. Sure, they may rightly figure that the appointee will most likely not be on their side. However, when you have all the details in your statement ahead of time, well, we know your agenda. Here's the pre-bashing stupidity:
In response to Donald Trump's nomination of XX to the Supreme Court of the United States, The Women's March released the following statement: Trump's announcement today [ of a guy they didn't know yet] is a death sentence for thousands of women in the United StatesWhew, ever exaggerated any, March ladies? Really, you are so lucky to be living in a time and in a country which has a Constitution that prohibits just that, a man in power that could indeed decide to just sentence you all to death.
It so happens that in our glorious Constitution, the best founding document of a country ever written (by all white men, BTW), there is one line in Article 1, Section 9 that states:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.A "Bill of Attainder" is a law written solely to apply to a certain individual or group. If we didn't have that pesky Constitution, President Trump could indeed decide that these women are a hindrance to the nation's well-being and should be terminated with prejudice. Article 1 sets limits on Congress, and Section 9 there prevents a law from being enforced that would single out the "Women's March". It'd be the Supreme Court, in fact, that would determine if any certain law was indeed a Bill of Attainder.
Here, though, these hypocrites want to block a Supreme Court nominee who is too big a defender of the Constitution because of one part that hurts their feeelings! Yeah, how about a "Man's March against Article 1/Section 9", ladies? How would that make you feel, knowing we may write up a law just for you ladies? Don't go babbling on about a "death sentence", especially if you believe in jinxes.
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Real life inflation anecdotal-data(?)
Posted On: Thursday - August 30th 2018 3:58PM MST
In Topics: Economics Inflation
I'd promised (or threatened, depending on how you like this stuff) to give more anecdotal inflation numbers from recent history. As I've written, that Shadow Stats site has much more comprehensive and accurate information than Peak Stupidity could come up with. Inflation calculations (along with other important econ. statistics) is their bread and butter; stupidity is ours. This post is just from prices that sit in my memory, but lots of them are ones I remember very well - why, I don't know.
While still sticking to food for the time being, let's talk beans. OK, bean prices, that is - for recipes, you're much better talking beans with a beaner in the bean aisle. There was a period 8 years ago in which our household consumed a lot of beans... garbanzo beans, red beans, black beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, lentils, stewed beans, fried beans, baked beans, refried beans, rebaked beans ... yeah, the whole Bubba Gump thing with beans instead of shrimp. At the grocery store in which I bought 90% of them, almost all of the dried bean varieties stood at $1 per lb. Getting back into beans lately, we've found these same packages at $1.50 per lb. That ain't no 1-2% inflation, mi
I'd bought canned Campbell's soup back 30 years ago to eat as supper for $0.45 to $0.55 per can. They are now in the range of $1.00 to $1.55 for a smaller can, and yeah, you have to have a good memory to catch these things (the shrinkage especially - 12 oz down to 10.75 oz.) On a per-mass basis, at the price mid-range, that soup's gone up in at an 3.5% annual rate. "Sure, sure..." you may say, ".. pick and choose and you're gonna find big numbers." I don't think that's the case. I am picking items that I just happen to remember numbers for, but there's not much in the grocery that I can't look at and get some idea of how much the price has increased since I started buying groceries (or, at least, buying that item).
Let's get outta the grocery then. Let's talk lumber. That happens to be a product that I bought a lot of also 25-30 years ago. I didn't have projects to buy lumber for, for many years after, but have bought some over the last 10 years. 2 x 4's are just a superb example (pressured-treated or non), as they are luckily still the same dimensions* and made out of the same trees that they were when I first bought them. From well under a buck for a non-pressure-treated 8-footer, I recall $0.79 or so to up above $2 - $2.50 now, that's the increase over, call it 30 years. There we go again, from 3.5 - 4%. The rest of the 2-by's along with the "1-inch" lumber has gone up accordingly.
I'd really like to get into gasoline prices, but that is a commodity the price of which definitely depends on politics, no matter what politics you figure. Gasoline is a big enough part of a household's budget and it's such a volatile (get it??) commodity, that the stats people like to exclude it to get at the "core inflation". Maybe by "core" they mean "the FED", as that's the basic cause. I will put up a post on gasoline prices during recent history, with some anecdotes, because it's just personally interesting.
Let's even get off of products and get into services. This does sound harder, as how much have services changed to disallow comparison? I've got one - auto insurance. See, these older vehicles are all insured at the same basic coverage as required by state law. I'm with the same agent (though I've tried shopping around - they make it very very difficult ...). I won't give too many details, but the total on the vehicles has gone up from $310 only 8 short years back to $415 for the same coverage/period. Aha, that works out to 3.7 % annual inflation.
