Reader Friend Suggestion: Judge shopping for re- and pro-active Reverse Lawfare
Posted On: Saturday - April 26th 2025 4:12PM MST
In Topics: Trump US Feral Government ctrl-left Legal Stupidity
(I was glad to see that when I'd typed in "Boasberg Judge i..." for "images", google suggested impeachment.)
In my mind, the judicially obstructionist strategy of the ctrl-left was even worse during Trump-45, but, after the initial Trump-47 E.O. Blitzkrieg, it's baaaaaaackkkk! We may see much more of it, just based on the fact that Trump has been getting a LOT more done this time, or in some areas just trying harder. It's been only 4 months, and I don't think President Trump had this many policies at least STARTED in 4 years last go-around.
Will no one rid of us these turbulent Commies? For Henry II, just asking the question may have greatly helped answer it in the affirmative. For American Conservatives, we like to stay within the law. As much as the commies of the ctrl-left stretch the law way beyond the spirit of it to fight us, we may need to fight back in the same manner.
A long-term friend and Peak Stupidity reader has an idea on this matter. He's been trying to get someone, ANYONE, to at least explain why it won't work, if there's a reason. If not, why can't the Trump Administration adopt these ideas?
Here's Coulda Had Lee Rille (NOT his real name) with his idea:
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I've had this idea since Trump's first term to deal with anti-constitutional lawfare (e.g. Boasberg, Friedman, many others) that attempts to usurp executive powers at the hands of a few black-robed unelected "judges". The problem's gotten so ridiculous now that I'm compelled to find some way to get this seemingly obvious idea out there. It seems so simple and obvious to me, but in all this time (7 or 8 years now), I've not seen ONE person online, in the media, or in government mention it. That makes me think there must be some technical or legal reason that it's not even being mentioned.
There are two versions of the strategy. The first might be called "reactive" and is considerably simpler. The second might be called "proactive" and would require more planning and thinking, even before an Executive Order is issued. The "reactive" version assumes that one can bring a complaint or case to a federal "district" court, even though a fairly similar complaint has already been brought (and possibly ruled on) in another district.
Reactive: Once a lame injunction or ruling has been dictated in a leftwing activist judge-shopped district, you get a plaintiff(s) to bring a similar complaint to a "conservative or constitutional" judge in a different district. Hopefully, a ruling is then soon made which runs counter to the first ruling. At that point, the prez can safely say "We've got one judge that says "A", and another that says "B", and they conflict with each other severely. The only reasonable thing to do is to keep the order in place until one or both rulings are possibly appealed to the Supremes."
Proactive: Before the latest EO is signed, people in or near the administration brainstorm and try to predict the most likely case or complaint that a crazy leftwing group and lawyer might use to defeat said EO in court. Find some plaintiff(s) to bring that complaint/case to a conservative or originalist judge (reverse judge shopping, as it were!). Hopefully said complaint will be quickly struck down. At that point, if the ACLU (or other anti-American activist group) brings a similar case elsewhere - and it results in the inevitable injunction or "temporary blocking" of the EO - you're back in the situation of saying "hey, we've got two judges saying two totally contradictory things on this, so we're forced to just keep the EO in effect until an appeal is made and ruled on."
Note, the main reason to go with the "proactive" version is if it's somehow illegal or "against process" to bring a complaint to a district judge if a "similar" complaint has already been brought (and possibly ruled on) in a different district. I apologize for my lack of legal process knowledge and language. I'm just hoping some legally knowledgeable people out there might explain why some version of this strategy has not been implemented. BTW, it would also work for a Democratic administration, but they don't seem to have this judicial activist issue hitting them in the face every week or two (probably because there are so many leftwing activist Federal judges that only care about party and politics).
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I hope Mr. Had Lee Rille will get some help from either Peak Stupidity readers or elsewhere. (I'm gonna put it in the next Steve Sailer Open Thread.)
Have a good Sunday, Peakers. We'll be back with plenty more next week.
Comments (9)
REAL ID - Zee deadline iss approaching, Comrades
Posted On: Friday - April 25th 2025 10:39PM MST
In Topics: US Police State Liberty/Libertarianism Orwellian Stupidity
Back in the day, one would make fun of attempts to implement an American Police State using German or Russian sounds, seeing as a) Those were the Police States people were most familiar with, b) Nobody knows how to even attempt at making fun of Chinese, and c) We didn't have our own Police State yet here, so we didn't just write in plain English. Oh, and, as with that Monty Python Communist Quiz Show skit, we often confuse Russian sounds with German ones. (I do, anyway.)
Peak Stupidity mentioned the continual extensions of this Orwellian REAL ID bull twice already. Oddly, but maybe not, the 1st post, Reprieve on the Illuminati ID* - written in Fall '21 about the extension of the '20 deadline, was not mentioned in the 2nd post Illuminati ID delayed. Peak Stupidity delighted., written at the end of '22, about the extension of the then-coming '23 deadline. Yes, we forgot we'd written the 1st one.
I swear I'd seen a sign extending the May '25 deadline earlier this year, but maybe that was in a dream sequence. Alas, per Ron Paul, who keeps up and hates this stuff as much as anyone, in REAL ID: Phony Security, Real Authoritarianism - this time's for REAL.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem must not be much of a Patriot, since she's enforcing this deadline. Actually, anyone who'd work at a "Homeland Security" department, speaking of old Police States in history, is by definition not a Patriot. Ron Paul notes the various ways the REAL ID can and will be used against you (no court required), but he also added:
REAL ID could even be the final piece of the transformation of America into a total surveillance society where government monitors, and thus controls, our actions.I don't see this as the final piece. Peak Stupidity readers may know that the transition to a cashless society is one of our niche issues (check out the US Police State or Orwellian Stupidity topic keys). Control of who may buy and sell sounds like the final piece, or at least it is from what I've read.
Back in '08, when this REAL IDea was first trotted out, we did not yet carry the pieces of iEspionage that willingly send in all the info about us that iCrap designers and Globalist control freaks can imagine. What's REAL ID compared to that? Still...
My driver's license had gotten so worn out already 2 years back - it fared better before, in my wallet made out of duct tape! - that the cop the other month had to look it up. I went in a few weeks ago and got a non-Illuminati license (even the black ladies at the Highway Dept. seem to understand that terminology). However, it still expires in a year, so what next?
Here's hoping the airports are full of loud, pissed-off passengers who are being turned away by the TSA in a couple of weeks. Maybe the Feral Gov. control-freaks will back off on this yet another time. The deadline looms ...
* There are some great driver's license (or NOT) stories from Adam Smith in the comments thereunder.
Comments (7)
The 5150 Skil Saw
Posted On: Thursday - April 24th 2025 11:23AM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap Americans
#CommissionEarned-KerChing! [/Instapundit's wife] We don't do sales here. It's a shame though, that we can't recommend the Peak Stupidity reader go out and buy the (original, not generic-termed) Skil Saw shown above. They don't make stuff like that anymore, though there are a few on ebay.
I'm pretty sure I paid $30 for this made-in-America circular ("Skil") saw in 1990. That's when I got to doing a lot of wood projects. I would say that equals $100 for a saw in today's money, but you'll unfortunately still be getting TODAY's saw - probably Cheap China-made Crap. Do you have a choice now?
We had to cut some 14 gauge sheet metal - that's only .074" or so. I got the right blade, pulled the saw out from the shop, swapped out blades, and guess what? The saw doesn't care what year it is. It doesn't get on the internet and talk to my phone about updates. It just RUNS. Same as it ever was.
OK, sure, the thing is mostly just a big electric motor, but the spring-loaded safety cover has some screws and that torsion spring, there are electrical connectors, and there's the safety trigger mechanism* and pieces of obviously very durable plastic. I haven't replaced a single part and haven't had to do ANYTHING. It just runs. That WAS America.
Americans under 40 y/o, much less foreigners, have no memory/idea of how it used to be. It's difficult trying to convince people that, YES, quality stuff can be and did get built in America. I mentioned experiences with my long-owned American-made mower and desk lamp already. I just started the 1992-built Murray/Briggs&Stratton mower for the season. (I even gave it some new oil- no NOT the good stuff, though I feel terrible about that.) I've given up on it before, but It never gives up. I've also given example of household appliances/equipment that lasts 3-4 decades in comments elsewhere.
Could America ever build good stuff again? I'm not sure myself. President Trump's efforts, no matter how Reality-TV-style they are, will help us find out.
In the meantime, I've bought old Ryobi tools (saws, both) from an estate sale. I expect they will work well. They were made 30 years ago, and per the instructions that were actually in GOOD ENGLISH (ONLY!), they were "Made in USA". (The funny thing is that I'd long thought that name was Japanese.) However, as with selling each other gourmet hamburgers and craft beer to support the Service Economy, I don't think the purchasing of good power tools from estate sales by Americans who want durable goods is SUSTAINABLE. (If I may borrow that word from the tree-huggers.)
PS: The Skil saws - no matter what brand - are one type of the more dangerous of hand power tools, IMO**. That aside, we used eye protection for the steel, and it's the only thing (when cutting wood) that's loud enough at the right frequency to make me consider putting foamies in my ears. Nope, our lawyers didn't make me write that.
* I'm not sure about all of them, but this one has a push switch for one's thumb that unlocks the trigger. Now that I'm not using it and have put it up, I have to think about it, but I believe after you've unlocked the trigger you don't have to stay on that unlock switch.
** Perhaps a Sawzall "beats" the Skil saws in this respect - I haven't used mine enough yet.
Comments (9)
Bad luck streak in Traffic School
Posted On: Wednesday - April 23rd 2025 3:26PM MST
In Topics: Humor US Police State Cars
Continued from our post Good luck streak in Traffic School of 6 years back, only because, yeah, our streak of good luck has been broken. (The titles come from the great title of a music album by the late Warren Zevon, to be honest.)
Who coulda' seen this coming? I've been doing any speed I felt comfortable with, rolling through stop signs with open views, whatever, for 15 years now and no blue lights ever appeared in the rear view mirror. I was under the impression that sort of thing didn't happen anymore. It didn't used to be like that, I can tell you! (Got pulled 3 times in one week one summer in the 1990's - 2 tickets out of that, and one time in traffic court the judge who I well recognized asked me first "Hey, where do I know you from?" Somehow, we couldn't figure it out...)
We've got this one 3-way intersection nearby for which there's really no point in stopping completely. You can see the other 2 ways. If someone were coming cross-ways, he'd better slow or he'd barrel though parked cars and into a house.
Because the one vehicle has very accurate real-time and cumulative gas mileage readouts, it's a game for me to bring this number up and up vs. my wife's driving. It's wasteful to stop completely and then accelerate, so I don't. I care about the planet, you know? And another thing I could bring up to the judge besides the fate of the planet is that if someone else is stopped dead in front of me (we're in a neighborhood of Grannies, traffic-wise, some of them 40 y/o guys in big pickup trucks, but, yeah, grannies!), and I've already got the view, I should be legal to follow through. (Rarely is anyone coming on the vertical leg of the T.) This would be an interesting question for a lawyer, in fact.
Well, my wife kinda learns by example. She got pulled over on the way to work at that 3-way, first time ever for her. Per her words, the cop said she sped right through it. I believe him. She got the full 4 points.
The jurisdiction has a "diversionary" policy - wait, we're not Black!! - in which one can go one time to this program. That means you're in for $150 for the ticket and the same for that program. But wait, there's MORE! You still gotta pay $25 to the guy who "teaches" the class. It's on-line and NOT in real time, just web forms, so this guy may be making thousands each "class".
So, instead of some at least minor learning experience, as I'd had 1) enjoying the work of a comedian who wasn't yet ready for the clubs, 2) Watching sportsball due to muh playoff and talking about how to deal with cops once pulled over so you don't get tickets in the future, or 3) having a guy tell me that 1 in 3 of us will die in traffic accidents, she had to answer page after page of web tediousness and WRITE ESSAYS! Yikes!
The worst part was actually the multiple choice questions as this "instructor" must have used this very same test for all kinds of diversionary programs. I kid you not, there was a long series of "When did you stop beating your wife?" (I guess husband, in this case) questions about my wife's alleged substance abuse. I mean that it's inherently alleged by questions such as:
How did your substance abuse affect your family's finances?
Do you think this class will help you with your substance abuse?There were about a dozen of them. How do you answer these, as there was no "N/A" option?
