Amity Shlaes on President "Silent Cal" Coolidge
Posted On: Wednesday - May 2nd 2018 7:24PM MST
In Topics:   History  Pundits  Liberty/Libertarianism  Books  Dead/Ex- Presidents

Mrs. Amity Shlaes is a politically-libertarian writer of non-fiction. I read her great 2007 book The Forgotten Man, a history of, and debunking of the common Lyin Press-spread myths about, the Great Depression (GreyDep 1.0, we may be calling it in the not-too-far future).
Mrs. Shlaes has a new book out about ex-President Calvin Coolidge simply called Coolidge, who became president well nigh a century ago. I wrote "became" because he filled the position vacated by the death of Warren G. Harding in the summer of 1923, but was elected in 1924 for one term.
It's not just the cool name "Calvin" (see "Calvin and Hobbs"), but this man was probably the most libertarian of any US President since George Washington (or at least Jefferson), but Washington (the city) hadn't got started wreaking havoc yet just after the US Constitution. President Coolidge was called "Silent Cal" because he didn't have too much to say in terms of bringing about new policy and interfering in affairs of business and foreign countries. He represented what the Presidency SHOULD BE - just a high-level administrative office, in which one may occasionally (well, not "occasionally" for the last 25 years) wear the hat of Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces during wartime, as defined by a declaration from Congress. Yeah, I know, right ... hahahaa.
I don't know how the presidential
The one man from recent times that could hold a candle to the principles of Calvin Coolidge would be Dr. Ron Paul - as only a congressman, one of 454, he couldn't have the same effect on the country. Dr. Paul was often derided for "not bringing up a single bill to the ..." GOOD! What's the problem with that? "He's vetoed more bills than ... they call him 'Dr. No!'" GOOD! It sounds like the same stuff the fledgling Lyin' Press of the mid-1920's would have said about the great man Calvin Coolidge.
Amity Shlaes is an expert on this man, as she even runs an institute about him. I like this lady, and speaking of that, she can't look like the still photo shown of her in this < 1/2 hour video, as she is 57 years old. Mrs. Shlaes is not in the studio with the gentleman from the libertarian Mises Institute, so just her still shows. This is just something to be listened to, not watched.
Two quick points, the good and the not-too-bad.
1) During President Coolidge's years in office, the Federal budget became lower - yes, in Nominal, actual dollars! You'll never see that again until Grey-Dep 2.0.
2) As the this blog has pointed out before in What's the deal with Peak Stupidity - Libertarian or Conservative?, libertarians need to learn something from the conservatives about the immigration issue. Most L's are just ignorant about it. Well, I expected, at one small point in this video, Mrs. Shlaes to demonstrate that bit of stupidity. She did quickly mention in this video the 1924 near-closing-down of immigration, but it was so quick I can't even find it right now. It sounded like she was going to raise that as one point against President Coolidge, but this lady may be smart enough not to have ever really bought that line. She and the interviewer just let it go.
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Starbucks - fake coupons and raising hell
Posted On: Wednesday - May 2nd 2018 10:41AM MST
In Topics:   Music  Political Correctness  Economics  Race/Genetics  Big-Biz Stupidity

WWJCMCD?... What Would John Cougar Melon-Camp Do?
NO! AUTHORITY! DOES! NOT! ALWAYS! WIN! Ask me about my dealings with the water department sometime (that's why we have a COMMENTS section, dammit!)
Peak Stupidity having only written briefly and tangentially about the Starbucks story with which the Lyin' Press has created a large brew-haha, I'll add something here today. A site called Stuff Black People Don't Like brought up an aspect of this infotainment that I hadn't yet heard of. Some devious folks have been making some fake coupons (see the article linked to, I have not read about it elsewhere).
The fake coupons, purporting to give free coffees to only black people, or some such thing, are not only a great idea for the trouble they may cause the Star-Cucks. In addition, this kind of thing awakens (especially the young) people to the PC racist BS that they've been living with their whole lives. Look at that guy in the photo - OK, probably staged a bit, but not as much as the whole "Big Incident" itself. Anyway, how much more of that kind of crap, along with the 4-hour struggle session ("The Kind of Training Starbucks Workers Need and Deserve") to come will one guy take?
I have mentioned on the Peak Stupidity blog, then again under that most recent Steve Sailer post just linked to (he goes wild with these kinds of stories - all are in his wheelhouse, if you will) that the young people could learn a lot from the radicals of the 1960's. My point:
One more thing regarding the employees in general and how they will not be backed up by Starbucks’ managment if it works against Starbucks’ virtue signaling. These employees aren’t all stupid. It’d be nice to see just one standing his ground and not worrying one bit about being fired. How much is the job worth vs. the great publicity one may receive for standing up to all the BS for a change?A regular poster, goes by the handle SFG replied:
My brother used to listen to Larry King, on radio, and he related how Larry told this story about all the employess of some retail place letting themselves get fired. They all went across the street telling stories and laughing about it. Yeah, I know it’s not the 1970′s anymore and good jobs (even somewhat decent) jobs are scarce. However, they can’t fire all of you. The first guy to take a stand is a hero and a rebel (so long as others follow …)"
No, that’s exactly the problem. As you say, it’s not the 1970s, good jobs are scarce, and they *can* fire all of you. There’ll be enough desperate 22-year-olds with loans to pay off to replace you.I respectfully disagree thusly:
I don’t know, SFG. To me, it’s really just a matter of young people not knowing how to raise hell anymore. If one guys says the equivalent of “f_k this s__t” and walks out, and so do the other 4 people in the store, and they meet across the street at the ice cream shop (per Larry King story), it’s going to really mess up the day for the boss and probably a few weeks. Yes, he will be able to find others, but will he not be worried about how these new employees will act “next time”?
I mean, a job’s a job, but to me these baristas and others who work in and hang out in the coffee shops aren’t on much a career path, and I think most just hope their school loans will be forgiven or written off eventually. How else could they possibly get ahead and form a family? The young people now just don’t have very much to lose. They could spend their time wisely, were they wise, that is, and do the hell-raising that the older folks can’t do anymore.
I wasn’t the type, but even in the recent past, I regret that I didn’t take the opportunity to tell a few (more) people off, and raise more hell in the workplace. It would not have changed my life for the worse, as this bridge-burning thing is only a problem when you run into the scourge of HR, but they don’t work in small business.
I’m not in these young people’s precarious positions though, SFG, so I dunno what I’d do. I can assure you I’d never be that one guy in the picture. I could tell you a couple of “customer service failure” stories that ended up being great memories!
Have the young people forgotten how to raise hell? I couldn't think of a better era in which to go ahead and raise hell, as these young people just don't have very much to lose anymore. The fake coupons and that type of thing are a start. I suppose that kind of action may be the egging-houses, prank-calling, and setting-fences-on-fire of the Current Era. On that note, direct from John Cougar's Melon Camp in the vicinity of Seymour, Indiana ...
"But I've been doin' it since I was a young kid, and I come out grinning."
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Karl Marx - born 200 years too soon?
Posted On: Tuesday - May 1st 2018 7:18PM MST
In Topics:   Commies  History
the insane ramblings of an ancient German retard?

Apparently Commie #1 was born 200 years ago, either today or yesterday (we don't keep up cause we don't care). It's just that if Karl Marx had been born later, as in today or so, I don't think this writer, at least, would be having to deal with the fallout from his Communist bullshit.
Peak Stupidity, having gone Marxist in the past does not quite have the hatred of this guy, as we do for the modern destroyers of liberty and decent society, say the US Police State, the Deep State and this guy and this guy. I'm not sure why though. The fallout from Karl Marx's asinine and inane thoughts about how the world should be run, as carried out by millions of useful idiots, have ended dozens of millions of lives and ruined maybe 2 orders of magnitude more than that. It's just that Mr. Marx never implemented any part of his prescriptions himself. He never had his own hand in the destruction. Do we blame the engineer who wrote the explosives manual for the acts of ragheads who use the information?
Still, the existence of this man is nothing to celebrate, just as we don't celebrate the day herpes first mutated into the first-tier STD that it is today. The Peak Stupidity blog has discussed the long-term effects and after-effects of the experiment of Communism on the nations of Russia and China a while back. We have many articles with the "Commies" and "Socialism/Communism" topic keys that could keep the reader busy until tomorrow, at which time maybe we can all forget this sick fuck.
It'd be nice to think that we won't get fooled again, but remember, these Commies come crawling out of the woodwork every century or so, the current situation in the good old US of A is at the point where these new millennial Commies will find happy useful idiot hunting.
In the meantime all we can take from this original Commie Karl Marx is a motto most applicable to a whorehouse - "To each according to his needs, from each according to her ability."
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In defense of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
Posted On: Monday - April 30th 2018 8:07PM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media  Political Correctness

