Competence is dying
Posted On: Tuesday - March 7th 2023 2:02PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness The Future Race/Genetics
The motivation for Peak Stupidity's post Demographics to DIE
It turned out after a quick reading, though I'm glad this writer M.B. Mathews sees the same trend I do, the first bit of the article,
Have affirmative action hiring practices caused overall competence to plummet? The record appears to show exactly that.... does not actually describe what appears further into it. This guy's anecdotes are more random than Peak Stupidity's, "random" being a word that nowadays means not so awfully organized. This next bit is what I completely agree with:
For no good reasons whatsoever, competence was allowed to die on the vine in order to give the less competent a leg up. Not superiority but "equity" rules the hiring, firing, and education of Americans. Worse, many of those who were affirmatively hired do not do as good a job as those whose excellence was obvious. You can see it in customer service, which for many businesses is abysmally incompetent. There is a resentful casualness in those who are hired to serve others that would not have been acceptable even two decades ago. The competence level one deals with on a daily basis is on life support.2 decades ago? I'd say 3 years ago, right before the PanicFest, is far enough back from which to note a change for the worse. Hmmm... if this was purposeful as part of the Kung Flu PanicFest to promote Big Biz and squash small business, this writer's praise of Amazon bears this out.
The rest, as I wrote is written, well, without a lot of competence, I must say. I'm just glad to read others noticing the big picture. Mr. Mathew's solutions are pure naivety or purposeful racial ignorance:
Bring back real education so that those we pay to serve us will be competent and will stop pointing fingers at the other guy who was supposed to take care of it.Yes, well, what about these diversity programs? The writer doesn't get to the roots of why diversity doesn't guarantee competence. Don't give people degrees? Hell, many of those degrees give one competency mostly in bitching and complaining, if you graduate Summa cum Laude.
Bring back competence by bringing back a cultural work ethic of purpose and individual responsibility, which can only happen when people truly care about competence and doing an excellent, not just an adequate, job. Stop giving people degrees in fields where they are not competent, and for God's sake, stop the diversity programs. Diversity doesn’t guarantee competence.
No, "diversity", "inclusion", and "equity" don't work because they replace White men who are naturally more competent with people who are generally incompetent, mainly GENETICALLY. Ya' gotta tell the plain truth, people.
Commenter SafeNow brought up a good point in the comments under that previous posts. Once, the White men get down to a minority or even only small-margin majority, the incompetence rubs off on them too. It's not just that they will get weary of keeping the show going by covering for the rest. The corporate/work culture will just get shoddy in general - laziness and worse ethics are becoming the norm. To the 3rd World - Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu!
Back to the White man's weariness of the DIE workplace, here's an old anecdote of my own:
This was a summer physical labor job I had long, long ago. Bushwhacking and digging was mostly what we were doing, all with hand tools. It was a diverse group of young people working together, the reason being that this was a government job. For most of a week, our group of 8 was digging a pit, with shovels and pick-axes. Once 6" down, it was nothing but hard red clay down there The whole big pit could have been done with a backhoe in an hour, but this was a government job for young people. As the government boss, a decent guy, could have told us, had he watched the right movies, "There are 2 kinds of people in this world, those who have backhoes and those who dig. You dig!"
I think there were 3 or 4 of us White guys. The 2 or 3 black guys worked hard, though one had to put up with some stupidity from them. It was the 2 black girls that were not pulling their weight. They couldn't be fired or even scolded, I knew that much. By the 3rd day, a guy named Chet*, who'd been working hard like the rest of us, got tired of them, threw down his government-required hard hat, said "fuck this shit", and walked off. He wasn't at my High School, so I have never seen him since that day.
We may see a lot of that in the future ...
* I remember his full name to this day, in fact.
Comments (26)
Glenn Reynolds' Kung Flu Instapology
Posted On: Monday - March 6th 2023 9:06AM MST
In Topics: Websites Pundits Kung Flu Stupidity
With the start of the American version of the Kung Flu PanicFest now 3 years ago, besides us Libertarians and those analytical types who wonder "just what the hell happened", there have been recriminations and requests for forgiveness from some of the Kung Flu dupes of the literary world. 3 months ago, Peak Stupidity featured 2 posts from those who wanted this all behind us: Kung Flu PanicFest - Forgive and Forget? and More Kung Flu PanicFest Recriminations.
Neither of the 2 "journalists" heard from and discussed in those posts ever understood what they'd done wrong though. It's hard to forgive or forget when the Totalitarian in question does not even yet see her stupidity. (Both of them were women, so any wait for an actual statement of wrongdoing would be an exercise in futility.)
Now, we're talking THE Instapundit himself! A the self-proclaimed Godfather of bloggers, Glenn Reynolds' site was the first political blog I remember reading. It was at least 20 years ago when I'd peruse the Instapundit site daily. At some point, 10 years back, I'd say, this tailed off, as I came upon other interesting sites. Though Instapundit is 1 of only 4 sites on our measly blogroll (that I need to expand), from then until only a year or two back, I very rarely looked at the site. This means that I missed Professor Reynolds' and his co-bloggers' takes on the PanicFest.
It turns out, I'd not have been happy with that coverage, at least from man in charge. As I became at odds and well upset with Steve Sailer, Ron Unz, and a few others for being duped by the PanicFest Infotainment, I never noticed this from the good mostly Libertarian, but, alas, still Neocon, Instapundit. Two days back Glenn Reynolds set us (me) straight with a flat out apology on his substack site*: How I Was Wrong About Covid, subtitled When even libertarians trust the government too much.. It's a REAL, honest-to-goodness apology. This substack post is a quick and entertaining read, so I advise the reader to spend the 2 or 3 minutes. I will just present the 2 Instapoligetic bits here (plus just a tad more):
And yet Covid was, it turned out, not as bad as I anticipated. In the early days, I was a Covid hawk, but I was wrong to be. It seemed right at the time.Indeed.
In retrospect, I should have been more skeptical. It’s hard to believe that I, of all people, trusted the government too much, but there you are. Well, lesson learned.Faster, please!
Thank you for being a man about this, Glenn Reynolds. I can't say "it feels good" or "I told you so", simply because, as I wrote, I didn't keep up with your posts** during the darkest depths of
So that’s where we are now. And the lesson is that the “expert” class failed us again. How much was failure, and how much was deliberate malfeasance, remains to be seen, though the evidence keeps piling up in favor of the latter.Yep, this IS the 21st century, after all.
And in fact, that’s the biggest lesson of the past few years. Again and again, claims to expertise turn out to have been cloaks for politicized misbehavior. “Professionalism” has turned out to be no protection against partisanship. And America’s cold class war between the Gentry Class and the normal-American community has escalated.
Covid is basically over, but there will be something else. You can, alas, bet on that.
Regarding the Totalitarian PanicFest or anything else, there's no use apologizing or asking for forgiveness, if you don't even understand what you did wrong. Glenn Reynolds does, so, yeah, thank you and you got it!
* I didn't know he had one. It'd be a better place to put a word in that the Professor might well read, as comment count seems to be at least an order of magnitude less than those seen on Instapundit. (When I read the latter site a lot, more than a decade back, there weren't comments yet.)
** From what Professor Reynolds says, it was not all of his "staff" that were with him on the PanicFest, and he let them blog against his opinions on the PanicFest, an admirable thing. (BTW, Ron Unz did and does this too, in the extreme! He'll put up with people ragging on him on his own blog in the comments, and he'll keep on the writers that think his opinions are crap. They often are.)
Comments (14)
See Oh Two Ain't Real Pollution!
Posted On: Saturday - March 4th 2023 4:14PM MST
In Topics: Music Global Climate Stupidity
In the Peak Stupidity post Derailments and Bai Dien's coming, Pollution in Ohio of about 2 weeks back, I foresaw an additional explanatory post on the Climate Calamity™ nonsense. That was based on the following paragraph in that post:
Instead [that is, instead of reporting on ACTUAL pollution], for the last 20 years, going on 30, we are barraged with talk about Carbon Freaking Dioxide. It is a part of the atmosphere, and it's simply NOT a pollutant in any way. The term "carbon" (rather than CO2), "pollutant" and "emissions" are used to fool the non-Chemistry-inclined (or those whose chemistry involves the intake of chemicals with very long names) into thinking we're talking soot or that stuff that people inhale to die in their garages, something you should NEVER inhale, and the production of said substance, respectively.I looked back at some posts with the Global Climate Stupidity topic key and realized I'd already said it all about a year ago in the post It's almost as if yahoo wants me to click this....
However, we were remiss in not including the AC/DC song that this subject reminds me of. That would be Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution!. It was the 4th single that the band released from their very successful album Back in Black, back in 1980.
CO2 ain't real pollution.
CO2 won't make ya' die.
CO2 ain't real pollution.
Yeah, the planet will survive!
We're big AC/DC fans here at Peak Stupidity. I'll get around to linking to the rest of them on the site some time soon.
AC/DC was (at the time):
Brian Johnson – lead vocals
Angus Young – lead guitar
Malcolm Young – rhythm guitar, background vocals
Cliff Williams – bass guitar, background vocals
Phil Rudd – drums
Next week's blogging will include that MTG/AOC battle of the hot politicians, the post on the decline of competence, some immigration stupidity, the coverage of which has been sorely lacking lately, and Kung Flu memes, to say the least. Thank you all for reading and commenting. Happy weekend - what's left of it.