To me, it'd be a great way for The State to have some "dirt" on her saved for future use. "Suspect admitted to abusing substances during her traffic school class." (Oh, was this a traffic school class?) "That is inadmissible, Your Honor. Anything answered during a diversionary program for allegedly driving like a maniac is not allowed." "You're out of order, councilor." I'm out of order?! You're out of order! This traffic school is out of order, and this whole society is out of order!" [/Al Pacino or Robert D'Niro, one of 'em]
This required a text message to the instructor who wrote back telling her to ignore these questions. Yeah, he wasn't about to straighten this out by going all out making up a separate automatic web-based test... just for thousands of $$ a day - that's not a Black! Middle Class thang. This website has its name for a reason. I hope our readers do see that by now.
Now, eventually there were questions not about actual driving, but ones like:
Explain how your bad driving affected your family?My wife showed me that. "Oh, let me do this one. Put down My husband is very upset that I didn't look uphill for the cops. She refused to write that in. I get it - you wanna get those 4 points back...
As I described what my wife had to go through for modern traffic school to a friend of mine who gets speeding tickets like $Million-donating alumni get tickets to basketball games, I ... got pulled over for 55 in a 40... yes, while I was on the phone. The cop was pretty nice, but I didn't get the golden opportunity to answer the usual question "Do you know how fast you were going?" The speedometer hasn't worked for 8 years, so I had so looked forward to answering "Not really. I mean, right now the needle's curled around pointing to 105 mph. That CAN'T be right!" He wrote it up for 49. I think the reader may have figured that I won't be going to traffic school. It's not the same...
Comments (2)
Earth Day celebrated as landfills with cheap China-made Crap
Posted On: Tuesday - April 22nd 2025 7:38PM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap Treehuggers Globalists Cars Curmudgeonry Economics Americans Artificial Stupidity Environmental Stupidity
There are a whole lot of points we made about garbage, recycling, and landfills in our 7 y/o post Toward Sustainable Stupidity. One point was that, NO, we're not running out of room for landfills. It's just that for completely reasonable NIMBY reasons, as America grows full of newcomers, population increases result in landfills having to be located farther out of cities, meaning more expense is involved in trash transportation.* That's all, not the End of the World as we know it.
In somewhat of a follow-up post, 2 1/2 years later, we got more into the economics of recycling in Make Stupidity Sustainable Again. The leads us to the actual topic of this post, economics and the recent goings-on with President Trump, tariffs, and China.
First, let me say that your Peak Stupidity lead blogger is NOT a licensed Economist. [Thank you! PS Legal Dept.] We do have pages of reports from the BLS, Jerome Powell, Ben Stein, and all sorts of sources
Continuing along those lines, I very much enjoyed a recent Charles Hugh Smith** post - he of Of Two Minds fame or unfortunate lack thereof - on ZeroHedge, Last Gasp Of The Landfill Economy.
Mr. Smith's post is not so much about landfills either as it is about the American pursuit of Cheap China-made Crap. I agree with a ZH commenter that, unfortunately, that "Last Gasp" part is quite optimistic, but I sure like the way this guy thinks!
Globalization's great gift wasn't low prices--it was the collapse of durability, transforming the global economy into a Landfill Economy of shoddy products made of low-cost components guaranteed to fail, poor quality control, planned obsolescence and accelerated product cycles--all hyper-profitable, all to the detriment of consumers and the planet.Charlie, my man, you're preaching to the choir here, nay, to the Bishop of Stupidity! AMEN, anyway! Peak Stupidity has discussed multiple times in posts tagged with our Inflation topic key that decreases in quality are very much a form of inflation but one we really doubt is taken into account. There's that basket of goods the green-eyeshade boys (and girls, and unknowns) manipulate to reflect consuming habits, and even this very basket is now cheap China-made crap and deteriorates before you can even calculate the current year's CPI! Holy moley, I want to excerpt the whole article!:
Globalization also accelerated another hyper-profitable gambit: . Since all the products are now made with the same low-quality components, they all fail regardless of brand or price. The $2,000 refrigerator lasts no longer than the $700 fridge. Since the manufacturers and retailers all know the products are destined for the landfill by either design or default, warranties are uniformly one-year--and it's semi-miraculous if the consumer can find anyone to act on replacing or repairing the failed product even with the warranty.
In The Landfill Economy, Consumer choice is pure illusion. I'd like to buy once, cry once, so where is the option with a 10-year all parts and labor warranty? There isn't one, because nothing is durable--by design or default.Right. I just got done (for now) relating some stories of working household appliances/infrastructure made in America one lasting 38 years, just gone bust, and another 37 and still going strong. Then, there's the now-33 y/o lawn mower.*** Next, I'm gonna write about a 35 y/o Skil Saw (the actual brand, not generic terminology) that I just pulled out to use after 3-5 years. It doesn't care what year it is - it just plain works!
As a result, The Landfill Economy is fundamentally extortionist. We know this product will fail, you know this product will fail, and so here's our offer: buy a 3-year extended warranty for a hefty sum, because we've engineered the product to fail in four years.
If the product is digital, then even if it still functions, we'll force you to replace it via a new product cycle: we no longer support the old operating system, and since your device is out of date (heh) it can't load the new OS, and since all the apps now only function with the new OS, your device is useless.
The low price is also illusory, as we now have to buy four, five or ten products instead of one durable product. Appliances that once lasted 40 years now fail in 6 or 7 years if not sooner, so over the course of 40 years we have to buy five, six or seven appliances instead of one.
Let me back up to the 2nd-to-last paragraph I excerpted. This is very much what Peak Stupidity has described in a number of apoplectic spasms of curmudgeonry about all the Artificial Stupidity such as in our post Software as a tool.
Digitization is a key driver of The Landfill Economy, as cheap electronics all fail, and the product / vehicle / tool becomes a brick. Since inventory is an expense, it's been eliminated, so parts for older products are soon out of stock and unavailable.Car stories follow, so you Peak Stupidity car guys have just got to finish reading that great article, as I don't want to get sued here. (Nah, CHS is a cool guy - I'd love him to read here.)
In a few years, the firmware is no longer supported, and in a few decades, nobody will even know what coding was embedded in the chipset, but it won't matter anyway, because the chipsets are long gone.
Readers tell me vehicles are now wondrously reliable. Um, yeah, until they need to be repaired. Then the cost is higher than what I've paid for entire used cars.
I really wish that the Trump tariffs and big wrecking ball style upset of the world's economies results the end or a big tailing off of this Landfill Economy, produced in China. I've hated it since it started. That makes me a REAL treehugger, I'd say, as, no matter about costs and all, I just hate to see things get thrown out that could be fixed. (Except they often can't.) My trash can goes out to the road once in 2-3 months and the recycling can about 1/2 that often. We're leaving a small polycarbonate footprint and helping to keep the landfills small, which is great... unless you're a seagull... or Tony Soprano.
Thanks so much for this, Charles Hugh Smith! I hope this has gotten read by millions.
PS: Now, OK, I haven't agreed with all the ZeroHedge commenters lately. (It's read-only for me.) When they do let loose, though, they are truly the best! These are just the first 3:
Krink26
Digitization is a key driver of The Landfill Economy, as cheap electronics all fail, and the product / vehicle / tool becomes a brick.
But your new refrigerator comes with an app. That needs to be connected or it won't cool. Because it's green. Or some other nonsense. And you can get notifications. For a fridge.
PeachPit
I often get notices on my cell phone, if I use it outside, to register or something my Samsung washing machine. Some day I'm going to try it and see what it does.
PS. I don't own a Samsung washing machine.
TeleslesThen the Prepper talk gets going, which is good. One guy mentioned getting tools at estate sales, which is horning in on my post to come.
My neighbor's fridge has an open Wi-Fi network. Too bad I like them.
* If you don't like it, go have a talk with my friend Tony Soprano - and you thought you already have enough trash in your yard due to illegals... he's gonna make you an offer for some refuse you no canna' refuse. (Pun totally serendipitous!)
** We praised this pundit Brandon in a post a year back titled Lew Rockwell and the 2 Smiths.
*** I wrote that one nearly 8 years ago, and interestingly the title was close to Mr. Smith's: Cheap China-made crap in a throw-away country. Yeah, OK, "World".
Comments (5)
So-called Pope Francis finally lightens up.
Posted On: Monday - April 21st 2025 7:35PM MST
In Topics: Commies Bible/Religion Poetic Stupidity So-called Pope Francis
He died yesterday, is what we're trying to say.
His real name was Jorge Mario Bergoglio. I don't know who so-called Pope Francis was trying to fool with that subterfuge. Was he running from the ghost of Juan Peron? I have not liked this guy one bit. Pick most well-known Catholic figures down there in Latin American, and you're gonna get a "Liberation Theologist", that ideology being a brand of Communism. What were the Bishops and Cardinals thinking 12 years ago when they put out the white smoke for this guy?
Peak Stupidity has stated that we find only one reason to speak ill of the dead. We've stated plainly that we were glad when Ted Kennedy died and when Juan McAmnesty died - that was due to the fact that neither WOULD EVER retire from his position of power, so we'd only get relief from their ctrl-left oppression when they kicked off. Whaddya' gonna do?
It's tricky with Francis and his death. Pope is not a position you generally retire from, so one can't expect that, and I suppose Catholics felt they had to put up with whatever ctrl-left ranting and poor advice came from the guy. Impeachment is not a Biblical thing - you're thinking US Constitution. (Then again, there is no "Pope" mentioned in the Bible either.) I've ignored the guy for the most part, the last few years, and he's mellowed out in his old age, so OK, R.I.P.
Let me add here that his late Pope was an exception, the last being 600 years ago, to what I just wrote, about Popes being Popes for life. For all the information one could possibly want about the deal that happened with the short-time (under 8 year "reign") Pope Benedict XVI, you could not go wrong by visiting the site of Ann Barnhardt and her The Bergoglian Antipapacy. section (with 3 videos too). Miss Barnhardt saw Jorge Bergoglio as evil.
Though we'll probably have no more posts with the So-called Pope Francis topic key, I noted we had some fun stuff and some angry stuff in there. The image up top is from a fun one titled Pope Poetry. What made me most angry at this imbecile and Communist turd (sorry, just quoting the President of Argentina here - not MY words) was not his suicidal stance on immigration but his deigning to be an expert on the Climate Calamity™, with admonitions to the world about it. From Is this Pope on Dope?!, we quote ourselves:
Now, we see that "Pope" Francis, titular* head of the Catholic Church, has got a bug up the Papal rear-end about his apparently undeniableWell, it was a little of both there...knowledge offaith in the ongoing Global Climate DisruptionTM. In his latestpiece ofPapal Bull, he "rebuked those who deny the science behind global warming and urged negotiators at climate talks in Germany to avoid falling prey to such "perverse attitudes"..." OK, so besides the label of "denier", people who understand mathematical modeling (continued here, here, here, here, here, and here) are now also shouldered with the appellation of pervert.
Now, not to get into the history of some of the Middle-Age Popes in terms of being perverts, we would be the last to tar all Popes with the same broad brush. The current Pope is no pre-vert, and probably not high, but just lightly retarded. That's OK, that's OK, a differently-cognizant individual should be given an opportunity to run the Catholic Church, as appointed by God, as any thinking man, even in these times of anti-Christian fervor, what with 1.5 Billion Moslems having started a demographic invasion of Europe, because, like, diversity. [Links in original only]
Today, we'll add another limerick to the 3 in the "Poetry" post:
We'd told him to "Lighten up, Francis!"
Pure Papal Bull each of his rants is.
For his Lib'ration Theology
we deserve an apology.
Next Pope, pull your head outcher pants(es?)
Will the next Pope also be Woke? Will Wokeness itself pick the next Pope? It would not shock me too much if they picked a woman, even. In comments elsewhere, someone suggested it'd be fun to see a strongly anti-gay African guy. (I've read about one in particular.) I really hope they don't practice Catholic AA though. I don't think we'd like what we'd get.
Europe is the long-term home of Christianity, so I say narrow your search, Bishops and Cardinals. Francis was the 1st non-European Pope in a Millennium and a quarter, going back to Gregory III from Syria in the early/mid 700s. Francis is just one data point, but... no, none of that.
Why should Peak Stupidity care anyway? This whole Pope thing - not my monkey, not my circus.
Comments (10)
A Quarter Millennium Ago: Lexington & Concord, Mass
Posted On: Saturday - April 19th 2025 10:00PM MST
In Topics: History Americans Liberty/Libertarianism Bible/Religion Holiday from Stupidity
How long has it been since the residents of Massachusetts have resembled in the least the Patriots of a quarter millennium ago? It seems to be the last place you'll find a modern day Patriot. What happened to the people in that Colony that turned them from Patriots to Massholes?