The Peak Stupidity blog likes to remain, oh, say, about 1 to 2 weeks behind in our "current events", in order to
Steve Sailer reads the NY Times a lot to check in on the enemy, and has found an article that berates Americans for thinking the character "Apu" is funny. Let me quote Mr. Sailer this time:
One trend I’ve been noticing lately is the ever-growing percentage of Professional Diversity Scolds who are from upper crust immigrant backgrounds from the more verbally facile countries, such as India. I would guess that the number of South Asians [dot-Indians, aka, sub-continental-drifters, does he mean? - Ed] who got paid last year for berating white Americans in the American media outnumbered Mexican-Americans, despite Mexicans being vastly more numerous.I'll let the reader go to Sailer's article on unz (linked above) to read the lecturer, a Mr. Vikas Bajas's scolding and the coupla' hundred mostly great comments discussing the matter.
For example, here’s a New York Times editorial today in which an Indian immigrant staffer lectures Americans on how The Simpsons — as good a candidate for The Great American TV Show as any — must be censored for the amour propre of people like himself.
Mr. Bajas:
… the character also encourages the infantilizing of Indian immigrants as simple-minded people who talk in a singsong voice. Even Apu’s last name — Nahasapeemapetilon — is presented in a way that invites mockery.They DO talk in a singsong voice. The names DO invite mockery. Why is that so hard to understand for this guy? Oh, yeah, no sense of humor.
“Thank you, come again” — those four words, spoken in an exaggerated Indian accent, have followed immigrants and Americans of South Asian descent like a bad penny since “The Simpsons” premiered in 1989. They helped make Apu, the show’s tightfisted convenience store owner, a household name. And they are often repeated to us, with a sly grin or a guffaw, by the same people who are surprised that we speak English in grammatically sound sentences.It would really help Mr. Bejesus’s cause if dot-Indian DIDN’T own and operate most of the convenience stores throughout the United States of America. In the famous words of Homer Simpson “It’s funny cause it’s true!”
There are so many great comments on this on unz there, but the gist of my favorite ones is: Doesn't this dipshit realize that The Simpsons makes fun of just about everybody? Why are the dot-Indians so special? Lighten up, Bejesus!
I am sensitive as the next fucking guy, but I will NEVER EVER STOP thinking “tank you, come again” in an Indian accent is funny.
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Making a fair multiple-choice test
Posted On: Monday - April 30th 2018 9:34AM MST
In Topics:   Curmudgeonry  Educational Stupidity

OK, from the get-go, the post title, this one may seem boring if you're here for the political stuff. However for 2 reasons, I would like to write a bit about exams, boards, or placements tests.
1) This relates to the material in the last post on HR, scourge of the business world, involving software-based applications*. I had promised at the end to make a post on this, since it's something I'd been thinking about writing on.
2) A family member has been studying for a big one of these multiple choice exams, and I started to see some of the problems.
To get to it, multiple-choice tests are in use everywhere for medical boards, professional engineer licences, ham radio, etc. In addition, they are the test of choice for teachers and professors for the very simple reason that the grading is MUCH easier. If it's not computerized (and why not, by this point?) it's a mindless chore that can be done while listening to music, cooking, what-have-you.
I say this as a comparison to the types of tests that must be given in math and engineering especially, where the problems are long, and involve multiple steps. You just can't have a multiple choice test to look for the one correct numerical answer that results from an applied thermodynamics problem that may be 1 of 2 that make up the test. A problem will have mulitple steps that can't be tested separately. Yet, the numbers from one part will be used in the next part of the problem. Therefore, the grader must put lots of thinking into the grading. Sure, he can check the numbers at each step at a time, but if the eariler ones are wrong, he must now use the wrong numbers to check the work of the latter steps. To just count the rest wrong is unfair. It's a real problem and makes grading a big chore that involves concentration and not a little good judgement. As good as computer software is, a paper test like this cannot be graded by computer. (That's not to say the whole test couldn't be done via software that does take initial errors into account.)
OK, the studying my family member was doing was for a mutilple-choice test. I started realizing some of the difficulties in taking, and flaws in, these tests as she was taking the practice ones.
As for the difficulties, many of these questions could have multiple correct answers of the (a), (b), (c), and (d) (sometimes (e)). That's not what I've been used to. In the old way, with only one correct, a couple of fairly nonsensical answers would result in a 50/50 chance on the answer left. Not good, but let's say there are 20 questions like this you aren't at all sure of, 10 more that you have no idea of any of the answers on, with the 70 rest of the 100 known. Probability-wise, you've got an 82.5 score (70 pts. + 1/2 x 20 + 1/4 x 10) vs. < 80 if the possible answers were all reasonable. With any number of good answers that could all be correct, the test becomes much harder.
The "all of the above" and "none of the above" possible answers always helped out too, in the old tests. There is more logic available for the test-taker to winnow out which is right, even when unsure. I don't there was to be much of this in this upcoming test. Now, the factors just discussed don't make the newer tests unfair, but just more difficult.
As for the flaws in multiple-choice exams. the real problem is the implied knowledge of the test-MAKER. Especially for true/false questions, but even for the normal pick-one-out-of-four, it's often the case that the test-taker must guess how smart or knowledgeable the test-maker is. It's the words "almost" "always" "never", "often", etc. that can make the question hard for someone who knows the subject matter very well. In fact, knowing it well often makes these questions harder!
Maybe it's physics and the question is (just an example mind you) "A particle in motion will ....". (four choices). Hey, you know Newton's law very well, but did the professor want you to remember the exeptions for things moving near the speed of light, or did he just expect an answer correct in the normal realm? At least you may know the professor's ways. "Yeah, he drilled this into us one day a week back, so he must want this answer." Who knows for sure, yet you damn well know the material.
On some type of medical board test, let's say the question is something like "These 3 symptoms often indicate the patient has blahblah-itis, true or false?" Well, in class we learned that sometimes this 4th symptom is a better way to figure out if he's got this nasty disease, but it's hard to look for. Did the test-makers even know this fact? How much the test-makers know can effect which is the correct answer, and that means the question sucks.
This kind of thing is worse in any kind of nationwide board test or on a test involved in a job application, as there is usually no recourse (not even a way to find out what they wanted in the end - this leads to the subject of the next post). At least in your own school classroom, you may bring up the question and why you answered "wrongly" and have it thrown out. Back on the other hand, you figure those board questions have been thorougly tested as legitimate and fair, so that you should be getting good ones. One bad one, however, may be the difference between practicing law next year or not (probably just as well not - we have more than enough lawyers!).
The making up of good multiple-choice test questions takes some skill, but also testing of the questions. That leads right into the subject of a follow-up post on the strangeness of the new way of computerized testing. This may be neither interesting nor stupid, but it's my blog, and feel free to skip. I'll be back into politics as soon as the next time I get on the internet, I'm sure - lots of stupid in that realm!
* I mean "applications" as one of its REAL defintiions here, as in applying for a job, versus this silly Apple "app" talk, in which an application is a piece of software (what idiot started that use?).
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Pat Buchanan on American political history - 50 years ago
Posted On: Saturday - April 28th 2018 6:01PM MST
In Topics:   History  Pundits
(Watching people) kickin' hippies' asses and raisin' hell

Mr. Pat Buchanan is one of my favorite political pundits, meaning his views are approved of by the Peak Stupidity blog. His latest column With Nixon in '68: The Year America Came Apart is great reading just as a nice portrait of an important time in American political history. He really doesn't give any opinions, just his recollections from his time as Richard Nixon's (just before he became president) 29 y/o aide, as the presidential primary's, both D and R, were happening, and the Viet Nam war was the biggest issue.
I won't even quote any of the article, because it's a story in sequence. Mr. Buchanan's favorite part (it'd have been mine) was probably when he got to watch the Chicago cops beat all hell out of a large contingent of protesting hippies from his safe vantage point on the 19th floor of a hotel. I wonder if he was listening to Jerry Jeff Walker singing about "kicking hippy's asses and raisin' hell". Nah, Jerry Jeff and all the outlaw country guys/gals were younger than Pat. 50 years ago, it was!
As I wrote in the last post of a 6-part series Battle Lines are Being Drawn, the patriotic young people of today could learn a lot from the hippies and protesters of 50 years ago. (Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. )
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Enemies of the Culture - foreign and domestic - Part 2
Posted On: Saturday - April 28th 2018 9:16AM MST
In Topics:   Immigration Stupidity  Websites
(Continued from this post.)

