Autopay - it's sooooo convenient...
Posted On: Wednesday - November 1st 2023 5:59PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Economics Big-Biz Stupidity
... for the Big Biz world of corporate hustlers.
There's a lot of encouragement from Big Business to us peon customers to switch to autopay for recurring billing. The convenience of it is a siren song for the weak of principle. Yeah, well, you'll save a stamp and check each month, which add up to nearly a buck.* More importantly is that time saved. They seem to have a point.
However, one loses a couple of important things with autopay, leverage and privacy. Regarding the former, it's harder to argue over bogus, or even correct, charges on a bill when you've already given them the money. These companies like to have the money steadily rolling in. If you owe a bill and don't agree, I've found it's easier to dispute something when you can threaten to withhold that steady money. "I'll change companies", you can tell them, either way, but with autopay you're caught up and they've got your card number. You won't be able to stiff them quite so easily if they deserve it.
This reminds me of the escrow account I used to have for the mortgage, insurance, and taxes on a house. (They told me I HAD to have that, and I was young and naive.) "Hey, your insurance went way up, gotta up your payment. Don't worry, we already paid the insurance company. You're good!" It was much better when I was handling the money.
...and, what's a post office?
As for the loss of privacy with autopay, that's just gotten worse. We grudgingly went along with it on our phone plan. That was due to the deal that said we'd be paying $10 more monthly if we didn't. It's a big win for Big Business, as they don't like the deadbeats. Autopay assures them that they can cut off the potential deadbeats while not yet at a loss. WE'RE not deadbeats though, and I highly resent our being treated like we are!
The phone company had our credit card in their files for a couple of years, well, with the continual turnover of the actual card info due to scammers. ( 2 1/2 years back Peak Stupidity posted some information I'd never known about before then regarding the updating of card info, which itself can be automatic - for good or ill. That was in the 2-part post Visa Account Updater: Part 1 - - Part 2.)
Now THAT's not good enough. No, I suppose too many people are still disputing charges. Even with the lack of leverage from the automatic payment schedule, one can call the CC company and put put some charges in limbo. (I am having a brain fart on the term and can't find it.) This phone company now wants either a Debit Card on file or a bank account routing number. To put my feelings bluntly, NO FUCKING WAY!
They have no business knowing this info. At the phone store, when told I wouldn't be using a CC, asked me "OK, then, do you have a debit card? Oh, don't worry - you can just get me your bank account routing number." "Uhh, no. I guess I need to get bills in the mail again." He gotta a little miffed at that, I must say.
So be it, $120 more yearly for this (+ the checks and stamps), but I have my peace of mind and satisfaction. Part of the satisfaction is in knowing that Big Biz HATES HATE HATES this old fashioned paper stuff now. They have to keep contracts with companies that do the printing and mailing, and others that do the opening and data entry! The Philippines has plenty of young men and ladies who can do this, of course.
Yeah, and they are so not into this stuff that the latest bill has the outside envelope printed upside down. With the writing read normally, the envelope flap/seal is on the bottom. Is it just the normal incompetence these days, or are they not even trying? Ha! Better keep killing those trees for me, Big Biz, because you are the ones that brought this on!
PS: I just mailed it off. The account # was so tiny that I had to use the phone camera and enlarge the resulting picture to see it for writing it on the check. I put it in equally tiny writing.
* I've written before that sometimes I pay ahead by 3, 4, even 6 months, a net gain monetarily in the era of basement-level interest rates, but that's changing. It saves on stamps, checks, and, most importantly time. However, that depends on how much I trust the outfit to not change prices or screw me on a charge.
Comments (17)
War on Halloween: Who are the real sluts?
Posted On: Tuesday - October 31st 2023 8:43PM MST
In Topics: Humor Female Stupidity Holiday from Stupidity
Peak Stupidity featured a short post on or about Halloween 4 years ago called A Holiday for Sluts. That was about the adult (I hope) women's costumes these days. Since there was no gratuitous girly picture above that post, we will put one here in the morning.
James Fulford of VDare posted an article today that describes a War on Halloween, seeing as the Commies who want to overturn ALL tradition have these informal wars on most American holidays. His article is The War On Halloween Is About How White People Aren't Allowed To Dress, but he says it's being fought on 5 different fronts:
War On BlackfaceThe article is fun, and that's all I've got going this time around, as we had no time for any of it, not even giving out or receiving any candy.
Evangelical Christians’ War On Paganism And Satanism
Mexicans’ War On Halloween: It’s Now The Day Of The Dead, Gringos!
Feminists’ War On Slutty Halloween [The one we're interested in, depending on the venue.]
War On White People Dressed As Non-Whites
I did just hear a Peak Stupidity-worth short anecdote from a colleague that relates, though. She is staying at a hotel in a not-so-nice area in the big city. The place itself, inside, that is, is OK, but it's in the ghetto. I warned her. She went to the Mexican restaurant right off the parking lot. "I don't know", she told me, "There were a lot of women that might have been prostitutes, but I couldn't tell if they are just dressed like prostitutes because it's Halloween."
In some neighborhoods, every day is Halloween. "Trick or treat?" Wait. Or is that "trick or tweet" now?
Comments (11)
Presidents and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve: The purpose of Depletions
Posted On: Tuesday - October 31st 2023 8:10PM MST
In Topics: Economics US Feral Government Inflation Dead/Ex- Presidents
Continued from the previous posts: The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Bai Dien Drawdown - - Donald Trump: BS ass-ymptotially approaching Lying and Presidents and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Capacity, Filling, and Crude Prices. This ought to be the last of it, since it's getting boring at this point. If it's getting boring to the writer, imagine the situation of the poor readers! [And commenters! - Ed.]
It's a little wonky, but an August '09 paper written by one Robert Bamberger, The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: History, Perspectives, and Issues, for the Congressional Research Office does a good job in explaining a bit of history and what's been going on with the SPR...till 14 years ago, of course. The impetus for this idea was the '73-'74 Arab/OPEC oil embargo that resulted in what Americans figured was the near end of oil. In reality, it was just the end of really cheap oil. The rough times at the gas stations and the shock of it had the US Gov't figuring out a way to stock oil to cushion shocks via a big storage facility.
We discussed the filling of the SPR salt caverns, and which President* did the most and least of it, in the last post. Let's discuss the depleting, draining, or drawing down. Per the act that created the reserves:
The Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA, P.L. 94-163) authorized drawdown of the Reserve upon a finding by the President that there is a “severe energy supply interruption.” This was deemed by the statute to exist if three conditions were joined: If “(a) an emergency situation exists and there is a significant reduction in supply which is of significant scope and duration; (b) a severe increase in the price of petroleum products has resulted from such emergency situation; and (c) such price increase is likely to cause a major adverse impact on the national economy.”This power was to be exercised via Congressional authority, yet, since 1990
This section, 42 U.S.C. § 6241(h), has allowed the President to use the SPR for a short period without having to declare the existence of a “severe energy supply interruption” or the need to meet obligations of the United States under the international energy program.Yep, there's that loophole. By the time Mr. Bamberger wrote his paper,
Legislation has been reported in the Senate that would alter significantly the authorities governing drawdown and sale from the SPR. The American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 (S. 1462) would require that the SPR include 30 million barrels of refined product (distinct from the 2 million barrels of home heating oil held in the Northeast Heating Oil Reserve); would transfer authority for a drawdown from the President to the Secretary of Energy; and would amend the drawdown authority to permit drawdown and sale in the event of a “severe energy market supply interruption” that has caused, or is expected to cause “a severe increase” in prices. This language is a significant departure from existing authorities which predicate drawdown disruptions in supply, and discourages use of the SPR to address high prices, per se.Yep, "leadership", by the President, and now drawdowns could have a basis on oil prices, well, there are these elections every 4 years ...
The writer has 4 pages that discuss the various small drawdowns of the SPR, along with the change in reasoning. There was the Gulf War I drawdown in early '91, based on expected disruption of supply and price increases that didn't much pan out. Then, Bill Clinton proposed in '96 the withdrawal of a small amount, 7 MMbbl, to pay for, well, the work on the SPR. (Wait, whaaa? Forget it, readers, it was ClintonTown.) Mr. Bamberger does not mention the small but sharp drop of 30 MMbbl in the Fall of '00. Then, the disruptions due to refinery damage from the hurricane that hit the Gulf coast in the mid-'00s are discussed. However, along that decently increasing reserve level of the early 00's, there was just a blip down of ~15 MMbbl in the Fall of '05, with the reserve still at 90-95% capacity. That was in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina in August and then Rita in September of that year (not a good time to have had a beach house down there).
The discussion of the depletion of some SPR crude in the Summer of '08 was a different story. In this case ...
The rise in crude prices to over $140/barrel by the summer of 2008 was attributable to many contributing factors, including increasing international demand, and concern that demand for crude might outstrip world production. Markets were described as “tight,” meaning that there might be little cushion in terms of spare production capacity to replace any crude lost to the market, or to provide adequate supply of petroleum products.