We probably shouldn't pick on Massachusetts alone when wondering how the America of colonial days became the Imperial Socialist Police State of 250 years later. However, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the site of the proverbial "Shot heard round the world" that anyone my age learned about in Elementary School. It was 250 years ago today.*
In case you didn't participate in said schooling or just don't remember it all, Rick Moran of PJ Media has written a pretty good quick summary. Massachusetts militiamen under the command of John Parker had mustered at Lexington as British regular soldiers under one John Pitcairn marched through out of Boston. Pitcairn had told the militiamen to lay down their arms.
Through the haze of one quarter of a Millennium, we know there was confusion as can be the case , and nobody knows which Colonial militiaman fired that first shot. The battle later on that April 19th at the North Bridge across the Concord river, with 400 Americans overwhelming less than 100 British soldiers, is seen as the first battle of the Revolutionary War. That was April 19th of 1775, so today we memorialize it.
The American colonists had a lot of beefs with their British rulers. We've got so many more now that a new Declaration of Independence (from the Potomac Regime) would take a half hour to print out on a laser printer. Were we to write U.S. Constitution 2.0, we'd hopefully include a lot learned during the misuse of 1.0 and doctor the old one up quite a bit.
We can go back only 32 years and see the state of the American Republic at the end of the
The country has become even more of a Police State since the Waco Massacre.
We've been lucky that they've put off this National (Illuminati) ID implementation 3 or 4 times already, but they seem to be pressing the issue this time. Nobody balks anymore when Bill of Rights Amendment IV is trashed at airports around the country daily, so what's one more small indignity?
Generally, we are not the same Americans as the militiamen involved in that shot heard 'round the world 250 years ago today.
That all said, going back 8 times farther in time, to right at 2 Millennia ago,
Luke 24:
1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.
2 And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.
3 And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.
4 And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:
5 And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?
6 He is not here, but is risen:
PS: I'm sure there are plenty of websites with "This day in history", and specializing in the Revolutionary period. We'll put a few more highlights up some days, just to imagine "it was today, a quarter of a Millennium back!" That beats memorializing all the rock/pop stars from a few decades long era of great music, as pretty soon, there'll be a famous one dying weekly. We appreciate their music, but the men of the American Revolution deserve mention more.
* Your blogger-in-chief is too tired to make a Sergeant Pepper's verse out of this tonight - maybe I'll fill it in later.
Comments (2)
Tariffs: Libertarian Ideology v Patriotism and RealLifePolitik
Posted On: Saturday - April 19th 2025 11:23AM MST
In Topics: Trump Globalists China Economics Liberty/Libertarianism
I believe I've only written this in comments (will search later), but I will relate the subject of a conversation between me and my now-departed friend about China. I'm trying to pin the time down, but it just MUST have been near the end of the 1990s. We both knew that lots of manufacturing work was being outsourced to China even then. My friend did not like the whole deal, and his major point was "they will equalize the salaries between China and America." I disagreed that that was a problem. "So? What's wrong with that?"
I don't know why I said that, as even in the early '90s I was well aware of the problem with America trying to have only a service economy. I'd even helped in the Paul Tsongas campaign, and then nearly voted for Ross Perot* in '92. (No, of course not Bush, nor Clinton, but I voted for the L guy. They weren't Open Borders wackos back then...)
It's been more than a quarter century since that conversation of ours. Even a decade later I could see that he was right - I'm sure I admitted that to him. Well, in the 2 hour-long conversation that Peak Stupidity urged our readers to view, that ZeroHedge-run tariff debate between Spencer Morrison and Peter Schiff, there were some words exchanged that get back to this point about what's good for the World vs what's good for America.
I can't remember every word said, mind you, or every point made, but this was early on, and it was Peter Schiff who brought the wrong side (in any Patriot's opinion) of the issue up. The talk was about "Comparative Advantage", "Competitive Advantage" (for the difference, try to figure it out here) and other Libertarian economic theory/ideology. Peter Schiff said, and I AGREE with this, that Free Trade, on the whole is best for the people of the world. (I'd take that as "on average", and as for "Where is this Free Trade of which you speak?", don't get me started... just yet.) Well, probably so, but is that what's best for Americans, especially right now? Of course not. Shouldn't President Trump be working on behalf of Americans, not the whole world?
I don't recall whether Mr. Morrison made the point exactly that way. That's what the debate came down to, though. Peter Schiff did not come across as an American Patriot here.** Yes, the Libertarian economic theory he defended is right, assuming, of course (NOT!), that each country and each country's businesses play by the rules. No, they don't. The biggest of them all, what Trump's new tariffs (and that debate) are all about, is China. China, the country, does not play by the rules, and Chinese businesses themselves don't play by the rules.
The Chinese government may have some certain agreements with us, all of which have been MOST FAVORABLE, by American Globalist definition, for China, but, even within those bad deals for us, the agreements are evaded purposely by the State bureaucracy. People will tell you that Americans just don't try hard to export to China. They've tried. The Chinese government, in its insidious ways, makes it difficult. Were you to finally get permission and start shipping products, the Chinese will rip off the IP, reproduce the products, and end up selling them to Americans! (That'd be at a lower price too, due to the Yuan being pegged to the US $, for one reason). One tends to give up banging one's head up against a brick wall after a spell...
Secondly, Chinese businesses themselves deal dirty. I suggest again to the reader to take a look at the Paul Milner book Poorly Made in China. Peak Stupidity reviewed this work, basically a description of an experience of frustration on steroids, and commenter Adam Smith kindly linked us to this online .pdf copy. (Speaking of, errr, stealing IP, haha!)
Beyond the cheating and subterfuge behind the Cheap China-made Crap, there is the basic difference between the old American way of doing business and the Chinese way, and most of the rest of the World with it. Olde White Man America was a place where a man's*** word was his bond, and deals really could be completely confidently with a handshake. All that doesn't fly in China ... and not so much in America anymore either.
I've known about the shady Chinese business practices from personal accounts. President Trump is good at seeing scams for what they are. He is quite aware of the scamming of America and American businesses by China and Chinese businesses. That's the RealLifePolitik. You've got to take that into account before you go claiming that sticking with the Libertarian ideology on the benefits of "Free Trade" is the best thing for Trump and America to do.
To summarize this post, it's really 2 separate reasons that Patriots are right and Libertarians are wrong about the tariffs and supposed Free Trade:
1) Whatever good Free Trade does for the World, it is not good for America. We care about America, foremost, because we LIVE HERE! [/Red Dawn]
2) There is NO Free Trade going on 'round here anyway!
PS: Long ago Peak Stupidity suggested the Conservatives and Libertarians just try to get along. See What's the deal with Peak Stupidity - Libertarian or Conservative?
* Yes, I should have, but his dropping out and coming back into the race that summer made me wonder about him. I know better now that he'd probably been threatened by the Deep State.
** I've been disappointed with what I've heard from him lately. In those gold v bitcoin debates (see here - - here and here), though I agree with him on the very point of gold as money, Mr. Schiff comes off too much at times as a salesman for his monetary fund of some sort. (He's with that "Sovereign Man" guy, no American Patriot, and maybe some others.) "There's more upside to come....!" C'mon, man! That's completely in contradiction to your main point, that gold is REAL money. Got 20 oz. today, you'll have 20 oz. tomorrow - same amount of money - THAT's the point.
His Dad Irwin, OTOH, was a real Patriot, having resisted the IRS his whole life and, in fact, died in prison due to this. Peter Schiff has bugged out to Puerto Rico for some odd reason...
*** Yes, that's "a man's" written her not just due to that olde correct grammar but to explain that, plainly, a woman's word ISN'T. It's just like that. It'd have been best to have learned that young, for personal reasons alone.
Comments (4)
Trump v Leticia - Round 2
Posted On: Thursday - April 17th 2025 1:13PM MST
In Topics: Trump US Feral Government Race/Genetics Legal Stupidity
The fatassed (hey, we're just quoting original sources here) Leticia James, Attorney General of New York, is just one of the handful of minions of the ctrl-left that tasked themselves with conducting lawfare against candidate Donald Trump. I have to say here again that Mr. Trump's persistence among all of these distractions of his time, threats to his finances, and threats to his existence as a free man over that long period (not to mention nearly getting shot dead) is very impressive.
For Donald Trump, everything is personal. Sometimes that becomes more important to him than, well, America. However, I can't really blame him for wanting to exact legally-justified (or not!) revenge against this evil fatassed Leticia James. More so, Trump's persecution has come from (she's not the only one) vicious and dull Black! women playing legal eagles in positions designed for intelligent, decent White men, upping the stupidity level and making it that much more humiliating. (Even without this sort, you can get trouble - it IS New York, after all.)
It so happens that, besides our agreeing with the idea of bringing the ctrl-left Totalitarians who've ruled outside the law for the last 4 years to revengeful justice (see The World Turned Upside Down), Peak Stupidity takes the Leticia James lawfare personally too, on behalf of our friends at VDare. For them, it was very personal - when one Totalitarian fatass from New York (where you'd mistakenly thought you'd always see rule-of-law) takes down your whole patriotic Foundation out of West Virginia based on NO CHARGES, only continual harassment by tax-payer-funded lawyers, it's been VERY, VERY personal.*
So, even though President Trump hasn't thought to consider VDare's travails**, any legal action his administration can take against this evil broad will be beneficial to VDare as well. For Trump, it's about revenge and justice, while for VDare it'd be about their ability to start the Foundation and website back up now when we need it more than ever... yeah, and justice in a a cosmic but not physical sense. It's not like they're be repaid their money, their lost years, and their loss of readership. Call it Social Justice for VDare!
Regarding the first benefit for VDare, were Leticia to be put out to pasture, that Mr. Brimelow*** and his organization may very well have indirectly gotten Trump to where he is and the invasion into the spotlight 10 years back is great, but we could use VDare now for news on all things immigration, now that there's a lot to be excited about. (/Fingers crossed]
Therefore, the following story of uncovered malfeasance, of all things ALSO in the real estate business, is very good news. The Gateway Pundit has the story, without even a lot of hype within - yeah BREAKING!], whatever - here: BREAKING: Trump Administration Criminally Refers NY AG Letitia James to Justice Department for Mortgage Fraud as First Reported on The Gateway Pundit. For a change, rather than a bunch of tweets and counts of LIKES therein, GP has some very good plain simple evidence of Miss
Additionally, ZeroHedge has the story too: Bye Letitia? Criminal Referral Filed Against NY AG Over Real Estate Fraud Accusation. Gateway Pundit commenters are pretty good, but ZH commenters are better.
This is a very nice development, though the discovery of cheating by a Sistah in power is almost expected nowadays. All the excitement may be for nothing if Trump fails to follow through, as is often the case - he's pretty motivated, but then, what about this Attorney General Pam Blondie? (I'm not to enthused about some of the women, non-sexually, that is... that's another post.)
I hope Peak Stupidity readers will not assume something here, that is that we feel this story is very important in the big scheme of things (except re: VDare). There should be lots of people getting visited and dragged off by the FBI and arrested already, starting with Allie-Hondro Mayorkas, Merrick Garland, and the list is endless. I haven't seen this happening. It needs to! Then again, the personal comes first all too often with Donald Trump.
Still, all else failing, I'd really like to see a Round-2 knockout by The Donald, putting Leticia James on the mat with dead eyes, wait, she's already like that... and drooling blood. Trump likes the boxing and the TV, so he'd like our metaphor here ...
* Peak Stupidity has written about this multiple times. Of course, VDare had, for the multi-year period all that was going on until they had to cease operations. If you want to know more, see Tucker Carlson's interview of Lydia Brimelow and our review of it.
** It's possible that he does know of this story but is not courageous enough or focussed enough - probably the latter, and what was the first thing again?... to bring it up. It seems like it would have helped his fight against this lawfare to bring up the VDare case with, again, NO CHARGES.
*** BTW, commenter E.H. Hail has informed us here that Peter Brimelow has been writing on this substack site. I see no comments - as with Alarmist's substack site, I've got to work on this. Thanks, Mr. Hail.
Comments (7)
Praise for Steve Sailer
Posted On: Wednesday - April 16th 2025 6:52PM MST
In Topics: Feminism Pundits
Now THERE's a concise, honest, and (somewhat?) entertaining headline!
