Chipotle - no credit, no debit, and hold the E. Coli
Posted On: Monday - May 29th 2017 5:04AM MST
In Topics:   Global Financial Stupidity  Globalists  Economics  Liberty/Libertarianism
Hey, we're only a few days behind on this one, but it's the general story, not this specific happening, reported on such-and-such date, that is the focus of this Peak Stupidity post.
I've been to Chipotle (it's not, "chi-pot-el", as one might thing, but "chi-poat-lee", to sound more sophisticated) a few times. I got the grilled steak tacos, hold the e. coli. The guys or girls behind the counter liked this joke, BTW. (This chain had an e. coli problem a couple of years back.) Now, the restaurant chain has had a problem with hackers into the digital money payments.
Chipotle says hackers hit most restaurants in data breach
Hackers used malware to steal customer payment data from most of Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc's (CMG.N) restaurants over a span of three weeks, the company said on Friday, adding to woes at the chain whose sales had just started recovering from a string of food safety lapses in 2015.
Chipotle said it did not know how many payment cards or customers were affected by the breach that struck most of its roughly 2,250 restaurants for varying amounts of time between March 24 and April 18, spokesman Chris Arnold said via email.
A handful of Canadian restaurants were also hit in the breach, which the company first disclosed on April 25.
OK, what else?
Stolen data included account numbers and internal verification codes. The malware has since been removed.Hey, cash is King,
The information could be used to drain debit card-linked bank accounts, make "clone" credit cards, or to buy items on certain less-secure online sites, said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the non-profit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
Cash
More on the total control aspect in a minute, but just to explain the strike-over in the last paragraph, the US dollar denominated currency, and the digital dollars too, are money right NOW, as people ACCEPT their value. This can change very quickly in a financial collapse or during a hyper-inflationary period, but his has been hashed out in detail on this very blog - there are at least 20 posts already on this subject. Real money does not lose value during financial and political crises.
Now, the reader could find many articles on Zerohedge on the subject of governments' (around the world) war on cash. Look up the screw up of the Indian rupee due to ban on certain denominations that happened a few months back - it messed up the economy quite nicely. ZH has also written about Sweden, one of the countries that is most "cashless", many times. One of the wettest dreams of all globalist elite control freaks is the removal of the ability to buy and sell without observation, supervision, and permission by the government - let's replace the word "government" with "the beast", so we now know what we're talking about.
I had an acquaintance back in the 1980's who would talk about the Book of Revelation* and relate it to bar codes. RFID was way in the future then, so the bar-code on the forehead idea seemed a bit out there to me. It's not out there anymore, people, as even without RFID tags, were we just to stick to bar code, I could see it as a beauty enhancement for some of us:

(OK, these guys do not necessarily work at Chipotle, but this could explain the e. coli.)
I guess the guy on the left is a barber, and you don't get to see these barber poles so much anymore, what with Great Clips and all, so there's that. The guy on the right is much more suited for the modern era, as he has a place set up for a bar-code, maybe even a 2-D one first implemented by UPS(?).
This push for a cashless society, meaning completely digital, recorded and controlled buying and selling, is, other than a grab for the guns, once of the last steps in total control of the population. How this cashless idea has been advertised and pushed on us, and what people can do, or are doing about it will be continued here.
* Here's the passage: 13:17 "And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."
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A small piece of good news from The Donald via Zerohedge
Posted On: Saturday - May 27th 2017 8:58PM MST
In Topics:   Global Climate Stupidity  Trump
Merkel Furious With Trump After "Unprecedented" G-7 Failure To Reach Consensus On Climate Change. This just makes me smile. This will not be a scientific or political post about Global Climate DisruptionTM, as Peak Stupidity has done yeoman's work (well, when we had a yeoman on the staff) in documenting Global Climate Stupidity. I remember vividly staying indoors to write most of these 23 (and counting) posts, as the climate had just CHANGED, to like, winter or something.
We have all been fairly disappointed with President Trump's breaking of many promises, as not all his lack of success is due to judges. He has let us down a number of times with decisions and actions that are completely within the president's power. This is not the time for this post, though, and many are all over this - here's a 3-week old John Derbyshire article on the disappointments from this man.
Sometimes, all it takes to temporarily make us patriots happy is a few choice words of truth from the guy, just standing up to the bullshit here and there.
Merkel who had hoped to leave the Saturday summit with the G-7 agenda endorsed by everyone, including Trump, was furious at the US president.Yeah, right, Euro-trash, do you understand that this is not Confucianist China and we're not gonna agree on stupid policy just to "conform to the consensus". You can peddle your Global Climate DisruptionTM
“The whole discussion about climate has been difficult, or rather very unsatisfactory" German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters Saturday. "Here we have the situation that six members, or even seven if you want to add the EU, stand against one. That means there are no signals until now whether the U.S. will remain in the Paris Agreement or not. We have therefore not talked around it but made clear that we the six member states and the EU remain committed to the goals of the agreement.”
The unhappy German continued: "The fact that we have not been able to make progress here is of course a situation in which you have to say that there is no common support for an important international agreement. This Paris Agreement is not simply any old agreement, but it’s rather a core agreement.”
She concluded by noting the unprecedented breach of agreement within the ranks, perhaps a first in G-7 history “There is right now no agreement. But we have made very clear that we are not moving away from our positions.”
Moments later, the final declaration released a just as stunning statement, which said that the U.S. was "not in a position to join consensus" on climate change.
To be sure, its wasn't just Merkel who was displeased with Trump. According to Politico, while he avoided any major gaffes or serious diplomatic breaches, Trump’s lack of rapport with European leaders raises serious questions about his ability to effectively team up with critical U.S. allies.
“Like when there’s a new strange kid in the class nobody likes,” said a senior EU official who was briefed on the closed NATO meetings in Brussels. “You behave civilly when teachers (media) watch but don’t spend time with him in private because he’s so different.”
.
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Childless European Leaders
Posted On: Saturday - May 27th 2017 7:52PM MST
In Topics:   Immigration Stupidity  Globalists  The Future  World Political Stupidity
The following image is known as a tweet; make of it what you will. Peak Stupidity has determined that, at the time some commenter pasted this under some blog post, 428 people were pacing around in a clockwise square pattern perusing the implications, while 533 other twits were eating heart-healthy snacks in response. Or either, we are not current on our icon-ography here.

Seriously now, this information is startling. I would bet a decent amount of money that any tweet from the 1970's (OK, a newspaper clipping) would show that every one of the leaders had kids, and the average number of kids would be pretty close to 3. The reader may want to look into this, but keep in mind, I haven't put down my wager amount, so...
I want to relate this simple informational graphic to the immigration stupidity that is going on in Europe at a fairly rapid pace. We indeed have our own version of this in America, but it seems like Western Euro leaders have gone all in, with the evil Frau Merkel as the ringleader of the shitshow being performed on that continent. These leaders may be stupid, or evil, or be stupid puppets for the truly evil deep in the background.
Do these leaders of the Western European nations care that the native Europeans are being replaced with scum from Africa and the Middle East? Believe me, that is happening - check not just the demographic raw or percentage population numbers but these numbers for kids of school age. You will know what's coming once you do. The stupid among these leaders may care, the evil ones by definition don't. Evil will have to be fought back, as always, with lots of suffering in doing so, but let's just assume generously that these leaders are just flat-out stupid. They have a lot of compassion - note 45% of the 9 are women, but you can't chalk up the entire problem to that. (Look at the Pope, he's a man, and has a billion or so Catholics that he is supposed to be defending... except that he is compassionate, so lots are gonna die.)