(This particular one is just a globalist and traitor to South Carolina.)
This 2nd part of this series (should be the last) is a quick discussion, with a good example of domestic enemies of the culture. This is really simple. If you have massive immigration into your country, you won't have assimilation. Now, I may keep using Mexican examples even though this post will discuss dot-Indian people* for a reason to be given shortly. If you come down to Mexico by yourself or your family as an expatriate to a small town in Mexico, you may want to or even unwillingly assimilate to the Mexican culture. However, if you move to a big community of ex-Americans in Guadalajara, it's natural to hang with the other ex-Americans, and culturally all of you will really just remain actual Americans. Again, this is simple stuff, and I therefore don't blame large groups of Chinese, dot-Indians, and Latin Americans themselves for doing this. It's very hard to change your cultural ways, and then there is the genetic component - you're going to be who you are.
In the big picture, it's Americans' fault for letting this massive unassimilated immigration happen, but it's not many of us that asked for it. Most were just too ignorant of the problem, or cowardly, or too civil even, to make any effort to resist. I will this time paste in a large block-quote of a story that I got 3rd hand, I suppose, as it itself was pasted into a comment I'd read. I will include this link to an article/site I haven't read. One of my problem with going to unknown websites, aside from not wanting to link to stupidity directly, is that many of the larger TV/"newspaper" ones, ad-blocker nothwithstanding, run so many scripts that take too long to settle the hell down, so I can just plain read some text. I mean, often I believe things would be just as fast with a 4096-baud modem on the phone line receiving packets on a simple 3-page text/image website that doesn't try to write cookies, find your location and just ream you in the ass, when all you want is to just read a few paragraphs!
Back to the subject, this story is just one of the many skirmishes, not really particularly violent this time, that will happen more and more, as people are mixed in together in something that does not at all resemble a melting pot, but more of a experimental chemical reactor vessel. Call it California. Also, since I didn't read the original source (feel free to, and them comment, please!), I don't know who was really in the right. The cultural enemies in our midst here, the metric-shit-ton of dot-Indians living all together in lots of areas of America, are supported by their press back in India. That's the funny thing here - this article, about a simple neighborhood fist-fight/blow-up is in an Indian newspaper! Would the Des Moines register print an article about an American family getting called names in India? No, I don't believe so.
New Delhi: In yet another shocking incident of racial abuse, a woman was attacked at Milpitas in California (United States of America) on Sunday while she was standing on the guest parking spot on the road across her upper-level apartment. The incident, which took place at 1540 hours (local time), left the Indian neighbours in complete shock. As they rushed to save the lady, identified as 33-year-old Sharda KS, they also were assaulted too. According to Samrat Nandi, an IT engineer [sic, sic, SIC! There's no such thing as an IT ENGINEER. - Ed.] with Zensar Technologies, a white male, who was naked waist-up, tried to park his car where Sharda was standing. Suddenly, he started hurling racial abuses at the lady.Again, I don't know who was really at fault, but frictions are going to rise, and the Americans involved most likely didn't ask for this stuff on the larger level of immigration policy. People blow up sometimes when they have had enough and have no say in how their communties and their whole nation is changed by those in power. It's to be expected that dot-Indians will live like dot-Indians, but these domestic enemies of the culture are supported by their press way back in the old
Sharda rushed for help while calling out her husband’s name. Hearing her voice, Samrat and his wife Monima (who stay on the lower level) and a family friend Aniruddha Mondal immediately came outside. While Samrat dialled 911, the white male continued to hurl expletives and was “almost about to hit” Sharda and her husband who was trying to protect her. Meanwhile, the man grabbed Aniruddha and punched him in the face, leaving him profusely bleeding. As per Samrat, another “Hispanic-appearance male joined the fight along with the white man.”
Soon, a white lady too joined the scuffle and started abusing. She held Monima and shouted: “We are white, what are you going to do b***h.” The scuffle was finally sorted when a neighbour (white mixed race male) intervened. The trio left the scene while continuing to hurl racial abuses towards the Indian group.
While the group was helping Aniruddha as he was bleeding profusely, the white shirtless man came back again, grabbed Monima and slapped her on the face. The man then got into a black Nissan Altima car (Registration number – 8CQW497) parked near Nandi’s rented apartment and fled. The Hispanic man and the white lady rushed inside an apartment in the same community. At around 4:00 pm, the US police recorded the victims’ statements.
Samrat has alleged that the entire incident was recorded by a white lady whom the group does not know. He claimed that she provided the video to police. However, police officials told the complainants that the video was shaky and did not let them see it when they demanded. Albeit police told them later that they have identified the Hispanic man, who is a resident of the same community where the incident took place, and the lady who assaulted them, yet they refused to divulge their details.
The Indian group, another victim of hateful harassment since Donald Trump was elected president, has contacted the Consulate General of India in this regard and are awaiting justice.
Just picture this the other way around. I won't make my example India, just because it's hard for me to imagine wanting to live there as an ex-patriate. I'm sure it's got it's good spots, but it is, using the illustrious phrase of our President, a shithole. The place will surpass China pretty soon in population, with a land size roughly the same (see just below the middle of this post on China to understand what I mean) but the people are too disunited, with their castes and what-not, and just to weird to make that country into anything.
Imagine, then a group of American expatriates in Guadalajara deciding they really don't like the Mexican corrupt culture and being shaken down by Federales every other day. They then form a poltical organization to change the policies of Mexican law enforcement via protests to the government in Mexico City. Then, the New York Times prints article in support of the ... (OK, getting too silly here, and I almost forgot that the richest Mexican, maybe man in the world, owns a big chunk of the NY Times). How long would it be before these people were placed in a Mexican prison awaiting deportation, with their houses auctioned off (we don't need no steeeenking forclosure documents!)? As long as it takes the Federales to jump-start their old jalopies and get there, that's how long. There's no way they would put up with any of that. You'd better behave, gringo.
It might be a little more mellow in Thailand or Uruguay, but the people in most countries understand that you can't take any grief from the domestic cultural enemies. If they try to get along, no problem, but the welcome can be removed at any time. Many here in America do understand that, but our "betters" won't let us handle the situation and keep making it worse daily... it's been 50 years now of this. Don't wonder why people just blow up and call people names once in a while.
* The term in vogue** now is "sub-continental". Yeah, I know it refers to the subcontinent of India, being a big chunk of Asia hanging down to the south. What the hell kind of stupid term is that, though? Other continents can have subsets of some sort. Look at Greenland - it's part of Europe, I'd guess, since Denmark owns it, so it's some kind of subset. Who's to say the Yucatan part of Mexico isn't a subcontinent - it's sticks way the hell up there like a sore thumb trying to bum a ride up north across the border. How about Scandanavia? Are the Norwegians and Swedes not subcontinentals? No, I'm not doing it. It's dot-Indian, and that's final.
** NO, not in Vogue magazine! It's an expression. Writers for Vogue magazine do not worry about subcontinents and subcontinentals, unless they have glamorous new hair styles and show off their cleavage(s).
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Enemies of the Culture - foreign and domestic
Posted On: Friday - April 27th 2018 9:20AM MST
In Topics:   Immigration Stupidity  Pundits