In our over 8 years of blogging, Peak Stupidity has discussed the writings of, and the opinions of, pundit Steve Sailer far more than of any other pundit. It got to the point early on where we felt obligated to explain to readers that No, we don't worship Steve Sailer. We were, errrr, borrowing, that's the ticket, a lot of material around that time. To excuse that behavior at the time, I will note that reading the NY Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic as Mr. Sailer does still, to point out the stupidity therein would feel creepy for me. I've made other people feel creepy - no problem, it's a thing now - but being a NY Times reader, no, just too creepy... I couldn't live with myself. So... we got a lot of material from him.
It's been great reading Steve Sailer's writing over the years on The Unz Review. (Ron Unz keeps all the archives there, and he's kindly created threads at slightly variable intervals for us former commenters to keep arguing.) Mr. Sailer had definitely moved on, as we noted 9 months back he was in the process of doing. I've given my reasons (time spent and curmudgeonry regarding the format) for not joining up on the SteveSailer.net substack site. However, I read the posts that interest me, especially when there is no paywall.
Why? I've had a few more differences with this pundit than I used to, agreeing with him 90-95% of the time rather than 99%, as I used to. Most importantly I've considered whether this time in American history is no longer the time for a peacetime consigliere?
OK, again, Why? Because he's really a great writer. His writing is entertaining while at the same time being as full of truth as Mr. Sailer allows himself in this time in his life. By that I mean he still writes truthfully about issues that most pundits who worry more about their status will avoid. IMO, Mr. Sailer has trying to fit in a little more to get more young readers to understand these truths without turning them off.
That graphic above is at the top of this recent SteveSailer.net post. This is his thing, seeing and writing entertainingly but also informatively (often with statistics) to show the hypocrisy and stupidity of one of his many well-noticed social goings-on in America. (His book Noticing has a great assortment of these.) To start off, this "wait until paragraph 17 for the actual facts" description of the NY Times is one of his many themes:
Here’s a classic upside down New York Times article that puts the interesting facts way down toward the bottom with practically indecipherable terseness about the cause of the catastrophe after dozens of paragraphs of human interest trivia about the garbagemen’s strike in Birmingham, UK:Garbage Men are called Bin Men in England.
Why is there a garbage strike in Birmingham?(OK, paragraph 24 this time.) Most of the rest of the post is excerpts from the BBC and then the actual story out of some tweeter. Mr. Sailer again:
The answer is actually quite interesting — greedy feminist dogma run amok in Labour-run Britain — but NYT subscribers don’t want to hear that. It gives them Bad Feelz.
So, the most glancing reference to the cause of this disgusting situation is left unmentioned until this masterfully boring 24th paragraph:
You see, bin men, who are mostly men, were paid more by the city than people who held more genteel jobs, which are filled mostly by women, that didn’t involve lifting stinking heavy stuff. That’s supply and demand.The snark is excellent. He's like that a lot.
But in a breakthrough in feminist theory, a judge determined that women in nice jobs should get paid as much as men doing nasty jobs, because women are Good and men are Bad. Or something.
So, Feminism has backfired in Birmingham, England, as (per Lara Brown's tweet-string): Rubbish is piled high, ... Yeah, I mean, the NY Times can be over an inch thick on Sundays, so you get a few hundred copies and ... yeah... I agree it IS piled high. Now, see, Steve Sailer could have done a better job with that joke, is what I'm saying.
This is just one post out of many I enjoy. Unfortunately, a look at the recent posts on Mr Sailer's site isn't a good sample. Golf? Sorry, knock yourself out writing, but it's not for me. Basketball is not either, but I realize there is a bigger point that he's making in these ones on his classic topic, Human Bio-Diversity*. Then, there are a couple of posts in retort to on-again/off-again Sailer nemesis Mathew Yglesias. They aren't so entertaining, because I can tell Mr. Sailer has really gotten pissed at this guy, who is throwing Mr. Sailer under the bus, best some cuck pundit can heave him, in order to virtue-signal rather than tell the simple truth. This is from a guy who borrows Mr. Sailer's material and takes it only as far as is is socially acceptable.
As a very honest guy**, Steve Sailer detests people, whether it's Matt Yglesias or Lyin' Press "journalists" who purposely miss the real story. OTOH, as we wrote recently, SO WHAT, if you're right!
Keep on truckin' Steve! I hope you gather 100's of thousands of reader, no, millions, on your substack site, and get 10% of them to subscribe.
* Believe it or not, I'd read his old site for about a year before I figured out what "HBD" meant, as many times as it was written back then.
** About the only time I remember Steve Sailer not being quite honest with his commenters is during that Kung Flu Panic time. Though I didn't agree with his short-lived but serious pro-Panic stance, that wasn't dishonesty. That's not it. What someone brought up yesterday is that bit about "You don't want to take the jab because you're scared of needles." Yes, I read that from him a few times. IMO, he was pissed off that he had unruly commenters that could be seen as "conspiracy theorists" and even worse, low brow. He had to know we weren't avoiding the jab due to the ouchies from the needles.
Comments (4)
Peak Stupidity Geophysical Research Letter - Sea Ice Albedo
Posted On: Monday - April 14th 2025 7:51PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Science
Peak Stupidity is no scientific journal, so we refer not to our post itself here but to a recent short paper ("letter") in Geophysical Research Letters pointed out by commenter Alarmist under one of our recent posts.* I don't claim to understand the methods within the paper. However, I can read this sort of thing and at least see what kind of science these people are up to.
In Biases in Climate Model Global Warming Trends Related to Deficiencies in Southern Ocean Sea Ice Evolution Over Recent Decades, climate scientists H. Mutton** and T. Andrews noted "deficiencies" in various climate models. These discrepancies, as I'd call them, have to do with the actual versus predicted extent of Antarctic sea ice. Different surfaces on the Earth, or any body, say, plowed soil, forest, rock, ice, etc. reflect energy by different amounts. Ice obviously reflects a lot. The term used in Astronomy is "albedo" (al-bee'-doh).
Well, OK, since the albedo of all areas of the Earth, these areas themselves changing due to changes in the environment, must be part of a model of the Earth's climate, such a model must predict the current and future states of such surfaces. These researchers have found that the prediction of sea ice extent in the Antarctic is not just wrong but backwards. First line from the Abstract (Intro.):
Between 1985 and 2014 observations show an expansion of Southern Ocean sea-ice. This phenomena is not simulated in CMIP6 Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs). Here we quantify the impact of this discrepancy on radiative feedback and simulated global temperature trends.One may note from reading or from a perusal of the paper's Table 1 that 5 different mathematical models of the climate are being studied, errr, really, screwed-with, here. "CMIP6" is one of them, but I'm sure there are thousands outside of the realm of this work.
Sea ice obviously has a high albedo, so if it's increasing in that region rather than decreasing, as predicted by THESE MODELS, then the models must be changed. I'll make my basic points here shortly, but let me excerpt a few parts to show the tone of this paper. There's no science/engineering-style observational data of measured different ice albedos, convection and radiative heat transfer equations, energy balances, etc. here. It's all about the various and sundry factors, "global ensemble means", "regressions", "feedback forcing functions", etc. Now, I can see that the math here is originally based on thermodynamics and heat transfer, but what you read here is playing with math. Of course, it all ends up as math in the models, but, I'll summarize the problems... OK, to get a taste of this:
Using this relationship between and , for each model we apply three values of to demonstrate the impact of Southern Ocean feedback biases on the estimated . First, the estimated from the historical ensemble mean, second, a modified where we replace the Southern Ocean (55–78°S) with values from the amip-piForcing ensemble mean, and third, a modified where we replace the Southern Ocean with values from the amip-piForcing ensemble mean. These values of and the associated are indicated for each model as a dot, vertical marker, and an arrowhead respectively in Figure 3d and are recorded in Table 1. Here the Southern Ocean substitution has been performed for and to capture both the direct impact of the sea ice biases through surface albedo changes as well as any other related local processes such as changing clouds (Cesana et al., 2025).Sorry, the paper's Greek letters, sub-, and superscripts don't show up here, and I'm not up for it - you can read it better there if you care. I have points to make that's not about the details.
The zonal mean of and over the Southern Hemisphere higher latitudes is shown in Figures 3b and 3c respectively, where black vertical lines indicate the region over which the amip-piForcing values have been substituted when modifying the historical . In Figure 3b observed values of have also been included, using observed values of and and taking from the ensemble mean of all CMIP6 models analyzed. This was done given the effective radiative forcing used for the IPCC AR6 is only provided as a global mean timeseries. A clear negative feedback can be seen in the observed estimate, confirming that in this region the amip-piForcing experiment is able to capture feedback processes consistent with those seen in the real world.
We see that had the coupled historical experiments simulated the observed changes in sea ice, assuming all other feedbacks remain unchanged, this would impact the global temperature trends by approximately 0.04 0.03 K (multi-model-mean). For HadGEM3-GC3.1-LL, this accounts for just under one third of the bias in historical temperature trends compared to observations. We see that depending on the model, when substituting in just the Southern Ocean , 12%–29% of the total disparity in global is accounted for between the historical and amip-piForcing experiments. This increases to 18%–57% when other local changes are considered and the Southern Ocean is substituted (Table 1). In the multi-model-mean, substituting all local Southern Ocean processes changes global-mean by 0.25 , whereas substituting just changes global-mean by 0.18 (Table 1), that is, contributes 72% to the total difference over the Southern Ocean.OK, here are my problems with the shear hubris of anyone who claims to have made a working model of the entire Earth's climate***, with this paper as an example:
1) These models have been wrong in predicting the changes in Antarctic sea ice. How much confidence should we have in the rest of these model's predictions?
2) The effect of higher albedos over larger areas (more ice) would have made those models wrong. Is that the one and only input factor in the models that was wrong? Not bloody likely! (Hey, the writers are British, so just trying to relate.)
3) We see the vicious (maybe viscous too) cycle here. The models predict wrong climate changes, somehow.. Those changes result in different conditions for the models to be based on. The models were bound to be wrong from the start. Here, different sea ice extend means higher albedos for certain areas, which would certainly affect the results of any model that took albedo into account, out of hundreds, I'd say, processes that must be modeled VERY PRECISELY for a model to have any chance in hell of predicting ANYTHING!
4) Note the very wide ranges of the values for conclusions here. 0.07 W per square meter per degree K to 0.23, 0.01–0.06°C per decade, 12% to 29%, 18% - 57%, come on! OK, I'm glad the guys are honest with their error ranges, but then don't pretend anyone can predict what's going on.
5) The corrections being made in papers like this are not going back to the basic science and even the real math, the calculus derived from the science. These writers are only using the statistical techniques and fancy functions to fudge the originally derived math to make the models work better. This is not really science - it's fun with math.
6) Five models are compared. I've said this before: If they don't match, one should figure out why. It's what I don't like about "Meta studies", besides that they are a way to avoid doing science/engineering one's self. "On average, the studies yielded value x." OK, but what's wrong with the ones that are not close. Without seeing the errors in the "off" models, how do we know they're not ALL wrong?
... which they ARE, because, again, there is no working model of the entire world's climate!
This Geophysical Research Letter seems like a difficult read on a complex subject, but what I get out of it is that fudging of mathematical climate models is a science in and of itself. Knock yourselves out with this stuff, guys. Just don't go ruining the economies of the world with it. (They don't need your help.)
* Unfortunately NOT under our 2-Part series The melting of Antarctica: More Alarmist Trickery See Part 1 and Part 2. This got me going though, so, thanks, (non-Climate) Alarmist.
** A British name if there ever was one. I really didn't see much on the authors, but the words "Centre" and "Programme" spelled so, gave it away..
*** Peak Stupidity has a series of short posts from over 8 years back, early in our blog history, titled very clearly and adamantly There is no working mathematical model of the world's climate, dammit!: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - Part 4 - - Part 5.
Comments (10)
Tariffs! Tariffs! Tariffs!
Posted On: Saturday - April 12th 2025 8:22PM MST
In Topics: Trump Pundits Globalists China Economics Big-Biz Stupidity
The Trump tariffs have Americans and foreigners affected in a tizzy. Regular Americans see their 401(k)s dropping and may be fooled again by the "tariffs cause Great Depression" civic mythology. The Globalist elites here have no problem with bad trade deals for America and Americans - they just want to keep the China-made Crap flowing in, shoddier and shoddier by the year, to keep the Big-Biz bottom lines increasing.
There are foreigners, and there are foreigners. Most of them, the Canadians and the Euro's, don't like Trump to begin with and surely don't like him exposing the one-sidedness of our trade with them. America has been a patsy, due to our thinking that we'd be that sole economic superpower forever and our benevolence in lifting up the world won't catch up to us.