Significant and sustained increases in oil prices were observed in the absence of the sort of “severe energy supply interruption” that remains the basis for use of the SPR. As has been noted, legislation in the Senate (S. 1462) would introduce a price basis for authorizing a drawdown of the SPR.In answer to the question posed by commenter M under the last post:
Some policymakers were urging the Administration to release oil from the SPR during the spring and summer of 2008. A review of the dynamics in the oil market during this period provides a demonstration of why an SPR release in the face of high prices will not necessarily foster a decline in petroleum prices.If the Peak Stupidity reader is still interested, he can go to that short paper and learn quite a bit about the intended use of the SPR by the Feral Government and how it was actually used. Since its author Robert Bamberger hasn't covered the last 14 years, it is up to us to see that the massive drawdown of the crude oil reserves by Zhou Bai Dien was, and still is, an attempt, at least to keep gasoline prices down in order for the American voter to not see what a shambles the economy is. That is, it's an attempt to hide at least one portion of the reincarnated Misery Index (any 1970's aficionados here?), inflation.
Could this depletion of so far 1/4 Billion barrels of oil from the SPR help keep gas at the pump prices low until, say one year and 5 days from now? There's a lot more to this than we can cover here. There's global supply and global consumption, along with how much we produce here (not all of it stays here) to think about. However, let's just note that this 1/4 Billion bbl was about 12 days worth of these 2 years at our consumption rate of ~20 MMbbl/day. That's just a couple of percent, but maybe releasing it strategically can keep prices where they want them, which is NOT the purpose of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
One final note: I noted in the last post that the SPR has had authorization to expand to 1 Billion bbl capacity, though the money for that has been long thrown to the winds. In this paper, I read that G.W. Bush pushed for a further capacity increase to 1.5 Billion bbl, but his effort was unsuccessful. No, there are not many preppers in the Feral Government.
PS: Yea! The EIA page with all the SPR level numbers and the interactive graph is back up! (Do they read Peak Stupidity?)
Comments (3)
Presidents and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Capacity, Filling, and Crude Prices
Posted On: Monday - October 30th 2023 9:55PM MST
In Topics: Trump Economics US Feral Government Inflation Dead/Ex- Presidents
Peak Stupidity got on this topic last week to note that President Bai Dien has imprudently sold off 45% of the crude oil in the SPR from the level that existed at end-o-Jan '21, when he took office. That brings it down to 48.5%, just under half of full capacity and 47.7% of its max.*
In case you want details, all the numbers are here, from the US Energy Information Administration** in tabular form to the nearest thousand barrels*** and a very nice interactive graph. Yeah, this is my kind of (small) government agency, if we're going to have any - just the facts with lots of numbers.
We then had something to say about President Trump's erroneous bloviating (to be generous) on the subject of SPR filling and depleting by Bai Dien and himself. In that post, I started getting into what I see in the bar chart below - keeping in mind that the President can indeed unilaterally deplete or fill the SPR. That was interesting, but I realized that it was neither the time nor post. This is.
It wouldn't make so much sense to focus on that chart without keeping this one in mind:
(I don't often get to the same site twice when I do internet searches, but I note that this graph must have been created by the same people who made the gasoline price chart I "borrowed" for Part 2 of Recent history of gasoline prices from 5 years back.)
The reader may also want to pull up a better and interactive graph like this one for recent (only goes back to '83) crude oil price history. Then we can refer to the very simple stuff in the Forbes article and some interesting political/law/economics in a much more comprehensive 12-page paper The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: History, Perspectives, and Issues by one Robert Bamberger of the Congressional Research Service. The latter provided lots of insight, but it is 14 years old. I can't say I read every word, but I skimmed through the latter and found what I was interested in.
Obviously, once the law had been passed in 1975 - signed by President Ford and then implemented in '78 - and the salt caverns were created at the SPR sites, they had to be filled up. This explains the 112 MMbbl pumped into the sites during the Carter Administration, and then the huge amount - 345 MMbbl - input by Ronald Reagan during his first term. He wasn't delinquent on this during his 2nd term either, with another 104 MMbbl. With only 14 MMbbl pumped in during G.H.W. Bush's term and a draw of 12 and 22 MMbbl during the 1st and 2nd Clinton terms respectively, there was not much change until G.W. Bush. 138 and 24 MMbbl were added to the SPR during his 1st and 2nd terms, respectively. There was no significant net change during Øb☭ma's 2 terms. As we noted previously, there was a net draw of 57 MMbbl during President Turmp's term. Then there was Bai Dien...
The filling up of the SPR was not just a matter of Presidents being prudent or not. If you recall, President G.H.W. Bush was genially mocked for his "Wouldn't be prudent..." line back in his day. He wasn't prudent in filling up the reserve, but, yeah, there's more to it.
For one thing there is the capacity. By some point, right there at the end of Reagan's Presidency, for example (at 78% full), one could fill the reserve somewhat higher but the change wouldn't be that significant in days of oil stored. Per the Bamberger paper, in '05 the US Congress required the SPR to be expanded to its authorized (when authorized, I don't know) 1 Billion bbl capacity per the Energy Policy Act. The money was allotted for a site in Richton, Mississippi. However, in '11, Congress voted to nix that insignificant amount of money... would be too prudent, got a Black! President who wants to make a splash and buy everyone a new phone and trash the old clunkers! Still, 1 Billion bbl wasn't that much more reserve. I'd have liked to have seen 5 Billion, a couple of years worth of oil... to get us through the SHTF? - nah, the Chinese would just buy it up.
More interesting are the changes in the price of crude oil as seen above. You want to buy when it's low, of course. The Reagan administration really wanted to fill this thing up, seeing as the steepest rise was in '81-82, when oil was still very high. They filled it up more through the middle of that decade though, as the nominal price eased down and the inflation-adjusted price even more so. (Inflation was still pretty high, as FED Chairman Volcker's high rates took a while to have an effect.)
The time to have bought was the whole decade and and a half from the mid-'80s through the end of the '90s. There was 100 MMbbl pumped into the SPR, but there was a remaining 100-125 MMbbl of capacity that was never attained in that particular cheap oil era. That would have been the time to increase capacity, but Congress didn't get to it until 2005. (As stated above, that never happened anyway.) I gotta give credit to Bush the Shrub then, for filling the rest of the SPR up, right near capacity, from '02 to '06, as crude oil prices were steadily rising. I suppose that rise was the impetus. During the cheap oil period, I suppose everyone thought it would stay that way and that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a "barbaric relic".
Well, two things just happened. This post ended up getting long enough with more discussion to come. That'll be more about the using, that is, draining, of the SPR, for appropriate and also political reasons. I'll refer to the very informative Bamberger paper.
The 2nd thing is that the nice EiA page I've been linking to - I mean, like just this afternoon - went away, as the EIA tells us they are revamping the site. All I have left for now is the screenshot graph shown in the 1st post on this subject, as I cannot find this page now. Damn government! (If anyone wants to try, start here, that is, if you see the "Petroleum Navigator" button. Sometimes, it's there.)
Lastly, while still on this post, let me give President Trump a little credit back after I eviscerated his BS previously. First off, I suppose one COULD SAY right now, the SPR is "mostly empty", technically, at 48% or so. Trump had said "It hasn’t been full for many decades. In fact, it’s been mostly empty.” Uh, no. We've got graphs and tables - the EIA worked for YOU, man! Less pedantically, though, I read in that Forbes article:
But then on March 19, 2020, President Trump directed the Department of Energy to fill the SPR to maximum capacity to help support domestic oil producers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Funding was blocked by Congress,...Of course, because PanicFest Infotainment and monthly impeachments. Too busy! As I discussed before, just a percent of that PanicFest "CARES ACT" money could have filled that thing up to a 6 1/2 month supply, were the capacity there, as opposed to the current capacity of 70 days and right now 1/2 that - 5 weeks worth. That was some good tactically thinking, but without strategic (get it?) thinking way ahead, well... Congress doesn't give a rat's ass about being prudent economically anyway - hasn't for arguably 2 decades.
* As we noted before, the reserve was up to a 725-726 MMbbl value during a 2 year maximum plateau from Summer of '09 to Summer of '11, which was ~ 11-12 MMbbl above the stated capacity from the Dept. of Energy site.
** See now, I gotta admit, an agency that collects and disseminates this kind of information is one of the few I wouldn't be all for eliminating, were I a Founding Father 2.0. Yes, it could be done privately, though. Of course, they've got the usual diversity shown on their "About" page. I'd never heard of these people before, but, then again, the Regime Capital is a big place.
*** Again, in the oil/economics world, a barrel (42 US Gallons) is written as a "bbl", and a million barrels as "MMbbl".
**** These numbers may not quite match the Forbes graph bars, but I trust the EIA tabular data more.
Comments (4)
Help us Ron De, yeah, get him outta our hearts
Posted On: Saturday - October 28th 2023 8:39PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Trump Pundits Orwellian Stupidity President DeSantis
I don't think he can lose the vote for GOP candidate for '24. If Trump is held in jail under the Anarcho-Tyranny, of The Regime, I'll be voting for him just on principle. Still, though I've read and heard that he's not a very good campaigner, I'm hoping Ron DeSantis gets some momentum.
As re-written by Ann Coulter:
I was gonna be his pundit,
and he was gonna build our wall.
But now I don't care
if he's still sittin' in jail next Fall.