Just like Ivanka Trump with the pictures of hurt/dead Syrian children, there is no thought to the many more that will be maimed and killed once America decides to start another war. Let me digress for a minute to mention a 3-hour (no, not included here) video of Mark Steyn, the conservative writer/pundit being interviewed by this really cool mellow guy on C-SPAN "book-talk", or something like that. Mark Steyn is on the American patriots' side on the immigration issue and that was being discussed. Great show, really, but I just remember when a woman caller brought up her deep compassion for some Mexican kids (I believe "kid" goes up to 35 years-of-age in beaner-speak) that were detained after breaking into the country down in Texas or New Mexico. Mr. Steyn should have tore her a new one.
Were I Mark Steyn, here would be my reply: "You've got compassion lady, but how do you know WE don't. We just think a little into the future, as men have to, to build a civilization. Our compassion may extend a bit further than yours, to a point when my and your kids are living in Mexico, even though they never moved residence. How could you explain to your grandchildren how much YOUR compassion caused the country to change from the damn good one you grew up in to Mexico del Norte? Also, lady, were you a family-oriented person, you would be putting YOUR family's welfare over those of the Mexicans, as that's what being a Mom means! Have some compassion without the side of stupidity."
This post is not meant to denigrate those patriotic Americans and Euros without children*, by any means. I personally know plenty of Trump supporters (before he started to semi-suck), and real conservatives that don't have kids, but just want to do good for our country.
The point of this post is that these leaders may have a fairly small stake in the future. They may figure that this is all just a game or interesting experiment in diversity and multiculturalism. If it doesn't work out at all, well, they'll be dead or retired in a nice gated bug-out country in a non-disclosable location - so, you know, who cares? - don't take this stuff so seriously.
* Another post is coming to mind right now, as I write, about the difference in family size of native American and Europeans vs. the developing world.
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Gotta have some AC/DC now. "Thunderstruck"
Posted On: Friday - May 26th 2017 7:33PM MST
In Topics:   Music
A friend of mine just said today that the mark of a good, long-lasting song is how many bands cover it. His example was this one, "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC and covered by various and sundry other bands.
After finishing the previous post with a novelty fun take-off on "TNT", I figure we need some AC/DC. This is another band that exemplifies our contention that 99 % of good rock and pop was created in the English-speaking world.. The song in that post, an exception to prove the rule, is "Ninety-Nine Red Balloons" by the 1980's looking German girl Nena.
Brian Johnson sings the lead vocals in this song off of the The Razor's Edge album from 1990. Do you need the lyrics? No, I didn't think so. Weird, again, Angus Young's main guitar riff is in mixolydian mode.
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Feminism 102 - Mother Nature expresses herself monthly
Posted On: Friday - May 26th 2017 7:06PM MST
In Topics:   Music  Feminism
She's still on the lunar calendar. It's just some thoughts I had about a lunar month ago, so this could be a good follow up for Feminism 101 of 3 moons ago.
This post is about what you think it's about, so if you're too squeamish and don't have the stomach for it, GET OUT NOW, no harm, no foul. Menstruation is something men either don't know about early on in their lives (< 15 y/o) or don't want to know about (rest of the time). Women usually find out about it in the school shower and think they are dying because blood is pouring out of you-know-where. (OK, at least that's the way it happened for Carrie White in the Steven King movie, so, you know? It'd be pretty sad if everything Peak Stupidity knows about women's problems is from Movies and TV!) Later on, after the hot gym teacher explains it to them, they keep track of this lunar-monthly phenomenon like men watch the stock market for crazy irrational dips.
My formal biology learning ended a few decades back, so, whether we discussed the P.M.S. issue in class or not I cannot remember. (I probably would have remembered the laughs, so I think not.) Therefore, when a friend in the medical field mentioned that a women has only a limited supply of eggs already when she matures into a baby-making apparatus, I had no idea anymore about this. It turns out that she has just under 1/2 million egg follicles at that point, but during each period, as the one in 1000 follicle that has matured into an egg, but remained unfertilized, dies, another 1000 follicles are also lost. In 35 years +/- 5, the whole supply is gone.
Just as an aside, here's that "their" crap again! Though probably TMI for our average reader, here's a quote, as I was solidifying my menstrual-IQ in research for this post:
For most women, the length of time between ovulation (when an egg is released from the ovary) and their monthly period is between 12 to 16 days (this is called the luteal phase).For cryin' out loud, you know this only applies to women, the author is using "monthly period" singularly, so it should be "her monthly period". Damn this idiot and her fucked-up grammar!
OK, class, back on the subject here, the math is that 13 mature eggs and 13,000 or so follicles are lost each year (note, 13 due to lunar months). During those 35 years, the supply goes from 1/2 million follicles (possible eggs) in the ovaries to a big ZERO (invented by the Moslems, supposedly, BTW).
Now, women being emotional creatures and all, though the book knowledge, obtained from (almost all) men doing years of great scientific research, is not in mind usually and could not have been before the science, the female mind has a type of knowledge of the process that manifests itself as emotions. What do you think the female body would feel when another egg from the limited supply goes literally down the tubes? Mother Nature is not happy at all about this, as it has planned the female body for other things, say, bearing children. This disappointment by Mother Nature, an unforgiving old broad, manifests itself during this certain time of the lunar month as massive emotions that we try to avoid being around. It is not a good time for anyone involved, and the impetus for the entire "man cave" trend, in Peak Stupidity's opinion.
This is so obvious, but I have never seen this stated before. PMS is to be expected in a body running mostly on emotion, built for having children, at times when another of the limited supply of one of 2 necessary ingredients for the making of a child is lost. PMS could not NOT happen, unless, what, Mother Nature is taken out with extreme prejudice (but how?) or we talk to the preppers, maybe start an egg-prepper facebook group (hey, it's a start, OK, we just work here!)
This post is a scoop, people. EXTRA, EXTRA! Read all about it. PMS is bad, mmmkaay.
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Clocks by Coldplay
Posted On: Thursday - May 25th 2017 7:57PM MST
In Topics:   Music
This is one of those songs you just hear randomly all over the place, say at Target or somewhere, and you think "I've got to get some music by these guys". I hope I don't ever overplay it, as so far I dig this sound every once in a while when I think to find it and listen.
The British band Coldplay from circa 2002 with "Clocks":
I like how the guy ends many of the musical verses with the beginning of the next lyric line. Music scale is in the Mixolydian mode - that's why I like it too - much like Jerry's solos.
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Banned in Beijing ...
Posted On: Thursday - May 25th 2017 6:48PM MST
In Topics:   Student and other Snowflakes  University  China
Miss Shuping Yang had a few choice words to say about China at the University of Maryland commencement ceremonies last weekend. The Chinese people are not at all happy about this young lady bad-mouthing her native land, and Peak Stupidity local sources say she has been told not to come back. What the hell are we supposed to do with another foreign graduate in Psychology, though? ("Yang, I've been having those dreams again of my mother, and ... " "Rye back, have more sticky-lice-balls, and lerate your dleam to me in your best leco-erection.")
Peak Stupidity comments are coming, of course, but before you watch the 8 minute video, keep in mind this: agree or disagree with some of what this vapid assimilated-snowflake has to say, remember how stupid and naive we all were at this tender age too, OK. Well, I mean not THAT stupid and naive, and also, what do you mean "we" Keemosaabee?
(Note that this video has comments disabled on youtube. Yes, they are private and no Constitutional Amendment applies, but this sort of makes one think right off about what kind of free country we are anymore. I checked another video, and almost all the comments were in Chinese. We noted neither the characters for "stupid" nor "vapid", nor "snowflake" among them, but without
Were this 25 years ago, I would agree with the young lady wholeheartedly and applaud in front of my IBM 4MHz PC-clone with ... wait, no internet. Really, it was a different country then, but, along with that there were probably 1 % of the number of China
Nominally, we have a 1st Amendment protecting bans on free speech by governments, but it doesn't work as planned by our founders when the definition of "free" is changed to "anything that doesn't trigger our emotions". At the universities, which are almost all in a big-way taxpayer-supported institutions, this situation is the worst (see our post about Berserkely, but there is much more on VDare.com) of anywhere else in the country beside Washington, FS. This lady may really be naive and not know this, but then she is the freakin' Valedictorian! How do they pick 'em now, brow jobs?