Then there are the Chinese foreigners. It's at a whole nother level with China. We have given so much up for China (and Globalist Big Biz profits), our manufacturing and our trade secrets, and experienced a big decline in human capital with absolutely no gratitude given in return. (The CCP doesn't do gratitude.)
One thing that makes Trump helpful to Americans is that he knows bad deals when he sees them, and he doesn't like getting screwed, and he doesn't like America getting screwed. We've been getting screwed for 3 decades by China. Even if we leave behind the revenue aspect, and the most important attempt at bringing manufacturing back, tariffs are a way for us to stop getting screwed.
One may look up numbers on tariff rates, etc., but what the Chinese do is use their bureaucracy to greatly discourage imports from America. I've written about one example (a mistake by said bureaucracy, but a perfect example anyway) from personal knowledge. You're not going to get far getting the Chinese to admit this, but Trump knows, and the Chinese HATE HATE HATE that the President of the US is on to them. Peak Stupidity supports Trump's tariffs for many reasons, but this reason alone is good enough.
Instead of ranting on though, I will point out more reading from pundits the Peak Stupidity readers (commenters, at least) will know, along with a long debate video. Firstly, let me note that I'd forgotten our post from nearly 7 years ago, Tariffs in American history. Yeah, Ben Stein was in it, as one might guess, but it was just a still picture. Our very basic quick take 7 years back:
Pro Free Trade - If you protect industries, consumers will miss out on better deals, like all the cheap China-made crap, but also American industry will find parts and raw materials from abroad more expensive. With the overseas competition stifled, there is definitely an incentive for American manufacturers to make junkier stuff (think US auto industry pre-1980).(There are links in the original post.). If he hasn't already, the reader may want to read E.H. Hail's post Alfred Eckes on the Smoot–Hawley Tariff of 1930 and its long-lasting civic mythology, along with the important chapter of Alfred Eckes book on tariffs presented therein, or the whole book*, for that matter. Mr. Hail pointed out a Pat Buchanan article, but let me point out another one that we've missed, Did Tariffs Make America Great?. Our commenter "The Alarmist" here has a good post on this matter - Trump to Stock Markets: “Drop Dead!“ on his substack site. I love the title, and Alarmist's very readable and enjoyable essay is pro-Trump. I agree!
Pro Protectionism - American consumers can't buy a whole lot when they don't have good jobs to begin with. As Mr. Buchanan quotes many of the Founders and historic American icons of industry saying, along with what I've been saying for years, the wealth of a country is very related to how much manufacturing it does (vs. service industries, including F.I.R.E. ").They'veWe've also said, just based on the country's security, that essentials for the country's existence and prosperity should be made here.
A couple of go-to pundits for Peak Stupidity and readers are John Derbyshire and, of course, Steve Sailer. The former admitted, in his latest (Zman-hosted now) Radio Derb podcast, regarding where he stands on the issue:
Uh, nowhere very firmly. I don’t know much about Economics and am not ashamed to admit it. In fact I have argued previously in this podcast that Economics is a pseudoscience, not to be taken very seriously.I like the honesty, and the same came from Steve Sailer, to be noted shortly. No, Economics is no science at all, by any definition of science. From the little he did write, Mr. Derbyshire is generally in favor of tariffs and also in favor of what Trump in particular is up to. He excerpted a Trump transcription (that's NOT easy!) Speaking of China:
People took advantage of our country and they ripped us off for a very … for decades. I’ve been thinking about this for decades.Steve Sailer admitted in a recent substack post, Procrastination Rules! that he procrastinated about writing about tariffs because he hasn't though much about the subject. He wrote quite a bit to explain how building back manufacturing is no short-term process. I agree. I understand Mr. Sailer's concern about Trump's flip-floppery on tariffs not helping said long-term process. Trump is very much the opposite of a "long-term, slow-burn getting things done"** guy. OTOH, Trump is really fucking with the Chinese, which to me is a very good thing. Mr. Sailer has a hard time praising Trump for anything.
I’ve been … If you ever saw me on television, I was young like these guys. And, er … Those were the good old days, I’ll tell you, Roger. But I was like these guys — young. And I was talking about it. Nothing, nothing changed and nothing was done about it.
Then I did it; in my first term I did it, and did it well. We took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China — and others — and I started the process.
I have only read about 1/2 the comments under that SteveSailer.net post, a few days back - there are 120 now. I feel I must correct an error written by at least one commenter, that this tariff idea is new to Trump. No, as I wrote up top, and per the clip above, this one IS a long-term concern that Trump has been talking about for many years. Additionally, to correct the error, I'll add that Trump did institute one phase or two of what was to be a multi-phase program of levying tariffs on Chinese goods during his last term. People forget, but Peak Stupidity noted this in praise of Trump-45 at the time.
After writing all that above, I ran out of time to even attempt to continue watching the pro/con tariff debate I present here. I did watch the last 30 minutes or so of it live on ZeroHedge*** the other day and then the first couple of minutes of it on youtube.
Peter Schiff, anti-tariffs here, has been a feature of 2 gold v bitcoin debates here.**** The other, pro-tariff, gentleman is one Spencer Morrison, who, hilariously, makes sure in the introductions that the narrator stops mistaking him for an Economist. I get it. Among this ZH crowd, Steve Sailer (though he majored in Econ), John Derbyshire, and your Peak Stupidity writer(s), as much or little as we write about the subject, Economists themselves don't get no respect!
I gotta get those radio diaries filled out, but next week there will be time for plenty of more on, yeah, one more point on tariffs, more on Trump, Steve Sailer (in a good light), eventually that post on Deflation, and whatever stupidity presents itself. Have a happy Sunday, Peakers. Thanks for reading and writing in.
* Thanks again to Adam Smith for providing a few links the whole book online, which can be found under this post of ours.
** If you can guess to what song that line is a lyric, WITHOUT the internet, you ought to win something, I don't know what... a [REDACTED] album?
*** It's not that wow, live! means much for something like this, but ZH had it up, and after it ended it was - pooof! - gone from the site.
**** The 1st one (with our discussion here) is fun, but you won't learn very much on the pros/cons. The 2nd one is a lot better.
Comments (11)
Radio Daze and the Nielson Ratings.
Posted On: Friday - April 11th 2025 11:27PM MST
In Topics: Salesmen Media Stupidity
Look, I am pretty much the opposite of an "early adopter", of anything new. So, if I haven't been listening to radios stations for the last 15 years, who else has? We've got all our iCrap, well, most of us. If these can be used as small-screen TVs, I know they can be used as radios. Hmmm, anyone see any guys in the hood carrying these iPads on their shoulders. That'd be a lot easier on the muscles than ... where are the ghetto blasters of yesteryear?
If we can pull up obscure 1970's Gerry Rafferty, no, even the Humblebees, songs off the internet, of what use is the radio? I have heard of satellite radio in cars and of all the very specific genres or themes they've got. That sounds good, but the subject of my post here does not even include that as "radio".
"How do they know who's watching what on TV?", we wondered, as kids. Our parents explained. I'd heard of these Nielson ratings for TV and radio but never heard FROM them until a few years ago. People have been sending back these "diaries" for over half a century now, so that's how we know. Now, these Nielson people think I'm some honest diligent guy who will report my viewing and/or listening habits. Sure, I am, but I CAN'T!
I wanted to be honest in the TV diaries they sent me a while ago. Would they believe me if I left the whole things blank or figure I want my money for nothing? (They put a few bucks cash in their envelopes each mailing.) I put down a 5 minute stint of watching the weather radar on each of those for one time during the diary week. Now, because I do send stuff back, they have sent me a women's survey which my wife won't fill out, and now 5 radio diaries. What am I to do? Each log entry row has a column for the station ID, frequency (If you're not sure just go ask Kenneth), and check boxes for AM or FM. This is some antiquated, antiquated stuff, people! I think that's what I like about this.
I can, at least, fill out a poll with data that might influence something, but, again, what to write? I have one idea, but I can't put it on all 5 of these: "3:35 PM: Pulled up in my car by some thug with his windows down at the red light. Heard some nasty hip-hop crap yelling at me. Rolled up my window. Listening time: 8 seconds. Station ID unknown.".
Any other suggestions?
PS: Wouldn't all the new "smart" TV's that take expertise to just turn on, keep track and report what we watch? (How about a smart boom box? Do they have those?). Doesn't this make Nielson Ratings even more obsolete?
Comments (13)
EXCUSEs: Means and Motives - Example, JFK, Jr. - Pt 3
Posted On: Friday - April 11th 2025 9:36AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity History Science
I know the Peak Stupidity readership has been on pins and needles, waiting to know what REALLY happened to John F. Kennedy, Jr. Likely he died in his plane crash due to an all-too-common pilot error, but otherwise I don't know. What a let-down that was... but, again, that wasn't the point of this series of posts* (Part 1 and Part 2). We'll get to the point THIS POST, as promised.
Let me note that I added one more point (8) to the list in Part 2 of how a writer with a supposed EXCUSE (our acronym to replace "conspiracy theory", a term is not used accurately, as a friend recently pointed out) for Kennedy's unnatural and untimely death ruins his theory by being very ignorant of the subject. That subject for this speculation is aviation, specifically single-pilot General Aviation. (I also modified 2 other points re the logbooks and the seats.)
That point (8) was something I'd meant to mention and plain forgot, but the other 2 corrections came from my reading of the Final NTSB report of Kennedy's accident. Why hadn't I read it already? Good question. As I read this Laurent Guyenot's article 6 years ago, I already knew enough to want to correct a lot of ignorant points. The NTSB report is pretty thorough, so I learned a few new things, but nothing that changes my story here. Did Mr. Guyenot read the NTSB report? No, he never linked to it directly - he only referred to people who did read it. He put his trust in those people and made an attempt to sort the many discrepancies out on his own. He failed at that due to his not knowing the subject. He personally CANNOT get the real picture out of the NTSB report, so instead he turned it all into supposed contradictions, subterfuge, and cover-ups. Aviation is most certainly not his specialty, but politics is. Therefore he did a nice job with the motives at least.
I didn't mention the "Israel killed the Kennedies"** section, but I'd lean toward the Clintons. The Hildabeast was (may still be!) one ambitious broad. There are many strange deaths in the Clinton's past. In their style of politics, sometimes you've just gotta off a few folks. However, what kind of complicated assassination would they have done with Mr. Kennedy's Piper Saratoga? Mr. Guyenot freely admitted that there was no evidence, other, of course, that what he figures must have been covered up, which is not real evidence. Were there a corroborated story about some strange guys in the hangar or out on the ramp - it's not easy to be out of prying eyes outside - that might lead to something. Why not just get the usual goons to off JFK, Jr. somewhere in NYC where one might very well get mugged? Maybe, the Hildabeast already had a plan in place, but Mr. Kennedy's unfortunate accident saved her goons the trouble.
Instead this speculator concludes:
In the final analysis, it is the explanation of the crash that is strikingly implausible. As Anthony Hilder [one of Mr. Guyenot's sources who he does not completely believe anyway!] put it: “A finely-tuned, well-kept first-class airplane doesn’t just drop out of the sky and head straight down into the ocean unless it’s blown out of the sky or the pilot deliberately sends it into a dive to kill himself and his passengers.”No. It most certainly can come down fast in a tight "graveyard spiral", a structural failure due to that, or a resulting stall/spin from an attempted recovery. It's not so easy to calm one's self and "make the gauges your world" and go back to that important lessons from the instructors and the reports from the many times this has happened before.
Laurent Guyenot also admitted:
In this whole affair, we cannot prove directly that JFK Jr. was murdered. What we can prove, however, is that federal agencies and mainstream media conspired in a massive fraud, including the concealment of key evidence (the 9:39 call and reports of an explosion), the distortion of facts (visibility and pilot’s ability) and false testimonies (Kyle Bailey and Bob Arnot being the most likely). That can be taken as indirect proof that JFK Jr. was murdered.The rest is bad aviation speculation from someone who knows nothing.
There is evidence of an accumulation of deliberate omissions, lies and false testimonies from the NTSB investigation to mainstream reporting, in order to blame the plane crash on the pilot alone, regardless of inconsistencies. And so, between accident and assassination, I lean strongly toward assassination.You didn't READ the report, and you CAN'T read the report, so I lean strongly toward your being full of it. You can't claim omissions, lies, and false testimony, if you haven't read the report and don't understand the subject yourself.
