Cravin' Melon from Red Clay Harvest
Posted On: Tuesday - February 14th 2017 8:59PM MST
In Topics: Music
These guys are from South Carolina:
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Madison Avenue and the Advertising Business - Does it even work at all?
Posted On: Tuesday - February 14th 2017 6:19PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Salesmen Curmudgeonry
This article, is about modern-day commercial making, and a parody of it on Saturday Night Live (still on TV, who knew?). In particular the parody was of the agenda-driven commercial with no information about the product being sold. Of course, all of the agendas would be left-wing, globalist garbage.
Now this is something I don’t understand very well regarding the real advertising business, but I’m sure the SNL skit is a pretty realistic parody of it. I’ve heard many times that it’s the “name recognition” that gets people to buy. They say it doesn’t matter whether the ad has anything to do with the product or service, they just want to get that product (or service) brand name in your head.
Someone tell me how do you think that really works? (My contention is that it doesn’t, and things sell or don’t sell, and Madison Avenue has squat-all to do with it these days.) You’ve got your Coke-cola and you’ve got your Pepsi – who has not heard of either one? Is the idea to associate this one, say Pepsi (which sucks, BTW) with this musical slut artist so people remember, “Hey, “Lady Madonna”/”Pepsi”, yeah whenever I see “Pepsi”, I think “Lady Madonna”. OK, so I’m at the store, and my mind goes “Here’s the Pepsi; “Lady Madonna likes this!” “but … it sucks, if I’m gonna drink caffeinated sugar water, I’ll take Coke-cola.” “I like Lady Madonna, but she can go buy whatever the hell she drinks, who cares?”
What about products/services that most people have NOT heard of yet? Yeah the idea of advertising is to let people know what you’re selling. “Here are some grimy amigos climbing over a fence, cleaning up all their trash on the way across the Colorado (river) desert, finding a new home, cutting down on Carbon (for the Carbophobics out there in TV land) when they get there and enriching the living s__t out of our lives” NOW “Dog Pile II Web Services – put your work on the Thunderstorm Cloud!” How does that help me as a consumer?
I found no problem with the old ads that would try to sell you on stuff based on WHAT IT DOES!. Yeah, there was a lot of bull involved some of the time, but at least it was informative.
A good comment back on the article page on unz.com by commenter Mr. WowJustWow was:
The point of a Coca-Cola commercial isn’t to convince you that Coca-Cola is great, it’s to convince you that other people have seen the commercial. Ever heard the phrase “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM?” Well, no party host ever got a dirty look for loading a cooler with Coca-Cola instead of RC Cola.
What about that lizard though? Even past my TV-watching daze (get it?) I still have seen that 6 in tall British lizard talking about auto insurance on friends’ or hotel TVs. He’s very entertaining and cute. However, it has not changed anything about my purchasing of auto insurance no matter what new hijinks that cold-blooded limey is up to. What would a lizard know about insurance, is what I wanna know.
What’s the point?
Possibly Madison Avenue Big-Advertising is the biggest scam since Global Climate DisruptionTM or even Social Security. We at PeakStupidity do not readily fall for scams and hoaxes. The last one was probably our deal with the alleged son of the deposed King of Nigeria. There was no way to see that coming, just as it went with this guy:
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Semisonic - All about Chemistry
Posted On: Monday - February 13th 2017 8:20PM MST
In Topics: Music
I'd forgotten about this great song. I know nothing else by this band. This is a good tune with great lyrics and even a great video story.
(Ignore "Explicit Version" - maybe that was to get clicks, but there's nothing explicit to it.)
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Protesters unclear on the concept
Posted On: Monday - February 13th 2017 7:34PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity
In this VDare article, another great one by James Kirkpatrick he writes more about what these judicial decisions overturning the President's control of immigration are really saying. Please read the whole thing, but here is a short excerpt:
The claim that non-Americans somehow possess constitutional rights, and have a right to immigrate to the United States, is laughable on its face. Yet quietly, without debate or even acknowledgement of what is going on, it has become the consensus in the MSM, in the courts—and in the streets.
What got to me was the picture at the top of this article of protesters, regarding the sign I zoomed in on here:
The girl holding that sign doesn't look stupid. Of course, the only thing that tells us is, "looks ain't is!" Do you think she understands the magnitude of the problem we are going to face soon? There are 2 concepts I think she does not get.
1) I imagine the signholder just thinks about other immigrants who live peacefully as Americans, work hard, fit in, etc. That works only on a small scale, see, say about 1-5 % immigrants in a country. I've known plenty, and some are and have been very good friends, but things have been ramped up a few orders of magnitude here. Point 1-a is that assimilation works fine if new arrivals are spread out reasonable well. Hell, I remember that even in the early 1980's, we avoided Miami because "it's like going to Cuba" and "you can be in places where nobody speaks English". That's an example of a place where immigration wasn't working out for Americans, but it was just one spot back then (OK there was also Chinatown in downtown NYC, some small areas of S. California were like Mexico). It wasn't a worry back then because the numbers were much smaller.