Now, Ron De, you caught my eye (caught my eye),
and I can give you lots of issues why
you gotta help me, Ron De.
Help me get him out of my heart.
Help me, Ron De, help, help me, Ron De.
Help me, Ron De, help, help me, Ron De.
(Oh Ron De, yeah)
Help me, Ron De, help, help me Ron De.
Help me Ron DeSantis, get him outta my heart.
This one says it's in stereo. Does anyone care anymore about that or even know what that means?
Brian Wilson, with some help on the lyrics by Mike Love, wrote this, and The Beach Boys included this song on 2 of their albums in 1965, 58 years ago! We could use some decent music again, and perhaps, girls named Rhonda. (Who was that great '70s singer, Rhonda Ronstadt?)
It's a very uncommon name for young people right now. I'd like to see some enterprising new parents retro Rhonda back into usage.
Thanks for reading and writing in this week, Peakers. Will we get back to China posts? I don't know, but there's plenty other stuff that's been left hanging, and more new stupidity every single day. Happy Sunday!
Comments (8)
Vaxphobic NY City Cops fight back and win!
Posted On: Saturday - October 28th 2023 8:37AM MST
In Topics: Kung Flu Stupidity Totalitarianism
"Vaxophobic", what do you think? That's a better term than "anti-vax", as first of all, not all, not even many, of those against the mRNA gene experimental therapy are opposed to the idea of vaccinations period, for anything. Secondly, whether one is or isn't against this general medical preventative treatment (uhh, supposed to prevent one from getting sick from said disease, if I recall correctly), that still doesn't make one opposed to their availability. Survey "anti-vaxxers", and it would probably be a minority that are against anything that's not a mandatory program or one that involves any coercion, say involving employment.
We'll get to that subject, but just to finish this, the suffix "phobic' has been added ERRONEOUSLY, to lots of terms, homophobic, xenophobic, etc. That is done to make the term a pejorative, implying people are unreasonably AFRAID of something rather than being against the idea, or simply wanting nothing the hell to do with it.
In this case, it kind of works, as many people after what they've seen personally and what they've read, are rightly afraid of taking the Kung Flu vaccines. I am vaxaphobic, but more on that. Let's get to the subject, regrading that coercion of big employers, often out of PotomacRegimaphobia, but often out of the usual stupidity. The Kung Flu PanicFest was rife with both.
Per the FOX News website, Anders Hagstrom
To compare this to my own situation, let me say that there were 3 basic things to consider, back in that time period - very-late-'20 (beginning of vax availability) to early/mid-'22 (the giving up on vax coercion by Gov/Corp America):
1) Is it worth even getting this shot? That is, am I seriously worried about getting the Covid-19?
2) Will I let them give me the jab based on it being mandatory?
3) Will bad health effects (oh, such as death) possibly happen to me if I take the jab?
I think the timetable of the vax political effort and my answers on 1-3 was somewhat fortuitous, as, say, compared to those NYC cops.
Answering (1) in the negative was a given since mid-March of '21, well before any of the vaccine business. I knew this was an overblown ginned-up PanicFest by then. Answering NO to (2) is in my nature. Would I not take it because of question (2), even if my answer to (1) was YES? Of course I'd take it, but I can guarantee you I wouldn't be pushing for the mandatory vax - after all, if it worked for me, why should I care what everyone else does? We should all be against coercion. The answer to (3) only became YES late in the game, as I saw some bad outcomes in people I know and read more about this gene therapy. By that late in the game (2) had been taken out of the picture.
Still, back in mid/late '21, I had plans for (2) involving my having to leave my employment, but making a big scene was part of that. Unlike in the case of these cops and other city employees, for which the numbers suggest they were a small minority, we had lots of pushback by late mid/late '21, when question (2) was still MY main issue. For most of those doing the pushback, unfortunately, I think (3) was their worry, more than the principle (2). Is that the same with the NYC cops? I'm guessing so.
It helped out our cause that our employment became in much higher demand by that same time '21/'22. Did the corporate folks really, really, want to keep pushing this shit? Someone got a little sanity, and then, within just a few months, everyone laid off this stupidity.
Back to the NYC cops, why do I guess they were not worried about principles, so much as their own personal worries? Cops aren't generally known as men of principle, or we wouldn't have the Police State we have. Then too, well, read this one excerpt from the Fox News article, although this is from NYC Uniformed Firefighters Association President Andrew Ansbro, not a cop, but this is their tactic:
"If you're going to remove the vaccine mandate for certain people in the city, you need to remove it for everybody in the city," Ansbro said. "If you're going to follow the science, science is going to tell you there isn't any danger right now, and putting hundreds of firefighters, police officers and other emergency workers out of work is not in the best interest of the city. It's not safe."There was no mention of principles here. "No danger right now" and whataboutism are the arguments. Perhaps this talk was in support of the court case, per advice of the lawyers based on practicality. However, practicality doesn't beat this stuff. Standing on principle does... if there are enough of you doing it. The FOX writer was writing out of chronological order here, so I'll take care of it:
NYC fired roughly 1,700 employees for being unvaccinated earlier this year after the city adopted a vaccine mandate under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
A New York state Supreme Court ordered all New York City employees who were fired for not being vaccinated to be reinstated with back pay.Yeah, and NY City was a virtuous Sanctuary City, open to all the downtrodden of the world!... also, earlier... What do the black pols like Eric Adams say about some poultry or something coming home to roost?
The court found Monday that "being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting COVID-19." New York City Mayor Eric Adams claimed earlier this year that his administration would not rehire employees who had been fired over their vaccination status.
Again, the NY Supreme court did not rule on principle. What if this vaccine DID prevent "an individual from contracting or transmitting COVID-19"? This is how you get your back pay and get back at the Totalitarian employers and Government. It's not how you win in the long run though...
Good on the NY cops and firemen just the same. This was some rare good news, seen on Peak Stupidity no less.
* In fact, we've had a WHOLE LOT to say to the contrary. Check out the old posts of the series: First Responders and Heroes (written 22 months before the PanicFest) - - "First Responders!" - The Firemen and Fire Departments - - "First Responders!" - Ambulance drivers, excuse me, EMTs - - "First Responders!" - The Cops - - "First Responders!" at "The Office" and, later 1st
Comments (7)
The Stupid comes home to roost
Posted On: Friday - October 27th 2023 5:39AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity University Pundits ctrl-left
That "come home to roost" line seems to be predominately a black politician line. They do like their chickens ...
In her most recent column, Ann Coulter has pointed out how the stupidity of the ctrl-left, with Jewish people and University inhabitants being predominantly of this persuasion, has come home to roost recently. She writes: On What LEGAL Immigration Brings: "Staple a Green Card to Their ’Kill the Jews’ Signs". (Legally v illegally is pretty hard to distinguish anymore, with Bai Dien and Mayorkas' recent Asylum Apps being made available.)
Whether Americans wanted it or not, the US Gov't has supported Israel, its defense, and its continued existence for 3/4 of a century. This most recent, Hamas-started violence has not resulted in the usual unified response of America that these Jewish and/or University folks may have expected. See, no matter what you think of the State of Israel and the Middle East, this country is not unified anymore. The 1/2 century long immigration invasion has seen to that.
Yet, the ctrl-left, including most from those particular peoples and Institutions have greatly encouraged this immigration invasion. Ooops, we fucked up. Miss Coulter:
This week, we’ll consider the other main contingent of Hamas Boosters: foreigners, who, for reasons I can’t understand, are in my country.Yeah, they're here, because Diversity is our strength, dammit! But, they don't need to do all that diverse multicultural stuff now though - this is SERIOUS!
In the past few weeks, Muslims and Arabs have poured into the streets in nearly every U.S. city to celebrate the slaughter of Israelis, while wearing scarves, keffiyehs and other clown outfits, waving the flags of Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Yemen, Turkey, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and on and on.
It’s so obvious that these people don’t belong here that the immediate reaction of a number of politicians was to demand that their visas be revoked.Revoking visas - I wonder why
Sorry to roll my eyes, but where have they been? The gleeful cheering for the mass murder of Israelis is only the latest expression of hate by inferior cultures toward the superior culture of the West—of which the donors are a shining example.After this, she give a whole lot of examples of the wokeness these wreckers of society have wrought. (See this Steve Sailer post about the melting of the Richmond statue of Robert E. Lee.**)
But when the exact same people who hate our country turned out to hate Israel, too, our clueless elites were gobsmacked. Gee, where’d that come from? We thought you liked us.[SNIP - skipping the part in which she takes sides, due to that not being my point here.]
Instead of trampling on the free speech rights of people who hate the West, how about avoiding the problem altogether by leaving them where they are? They’ll like it! Vastly fewer “white supremacists” to oppress them. They can hate us all they want. Just do it from their own countries.Agreed, Ann!
People have gotten on Steve Sailer's case for not speaking up about lefty Jewish influence in American government and media. However, he had a very good post addressing this, just 2 weeks ago today, titled The World-Historical Question. This one was not so much about immigration but the Wokeness that, IMO, he doesn't understand the full scale of. Anyway, this is good stuff in his introduction:
The world-historical question at the moment is whether American Jews — who are, arguably, the single most influential politically mobilizable group in the modern globe — will figure out that Woke anti-white hatred is inherently anti-Semitic. Or will they assume the solution must be tripling down yet again on promoting racist anti-white hatred as the only way to unify the Coalition of the Fringes?I don't think we can just leave it up to them. Hope is not a strategy.