Comments (25)
Demographics to DIE
Posted On: Saturday - March 4th 2023 9:30AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Political Correctness The Future Race/Genetics
Back last Fall,Peak Stupidity posted a 5 part series titled Harvesting the fruits of a half-century of Affirmative Action: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - Part 4 and Part 5. This post was to be made in reference to an article, actually more like an editorial in The American Thinker maintaining that "Competence is dead and diversity killed it". That'll have to be a post for early next week, as I'd first like to expand on the points in our series of 5 posts on AA.
This is somewhat of a correction too, as AA has been pretty much superseded by the new program dubbed D.I.E. DIE is not just more intense Affirmative Action, but there's a fundamental difference.
Going back to that series, the biggest point made out of all of it is that AA, though clearly unfair to White men, was not a real threat to the workings of our society in the early years. The reason was in the numbers. In an 85-90% White country and early on with a big majority of men in the workplace, the black and female deadweight could be dealt with. The competent White men could cover for them, or if their positions were too critical for them to put up with that, the deadweight could be thrown into special areas (HR, anyone?) where they couldn't do any harm... uhh, well, directly, against the workplace's main goals, no, they couldn't yet.
Demographics is destiny, they rightly proclaim, and the change in the demographics of America over the last half century portend a dubious destiny. With much larger numbers of people falling under the AA umbrella, the placing of incompetent people into work positions, the universities, and more, cannot be covered by the White man anymore.
That was the recap. Expanding on this, the "D" in DIE stands for Diversity. That, apparently, means anyone who is not a normal White man. Well, the numbers are a lot higher now, with the workplaces full of women and their being huge numbers of Hispanics and then Oriental*, •Indian, and black African immigrants.
The "I" in DIE stands for Inclusion. That's a real boost from the old AA programs, as inclusion means we gin up terms for any kind of freak, of any race, color, or creed. People who in the past were just crazy stories and perhaps 0.001% of the population, such as trans-genders, are included now. If you're gonna bring the numbers up for the DIE program, you've got to gin up way more of them than that tiny percentage though, so you hire more school guidance counselors and the like to "help". Presto, chango, they are a significant part of the DIE population, coming to a work site near you. What were once freaks are now associates.
The "E" in DIE stands for Equity. That is the most important one when it comes to a fundamental change from AA to DIE. The old Affirmative Action proponents assured us that, though the idea was to increase the amount of black people and women, there would be no quotas. That was very obviously a crock of shit from the get-go. I mean, if there wouldn't be quotas, then employers would hire people based on qualifications and ability. Almost all employers with any sense would have already been doing that for a black or woman before AA. No, there were quotas, publicized or not, BUT, and this is the point, the requests were lower and more open to interpretation and variation.
That Part 3 of our AA series was, as we like to include, an anecdotal interlude. The fact that a country music radio station felt enough pressure (from the FCC) to hire a black DJ is humorous at this point, but it wasn't to a White guy I know well, for which this was his dream job**, and who needed that money for college. It was just the one black guy though, and when he left, I don't think there was any more obligation felt by this small-time employer.
Equity is different. It means that a workplace or other organization must include numbers of all the various diverse peoples in proportion to their proportion of the US population.*** (Note that I have nicely included "include" and "diverse" in that sentence. GoDaddy server monitors can be proud.)
Going back to AA, there was this term used in tens or hundreds of millions of job advertisements over the half-century, "Equal Opportunity Employer". If the reality of it had really been equal opportunities, then that'd have just meant "hey, we're not blatantly racist or sexist in hiring". Nah, there WERE quotas against us, but at least the people pushing to hurt the White man had the decency (?) - well or lack of outright visible hatred - to pretend otherwise. That's not the case with Equity, as blogger Steve Sailer has noticed and commented about numerous times. Equity means, we want proportional employment, no matter about quailifications, etc. DIE is not just about employment. As Mr. Sailer has wryly noted in regard to black demands for DIE within the realm of housing, they take the "equity" literally too. You built up that equity in your house over the years, and they want it.
Look, the people behind this and the people who take advantage of it are like the Commies of old. They are Los Resentidos. They want to take your shit and destroy your society.
In summary, between the demographics of today, with White men and other competent people in the workplace being a shrinking minority and the hiring based purely on DIE, the level of competency in America is declining quickly. I have been seeing this with my own eyes over the last few years. I have no idea how we can avoid this death of the old competent White male run society.
* Often, but not always excluded from AA, cause, competence ...
** I absolutely do not shit you on this. Being a Disc Jockey was the coolest job imaginable.
*** Well, OK, I know, basketball teams must have gotten some kind of waiver for black people, as also the interior decorating businesses have for gay men. There must just be some paperwork involved...
Comments (13)
Posted: The Stupid need not apply
Posted On: Thursday - March 2nd 2023 6:38PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity
I don't know why one gets the story from a Tampa, Florida TV news website for goings-on in Columbus, Ohio, but that's the world we live in, and this was Instapundit's link - Pizza shop catches attention with ‘now hiring non-stupid people’ sign.
I like it. The owner claims this was just a joke (more on that), but there's truth in this joke. It's very hard to hire good employees now, especially if you have the work-a-day world of the '00s, '90s, or earlier in mind. It's hard to get these people's minds off their iCrap for long enough periods for which they can get basic tasks done. The 1 to 2 year (depending on location) Kung Flu PanicFest free ticket to leisure made any work ethic hard for employees to fathom when/if they've come back to work. Hence the sign pictured above.
A Santino’s employee inside told WCMH that the signs were intended to be a joke, but referred further requests for comment to the pizzeria’s owners. The worker was well aware of the online attention Santino’s request for “non-stupid people” had received, with people calling the store to discuss the sign.The owners couldn't be reached, and I don't blame them for that. This sign is only funny because there's truth to it, but you can't even make fun of the stupid anymore. Look, I do know that using the word "retard" can be hurtful to those few parents or siblings. "Stupid" on the other hand ... isn't it under one's control? They do say "you can't fix stupid", though, but just come into work on freaking time, use your iCrap only when you have a break, and put your mind into the work as much as is required.
Santino's, this Columbus, Ohio pizzeria, got some pushback against the sign:
The “non-stupid” signs drew attention online that turned into retaliation, with a man posting on social media that he ordered $110 dollars worth of pizza without paying, then never picked them up.Goodness gracious, even the pushback is getting stupid! That's not how you do it. In my day, if you really have it in for someone, you order pizzas every night to his apartment, until the place cancels him (we didn't call it that). You don't tell anyone but your friends that you did it, because YOU don't want to get banned from ordering pizza pies.
I was pleasantly surprised that there are no Yelp commenters with their panties in wads due to discrimination against the
I took a look at Santino's pizza on their menu as scanned and displayed on yelp* shows "Traditional Thin Crust Pizzas". There ya' go - New York style. I may be pissing off half the Peak Stupidity customer base, but, if these people sell that thick cheesy greasy stuff, they need to read their own sign and revamp the menu accordingly.
* Speaking of stupid, the restaurant's own website is slow and clunky and doesn't actually display the nice Italian-themed menu in pictures anywhere. (You might want to view it that way to decide whether you want to come in for a meal.)
Comments (7)
Is Ann Coulter stealing our material now?
Posted On: Thursday - March 2nd 2023 11:33AM MST
In Topics: Pundits Kung Flu Stupidity
There's nothing I could do about it due to the Peak Stupidity legal team having forgotten to renew our ©'s while out on a Vegas junket this winter (they're still there!), but I'd be happy were that the case.
Really, though, this isn't even the same as an independent similar observation, as we noticed a few times before: here - - here and here. We just both have had the same experience with our family, friends, and acquaintances during the madness we call the Kung Flu PanicFest.
In a sort of 3 year retrospective I! TOLD! YOU! SO!, 15 Days To Flatten the Truth—Covid Truth Slowly Leaks Out Three Years Late Ann Coulter reported:
Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”While discussing the Chinese Covid~Zero stupidity last summer, Peak Stupidity reported the following in our post Inside info on the latest Oriental Kung Flu Stupidity:
However, who the heck hatches a big plot to damage the world with a virus for which I don't even know anyone who knows anyone who died from it!? [Bolded then, bolded now.]OK, well first of all, if I count Peak Stupidity commenters as "anyone", and they are more than "anyone to me, MBlanc46 wrote under that post:
I know someone who died from covid.Fair enough. I can trust the Peakers, and there likely have been other bloggers/commenters who had personal knowledge of deaths due to the Kung Flu. Therefore that last phrase, which basically mathematically squares our denominator (assuming people average the same number of friends/acquaintances) is no longer strictly correct. I'm not sure if Ann Coulter took into account on-line friends or acquaintances.