2) Islam is not just another religion where they go to different shaped churches, possibly on a different day of the week (better for traffic, right?). The 1st concept applies here - a very few muslim families spread around here and there will probably fit in fine, but when an area, like say, Dearbornistan, Michigan, have populations in the 100's of thousands, there is no assimilation, and the culture is the same as that of the Islamic countries where the people came from. The 2nd concept here is that this particular culture is really at odds with anything Western. If you want to learn more, you might just read our profile of Ann Barnhardt, in which she reads passages from the Islamic holy book. She's got 'em bookmarked and all, albeit with bacon strips, not your normal paper ones.
So, what's with the sign? Are you really a Christian, or are you just saying you are? If you're serious about it, you've really got to wonder whether the sons and daughters of your church will eventually be living under Sharia law, or barring that, involved in some sort of civil war, assuming anyone in the Christian churches ever ends up taking a stand at all. What will you do after you've let it go too far? Where could your children even bug out to when it does?
Just like the last post, about feminism, we've got to start respecting the laws of nature. Putting big populations of two very dissimilar cultures together is breaking the natural law that says, people, in general (the bulk of them) like to be with their kind.
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Feminism 101 - It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!
Posted On: Monday - February 13th 2017 8:58AM MST
In Topics: Feminism
There's so much to write about feminism just based on everyday stupid-happenings in today's society. As with the Global Climate DisruptionTM and Global Financial Stupidity topics, we will include some posts of introduction to the subject, a little history of the steady rise in the amount of stupidity accumulated in this "stupidity space", if we may.
One could go back just under 100 years on this subject to the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution. That would be a good start, but the reader can easily learn as much as PeakStupidity about the details of the woman's suffrage movement. Un-coincidentally, right after that Amendment was ratified in 1920, the push for prohibition of alcohol started. You see, women like men a lot, because they need them, until they have a chance to try to change them; then they expend a great deal of effort to change them. Married men know this.
I'm sure there would there be more to cover between the 1920's and the 1960's if I were a womyn's studies major and wanted to make this my dissertation, but in my case that would only happen on the kind of cold day in hell that would have made this computer into a superconductor by now and have probably burned my screen out (can you do that to LCD's?). So, there may have been some special coins minted, some articles written, etc., but the serious changes to our society from feminism started in the mid-1960's.
Besides being a somewhat busy day, this post has suffered from what I am dubbing a "blog fart". It's, if I may, a brain fart of a blogger. I really did get stuck trying to transition from the first 3 paragraphs to what I want to say today without writing a men's studies dissertation (What are "men's studies" - well the whole world, of course - we built it all.) Suffice it to say that the last half-century +- only a year or two was a time in which feminism transformed from a minor political hobby to a massively invasive form of highly-corrosive, floculated, superheated stupidity heretofore never observed in human history, and prehistory (from my readings) for that matter.
Feminism is one of the Stupidity Quadrad (along with Global Financial Stupidity, Immigration Stupidity, and Political Correctness) that comprise an estimated 85% of all stupidity emanating from the Western hemisphere, on a good day! Seriously now, there is no way for a country to remain conservative with the level of feminism seen today.
The quick point for today is just that the gender roles that Westerners are acting in are not in accordance with the laws of nature. One can find a study proving anything in this area, but from being around quite a while and trying to hold to the truth, it is very apparent to me that the noncompliance with natural gender roles makes people unhappy and is just corrosive to society. To be more specific here, one need only look at the female body (or multiple ones). It helps to be a man for this part. Is there no doubt in your mind what this body is made for (once you reach puberty)? It may seem like just a sex urge for most of your life, but one wonders after a while why that urge is there, why certain women parts are always important to men, etc. Then, there is the science (that used to be common knowledge before stupidity ramped up) about women's bodies and ability to conceive, carry safely and give birth to a new life over the female lifespan.
The "have-it-all" (career and family) story that has been promised to women this whole time - the 1/2 century - has taken a long time to get to the debunking stage. It being debunked by science is one thing, but the debunking via experiences of 100's of millions of women, and men who are a part of this crap too, is a real shame. It's one thing to learn a small thing the hard way, but to take a lifetime to learn a life experience that used to be common knowledge (i.e. learned the easy way, from advice) is just sad.
It turns out that, for the most part, women are happier doing what they were created for, making the babies with all of the various stages thereof and teaching and raising them in a home they feel comfortable and safe in. Men were made to be able to do anything it takes to make this happen - meaning about everything else that must go on in the world. Men are happier being out in the world part of the time and getting away from the women crap. Even women in the workplace have told me that they don't like being there dealing with the women crap!
I asked a 24 year-old babysitter who had her own baby too, how difficult it was to pop out the little one, since we were a good bit older as parents. "Pretty easy, no problem". "Kinda like taking a dump?" I asked (sorry for the language). "Yeah, pretty much." This is no new news, but just to conceive in the late 30's is not guaranteed, the chance of miscarriages is much higher, birth is more painful and more risky, and the risk, though still small, of a serious problem with the baby is very much higher than with a women in the prime 15-28 age range.
Feminism has been trying to force people to ignore the laws of nature, just for humans. These laws can be suppressed by governments and societies via coercion, but they can't be repealed, even by a judge in California. (As a side note it's also interesting that there is a big overlap between the nominal "treehugger" crowd who supposedly loves nature and the crowd who'd support all things feminist. It's quite the contradiction, really.)
To combat this dangerous form of stupidity, the first thing we need to remember is:
IT'S NOT NICE TO FOOL MOTHER NATURE!