The phrase "enemies, foreign and domestic" is used by the liars, for the most part, taking oaths of office, as required by law and described here. "... solemnly swear, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic... blah, blah, blah ..." NOTE VERY CAREFULLY the one bolded word Constitution. It's not supposed to be an oath to blindly defend the United States, only the law of the Constitution. The US may look like Soviet Russia or Orwell's "Oceania" in the pretty near future, so there would then be absolutely no obligation to defend it, even if one were WEREN'T LYING to begin with when one took the oath. OK, way to get off the subject in the first paragraph! However, that's just the background for the title of this post.
Here, I am writing not about enemies in the military sense, but just enemies of TRADITIONAL American culture. Unfortunately, foreigners seem to take to the absolute worst apects of the modern American culture - it's made worse in that they have no clue of what this country used to be - even those that have lived here for many years. The elites of foreign countries, however, may know more about the traditional American culture, which explains why, Commie, Moslem, Hindu, Totalitarian, whatever, the children of the big shots somehow always ended up going to school in America somewhere. The elites of Mexico and India, for instance (because they are the subject of this and a continuation post) aren't military enemies, but they are enemies of our traditional culture, and their foot soldiers unwittingly are enemies too. This post will give an example of the "foreign" portion of our cultural enemies, with Mexico as the foreign enemy, and the subsequent post will give an example of the "domestic" portion, with dot-Indians as the example. There's no reason this stuff can't be mixed and matched - these are just examples.
Mr. Allan Wall who writes for VDare.com, has 2 or 3 weekly articles about the Mexican views on the immigration invasion issue. His great perspective is from his having lived in Mexico for over a decade with his family. He and his writing would make a great contrast for another pundit who currently lives in Mexico, and has for over a decade himself, Mr. Fred Reed. That would make an excellent subsequent post, in fact - another pundit-vs-pundit deal. Mr. Wall is very fluent in Spanish, not a very hard thing to come by anymore, except in pundits who want to lay out the truth. Allan Wall has a good feeling for the Mexican people, as evidenced by the fact that he married one, and his kids are 1/2 Mexican, I assume (that's not any kind of slur - I just am not completely sure that his kid are from his senorita). However, that doesn't mean that he wanted to live AS a Mexican, as he moved back. (His column "Memo from Mexico" changed to "Memo from Middle America""Said in Spanish" VDare category.)
That all said, Mr. Wall's 2nd-to-latest column, Mexico’s “Conservative” Presidential Candidate Anaya Worse Trump-Basher Than Leftist AMLO—But U.S. Should Ignore Them All Anyway is another of his that delves into what the Mexican honchos, like the guy above, really think of us (spoiler - "WEAK PATSIES") and what they are getting away with. Yeah, they think no one here reads what they have to say, which is mostly correct, if by "no one" we mean their sycophants in the cntrl-left and US Feral Government only. However, they have been foiled by Mr. Wall! That is, so long as you read his great article, anyway. If nothing else, read the brown-fonted points made by the Mexican candidates for Presidente, or whatever-the-hell, just to see how blatant they are in their wishes for control of AMERICAN immigration policy and the tens of million of immigrants who are still Mexicans - regarding this aspect, I'll quote just this section:
What does Anaya propose? According to Siglo, Anaya “offered a policy of support and defense for the 37 million Mexicans who live in the United States.”The amusing part, as the writer states, is that even the most "American-friendly" candidate tries to out-do the other guy in his bellicose talk about President Trump and his encourangement of treasonous behavior of Mexicans that just happen to live in America, subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
What a minute! 37 million? Wouldn’t that include American-born citizens of Mexican descent going back several generations?
Why yes, Virginia Dare, it would. But that’s how Mexicans view American citizens of Mexican ancestry. They are Mexicans first.
Siglo reports that Anaya “would propose a reform that, with the goal of them [Mexicans in the U.S.] having greater representation in [the Mexican] Congress, would reinforce the consulates, include them [Mexicans in the U.S.] in public spending decisions and defend the DREAMers against the U.S. government.:
He’s proposing a State Within A State.
[My bold. As usual, VDare has links out the ying-yang to VDare and other sources. Those can be found it the original article.]
As far as the foreign portion of our cultural enemies go, just imagine the reverse of this situation of Mexico's elite deigning to dictate America's immigration policy, very hypocritically, I might add. Try immigrating as a white Christian to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or Pakistan sometime (though something tells me they don't get a lot of phone calls about it ...) Do you think you, or anyone in the US Feral Government there to help you (hahahaaa!) cares where the hell you want to move to and why?
The Mexican culture, as can be just gleaned from the pic up at the top, is about machoism, something we could use a little bit more of, to the detriment though of rule-of-law and peace. Their religion, and that of all Latin America, is the supposed original version of Christianity, Catholicism, but they embrace the ceremonial and superstitious parts of it over the search of truth and belief in forgiveness. That is who they are, and I've got no problem with that, so long as "they" are "THERE", not here. It is NOT who WE are. Yet, with scores of 10's of millions of people, we will be living in an at least 1/2 Latin American culture before too long, without having taken the trouble to move!
These elites of Mexico, in the articles (many, over the years, by Allan Wall) are foreign enemies of our culture. As Mr. Wall says, we can just ignore their trash talk in their own internal elections. We cannot keep ignoring the policies that are treasonous to our country however. Peak Stupidty sure misses candidate Donald Trump.
south of the .... hiking trail.

Yes, our presidential candidates also like women with big tits.
Why can't we all just get along?
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Captain Kennedy - more acoustic Neil Young music
Posted On: Thursday - April 26th 2018 11:17PM MST
In Topics:   Music
... and pretty damn obscure at that. You have to be a real Neil Young fan, almost an Annie Wilkes type fan, to have heard this one.
Captain Kennedy from the album Hawks and Doves should have come with the previous post on The Kennedies but I plain forgot. The Peak Stupidity blog has featured another song from the same album, called Coming Apart at Every Nail, which was one of a trilogy of songs that presciently described the unravelling of America leading up to peak stupidity. The other 2 were Merle Haggard's Are the Good Times Really Over for Good? and Paul Simon's American Tune
The lyrics on this one are very clear, so easy to make out, but it's not easy for me to have any idea of whether there is any real historic background to them, and what in the hell that would be. Who cares, this one has that trademark Neil Young acoustic chunky guitar sound. This is one guy who likes to use the guitar as both a harmonic and a percussion instrument. You can just tell it's Neil Young right away when you hear the style of his acoustic playing.
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You know you're a Kennedy if:
Posted On: Thursday - April 26th 2018 8:18AM MST
In Topics:   General Stupidity  Humor

Some thoughts from reading a Steve Sailer post, Do "Kennedys" Exist? turned into a list in the format of Dave Letterman's. (Or was it Jeff Foxworthy with his "You know you're a redneck if:" bit that started this?). Though I've touted the pundit Steve Sailer numerous times on the Peak Stupidity blog, I don't believe I understand his point on this one, but that happens to me sometimes.
Also, I would hope the reader is aware by now what Peak Stupidity thinks of the Kennedys especially this one guy - more at the bottom of this post.
You know you’re a Kennedy if:
10) You live in a Compound that is NOT derided by those in authority as a place for white survivalists and cult members.
9) You have so many odd-talking politicians in the family that their voices are preserved for posterity by Mayor Quimby on The Simpsons.
8) Your H-1B visa security team members are important enough themselves to say “do you know who I am?” during traffic stops.
7) Your name causes women to get all hot and bothered until they realize that nobody in your family can even get elected dog catcher in a majority-feline jurisdiction anymore.
6) You have a family so big and worshiped by People magazine that it retains a full-time wedding planner who plans the individual weddings of your H-1B Visa contractor wedding planners.
5) You are closely related to a family member who has ditched one of various types of conveyances, be it seaborne, airborne, or ground-borne/temporarily-airborne in multiple locations in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, mostly clustered to the south of lower New England.
4) Your family tree has roots so deeply inserted into the clay pipe fittings of the sewer of Boston that even the most corrupt snake in city government is not long enough to clear it.
3) You still appear in The National Enquirer and People magazines, even after having done nothing of note for 5 decades, and without even a contraction name, such as Brangelina or JacKenNassis.
2) You have been personally instrumental in the demographic destruction of one or more advanced industrialized nations.
Finally, the number 1 way you know you are a Kennedy is
1) Your extended family is often compared to a beloved Middle-Ages cultural myth involving the Knights of the Round Table, when its behavior is usually closer to that of the Knights who say Nee!
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The great works of the ancients ... with no Caterpillars
Posted On: Tuesday - April 24th 2018 9:17PM MST
In Topics:   History  Science  Poetic Stupidity