Let me broaden the point here. A lot of people have some really good motives to "off" a lot of people. As Exhibit A, I present the institute of Marriage. It's often on some lunar cycle of some sort, but there are times the motivation and full moonlight are strong. Usually nothing happens though. When a spouse does die of unnatural cause, when there's some substantial evidence of nefarious means, that's one thing. If not, very realistic motives or not, we figure an accident is an accident, but, also, why go through so much trouble? They got poison, you know. Mostly we try to get along.
For some of the historic events like assassinations of big-time politicians, there are usually a plethora of realistic motives to be considered. Without some solid evidence of wrongdoing though, the next step writers/pundits/podcasters make is to try to throw shade on the "official", but often most likely, story. Contradictions are pointed out. That's a good method if you know the subject matter well. It's all garbage if you don't.
It's highly likely that John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife, and his sister-in-law, died due to Mr. Kennedy's having inadvertently gotten his airplane into an unusual attitude and not successfully performed a recovery. It's too bad, as I wrote in Part 1, as, just from what I've read, he seemed like one of the more decent of the Kennedies.
Just to get an idea that JFK, Jr's accident is not some strange phenomena, I screenshotted just a couple of days' worth of accident reports off the NTSB site. The field, hobby, or business of General Aviation is now not nearly as big as it was in the 1990s. I didn't look at any current month in this easy-to-use search-by-month feature on the site, but I can tell you there used to be on average 5-6 accidents per day. To guess, 10% or less involve fatalities.
From a ground loop of a tail-dragger on landing to an engine-out landing in a field, to a graveyard spiral like this, things happen, well, every day. It's not often to famous people like John John. People shouldn't get so surprised and suspicious, unless they've got something solid.
Next on the docket - whenever I feel like it - Paul Wellstone and the King Air crash in Minnesota.
* I should have written these last Summer, as it would have been right at a quarter of a century later.
** Doesn't quite jive with the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil lyrics though...
Comments (7)
Further thoughts from the coffee shop ...
Posted On: Wednesday - April 9th 2025 8:13PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Music Muh Generation
... as continued from our thoughts from the coffee shop on March 2nd of '18. Wow! I guess we at Peak Stupidity don't think about the subject of "the coffee shops" too much.*
It's been a beautiful couple of days with my schedule allowing me free time in the mornings. There was time to spend, an hour to two, in the sunshine with friends at the local coffee shop sitting.
This place makes a mean hot chocolate, and it's convenient, but yesterday the non-service-oriented staff had me thinking about not coming back. They will often blast the music - this is on the outside, on the sidewalk. If I ask them to turn it down, sometimes the guy will, and sometimes the other guy or girl will only act like he will. It stayed loud after my twice asking yesterday - it didn't help matters that the music really sucked, and probably that I also told the guy that the music really sucked.
Maybe you all know this tune. There's a guy singing and some black woman repetitively chanting "hey motherfucker" as the chorus. No, this isn't my chronic lyricosis flaring up - that's the "song". I don't need some Black! woman chanting that to me ANYWHERE, much less outside there where we wanted to be able to hear each other.
Let me back up a few years. This is the place where I almost got into it physically with one manager type about the face masks back during the PanicFest. I asked him if he was pushing this on us (you had to put one on if you got up from your table) because he was worried about the City getting on him or because "you're really scared about this thing"? They're going to be lefties running and working at these places, with very few exceptions.
Therefore, I did feel a bit miffed when the kind of people who would be worried about "killing the planet" leave the front door wide open in mid-winter. It was pretty cold on the inside near the door of course. However, they told us that they were hot behind the counter from all the coffee-making apparatus. Apparently, at this place customers don't come first anymore (same regarding the music) over the staff, and even over THE PLANET! There's a different attitude going around in this generation of tatted-up nose-ringed lefties.
I will now jump from 5 years back, then this winter, and yesterday to THIS morning. It was a different guy running the stereo today, and he had classic Billy Joel songs playing! I had to run in and compliment him along with reporting when the parking meter guy was out and about. This music was vintage, obscure stuff, starting (when I got there) with New York State of Mind from Turnstiles, a little before the Piano Man came back home from Los Angeles and got famous. Another one was an album cut from the more popular album The Stranger - it's embedded in our recent post Vienna no longer waits for you. How appropriate was the song though, I thought, as I remembered the old PS post Starbucks vs. the Viennese Kaffeehaus.
The music wasn't blasting this time - it IS a coffee shop, after all, but just as importantly, this music did anything BUT suck. We've already embedded that 2nd favorite from Billy Joel here, but as the Go-Go's song Head Over Heels was playing a little later, my friend mentioned that band's lead singer Belinda Carlisle's solo hit Mad About You. I really like that tune, and, sure enough, the music aficionado played that one too.
What a difference the music makes, the day makes, and a more decent employee makes.
We'll dive back into that John F. Kennedy, Jr. story tomorrow, though probably not deep enough into the Atlantic Ocean to find that dang squid who ate his logbooks.
* We had a different attitude about the places even longer ago, and then we had posts about Starbucks stupidity here -- here -- here and here.
Comments (16)
Fake History Rhyming Over One Century
Posted On: Tuesday - April 8th 2025 9:57AM MST
In Topics: History Movies Trump Pundits Economics
They say history doesn't repeat, it turns out, but it sure does rhyme. I believe we may see fake history rhyming too, with this story being an example. I really hope not - you'd think the internet would be of help this time around.
Our commenter and the illustrious pundit E.H. Hail has a new post out that is right in Peak Stupidity's wheelhouse. We like the basic Economics (Econ 101, turns to garbage by Econ 102) discussions here.*
When it comes to tariffs, a big subject as of late, to put it mildly, I'd say I changed my mind away from the half-century long free-trade, anti-Protectionism, anti-Nationalist mindset only in the last decade or two. I'd agreed with Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot in the 1990s, but it still didn't sink in that America may really get screwed by free, but especially non-fair-free trade. At this point, I've been even been disagreeing with the great Ron Paul, which does make me wonder ...
Mr. Hail's post has commentary on, and includes a nicely presented (yellowed pages even - I like it) full chapter and more from a book by one Alfred Eckes on, tariffs over American history. The Peak Stupidity Community discussed this book, after Adam Smith kindly provided links to on-line copies under this post.
The entire book, Opening America's Market, is worth reading. Of particular interest, of course, is Chapter 4, as the entire chapter is about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs enacted 95 years ago, celebrated in notoriety in civic mythology** and even fun 1980s John Hughes movies. The post is Alfred Eckes on the Smoot–Hawley Tariff of 1930 and its long-lasting civic mythology. Mr. Hail would welcome more comments there, I'm sure. The interesting commentary by Mr. Hail is something I won't repeat, but I'll add what I can here.
Smoot-Hawley is named after the 2 sponsors of that tariff bill, Mr. Reed Smoot in the Senate and Mr. Willis*** Hawley in the House.**** One might notice that tariffs being discussed and ranted about now don't have said 2 sponsors, hence no 2 names either. Hmmm, don't all bills normally have the 2 sponsor's names like that? Oh, wait, there IS no bill being discussed. These new tariffs are simply being accurately called the "Trump Tariffs", as, since the UniParty Congress had been weak and unhelpful - at least for Conservatives - as of late (meaning, say, 30 years), Trump has taken on this power to levy tariffs himself. I don't blame him one bit. Peak Stupidity has discussed his being akin to a King or El Caudillo Yanqui (per Mr. Hail), but that's nothing new anymore...
It's been 5 years short of a century since President Hoover signed the not-particularly out-of-line Smoot Hawley tariff bill. Though it passed after the FED meddling had already greatly exacerbated the fallout from the crashes of 1929, somehow Smoot-Hawley! has become the bogeyman for the entire Great Depression. Never mind Roosevelt's Socialist policies ... ahh, too long a subject for this post.
I like Mr. Hail's term used in his article, "Civic Mythology". Indeed, and we may as well abbreviate it, SHCTGD, is century-long civics myth. I remember it from my HS history. Though I didn't drool on my desk, we were not much more excited to hear about the causes of the Great Depression than the absent Ferris Bueller's classmates - SAVE FERRIS! - as seen below. I imagine the clip below has gotten a lot of views lately (just noticed that a search starting with"Ferris Bueller..." has "tariff scene" as the first completion - bet that's new), and Peak Stupidity would not be ourselves if we didn't feature this Ben Stein scene.***** from that fun 1980s movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
This is a slightly longer excerpt of the Ben Stein as boring HS Econ teacher, as anyone who remembers the Reagan/Bush years will enjoy the ending. Anyone? Anyone? Mr. Hail? Anyone?
This near-century-old fake history reminds me of another piece of civic mythology, the use of the term "McCarthyism". Peak Stupidity has been all over that myth afterreading Ann Coulter on the subject but more so after reading and reviewing the thorough and informative M. Stanton Evans book about Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy Blacklisted by History. It's been only 70-odd years that this one has been in use. I'm about beyond the point of correcting people anymore when they use the term. It's a myth, but it's sticking. No, Joe McCarthy was NOT the guy the term connotes, personality-wise, and he was RIGHT - there were (still are) Communists in the US State Department and elsewhere in the Feral Government.
These Trump tariffs are being said to be the 2nd Coming of Smoot-Hawley. The Chinese are mad. Good! The Europeans are mad. Good! Consumers will have to pay more for that Cheap China-made Crap, or even be unable to afford it. Good! In fact, that's the point. The stock market is way down. Good!
Americans' main claim to wealth, other than their granite/marble counter-topped-kitchened houses is their 401-k's. They're down. Wait, what? Yes. Peak Stupidity's newsletter, had we one, would have told you long ago to get your money out of anywhere the Feral Gov't has control of. I've been officially losing my ass personally, but ZeroHedge people got me worried years ago that the Feds may someday require portions of that money be in Treasury Bonds to prop up the system. We'll see about that or other rules that may change one's access to "his" money, but I'm not playing. Tough luck, people.
Peak Stupidity has featured dozens of posts about the financial doom caused by a century of financial stupidity. "What can't go on, won't go on., some dude said, and the music may stop during this Trump-47 term. The Trump tariffs are LONG LONG overdue. He is in the right. However, depending on timing, will the coming crash be blamed on the Trump Tariffs? Why wouldn't it be? I wouldn't be surprised it there are Globalists in the market right now purposely selling off to help version 2.0 of this myth keep going, maybe for another century.
Will this fake history rhyme stick? Anyone? Does anyone know the term for what's going on? "Civic" something ... anyone? "Civic myth-"something... Anyone?
PS: Yeah, I know, that movie was somewhat juvenile, but that and Fast Times at Ridgemont High are classic 1980s Americana. I will point out here that Mr. Hail, in a more serious vein, has a great discussion on the long mid/late-20th through present-time push for Free Trade as an economic given. I got suckered into that like most other people that think about economics. Pat Buchanan never did - he's mentioned in Mr. Hail's post too. Go read, man!
* We WILL get to that post on Deflation. Amazingly, last week I found that old news clipping on the subject out of a Nov. 2001 WSJ, with my writing "WTF?" on top in pen. It's a little yellowed but readable. I'm even more miffed by the writer's stupidity than I was 23 1/2 years ago!
** A GREAT term, that I will credit to Mr. Hail, unless I hear otherwise.
*** It's been said that Congressman Willis C. Hawley originally wanted to levy high tariffs on vacuum cleaners, but President Hoover nixed this, saying, "Whatchu' talkin' 'bout, Willis?!"
**** I wrote in the comments in our discussion 3 1/2 weeks ago that that Alfred Eckes spent a couple of pages in the chapter explaining whose name SHOULD have gone first and why. It was kind of esoteric but fun. Note too that Ben Stein***** in the movie called it the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill. Maybe there should be a debate on this between the two economists about it.
***** Ben Stein was an academic and political wonk himself before becoming an actor. I tried to find his actual views on this tariff issue but had no luck so far. Though he started out working for GOP Presidents, Mr. Stein's views have been all over the map.
Comments (12)
Student Snowflake concerned about normal things
Posted On: Saturday - April 5th 2025 9:43PM MST
In Topics: Student and other Snowflakes University Humor Cars
This quick post, ‘I F***ING HATE YOU’: Student gov candidate at UNC Asheville destroys pro-life table, yells at pro-lifers, came across our desk by way of Instapundit this morning. It's the typical University behavior you'll hear about daily now, with the student snowflakes that can't handle anything different from their well-brainwashed-in world view. I thought that was what they were there.... never mind.