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The Eleven (in 11/8 time)
Posted On: Saturday - February 11th 2017 5:44PM MST
In Topics: Music The Dead
This is some hardcore live Dead. This song, after the segue-way from whatever song preceded (probably St. Stephen), is in 11/8 time - listen after about 1:25 and count 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2, repeat.
From Los Angeles, CA August 23rd, 1968
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There are two drummers - Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzmann.
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What's wrong with these people (salesmen)?
Posted On: Saturday - February 11th 2017 7:44AM MST
In Topics: Salesmen Curmudgeonry Economics
After all the political stupidity that could take 100 bloggers working 24/7/365/multiple millenia to keep up with, let's take a break for just a few more days from this. Here's the story about salemen as a follow-up from this post from way back last year. Sure, it's nothing really profound, but it does kind of make us wonder "what's wrong with these people?"
Even though the quick story about the cable salesmen was to display my disdain for TV in particular and also how to get rid of these guys, another point left out was the guy's refusal to either believe me, or refusal to give up when I told him what I wanted to buy (just internet service). Next about these window salesman of the 1990's.
The windows in the old house were going to have to be replaced sometime, and while watching TV (back when I did) there appeared an ad for replacement windows with an 800 number (again, this is way back, so no internet at my house). It wasn't like I even had the money at this point for this, but I figured I may as well get an idea of what was coming so I could take care of it in the next few years. I don't think one waited on hold much or went through voice recognition systems back then, so I got a guy from whom I really tried to get a quote - simple really, easy layout, 20 or so windows - all the same size except for the smaller bathroom one (I had measured them already). After a while I realized he was not going to give me any idea of a price, which was all I wanted. It was important, he insisted, for some people to come by.
OK, so a lady salesman and her trainee salesman showed up in the evening as I and one roommate were have a beer or two. It started out fine; I gave them the numbers. Yeah, OK, but there are lots of options, they were going on about. How about the simplest plastic framed double-paned and so forth - I gave them every detail they wanted. "What's the price estimate?" "Well, there's a lot to it, prices go up and down." "OK, what are they at now?" "Well ... it's tough to ...."
**************** INTERMISSION ****************
"Rrrrowwwwww!" We heard my tomcat in a fight (or big argument) with another feline right outside and we had to check this out. Cat fights are pretty amazing. These guys were so pissed off at each other, staring each other down from 3 feet away, and standing on two legs for a coupla minutes (they'll never do that for you, even for ice cream!). They don't care what the humans have to say at this point - you're just a bystander and have no say in this. All of us watched the cats from the front porch for about 10 minutes until I chased them across the street....
**************** INTERMISSION ****************
OK, where were we? "Yeah, well you know that plastic is made of oil and all, and with the situation in the Middle East (this could be any time in last 1/2 century, right?) that's unstable, so you know ... " "How much money's worth of oil could possibly be in the pound or two of plastic in each window." "Oh, it's hard to tell....." There was some additional bullcrap out of the salemen's mouths about the engineering of the windows, and my roomate got some good smart-ass remarks in, but finally, after an hour and a damn half had gone by (not including the catfight),
"Man, I really can't buy anything without having an estimate, at least, of the price." The salesmen's smiles went away, and the lady goes "I'm sorry then, I guess we'll get going." and they both got up off the couch with their sad faces and were saying goodbye. After getting no idea still how much it would eventually cost to put new windows on my house, and a coupla' hours wasted, I still didn't want to be rude: "Well, you did a pretty good job, I told the trainee guy." "No, I guess not" he said "we didn't make any sale."
"How could I buy something without knowing the price?!" I finally had had enough. "What is wrong with these people?", I wondered later on. Really, when you get to thinking about it, they wouldn't be doing the same sales technique if it didn't work. "What is wrong with people?", is the real question, as idiots will sign on some dotted line without knowing the price. These people are voting for congressmen who put our whole land in debt; that's what comes out of this.
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Victoria - The Kinks (live)
Posted On: Friday - February 10th 2017 8:34PM MST
In Topics: Music
There was too much else going on, and no time for posts today. Tomorrow morning will be the time for the 2nd salesmen story.
For now, per PeakStupidity's take on what makes a good song, this song by the British band The Kinks illustrates our point again. This is from the 1970's, and one could imagine how left-wing (not in the same whacked-out way as now) the audience was. Yet the lyrics of "Victoria" are about longing for the monarchy of Queen Victoria and the British Empire upon which "the sun never set", kind of a conservative theme.
However, the audience loves it anyway - Ray Davies (and all of them) are pretty high-energy. I bet that was a great show. From 1979 in Providence, Rhode Island:
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Another for the Parrotheads
Posted On: Thursday - February 9th 2017 6:37PM MST
In Topics: Music
I guess Parrotheads gonna parrot, it's what they do.
This one is not a typical fun Buffett song about sailing, flying or girls. The lyrics are serious and very moving, if you ask me. I think it's the best Jimmy Buffett song ever.
"He went to Paris" from the album "A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean" (no video):
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Lyrics at 2:10:
WAS: "... he was recalling, answers he never found"
SHOULD BE: "... he was recalling, answers he'd never found"
That's a critical difference in the meaning of the song!
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Great Ann Coulter column
Posted On: Thursday - February 9th 2017 12:11PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Pundits
There's really nothing to write as witty and as accurate as what Ann Coulter wrote yesterday - "Ann Coulter: A Maniac Is Running Our Foreign Policy (It’s Not Trump, It’s Judge James Robart)".