Now, about the clean air business Miss Shuping hammered China about, we've noted here the problem with a country having too many people for the land. China indeed manufactures for the world cheaply at a high cost for the health of the people. I don't really disagree with Yang about that, but I think she is too stupid to know about anything but the symptoms. Did she mention how all environmental problems become more acute with greater population. No, I didn't hear that in there; possibly she is Sierra Club member and might even have a lot of compassion for the illegal immigrants that burn down 45 square miles of the High Sierras national park. Were she a Trump supporter and had a damn clue what kind of country this will become if we keep on doin' what we're doin', we could put up with another psychologist, at some cost in welfare benefits we suppose. But very high Lost Wages odds say she ain't. Could we ship her to some middle ground, if Peking won't let her back in - worst case an island made out of old HanJin shipping containers bolted together in the Pacific, with weekly air drops?
Anyhoo, this girl unmasks her agenda to those in the know, our local Chinasource, by telling the bogus story about needing a face mask. That can be true for Peking and many big cities there. However, Miss Shuping is from Kunming, down in Yunnan province (NW of VietNam) where the environment is quite nice, for China anyway. It is a big tourist destination, in fact. I really don't like the big embellishment of the story. Even if nominally pro-USA, I don't like bullshitters.
This is hardly related at all, except my friend's date in the south of China was named Shuping (that's the family name - first name was "Sweetie" or something). Anyway, I was in a hurry to meet them both before 2:30P on the "mainland" side of the border with Macao a few years back, as I would not know where to meet up with the bus to Canton, were I to be late. I just missed getting in front of the immigration man, when a Moslem guy (with crescent moon on his green passport) got back in front of me to finish. Let me tell you, this immigration guy was absolutely not screwing around or being PC by treating everyone the same. He went through every page on this guy's passport with a magnifying glass, back and forth at least twice. 10-15 minutes went by. Well, I got my turn finally, and it took about 30 seconds. Though worried even more about making it in time into the country, I pointed at the guy, said "Moslem?" and gave that immigration guy a big thumbs up. He smiled back.
Luckily my friend meant AFTER 2:30P, not BEFORE, as I looked frantically for gui lao (foreigners, literally "white ghosts") all around the sea of Chinapeople on the other side. Good times, good times, ... and we should import immigration zealots like that Chinese gentleman at the Zhuhai/Macau border, rather than vapid psychology students.
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Quick glance at the budget from US-Gov crack Green-eyeshade boys
Posted On: Thursday - May 25th 2017 2:46AM MST
In Topics:   Pundits  Global Financial Stupidity  Economics  US Feral Government  Taxes
[Firstly, mucho apologi-mento from Peak Stupidity for the lack of posting. As usual, it's time constraints, as we have a backlog of 20 or so examples of "the stupid" that are just rarin' to go. It's a veritable smorgasbord of stupidity, if you will, out there, so that's not the problem. We will try to get at least one regular (not just music) post up each day if at all possible for readers that like to follow us daily.]
"Green-eyeshade boys" is an old term for accountants, as back in the day they wore these green-tinted glasses that could tilt up and down to help them pore over the numbers without as much eye strain, I suppose. One can see it in the old movies once in a while, but some of these movies are black&white, so it's kind of hard to tell ... I just think that term is cool, just like the "white-shoe boys" for the Wall Street money men, though about the only times I've read that expression is from the same pundit, Mr. Gerald Celente, who preaches financial doom-and-gloom (and rightfully so, I might add, but he's kind of a one-note pundit - his big one-liner being "when people have nothing to lose, they lose it" OK, it was good the first dozen times, but ....)
Anyhoo, our crack US Feral Gov't green-eyeshade
[Yes, to add to our apologies above, this is a post meant to be made at tax deadline time, more than a month ago. As we have said before though, the stupidity discussed here is not arranged on a strict time-line so we do not need to be particularly timely on most of the posts.]

As a ZeroHedge aficionado, I don't really expect the figures in the charts to be totally accurate, and there is much black money in the outlays that we, as citizens, are not to be told about. However, let's put on our green eyeshades for a minute or two.
Note first the small text at the bottom. It seems that 2015, the example in the pie graphs, was a very good year, relatively speaking.* $3.688 Trillion - $3.250 Trillion = $438,000,000,000. That's the additional money (the deficit) that got added to the total (debt) owed to US Treasury bondholders in 2015.
From the pie graphs,there are just 2 things that I'd like to note, one about big government on the left, inflow, pie, and the other about our peak-stupidity-inducing financial situation on the right, outflow, pie.
Note on the left, inflows, pie that there is a fairly small 8% slice that represents excise taxes + estate taxes (death taxes), and gift taxes (even more IRS BS). That the entire US Government intake was just this currently small piece of pie up until 1913 (with a decade or so intermission by the tyrant Lincoln), resulting in great freedom, is a testament to the great wisdom of our founders in keeping the Government Beast under control for so long. The excise tax was THE income for the beast for that time, and it was not a direct burden on the citizens and encouraged self-sufficiency in manufacturing. Today, only < 8% (as we don't have the breakdown after subtracting the estate and gift taxes) is from tariffs, and all the rest in confiscated from us in various and sundry ways.
Now note on the right, outlays pie, that there is a 6% slice called "Net interest on the debt". Oh, just 6%, that doesn't sound too awful significant. Well, I dunno, that's 1/7 of the personal income tax collected just to pay off interest. Think if you had a few jobs (like the multiple sources of income on the left pie - though ALL of them come from us directly or indirectly anyway) and your biggest-income job had a paycheck, the net of which 1/7 went directly to pay off the credit cards. That's not insignificant, but one can live with it. HERE'S THE PROBLEM: This 6%-of-spending debt payment is at a low interest rate, made artificially low by the Federal Reserve Bank. The rates that the government is paying its lenders, via interest on outstanding Treasury Bonds/Bills is in the neighborhood of 2%. Imagine if interest rates were allowed to rise to their natural market-driven level, and they have to be eventually without inflation going crazy, as the rates are kept low by the lending of freshly-made-up money by the FED. Just 7% rates, seen throughout recent history would bring the debt support to 20% of the spending. Imagine a period of higher inflation, bound to happen with all the money being created out of thin air, and, in the long run, interest rates would have to go up to match, as they were allowed to do by Paul Volcker, the last decent FED chairman, in the early 1980's. 1/2 of all spending will be just interest payments when rates rise into the teens.
The simple arithmetic in the above paragraph can be seen back here. Let's just do one thing to back-check the math from the pie chart. With, say $17 Trillion debt back in '15, at 2% interest, interest-paid should be $340 Billion yearly. However, the 6% (pie slice) of the $3.688 Trillion spending that year gives only $220 Billion. That means, either I don't get the "Net" part of "Net interest on debt" vs. some "gross" number, or we are getting away with paying even less than 2%, maybe 1.3%. That means a rise to normal rates would make interest payments an even greater part of the future budget.
(Dammit, DO! NOT! GO! TO! us gov't treasurydirect site for numbers - it just crashed my browser and cost me half an hour, and they can't even spell February. It's where I got the 2% Treasury Bond average figure - before MY crash)
* I say this because, in general, our Feral Beast has been running $1,000,000,000,000 in the red yearly on average - the debt has gone from $10,000,000,000,000 or so to $20,000,000,000,000 during the Øb☭ma administration years. (Yes, I know Congress does the spending, when there is even an official budget.) So, versus > $1000 Billion yearly, "only" $340 Billion in the red made 2015 a very good year. Note, we do not put in all digits in the numbers here to represent high precision. It's just that only this can way readers get the true scale of these numbers.