If I were to get into health care, a topic the Peak Stupidity blog has covered a bit already, things would just get crazy. It may indeed be difficult to compare the value of plans without a group of a dozen accountants with spreadsheets trying out many different combinations of illnesses or treatments under plans with different deductibles, co-pays, in-network rates, etc. Sure, that's true, but I can say this: I doubt you know one soul whose (nominally-same) healthcare plan has not gotten much more expensive over the last decade. That last decade encompasses the stupidity that goes by the name "Øb☭macare", but one can go back 4 decades and say that basic healthcare has continuously gone up much more than then our 4-5 % range seen in the anecdotes here.
Now look - again, this is no statistical inflation study, just anecdotes, mind you. I've had a long habit of not believe everything some US Feral Gov't agency tells me. This is just material to back up my contention that inflation is higher than "advertised".
Is this difference a big deal? "Wow, you think inflation is 3- 4 % vs the Feral Gov't's 1.5 - 2 % numbers", the reader may say, sarcastically. "So what?". Here's what: Over a decade, everything you had saved in dollar form loses 1/3 of it's value.** Did you work 10 extra hours weekly that one WHOLE YEAR to save those 7,500 AFTER-TAX bucks that you put away? So, sorry, that's worth only 5000 bucks now, or, put another way, 4 months of your working 2 hours extra every evening has been taken. "We took it. That's how we make a nice living.", sincerely, your friendly Central Banker.
*The 12 oz. can is from memory. I will have more to say about this shrinkage in another post, especially as related to lumber.
** To clarify, 4% annual inflation, when compounded over a decade, results in an increase of just a smidgen under 50%. It'll take $150 to buy what $100 would have bought at the beginning of the period. Your $100 is worth, $100/$150 = 0.67. You've lost the 0.33 of your original buying power.
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Grasping at Straws - Update from Starbucks
Posted On: Wednesday - August 29th 2018 5:55PM MST
In Topics: Humor Treehuggers Environmental Stupidity ctrl-left Big-Biz Stupidity
Yes, Starbucks has relented to the pressure from, like, one guy or something(?), who has been grasping at straws, successfully as of late. Here at Peak Stupidity, based on just a few simple calculations are pretty sure this has been a strawman argument that has now been milk(shak)ed for all that it's worth. OK, punditry aside for now, we will spotlight this latest installment of stupidity.
Per this Wichita Eagle article (why this site - cause it came up first and loaded quickly), Starbucks will now resort to the dispensation of sippy cups to grown adults due to that intense pressure from TITB ( The Idiots That Be ). The first sentence of the article states:
If you were like many other kids, you probably stopped drinking from a sippy cup when you were 3 or 4 years old — and you probably never had coffee in your spill-proof cup.I guess I was not like many other kids. This writer's name is Kaitlyn Alanis. Has anyone named Kaitlyn made it to adulthood already? Time flies, or maybe she hasn't.
Anyway, Starbucks management, per this story, dispenses a billion straws annually, which is just 2 x that one guy's estimate of straws used (or at least thrown out) daily. That comes out to Starbucks holding 0.55 % of the straw-sucking market, not really enough to make a
There are a couple of tweets about this move in the article too, how bout that?:
I got a sippy cup at Starbucks this morning...I swear I’m an adult.
pic.twitter.com/UdwLxER3Ss
— KitTeaCup_EME (@KitTeaCup_EME) July 6, 2018
Keep in mind that Peak Stupidity does not take too kindly to tweets, as we feel people who tweet like this are the ones who should be using sippy cups for all meals, not just coffee-time.
Also - totes sipping on that new adult sippy cup lid from @Starbucks heheh. pic.twitter.com/M51ihyZ4h8
— RDTJ (@_RDTJ) July 6, 2018
Though this move makes Starbucks management feel greener than a pile of minute-old doe droppings, I don't know if the customers will feel the same. Hey, I wrote already that I don't use straws much, as they seem kind of juvenile themselves. However, I never was a drive-thru guy either and don't get the whole essence of coffee - if I'm gonna drink it, it's usually while sitting down. Don't get me wrong though, I do understand those who are on the move. The lid and straw are necessary, and now life just got a little stupider for lots of Starbucks customers. For some that are already sick of Starbuck's ctrl-left bullshit* this latest move may just be the straw that broke the camel's back. [OK, that's the last straw, I'm warning you! - Ed]
* The Peak Stupidity blog had a few choice words to say about Starbucks regarding raising hell about their nationwide, synchronized struggle-session back in the spring.