We're gonna do our best impression of the godfather of pundits, Mr. Glenn Reynolds then [Instapundit mode]:
Ann says:
If only we were able to deport citizens, we could use Trump’s new policy of excluding those who are “hostile” toward our country to get rid of Judge James Robart.
Heh!
Judge Robart’s veto of Trump’s travel ban notwithstanding, there is not the slightest question but that the president, in his sole discretion, can choose to admit or exclude any foreigners he likes, based on “the interests of the United States.”
The Clinton administration used the executive branch’s broad power over immigration to send a 6-year-old boy back to a communist dictatorship. The courts were completely powerless to stop him.
As explained by the federal appellate court that ruled on Elian Gonzalez’s asylum application: “It is the duty of the Congress and of the executive branch to exercise political will,” and “in no context is the executive branch entitled to more deference than in the context of foreign affairs,” which includes immigration.
Indeed.
Read the whole thing.
[/Instapundit mode]
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Ron Paul: Trump can't stop the financial collapse coming
Posted On: Thursday - February 9th 2017 7:43AM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity
This is over a week old, but it's not like a week's earlier warning is going to change anyone's mind on this: Ron Paul Warns: "Second Financial Bubble Going To Burst Soon... Even Trump Can't Stop It".
OK, if you don't think much of Ron Paul, you can write this off in your mind like all the other financial speculation news you read or hear day-in and day-out. PeakStupidity has much admiration for this guy, possibly the one honest man that has been in the US Congress in the last half-century (if you're the other one, please add a comment now, or forever hold your piece (sic ;-}.
I've said it before, and gosh-darnit, I'll say it again - if this man had just taken to heart the advice given to him in early 2012 by proto-PeakStupidity to speak about illegal immigration in the Republican primary, he'd probably have been president for the last 4 years and 3 weeks. Yeah, he didn't have the charisma (any more that is) compared to Trump, or you could say was a "lower energy" guy. True dat, but it was the fact that Trump came out of his hotel the summer before last talking about the damage to this country being caused by immigration that got him going. I know that if Representative (at that time) Paul (TEXAS!) had come out swinging about this issue, and just won the next primary on this, it would have been very hard for the LP to bury the story at that point.
BTW, just my opinion (I'd ask Mr. Paul, if I had a chance), but I believe even Ron Paul would admit that he would not have been able to get the country to avoid the financial pain coming per his words linked to in zerohedge above, if he were president back in '12. It's just that we could all have gotten the ship steered at least in the right direction toward fiscal responsibility and smaller government and liberty, so that we could get out of this hole in the right direction (upwards, not downwards towards Hell, as it could go). People would have been prepared for what's coming.
Again, we like the anti-PC, anti-immigration-invasion and basically pro-Americans attitude of Donald Trump. However, he's not gonna magically get us, or the rest of the world out of the major financial turmoil and pain that is coming once payments get demanded for the bills due and the bad checks we've got floating all over creation (See the whole topic).
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Down to the banana republics .... went Fred Reed
Posted On: Tuesday - February 7th 2017 9:00PM MST
In Topics: Music Websites Pundits Global Financial Stupidity
Fred Reed is a writer/pundit who writes weekly or so columns on his Fred on Everything site. He is also featured on Unz.com in this"space".
This guy has been around a long time and seen a lot as a reporter, and he writes great columns, most of the time, about all sorts of things: race, the American police-state, American politics, etc. Especially good are his columns that refer to his past as a Southern boy/young man somewhere in Tidewater Virginia, I believe. He makes great contrasts between the relatively free and confident country this was in his youth and today's 'Murica. I could put a long, mostly positive, review on PeakStupidity, but that's not the point of this post.
Mr. Reed is what you call an expatriate. He moved down to Mexico a good while back and is married to a senorita down there. His experience living there and the contrast to what this country has become also makes for good writing, as he still has business or maybe just family in this country, so he sees the differences when he visits back. Now, I don't fault him at all for his appreciation for what is better down there (at this point in our history). Yeah, people are more relaxed (well, when there's no kidnapping or narcoterrorism going on), it could be a better quality of life is some other ways I can imagine.
Here's the thing: Mr. Reed defends Mexico and everything Mexican a bit much for this writer and many commenters on his blog (at Unz.com) also. This is especially important in this critical time when Americans are getting serious about our immigration problems, and not a year too soon either. I would like to write some of this reply to him there, but he may not read his commenters at all (in contrast to Steve Sailer, who, amazingly, replies to many of the people.) So, I don't intend for this to be pundit-to-pundit gossip, as I'd discuss this directly with the guy if I could. There will be a point when the American money runs out. Seriously, it's coming later, and it's what puts the Topic Key "Global Financial Stupidity" on this post also.
OK, off of Fred Reed for a while, but I will connect this expatriate thing back to this pundit shortly.
The idea of leaving it all behind and heading south to a more relaxing climate, and more relaxed way of life, and additionally, to a place where you don't need to use much of your money (or don't need to have much to begin with) to live a nice quiet life is especially tempting to single older guys. Just the girls that probably do treat men better, maybe wishful thinking, is enough to cause one to sell it all and get a passport and one-way plane ticket. The thought of getting out of "the rat race" and being in a place where the money goes far is another thing. It's much easier for a single guy, as, for families, safety is a worry, but also, the single man is not so demanding and really only needs a few things. Next, some music from 40 years back to better describe the concept of an expatriated American.