Additionally, Peak Stupidity does NOT maintain there was no such virus or disease (the virus being the "SARS-##&&%" or whatever, and the disease being that "Covid-19"). I am no virologist. Did/does this virus resemble the flu? In its effect on humanity, I would say it did and does. The PanicFest is another story. Just before the excerpt above, Miss Coulter also came very close to copyright infringement (ya' got lucky, kid!) with this bit:
Millions upon millions of wrecked lives later (including 170,000 excess non-COVID deaths), the people who lied to us for their own selfish motives—getting on TV, high ratings for their panic porn, the joys of bossing other people around—are quietly admitting the truth."Panic porn" instead of "PanicFest". OK, we'll [what still remains of the PS legal team] let you off with a slap on the
You all know the copyright stuff is just in fun here, but note how Miss Coulter's opinion of this whole thing is very close to ours. Read the whole column of hers - you won't be disappointed in her common sense assessment.
Next, with new reporting on it, we've got to re-iterate our points about the "lab leak" theory of the origin of the Kung Flu soon, keeping in mind that, the origin was not the BIG STORY. The PanicFest was!
Comments (15)
The Religion of Recycling
Posted On: Wednesday - March 1st 2023 7:16PM MST
In Topics: Treehuggers Economics Environmental Stupidity
This post could be considered a follow-up to a 5 /y/o Peak Stupidity post with, IMO, one of our best titles, Toward Sustainable Stupidity. After clearing up the proper use of the word "sustainable", in that post we discussed the sustainability of recycling of garbage.
The point was, the decision to recycle should be based on economics, not feel-good virtue-signaling or some bull about "saving the planet". Said economics may include quality of life factors as pollution, unsightly messes and such do detract from value of property. When it comes to recycling of the various materials in our garbage, much of it wastes money, as it's not profitable*. We are not running out of room for landfills**. It's more like the (understandable) NIMBYism of not wanting to be near a landfill causes them to be located farther away from the population, causing higher garbage transportation costs. Sure, if doing something useful with that cardboard is cheaper than trucking it way out there, then you do the least expensive thing, if you actually care about the taxpayers and not so much about Greta.
Recently John Stossel published a short article, The Recycling Religion, on his Stossel TV website.
I have nothing bad to say about John Stossel. I remember him from my TV watching days in the mid '90s. Since I've seen him and read some of this stuff, he's always been a great Libertarian. His digs against the stupidity in government have been entertaining as they hit their mark. That kind of stuff doesn't get on TV today. The ctrl-left doesn't want it on, but the diverse America of today doesn't seem to care about that anyway, as opposed to "give my people our due, government!"
As a follow-up to that old Peak Stupidity post on recycling, Mr. Stossel's article goes even farther. He's into sentence-sized paragraphs, for some reason, so I'm just grouping them together in the excerpt:
The ugly truth is that many “recyclables” sent to recycling plants are never recycled. The worst is plastic.Now, see, that hits home even for me. Due to certain family members' shunning of one thing the Romans did for us, we have been compacting and (thinking we were) recycling water bottles for years now. Has that been all for nothing? Probably.
Even Greenpeace now says, “Plastic recycling is a dead-end street.” Hoffman often trucks it to a landfill.
Years ago, science writer John Tierney wrote a New York Times Magazine story, “Recycling Is Garbage.” It set a Times record for hate mail. But what he wrote was true.
“It’s even more true today,” says Tierney in my new video. “Recycling is an industry that uses increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less.”
This news about more of our trash going into, well, the trash, than I had thought pisses me off too. In my case, Green is not my religion, and recycling is not my sect. The planet itself doesn't need saving. I'm with George Carlin on that one - "The planet's fine. It's the people that are fucked!"
It's wastage that I really don't like. I grew up around some people who experienced Great Depression 1.0. They lived "waste not, want not". To me, it's just a shame all those plastic bottles were produced for one use. If one can make playground base material, decking, or whatever else out of it, I like the idea.
However, I'm not for the taxpayers footing a boondoggle. These boondoggles have the benefit of making those for whom Recycling IS a religion feel so much more holy and better about themselves. I don't want that to be on my dime.
PS: There was a 2nd big point in that old post on "Sustainable Stupidity". That was that any population increase, which in this country is due to immigration alone, works against any actually sustainable environmental policy. As the Environmentalists said in rebuttal though, "blah, blah, blah, I can't hear you!!"
* I will write a short post soon about what does pay off by its recycling and what doesn't, noting especially the highly-recycled automobile.
** Go to bing maps and just try to spot one. I'll give you 1/2 an hour.
Comments (9)
How to use Wikipedia
Posted On: Monday - February 27th 2023 4:20PM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites ctrl-left
Nope, Peak Stupidity is not becoming the new Stack Overflow, (gotten LOTS of help there) or writing a new addition to the Idiot's Guide series. This is about how to use the part of the internet BUILT BY idiots. Don't get me wrong - user-provide content is a great idea. Amazon.com, with its idea of letting users voluntarily provide book review (only the beginning) being the first I can remember, is one I discussed in the old post The F.A.G.S. space and user-generated content.
I'm sure Wikipedia started out with the best of intentions. Most of the people who edit want to set something straight. The old "someone's wrong on the internet" cartoon (I'll dig that one up) syndrome makes well-read Wiki some low-hanging fruit, as they say. As I wrote in All Hail the Editing King of Wikipedia! about a guy who is one of the biggest editors, I would hope most people have the honesty to only edit pages on subjects they know well.
However, unless you're talking programming languages or something, things get political very easily, for example, the pages on, well, politics and politicians. Was Wiki co-opted by the Deep State at some point or other nefarious actors? It probably didn't need to be, as the editing of the biggest and most-used body of "factual" knowledge is bound to give people swell heads and penchants for dirty edits, done dirt cheap.
In general, I'd say the ctrl-left has more time on its hands for this sort of thing. Additionally, they are more politically minded than the right who would just like to be left alone, and those on the left are also prone to dishonesty pretty much by definition.
When I wrote up the post on US Congresslady from Georgia (R-7th district) Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG) and her writing about a "National Divorce last week, I used Wiki for some basic facts. That image in the top has got some basic facts. The rest of that Wiki page, like most others, must be "used" a certain way. This is new to lots of Americans. Most Russian people could have explained this to us, had they had access to Twitter, in the years 1917 to 1989.
The first sentence of this biography goes:
Marjorie Taylor Greene (born May 27, 1974), also known by her initials MTG, is an American politician, businesswoman, and far-right conspiracy theorist who has been the U.S. representative for Georgia's 14th congressional district since 2021.See, OK, I get that the latter bit is her bent, but it's just not a normal part of a description of who someone is. Does Wiki start off calling AOC and hard-left Socialist? Wiki-"simple", all I could get besides bikini pictures, does say "Socialist" but not "hard-left". Could they have called MTG simply a "Conservative" at the beginning? (That's our next post on MTG, though, a battle of MTG v AOC.)
The slurs and sleights continue with almost every sentence. Nothing about her is put in a good light, that is, for the average reader looking for the basic facts.
Greene has promoted antisemitic, white supremacist, and far-right conspiracy theories, including the white genocide conspiracy theory, QAnon, and Pizzagate. Other extremist conspiracy theories she has promoted include government involvement in mass shootings in the United States, murders perpetrated by the Clinton family (Clinton body count), and 9/11 conspiracy theories. Before running for Congress, she supported calls to execute prominent Democratic Party politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. As a congresswoman, she equated the Democratic Party with Nazis, and compared COVID-19 safety measures to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, later apologizing for this comparison. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Greene promoted Russian propaganda and praised Vladimir Putin. Greene identifies as a Christian nationalist.Just the facts, Ma'am? Well, they are not all made up, but the use of certain adjectives and this synopsis of MTG's political life in this way is not something that'd be done for someone of the left. The way you use Wiki for political information is to sort out the simple facts from all the opinions of the opinionated editors.
OTOH, for someone like me, the Wiki page has me smitten with MTG or "Large Marge". She apparently recently got divorced too, so ... what are you all waiting for? Sure enough, Wiki is in error about MTG's writings on the Hildabeast and Øb☭ma**, but I'd have no problem with it, along with most of what she's said and done per Wikipedia.
* Wierdly, a year before the Kung Flu PanicFest, I used the term "non-essential employee for this Feral Gov't worker/Wiki uber-editor.
** Again, one must read carefully to get at the truth on this Business Insider article too. See, the "hanging" was in the political sense:
CNN reported that in one Facebook post in April 2018, Greene spread baseless information attacking the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which was one of President Barack Obama's key policy achievements. Someone commented on the post, asking Greene, "Now do we get to hang them ?? Meaning H & O???""Let people off" meant politically let them off. She wasn't talking setting up nooses... not that there's anything wrong with that ...
The person was referring to Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"Stage is being set," Greene replied, according to CNN. "Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off."
Comments (24)
Thank you, Early Bird!
Posted On: Monday - February 27th 2023 5:44AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Peak Stupidity Roadshow
OK, it's not too awful likely that the driver I address in the title is a Peak Stupidity reader. This post then, will be to thank those helpful and experienced drivers out there in general.
Sometimes, on the road, I miss the Kung Flu PanicFest, in which there was hardly anyone on the road, especially in the wee hours of the morning. Besides that, traffic cops were either off the road due to the worries about a possible hands-tires-road contagion vector (the SCIENCE!, you know) or, a few months into it, doughnut-shop-bound due to Floydism, and getting paid anyway.