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Are American Indians slobs?
Posted On: Monday - May 22nd 2017 12:16PM MST
In Topics:   Treehuggers  Americans  Environmental Stupidity
Hey listen, we don't have to be PC here at PeakStupidity, but keep in mind, this post's title is a question, not a statement, like the long-ass 2nd part of about every non-fiction book title these days. (Made-up example: "BROCCOLI: Are today's school lunches giving our kids too much vitaman A, not enough Niacin, and sending them to the bathroom too much during the learning process, or are they just throwing most of this nasty vegetable matter in the trash?" by Ms. Annette Krebopple, PhD Ed., JD, CPA, member-$PLC, NVA/Vietcong, RVSM)
Where was I? Yeah, this post by Steve Sailer on unz, Geronimo is comprised completely of a comment by one of his commenters below a previous article. Nice work if you can get it!! No, that's a joke, as Sailer is the opposite of lazy, and you've got to have many commenters to do this, hint, hint. I won't comment much here on the article in the link above, except to explain that it (the very good original comment, that is) was about Americans' affinity for Indian lore, names, and respect for the Indian warrior of centuries past. That's not to say that we don't know how brutal the Indians and some of the white men were to each other due to the impossible divide between a culture of property rights and one that had no concept. Still, people here take pride in being part Indian, even when they are making it up. Some, even, cough, cough, make it to the US Senate this way.
That aside, this led me to think of some thoughts from way back about Indians - from here on in this post, I mean "feather", not "dot".
I was hanging out years ago with some girl who would get into New Age things and such, and one thing was the Indian sweat lodge. It'd get pretty hot and sweaty indeed under that tarp with the heated up rocks, but I was young and could take it - it was about the girl to me, see; I didn't have any other visions just due to a little thermal distress. I believe I would have needed to have something a little stronger than a sweat lodge to have a vision quest, something made in a lab.
When we got done, we went over to the property of a full-blooded Indian, or that's what she said, to pick up something or other. This guy's trailer and his 1/2 acre lot was the messiest disaster of a living quarters I'd seen in my life up to that point, maybe since, but I do have many single friends. I mean there were rusty washing machines just outside the door, and all kinds of crap clogging up the trailer. He could have applied for superfund status. I knew it was just one data point, but this made me think a bit and question the idea that seems ingrained in our modern culture that the Indians were the big environmentalists.
There is no doubt that they lived on and with the land in a way that hardly anyone but an army Ranger or navy SEAL in survival training could possibly survive today, even for 3 days on "Naked and Afraid" with one phone call to get back to civilization. That's what savages do however. If you don't like that term "savages", it's perhaps because you don't understand it. It has come to have bad connotations, but a savage is one who is not part of any modern civilization in any way we think of civilization.
OK, so these Indians knew hunting and fishing and small farming (some tribes) with the most basic tools that were hand made. This meant that they were extremely self-sufficient, which is why people sometimes daydream that they'd like to go back to that kind of life, as the freedom in it is more than we can ever attain with a civilization, even when it's the best ever seen (1st coupla centuries of the US, for example). However, these dreamers may not have felt starvation, quick death from bacterial disease, and savage fighting with, or capture, by another tribe. That can ruin your daydream if you let it.
They lived off the land, yes. Does that make them environmentalists at heart or as part of their culture? Because there was no plastic and modern materials, there were no roads and buildings, and they had and needed few possessions to begin with, there was nothing much to keep clean really. Now, how many Indians existed on what's now the continental US at one time? I don't think anyone would come up with more than 5-10 million as just a round figure.
This is my point now, that the land, Mother Earth, if you will, can do a fine job of cleaning up after itself if the people are few and far between. It's all water and wind erosion, and bacterial rot these days, that's how she rolls.
Spread the tribes of a few dozen to a few hundreds or thousands of people totaling 5 million around the 3 million square miles of what's now the continental US, and there'll be lots of room to throw out your crap. You spend a few months or even a few years over here by this forest near the river, and no one is back for 50 years, well, guess what, all the junk you left has completely decayed. Any structures of any sort are long gone, wooden pieces have long since rotted, stone has been rounded down with 50-year growth all around it and the human waste was the first thing to be cleaned. It's not hard to live in a pristine place when you can move to a new place that no human has been in a century, any time you want.
In America we have 2 orders of magnitude more people on the same chunk of land, as there were Indians long ago. Modern technology has both made more mess and at the same time improved ways of cleaning up. The thing is, how much CAN you keep up with? Mother Earth can only do so much. Does it make sense to want the population to increase even more, if you care at all about living in a pristine setting, or at least having a way to get there part of the time to enjoy it? It's not like PeakStupidity has not mentioned this complete idiocy on the part of environmentalists with a good anecdote regarding blackberry picking. We all like blackberries, right, so think about this.
OH, right, answer the question: Who cares? It's OK to be a slob when you have a 24/7/365 maid named "Mother Earth" to clean up after you.
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Zerohedge commenter nails it ... re: government theft
Posted On: Monday - May 22nd 2017 11:21AM MST
In Topics:   US Police State  Liberty/Libertarianism  US Feral Government
Even though I don't recognize half of the handles of the commenters anymore, they still seem to be the best on the internet that I've read in terms of knowing what's truly going down in the world.
The article in question, and it could take all of one's time to keep up with ZH and it's comments, is about the Greek government's plans to steal what the residents are trying to keep away from it's greedy hands, entitled
Greek Authorities To Launch Mass Confiscation Of Safe Deposit Boxes, Securities, Homes In Tax-Evasion Crackdown
In answer to "scoutshonor" who says:
One of the problems I have as an old fart is holding the memory of a time when governments were not allowed to just take shit when they felt like it. I remember what due process was like. But that's me."rejected" replies:
What I often wonder is whether it is more painful for me or someone who is 25. Would it be worse to not have ever experienced the rule of law--or having know it watching as it is yanked away bit by bit?
I can't put myself in the shoes of a youngster since I'm 60--but I find myself giving the young people the benefit of doubt because this is all they have ever known. It really is sad.
"One of the problems I have as an old fart is holding the memory of a time when governments were not allowed to just take shit when they felt like it"I cannot say this better, so I will have to resort to the Instapundit punditing style, thusly,
There was a time when people would not allow them to just pass confiscatory law. They would have been shot in their homes, hung, or worse.
Today we are trained beginning in preschool that "IT'S THE LAW!" They even use this phrase on highway signs concerning seat belts, wipers on during rain etc. They have us trained that they "HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO PASS ANY LAW THEY WISH" even though no such authority exists. Does anyone really think the founders had in mind lawmakers ability to regulate toilets?, Light Bulbs?.
Most of this all came about after the cigarette issue. Once they got away with passing the no smoking in restaurants and other public places FOR YOUR HEALTH AND PROTECTION, all limits on them were removed. We now enjoy such things as Soda Taxes, Mandatory Insurance (Car, Home and Health) and other niceties. We allow them to confiscate property for non payment of taxes (which means you don't own it), We allow them to confiscate cash and other assets, on the highways and byways with no charges,,, just grab the money and run!
With no one forcefully telling them NO!,,, what the hell does anyone expect?
"Indeed."
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People can't merge ... is there an App for that?
Posted On: Friday - May 19th 2017 10:25AM MST
In Topics:   Cars  Curmudgeonry  Artificial Stupidity  Peak Stupidity Roadshow

What is so hard about this? The interstate highway I was driving on last week had a construction left-lane-closed sign a whole MILE away from the start of the merge. The traffic was relatively light. Almost all of the cars in that left lane just stayed in that lane until they had to move, causing way more of a traffic jam than necessary. I do realize that one lane can only carry half the traffic, so a big back-up can occur, but it would not have with this light traffic, under normal levels of stupidity.