PeakStupidity tries to post a music video most nights, but this will be one most connected with a post with a real point to make. Jimmy Buffett sang this song, written by Steve Goodman, in the LATE 70's, we're talking right at 40 years ago! It's an obscure "album cut" too. This is one that, with a decent tune, is still an exception to the PeakStupidity rule that melody and sound rule over lyrics. These lyrics evoke partly the romantic part of this single expatriate lifestyle, but also gives the "grass is not always greener" side too. It's such a great song, and the lyrics could apply today, with a caveat that brings us back to Fred Reed's point of view - after the video:
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(From "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, from Jimmy Buffett's prime - more Buffet coming - got to please the Parrot- and Dead- heads, both, but there's probably a lot of overlap.)
Please, listen to the song first, before this last part, as the lyrics are so descriptive.
Now, it's gotta be great to live the good life, probably by the beach in Costa Rica, Belize, or maybe even on a different continent, in, say, Thailand - the song still rings true. You've got a guy that you pay $2 weekly to do the laundry, the girlfriend doesn't take much to support, or you could rent them on the cheap and have change left over for tequila, the rent is $300 and it's $10 more for a girl to clean the place each week. Yeah, your small pension or SS check, or small remote business profits go a long way.
OK, getting to my point now, whewwwww, yeah this is a good plan for some guys, or so it seems. Jimmy Buffet (or really Steve Goodman, the songwriter) has some caveats, but here is one that wasn't a factor in the 1970's. Everything that makes life good down there is dependent on a STRONG DOLLAR. This is neither the time (late at night) nor the place (not zerohedge or Ron Paul's blog) to give the details, but the dollar will not for long be the powerful currency it is today. The good life of an expatriate will go bad quickly when the dollar turns into mostly just scrap paper, as is typical of most currencies around the world, and especially the 3rd world. It won't take too much inflation and decline of the mighty dollar before the girls aren't too interested anymore, expenses become a worry - turning the whole rum and sunsets on the beach deal into "rat-race 2.0" and YOU end up being the guy that is doing laundry for $2 a week.
Lastly, back to Mr. Reed. Does he not live on American money? I realize his wife is educated and all that, but I don't know if he is truly living like a Mexican - I mean one that does not get paid in dollars and cannot un-bail back to the US if absolutely necessary. I think his view of Mexican life is a bit shaded by his living as an ex-pat, not a true Mexican who is stuck there living on the peso with no out.
This is by far PeakStupidity's longest post so far - I hope the reader can make sense out of it. Good night all.
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Education Secretary Nominee may be rejected.
Posted On: Tuesday - February 7th 2017 7:41AM MST
In Topics: Humor US Feral Government Educational Stupidity
If we've got to punt on any of these people, this Betsy DeVos broad is a good start. Zerohedge says Betsy DeVos In Danger Of Becoming First Cabinet Nominee In 28 Years To Be Rejected.
Listen, if you want to be my Secretary of Education you gotta play by my rules and follow the plan. Here's the plan:
Day 1) Meet and greet. Eat Donuts and talk about problem chilluns.
Day 2) Everyone in the conference room, like YESTERDAY!
Day 2.1) OK, all of y'all are fired. You've got till noon to clean out your desks.
Day 2.5) Make sure all employees are on the way out of the building. Serve donuts to prevent any hard feelings (and lawsuits related to said feelings.)
Day 3) Shut the whole mutha down!
Day 4) Accept new position at Department of Motherland Security.
Day 5) Repeat steps 1-3.
Day 6) Repeat steps 4-5, FOR NEXT Dept of XXXXXX
Day X) Exit when NUM_DEPTS == 0;
FOR LOOPS, BITCHEZ!
This woman was an NEA puke anyway. Get all governments out of education. Bring Stupidity down to a manageable level.
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[UPDATE - Tuesday Evening] Looks like she did get approved by the Senate with VP Pence's tie breaking vote.
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We receive a big shout out from Derbyshire over at VDare.com
Posted On: Monday - February 6th 2017 4:38PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Websites Pundits
In the blog post Turkeys Vote For Thanksgiving–Gays Demonstrating For Muslim Immigration, citing the sheer imbecility of "WOMEN, JEWS, AND HOMOSEXUALS FOR ISLAM." John Derbyshire adds:
"I don’t know if we’ve reached Peak Liberalism yet, but we must surely be getting close to Peak Stupidity."
Apparently, he is on-board with our idea of Stupidity peaking out soon, at least as a pundit, not sure about as a mathematician.
We welcome the "shout-out" - and a big "pipe-the-fuck-down, use your inside voice" back atcha, slick. ;-}
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Primer on the state of Global Financial Stupidity (Part 8)
Posted On: Monday - February 6th 2017 9:42AM MST
In Topics: Music Global Financial Stupidity
(Continued from here.)