Your lead blogger here has a history of being pulled over on the road that is probably in the 99th percentile, for your normal White guy, anyway. For a few suspected reasons and others unknown, I've had not nearly as many problems over the last 10, going on 15, years. Even when doing a routine 200 mile round trip, all but 10 miles Interstate. weekly for a few years back before the Kung Flu, I'd do a steady 78-81 mph in a long 70 mph limit zone and never see those blue lights in the rear view.
Well, early in the morning the other day, I was doing 12-15 mph over the limit in a clear spot within town, in those wee hours of the morning. Some car coming the other way had the headlights flashing back-and-forth dim/bright about 1/8 mile away. You know how fancy car lighting has gotten recently, so I didn't know what his deal was - maybe there's a setting and they're supposed to do that. Maybe it was some emergency vehicle or cop that had forgotten to activate the rest of the lights and noise.
Wait, maybe.... well, that's not the way you do that cop warning thing though. You turn your lights on and off, right? That's the way I was taught ... somewhere, no I don't think it was in one of the 3 driving schools I have forcibly and proudly matriculated from. (It's possible we did though, in one of them.) As soon as you get past the cop, you start turning your lights on/of for every vehicle you see coming, for maybe 3 miles even. That was the case for me during my heyday of ticketing. Good drivers should know this, or drivers who want to remain good drivers. See, you aren't considered a good driver anymore by the State and the insurance companies if you get pulled over and ticketed.
It turned out this fine morning that, yes, that's what the driver meant to do, helpfully warn me and whoever else was coming that way that a traffic cop was aiming that radar gun right at us. I saw him right there in the grass. I had slowed early enough. Thank you so much, Sir!*
Do any young people know this stuff, even if they get the procedure a bit wrong? Probably not, as they use the apps, I guess. I've gotta admit, Waze, etc. are more powerful than headlight-flashing or CB channel 19. I need to pay this back, and forward too.
* No, I couldn't see, but I will assume "Sir", as no women I've known do this thing.
Comments (11)
Roll away... the dew... roll away, with you ...
Posted On: Saturday - February 25th 2023 6:16PM MST
In Topics: Music The Dead
With the exception of that RealNovella story, it's been long serious posts this week. We haven't even featured any music in 2 weeks and not any Grateful Dead songs since, geeze, July 4th of last year (the usual US Blues).
I looked and was seriously surprised that Franklin's Tower has not been featured here long ago. Nope. Of course, almost all Dead music is better heard live or from live recording, as is this one.from the Buffalo, NY Memorial Auditorium on May 9th of 1977. The song came from the band's '75 album Blues for Allah.
This may seem repetitive as far as chords and melody, but the Jerry solos are excellent. Let you mind go with it. Additionally, if you can't dance to this one, you have no business dancing at all!
It's not like we have a crush on her or anything, but there'll be 2 more posts next week about the Congresslady known as MTG. More Global Climate stupidity is coming, and we've got posts built up out the wazoo, in fact. Thank you all for reading and writing in!
In Franklin's tower the four winds sleep.
Like four lean hounds, the lighthouse keep.
Wildflower seeds on the sand and wind.
May the four winds blow you home again.
Comments (14)
HailToYou from the Anti-War rally - yearly rallies against the Regime
Posted On: Saturday - February 25th 2023 3:28PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Liberty/Libertarianism US Feral Government Kung Flu Stupidity Guns
Mr. E.H. Hail, proprietor of the Hail To You political blog and often Peak Stupidity commenter, has a very nicely written detailed report up with his personal account of the Rage Against the War Machine rally in the FS this past Sunday: Scenes from the anti-war rally in Washington (Feb. 19, 2023). Mr. Hail noted at the beginning that it's a long one, about an hour's worth of reading (about right, per my reading). It is enjoyable reading, and I like the way the writer organized his report. (I am also surprised about the details Mr. Hail was able to report, as I'd have forgotten half of them by the next day, without notes - taking notes, as he did, takes away from the experience for me though, IMO.)
This rally was specifically against the US involvement and support of the Ukraine in its war against Russia, not all wars in general. It wasn't even about their being a war, per se. It's not up to Americans, at least me, to go rallying against a war between the Ukraine and Russia. That's their business, well, or SHOULD BE. However, America had a big part in causing the trouble that started his war, and, if nothing else, we should not be sending $100 Billion and other aid, pushing things toward WWIII, or at least Cold War II.
A couple of more points from the HailToYou article, though I'll make comments there later. I agree with Mr. Hail that the name of the rally was not the best. It sounds hard-leftist. Per this report, the rally had elements of the old-left and the Libertarian Right. Yes, when rallying for a common cause, I can get along to an extent, but it's not like I trust those Commies I'd be standing next to one bit!
I do agree with the effort though and would have considered joining it had work obligations not been already determined. This brings me to mention the series of 3 rallies in the Shithole (that's what we wonks call FS, formerly DC, for short) that have been held, along with a big one in Richmond, Virginia, all over the last 4 years, in 3 January's and a February (the last one).
Actually, I'll go back one full decade before the first, which was a gun rally I attended in northern Virginia just across from Washington, FS in early Spring, AIR, of 2010. It was a fairly small crowd of purposely blatantly armed individuals - rifles for the most part. I'd say there were no more than 50 people there, listening to speakers like the late Mike Vanderboegh. This one did get into the national news for a day or two. It didn't particularly solve anything, as it was just a show of support for Amendment II in general. It was good to be part of it... until 10 miles into the long road trip home, still on Regime property, when the engine quit on the little Ford, due to the failure of a cheap-ass timing belt pulley*.
10 years later, the people of Virginia, being worried about impending additional gun control, staged another of their yearly rallies on Jan 20th, but with this one somehow morphing into a HUGE rally, the likes that had probably never been seen before from the gun rights patriots.
(Peak Stupidity image.)
I was able to attend - see There's great power in numbers - Case study: Richmond, Virginia - but it was purely a lucky thing. The work obligation that weekend took me to a city within 100 miles of Richmond, Virginia. I was able to go, but with the idea that I MUST be back at a certain hour. With all the hype about "violent gun owners", let me tell you, my biggest worry was being able to park the rent-a-car (got lucky on that) and later would I get back through the outbound traffic at the end.
I had a great spot out there in the cold for 2 hours until I got nervous (about making it back!). I did some calculations based on what I saw as roughly 100 people, how big is a crowd of 10 of those, and then how many of those 1,000s filled these streets on one side of the Virginia State House. There were multiple 10's of thousands out there, most of them openly armed. A great time was had by all, and nobody in authority would have tried arresting anyone in it.
A year later, well we all know the date now, a still-President Donald Trump held a rally in protest of the massive cheating in the '20 election. As I wrote that evening, it was only logistics that kept me from going. Better planning a few days before would have had me in the midst of it all. I still don't know if I feel more regret than relief, based on the way the Potomac Regime decided to make an Anarcho-Tyrannical "example" of these "Insurrectionists!" If Peak Stupidity had stopped publishing a few months later, you all would have figured what happened, right? How about tried to break me out? Too soon?
There is too much to write about 1/6/21, but even with the huge crowd (said to have been in the multiple 100's of thousands) at the rally itself, nothing changed for the better afterwards. The cheatfest was let stand, and the frivolity in the Capitol by a small few (as likely planned to a degree by provocateurs** ) resulted in the holding of ~1,000 Political Prisoners and lots of discouragement of those who aren't yet wanting to get violent about it all.
At a time a year later, most Americans had had enough of nearly 2 years of Totalitarianism by Kung Flu PanicFest adherents. Additionally, this was still at the time that Big Biz, government, universities, the military were still mandating, or trying to mandate, the Covid gene therapy shots called vaccines. From what I saw and experienced, Americans were no longer complying, and then there was the trucker convoy in Canada's capital Ottawa, raising hell and enjoying the chance to push back. In January '22, a "Defeat the Mandates" rally was held in FS, as documented by Mr. Hail, who was at that one too: Scenes from the “Defeat the Mandates” rally (Washington D.C., Jan. 23, 2022) and thoughts on its place in Corona-Panic history.
Work again interfered, but I was able to watch some of the talks on video - see our post Dr. Robert Malone and E.H. Hail at the anti-vax-mandate rally. Per Mr. Hail in his post and his excerpt in a comment from one Jeffrey Tucker, there were tens of thousands of protestors, even in that cold weather (as I could tell even on video). My personal opinion differs from Mr. Hail's in that I think the end of the PanicFest and the end of attempts at mandatory vaccination were already coming, protest or not. However, seeing that crowd and those speakers on video, the Totalitarians might have then understood fully that they were not going to win this one.
Someone coincidentally, Lyin' Press media coverage switched within a month to nonstop Ukraine/Russia. I doubt it's that the war was triggered at this point due to the failure in extending the Kung Flu PanicFest another season, but more that the barrage of coverage indicated it would be the new Infotainment for the American masses to take the previous one's place. (By early March of '22, Peak Stupidity asked and answered the question Is the Russia/Ukraine War another piece of Infotainment?)
This latest round of warmongering or war-instigation by the US has not just drained more money and goodwill from this country, with with Nordstream sabotage being part of the latter. It's brought fears of a greater conflict and nuclear war that hasn't been seen since the end of the Cold War.