This story was not worth a post - or we'd be running these day and night - were it not for one unexpected small part of the statement by the protagonist in defense of his snowflakey behavior. His name is Adrian Miguelez, and we've got to give him a chance to justify his actions.
Miguelez is running to be a sophomore senator at the school’s student government.No, that's not it. You've got to be a much bigger politician to get away with acting like this much of a jackass.
He lists his pronouns as “He/Him,” [A true student of letters and Litratoor*, Mr. Miguelez is] and adds: “Unfortunately, due to compliance with the assaults on diversity and cultural programs by UNCA, an emerging student mental health crisis, and the over-ticketing of students who rely on personal transportation in their everyday lives, there has been profound negligence by the school’s administration in dealing with our very immediate concerns. As someone passionate about true justice within our community, I will fight to right these wrongs.”This sounds personal, especially his mental health crisis. Wait, what else did he say in there? This stood out for its being a more mundane, hence unusual, concern for a student snowflake: the over-ticketing.
Ahaaa! Is that what set this guy off, getting too many parking tickets? If that's the case, I want to head to Asheville (next train I can ride) and shake this guy's hand, never mind his table-overturning behavior, and the mental instability, oh, and the pro-D.I.E. stupidity. He's absolutely right! The city of Asheville and UNCA have probably been doing the same as elsewhere, raising the fines and raising the meter requirements. They know they can ream those students this way.
Does Mr. Miguelez not have an old out-of-state license plate connected to no extant vehicle, you know, with slots in it to slip over his current plate, under the 2 screws left out by 1/8", while he parks? You just rip up the tickets and leave the pieces on the street, with no worries, greatly increasing your mental stability... I mean, until you see the tow truck backing up one day. Even then, all
These modern student snowflakes, they were never taught how to handle adversity. This is how we did it in my day... well a little earlier. The young people would probably write mean tweets instead.
Not to spoil a 58 y/o movie or anything, but, good point, it didn't work out so well for Cool Hand Luke in the long run either. Going by his surname alone, any stereotyping purely unintentional, this Miguelez guy may end up being deported.
* That's how the good Professors say it - I figure it's spelled like it sounds.
Comments (38)
EXCUSEs: Means and Motives - Example, JFK, Jr. - Pt 2
Posted On: Saturday - April 5th 2025 1:18PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity History Hildabeast Science
(Continued directly from our last post.)
Over 6 years ago, a writer named Laurent Guyenot had an article published on The Unz Review titled The Broken Presidential Destiny of JFK, Jr.. The subtitle, Israel's "Kennedy Curse"? really made little sense, as the writer concentrated elsewhere in trying to EXCUSE this unnatural death.
We've discussed the likely cause of JFK, Jr.'s death and that of his wife and sister-in-law more than enough in the last post. We'll still have to refer to that explanation a bit here, but Let's get to the possible motives for a more nefarious explanation.
Yes, there were motives to support the idea of foul play in the death of JFK, Jr. I (sounding like Ron Unz here some more, haha) had no idea of any of them until reading this article This writer did a very nice job relating something of this John Kennedy's upbringing (very close with his mother Jackie (then) Onassis) and his rise into a man considered a big rising D-party star and very-possible not-too-far-off eventual Presidential candidate.
When it came to immediate consideration of Kennedy for US Senator from New York, Patrick Moynihan having just retired, it turns out there was one other contender. That'd be one Hillary Clinton, known locally (here) as The Hildabeast. (We REALLY don't like her, and that goes back well before Trump v Hildabeast in '16.) Of course, I followed the carpetbagging entry of the Hildabeast into national politics via the NY Senate, but what I hadn't known, long since caring about New York, is that Mr. Kennedy had been a more-likely candidate. Mr. Guyenot's article says that multiple sources had Kennedy about to announce his run, first time in official politics, a few days before his fatal plane crash.
Kennedy was an actual New Yorker with personal, business, and political ties to NYC. The Hildabeast was, again, a carpetbagger out of Arkansas. (Well, a reverse carpet-bagger, I suppose.) The ctrl-left wanted its man, someone much more to the left than old-school leftist Patrick Moynihan, in this US Senate seat. The Hildabeast had to do, in the end, though nobody really had to like her. However, the NYC crowd (too big a proportion of the State, unfortunately) loved them some JFK, Jr. I believe he would have won a primary election. Time for another Sirhan Sirhan deal? I could see that. The Clintons had been known to off some folks in their day.
This alone is a good motive, and Mr. Guyenot had more than that to say. As you'd expect, with his father having been murdered when he was a toddler, John, Jr. wanted to investigate what really happened to his father. His uncle Robert got into that and was dead himself 4 1/2 years later. Were it a more nefarious thing than the official story - and talk about motives! (as we did). whoever was responsible would not want to let John, Jr. get too far with this, one would think. So, yes, there are plenty of reasonable theories of a motive to kill this guy.
I had a real time with the rest of this article though. This is because the writer went into the possible means with details to try to match his suggested motives. This caused great exasperation with the whole attempted EXCUSE for me, including trying to correct the record in both the article and the comments. Laurence Guyonot does not know enough about the subject of flying to write an article like this. By claiming to see unexplained discrepancies in the story as some sort of good evidence of nefarious deeds, he fails at his theory.
I will refute the errors in this article, not to point out the writer's stupidity, but to show that all these pieces of supposed evidence of a doctored-up story are untrue. Some of my exasperation is with the commenters*. Since their claims are not, of course, Mr. Guyenot's fault (though he chimed in a few times but refuted none of it), I will leave them out. A couple of my points come from a video that the writer embedded, recommended, and used for support. It is garbage, at least the part I was led to watch. Here's a non-exhaustive list of my problems with this supposed conflicting and damaging evidence:
1) The last portion of the flight path of N9253N, Mr. Kennedy's Piper Saratoga: Evidence claimed for the idea that the plane was shot down or bombed was not much more (I'll get to the other part) that its path was nearly vertical as seen on the scale used by the NTSB investigators. Yes, the airplane didn't go very far horizontally as it came down. The writer's problem is not understanding how the approach/center radar works. Each sweep takes a while, 5 to 12 seconds - you can see the antennae rotating as some airports that have the radar on site. A normal "standard rate" turn of an airplane is 2 minutes, but when you're in that tight spiral, in a spin, or at the very worst, broken into pieces**, it's a lot quicker than that. From radar returns, you're not going to see any kind of coherent horizontal path, or know which way the plane could be considered heading. So, this is not evidence of a bomb or shoot-down.
2: The weather reports conflicted!: Even back in 1999, the fairly new at the time ASOS (Automatic Surface Observation System) weather broadcast from Martha'a Vineyard airport had the local weather which was clear and hazy with light winds. The tower was still open at the time Kennedy was coming in, and, after the fact, the controller reported that this visibility as higher than the ASOS reported more like 10-12 miles. That does not mean Kennedy did not have lower visibility where he was. Still, it was VFR. As we wrote last post, there would not be much of a horizon, so basic instrument skills, something Kennedy was reported good at, were needed.
Local news reports gave all kind of reports of what the weather had been, as Mr. Guyenot considered these as evidence of discrepancies, cover-ups, and the like. Yes, as if the hype days after the crash from local news sources is what you can trust. He even noted erroneously a difference between "clear" and "5 miles visibility". See, discrepancy! NO. "Clear" means no cloud cover (sometimes just below 12,000 ft). It WAS clear. It can be "3 miles in clear skies" Lower than that visibility, there must be "haze", "fog", "smoke", "snow" etc, associated. In flying, "visibility" is a different parameter of a weather report or forecast than cloud cover.
Since I'm getting into this, the writer saw Kennedy's long delay on the ground at Caldwell airport, waiting for his 2 passengers. as some kind of sign of something. I can imagine this still fairly inexperienced pilot's trepidation, as he was used to having an instructor with him. That's not a good thing, but, being cautious enough, Kennedy was worried about both that it was nighttime, and that with the temperature and dew point trending very close together at the other end, the weather could come down way down. Fog could form quickly. He had a reason to want to get going, and passenger delays, even though one of the advantages of having one's own plane, can mess with one's plans when weather is involved.
3: Kennedy's altitude and call to the Vineyard Tower: It's maddening when the guy calling out "unexplained" happenings to bolster his theory doesn't bother going to obtain an explanation. The writer wrote a bit about Kennedy's having descended a few hundred feet then back up to 2,500 because of the tower airspace. This made no sense. First of all, the tower airspace goes up to 2,500 ft above the ground ("agl" is about the same as "msl" (altitude above mean sea level) on these islands and over the, well, sea) only within 4.2*** nautical miles from the center of the airport, not 15 miles out where Kennedy was then. (He'd started a smooth descent from his cruise altitude of 5,500 ft from about 35 miles out. That's about right, maybe a little early. 500 ft./min. is comfortable, and he'd be doing about 2 1/2 miles/minute in the descent. 4,500 ft to lose until the pattern = 9 minutes = about 22 miles.)
There's nothing wrong with calling the tower at 15 miles out, but Kennedy was nowhere near in his airspace yet.
4: A boater saw/heard the whole thing!: When I first read "A trial lawyer in a ...", OK, that's about it. I kept going and noted that the supposed sight of an explosion that the author mentioned from some other eyewitness wasn't corroborated, but the boater heard a bang. In the middle of the calm water at night, you're going to hear a bang, for either the break-up of the airplane, but more likely from it hitting the water hard. But, let me get back to flying stuff...
5: Kennedy may have had an instructor onboard, and he took seats out.: I just looked back at this, and this is one I've got to excerpt as an example of abject stupidity:
One question has been the focus of much attention from independent researchers: was there a flight instructor as co-pilot in the plane? Officially, there wasn’t. No fourth body was recovered in the wreckage. But strangely enough, one seat was also missing, and conspiracy theorists such as John Hankey have speculated that it might have had a flight instructor’s body seat-belted on it, which might have been spirited away for the sake of building up the story of an incompetent and reckless John. For if John had flown with a flight instructor, then the whole argument of his recklessness falls.And he wouldn't have augured in either, so no need to hide any bodies. Why would this instructor have not saved Kennedy? Was he a suicidal maniac sent to kill them all? Why not find another way ... I'll get to this. The evidence of his body was "spirited away", sure, and I guess nobody missed the guy either. Just another flight instructor, ... well, it was kind of like that in those years. ;-} His death would have helped out another pilot trying to get a job, so there's that.
One neat thing about the Piper Saratoga/Lance/Cherokee 6, as with its twin-engined sister the Seneca, is that is can be, and is often configured for "club seating". The two rows of seats behind the front two face each other. Conversation can be made more readily, cards can be played, liquor can be drunk, and so on. Seats can be taken out easily, and if there was anything going on with seats, it was likely to take out the middle 2, leaving the one back passenger with lots of room facing forward. Did Kennedy's making conversation with her - I assume the SIL - become the start of his spatial disorientation? That could easy be the case. I think THIS, if anything, was the "missing seat" story.
UPDATE from NTSB report: The plane was arranged with club seating and all 6 seats were in the plane. I hate riding backwards, and if the 2nd passenger felt the same, she'd have been facing forward 5 ft or so behind the front 2 seats.
6) The logbooks were missing, meaning... something. Yes, that meant something. That meant the JFK, Jr. was not stupid. Bringing along airplane or personal logbooks (especially the former) is generally stupid, unless one wants specifically to get them to point B. There are 2 reasons for each type, overlapping for the 2nd (C):
A) Airplane logbooks - it is said, with numbers pulled out the rear, that losing one's A/C logbooks will reduce the resale value of a plane 10%, 25%, who knows? The records of how the airplane was kept up and often improved are important for any buyer. Otherwise, he will have to assume the worst, at the very least requiring expensive inspections that might have already been done, etc. You don't want to lose them, so you keep them in a safe place at home.
B) Pilot logbooks - These have great sentimental, maybe even historical value. ("Remember when we landed here and met, ohhhh, John John!" "Let me look up when that was.") You would hate to lose them for this reason.
C) Airplane AND pilot logbooks - After any kind of accident or a known violation of rules (usually about airspace), the FAA will want to look at both pilot and aircraft logbooks (both especially after an accident). If they are in the airplane, then the FAA can get them easily and quickly. This is a case in which you might WANT to "lose" them. I'll say no more...
That was too comprehensive****, I know, but it completely refutes Laurent Guyenot's idea that the lack of logbooks found in the wreck of Kennedy's plane means something strange.