Whew, again, this is not the most fun type of writing, but this stuff's got to be said, before the more interesting posts to come about the details in the current time, that could also point the reader to some of these primers for background - or one could read Zerohedge for 5 years running to get the big picture. You can do it the hard way, or you can do it the easy way ;-}
What about the rest of the world? Couldn't they bail us out if we get into trouble, kind of like we have done for them in the past? No, they could not, but they probably wouldn't have anyway, right? Looking back at countries with hyperinflation, say 1920's Germany or 1980's "the country formerly known as Rhodesia", from white-run breadbasket of Africa to black-run basket-case, we see that American dollars could at least be used by wise people to hold their wealth (or real money - Gold and Silver, of course). Loans from countries with well-functioning economies, usually the US were made to help in a transition from one economic meltdown to the next in Latin American countries in the past.
The problem now is not just in one country or even in one part of the world. Let's have a look-see around:
Even countries that seen to have their act together, such as Japan, turn out, upon readings of Zerohedge, to be in major financial holes of their own. Besides having a national-government debt of more than 200% of the GDP of the country, quite of bit of US Treasury bonds (debt) are held in Japan too.
Though the Chinese have the manufacturing might, such as that of 1960's America, the place still is run by Commies, so, on the scale of big-business, there is nothing like a real free market. Well-earned money is thrown into boondoggles and there is a housing bubble just like here, as people can not safely keep the monetary results of their labor in any other form. How can the people of this place create so much wealth (manufacturing, mining, etc.) yet be in so much debt? It comes from "mis-allocation" of assets - big projects get built that do not make money, and laws are changed daily to make financial dealing very uncertain. This kind of stuff would not happen in a free market. Were China a free-market with the people and infrastructure they have, hell, I'd be on the first
Then, there's the EU, run into the ground financially (and now, demographically) by the power-mad scum in Brussels.
Down under, you've got the Aussies and the Kiwis - their economies are not big enough to bail out the rest of the world, and Australia is being mined to supply China, so if China goes down, so do they. India has a large economy due to having such a large number people, but it will never be strong or solvent due to that same reason. Then there's the 3rd world, which is called that for a reason. Half of it is run by bailouts, so I don't believe they can help (shoot, maybe Øb☭ma's real family over in Kenya can pay a brudda back, mon).
I left out Russia, so far. I don't know enough about its current economy to write about it in general here, though I did recently read a lot about how bad the place was ravaged by foreigners in the 1990's after the Soviet Union fell apart. It's something that you didn't hear much about at the time in America, but it could be a good lesson. (Also, maybe we shouldn't try to start a war with them, eh?)
It's tempting to say "Hey, so we're all in the same boat - America is no worse - it's a zero-sum game", that kind of thing. American money is still the "reserve currency" used for international trading. That, and a comparison to other currencies is what's keeping it looking good now. However:
a) the reserve currency aspect can not hold up, as we don't create enough wealth to support the Dollar. People and governments around the world cannot keep accumulating our currency, when it doesn't stand for much.
b) even if our currency looks good compared to that of other nations or "E-Unions", it's just what's called "the cleanest dirty shirt"*. All of the currencies are "dirty", so ours being the cleanest is not something that's gonna help us in the long run. This paper and those digits in the banks' hard-drives just don't mean what they used to. We're gonna find out soon what happens when this becomes common knowledge.
No, we're all in a big hole, folks. The first part of any solution is to stop digging, and we haven't even done that yet.
* I believe the expression came from this great Kris Kristofferson song titled "Sunday Morning Coming Down". Here is the song sung by Shawn Mullins:
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Primer on the state of Global Financial Stupidity (Part 7)
Posted On: Monday - February 6th 2017 8:44AM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity
(Continued from here.)
Part 6 was just updated to indicate that THIS ONE (Part 7) is to be about consumer debt and Part 8 about the problems around the rest of the world.
Of course, there isn't enough room in one post to go over the details of any of this, but these "primers" are just that, an introduction to the problem. While discussing the ways that different obligations, sometimes in the form of paper debt "instruments", and other times just promises on a contract or in pension plan brochure, are interrelated, in Part 6, a big item was skipped. That is consumer debt.
Americans, on average, have quite a lot of debt on their own, not related to any of the stuff big government is up to. One could say that their governments are just going to do what Americans let them, but I believe that, especially our Feral Gov't, they are out of our control now anyway. It is probably the case that Americans don't have enough worry about the consequences of governments having sky-high debt and obligations due to the fact that it's just a part of everyday life for most families also in this day and age.
The biggies are mortgage debt and other loans against people's biggest asset, their homes, credit-card debt, college loans, and auto loans. If you went back to the early, and even mid 1970's, you would find that only the first of these 4 was any kind of significant number. Yes, you'd have to go back quite far to get to the time when people bought houses without payments, but the money wasn't lent out so readily, before the US Gov't got it's dirty hands in this business.
Car loans have been around 2nd longest, but 4-year payment plans were the highest you'd get until just a few decades back. Now, people are getting as long as 7-year terms for pay-back! (It sounds worse in months - only an 84 month plan! - the coupon book - do they still have those? - would be a half-inch thick - kinda depressing.) This business, as of late, the last 5 years, has become the new sub-prime business, as they'll come up with any plan that has payments small enough for the buyer to squeak by on. It keeps the cars moving off the lots, and the repo business has gotten a lot safer lately, with the new technology to, say, disable the vehicle in the parking lot while the repo man knows the
Credit cards have been around for 50 years or more, but they weren't something that average Americans depended on regularly for their financial dealings that far back. I can remember getting one just to take care of buying items over the phone, but really only for that reason (I'm very glad to have grown up in a conservative family). Debit cards took care of the problem of buying things remotely, so that's not the reason most people have credit cards now. People want to spend to the max and feel they are doing OK if all the paychecks in the family cover the payments.