* Sure, there may have been eras in which the President did not cater to their whims so much, but it's been assumed that they are an ally over there, with support available if needed.
** Taking it down was not enough. To humiliate us all the more, they had to melt it down.
Comments (26)
Uber Economics
Posted On: Wednesday - October 25th 2023 7:34PM MST
In Topics: Cars Economics
This post is not about "Super" economics - when did Americans start knowing this German prefix "Uber" anyway, after that Dead Kennedies' song? It's about the contract pseudo taxi service Uber, same deal as Lyft and the Uber-Uber system in China.
Interestingly, when I searched for photos, the one above turned out to have come from an article about using rental cars to do Ubering. Whoaa, I just wouldn't think Hertz, Avis and them* would appreciate this sort of thing! I can't find that article now, but it turns out that there are some partnerships.
For many years, taxi companies had near monopolies in the business of driving people around town. It took money, time, and maybe knowing the right people to get these certificates, or medallions in NY City (makes you feel like a winner). I remember getting a ride in some beater driven by some old black man who said it was a taxi, and we were none the worse for it. We received words later of amazement that we'd have done such a thing. "Illegal Taxi!" OMG! You can't just illegally give somebody a ride and have him illegally give you money in return!
Well, years passed. If you are some new "TECH" company using software and existing new gadgetry to overturn the system, that's fine. The elites who start up these firms must know elites in governments and such that decide, hey, anyone can drive a taxi. We don't neeed no steeenkng medallions, Senor! All those years of thinking there was no other way - what a brilliant idea to have what used to be an illegal taxi service now.
Of course, Uber and Lyft, and then those guys that work out other "sharing economy" ideas, could only have done these things in the age of hand computers, aka smart phones along with cheap GPS systems. Perhaps having a monopoly or the 2 of them is the only way this kind of business can thrive, but it means these companies can squeeze down the contractor drivers. From what I gather from a friend who used to do this (got "fired", aka non renewed, for a few fenderbenders) and others I've ridden with, they have to virtually hand over 25% of the fare to Uber or Lyft.
Anyway, as I've ridden around with these contract drivers, along with other interesting conversation with those who are actually American, I try to get a feel for the economics of this "gig economy" well, gig. Many seem to be enamored with the economics of it. "Oh, yeah, it's good money, and I'm doing a lot of it - just put 45,000 miles on the car this year." I think about the $20 payment, for example, for what had to be 1/2 hour - 15 min for the ride, he had to come from somewhere empty, and then his trolling around (no offense intended) beforehand. After Uber takes its cut, that's $15, so maybe he's getting $30/hr for 8 hours a day, let's say. $240 daily minus maybe $25 in gas is not terrible if you don't have other skills, but then there's no getting out of taxes on this deal, as it's computerized by nature. That 8 hours may entail 150, maybe 250 miles of driving, hence 30-60 thousand miles on the car, if it's done as a full-time job.
The thing is, these people are usually not professionals in business. Now, I don't claim an MBA is necessary, or any college degree. These drivers don't usually seem to have worked it all out long-term. "How much does it cost to run this car per mile?" She doesn't know that. "How often do you wear out a set of tires?" "Yeah, pretty soon, I'll need tires..." "What are you going to do when this car gets old and starts breaking down a lot?" " " [/silence] Lots of this is city driving too.
I think they are fooling themselves that Uber/Lyft driving is a good gig. I haven't talked to any drivers who have already ran through a car and are on their 2nd or 3rd. That's probably because they gave up doing it when the car broke. I doubt it's any different in China. The margins seem much lower there, but I couldn't talk to these drivers about it.
What can I do to help? I have exchanged phone numbers at the end of a ride when I thought I'd be going the same way again - keeps Uber out of the loop. (My friend did some of this, and he also would sometimes limit himself to driving during "surge" times - 3 x the money, or something like that). I tip in cash because:
1) I don't have the Uber app, so it's always on someone else's.
2) Uber doesn't get its cut on a cash tip.
3) (2) means that the driver might come around a bit on that Kash is King idea.
Are Uber and Lyft just churning through suckers who can't do the math?
* I wonder how many companies there are - it may be only 3 or so, as many of these brands are combined into the same companies.
Comments (17)
I am the oyster woman, Goo goo g' joob!
Posted On: Tuesday - October 24th 2023 7:18PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Movies
I'm not really sure how funny the previous post may have been to readers, but it was funny to me, just that thought driving by, "hey, he reminds me of.. who's that guy again, the weirdo Senator from Pennsylvania." Anyway, this one is funny, I don't care who ya' are.
From Instapundit, I clicked over to the website of a TV station in KVLT, out of Knoxville, Tennessee* which reports on a situation in Atlanta in which a Man skips out on paying tab after woman orders 48 oysters on first date. The unfortunate suitor had invited that fat broad to go out for drinks via TikTok. (TikTok, see, now that's your first mistake!)
That's the guy's date in the image above. She looks like she could take on 48 oysters, but then there was more... In the words of the Simpson family lawyer Lionel Hutz, "Do these sound like the actions of a woman who had ALL she could eat?" Unfortunately, this was not an all-you-can-eat joint, so the bill got up to $185. Per the article, "At some point, the man bailed. Bennett said he got up to go to the bathroom and never came back.
That reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song about going out for a ride... then, the words of this lovely oyster connoisseur via text, "Running out on a tab is crazyyy" remind me of a Billy Joel song that mentions walking through Bedford Stuyvesant in NYC alone. Yeah, dating a girl with that big an ass, she may be right - he may be crazy.
Scene from
Suitor: Why you got to go and say forty-eight oysters for? Why not thirty-five or thirty-nine?
His date: I thought it was a nice round number.
From the TV station article, "Most internet commenters were siding with the man, with one writing, 'If you eat 48 oysters in a day you are a walrus.'" I ain't the egg man, I am the oyster woman, I am the walrus. Goo goo g' joob!
* Of course. That's Instapundit's home turf.
Comments (8)
A child of the Senate...
Posted On: Tuesday - October 24th 2023 7:46AM MST
In Topics: Humor US Feral Government
OK, if not socks, at least he remembered his shoes.
I came upon a child of the Senate, he was walking along the road...
if I'd asked him where he was going, he couldn'ta told me....
I was driving 60 mph on a country road nearby, and I saw the back of this guy walking in bare feet on the pavement down the road. At least he was walking on the left, i.e. correct side of the road, apparently not something everyone is taught anymore. I'd guess there were too many stickers or pieces of glass on the grass for comfort, so he took a couple of feet of roadway.
Whatever... but from the back he reminded me of someone. Is that... is that, you know, that Senator, what is is, John Fetterman?! Well, I don't live in Pennsylvania or Washington, FS, so, I wouldn't think so... hard to get a good look backwards at 60 mph, as this was in an older car with the smaller side mirrors.
I'd like to be able to write honestly that, nah, it wasn't him, we're better than that here in the State of REDACTED. I can't say that. I mean, no it wasn't him. Our 2 Senators are better dressed. They are likely more aware of the world and not mentally incompetent. Unfortunately, all that doesn't make them any better these days.
They are stardust, they are golden.
But they've got to get themselves back to the garden... or at least off the side of the road with their sweatshirts and bare feet.
.
Full discloser: It is fun going barefoot everywhere. By the middle of one summer, I could walk barefoot across a Wal-Mart parking lot at high noon and barely feel it.
Comments (11)
A Former Agent lets loose
Posted On: Monday - October 23rd 2023 7:33PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Bible/Religion
VDare's Former Agent was an American Border Patrol agent for 20 years or so, but he's not the guy in the picture above. This is some famous BP agent from the days of yore, when they got to fulfill their destiny. That they are often employed as illegal alien baby sitters and enablers of the invasion might explain why the VDare Agent has the first name Former.
This writer spent most his BP employment years on the US northern border. That may not have been a big avenue of entry back in the past, but it is fast becoming one. That its Prime Minister, Commie Trudeau, Jr. (see quick blurb within this post) is a World Economic Forum stooge means that Canada has a much bigger population replacement program, in proportional terms, than even the US! Steve Sailer had a very good TakiMag article entitled America, Jr. on Canadian immmigration's effect on housing affordability. (Unz Review shorter post with comments here.)
The immigration rate in Canada in '22 and '23 has reached the insane and suicidal level of almost 1% of the population PER QUARTER!. Oh, but they are hand-picked and vetted, the proud Canadian Cancucks would tell you. No, and this will become part of OUR problem as some of them head south. We have two land fronts of this invasion and then there is the aerial invasion via ports of entry, legal, corrupt entries, and non-immigration visa permanent overstayers. AS for our long, formerly friendly northern border, Mr. Agent even wrote about Illegals Now Swarming VERMONT Border—And Biden Is Releasing Them, Too a couple of days back.