(Image from E.H. Hail.)
That's yet one more wintertime protest by Americans. This was a smaller crowd, optimistically at 10,000 people***. You can read Mr. Hail's great report to the end to see what his conclusion is on the protest's potential "efficacy", as they say.
That's every winter for 4 years - Americans have had a major beef with the policies and dictates of the Potomac Regime. I agree with the Americans involved in all 4 of them. Well, the 1960s saw protests bigger than these weekly or monthly though. However, they weren't all protests I would have agreed with, many being held simply to help overthrow the system. It didn't need overthrowing then. Now it does.
Let's summarize ... attempts at gun control, massive election fraud, mandatory experimental "vaccine" attempts, and, finally, another war that this broke country is deeply involved in... only the first and last issues rhyme with history, and there were no protests against the 1st back in history. The Potomac Regime has got to go. "Regime Change NOW" ought to be the overarching rallying cry during all protests and rallies to come.
* This was a "non-interference" engine, so the car was able to live another day.
** See Mr. Hail's report of this latest rally for some more of that, albeit of a smaller fashion.
*** Mr. Hail's estimate of the maximum complicated by the fact that people had to leave and come back for food and drink.
Comments (5)
Mexican
Posted On: Friday - February 24th 2023 2:30PM MST
In Topics: Humor Female Stupidity
The Peak Stupidity reader should keep in mind that we are not a "current events" (1970's terminology) or news site. I do have lots of posts in mind on the current political stupidity, but other stupidity that is right up our alley garners attention at times. Here's one.
The headline of this Hollywood Unlocked* page starts out:
OK, OK, another "Dog Bites Man" story or, in this case, "¡Perro** Muerde Hombre!" as the story happened in Ole Mexico. Yes, those Hispanics can get mighty emotional. It works great in Telenovellas***, but in real life... well, I mean, sure, if I found a video on my wife's phone of her with another woman, well, wait, you know what I'm getting at ...
But, you know, there's metadata. Yes, Metadata, the information that comes along with pictures and video, when they were taken, etc. The headline continues:
Now, that there's funny no matter who ya' are... other than, of course, that poor guy who got stabbed due to his wife's being an impulsive retard.
* No, not our type of thing, but I got this story off an Unz Review commenter and went to the source.
** Roll your "r"s, bitchez!
*** There's more where that came from. See here. (It's been a while. Time for another one.)
Comments (4)
Irreconcilable Differences as grounds for a National Divorce
Posted On: Thursday - February 23rd 2023 6:16PM MST
In Topics: Americans US Feral Government Geography President DeSantis
Majorie Taylor Greene - yeah, I see why people are going by initials now - MTG, that is, is a US Congresslady representing the 14th District in Georgia, in the northwest corner of the State. She's a "character" as they say, and we could use more of them. It's not that I agree with every one of her "conspiracy" theories, though I think most are conspiracy facts by now. However what people like MTG do is not necessarily shift the Overton Window left or right, but expand the Overton Window, i.e. get a handyman (she's a woman, after all) to knock out the small window and some wall around it and change it to a big bay window. Here's a tweet from her* that expands the realm of public discussion
It's not like there aren't plenty of pundits and commentators that have brought up secession before, I mean since 1865, that is. MTG, though not long in office, is a well-known Congresswoman. Well known people of the Establishment were obligated to get busy and reply. I don't follow these tweet battles, but they'll bring up the not-so-recent-anymore unpleasantness of the secession attempt by 11 States just over 162 years back Instead of a divorce, that trial separation was squashed by President Lincoln's War, which killed more American men and boys than all others since combined.
There had been attempts to reconcile the differences, mostly economic, but with a moral component, between North and Sound well before 1860, such as the Missouri Compromise. (This is not a history post, so I'll stop there.) Let's just say that in 2023 America, the differences that are causing stress to the union are myriad and between vastly different types of people than was the situation in the Union in 1860. They are the difference between Libertarian and Conservative "just leave us alone" types and power-hungry Totalitarians. They are differences basically between the sane and the insane. Worse yet, each side thinks it is the sane one. I'm no know-it-all, but I'm pretty sure I know which is which.
It was possible to at least discuss the squabbles between sides back up through as late as the mid-1990s (by my estimate). Now, one side wants no discussion whatsoever except via their lawyers... on the courts. The "conversation", as they like to call it, goes only one way. At this point, the differences among Americans irreconcilable. I like the way MTG put it. Irreconcilable Differences is grounds for the big D, Divorce, at least in "no-fault" divorce States.
From the Legal Dictionary**
Definition of Irreconcilable Differences - Noun:Yeah, I mean, on (2) alone, the relationship between the left and right falls under this definition nicely.
1) Differences of opinion or will that cannot be brought into harmony, or cannot be brought into agreement through compromise.
2) A relationship that has become relentlessly hostile.
Is the United State a "no-fault secession nation" though? It's not, per those who prosecuted and wrote most of the history of the War Between the States anyway. Most Americans just assume "ya' can't just do that" for any reason, even infidelity to the Constitution. What would the Supreme Court think of the matter? I think the big fault, pun intended, lies with the Founders for not making it perfectly clear in the US Constitution: Any time you want out, just say the word. (Or in the Moslem version: I secede thee, I secede thee, I secede the.)
I am blessed to have not had any divorces in my immediate or any part of my family. There's a time for divorce, I guess, but when there are kids involved, it's usually a lot more damaging. Custody battles are one thing for 1 or 2 kids, but how about for a nation of 300 million? What States get to keep the Conservatives and what States get stuck with the ctrl-left children? It's a bit more complicated when we are divided like this:
Thank you, commenter Alarmist, for bringing this country-level map to my attention.
More on the custody of the population later.
As a nation we also have a lot more common property than the average family, more even than the Bezoses. Who gets the nukes? Who gets the 300 million acres of the richest farmland in the fruited plain?
Well, in regular divorces, no matter what the cause, the woman gets the house, especially if she is screwing the divorce lawyer. To extrapolate, I suppose the ctrl-left gets the farmland, but then, as with the woman and the house, they can't take care of it themselves to they require more of our money for that. It sounds very onerous for our side, but then, if we can at least keep our guns, we may not feel obligated to keep handing over money. What about the divorce lawyer in this analogy? Could a separation and permanent divorce between States be done amicably, with no lawyers involved.
From all my observations of divorces of people I know, the lawyer's job becomes increasing the animosity between the sides. There is more money to be made that way. In this analogy, the lawyer would be some foreign power, brokering deals with each side but with its own interests really at heart - yep, like a divorce lawyer. Would it be China, perhaps?
Back to the divide of the American population, being done with this analogy stuff, let me discuss the county-level map above. There may be "blue" and "red" States based on recent voting patterns, but,
1) For many States, it's only a few percentage points of difference, meaning the 2 sides are all mixed together within the States.
2) Though mixed together within States, except for white-lefty New England, the black Mississippi valley, and some big deeply Hispanic areas in the southwest, there is a strong city v suburb/rural pattern that shows a clear divide. You can't even split up territory within the States cleanly.
Even though we see the country is mostly "red", with only the cities standing out in blue, in some of the counties the margin of Right over Left is small. Once has to drill down to voting precincts to find out where the compatible people are. Believe me, I have been doing that for a while. Unfortunately, the NY Times great interactive '00-'10 census demographic page was not repeated for '10-'20 due to wokeness, so
How's this divorce going to work, as far as custody goes? Well, we've all heard of over the years, or lived in, sections of States that don't really belong, such as eastern Oregon (east of the Cascades), eastern Washington too for that matter, anything in Illinois outside of Chicago, Florida north of the I-4 being the only Southern part left, and then there's Texas, with a deal they made long ago. These State secessions would not raise the ire of the Potomac Regime as just quitting the Regime would.
In his latest post on VDare, National Divorce—Or State Divorce? Immigration Has Made One Or The Other Inevitable, writer James Fulford discusses these possibilities. That's where I copied the tweet from, but also, it's an interesting article.
This discussion of the carrying out of those dreams of State residents whose territory has the culture of a next-door State brings out 2 big points in my mind:
1) Will people move? Due to the extreme division that's been sown by the hard-core left, I think that's more of a possibility than in the past. Remember that "Free State Project" in which Libertarians were going to flood New Hampshire? Well, it was a nice dream, but I believe it was only 5 thousand or so who moved there for this project, a drop in the bucket even in New Hampshire.
There's a different feeling now after the 2 years of Kung Flu Totalitarianism. The contrasts have been stark - take New York City (please!!!) v Florida. People are moving. California, as nice as the weather and climate is, has become Paradise lost, as business and regulatory "climate", along with not-so-welcoming demographics has caused many people to give up. Exodus II.
There would be a cascading effect. The more of your side known to have moved, the better the new country will look and the worse your old country will be soon enough. Our family would really like to see this divorce, or these divorces, get finalized, so we can pick an appropriate spot.
2) Federalism! Without the kind of Federalist attitude, as in standing up to Feral Gov't pressure and resisting the bribery via their money and programs with strings attached, this won't work. That's why Peak Stupidity is such a fan of future President DeSantis, as he understands this, and he fights, and he wins.