Is it that drivers are so distracted by their electronics that they don't read the average sign at all? They may believe the electronics will give them all the information they need - there's an app for navigation, another giving active construction zones, yeah, but, hey this means they are not looking out of the damn car much of the time! That's the scary part about it.
Yeah, the electronics can't be wrong - there's computers in there! They wouldn't take you off road into the desert, or into a lake would they? "I'll merge when my 8G iPhone tells me to merge and not a minute sooner!" Idiots are all over the place now - get the lane change over with while traffic is still flowing smoothly and there will be no traffic jam at all, in many cases.
The long-term answer for "Is there an app for that?" is a big "YES", called a self-driving car. Of course we've all heard about them, but the way most people are
Jump to the ground as the turbo slows
To cross the borderline.
Run like the wind as excitement shivers
up and down my spine.
But down in his barn
my uncle preserved for me
an old machine
for fifty-odd years.
To keep it as new
has been his dearest dream.
I strip away the old debris
that hides a shining car,
a brilliant Red Barchetta
from a better, vanished time.
We'll fire up the willing engine
responding with a roar,
tires spitting gravel
I commit my weekly crime.
The song was written in the early 1980's. I would groove to this one no matter what the lyrics said, as it's all the tune and the sound, but what a creative imagination Neil Peart had (the drummer who wrote the lyrics)!
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The Onion is not dead yet ... and the Lido Shuffle
Posted On: Thursday - May 18th 2017 9:04PM MST
In Topics:   Music  Websites  Humor
In the previous post, I wrote that it's pretty hard to write parody anymore as stupid as the world is getting. While checking the link to "The Onion", I really enjoyed their pretty funny article "Kicking, Screaming Warren Buffett Dragged From Caesars Palace After Losing Everything At Roulette Wheel". Anything making fun of the "Orifice of Omaha" is bound to be enjoyable anyway, but the writers at The Onion have still got it.
Barely related, but since this great 1976 song has a gambling theme, what the hey...
Next stop shy town
Lido put the money down let her roll.
He said one more job ought to get it,
one last shot 'fore we quit it,
one for the road.
It's Boz Scaggs, from his album "Silk Degrees"
That jam at the end could be 2 minutes longer, but I'll take it.
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Stepped on an interesting USA Today article the other day ....
Posted On: Thursday - May 18th 2017 8:15AM MST
In Topics:   Genderbenders  Websites  Media Stupidity
... while walking out of the hotel room. They leave it on the floor, just outside the room door, in many places, as PeakStupidity mentioned in a post about a USA anti-Trump headline a few months back. This makes their circulation look good, but it doesn't really make for near as many readers as their marketing people would tell you.
The problem now is that things in this country are getting to such a high level of stupidity that parody humor websites will be forced out of business. To explain, here is part of the front page of the USA Today from last Friday or so:

Were this only 10 years back, this could be a The Onion" article. It's going to be really hard for the social parody sites to keep ahead of the quickly-rising levels of stupid in our society.
We better really hope we don't get ourselves into a real war with a serious enemy. That'll will be Peak Stupidity time for sure; when things get real, the stupid will stop cold.
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Apprehending Jason Bourne (part 2) - All-powerful Feral Gov't - NOT!
Posted On: Wednesday - May 17th 2017 4:00PM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media  Humor  US Police State  Movies  Media Stupidity  US Feral Government  Deep State
(Continued from last post)
As far as the movies and TV's portrayal of our omniscient Feral Government's tracking of the the bad or good guys, fighting the terrists "so's we don't have to fight them over there once we run out of money to do so", goes, last post finished with:
However, it's the people they've got all wrong. Programmers, dBA's, etc. can make all the great systems that might LOOK like the stuff on TV, but you've got US Government half deadwood, part affirmative action, part glass-ceiling-shattering employees, for cryin' out loud! Do you think they've got their act together like the people trying to catch Jason Bourne? That is not reality. Don't let them make you think this is what would be up against were you in a "disagreement", let's call it with the Feral Gov.? Far, far from it would be reality.
Again, some of it is just a really stupid naive view of reality on the part of the producers of this stuff, but there are probably elites in Hollywood and/or government who really want to create this impression to Americans.
The impression given to us: In this control room (best pic. I could find on short notice, sorry), these TOP GUYS! (and GIRLS and GAYS and BLT/G(with guacamole)) have total control and know everything they can know at the time about the "perp". They work together like a crack SEAL team. They talk fast, as every detail is important. They have jets that they can get on at a moments notice to be anywhere in the world in a day. Oh, and helicopters to land on the roof of whatever building the perp is hanging out in. They can hook up to any communications that anyone could possibly use. They stay up all night - it's a 24/7/365 TOP GUY pajama party.

Again, have you ever, ever dealt with any of "your" government employees at the Federal, State, or local level? I don't mean to sound like an a-hole here, as I know you have, so that was rhetorical. We all know how they treat us as the taxpaying "customer". (yeah, we're the customers, like those late cockroaches are the customers of my peanut butter traps). Think about the local highway department office (DMV to some) ... oh, ... here is a pretty representative example:
How would the search for Mr. Jason Bourne go in real life, with "our" affirmative-action-hiring, nepotist, glass-ceiling-shattering, jobs-for-life US Government? Let me tell you that the movie would not be quite the same were it realistic. It'd be more like:
"We need to get that cell phone conversation from last week, from when our Asset saw Mr. Bourne at the Berlin Zoo train station." "My top man, Leroy is on it, sir, but he called in sick last Monday." "Well, show me the video, please, on the big monitor!" "That's just the big-screen TV, sir; the Indian IT guy wasn't able to get the feed on there." "This is urgent!" "Yes, we have a help-desk ticket on it - I did it myself." "Also, most of the video got erased accidentally by that new-hire chick." "That is NOT! ACCEPTABLE! I am in charge of finding our wayward asset, do you understand? I struggled, kissed ass, and performed numerous blow-jobs to get here, and I'll not have this operation brought to a standstill now!" "Yes, Maam, uhhh, I mean sir now, sorry."
"You and the team will be heading to Prague as soon as the jet is ready." "Of course, but the transportation department's 113-slash-A request was not signed, sir; it got sent back to accounting. It may be a few days." "Gas up the JetRanger to get us over to JFK." "Don't tell me, in the shop, right?" "Yeah, we're outsourcing the parts ordering and hot-sections now." "Listen, how bad do we really want this guy?" "He'll blow all of our cover!" "Yeah, but, can we push this off until the spring, after my retirement?"
Maybe not the box office success we've seen with the Hollywood flicks, but it'd be real nice if a movie were to get real on this, just the same.
Coming soon to a theater near you - The Bourne Stupidity!
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Apprehending Jason Bourne, we're the government and we're all on it.
Posted On: Wednesday - May 17th 2017 8:42AM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media  Humor  US Police State  Movies  Media Stupidity  US Feral Government  Deep State
Hey, I was just trying to find re-runs of Seinfeld or Andy Griffith, while spending a night at a hotel on a bidness trip. Yes, I don't "do" TV, but I was getting bored even with the internet (that happens once in a blue moon).
While flipping through the myriad channels emanating the usual party-line bullshit (yes, the sitcoms too), I came across one of the Jason Bourne movies. Now, I'll give these some credit, I've watched 3 of them, and the action holds my attention, with a possibly not-even-purposefully subliminal point that I'll get to shortly. The movie being shown on this hotel TV channel wasn't one of the 3 I've seen. The guy looked like Matt Damon, but I'm not absolutely sure. The plot however was the same - there are guys out to get him. He's got to run, but save the girl at the same time.