Now that information is so disheartening but also off track, as I was originally only going to write about one paragraph I really liked by this writer from his recent post ho’s Getting A Universal Basic Income (UBI) Thanks To “Non-Profits“? Illegal Aliens, That’s Who!. VDare usually provides lots of facts, but in addition, Former Agent let loose a quick rant of Biblical proportions to describe this evil:
What’s so non-profitable about non-profits anyway? According to this site, it appears that the head of Catholic Charities, Sister Donna Markham, makes $950,000 a year. That buys a lot of communion wafers and wine. (Luke 18:25, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”) I wonder if Sister Markham recycles a lot of her “non-profit” back into her child smuggling service.I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you, Former Agent!
Comments (6)
Donald Trump: BS ass-ymptotically approaching Lying
Posted On: Saturday - October 21st 2023 7:00AM MST
In Topics: Trump Economics US Feral Government Zhou Bai Dien
In yesterday's post, The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Bai Dien Drawdown, I noted that the question of filling or draining the SPR is completely the President's call. That is, via the Secretary of Energy, who works for him.
I found the chart below in a Forbes article, written by one Robert Rapier, a Chemical Engineer (so I kinda trust him). Mr. Rapier asks and answers Which Presidents Filled And Depleted The Strategic Petroleum Reserve?.
First off, this is kind of interesting, as these numbers are a function of the mindset of the President and the times. Note that Reagan was, well, not a prepper, but a prudent guy when it came to this. However,
OK, so look at President Trump's net drain over 4 years of 57 MMbbl - that's from the precise numbers on the tables linked to yesterday. That's not so bad, and I'll put that in the analysis of this to come.
However, per the Forbes article, here's what Donald Trump said sometime in '22 after Bai Dien started going gangbusters draining the reserves:
“So, after 50 years of being virtually empty, I built up our oil reserves during my administration, and low energy prices, to 100% full. It’s called the Strategic National Reserves, and it hasn’t been full for many decades. In fact, it’s been mostly empty.”Every single part of that is wrong. It's not been virtually or actually empty since President Carter started filling it in '77. Trump didn't build up oil reserves. I looked at the numbers in the table, and they show just a very slow drain, eventually adding up to -57 MMbbls in the SPR. It was NOT 100% full per the 714 MMBbs written in the D.O.E. SPR site, even when he took office, not unless some capacity of those salt caverns was lost. It's not called the Strategic National Reserves - it's the Strategic Petroleum Reserve - small error there, I'll admit. Yes, it was full, the last time in Summer of '11, less than 6 years before Trump took office. It's not been mostly empty ever, even after Bai Dien's big drain of it (so far), as right at 1/2 capacity is not "mostly empty".
OK, as per the explanation by Elwood to Jake in the old Blues Brothers movie, bullshitting is not exactly lying. Often Donald Trump really means what he says, but without having an idea that he can follow through. Sometimes I think he knows he can't follow through. I call that "bullshit" vs "lying", as it's not purposeful factual misinformation. Telling us that men can become women when one knows perfectly well better - that's lying.
What about this statement by Donald Trump on the SPR? He's not a numbers guy. He may have no idea how much is in the SPR and how much he approved to be drained from it. He can't keep up with everything. However, then he should shut his big mouth about it, as, without numbers to show "Bai Dien drained 5 x as much as I did!" (5.1 X as of this July, is what I just came up with) he's just spouting pure lies, a lot of them... OK bullshit, but it's getting awfully close!
Disclaimer: Peak Stupidity WILL point out the faults of Donald Trump. This was an egregious example today of his BS that was right up there near flat-out purposeful lying. However, I DO KNOW that, as much as voting alone won't cut it to fix this country, if Trump is the '24 GOP candidate, I will of course be voting for him for the reason explained here.
Comments (15)
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Bai Dien Drawdown
Posted On: Friday - October 20th 2023 9:16AM MST
In Topics: History Preppers and Prepping Economics US Feral Government Zhou Bai Dien
No, no, this post is NOT a movie review. I believe you're thinking of Strategic Air Command*.
This is the West Hackberry SPR site, about 25 southwest of Lake Charles, Louisiana.
If you can't remember the Convair B-36 nuclear bomber and Strategic Air Command of the 1950s, you may remember OPEC and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of two decades later. The latter two are still around, after ~ half a century.
A half century ago today (yeah, it's an even number) Americans'
The OPEC countries had nearly a monopoly, at least of American imports, as the world was used to their easily pumped cheap oil. What galled some Americans was that these Arabs would never have, and STILL never have, figured out how to pull this black gold out of the ground without help from Western engineers and such, yet they were in luck to be sitting on top of that, errr, Texas Tea. As former vassals of the West, the Sheiks realized the economic power they had and squeezed us.
I'm going to venture to say that America's having had recently ditched sound money had something to do with the changes. The US Dollar reserve currency did not quite have the power it had when it was backed by REAL MONEY, i.e. gold. We had to find out the real price of oil, and it hurt for a while.
The US Congress passed a law in 1975 establishing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to eliminate, or at least cushion, short-term oil price "shocks". "$4.50 a gallon?! I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED, that gambling is going on around here!" (Yeah, had to get that famous movie reference in -you'd be shocked, shocked if I hadn't.***) Now, as a Libertarian, I could go on about the Feral Gov't messing with the market, but seeing as international relations kind of screw with the free market in this commodity anyway, this, to me, was a damn good idea, a strategic weapon of economic war.
To hold reserves of crude oil, huge salt caverns in Louisiana and east Texas are used - 2 in each - with a total capacity of 3/4 of a Billion barrels****. At current use levels, that's about a 4 month supply. From this US Dept. of Energy site, this is interesting:
Strategic Petroleum Reserve caverns range in size from 6 to 37 million barrels in capacity; a typical cavern holds 10 million barells and is cylindrical in shape with a diameter of 200 feet and a height of 2,500 feet. One storage cavern is large enough for Chicago's Willis Tower to fit inside with room to spare. The Reserve contains 60 of these huge underground caverns. These four sites have a combined authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels.How the salt caverns are made is fairly simple - dissolve the salt precisely to make the shape desired:
Salt caverns are carved out of underground salt domes by a process called "solution mining." Essentially, the process involves drilling a well into a salt formation, then injecting massive amounts of fresh water. The water dissolves the salt. In creating the SPR caverns, the dissolved salt was removed as brine and either reinjected into disposal wells or more commonly, piped several miles offshore into the Gulf of Mexico. By carefully controlling the freshwater injection process, salt caverns of very precise dimensions can be created.Neat! The sites, Bayou Choctaw, West Hackberry, Big Hill, and Brian Mound, were developed and put on line generally from 1977 through the mid-'80s. The D.O.E. put out bids, I suppose, for the purchase of oil off the market to get started filling up this reserve. Fill it they did...
My apologies for the poor quality of this chart as viewed here. You can use a very nice interactive chart, along with a big month-by-month table with numbers to the thousand barrels, here.
Even during the era of the still very-high oil prices (2nd "oil crisis", aka inflation coming home to roost) from the start to '81, 1/8 of a billion barrels were pumped in. At those prices and times, that took a little political will and maybe a prepper mindset(?) As inflation eased, and the nice long oil glut***** started, the D.O.E. went gangbusters and the reserve was brought up to 550-590 MMbbl range in a decade, '81 to '91. One can see a slight drawdown during those Kuwaiti/Gulf War I times, but that notwithstanding, either it was figured that oil crises were forever in the past or it was just those ~600 MMbbl being close to the 714 million barrel capacity that had the reserve flat-lined for a further decade, '91 to '01.
That drop at the beginning of this century was NOT post 9/11. It doesn't look quite right, time-wise,, on my image above, and one can better see this on the source site linked to. The draw-down of the reserves was not large, from a roughly 570 MMbbl barrel level to 540 MMbbl over end-o-Sept to end-o-Dec of 2000. (What was that about? Anyone?) Post 9/11, there was a prudent steady build-up of the reserves from 550 MMbbl in Feb. of '01 to 700 MMbbl by Aug. of '05. After a slight, 15 MMbbl, drop that Fall, the level of reserves plateaued for 3 years. From '09 to '11, the level reached it's global (in the math sense) peak so far, or forever, at 726 MMbbl, above the D.O.E. stated 714 MMbbl capacity of the salt caverns. (Perhaps, the small excess was held above ground. Hell, a friend of mine's yard full of cars could hold a few barrels in their tanks - the ones not rusted to hell.) Were there vestiges of our being a prudent country still existing only 12 years ago?
That survey of what you can see with your own eyes in graphical form over with, I can be confident that the readers here have already noticed what's happened since the summer of '20. (I give readers here plenty of credit for knowing more than I, and that line at the top was a joke, of course.) The starting point was the local maximum of 656 MMbbl in July of '20 to be exact. What the heck was going on in July of '20? Hmmm? Yeah, that PanicFest was an excuse for ANYTHING, most of these things Totalitarian, stupid, or both.
What exactly would be a reason to draw down our Strategic Petroleum Reserve level during the PanicFest? Nobody was freaking driving! Furthermore, this would have been a great time to go the other way. As can be seen here, the ~$15/bbl low that April was one thing, but the crude oil price stayed in the close neighborhood of $35/bbl that whole summer and through late October. Remember that $4 Trillion spent on the CARES ACT? It was just thrown all around, everywhere.