(well, they just shoulda used a better mix ...)
This post was brought up by some commenting I'd read a few days back about some pretty amazing Japanese skin divers that go down toward 200 ft. below the ocean surface and back with no equipment. It was pretty impressive and they were topless and possibly bottomless. [No, absolutely NOT - Peak Stupidity has plans to become a family site, dammit! - Ed] Still, while one can be impressed by the physical endurance involved, we have machines that can take people miles down called submarines, and equipment for the common man and (hopefully topless) women that allow us to stay down at those depths for hours at a time. It's called SCUBA. "Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus! By George, I think she's got it!"*
I'll bring up my point here early on (for a change!), and then some examples. All of the fascination and reverence modern Westerners have for the old native cultures and even the precursors to their own culture includes great awe for the old mighty works, your pyramids, your stonehenges, and your aqueducts (after all, what else have the Romans ever done for us?!) and such. People are impressed by these big monuments and other more useful structures were built by men without the help of modern day construction equipment, sometimes even without the use of the wheel which, well, they hadn't thought of yet. I'm not gonna give a lesson here in the antiquities, as the Peak Stupidity blog's purpose is to enlighten readers on types of stupidity, not to lecture.
You will hear from those who demean their own cultural roots and revere that of the ancients that "we couldn't do this today". That statement is almost always incorrect. We COULD do it today. We CHOOSE not to, firstly, because the projects may not have a positive pay-off - you know, things like huge pyramids in the desert and big piles of rocks aimed toward solstice points and all that aren't the kinds of projects that a lot of honest investors feel are sound, if they do their due diligence. Additionally, even the quite useful massive projects, such as the aqueducts, can be built using modern designs and modern methods. Yes, we COULD do it the old way. Why would we?
The construction of the various pyramids in Egypt went on for decades on each one of them. The labor was not just cheap but free, with no union representation, no health plan, and nothing but "go ahead and die" as a retirement plan (was that a "defined benefit" or "defined contribution" plan - I'll have to ask the Peak Stupidity HR lady first thing tomorrow). Whatever funds, what to feed and house the slaves, to buy the stones from Stones-R-Us, and to pay the engineers of the day, were necessary, were about as unlimited as the funds that emanate from the American Feral Gov't of today, with that great support from the FED. Did the ancient Egyptians have their own version of the FED, in fact? Maybe that's what some of that "linear-C" hieroglyphics, never deciphered (until possibly just now?) were about - the old one's version of quantitative easing. See, back to the first point again, why would our modern-day FED inscribe big stone tablets to create currency when they have a better way, called cntrl-P'ing?
How about that Stonehenge? Yeah, I know, it is proof that these ancestors of the English had the free time and inclination to know some astronomy. That part is cool. The hauling of those multi-ton rocks to the site and positioning of them (especially that top one, with neither a tracked-crane nor snorklifts), was that really necessary, though? It seems like overkill ... call it scope creep. It probably started as a wooden structure, but then some egotistical Druid reckoned his fellow hunter-gatherers seemed to have lots of time on their hands, and idle hands an all ... We couldn't build it today, really? I guess, like a straight-forward border barrier on a < 2,000 mile border, it's really a matter of "do people WANT it built?" We have observatories and apps on our phones that can tell us where the moon and stars are, or we could look up and shit ... Still, if we want to put together a few dozen 25-ton rocks in a pattern, it could be done in a morning, depending on the union break schedule.
Americans built > 50,000 miles of paved 4-lane limited access highway in a decade or so, and it didn't make a major dent in middle-class American's tax bills (keep in mind that this was during a time of much smaller government). Oh, no immigrant labor was necessary, just Americans working smarter with the American-designed/built dozers, back-hoes, front-loaders, dumpers, graders, scrapers, rollers, and pavers. Should we NOT be proud because we DIDN'T do it with our bare hands, wearing out our backs and costing 1000 times more money? Is the invention of all that hydraulic/IC-engine-powered construction equipment NOT something to be proud of? All you native-culture lovers would be singing a different tune, if it weren't for hundreds of years of Western science and engineering giving you the leisure to do so.
Oooh, "they built it with their bare hands" ... hell with that - get a Cat!

"But they built up with their bare hands what we still can't do today.... " Yeah, right ... whatever ... just jam, man.
As explained here on Peak Stupidity early on, we don't have to agree with the lyrics to enjoy a great song. It's only a disagreement with the line above, really, as Neil's words about the Spaniard's treatment of the natives were fairly true. The song's title is pretty appropriate, but again, here's the thing: This is the best of electric Neil Young - the lyrics could say any damn thing, and the song would still be great, with that long lead guitar solo. We have featured mostly acoustic Neil Young, also great stuff, such as Sail Away, Comin' Apart at Every Nail, and Comes a Time before. Electric Neil Young stuff is great too - listen to Powderfinger
*What, no Family Ties fans here?
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Can I help you?
Posted On: Friday - April 20th 2018 10:42AM MST
In Topics:   Curmudgeonry  Race/Genetics

A commenter writing on a thread under one of the Steve Sailer post WaPo: "Starbucks and the Elimination of Black People from White Spaces" (WaPo is The Washington Post, for those who aren't required to keep up with the Lyin' Press) mentioned a euphemistic phrase that I'd been wanting to post about. It was on the way-back burner, but I'm glad to have my memory jogged. This concerns the Starbucks brew-haha that Peak Stupidity has been remiss in posting anything about. Well, iSteve almost always covers this sort of story remorselessly.
Per the commenter, name of Laura, the phrase "Can I help you?" is one that black people have a real problem with, per a Slate magazine writer. Apparently, inside a retail establishment, this question is a subtle accusation of shoplifting. Well, blacks are gonna complain about imaginary stuff just like lots of others, but I will say that this "Can I help you?" crap, in any other situations than the obvious ones that I'll describe in a second, kind of bugs me for a similar reason.
“Can I help you?” is most times a euphemism for “what the hell are you doing here?” Yes, if you are in Target wandering around the same coupla’ of aisles, it is a valid question, whatever color you may be. However, I have heard it many times when I was nowhere close to a store, say crossing the school grounds without any kids.
“Can I help you?”. “I don’t know if you CAN help me, but no, you MAY not.” is a good one at a school, followed by “Hey, what are you teachin’ here anyway?” That sets ‘em back about 30 seconds. Still, I don’t like this. I’d rather the questioner just put it truthfully “Hey, what are you doing here?” “Don’t worry about it.” is an appropriate response … till the cops come, that is.
I'm guessing blacks do hear this phrase more, but I don't know if they'd rather hear "Just what the hell are you up to?" or not. At the store, as the commenter said, the clerk is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. "Can I help you?" is insinuating you are a trouble maker, while ignoring the you makes the clerk a racist. Nah, you can't win with this easily, but I did come up with one thing: “Hey, nice hair – one gal on our armed security force has hers the same way!” Whaddya think? Women are good at this sort of thing, right?
While I'm all over this thing, I will tell you that being called "Sir", most of the time, is worse than "Can I help you?" It usually the cops or somebody in authoritah you hear this one from, with the numerous exceptions of a stranger calling you to tell you your phone dropped out of your back pocket. Most of the times, "SIR!" is not good. I feel for some of the black guys that really aren't out to cause any trouble, but, hey, people can't usually tell.
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HR - scourge of the business world - Part 3
Posted On: Thursday - April 19th 2018 7:31AM MST
In Topics:   Curmudgeonry  Artificial Stupidity  Big-Biz Stupidity
(Continued from this post, as Exhibit A from the Peak Stupidity legal department was just an interlude.)

One thing I promised to disucss, back in the 1st post of the series on the scourge of "Human Resources", is computer selection of prospective employees, hence the Artificial Stupidity topic key is attached. You would think this may be a good thing. I had discussed how HR people normally don't know a whole lot about the jobs that they are there to hire people for. Why NOT let
How about let the manager looking for an employee just get the information he needs and hire whomever he wants? That's way too old-school, I guess, and the reader may well ask, what about in today's economy, when there may be 2,000 applicants for some technical job? OK, I can see the need for some computer screening. It makes sense to have some on-line info with basic numbers and qualifications that can be screened to weed out most of the applicants as just not qualified - they'd be a waste of time to talk to on the phone. The problem is that these HR people (damn them, again?!) are involved in this process too.
There is no way, without inside information, to know whether you, the applicant, may be missing some simple things on your resume, which the software has a a real boner for. The HR people, as written about earlier, only know the buzzwords, but don't understand the technical fields. They have no idea what people will really be doing with their time, meaning also no idea what the resume shows the applicant having done before during his work history. It's really not any better sometime, and can even be worse, because bugging the hell out of a software program does not have the same effect as bugging the hell out of some HR lady, until she caves.
The 2nd thing that is going on, is that I believe the on-line application processes are designed as a way to weed people out just based on difficulty of use. It's the modern method versus what used to be a look at the grammar, spelling, and manner of speech of an applicant. Yeah, it still never had anything directly to do with the job, unless it was for a book editor or a press spokesman. However, the old way was a measure of written/verbal skills, meaning part (ONLY) of general intelligence. Now, I guess, getting through the on-line process is your test. I did this a few years ago. While well qualified and having good experience for the technical position, I failed miserably on the on-line process - I guess, cause I never heard back, and I had emailed to get help to finish the on-line shit!
I think things involving corporate employment, at any larger than the family or 20-person business level, have gotten pretty miserable. Back to my on-line experience, I did have thoughts of just driving over to the workplace in question and trying to talk to people. It wasn't very far away. I figured, probably rightly, that the best that would happen is that after telling me that everything is on-line and they can't help me, they might just direct me to a desktop computer in the lobby to go through the same crap I did at home! I suppose it's always been more "It's not who what you know, it's who you
More discussion of modern computer testing in general has been on the future-post list for a while, so that'll be coming.
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Chick-Fil-A foes hatch new hate campaign after 7-year incubation
Posted On: Wednesday - April 18th 2018 5:43PM MST
In Topics:   Media Stupidity  ctrl-left  Bible/Religion