Lastly, the student loan debt is orders of magnitude greater (even in real dollars) than 3 decades ago. PeakStupidity featured a short post about this already, but there is much to say about this, and we have a particularly lot of experience in the University environment.
Again, this is just intro. and not very entertaining even as I read over it myself, but the detail posts will be more interesting, I promise. The large point here is that the numbers are very HIGH compared to the recent past, even in real dollar terms, of all this consumer debt. At the same time, the number of jobs that could enable a large portion of American society to live a middle class lifestyle and keep covering it's debt is much LOWER and decreasing.
As mentioned in my examples of the interrelationship of money/debt over the economy, this consumer debt, much of which is totally unpayable, is held as assets by what-have-you, other people's pension plans, your 401K account, etc. There's no tightening up on one part of this mess without causing pain everywhere else.
Next up, and the last of the "primers", will be a short discussion about the state of the world compared to America's debt problems.
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Jack Straw from Wichita
Posted On: Saturday - February 4th 2017 6:14PM MST
In Topics: Music The Dead
from the Europe '72 album
Good night, readers.
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These
Posted On: Saturday - February 4th 2017 6:06PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Globalists Media Stupidity ctrl-left
This is really a continuation of the last post, about the Berzerkely rioters, but I think it can stand on it's own. It also could be a Part 2 of this one: FACE IT, GLOBALISTS, YOU SCREWED THE POOCH!, about the LP (Lyin' Press) and the outright lies they spew that they KNOW people don't believe anymore (yet, spew they do - hey, I'm a poet and didn't know-it).
This one link, Reich Rips Third Reich-loving Alt-Reich for Reichstag Fire False Flag at Berkeley - great title by Sailer - from the last post is a good example. Does Mr. Reich really believe that many people would believe him that the riots against the gay guy Milo Whatever were instigated by the right to then cause a crack-down? Really, the evidence and all logic do not point to this idiotic theory. Yet, this
As I wrote in the "YOU SCREWED THE POOCH" post, this kind of talk may have worked fine through the 1980's even, when most people still watched only certain TV channels, and the newspapers were not quite as bad as Soviet Russian "Pravda", so they were mostly believed. Anyone with some truth about the real story wouldn't have too many ways to get this truth out. You wouldn't be directly shut up, as the Bezerkeley rioters have done to Milo, but then, they didn't need to do that, as your story would not go far.
Then came, ... dum-dee-dum-dum, ... the internet. Thanks a lot, Al Gore, you Carbophobic bastard! (Yes, he has an irrational fear of Carbon, this college drop-out living in the California coastal mansion.) You ruined it for the lying press by your single-handed creation of the Internet Protocol (often called the Protocols of the Elders of Gore). I don't know why they even still talk to you.
Now, mind you, after things started to get a little out of hand in the early oughts, with say, Instapundit (libertarian), then the Patriot constitutionalist sites, and VDare, Zerohedge, the Globalist elites still figured things could be put back under control pretty damn quickly if they set their minds, money, and AntiChrist to work on it. Well, it turned out that it wasn't as easy as TV and newspapers - just buy them all up, let a rich Mexican buy the NY Slimes, a Seattle-based punk-assed geek buy the Washington FS paper and keep 6 companies in charge of all the TV networks. Start the journo-list groups with the common talking points, keep them happy by letting them ride on Air Force One and be the only ones let in to the gov't press conferences.
It's not quite so easy to OWN THE INTERNET, is it, Davos boys? We know you're trying a lot of things, but face it, you're computer-tech illiterates, the AntiChrist Soros doesn't know dick about anything technical, and a lot of the computer-tech people are not on your side.
Now, along comes PeakStupidity.com.
SOROS, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD, WE READ YOUR BOOK!
These people have been getting their way and keeping us at on the road to globalism, one-world government and away from individualism and the American Republic at high speed for decades now. They are not at all used to giving one inch. This small setback for them in the form of the Donald Trump victory is, well, let's say they are not taking it well at all. These people are NOT USED TO LOSING, but they better get ready for MUCH MORE!
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Piles of posts by Mr. Steve Sailer on Unz.com/VDare about Berzerkely, etc.
Posted On: Saturday - February 4th 2017 5:31PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Student and other Snowflakes Pundits Globalists
Mr. Sailer, as described herein, is a pundit extraordinaire. There's no way to keep up with this guy, and he does almost as much writing as Zerohedge, though they are legion and he is one man. Well, also Zerohedge writes short posts and about 1/2 of them are re-posted from some contributing sites/pundits, while Steve's are longer, with appropriate videos interspersed, and more thoughtful. What happens is that he will get on a subject and get into it in such detail that he becomes an expert, though at some point the reader may wonder "what the hell is this crap, and why should I care?"
An example from this week is the posts about the Berzerkely, California violent rioting sickos (hey, not that rioting is sick, it's just that these people are either nuts or just pro's that are paid well by the usual suspects). In order, from (hopefully), the start:
Berkeley's Anti-Free Speech Movement
Why Aren't the Berkeley Anti-free Speech Beatings by Masked Men Being Called "Hate Crimes?"