Imagine how much oil could have been stored, were "we" to have spent 1/8 of that throw-around folding money on it? I picked 1/8 to get a nice round number of $500 Billion, which could have resulted in 14,000 MMbbl (written in same units for comparison's sake. Moar salt caverns!?? We'd have needed 20x the amount of storage. Yeah, well, as a prepper, I like it! That stuff doesn't rot, and it'd be over 6 years worth of supply, before scrimping and saving. OK, well, let's be reasonable and take only 1% of that Kung Flu PanicFest money - they'd never have missed it. $40 Billion would have gotten us 1,100 MMbbl, requiring a 60% expansion of the SPR, for a 6 1/2 month supply, enough time to pack up and bug out, were we really at Peak Oil, and with the petro-dollar in the toilet.
Yet another fun digression over with, let me get finally to the point. The point is Zhou Bai Dien and his drastic drawdown of the SPR from 637 MMbbl in Mar. '21 to 347 MMbbl end-of-this-Jul. As with lots of things, it was gradual, then sudden. The gradual part was, slightly arguably, through Aug '21. After that, it's been drastic.
Whadda' gonna do when people go as far as to put "I DID THAT" stickers on gas pumps? People say that that $4 Trillion has something to do with it, but I know, it's nobody's fault ... People are getting pissed at gas prices, so, c'mon, man, you gotta bring the price down. That's the way you do it - that oil's just sitting there anyway for I dunno what.
It IS the President, not Congress, who has the power to control the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, via his Energy Secretary, in this case the odius Jennifer Granholm. (To jog your memory, she was a blue-squad Michigan Governor 20 years back, a CNN host, and general long-term ctrl-left gadfly.) You may want to check this Forbes article out now, but I'll put up a quick post showing the changes in the SPR under the Presidents in charge.
The SPR is right at half of its fairly-near-high level of 3 1/4 years back - even Poltico writers seem concerned. How low can you go? Yes, I see that I can get gas for well under $3/gal right now. The power to mitigate price shocks is going away as these reserves get depleted though. Can Bai Dien sell just the right amount of crude into the market to keep the prices down for, let's see 1 year and 2 weeks? Have his handlers done the math? Remember math is not really the strong suit of the ctrl-left, or most anyone else these days.
* I gotta admit, I like those old bombers - especially the 10-engined (6 turning and 4 burning) B-36 Peacemaker of the 1950s and the century series (F-100 through F-106) rocket-with-wings fighter/interceptors of the '50s, '60s and a little beyond**. To foreshadow the subject of this post, let me just say that fuel economy was assuredly not an issue.
The 1955 movie featured the B-36 and the B-47.
** The F-104 Starfighter was flying into the '90s in Germany, though unfortunately in a role it was not meant for, and even into the '00s in Italy.
***. Also, there is something sort of like gambling involved in the stocking and drawing-down of the SPR.
**** Other than in excerpts, I will use the standard abbreviation bbl from here on, but with the high numbers, MMbbl for a Million barrels. There's great confusion here, as the industry has used "M" with the Roman Numeral meaning, not as a metric prefix. Doesn't "MM" mean 2 thousand then? No, it means a Million. As with saying colloquially "pounds" for psi when talking tire pressure, you can't fight this stuff once it's been engrained in the industry.
One barrel (bbl) of oil is 42 gallons. The chemical energy contained in each is 5.8 million BTUs, or for you young whippersnappers in that metric system, we're talking 6.1 Million kJ.
***** BTW, I discussed my recollections of gasoline prices over my lifetime - but only up to Sept. of '18, the posting dates - in Recent history of gasoline prices: Part 1 and Part 2.
Comments (10)
Tax Relief
Posted On: Thursday - October 19th 2023 12:07PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Race/Genetics Customer Care
Peak Stupidity attempts to get appropriate "file photos".
This is not far off the mark, as there was one cutie with glasses but no former Bangles members, as seems to be the case here.
Property tax on houses and land can be the most evil form of taxation other than that "Poll tax" I've read about in Great Britain. One has to pay a tax on one's person, I suppose so long as he is alive. So, if you don't pay ... what ?? Property tax without that Allodial Title that commenter Adam Smith knows quite a bit about* is evil. Basically to keep in good standing or keep any judgements, hence liens, away, one must keep paying that rent to the government forever.
This tax went up by over 4X on something we own. There's a little bit more to it, but that's the kind of blow that causes one to rethink his whole plan. That piece of mail ruined my day, with only a 2-hour reprieve due to my engrossment in a great episode of The Rockford Files. Jim Rockford's travails made mine seem like an ordinary day - no getting shot at or punched out in my trailer (part of the tax thing, haha), no trips downtown ... anyway where was I before, and after, I forgot this tax business?
I'm used to dealing with a prevalence of black people, mostly black ladies, in these government matters. They can be friendly - some of the time - nice enough and all that, but: They don't really care, and they don't really know very much. That's the rent one pays at government offices for Social Peace, or something... I was dreading going down there for the 2 days I procrastinated on this.
Well, whaddya' know, but it was a nice quiet office with ALL White people! The one guy looked over maps with me, explained something they'd missed, gave me some great advice, and sent me upstairs. The White guy upstairs got the forms ready in 5 minutes, and we talked about maps. I went back down, and the 1st guy went over how to do some other forms - since we couldn't get everything complete right there - missing some info - I could finish at home and scan and email it all back. It was all very calm, quite, intelligent, and productive.
I just checked. It's all done. I don't know if I would say this whole thing was a pleasure, because I still don't have the new tax amount. (But it'll be MUCH lower.) However, doing business with an office full of White people was indeed a pleasure, compared to the usual. We really need our country back.
Not having to deal with entitled, lazy, bitchy black women on something important like this was some real tax relief!
* If he doesn't reply, try here, but Adam comes through with much good Libertarian-oriented info.
Comments (7)
Bai Dien, Ctrl-left, Globalists, and Big Biz caught Red Handed
Posted On: Wednesday - October 18th 2023 6:20PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity China Books Zhou Bai Dien
This is not part of Peak Stupidity's China road trip coverage. It's a book review that we need to get out of our system now, just because this book has been due in to the library for months. If you follow this blog, you know that our China trip was over 2 months back, and, yeah, I read this book on the airliner and the fast train. (No other passengers brought anything up about it - woulda' been interesting though ...)
The full name of this book by Peter Schweizer is Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win. Mr Schweier is the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), senior editor-at-large of Breitbart News*, and a former fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution.
Is he a NeoCon? I'm not that interested, but I do know the current mantra that NeoCons of "the right" hate China while NeoCons of the left hate Russia. Peak Stupidity will reiterate here that we do not subscribe to any ideology that says we should be at war with China militarily. As for an economic war, well, we're in it. We've been in one since the Globalist elites of this country started giving away our manufacturing economy to the Chinese from the mid-1990s on.
This book covers this economic war and said treason and capitulation from the beginning, but there is plenty in this book about the military technology/IP given away to the Chinese along with the business side of things. (Does that make the author necessarily a NeoCon?)
Readability-wise, I wasn't too enthralled with the book. (I'll explain at the end.) After one introductory chapter titled The Rope, there are 7 chapters on the various culprits that have been giving away economic might to China due to lust for fame, greed, corruption, stupidity, evil and combinations thereof. They are:
2: The Bidens [sic]
3: Capitol Hill
4: Silicon Valley
5: Wall Street
6: Diplomats
7: The Bush and Trudeau Dynasties
8: Higher Education
Until Chapter 6, I slogged through the chapters without enjoying the book. There are lots of fact there about a lot of people, many interconnected, as the Globalists, Politicians, Captains of Industry, and the ctrl-left often are. However, with name after name after name, and institute after institute after institute, I wouldn't have remembered all the goings on in each chapter an hour later. Don't get me wrong - this stuff needs to be told to somebody, just not me. This information would be great at a Nuremberg style trial though.
I was interested and amazed though at the way these elites handle their money with the foundations and such. One of the influencers (not the TicTok type) had foundations with ALMOST the same names but with different articles, plurality and that sort of thing. It'd suck being a lawyer working on that shit.
The first note I took was within Chapter 6 on the Diplomats. I'll quote this, because I've met Gary Locke, one of the traitors (just made a snide remark there at the airport as he went out the door), and it's funny:
"In 1998, Locke also took nearly $14,000 in donations from monks and nuns who were members of a Buddhist temple in Redmond, Washington. That was a surprise given that they had taken vows of poverty, spoke little English, and when asked, did not recall donating to Locke's campaign."Perhaps they'd taken a vow of silence. (There's a good vow of silence joke I got ... another time...)
One thing I don't like in this book is the author's bringing up of Chinese human rights violations. I know there's semi-genocidal (you don't get hurt if you become Chinese) and Orwellian things going on. However, I hate (not really) to say it, but that's simply not our business! The best I can do is to ride around with "Free Tibet..." bumper sticker.** There's a statement by Gary Locke in that same chapter saying basically "who are we to criticize?", but yeah, that was part of his rationalization - he was another traitor nonetheless.