I suppose it'd be OK in future "Blue America", but for those in the potential free zones, nothing changes for the better unless the State government has guts and resists. Otherwise, it's "OK, we have, errr, are allowed, higher speed limits, and you can drink beer and wine at 18 y/o again... blah, blah." Whoop-di-freaking-do!
This is the hard part. The Potomac Regime won't let go easily, and maybe will try a repeat of 1861. Good luck to us all!
* Screenshot, not an actual, physical tweet.
** Disclaimer: Peak Stupidity's legal team cannot verify and guarantee all information therein, as they are too involved at the present time with our class action face Chinese diaper failure litigation.
Comments (11)
More info on the J6 Political Prisoners
Posted On: Wednesday - February 22nd 2023 7:03PM MST
In Topics: US Police State US Feral Government Anarcho-tyranny
Peak Stupidity has not written nearly enough about the 1,000 or so Political Prisoners that have been held in the Potomac Regime's Federal Shithole, some for 2 years now.. In November of '21, we posted The 1/6 Political Prisoners will NOT be sung of in a U-2 song. Much more recently, on the 2-year anniversary of the protesting, with minor rioting, about the fraudulent '20 Presidential election, we posted Two years later, Political Prisoners still held in Washington, FS.
One must search out this stuff. It's not like any of the mainstream Lyin' Press outlets are keeping anyone informed of this. Were this happening in some Latin American country or Russia (but not the Ukraine), Americans would be reminded daily of how many people were being held in some nasty conditions by near animals as guards and for how long so far. Nope, the protest, riot, and merrymaking in the Capitol was called an "Insurrection!" to both fool the gullible into thinking it was serious business and to teach what happens to "insurrectionists"*, were there any.
I got more information today, an article by one Cat McGuire** (a she) in The Occidental Observer, Report from Washington: DC Gulag Vigil for January 6 Political Prisoners. I am proud of and thankful for political gadfly Ron Unz's having posted the article here on his Unz Review website. There are nearly 100 comments there (The Occidental Observer has only 8 as of now.) At the bottom of the article, Miss McGuire has links to more coverage and groups that actually care about this Anarcho-Tyranny and these Political Prisoners.
There are vigils every night outside the DC Central Detention Facility, which were started by the murdered Ashli Babbitt's Mom back last August. I'm hoping to have a chance to visit with these "Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, and Brothers of the Disappeared" sometime.
I thank Cat McGuire, The Occidental Observer Editor Kevin McDonald, and Ron Unz for shining a little light on the fate of these people subjected to the worst of the Anarcho-Tyranny from the Potomac Regime (so far). I have the usual JFK quote that applies here in the 1st footnote below.
* There is indeed a lesson to be learned. That would be, if you end up part of a REAL insurrection, you may as well go all the way. John F. Kennedy tried to tell them "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable."
** Her bio-blurb makes her my kind of gal (politically): Cat McGuire is a freedom activist in New York City with a focus on opposing vaccine mandates, ID passports, and the New World Order Great Reset. In New York City, no less! That's way behind enemy lines. She was also at the Jan. 6, '21 rally but not inside the Capitol (or she'd have had to be writing this report on toilet paper using blood).
Comments (5)
More on Univ. of Wisconsin polling - to suck up or not to suck up?
Posted On: Tuesday - February 21st 2023 9:50AM MST
In Topics: University Political Correctness ctrl-left
... that's the survey question.
A week ago, we showed some polling data from the University of Wisconsin student body that demonstrated how anti-Liberty and downright Communistic these young people are. ("How they are indoctrinated", I could say instead.) The information Peak Stupidity used was taken from this Steve Sailer post: https://www.unz.com/isteve/little-sister-is-watching-you/.*
I want to comment here on one more of the poll questions.
I had to shrink-to-fit, so, I'll repeat the graph title in text here: Percent of students who have not expressed their views because they worried the instructor would give them a lower grade.
The way it's worded means it could have been any Professor of any class in 4 years who had a Totalitarian attitude that discouraged the pollee from speaking up. Here are the answers grouped and averaged by student ideology:
Anyone who's spent time at a university, even going back 40 years, would have seen which particular fields of study ("study" nowadays being defined kind of loosely) have the more ctrl-left Professors The ctrl-left is not tolerant and doesn't even claim to be "liberty loving" these days, and going back to since they got complete control of the Institutions and became The Establishment. OTOH, part of being a Conservative, at least on the old-America-style Libertarian side of it, means one is tolerant of differing opinions.
So those handful of Conservative Professors aren't the ones directly or indirectly threatening the students with lower grades if they speak up in opposition. The ctrl-left ones are. So, there's your graph. It's not that the "Very Lib" contingent are so much more courageous than, or care about grades less than, the "Very Con" contingent. They just have the entire Establishment, including most Professors, on their side.
Going along with the economic factors - the worthlessness of most "Liberal Arts" and "Studies" degrees along with the huge amount of taxpayer money students are borrowing, there's another reason to either major in Science, Engineering, IT, or Math these days or just not attend a university. It's 2 things at once. One will not just stay away from most of the modern Woke stupidity, but one doesn't have to worry about it much if it pops up, and he isn't about to take it bending over.
To explain better, firstly, the Professors in STEM** are still generally more Conservative. The people that end up teaching Engineering or Math simply cannot be as dumb as most of those teaching Womyn's Studies or Psychology. Therefore, they don't fall for the Woke stupidity (though they may still be cowardly about it). Just as importantly, the STEM classes have objective rather than subjective subject matter. Yeah, this one Math Prof may be a left-wing kook and gets pissed off when you disabuse him of his political stupidity. However, if you solve the Differential Equation correctly, well, it's right. PERIOD. What can the guy do?
How to get those easy A's in those 10 electives you also took to meet girls in as lectured to by the Woke ctrl-left types, now that's another story. Do you suck it up or raise hell? Depends on your GPA, I guess.
PS: We briefly mentioned 3 weeks back in Chinese v American U-Students - Round 2: Current Campus, one fun activity for a grad student who is allowed to "audit" other classes - meaning no extra tuition and no grade - just for learning and .. heh, yeah, that's the ticket. This activity would be your auditing of the sickest, wokest class of the sickest, Wokest Professor at the whole school. You raise your hand a lot to argue anything you don't damn well agree with. Fun would be had by all! ... errr, you and your friend and hopefully a handful of regular student sympathizers! What would happen next? PS Legal says we shouldn't have even mentioned this to begin with.
* BTW, pro-White activist Jared Taylor posted Women Are the New Thought Police a day later, based on the same poll and also on The Unz Review. Mr. Taylor's style is different from iSteve's, but I like it, and there are 290 comments there (I haven't read) vs. iSteve's ~190. (Ron Unz put Jared Taylor's post up top for a day or two.)
** I really don't like the term much.
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Rage Against the War Machine Rally
Posted On: Saturday - February 18th 2023 3:52PM MST
In Topics: Liberty/Libertarianism US Feral Government
I am not able to go to this one due to obligations. I'm sure if you are, you didn't need to see this from Peak Stupidity the night before. Hopefully we'll see a big crowd on video.
Ron Paul will be there. Per his latest column:
The “Rage Against The War Machine” rally promises to be the first large-scale rally against Washington’s aggressive war lobby in many years. I am looking forward to sharing the stage with my good friends and former House colleagues Dennis Kucinich and Tulsi Gabbard, as well as my good friend and fellow libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano, and so many more speakers from a broad political spectrum.I am glad to see this happening. Good luck to all in attendance!
Comments (17)
The Solution to Pollution is Dilution
Posted On: Saturday - February 18th 2023 3:31PM MST
In Topics: Media Stupidity Environmental Stupidity Geography Science Zhou Bai Dien
The Chemical Engineers really like this expression. There are some really nasty pollutants, and if you want to call them pollutants too, long 1/2-life radioactive materials, that take a hell of a lot of dilution to be safe, which we're really better off not creating in the first place. Most times this "solution" works though, at least in the long run.
There's been some BS written about that E. Palestine, Ohio derailment and mess of pollutants released from those on the right even. I do get that what they see is a government that doesn't care* about ACTUAL down-to-earth (and into the water and sky) pollution that has hurt a town full of White people**. This is while for decades now, the ctrl-left especially has spent many orders of magnitude more money, screwing with the whole energy sector of the economy, and caused little children and mindless adults tons of worry on, for, and about a non-existent problem, that Climate Crisis™. We discussed this great distortion in priorities here yesterday.
I'm hearing my wife quoting people telling their anti-Social Media friends to not buy food from Ohio, don't buy bottled water from anywhere around, etc., etc. First of all, I had to explain to her that Ohio is not a big irrigation State. They get plenty of rain, unlike the western Great Plains.
All that great soil in central and northern Ohio is not lost. East Palestine is right up to the border of the W. Virginian panhandle, and, besides 1/2 mile strips of bottomland in a few places, the Ohio River is surrounded by hills, not farmland. In this town a small creek, Sulphur Run (they call them "runs" in that part of the country), merges with another creek, Leslie Run, which flows south to the Ohio River ~10 miles south (10 miles directly, not river miles).