Yeah, our headline is stretching it a bit, but, as a pundit of no great renown, and low in the pecking order, I've gotta keep striving for eggcelence. What I was very surprised about, when reading Michelle Malkin's column today, was that it has been 7 years since that boycott/buycott deal involving Chick-Fil-A and the owner Truett Cathy, as coincidentally mentioned here on the Peak Stupidity blog just 2 days back. (I believe I used the phrase "a few years back" to refer to that boycott and successful retaliatory buycott, but I was thinking 3 or so - time flies indeed).
The New Yorker magazine, read by people such as Michelle Malkin (apparently), Steve Sailer, and a number of New Yorkers, seemed bent out of shape about the restaurant chain opening up its 4th "store" in NY City. It is seen as an "infiltration" by the NY-mag writer and I guess lots of illegally-immigrated, errr, infiltrators. Actually, I jest, because, the way things are today, I must admit that the illegal Chinese and Chick-ano folks really don't give a damn what Chick-Fil-A does, versus the cntrl-left crowd in NYC. The latter are either scared chickenshitless or more honestly just have much hate for the Christianity privately espoused by the owners of Chick-Fil-A and lots of people outside NY City.
Here's the problem per Mrs. Malkin's interpretation of the New Yorker anti-big-chicken article:
Chick-fil-A’s corporate mission to “glorify God” and “enrich the lives of everyone we touch” leaves The New Yorker scribe terminally heartsick about the “ulterior motive” of its restaurant execs. So do the founding family’s commitments to faithful marriages, strong families, Sundays off and the highest standards of character for their employees. The frightened New Yorker critic is especially perturbed by the “Bible verses” enshrined at Chick-fil-A’s Atlanta headquarters and by the restaurant’s popular bovine mascots — which he dubs “morbid” and the “ultimate evangelists” — whose ubiquity on New York billboards and subway corridors is akin to a “carpet bombing.”As I wrote before, it takes a stand-up guy to keep all of the over 2,000 locations closed on Sundays in the face of (some) customer pressure, and LOTS of corporate pressure from the beancounters. Peak Stupidity has much admiration for this guy Truett Cathy and the Fil-A family. Michelle Malkin continues:
Notice, by the way, how these hysterical Chick-fil-a-phobes have no qualms about the success of Jewish-owned delis or the spread of Muslim halal food shop operators in New York City who openly pay tribute to their faiths. Imagine a reporter freaking out over Quran verses or Torah citations hung up on a business owner’s wall. Welcome to Social Justice 101, where discriminating against Christian-owned business in the name of opposing discrimination is the definition of tolerance.Great stuff by this #2 pundit. Yeah, this time it's not a particularly pro-gay point of view that is riling up the cntrl-left, but just the fact that Christianity is still around and kicking somewhere. It's a shame that supporting Chick-fil-A by buying Mor Chikin is the only non-hazardous way of showing support for Christianity, at least in NY City. Well, let's not get into the long-term effects of the saturated fat on the inside of your arteries - may as well have just gone to the gay nightclubs, drunk colorful mixed drinks and read New Yorker articles, in that case. Wait... whose side are we on, anyway? I dunno, if anyone's the victim here, it's the chickens.
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Global Climate DisruptionTM - The Politics (Part 6) on Takimag
Posted On: Wednesday - April 18th 2018 7:17AM MST
In Topics:   Websites  Global Climate Stupidity  Pundits

Peak Stupidity has not discussed the Global Climate DisruptionOUR Trademark - don't you forget it! field of stupidity in quite a while, excepting yesterday's post. It has really not been in the news lately, as a sort of long-term, slow burn (oops, too soon?) form of stupidity. I also think that Americans are really getting wise to the scam, and the Lyin' Press is backing off for the time being. Before I lost most faith in any abilities of President Trump to make some real changes, there was his heartwarming rejection of the bogus Paris Accord (man, I miss THAT Trump), which also put the issue on the back burner, heheh!
However, just this morning, a guy named David Archibald published Climate Groupthink on Takimag. It is a historic (going back to the late 1980's, that is) overview of the politic aspects of climate research, hence our post title continues from Peak Stupidity blog writings of over a year back. Mr. Archibald's article is really a summary of Global Warming: A case study in groupthink. (.pdf download that I have NOT read yet) written by the eminent Englishman Christopher Booker. He is one of the few journalists, especially in the formerly-Great formerly-British police state, to have the guts and lack of stupidity, at the same time, to report widely on the corrupt political aspect of this part climate science.
A couple of things to mention about the article/website in question are:
1) Takimag, mentioned before on Peak Stupidity blog, has discontinued its comment section. That can really ruin a website experience - not really a factor here right now, haha. Often, I look forward to reading comments more than the articles on various sites. Takimag HAD used Disqus, like "Discuss", get it? (I didn't, for like, a coupla years!). I had never commented, as the Disqus software/company required registration, that turns me off. The commenters under the Takimag articles were very intelligent, but sometimes too focused on minute historical details, and I didn't usually follow them all. For the website itself, I don't think the guy, Mr. Takidopolis (or whatever, he's Greek) is a rich man that must not care about hits to the website. I could see them going down by 90%, because having comments brings many of the same readers back dozens of times to one page. If it's not for ad-money, then that's OK, because you'd really like to get a measure of unique visitors to the site anyway.
2) The writer here, Mr. Archibald, at least in this article, did not write a nicely flowing, readable article like that of a Fred Reed or John Derbyshire. The order of things in this overview of the GCD politics is therefore not clear, and it doesn't seem very thorough. It's probably that he just wanted to quickly excerpt the important parts of the Booker report, kind of like me, in a minute. Hey, this isn't really a review, so it's not a big deal. The facts are still the facts, and they are pretty damning for the Climate Hoax pushers, in this article's case, the ones in Science.
To whit (hey I LIKE that!):
The scientific establishment in the U.S. and Europe were solidly on board the global-warming hoax from at least thirty years ago, before the evidence for it had even been concocted. Of course, any dissent from this was not tolerated; from page 13:But, as Lindzen noted, it had soon become clear that any proposals deemed likely to be at all ambivalent over global warming were highly unlikely to be accepted. He recalled how, in the winter of 1989, the National Science Foundation had withdrawn funding from one of his MIT colleagues, Professor Reginald Newell, when his data analyses failed to show that the previous century had seen a net warming (one reviewer suggested that his results were ‘dangerous to humanity’).
Back in the 1990s some of the original participants in the global-warming industry thought they were involved in doing real science, thus this amusing story from page 20 about an IPCC report from 1995:There's nothing at all wrong with scientific controversy; that's how science is often done. It's the politics that come in due to, as usual, GOVERNMENTS. The money to do all this work at universities all over the western world was given not by some companies or organizations that need science done, as in other fields where the results are immediately useful. Note, that is not the case here. Live off of the government teat, and you must obey her every whim, and the biggest one here was that "We are Doomed! We must show that in red/yellow/green 3-D graphs. Make sure everyone knows we are doomed. I don't want to hear any of that 'we're not doomed' shit!" OK, that's the face of it, but really it's more about "I want TOTAL CONTROL ... of energy use, production, and living in general!" To whit [WTF does that even mean?! Ed.]But no one was more surprised by this than several of the scientific contributors to those same pages, who had earlier signed off the text as an accurate record of what they had agreed. These now much-quoted words had not appeared in the draft they formally approved at a meeting in Madrid in November 1995.
In clear breach of one of the IPCC’s strictest rules, these two cited papers had not even yet been published. What astonished the scientists even more, however, was to discover that no less than 15 key statements from their agreed text had been deleted. And each of these had expressed serious doubt over the human contribution to global warming.
Because there was no evidence for global warming in the climate record, beyond normal variation, evidence for it had to be fabricated. One of these fabrications was Michael Mann’s hockey-stick graph that got rid of the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period. This was exposed by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who found that:I had no idea the Russians were involved, but then they've always been good in science. It sounds like were stand-up guys on this political science issue, but then caved in the end (you'd think the cntrl-left would LUV this guy Putin, but he must have gone off script again with all the peacemongering and stuff).In essence it seemed that Mann’s algorithm was ‘mining’ the underlying data for hockey-stick shapes, and therefore would give a hockey stick result from whatever data was fed into it.[ PS NOTE - remember all our writing about math models and proving the models? - Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, summarized here and here.]
Despite having the gumption to throw out a thousand years’ worth of climate data in pursuit of his hockey stick, Mann is a sensitive soul with a fragile self-identity. He went on to sue Mark Steyn and others for alleged defamation. Another unpleasant individual prominent at the time was the smarmy Tony Blair, then prime minister of the U.K., who sent a delegation headed by Sir David King to a climate seminar in Moscow organized by Putin’s economic adviser, Alexander Ilarionov. King behaved abominably. The Russians had recently emerged from seventy years of a totalitarian regime enforcing groupthink and were quick to recognize global warming for what it was, as told on page 28:He went on to speak witheringly about the ‘distorted and falsified’ data used to promote the ‘consensus,’ mentioning the ‘hockey stick.’ And he then tore apart the behaviour of King and his colleagues, pointing out their complete inability to answer scientific questions and referring to those ‘ugly scenes’ that had ‘prevented the seminar from proceeding normally.’
Ilarionov ended with a peroration warning that the world seemed once again to be up against a ‘man-hating, totalitarian ideology,’ dealing in ‘misinformation, falsification, fabrication, mythology and propaganda,’ in an attempt ‘to prove the alleged validity’ of its theory. No one listening to this storming rejection of all the ‘consensus’ stood for could have guessed that, four months later, on a private initiative by Tony Blair, President Putin would do a complete U-turn. In return for Russia being allowed to join the World Trade Organization on very favourable terms, it would now ratify the Kyoto Treaty.
I'll give you one hopeful thought here, in the midst of the Trump administration stupidity and all the rest that are leading us to the peak. We just haven't heard so much of the Global Climate DisruptionTM crap, so we can be thankful for that. Pretty soon, the way this is trending, I won't even have to be anxious about talking to a neighbor about the weather.
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Self Immolation at the Peak of Stupidity
Posted On: Tuesday - April 17th 2018 8:38AM MST
In Topics:   Genderbenders  General Stupidity  Humor  Global Climate Stupidity