Yes, I guess Jason Bourne is pretty good on any kind of motor conveyance, especially street bikes and he must have really trained hard on going up and down stairs with a motorcycle, cause he's pretty damn good at that. The guys chasing Mr. Bourne are not actually guys BTW, but they are "assets". That sounds really cool and Deep-State like, don't it? However, these fucking assets never seem to learn that you can't chase that guy down on his stolen motorcycle when you are in a car. I'd have learned that from the 1st movie on, were I an asset. These assets won't get their lard ass-ets out of the car to steal a bike of their own to catch Jason Bourne! After, all he is out of control, right?

Then, there are the guys and gals at mission central at the CIA offices trying to organize the take-down of Mr. Bourne (it was pretty early on in the movie, so good luck with that ...). There have to be women on the team, OK, that's entirely possible, with the uglier one barking out commands to the pretty one on some kind of screen, who would keep saying "yes, Maam" back. Probably the pretty one was really just showing off her pictures of last-night's casserole on facebook, but it seemed to keep her busy.
There was the standard contemplative black guy (seriously, how many times do you see this in real life?) who had his fingers on his chin. He was probably thinking hard about "I only got this job due to affirmative action. I've got to act like these smart government guys, even though they aren't that smart, and we are just making a movie. They act like they're smart, I can do that. Still, what to say here? I'll just look intensely at the screens and frown. Man, I'm glad I just got in to this movie bidness due to my skin color; imagine I were in the real CIA as an affirmative action hire! Then, I couldn't get away with just rubbing my fingers on my chin and frowning. Well, who knows? OK, cut!"
After, I turned the TV/movie off, I thought about the message that was in all of these movies, but also in shows like CSI (There were a bunch of them back in the day - seems like one TV channel was all-CSI, all-Day, say CSI Miami, CSI Winnemuca, CSI Palo Alto, or some such stuff.) OK, the good guy in the movie, Jason Bourne, was a white guy, but that's to be sure of getting a big enough audience to make money. However, you know who the evil guys are - always white, any movie, any show, and that is kind of a spoiler.
The message I would like to discuss is NOT the race/gender we're-all-equal crap - that is widely known by about everyone and is put up with by people without the self-control to just skip the movies and cut the cable (and subsequently the subscription). No, here's the targeted message from the state in all of the CSI shows and any movies like Bourne ____-acies: These Deep-State, CIA, NSA Motherland Security, etc. agencies are shown in the shows/movies to be smart, quick-thinking, and have all the information from any source in the world at their fingertips.
Listen to this shit - "Get me video from the North side of the train station!" "I want all purchases of
Whether it's just stupidity (our specialty here, of course, you're welcome!) on the part of Hollywood in not knowing the actual reality of organizations, especially large ones, or purposeful messaging to put the fear into independent-minded Americans, the movies and shows would have us believe that these agencies and their employees are just top notch. I do realize that all the data is out there, databases can make a lot of amazing connections, and computer speed is basically at whatever you need.
However, it's the people they've got all wrong. Programmers, dBA's, etc. can make all the great systems that might LOOK like the stuff on TV, but you've got US Government half deadwood, part affirmative action, part glass-ceiling-shattering employees, for cryin' out loud! Do you think they've got their act together like the people trying to catch Jason Bourne? That is not reality. Don't let them make you think this is what would be up against were you in a "disagreement", let's call it with the Feral Gov.? Far, far from it would be reality.
(This post is continued here.)
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Fred Reed says the Sexbots are coming, and the Feminists are worried sick
Posted On: Monday - May 15th 2017 4:12PM MST
In Topics:   Music  Feminism  Pundits  The Future
In his latest column, with comments here on unz.com, Reed discusses the sex robots that are coming soon to a
The way computer technology and sensors are advancing, via lower cost and smaller sizes, these "girls" may be amazing within 5 years. Were they to come into widespread "use", the changes to society are too weird and unknown to know, but interesting to contemplate, and contemplate Fred does:
Oh Lord, where is my Haldol? Recently I saw online a documentary on sex robots. The reporteress, a short-haired woman seething with quiet indignation, Viewed With Alarm the very idea. Progress is rapid on these love assistants, she said. They move. Some do, anyway. They talk, but not too much. Before long they will have skin-temperature silicone. Today we have all those deplorable men sitting home, lonely and isolated, choking their chickens and pondering suicide. Soon they will instead be rocking and rolling with Robo-Barbie. This worried her. She said.Though PeakStupidity has not spent much time on it so far, Feminism is a one of our topic keys that will reqire many more posts in which to flesh-out the stupidity of. A major part of the problem with feminism is that, in the long run, YOU! CAN'T! FOOL! MOTHER! NATURE!. Well a beautiful, charming sex robot seems like another try at this.
Mr. Reed goes on a diatribe on the disadvantages over American women, and I would only disagee with his assesment to the extent of extrapolating his descriptions to Western women in general. Feminism has led women in the west to delude themselves that competition with men in their realm will make them happy, when Mother Nature states quite clearly, in her own way, that this is wrong. Both men and women are less happy as a result.
Fred:
Fred goes on to a short description of seeing these sexbots under construction. This just made me think a bit about the engineering and the software programming job descriptions within this burgeoning field. Would the programming be more fun? I think you'd want the SWM (Speaking/Whispering/Moaning) group within the software department to be a mix of men and women, while the Moods group should be completely female-free to avoid costly returns for servicing. As far as the engineering, some of the smaller, say Oriental models could be built with pneumatics, while the Big Bertha may require 3,000 psi hydraulics with fast acting spool valves - just trying to "flesh" this out a bit - it's kind of fun.
It is a real problem: American women are inoculated from birth with angry misandry insisting that men are dolts, loutish, irresponsible, and only want sex. (To which a response might be, “Uh…What else have you got?”)
Of course, in some cases women, real ones, offer a lot. Even in America, women exist with intelligence, a sense of humor, maturity, and a recognition that marriage isn’t a guarantee of uninterrupted bliss. Such women are a delight, both of them. The problem is knowing when you have one. They all talk a good show as long as things go well. When they don’t she gets a lawyer, the kids, child support, and moves to Okinawa with a colonel she met in a meat bar. You never see your kids again.
No, this didn’t happen to me, but I see a lot of it.
Dating an American woman entails both high overhead and high risk. The costs are great in time, money, and emotional discomfort. She will grow on you, or try to. Sooner or later the dread question will arise, “Is this relationship going anywhere, or what?”
[snip]
In modern America I see no sign that women are concerned about masculine misery, and indeed that most of them rather like the idea..
Now to the real gist of it. Not just feminists, all females for that matter, will be threatened greatly by technology like this. Think, 1/2 of their only power that they have over men, the first half of the making of children, and the fun part for men, will be greatly diminished, were these robots to get the job increase man's productivity in this area, so to speak.
Of course what the shocked and appalled women are really concerned about is competition. They are dismayed at their coming automation. While women are more sexual that men–the better ones are, anyway, usually Democrats–men are more urgent about it. This gives women great power as they are the only sexual outlet men have, except in Scotland. Now they watch the coming sexbots with the unease of a McDonald’s worker watching the installation of an automated burger-flipper.
This thing could flip the tables on the feminsts who've tried things their way but also forced it on all of us via State coercion. Let's think again about this whole "fish needs a bicycle" deal, mmmkayy....
One thing bugged me in the comments on unz on this article that were otherwise very worthwhile reading. There is confusion between "lonely" and "horny". To me there is a very clear difference, but they are conflated sometimes, as in song lyrics about women, as "horny" is just to crude a word, as the most probable reason. Let's not get them confused here. These sex robots are a proposed solution for horniness, not loneliness. It may be fairly easy to forget that Sally is not human for the former problem, but not for the latter.
It's amazing how fast things are changing in this world, which brings us back to 1980, "when things were so uncomplicated", per the creative genius Jeff Lynne .....