There is amazing stuff though, regarding the elites and Chinese involvement in war and destruction that would have been the talk of the world were it America. LeBron James, a name I didn't particularly care about seeing in this or any book, is mentioned in a later chapter:
Morey's tweet [I don't know] was not the first time the normally outspoken James has remained silent about Chinese abusive actions. In 2007, black Sudanese Christians were being slaughtered in Darfu by a regime backed by the Chinese government. IN all, and estimated 200,000 to 400,000 were killed. Beijing [sic] provided the regime with political support and was the Sudanese government's chief trading partner.But, Sportsball! Gotta sell shoes!
In the next chapter, on traitors we know very well, Neil Bush - brother of G.W. - was quoted thusly:
The former member of the First Family lashed out at the "America first" rhetoric of the Trump administration and generally argued that Washington needed to stop seeing China as an existential threat. "China is not an economic enemy or existential national security threat to the United States."Yes it is, and it could be if we let them own our country. Then there's the continuation of this quote:
The demonization of China is being fueled by a rising nationalism in the U.S. that is manifested in anti-immigration, anti-Chinese, pro-America-first rhetoric", he proclaimed.Yeah, that's why we voted for Trump. He really gets us!
Now, regarding our northern neighbor and the other part of this Chapter, Canada has also run by Globalist scum. Pierre Trudeau was a serious Communist supporter from what I learned here. After one visit to the country in 1949, at the very beginning of the Mao era, he and one Jacques Hebert, upon invitation by the CCP took a trip there, of which Mr. Trudeau wrote a book Two Innocents in Red China. He was very sympathetic to and supportive of the Regime, even as the trip was taken at the height of the "Great Leap Forward" violence and repression that killed dozens of million Chinamen.
There's lots more on Trudeau's Communist tendencies (nothing about Cuba here, because, see the title.) Interesting, with shades of the Clintons:
Before the story [of Trudeau and his China exploits] is told, it is important to note that it is impossible to know the full extent of the Trudeau family's commercial and other ties with Beijing [sic] because in 2019 it was revealed that Canada's top spy agency had destroyed its files on Pierre Trudeau thirty years earlier. Trudeau died in 2000, and the documents had been expected to be released in 2020. The move was audacious and denounced by historians a both "outrageous" and "a crime against Canadian history".Wait, not egregious? How convenient, though!
When it comes to the Higher Education chapter, I expected a lot more wider knowledge, but for Peter Schweizer, it's all the big shots and Yale, Yale, Yale! Geeze, he didn't even write about the Confucius Centers - there's a mention in an excerpt in the back - that basically work for the CCP, though I've known about this for years.***
Now, in this chapter we see the other side of that "leave China alone about the human rights abuses." How about they STFU themselves about the racial situation in America? After all, it's not like they've got these same people in their land. From this chapter:
In August 2020, Joe Tsai [don't ask] donated $50 million through the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation to various activist groups in the United States to "advance social justice and economic mobility for Blacks, Indigenous people, and people of color."Yet, None dare call them Commies.
Foreign funds to American Universites are supposed to be disclosed, but Schweizer wryly observes:
The general counsel further noted that universities are very good at tracking any expenses owed to them by students. How is it that they cannot track large foreign gifts from China?"How, indeed?
The final Chapter of Red Handed is pretty short, entitled Fighting Back. Donald Trump is mentioned and put in a good light. Mr. Schweizer ends with that Upton Sinclair quote: It id difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." There are so many such men (and women), that our nation has been nearly sold out from under us.
About Red Handed in general, this book could be worthwhile for some readers. Basically, it has lots of facts, but they blur after a while, and I found only a few parts of it entertaining. We don't all need entertaining, though, so for the story of who is behind this sell-out of America, I recommend the book.
* Haha, I didn't quote wiki directly, as they inform us it's "far-right media organization Breitbart News" - you ain't seen far-right, wiki editors. Oh, and this different spell-check version STILL doesn't know "Breitbart".
** Actually, I've improved on that joke since February of '17, so here you go: The sticker is so long, I separated it into two parts, The 1st part's on the driver's side and the 2nd part's on the passenger's side. Free Tibet... - - - - - - ...en Coffee, with the purchase of a $10 bran muffin!
*** Recent statement by the Institute's namesake in regard to Communism: Confucius say "man who follow Renin, I imagine soon have no possession."
Comments (10)
More distraction and a variant of the old Overton Briar Patch trick
Posted On: Tuesday - October 17th 2023 11:23AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Media Stupidity Zhou Bai Dien
Don't fall for it this, or any other, month!
A year and a half ago Peak Stupidity proclaimed the Russian/Ukraine War another piece of Infotainment for Americans, though we admitted later we we were wrong about it being nothing but that. Still, it was a distraction and a big pivot away from the actual Big Story of the time. See, we can barely recall it. That was the world's people, but most acutely, the Canadians', revolt agains the tyranny of mandatory gene therapy/vaccines.
Let's move on to right now. I won't chalk Hamas' timing of its attack up to a purposeful part of any such plan by the Lyin' Press, but this latest conflagration in the Middle East is sufficing as a great distraction from another, more-continuous Big Story for Americans, the Bai Dien Border treachery. It's more than Zhou Bai Dien, of course, his pupptetmasters and underlings, such as Motherland Security's Alejandro (that'd be Alex, in English) Mayorkas. Yes, all eyes are on Gaza, Israel, and the ME in general while the invasion of the US from the south is in full swing now.
Besides the suddenly-noticed blatant convergence of stupidities that is just one of many actually-long-term ill effects of open borders, the Bai Dien administration also
Then, while searching for information and images on this little piece of wall, I came across a number of sob story articles. I would like to tell those open borders useful idiots to stop all of your sobbing, because this is not a part of any serious steps necessary to save the nation. What this media BS is, is a variation on what Peak Stupidity has dubbed the Overton Briar Patch*. From the explanation post:
Some of the ctrl-left with what we may think of as having, or have thought of as having Trump/Bush/Bush/Reagan Derangement Syndrome may really be outraged, but these are the most deluded psychotic sickos. I believe most of them just act like they think said office holders (I include notable Senators and Congressmen too) are actually Conservative. Why come up with these huge exaggerations of the supposed Conservatism of these politicians? It's a tactic of theirs that works very well .As an example, we gave the reader George W. Bush - this is the conclusion:
The effect of this tactic is to get Conservatives to actually believe "their" high-office holder is working hard, doing the right thing for them. "If they hate him so much, he MUST be doing a great job!" Well, that can be true, but not if that hate is based on exaggeration, lies, or plain insanity.
“Drown me just as deep as you please, Br'er Fox,” said Br'er Rabbit, “but for Lord’s sake, don’t fling me in that briar patch.” American Conservatives get fooled by: "Please, Conservative voters, close the southern border as tight as you please, but for Lord's sake, don't elect the far-right-winger George Bush!"We've got a variation here with the ctrl-left in charge. "Ruin this nation as much as you please. For Lord's sake, Zhou Bai Dien, please dont' harm the poor
We are to believe that this is a step in the right direction because the ctrl-left are hurt and angry, telling sob stories over the Lyin' Press. Don't fall for this crap, patriots. I explained what this was about in that previous post. Secondly, though it was the first part of this post, please keep you eyes on the ball - we're talking in baseball metaphors now - that Middle East turmoil is not nothing, but unless the nukes get across the pond, it's not the existential issue of this nation that the immigration invasion is.
* Note that "Overton" is just there for the continuity, as "-gate" is still a half-century later for political scandals. Robert Overton was a great guy though, from what I've read - see the post linked to.
Comments (5)
Too good for hand-me-downs
Posted On: Monday - October 16th 2023 6:46AM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Economics Americans
We've got a whole lot of kids clothes, toys, and games to get rid of. After sorting out the worn, broken, missing-pieces stuff to get rid of, we organized the rest of it. Let's have a yard sale, I figured, There's a deal now in which yard-sale brokers, if I may use that term, read the Craigslist ads and come around scarfing up stuff and re-selling it themselves on eBay, like the NYCity bankers looting of Russia in the 1990s.. like a really, really low-budget version of that.
Well, enterprising business is A-OK, and we still may have a yard sale, but I want to do this on a personal basis, getting these items to kids who would like them. We don't at all mind giving them away. The problem I'm running into is that the my wife tells me the Church people don't want used stuff, and I can't figure out who does, that is, besides Goodwill. That's not very personal, dealing with a big organization whose AA employees likely don't care what happens to this stuff. Also, see below.
It's nearly Christmas time, and I'm thinking of the long-ongoing US Marines' "Toys for Tots" program. They want new stuff. I may sound like a curmudgeon here - that's the idea, in fact - but with the time/money the Marines organization puts into this, along with the individual well-meaning volunteers, wouldn't they pretty much break even just having a new toys budget and getting discounts on masses of toys for the kids? That wouldn't be a community thing, I understand. However, then what's wrong with some used but working toys with all the parts? No, not good enough for today's tots whose parents can't afford toys?
My point here is of my surprise that most Middle-Class, Working Class, about any class, Americans seem to think themselves too good to acquire used clothing, toys, or games. It's embarrassing to them, I gather. That wasn't the case when I was young, and we weren't poor either.