If you're going to kill yourself, setting yourself on fire is the most painful way anyone could think of. It is the nastiest sort of pain, and as much as I've got jokes galore on this one, the pain involved makes it hard to even write ones on this guy (warning - links to Fox branch of Lyin' Press). I understand that Mr. Dave Buckel, as a lawyer for the transgendered, the planet, and all other under-represented entities, wanted to make a show and horrify the world. Yes, I am horrified, but only by the utter stupidity of his act.
Many Buddhist monks did this same horrible act on themselves in Vietnam, during the war days. I have lots more respect for them, as they at least knew (I suppose) where they were going next. They knew the horrible pain they would face, if only for a minute, and they didn't have as many worldly things to lose compared to an American lawyer. I think Mr. Buckel may have been too stupid to even know how burning himself would feel. In addition to that stupidity, it's the purpose of his self-immolation that brings out stupidity-induced humor of this blogger.
This act by David Buckel was apparently (from a letter that the flames must have missed) in protest of against the use of fossil fuels. No, he is not a chemist, but a lawyer, as I stated earlier. That's a real shame, too. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Buckel, in the next life, but how is combustion of your body not going to make more of the "greenhouse gasses" that your
What did Mr. Buckel think - his body wasn't made out of hydrocarbons and his shit didn't stink? The thing is, if this shyster lawyer could have stayed alive representing "The Planet" in various courts of law in various jurisdictions and maybe even accumulated body mass, he could have at least practiced what he preached, as a human carbon sink. "Stay alive, sequester the carbon" - that's what they say or should say, if these Global Climate DisruptionTM idiots had just enough brainpower to come up with good sayings (hey, guys, for the 1st one - no charge!) With this act of combustion, David Buckel was responsible for an immediate emission of toxic quantities of CO2 (along with water, a much stronger greenhouse gas, but, first rule of Climate Club: WE! DON'T! TALK! ABOUT! WATER!) No, ever heard "ashes to ashes, dust to dust", Mr. Buckel? Those ashes are carbon too. But, OK, you may have been so proud of yourself for getting through college and law school without a lick of chemistry - don't want to hang out with those autistic geeks, eh? Now look atcha!
OK, you may say, the process of combining the Hydrogen in the body with Oxygen to make water, and the Carbon with Oxygen to make Carbon Dioxide would happen any way that this guy died? That is true, rotting, the process of being processed by bacteria, will result in the same elements - dust to dust. Sure, but how about a massive dose of formaldehyde and a vacuum-sealed casket? Now that there's some Carbon sequestration, I tells ya. Maybe next time.
Did Dave Buckel even go through the permit process for burning in a public park - Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NYC? The treehuggers are really big on the whole permitting thing, so let's hope so.
Anyway, from the Lamda Legal family, λ being the Greek letter for gay, apparently, not to mention wavelength, an eigenvalue of a matrix, linear electric charge density, and of course, the latent heat of vaporization of a substance on a per-mole basis, we read:
This is a tremendous loss for our Lambda Legal family, but also for the entire movement for social justice.You say that like it's a bad thing. That's not the half of it anyway. This has been a huge loss of latent stupidity. OTOT, this is countered by a small gain for those who like warmer weather and don't ever want to see snow again. We'd really never like to see anyone get burned like this either. Are we at the peak,yet?
* Please see the Peak Stupidity blog's 5-part series on "There is no working model of the world's climate, dammit!" with the Global Climate Stupidity topic key for all the background on our opinions on this topic.
PS: For the family of this guy, I'm so sorry. I guess you all knew he was a nutball, but what happened is terrible.
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Boycotts, Buycotts, and CEOs ... Part 3
Posted On: Monday - April 16th 2018 6:23PM MST
In Topics:   Political Correctness  Economics  Big-Biz Stupidity
(continued from this post but could follow directly from the previous one)

I had some more to say about boycotts and the like, so the previous post was a bit out of order. Who cares.
That list of a baker's dozen companies that one could boycott in order to stand up for Laura Ingraham could be seen as very useful but could also illustrate some of the futility of spending significant time and brainpower to help. As I stated though, these boycotts and buycotts are about the only way individuals CAN make any kind of difference in the political and cultural scene as money does talk. The Chick-Fil-A example of a buycott was so successful, in my opinion that some of the cntrl-left on the other side of that deal, at least the ones with IQs above room temperature (Fahrenheit too!), may really have second thoughts about opening their mouths like this. Good deal. I wonder if it was the best thing to happen to the Chick-Fil-A franchise ever, as once you get a taste of that spicy chicken sandwich, there's no boycott left in you. Whether you like gay people, don't care, or really don't want them around you, you have to admit that the man makes a pretty good bird (sorry, old Seinfeld reference).
Smith & Wesson handguns learned a good lesson about 10-15 years ago when they cowardly caved in to the gun-grabbers on some issue I can't remember. What I do remember is that they took a big hit, and were in bankruptcy. They changed their tune after that. The NRA did a great job in spreading the word, and the gun-owners can be a disciplined bunch.
On other hand, can you take the time and energy upon making any purchase, whether this is "people you should be doing business with"? It can make one neurotic, or at least neurotic-looking, enough to hear the old pretty-good advice "You need to know how to pick your battles" on a daily basis. You may be the one in the restaurant on your first, and probably last, date with a lady saying "No, don't order that! That tuna is not dolphin-safe. (Stick with the melted-cheese sandwiches, made in a good-old fashioned cheese plant in
The problem will also be that some of these corporations may be on your side in one cultural conflict but have run their mouths or directed their money toward another policy that you detest. You can't have a simultaneous boycott and buycott. By that point, just buy what the hell you need. and get out. You've got to live your life, and things are so complicated that the company marketing people won't have any idea what kind of "cott" they are undergoing; sales go down, and sales go up.
An additional problem is the size and scope of Big Biz corporations. If you don't like what Procter & Gamble is up to, how could you possibly boycott all of their products without basically going off the grid (more power, oops, less power, to you if you do, but it's a big move)? They make all kinds of stuff. Imagine if, as often does happen, you reckon you should stop buying Huggies diapers due to their corporate PC BS (just an example, mind you) and will pay the extra money, just to show 'em, and buy Pampers. Who knows if both brands come from the same company, though, and maybe even the same factory? Big Biz may be laughing all the way to the bank on some of these deals, if the customers are not really diligent.
I guess the wrap-up here is this: When we can, a group of consumers can hit a business quick, if we are individually disciplined. Letting them know why if also helpful*, but the change in the money coming in is like a punch in the gut to them. At least keep it up for a month or two. However, some of the open-ended one with dozens of companies to watch out for are usually not worth it, unless there is an easy switch to make. In the long term, you're probably going to continue eating the chikin you crave ...
* .. such as by leaving stuff right at the counter. "Oh, I just saw on my phone that your company is doing such-and-such BS. Here, keep your stuff, I gotta go down the street. Don't take it personally, but y'all ought to give your corporate people a call." That is both productive AND fun ... BUT borders on neurotic.
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Boycotts, Buycotts, and CEOs ... Part 2
Posted On: Monday - April 16th 2018 5:31PM MST
In Topics:   Political Correctness  Economics  Big-Biz Stupidity
(continued from this post)