PeakStupidity has thus far never repeated a piece of music, but this Electric Light Orchestra song off of the wonderful concept album "Time" is perfect for this post.
We know the women are worried about this; as for the men, "Is that what you want - is that what you really want?"
I sent a message to another time,
but as the days unwind, this I just can't believe.
I send a note across another plane,
maybe it's all a game, but this I just can't conceive.
I drive the very latest hover car.
I don't know where you are,
but I miss you so much till then.
I met someone who looks a lot like you.
She does the things you do, but she is an IBM.
She's only programmed to be very nice,
but she's as cold as ice, whenever I get too near.
She tells me that she likes me very much,
but when I try to touch, she makes it all too clear.
She is the latest in technology,
almost mythology, but she has a heart of stone.
She has an IQ of 1,001.
She has a jump suit on, and she's also a telephone.
[Chorus]
Is that what you want? Is it what you really want?
I realize that it must seem to strange,
that time has rearranged, but time has he final word.
She knows I think of you,she reads my mind,
She tries to be unkind, she knows nothing of your world
Although her memory banks overflow,
no one would ever know, all she says "is that what you want?"
Maybe one day I'll feel her cold embrace
and kiss her interface, until then I'll leave her alone.
[Chorus]
Hahaa, just remembered "she's also a telephone" line! That must have been a big deal back then, while now people barely even use the phone function of their phones. Jeff Lynne - prescient about the sex robots, a bit off on the phones.
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Remember Glenn Beck with his Overton Window?
Posted On: Friday - May 12th 2017 8:48AM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '24  Trump  Pundits  ctrl-left
Well, let me tell ya', this new trick makes the Overton window look like something outta windows '93. Wait, what does that even mean? Who cares? The point is, the new overall political theme going on is much, much more insidious. Before I digress into writing a bit about Glenn Beck, let me state one thing again: I don't believe that very much that goes on in politics or behind-the-scenes control-of-the-world stuff is due to overarching long-term plans or conspiracies. There'll be a longer post on that sometime, but let me for now just say that, if people were smart enough to make multi-generational or even centuries-long plans, then they wouldn't be planning for the statist, commie, socialist, feminist stupidity we have now, would they? If you're smart enough to make moves, as in a chess game, seeing 5 steps ahead, I'd think you'd plan for things to work out better than they have.
Anyway, we ask the reader, in cases like this, knowing the material to follow, have you digested your lunch yet? This is something the PeakStupidity lawyers felt they had to throw in, as, well here goes, do you remember this guy?:

OK, OK, maybe that wasn't strictly necessary, but I feel I should bring back some good memories of this guy, as it relates to the latter part of this post. Mr. Beck, before he went completely mental, was on CNN with a show back in 2009. No, I was long done with the TV by that time, much less cable service, but there was a clubhouse with a cable TV nearby, and I got into a comfortable routine of going there each afternoon for some snacks and to view the 1-hour show.
Mr. Beck would have his rotatable chalkboard which he would use to diagram the various pieces of history and current politics that related to the sorry state we were in (by "were", I mean it's worse now!). Listen, I'll give the guy a bunch of credit - he admitted he didn't have much formal education on the subjects he expounded on, but he would tell the audience about events he was reading on, back to time of the Woodrow Wilson administration and so on. He seemed to have a good libertarian attitude and an understanding of the US Constitution and how far we had gone away from liberty.
Glenn was a bit over-the-top sometimes, like when he had ragged on the "lizard-lady" (some Øb☭ma administration official), don't remember the actual name, who used the Chairman Mao expression about "power from the barrel of a gun". Sure, the lady was a Commie statist, but the quoting of ex-chairman Mao (Rot-in-hell) is not what proves that. The show was entertaining, and I even got Mr. Beck to sign a book - not his book, as I didn't like him THAT much - one time. I was amazed they even let him on TV back then.
Digression almost over with, Glenn Beck talked about the "Overton window" for quite a while. I don't know or care who Overton was, but his idea was that there was a figurative window that would bound, on the left and right, the acceptable views that would be debated and were deemed appropriate and not radical. Mr. Beck talked about how the left-wingers in office would continually slide that window to the left, and we had to do something about that. That's a good concept, and it seems to work the way he used to explain on his TV show.
Here's what's been going on for the last few decades, the way PeakStupidity sees it, and this is a lot more insidious, let's call it odious, than this Overton idea. Again, not due to any large conspiracy and long-term planning, just a whole lot of dumbasses at the same level of stupidity, we have something more like a confidence game - a con job, if I may. (Yes, I may, cause it's my website). I'll come up with a name later. Just recently the phrase "Trump Derangement Syndrome" has been re-coined by the right as a slur on the nutcase left, just as "Bush Derangement Syndrome" was 15 years back. OK, I get it, the left does indeed act deranged much of the time, but I say that is not just their stupidity shining through, but also a way of conning in these dupe conservatives. Yes, sorry to have to say it, but using that type of language just shows you are being conned.
"Conned" how?, you ask. I have plenty of memories of what went on, during the time George W. Bush was president. It was very much the same story as now. "How could this have happened?! He is another Adolf Hitler! I'm going to move to Canada! We've got to do whatever it takes to stop this ultra-extreme conservative!" Well, if you remember anything, you know that George W. Bush (and his Dad too, BTW) was not anything close to a conservative. He pushed for a major addition to medicare, busting the budget, did not a damn thing about massive illegal immigration, and you could come up with 10 others in a minute, reader, I'm sure. However, by acting nutso about the guy, the lefties made conservatives feel smug and proud. "This guy really pisses off these people, so he just MUST be a conservative. I'm glad we have control of things, so we can do ..."
What? What good did Bush do with a Republican Congress and Senate? Not a damn thing good! If it would have made you feel better at the time, you could have rightly said "it would be much worse having Al Gore, man-bear-pig, Global Climate DisruptionTM D-average college drop-out extraordinaire in office". Sure, that's true, but things were just going downhill a little slower, but nothing was being reversed toward liberty and conservatism, nothing!
It is the same with Trump, as it has been going the last 3 months or so. I will admit to being duped during the campaign, thinking that this guy really wasn't part of the establishment and actually cared about Americans. I most certainly DID NOT think that way about the Bushes and didn't vote for either of them. The political environment is comparable though, PeakStupidity having been duped or not during the election time. Has Trump really done any good yet? Of course, it's better than the Hildabeast, but most conservatives are still being conned by the behavior of the left. "See, they hate him so much, this is great!"*
Don't fall for it; if the guy doesn't help us get things fixed, we need someone else who will.
OK, this is getting long, due to the part about Glenn Beck, I suppose. I will finish the idea about this con job later on in another post.
Oh, about Glenn Beck. Yeah, he lost me back when he went down to the Mexican Border with his teddy bears. Whatever happened to his brain, it may not be reversible. I'm glad I didn't spend 20 bucks on a book.
* We have posted this very same sentiment, but it was before Trump started breaking promises every other day.
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Do as I say, not as I do - we've GOT to save this planet, dammit!
Posted On: Thursday - May 11th 2017 8:57AM MST
In Topics:   Global Climate Stupidity  AntiChrist  Globalists
And, I'm just the guy to do it to! We're gonna need 1 Global Challenger, a coupla' decent sized yachts, 14 Hummer limos, 18,000 gallons of premium unleaded, 150 tons of diesel, and 90,000 lb. of Jet-A. I know a guy who can get us a deal on a green yacht - hey, we want to be responsible to the taxpayers and all that, right?
Zerohedge is pretty good on this stuff too, in addition to the reporting on the serious financial hell we are entering. That site used to have one commenter who was a big proponent of the Global Climate Disruption TM scam, yet sane otherwise, but I haven't seen him on there in a coupla' years (too many emissions of something or other? Hope he's OK.) Zerohedge wonders why: Obama Takes Private Jet, 14-Car Convoy To His $3.2MM Climate Change Speech.