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Land's End jumps the Sheep
Posted On: Tuesday - August 28th 2018 3:57PM MST
In Topics: Humor
Some posts just write themselves. This one and the previous one would be good examples. The humor comes out easily, and so does the anger - see that last one.
The picture above is from the latest Land's End catalog. I don't know; it just comes in the mail. Their marketing staff and powerhouse IT department have calculated that our household consists of yuppies... money not well spent. Perhaps the stuff inside is like J. Peterman, but I didn't open it - I just had to get this cover into the scanner.
Granted this blog is located in neither Australia nor New Zealand, but do these writers get out at all? Or, do they get the joke and are just pushing new frontiers (via the Overton Window) in sexual relations. What is the Land's End cover trying to say here? Is it that the women is so hot that the sheep will be jealous from lack of amorous attention from that guy? She is cute, in a sheepy sort of way, but, you know, she's standing straight up-right - what's up with THAT?
Even if I'd kept the catalog - 40% OFF YOUR ORDER - I'd better not order anything - we don't have any sheep in the neighborhood, but the whole thing just creeps me out. I guess, being a curmudgeon and all, I'm just not ready. BTLG (Bacon Lettuce and Tomato with Guacamole on the side) is something I could get used to, but BLTGQWETY-SHEEP? You've gotta draw the line somewhere, and that's Land's End.
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Mollie Tibbetts murder - no regrets?
Posted On: Tuesday - August 28th 2018 10:23AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Student and other Snowflakes Political Correctness Orwellian Stupidity
In the post title, I don't mean regrets of the young lady. At that age, and for the short time span in which she was raped and murdered she may have realized and regretted some errors. At 20 years old, a young lady doesn't know much about the world these day, so I'm not going to lambast her for the hate-whitey tweets even. It didn't used to be that way. Children used to learn the real facts of life from their parents, before Big Ed had them captured for such a long part of their lives, especially their period of mental development. Parents are prone to tell the truth to their kids because they love them. The State just wants them for indoctrination and the big bucks. Her Dad is old enough to know what goes on in this country. He may feel some regrets, but is he allowed to have them?
You may have read something of the funeral and the PC reaction about a rape/murder by someone who wouldn't have been able to do this, were the law enforced. It is just sickening to me, and this quick VDare post by the blogger there known as "Anonymous Attorney" brings home my anger at these people. By "these people" I mean all the snowflakes who don't ever want to get down to the root of a dangerous social problem and solve it. Nope, it's best to be PC and not get called names.
Mr. Tibbetts, the Dad, along with the Mom and other family I'm sure, must feel a sense of loss that one can feel deeply sad about just imagining. I don't know how this "we're all Iowans" crap will hold down in this guy's system before he cracks or something. I won't even get into now the crime statistics for illegal immigrants - peruse VDare, especially Mrs. Brenda Walker's writings for that. Even if the stats did say that the illegal aliens in Iowa are no more prone to a crime like this than a white Iowan (bullshit, though), it's your daughter, man! The guy should not have been in your town!
Mr. Tibbetts was called "brave" for a touching eulogy which "thanked the local Hispanic community", per the British Daily Mail. Nah, that's not brave. That's what's expected now - just take it in the ass from whatever evil our Globalist masters have deemed we must live with. Protecting your whole community from an invasion, possibly averting other rapes, murders, and just burglaries, ID theft, and ordinary daily hassle which you never had before, is not something we want to get into... too racist, xenophobic... too something! Would it not have been truly brave for that Dad to have brought this all up and told the funeral crowd whose fault it was that his daughter was dead?
As Mr. Attorney wrote at the end of his post:
Truly, the epitaph of the white race will read: 'At Least They Weren't Racist'.
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Juan McAmnesty - Rot In Place
Posted On: Monday - August 27th 2018 7:03AM MST
In Topics: Globalists The Neocons
Peak Stupidity has said most of what needs to be said about this traitor to Americans just over a year back, when the Senator was diagnosed with cancer. Just to clear up why we would stoop so low as to Speak Dead of the Ill, or now, to speak ill of the dead, we will repeat what has been stated probably a number of times on the Peak Stupidity Blog, in regard to the passing of Ted, U-Boat Commander, Ken nedy additionally:
It'd be one thing ifhe were just a retired, possibly reclusive old man living out his life by this point. I wouldn't go into mourning for his death IN ANY SENSE, but I couldn't see any reason to write or say much about it besides "hey, John McCain (Ted Kennedy) died, did you hear?" That's not the case. This guy was a US Senator, one out of 100, and one of the most influential ones, until the day he died. If his dying is the only way for Americans to be rid of his influence and power, then, yes, I'm glad he died!Yep, that's the way I do feel about it. Senator McAmnesty, as you might be able to tell per my disparaging nomenclature, is someone who's had a bad influence on America. There are stories about what went on with the man in the US Navy and in Vietnam, 50 years back, some of which makes him out to be the cause of deaths and demoralization during that war (especially regarding the MIAs). I am no expert on that history, so I should be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not much of what he did influenced the country as a whole until he became a politician, so it's the last 30 years or so that I'm remembering McCain by.