Now, let me discuss the last part, the CEOs who should shut their mouths more. The guy I ran into a few days back was a very high-frequency passenger on Delta Airlines. These days the big airlines, and especially Delta, have a tendency to really kiss the asses of their "Gold", "Emerald" or whatever precious metal/mineral-based customers are tops. They have their good reasons - that these are the customers that pay the real money-making fares and they are the only customers who have any loyalty. The twice-a-year vacationers may get treated very well on a flight, but if one finds a $20 lower fare next year on a different airline, he is likely going to bail for that. The internet has made this worse, I think.
This particular gentleman was fairly and rightfully pissed off about Delta's (and United's too, BTW) scrapping of their NRA discounts about a month back. The funny thing is, I had read that it wasn't more than a few dozen people out of millions that had availed themselves of it. The head honchos of Delta had to jump into the political fray after the Florida school shooting, and bad-mouth the NRA. Maybe they figured jerking the discount would only bother that score or so of customers, but see, it's the talk that pissed lots of people off. Because another of the 3 huge airlines left in the US did this same move, I really doubt that a boycott would be of any use. People may talk, but the high-dollar loyal passengers will stick with their status and perks, and the low-dollar ones will still shop the lowest fare that gets them from here to there and back.
However, a strongly worded letter by one, or maybe many, of the passengers that Delta kisses the asses of may make a difference in how much the CEO will mouth off next time. The immediate damage to Delta's bottom line this time was due to the outrage by the good gun-appreciating folks in the government of Georgia. Hey, Peak Stupidity does not praise government very often, so take a shot. We won't get you drunk on this one. Anyway, the ironic part here was that the buddy-buddy (bills-of-attainder notwithstanding anymore) deal of an exemption of fuel taxes at Atlanta Hartsfield since Delta's operation there is BIG BIZ, had apparently expired already. Therefore, the tax could be implemented again with no law required, just "hey, how 'bout this? We just noticed ...." Heckuva job,
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Boycotts, Buycotts, and CEOs who should shut their mouths more.
Posted On: Monday - April 16th 2018 12:24PM MST
In Topics:   Political Correctness  Economics  ctrl-left  Big-Biz Stupidity

The concept of boycotts and the newer thing, "buycotts" are not forms of stupidity themselves, in fact, far from it. It's the stupidity that initiates these informal consumer actions and the stupidity that goes with it all that require mention here on Peak Stupidity. The impetus for this post was a talk with a man, to be mentioned more later on, about the Delta Airlines executive's mouthing off about the NRA a month or more back.
Lately, I've read about Laura Ingraham and her troubles with Fox News due to her accurate but offensive statement about the gun-control high-school soy-boy twit, David Hogg. (BTW, any network that would go ahead and use "Accurate but Offensive" as their logo - no charge, guys - may be one to get me back watching the TV once in a while!) Anyway, Mrs. Imgraham's tweet to the twit caused her detractors to encourage viewers to boycott her Fox News show, and then spontaneously caused various sponsors to cave in as advertisers due to the usual cowardice and stupidity of their executives. That can, in turn, cause a boycott by Ingraham's and sanity's fans of those companies in question. I will write more on how the Peak Stupidity blog could be doing this stuff all day, but just for this time here are these companies, in case our reader(s) want(s) to make a U-ey, if he were for some reason reading this post in an Office Depot parking lot:
Rachael Ray’s Nutrish pet food brand (true story—I gave that to my dog once, and he puked), Expedia, TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Hulu, Office Depot, Atlantis, Paradise Resort, Honda, Liberty Mutual, Progressive, and Jenny Craig.That is a partial list, BTW, and comes from Memo to Laura Ingraham: Never Beg by a Mr. David Cole on Takimag.com. I've written about this website before, most recently here regarding the great anti-PC writer Jim Goad. This particular article by Mr. Cole is about more than just the Ingraham brouhaha, and includes his own experience with the cntrl-left's tendencies to try to ruin careers due to their being offended. "Don't apologize if you were right." is his point.
Now, back to our point, the buying and not buying or viewing and not viewing can go both ways, and back-and-forth a bit. Sometimes things can backfire nicely against the cntrl-left crowd when it takes offense. The Chick-fil-a deal of a few years back is the best example of this in my memory. Here it was the executive who didn't so much mouth off like the Delta Exec, but only expressed his own opinion about gays and gayness in some interview or some manner that made it public. He had made absolutely no store policy regarding homo-sexuality, as customers are customers and chicken don't even have time for homosexuality these days in the nasty factory farms, even if they have the inclination. Well, once his offended detractors decided to boycott, the non-necessarily anti-homo, but more reasonable, supporters started a buycott so huge that it would make you think a shrewd ad-guy working for Chick-Fil-A had thought the whole thing up himself*. No, I don't think so by any stretch, as Mr. Dan Cathy, the president (and heir of the founder) sounds like a very principled guy. Even if I have a big hankering from the spicy chicken sandwich on a Sunday, I have an abiding respect for a man who keeps the business closed each and very Sunday. This is even at airports where the rent must be outrageous, not to mention the 1/7 cut in the general top-line! There, you other PC cowardly CEOs, is a man of principle.
Back to the level of the peons who may decide not to watch Fox News until Mrs. Ingraham is off the air, or back on the air, or to buy lots of stuff from Office Depot before you
This week should be a good one for blogging, and our apologies for tailing off early last week.
* as is Peak Stupidity's opinion about the mid-1980's "New Coke" thing.
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HR - scourge of the business world - Exhibit A - Toby Flenderson
Posted On: Thursday - April 12th 2018 7:49PM MST
In Topics:   Big-Biz Stupidity
In the previous post, earlier today, on the topic of "Human Resources" I was very remiss in not including any discussion of my favorite TV HR personality, Mr. Toby Flenderson, of The Office. Yes, the show is 10 years old or so, and no, I don't watch TV now, but this explains why I believe The Office was THE FUNNIEST show EVER on TV. Yes, it's above Seinfeld, IMO.
"Dunder-Mifflen Paper Company" of Scranton, Pennsylvania, is the supposed setting of this show. This branch office of the NY City-based company has only 10-12 people or so, so in real life this would be a place free from the scourge of HR. However, the show has Toby as a corporate-placed HR guy who works in the back, and is detested by the boss, Mr. Micheal Scott.
Let me tell you, I don't place stock in actors/actresses and who plays this or that character in the movies, as the reader may have noticed from a couple of Peak Stupidity movie reviews here and here. Who cares? If it's entertaining, keep watching. If it's not, or even is but has a clear political agenda, then don't. That said, let me tell you, Steve Carell, who plays Michael Scott is really amazing. He plays a guy who is underconfident and not all that bright, but acts like he is confident and bright for his staff. It's really funny stuff, and Micheal Scott's scenes with HR-loser-guy Toby Flenderson make for some of the funniest moments. Youtube has big collections of this stuff, so here's just a very good compilation of the best.
Would that all HR representatives were like Toby Flenderson?! It'd be a much more pleasant world at the office.
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