A Decent NYT Article on the Berkeley Kristallnacht
Trump Ed Dept. Should Issue 1st Amendment "Dear Colleague" Letter to Colleges
"Whose Campus? Our Campus!"
Heckuva Job, Berkeleyie
Why Is It Legal to Wear a Mask to a Riot? (WE ABSOLUTELY DO NOT AGREE WITH SAILER ON THIS ONE!)
Reich Rips Third Reich-loving Alt-Reich for Reichstag Fire False Flag at Berkeley
"This Is HATE! ... I'm a PROFESSOR! HOW DARE YOU?!!"
Violence, Dissent, Conformity
This was just in 1/2 a week, in addition to at least 50% more other posts, and possibly he's got a job.
Unz.com also has many other good writers. After I write a review of the site, it will go in the blogroll to the right side.
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Primer on the state of Global Financial Stupidity (Part 6)
Posted On: Saturday - February 4th 2017 4:40PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity
(Continued from here.)
The first 5 parts of this series of posts have focused only on the huge US Feral Gov't Debt to try to explain the financial crisis/pain coming. This is a BIG PROBLEM, but only a small-size chunk of the BIGGER PROBLEM. Now, we need to delve into both a) other kinds of debt that are out of hand, and b) debt in other parts of the world.
The bigger problem looming with regard to debt does not really involve actual paper "instruments", as the financial green-eyeshade, white-shoe boys (what the hell does that even mean? ;=} call them. I am writing about promises, that may be in the form of contracts, benefits summaries, or just the jaw-jawing over 50 years by the political class to American citizens about what they've got coming to them. To be more specific, there are gov't pensions (at all levels of government), private pension plans, social security (topic for a whole nother post - working title: "Hey, you fucked up; you trusted us!"), medicare, private health plans, etc. This type of debt can not be easily be counted. On Zerohedge, the number bandied about is 200 Trillion dollars worth of these obligations. I would just take this number as just an order of magnitude estimate - some of the obligations may be counted more easily than others.
People were told by big organizations, either companies, or more so, governments of various sorts, in writing, that this is what you have coming. However, the money coming for all these types of arrangements is not accumulated and sitting nicely in a fireproof safe somewhere - we should all know that by now. The problem is that the money also doesn't just sit as digits in the computers of the banks even. It has to go somewhere, so it is used to buy bonds (of all sorts) or goes into the stock market, or is invested in something or other. Even more importantly, the money put in, if there is any, by the supposed beneficiary of all these cool deals mostly is not even close to what's promised. This is where the creative accounting comes in to show that your pension is solvent, or social security, hahahaaaaa, is, hahaaaaa, cough, spit, aaaahhh, sorry, is solvent, and you get the money shown on that statement that comes each year working for you to add to a nice payment for you some time, in the, hahahaaa, future.* Of course, your money will be compounded each year by a bunch of interest, which, for almost a decade running is pretty close to 0. The math hasn't been working out very well for these private financial obligations, and the government ones, especially the Fed ones, are very close to Ponzi schemes.
The numbers don't work unless the money can "work for us". Were interest rates to go up to normal, customer-accepted time-value-of-money, levels, not controlled by the Fed Reserve, some of the non-government plans and even some conservative state/city plans may be solvent. They say to this day that calculations are based on interest rates of 7-8% or so. If interest went back up to the our US Fed-Gov't budget would have to account for 1/4 to 1/2 of its expenditures just for interest (take 7-8% of $20,000,000,000,000. that's on loan, vs. a $4,000,000,000,000 budget. They cannot let interest rates rise, or that blows the budget, causing more need to borrow! It's like the coffin corner in high-speed aerodynamics, or in non-aerodynamicist's terms "being between a rock and a hard place".
What the interest rate problem does is force even normally-conservative managers of money to put the money into risky markets to get the high levels of return that are built into the math that makes these plans sound solvent. That's what goes on today, which is why even though we should have to care about the Dow Jones average if we're not invested, if it takes a plunge, all these financial obligations take a plunge with it.
The crux of the matter here is that money and these monetary instruments that hold our supposed future support (financial and medical) are fungible, or are like commodities. They are spread out all over and can't be separated back out by which ones were more conservative and which beneficiaries are more deserving. It's like this: this trucking company's pension funds may be partly in municipal bonds of the city of Anaheim, CA, which is in debt, the debt of which is held partially by a mutual fund - people's IRA or 401K money. The mortgages of 100,000 deadbeat home"owners" or the student loan obligations of 2,000,000 womyn's studies, art history, and grievance-studies majors from all over the Ivy league and the Pac-10 may be held by the pension fund of the state of New Hampshire or some even bigger suckers over in Denmark.
This way, it can all crash together at the same time, so, your know, there's that, at least.
Part 7 will discuss the huge amount of consumer debt, focusing still on this country. Part 8 will discuss international aspects of the Global Financial Stupidity upcoming crises. Stay tuned, but no posts on Sunday.
* Keep in mind, I am speaking in real dollar terms when I write that this money will not be there. In nominal US dollars, after some years of high inflation, yeah, you may even get the $1800/month after you're 65 y/o, as you have been promised - it's just that your rent may be $5,000/ month for your studio apartment and the S&S cafeteria costs about $85 a meal, and that's only during the EARLY BIRD SPECIAL!
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