Though it's being dug out up to 7 ft. down in places, locally there may be some nasty, ruined land. We're talking mostly within a few hundred yards, I'd guess. Particulates may land further away, but that's not a big problem. The air clears up quickly, though that's no consolation for those there in the thick of it on that day. The water? The local creeks might be damaged for a while. But, yeah, the solution to pollution is dilution. This is not a continuous polluting process, such as in the future-rust-belt cities that commenter Adam Smith mentioned back through the 1970s. Could you detect any of this stuff way downstream on the Ohio River down to Paducah, Evansville, or even Cincinnati, even right now? (Or when it gets there via the flow.) How about in a month?
Another thing I've read is "see, they (Bai Dien) blocked the pipeline construction, so this stuff had to go by rail, and look what?" Nah, nobody's going to build some long pipeline specifically for transport of Vinyl Chloride from this point A to B. It doesn't work like that.
This is not Chernobyl II. I don't like hearing the hype on the right side of the usual political divide any more than the ignoring of the story while spouting the Climate Crisis! stupid on the left side. Suffice it to say that we are not past getting harmed by actual pollution, and this story is bigger, yes, than some Chinese balloon. The fact that the Bai Dien administration has been ignoring East Palestine, Ohio says something else, something about their priorities, who they care or don't care about.
PS: Now, about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttedge and this story. Yeah, there's a story there involving the continual downsizing of personnel in the rail business and likely shoddier operations due to that AA thing cropping up again.*** (I didn't want my post to get so long, but I will say that Andrew Anglin did get into this last aspect nicely at the end of his post - the one I linked to before.)
* I should say still doesn't but now pretends to. Donald Trump is good for some things. What I've read is that since he made his plans to visit the town of East Palestine next week, the Bai Dien administration decided to release some funds. Trump's mouth is worth a lot more than his actions, kind of contrary to the old saying.
** From the '10 census, per Wiki: The racial makeup of the city was 98.2% White, 0.2% African American, 0.1% Native American, 0.3% Asian, 0.4% from other races, and 0.7% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.9% of the population. Whewwhooo!
*** We've been on this too, with Harvesting the fruits of a half-century of Affirmative Action: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3: Andecdotal Interlude - - Part 4 and Part 5.
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Rent control during inflationary times
Posted On: Friday - February 17th 2023 8:12PM MST
In Topics: Economics Inflation Zhou Bai Dien
This is a point that should have been made in our initial post on the effort of Zhou Bai Dien and the Congressional Commies to implement national rent control. Those pushing this obviously unConstitutional - but who cares? - rent control will be the first to tell you the purported reason* for it is that, due to inflation, the rent is too high!
Well, we know, but they may be too stupid to know, price inflation is a given when you increase the money supply without a corresponding increase in productivity. Whatever, that "wage/price spiral" deal is not the cause but a symptom, and the rental market is not immune to that sort of thing. Costs go up, so the rent has got to go up. What are the biggest costs? Property taxes are right on up there, other than the initial cost of the property, which, of course, must be considered. You've got maintenance costs, and you've got insurance, and sometimes utility bills. (I think it best to leave those for the tenants or they will naturally be wasteful with said utilities.)
It so happens, Peak Stupidity has calculated some numbers that apply in various old posts. In Checking in on Housing Bubble 2.0- Bubble or just high inflation?, we saw a 7.6% annual compounded** inflation rate in the '12-'20 period for housing in 20 American big cities. You've got to cover your payments, or if a rental house has been paid off, get your money back out in a profitable manner.
In the post Real life inflation anecdotal-data(?) beside some bean and soup calculations***, we did a calculation on the ubiquitous 2x4, as a stand-in for building materials, and came up with 3.5% - 4% (Note, this was before the recent HUGE price increases.) In On Inflation, Oil, and Roofing Shingles, we came up with a 7% average yearly increase over an 18 year period. Well, you need drywall, and paint, but I can guarantee you, especially for the latter, that they've gone way up too.
In case you cover utilities as a landlord, Peak Stupidity covered that, with just our own local example over a 22-23 year period, in Inflation Note: Utility Bills. Water/Sewer: Base Fee up 6.9%, Charge per ft3 up 4.2%. Electricity: Base Fee up 4.5%, Charge per kW-hr up 2.6%.
I haven't done house insurance calculations, but I can give you a number now based on apples-to-apples over a few decades. I got 3.3%. "Yeah, but the house has gone up." Yeah, but you still gotta pay it.
So, before the recent inflation surge due to the recent US Gov't higher-spending spree, a landlord's costs were going up 4% to 6%. He's gotta raise the rent accordingly to keep up financially. Zhou Bai Dien and the Commies are trying to prevent his doing so, just as costs are going through the (expensively-shingled) roof. This would take houses off the rental market and keep many a small guy from even getting started.
What about the big guys, the Blackrocks and the institutional investors? Won't they have a problem too? No, the lawmakers will make sure that they are exempted, because anyone who follows the new rules will be, except that these new rules will specify special legal or financial requirements that the small guy can't handle. That's the way ya' do it. Moova, moova.
* The real reasons are to gain more control of the population and help wipe out the small businessman, oh, and get votes and grift money.
** For all of these calculations, compounding has been included.
*** That's at least the 2nd time I wrote a post after having forgotten I'd written about the same point. Our recent post Inflation Note: Chicken Soup for the toll was about Campbell's soup as was one section in that "Real life..." post. I used different time frames, hence, prices, but the inflation numbers matched - average 3.5% to 3.9% yearly.
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Derailments and Bai Dien's coming, Pollution in Ohio
Posted On: Friday - February 17th 2023 2:58PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Pundits Environmental Stupidity Zhou Bai Dien
... actually, Bai Dien is not coming. He's tried to ignore this disaster, along with the Lyin' Press, the latter per the pundit described herein. Bai Dien does "vow accountability" however, something kind of at odds with all the diversity and stuff ... so there's (not) that ...
As weird or even perverse as it may seem to the average American, the staff of Peak Stupidity is proud of our ignorance of the daily stream of Infotainment projectile vomit emitting* from the mainstream media, aka, Lyin' Press. So, we don't know what has officially been the big story recently, other than by gathering the gist of it 2nd-hand off blogs. However, the pundit Andrew Anglin does. He says The Entire Ohio River May be Poisoned for Generations and the Media Is Talking About Balloons** No, probably not, regarding the former, but, regarding the latter, I will take his word for it.
I'm guessing Andrew Anglin is on the internet for more time than the time most people sleep, shower, eat, and rake leaves combined. I've written about this well-known pundit before - see Andrew Anglin and Anti-Social Media - and if I didn't expressly state it, let me here state that he comes across as a juvenile know-it-all. (Yeah, we get juvenile here on occasion, but not full time, and we neither know it all nor claim to.) Mind you, I'm glad a guy like this can still be on the internet - thanks, Ron Unz. His writing is mostly Conservative, and he speaks a lot of truth that most pundits won't touch.
I don't read him for his personality as I described, in addition to my experience that he'll have posts consisting solely of a series of tweets. That's just worthless to me. However, I was drawn to this one post, as Mr. Anglin will have a good point here, a know-it-all piece of erroneous stupidity there, and then come back to another good point.
I think Mr. Anglin's error in his point per the title is in not understanding what Infotainment is all about. No, the Ein groß weißer Luftballon story was not the modern-day Sputnik. It was almost pure entertainment and likely more interesting to the public than the nasty polluted mess from the East Palestine, Ohio tank car derailment story, cause, pretty balloons! That would be the public far away from East Palestine, Ohio.
Yes, the spilling and emitting of actual pollutants into the air, water, and onto the soil SHOULD be a big story. Would it not have been were this 1973, 1983, or 1993? It would most certainly be bigger because real, ACTUAL environmental concerns were one of the big issues from the time of the first Earth Day in 1970 and before. Peak Stupidity has seen the other side of that huge movement, in which entire industries were nearly destroyed, such as logging in the Pacific Northwest, due to the great excesses of the movement. That's not to mention that there were people, as usual, that none dare to call by the proper term, whose basic goal is to destroy industry in America. However, the discussion was about reality, not fantasy, at least.
Back to the story, there were 20 tank cars full of hazardous materials in that long (3 Locomotives, and 150 cars, all but 9 loaded) Norfolk Southern northbound train passing through E. Palestine, OH. 14 of them were filled with Vinyl Chloride, used for making a material we all know, PVC plastic. That harmful pollutant spilled out, and then Phosphene and Hydrogen Chloride gas were emitted, along with Dioxins into the soil and Ohio River. Additionally, and the only thing visible in the picture, there were big plumes of particulates when the material burned, accidentally, then on purpose to avoid a possible explosion***.
I want to point out in a quick post later my thoughts on the overkill regarding coverage from the Right regarding what I don't really believe is any new Chernobyl. Yes, it's a mess though, and isn't it strange that it's those on the Right, Conservatives, who think this is a bigger story than the Left? There is that definition of Conservatism and the term Conservation (of the environment) ought to make Conservatives the biggest of the tree huggers. In some ways, they DO conserve, as per Ducks Unlimited and other wildlife and hunting organizations. The Left likes to mouth off and won't put any of their money down.