This man's arrogance for his countrymen, especially seen during his flip-flopping on the illegal alien problem is what I remember. It wasn't flip-flopping based on goofiness or general stupidity. Nope, McCain would say one thing, "build the dang fence." in a re-election commercial, then join one of those "gangs of 8" groups to come a c-hair away from pushing through a massive amnesty bill, with regular Americans defeating these bills via direct pressure to the head(s) (yes, you can make a difference.) The arrogance came into play when he would run for election, spouting lies, knowing people don't have long enough memories to remember them and his breaking his word 6 years later.
As possibly the biggest neocon, warmongering Senator in the whole operation they've got there in the FS (Federal Shithole), the amount of deaths around the world that McCain caused should make one wonder if he learned a damn thing in that prison in Hanoi, N. Vietnam ... something like "We've got to stop Communism from taking over the world, but this invading, carpet-bombing, and napalming is not winning over the people, it seems. Maybe installing our own puppet leaders is a bad idea too." Like lots of the Neocons, I guess, once the Cold War was won, they felt that no matter what we did militarily, nobody can stop us anymore, so let's just get this guy Saddam, who, per this Steve Sailer post with an Atlantic interview exceprt, McCain HATED HATED HATED, saying "He ruled through murder. Didn’t we learn from Hitler that we can’t let that happen?" Hey, unlike Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein was not in the middle of (arguably) taking over Europe, so how was the Iraqi government our business again? There was much less reason for that war than for the Vietnam War, and that's what I mean by stating the guy learned nothing.
Now, a bit about Sarah Palin, McCain's running-mate for President in 2008. John McCain has said disparaging things about the lady, but the biggest untruth in that is his contention that she cost him the election! No, that was not exactly the case, as McCain decided to play ball and not be called names by the Lyin' Press that loved him, for bringing up Øb☭ma's connections to racist churches and other still-unknowns in that Commie's background. McCain basically threw the election so's he wouldn't be called a racist. Profiles in Courage, indeed! As for the very decent lady, Mrs. Palin and that campaign in 2008, I'll say this: Especially when she first came on the ticket, Sarah Palin was the only thing likely to have gotten me to vote Republican that year. I remember telling someone back then that I couldn’t be assured that McCain would get impeached or die in the first coupla years, so I’d just go ahead and vote Constitution/Libertarian again. (I believe it was Mr. Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution party that year - a good man.) The odds were against me on that gamble, and history (yesterday) proves me out.
Now you know why I am not going to act all dignified about the death of this man, as Steve Sailer did, but not the commenters on Zerohedge:
cayman 08/26/2018 - 02:09
Satan's little helper finally takes the dirt nap.
As if the incalculable MIC evil wasn't enough, he "hand-delivered the controversial 'Steele dossier' to FBI Director James Comey, returned to the Senate in July 2017 after emergency brain surgery to become the deciding vote that killed the GOP's repeal of the Affordable Care Act."
This was one misersable prick.
FireBrander Sat, 08/25/2018 - 21:18
I'm going to fast for a week as only an empty stomach can prevent me from vomiting when I endlessly hear "What a Great Man, Soldier, Patriot and Public Servant John was throughout his life".
silverer css1971 Sun, 08/26/2018 - 05:36
I'll visit John's grave and pray for him after I visit the graves of all the innocent people he was responsible for killing and pray for them first. Looks like I won't have the time to get around to John's grave.
HowdyDoody Sun, 08/26/2018 - 06:37OK, those were pretty much the tamer ones. There are approximately 1000 more. That never-speaking-ill-of-the-dead meme hasn't seemed to take hold over at zerohedge.
I would like to offer my deeperst condolences .... to the poor glioblastomer that developed a terminal case of McCainitis. May it rest in peace. It will be remebered and honored.
Yeah, those comments could be considered a little overboard. I'd just rather not hear anymore about Juan McAmnesty, that's all I ask.
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