Here's the modern worry about Goodwill. It's "Fast Fashion" that's a big problem. Fashion, hell! How about just being glad to get something to keep your kid warm and entertained?
Will the fact that the American economy is a ponzi scheme that's been strung out on FED-induced low interest rates and a Reserve currency - the former about done with, and the latter ?? - ever get Americans to understand that the 70-year long prosperous Middle-Class lifestyle can't be held onto forever via debt?
Too bad there aren't many Great Depression Era people around with the strength to knock some sense into spoiled Americans. They are going to need it.
Comments (14)
Heaven's Just a Sin Away
Posted On: Saturday - October 14th 2023 9:25PM MST
In Topics: Music
I couldn't name the years, other than at least by the mid-1970s, but there was an era when Country music songs had clever or pun-ny titles. I remember one about I Cheated Me Right out of You, and I'm sure there were plenty others.
This one has such a title, which does go along with the lyrics of the song. The Kendalls were a father and daughter duo - Royce and Jeannie Kendall. They are from Missouri with family roots in the Arkansas Ozark Mountains. I don't know anything from them but this one song.
Heaven's Just a Sin Away was recorded and released in 1977, and went to #1 on the Billboard Magazine Country Music chart. It's a pretty good tune.
I will get back to the comments discussion in the morning. Thanks to all Peakers for reading and especially writing in. Next week we may get back to China reports before too much of the trip is forgotten. A curmudgeonry post or two may appear, along with more on the invasion (not not in the Middle East but HERE). Then, there's the book review ... Have a happy Sunday of rest hopefully.
Comments (10)
Nobel Kung Flu Politics Prize
Posted On: Saturday - October 14th 2023 5:26PM MST
In Topics: Science Kung Flu Stupidity
Peak Stupidity no longer has a biochemistry department, if we ever had one. Our staff are not here to debunk or discuss the science that includes nucleoside base modifications. I am sure Drew Weissman and Katalin Koriko are intelligent, knowledgeable scientists.
However, there is so much research going on all over the world's universities, with plenty of bright research ideas with prize-worth results. How does the committee decide? Politics.
So, these two scientists have worked on the replacement of the nitrogenous bases in RNA, which are adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil. I do remember a little of this stuff, which includes that DNA strands have the 4 amino acids in patterns that make up genes. There's the A,G, C, and T, but in the RNA, the uracil replaces thymine (the T) that's in DNA. Who said this wasn't gene therapy? I cannot say that that means this research can't have important good applications.
This Nobel Prize announcement is centered on the particular application of the use of this research to "enable the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19". In the eyes of the Nobel Committee, that makes Drs. Weissman and Koriko HEROES and deserving of this yearly prize. There's your politics. Really, after all that has gone down and all the bad effects seen from this gene therapy vaccine, I am surprised that that the Noble Committee* is still keeping this Heroes and world-saving vaccine narrative alive. Perhaps I should not be.
Finally, for the record and as to complete due diligence here, I did duckduckgo "Katalin Koriko bikini pictures", and again with the little tick mark: "NO RESULTS". Dang. However, I came upon a Glamour magazine article dubbing her The Scientist Who Saved the World. There's a picture of her in a clearing in the woods with a long black dress, but honestly, women of Glamour, I would rather have just seen bikini pictures.
* That's in Sweden, no less, one of the more sane and non-panicked countries we've read about (as discussed thoroughly by our commenter E.H. Hail in parts VII - - X - - XI - - XV - - and XIX of his real-time reporting on the PanicFest in '20, among some others, I'm sure).
Comments (9)
A confluence of stupidities at San Ysidro
Posted On: Friday - October 13th 2023 5:27PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Race/Genetics
I'm telling you, it's like a conjunction of Mercury - the Gay Planet - and Uranus, something the math would predict but very hard to actually observe, without mirrors (I mean, with a reflector telescope), and with the Sun's glare and all. The immigration stupidity has been ramping up steeply since Zhou Bai Dien and his string-pullers were put in charge of things. Much more recently, the violence in the Middle East between Moslems and Israelis has flared up. Now, these 2 bodies of stupidity have gone into conjunction at the US Border, in San Ysidro, part of San Diego, California.
The VDare All-Things-Immigration site has as writer who used to work for the Border Patrol. Former Agent spent most of his career that at the northern border with Canada, but knows how things work and keeps up with the current antics of the organization. He wrote a post the other day based on on-the-scene video reports by one Ben Bergquam about this incredible scene down there: As Israel Is Under Attack, Jewish Family Services Buses Are Picking Up Arab Illegals At The Border.
As Peak Stupidity has explained over and over, there are people coming from all over the world. I think these "aid" groups, if they do know that, would be perfectly happy this leads to peace and perfect harmony, at least if the writers of a 50 y/o Coca~Cola commercial can be considered experts on these matters.
The thing is that they are helping Syrians, Yemenese, and Chechens into the country among others. They’re not all Mexicans and Central Americans. The Border Patrol has caught people from 160 different nations. Iceland is about the only country they haven’t caught people from.Not fair! More Ice People! ("They came from the land of the ice and snow where the hot springs rise while the hot girls blow..."*)
Many of these imported future Coca~Cola drinkers are not too fond of Jews... just sayin'...
At a time when Israel is under attack, what in the world is Jewish Family Services thinking?Here's what the people of Jewish Family Services are thinking:
"We are virtuous people. That's the important thing, and that's what we need the public to know. There may be a few bad apples, but the host families will help them assimilate, or worst case, it's the Government's job. I'd hate to think they'll start killing our people, but, let's not think about that. We can't be profiling the people of this immigration invasion. That's not virtuous at all, as we ourselves made sure everyone knows, right after 9/11."To be fair, plenty of other "virtuous" religious groups, of your standard White ethnicities, think the same way. One difference is that their stupidity does not have the possible immediate results, as we can foresee here for the Jewish members of Jewish Family Services. The long-term stupidity for everyone is that we are more and more living in foreign lands within our own country, even if it's not among people who are plain bent on killing us.** More from the Former Agent:
Bensman wrote a book, America’s Covert Border War, but he claims the programs that were once in place to stop terrorists have been corrupted and are no longer viable. He claims the Middle Easterners are being let into the United States unvetted. There’s a Muslim only migrant center now in Tijuana.Back to the Jewish stupidity of having, on average, supported this stupidity for a half a century, now they my pay the price in blood right here in America. Just after 9/11, the Neocons promoted war in the Middle East for the reason of "fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them over there."
The Biden administration has only deported 1% of those who have come across since the start of the administration. It has always been a calculation of the Left that once illegal aliens are in the interior of the country, then it becomes extremely hard to deport them. Among other things, it’s thanks to our intentionally dysfunctional immigration courts.
That expression was uttered time and again in those years. It sounded good, but the logic is unsound. Why would these people be over here to fight us to begin with? Are we fighting them over there to keep them out of here? Whaaa? You just control your borders and immigration entry points and keep the bad ones from coming in a legal manner too in the first place. Then too, if we keep fighting them over there, what will be the general attitude of the ones we invite over here?
I guess they wanted to test this idea by letting them in. More Saudi Arabians were let in yearly on visas after 9/11 than before (assuming they were the 9/11 culprits here). President Trump implemented a Moslem ban, and he and the plan were derided by the ctrl-left. That'd most assuredly include "Jewish Family Services".
On that score, I was about to wrap up this post, but ran into a new A. W. Morgan post, Terror Attack Coming? Border Agents And Families Threatened, Biden Imported 63K From Countries Trump Banned. The inner excerpt here is from John Binder of Breitbart***.
Third, and perhaps most significantly, the Biden Regime ended POTUS 45 Donald Trump’s misnomered “Muslim ban” and immediately began importing formerly banned Great Replacers:Thinking back on Peak Stupidity's previous couple of posts asking why the Middle East has to be America's business, now the massive importation of the people involved has made it our business, right here, right now.Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data for Fiscal Year 2022 gives insight into the volume of legal immigration to the U.S. from countries that former President Donald Trump had placed on a travel ban list because they either did not share critical national security data or were found to harbor and sponsor terrorists.
Biden, in January 2021, ended the travel ban.
Those travel countries, by 2020, were Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Venezuela, North Korea, Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea, Sudan, Tanzania, and Kyrgyzstan.
From October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2022, Biden brought nearly 63,000 legal immigrants from the travel ban countries to the U.S. on green cards — about 7,300 of which arrived as chain migrants, while more than 4,300 arrived through the Diversity Visa Lottery.
PS: Steve Sailer has surprisingly come out with a very good post on The Unz Review trying to come to grips with this self-defeating stupidity by the very influential Jewish left (and, yes, there are those on the right). He didn't cover the current madness, but it's an overall criticism of this stupidity in general - see The World-Historical Question.
* Disclaimer: I did not look up actual Led Zeppelin Immigrant Song lyrics out of laziness - heard the song many times, got the 8-track tape - this is the way I've always heard it...
** That's not to mention the dozens of other major problems due to the invasion. Peak Stupidity and VDare have been all over these problems over the years, the latter site more comprehensively.
*** Ahhh, jeeze, come on! Spell check acts like it doesn't know Breitbart. Sure they don't.
Comments (20)