The main thing is, back 50 years ago, the Big Biz big polluters that had Lake Erie, Love Canal, etc. nasty enough to be able to be set on fire (not really) were part of the Conservative establishment. Conservatives didn't want to mess with success, economic success that is. The Left was glad to bring Big Biz down whatever the excuse, and some of it was legitimate. Now, it's a whole different story. Big Biz is just one of all the Institutions of the Left Establishment, not to be criticized now by the Left. They'll let this stuff slide ... just dioxins, you know, and just Ohio... do you remember when those chemicals were brought up by environmentalists all the time?
Here's my big point, which is much more important than balloons vs. train explosions. Let's compare this type of ACTUAL environmental disaster to the long-term FAKE environmental disaster known as the Climate Calamity™****, aka, Global Cooling, aka, Global Warming, aka Climate Change, aka, Global Climate Disruption™****, now known outside of Peak Stupidity as The Climate Crisis!
There in eastern Ohio, the W. Virginia panhandle, and western Pennsylvania, people will be dealing with real, known, dangerous chemical pollutants. This is not even the more vague but still actual polluting substances like Sulfur, compounding with Oxygen to make acid rain, general particulate matter out of smoke stacks, and Nitrogen oxides produced from not-so-perfect combustion. We'd have heard all the names of the acute pollutants from this train derailment daily, were this the 1970s.
Instead, for the last 20 years, going on 30, we are barraged with talk about Carbon Freaking Dioxide. It is a part of the atmosphere, and it's simply NOT a pollutant in any way. The term "carbon" (rather than CO2), "pollutant" and "emissions" are used to fool the non-Chemistry-inclined (or those whose chemistry involves the intake of chemicals with very long names) into thinking we're talking soot or that stuff that people inhale to die in their garages, something you should NEVER inhale, and the production of said substance, respectively.
I will write another post about the subject in the last paragraph, as it deserves more explanation, and there's an AC/DC song involved. Let me give the reader some links - in footnotes - to posts Peak Stupidity got on near the beginning of the blog, when we tackled Global Climate Stupidity. We thought we'd done a good job, but it got back up fighting since then and since the conclusion of the Kung Flu PanicFest.
Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant. I DO understand the theory of Greenhouse Gases, involving radiation heat transfer at different wavelengths. Yes, CO2 is a "Greenhouse Gas". Yes,
The Climate hysterics will tell you that Weather is not Climate. They are right on that. Weather is a chaotic process, explaining why, with the exception of the desert or the North Pole, any forecast claiming to be for a week ahead is bullshit. Climate, based on energy balance calculations is not chaotic like that, but it's still very complicated. CO2 as a Greenhouse Gas is but a small part in a big complicated picture.
Why would this small factor that might just possibly effect the climate in some way that could be overpowered by lots of other factors, with no immediate danger and not even any solid evidence of ANY effect be this BIG news story, going on for decades, 10 or 50 times longer than any of the actual pollution stories? It's not just the Infotainment value, as with the white balloon out of China. No, it's that the Climate Calamity™ has been determined to be very useful to the Globalists and the Communists to ruin yet another country, the grand prize, in fact. You can scare some of the really gullible, cough, Greta, cough, cough, into really believing that Carbon Dioxide is dangerous like a cloud of thick black smoke and Hydrogen Chloride and Phosphene. For the rest, even if they aren't really worried, so long as they go along****** with the scam, this allows for control of the huge energy market, thus control of entire industries and control of occupations, livelihoods, and ways of life.
Granted, it's a long trip on a riverboat down from Pittsburgh, but could little Greta Thunberg give just a little thought to the REAL pollution and the REAL folks down in East Palestine, Ohio instead of some fantasy pollutant? I'd like to hear from her after she protests inside that thick black smoke plume. Hopefully it would shut her up... for a while.
* Haha, more on "emitting" shortly or in the next post.
** Then, a day later, he noted East Palestine Train Debacle Finally Hits the Top News.
*** Some sort of stuck relief valve on one of the burning cars.
**** These 2 are Peak Stupidity coined terms. I like my last one best, due to the nice alliteration.
***** The series of short posts, There is no working mathematical model of the world's climate, dammit! ,are here: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - Part 4 and Part 5
****** Regarding the scientists' and journalists' role in the Global Climate Stupidity, see the old series Global Climate Disruption™ - The Politics: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - Part 4 and Part 5 .
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[UPDATED 02/21:] Added link to previous PS post about Andrew Anglin, which I'd forgotten.
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Comments (9)
Commies gonna Commie - National Rent Control
Posted On: Thursday - February 16th 2023 8:33AM MST
In Topics: Commies California Economics Zhou Bai Dien
Back in early fall of the 1st year of the Kung Flu PanicFest, Peak Stupidity related some specific Totalitarianism in California. I know, it's California, but I always try to remember that, just like I don't blame myself for some of the stupid political stuff in my State, there is a decent-sized minority of Californians that are not responsible for the stupidity there.
That Oct. '20 post is titled Xia Den Flu De. Firstly, that was another attempt at Pin Yin due to Chinese people being involved in the story, and this time I tried to represent a long German word. (Give it a shot, c'mon!) See, the Chinese people in California, who, as a whole, probably voted right around the State's 3:1 ratio, D to R, were bitching cause, "State control" and "Totalitarianism". Reap what you sow, bitches! (In general, of course!)
The California government was prohibiting evictions of tenants who were paying at least 25% of their rent owed. You know, Covid-19. Can't make money, because the government banned that. Can't pay the rent then. Can't collect rent either. Still gotta pay property tax - luckily Covid-19 didn't affect it. Covid-19 didn't cut off the electricity/gas and water, so you still gotta pay. Tenants still destroy stuff - Covid-19 didn't affect that. Hard to come out anything but behind, but you can't evict people either. What CAN'T Government screw up?!
Rent control is more government intrusion into the market, but it's been around in certain places long, long before the Kung Flu. I won't say where this was, but I experienced the joys of this screwage of the free market. It was very hard to rent a room in this place in which it was hard for a prospective landlord to come out ahead. I would go to check out a place for rent per an ad and see 5 people already on the porch when I got there. They could be picky, so there's that.
"Let me see your references."
"Here ya' go."
"What's your favorite color?"
"Blue."
"Would that be light blue or dark blue?"
"Uhhh, light blue."
"OK, that's it. GTF off the porch."
When I finally did rent a decent place, just out of pure luck - a guy ahead of me bailed out after a week - the landlady begged me when election day came around "please vote these Communists out!"
The town in question did have more than its share of Communists too, especially for many years ago. Well, that story above is just California, so you know ... Now, I read that AOC and company want Zhou Bai Dien to take rent control nationwide. Per Rick Moran of PJ Media, Biden Makes First Move Toward a Radical National Rent Control Law.
Wait, Bai Dien can't make law though. Why don't AOC and Fauxahontas (yeah, she's involved) write up a proposed bill instead. Uhh, well, it's not like that anymore, see...
Under the Biden plan, the president is directing the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to look at limits “for future investments and actions promoting renter protections,” according to a report in Yahoo Finance.They need more control to be able to place those deserving of it into people's rental property. They got just the guy to do it, too:
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have been enlisted to “root out practices that unfairly prevent applicants and tenants from accessing or staying in housing,” according to the report.
Specifically, lawmakers had called on the president to direct the FTC to issue new regulations defining excessive rent increases and enforce actions against rent gouging*, suggestions that are [morel ] aggressive than what the administration has so far put forth. The letter also asked to have FHFA put in place rent protection for tenants living in properties financed with government-backed mortgage properties, which is more closely aligned with what the president outlined on Wednesday.Note those strings attached for government-backed mortgages, always with the negative strings, Moriarity. It doesn't have to stop there. There is nothing protecting landlords who may fully own their property from being screwed over by government interference. Rick Moran explains the stupidity from a Libertarian, small-government perspective:
Since the beginning of the republic, laws governing rent and leases have been local matters. If a landlord is cheating renters, local and state governments have the authority and the tools to punish the landlord. And being much closer to the problems of renters and landlords than anyone in Washington, local and state governments have a much better handle on the local rental housing situation.Yep. Then, the writer quotes radical Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in railing against "corporate profiteering" I really surprised it's still not so corporate as Mr. Moran notes:
But now, the federal government doesn’t believe that landlords should be compensated for owning rental property. They’re “gouging” renters. This is after more than two years of preventing landlords from evicting renters for non-payment of rent. And in a period of rapidly rising inflation, landlords are being accused of “profiteering” at the expense of renters.
It’s a ridiculous charge given that 98 percent of all rental property owners, or 80 percent of all rental properties, are owned by small business entrepreneurs who own five units or fewer, according to a study in Business Wire.Yeah, well, they're working on that. I don't know if Rep Bowman is stupid or just the usual lyin' sack of shit, as Big Biz landlords like Black Rock are not going to be adversely affected by your rent control schemes. They help MAKE the laws and influence any move Bai Dien makes. The little guys will get screwed and maybe give up, making it even harder for a decent tenant family to rent a decent place. Big Biz and the deadbeats will be just fine though.
The writer doesn't go far enough in his explanation for what's going on, IMO. Perhaps Rick Moran has not read all that ancient Chinese
That's where we're at now. This may turn into anti-Commie week here at Peak Stupidity, as I sure see the way it's been going.
* Peak Stupidity's take on price gouging. (Spoiler Alert: We're FOR IT!)
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