Just yesterday we noted that President Obama pocketed $3.2 million for a 1.5-hour speaking gig at a climate change conference in Milan...an exorbitant fee, by anyone's measure, which Dilbert creator Scott Adams most accurately described as a "pre-bribe."Zerohedge has lots of pics and video of the good life.
And while we're certain that Obama's motivation to appear in Milan had absolutely nothing to do with the money, but rather was born out of a pure concern for Mother Earth, we do find his travel arrangements, in light of that genuine environmental concern, somewhat ironic.
Apparently, according to the Independent Journal Review, it takes a private jet, 14-car motorcade, 300 police and multiple helicopters patrolling overhead just to get one man to a conference...quite the carbon footprint.

OK, we don't care about this carbon footprint nonsense, but if you do, how about it, that's a lot of combustion, you've gotta' admit. All that toxic Carbon Dioxide just CAN'T! BE! GOOD! FOR! YOU!, well, unless you're a fern, magnolia, dandelion, or basically any kind of plant. (Hey, who cares, plants don't get to run things, the Globalists do, they NEED this Global Climate DisruptionTM thing to control us better. It's mission critical). Oh let's not even think of all that water created via combustion - it has the same radiation-blocking effect, but we can't tell everyone to hate water - that just won't fly even at the peak of stupidity!
As PeakStupidity quoted the Instapundit here months back:
I think that Glenn Reynolds of Instpundit says it best and the most times ;-} thusly:Listen, guys, we know you mean well, but let's be just a little more green next time. No harm, no foul. Here's your transpo. for the next conference:
"For the political leaders, well, I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis."

It's not that bad. Michelle, the ex-1st-wookie has got some great rowing arms, and Hussein could make sandwiches.
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Fast version of "Reelin' & Rockin'" - aw, hell just listen to the whole show
Posted On: Wednesday - May 10th 2017 8:16PM MST
In Topics:   Music  The Dead
It's about 3 hours and 15 minutes, and this video is a "Dick's Picks" entire Grateful Dead show from Jersey City, NJ, September of 1972. I would call this as close to classic Dead music as I've heard, though without the space jams and the 10 minute 2-man drum solos that may be a bit much for someone not so familiar. 3 hours and 15 minutes! - There never was a more harder-working band, and they loved their audience as much as the audience loved them.
Here's another special thing about this band. Far from being bent out of shape about "unauthorized" people recording their music, these guys arranged for entire sections of the venue to be set up for the "tapers" to get good recordings. I would hope, with that history, that there are no corporate dipshits around trying to pull 3-hour Dead shows off of youtube. It seems that you can find about anything now, instead of getting 3rd-generation tapes, if you were lucky (recorded off a recording of a recording of the show).
Real Gone Music has a description and song list of this great concert from 45 years back.
This recording came up in my mind after I wrote a longer article on this All American Band last post. The faster, more familiar to me, version of the song "Around and Around", aka "Reelin' and Rockin'" is right at the end, at 3:11:35. Oh, and this a Chuck Berry song, which I didn't know at the time of the last post. It's straight-up 3-chord R&R, but Jerry still gets good leads in there. You gotta listen to that one, but in addition, there's a great version of "Deal" @ 1:52:35, a Dead-written song (meaning Jerry Garcia with the fantastic Robert Hunter, who did not play with them) with such a great solo by Jerry, and a great "Big River" @ 0:50:30 which was written and sung by Johnny Cash.
Oh, 1972 was after the Grateful Dead had been playing under that name for 7 years already, but they played for 30 years total before we lost Jerry. The fat man rocks!
PeakStupidity will get back to politics/finance/culture and other realms of Stupidity tomorrow, but sometimes this music and hanging around with 5 year-old kids helps temporarily lift us out of the toxic stew of stupidity we are normally immersed in, at least for a short spell.
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[UPDATED Years later:] The video is gone, and the description on Real Gone Music has gone 404 on us, so I just put in the one song in question here.
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If Jerry'd lost some weight, he'd be reelin & rocking in his grave, over his "Wolf"guitar
Posted On: Monday - May 8th 2017 3:52PM MST
In Topics:   Lefty MegaStupidity  Music  The Dead  Americans  ctrl-left
(I may not get to a political point I wanted to make today due to this story that just came across the PeakStupidity features desk - OK, we don't have a features desk, or any desk for that matter, just this old 386-clone from the yard sale with th big 15-in CRT.)
Here's the deal:
I'd never admired, but still always liked the Deadheads, whether the girls were twirling around in the parking lot of the shows with their dresses up high, or the guys were selling trinkets and dope for tickets with a big "I need a miracle sign" (a miracle meaning a ticket to the show, but from the song too). Though quite a bit deluded about what the real world is about, and their lives following the band were not what you would now call financially "sustainable", they meant no harm, and were a fun bunch.
The cops were shooing them off a hillside in California, from a spot where, without a miracle, one could still hear the show in the bright beautiful sunshine. Well, they were mooing like cows to show Johnny Law how they felt about it, but the cops could spot everyone of them in the weeds - those tie-died shirts don't make good camouflage, I'm here to tell ya. Then at another show at a big stadium venue, 100's of the audience kept somersaulting down the steep slope in the end zone. Good times ...
Now this rich prick, former Deadhead, is auctioning off one of Jerry's old guitars. He played "the Wolf" in the 77-78 shows, I'm reading here that this guitar may fetch a million bucks. That' just fine, were the money to go to a good cause or to anyone but this hateful cntrl-left organization called the Southern (they're in Atlanta) Poverty (no, get-rich-quick scheme by it's multimillionaire founder Morris Dees) Law Center. These guys have are probably just out to make another 50 million from donations from rich people riding the pop-wave of stupidity, but they do it by being against any and everything that is American!
The reason I think the fat man would be reelin & rockin is that, believe it not (not, if you never really knew them), The Dead musically and spiritually were an All American Band. Listen, Jerry started out playing banjo, the devil's instrument, as he called it one of his early bluegrass shows in old California (Pablo Alto, it was) as "The Wildwood Boys". You can't get any more American than bluegrass. As The Dead, in addition to many 100's of their own songs, they would play blues, old traditionals, folk, Merle Haggard songs, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, straight-up rock-n-roll, or a psychedelic or jazzy version of all of that stuff. How about the lyrics? Songs about riding trains that don't run anymore, high-tailing it down to Mexico, truckin' (got my chips cashed in), and don't forget the Cumberland Blues and the rest of the Workingman's Dead.
Speaking of working men, though many would not call it work, the core* of the band, Jerry (vocals and lead guitar), Bob (vocals and mostly rhythm guitar), and Phil (bass and backing vocals), played over 2,000 shows without any of them missing a one! That is a pretty good work ethic if I've ever seen one. It is said they played to over 25,000,000 people live, in total. They toured for 30 years together, not counting any reunion stuff.
It's true that this band hung out on the left side of the political spectrum during one of the most turbulent American times, but they were pretty apolitical. You would not hear any of the blatant campaigning, or the Bono-like verbal diarrhea during shows as you do now (if you pay your $200, vs. The Dead's $6.50 - if you had a miracle!). It was just about the music, and The Grareful Dead had the best sound I've ever heard. RIP, Jerry, sorry 'bout your guitar.
"Oh, all American", you say, "what about all the drugs?"
What? I didn't get that. Your lips are moving, but there's nothing coming out.
I cannot speak for
This is a slow version of " round and round", which I call "reelin and rockin", but you could skip over to just under 5:00 in, as they speed up and then transition to "Goin Down the Road Feelin Bad".
* Not to take anything away from the two drummers, Billy Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, nor the various keyboard players, nor Donna Godchaux, who came into the band as a package deal for a few years with her husband Kieth who played keyboards.
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