UPDATE from reading the NTSB report: The mechanics back in New Jersey allegedly said Kennedy did keep the logbooks on him. Hmmmm, I hate to impugn the guys, but that's what a lot of mechanics might say to avoid trouble, knowing the logbooks would be smudged gibberish under the sea. That would sure keep things simple.
7) Aviation vs. Navigation: This is another attempt at an explanation by Mr. Guyenot that is not helpful to his cause, if one understands flying. He doesn't get what flying "by instruments" is even about, as he supports his theory that Kennedy's competence would not have let this loss of control happen:
So, even if the visibility had been very bad — which it was not — John could have guided his plane safety to the airport, using his autopilot if necessary.We're not talking navigation here. Even by the mid-1990s' small aircraft owners could afford basic non-moving-map GPSs - one hell of a change too! In 1999, JFK, Jr. would not have felt a dent his budget from such a purchase. Yes, he could GET to Martha's Vineyard. You just can't follow the GPS to get there when you're in a graveyard spiral is all - Kennedy's problem was controlling the airplane, not navigating.
The writer did bring up the autopilot here again. At least from more reading since yesterday, I do think that Mr. Kennedy relied way too much on the autopilot. One should not NEED it in a plane like that, period.
8) The alleged CVR: I can't shake the feeling that this writer cannot picture general aviation aircraft. This is not some jet with those big "black" but actually orange boxes attached to the airframe in the "aft equipment bay". It's a little plane as the public would view it. It did have that foot-long (mostly battery) ELT (Emergency Locating Transmitter) that is required for cross-country flight - technically over 50 nm flight. That wasn't a point here.
What Kennedy did have in his plane was something pretty new at the time, an in-line with the microphone digital recorder. The idea is mostly to help someone who's not great with the radios to playback a clearance. (It can also get one out of trouble, were it the controller who made a mistake and some pilot violation was alleged.) So, the battery was missing, the writer says. Listen, Mr. Guyenot, this wasn't airline operations - it's the one reasonably diligent aircraft owner and private pilot. I don't think something like that would have survived days under the sea either.
That's it for today, on this old story. If the reader has gotten this far, I thank you for wading through all this. Since you're here, I'll also let you know that Part 3 (I swear it!), the conclusion, to be posted on Monday, will be a lot easier to read. The reader may already surmise that I don't agree that there were nefarious acts that brought the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. in his airplane. However, that's not actually my main point in writing all this. Come, Monday ...
* One commenter claimed a pilot must be on an instrument flight plan ("clearance" is what he meant) to fly at night. That is the case, from what I know, in Europe, and in Canada, one must have a separate rating above the Private Pilot certificate to do that. In the US it's always been perfectly legal to fly VFR at night.
It's one thing to ignore my correction. I've been back-and-forth with commenters who, when they finally realize I'm right, just stop replying. This guy, though, didn't reply, and then repeated his mistake (at that point a lie, because neither listened to me nor looked it up.)
** A good question is THEN what would the radar show? Primary radar - reflection off the metal, is pretty poor, though possibly the scope would show a few faint primary returns. The transponder (designed to help show aircraft on radar) would have remained with the fuselage, so ... that's about all the depth I want to go into about that ...
*** This is a weird one, Everything else is in nice round nautical mile numbers. This one is 5 STATUTE miles, hence, just over 4 nautical miles.
**** Let me add here that I refer to 1999 here, when this accident happened. Before then, one could have electronic versions, but paper was still favored. From about that time on, pilot logbooks could be put online, and nowadays save the latest flights in the cloud and what-not in real-time. It's just that, no Kennedy didn't have a Read/Write CD on him. Why would he? It was still 1999.
Airplane logbooks are still on paper, but as of late, mechanics/inspectors surely have electronic back-ups... most of them.
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[UPDATED 04/08:] Added point 8. Modified points 5 and 6.
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Comments (5)
EXCUSEs: Means and Motives - Example, JFK, Jr. - Pt 1
Posted On: Friday - April 4th 2025 10:24PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity History Science
(EXCUSESs is my acronym to replace the oft-derogatory expression "conspiracy theory". It stands for EXplanations of Causes of Unusually Suspect Events.)
We're really trying to follow up from posts that promise more of a conclusion coming. Rather than lots of other stupidity to cover, we'll follow up here on our post from 2 weeks back EXCUSEs: Means and Motives - Example, JFK. Note that very small difference in our title, "JFK, Jr." rather than JFK.
Everyone's got something to say about JFK's murder, though all Peak Stupidity could come up with is that there are over half a dozen, maybe a full baker's dozen, reasons that people would have wanted to kill President Kennedy. There's more hype now, with the release of dozens of reams of paper (in digital form, I guess) by the Trump Admin., but we speculate that the REAL KILLER might have had the means to get rid of the incriminating evidence over the last, what, 52 years?! Ya think?
So that wasn't much of a post of ours, without this follow-up to explain what we think of speculation on motives that don't understand the possible means.
About the Kennedies, some say there is a curse or they are just highly accident prone, explaining some of the other deaths of this so-called American Royal Family. I'd guess the naming of the band The Dead Kennedys [sic] back in 1978, only 10 years after RFK, Sr.'s murder, signified that Americans (no, not New Yorkers, but Americans) were already sick of that Camelot crap. That whole deal is not American - we really shouldn't be hearing about dynasties* outside of Chinese Buffet restaurants.
JFK, Jr.'s death was the most interesting of all the Kennedies' unnatural deaths. Skiing into a tree, ahhhh, boring. Getting drunk and choking in one’s own vomit – not sure any of them actually have, YET, but we’ll be the first not to know about it. ("We found a 2nd puddle of vomit behind the grassy knoll!") Plus, they're not Rock & Roll stars - that'd be somewhat culturally appropriative - not cool
The reader may detect a little disdain out of Peak Stupidity for the Kennedy worship and Camelot business. It's there, but I have more respect for President Kennedy than I used to, and though I barely knew who he was at the time, the assassinated President's son John sounds like he was one of the better of the lot.
A man-about-town, magazine publisher, and businessman who'd kept up with politics - particularly in a quest to eventually get to the bottom of the events of 1963 - I suppose I was supposed to know about him. Simply putting 2 + 2 together, that there was that sad little boy saluting at his murdered Dad's funeral in that iconic photo, and that I'd not heard anything about any unnatural death out of him - his would have surely been noted - would have told me this guy was around in the 1990s. It was one episode of Seinfeld really, that jogged my memory. Elaine Benice was all hot and bothered about his being in the same gym there in NYC. (The show had an occasional big shot on, such as Mayor Giuliani, but I wouldn't have known "John John" from an actor.)
John F. Kennedy, Jr. was one big city eligible bachelor or eligible non-bachelor, and he was going places, as they say. Sometimes he got around in his Piper Saratoga, a retractable-gear 6 seat single-engine plane. That's not a RICH RICH man's plane. He probably could have bought a business jet and hired pilots - I don't know his state of wealth at the time - but, flying can be a great hobby for people like JFK, Jr. and for those with much lower means too.
Rather than say, with the hobby of fishing, fun and relaxing but not really paying off unless one catches a LOT of salmon, flying would pay off in time saved for a guy like him. The story in question here is a great example, minus the unnatural death part, of course. Anyone who knows anything about Camelot (ha!) knows that this whole Kennedy Klan had a compound**** in Hyannis Port and spent time on Martha's Vineyard Island. Kennedy was in NYC a lot, and a car trip from there to "the Vinyed", including the ferry too, would have had to have been around 6 hours. Once he got to his plane at Caldwell (now called Essex airport) in northern New Jersey (no way I'd go out of the big NYC airports either - closest in NY would be Republic- Fairchild in Nassau County) and did his preflight, he could fly nearly in a straight line to Martha's Vineyard airport in an hour and a half. From Caldwell, one can stay under the NYC airspace with a little maneuvering to stay away from both LaGuardia and White Plains, and once level, that thing would do about 140 knots true airspeed on a 170 nm straight shot. Time was worth a lot of money for a guy like JFK, Jr.
Along with that great convenience would come the pride in being able to pilot one's self and up to 5 others, in an endeavor that requires some dedication and diligence to master. Practically speaking, if Mr. Kennedy was not a spendthrift, having a nicely kept Saratoga was a very good decision. (There are airplane owners that don't have quite the money to keep everything just about perfect, but that wouldn't have been a factor for him.)
I found out more about who this guy was on July 17th of 1999, the day after Mr. Kennedy's Piper Saratoga, with he, with his wife and her sister aboard, augured into the Atlantic Ocean just west of Martha's Vineyard airport. Because I didn't know any of the possible motives for any foul play, my neither really caring about the antics of these types nor about NY City, I and the people I discussed this wreck with didn't even consider it. This was also because the official story was VERY LIKELY all that COULD have happened.
As I will get into the article that purported to tell us how nefarious the death of JFK, Jr. was, let me agree with this part. From all I read, Kennedy took flying seriously and was competent at it. There is competence in the actual flying and competence in good decision-making. All I read has me agreeing that he was certainly competent in the latter. I can't get into everything here but his having possibly waiting for one of his flight instructors to go with him, then going anyway without him, was not a bad decision in and of itself.
Mr. Kennedy had to have gotten the required few hours of simulated instrument flying (using view-limiting "foggles") during his training for his Private Pilot license. Then, too, he'd been working on his instrument rating, so he had practiced, IIRC, a dozen or so hours at that with an instructor (more on this). It was both perfectly legal for him to fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules) that night and safe enough to, per Mr. Kennedy's confidence in himself. He should have probably already known from experience and been warned by his instructor and the books that night-time flying over water in 5 miles visibility, i.e. without always enough ground lighting to perceive the horizon, can require good reference to the instruments.
Still, bad things can happen if you don't pay attention. By that, I refer to what probably did, inadvertent***** entry into a "Graveyard Spiral".
Let me back up. The need for "blind flying" (the old term), or instrument flying as it's been called for half a century, to begin with is due to the biophysically determined limitations of our sense of balance. That stuff in our inner ears is very good in helping us know our attitude (in the flying sense), and which ways we are accelerating, etc. However, that's only for a short while, something like 15, 30 seconds or so. Pilot trainees get to learn just how much that short time is by flying in a bank for longer than that. Our bodies fail us here - we have not been built with Sperry's or laser-ring gyros. Smart inventors like Sperry going all the way back to the 1930s developed what we needed to safely keep attitude, so that flying could be accomplished without visual reference to the outside.
Here's what can happen, if one is not good at flying instruments. The plane enters a bank as the pilot is not spending enough time scanning the gauges. Vertical lift is reduced in a bank, so the plane starts descending too. Then the pilot continues to be distracted, and by the time he sees that the aircraft is in a fairly steep bank and losing altitude to boot, and the speed's headed toward the red line, he might unfortunately not recover from this in the way he was trained. That would have been - after the instructor has told him to close his eyes and then maneuvers the plane all kind of ways to mix him up and finally say "OK, your airplane - recover" - to first roll out of the bank before pitching "up" for altitude. ("Up" is not up, see? It's toward the top of the plane which might be inclined 60 degrees from actually up.) Some altitude is sacrificed, and one may have to pull power to keep speed under control, even though headed for the ground. After the wings are close to level, one can pitch up, get the plane climbing, add power, and switch seats with the passengers to change his underwear in the back seat.
The problem with pitching up while in a steep bank, especially at high speed, is that 2 very important limits can be exceeded. The airplane can stall due to the angle of attack required to increase lift, seeing as (for example) at a 60 deg. bank, it takes twice the lift just to stay pitch level. If the wing stalls at a level altitude, recovery is simple, but here we are in a steep bank, which will lead to a spin after a stall. In many planes, one can recover from that, but a lot of altitude. When you've already dove down toward the ocean for a while ...
Worse yet is a structural failure of the airplane as the g-loading is high enough to bend or break off the wings. That's it, then.
I just got done writing that it sounds like JFK, Jr. was probably a good decision maker as a pilot. Those who say he shouldn't have been flying that night are wrong. It's just that he screwed up this time. Was he distracted by the passengers for just too long? Was he too used to using the autopilot?****** I've heard a theory that he may have accidentally turned off the autopilot instead of pushing the "push-to-talk" switch. Both switches would be on the left side top of the yoke (steering wheel?) so that one can use them while manipulating the controls still, the right hand being for other functions. The ability to turn OFF the autopilot is very important for safety. Usually there are multiple ways to do it (including, worst case, turning off electrical power for a bit - the engine will still run), but one usual method is with a switch right there. Did he not realize the autopilot was off and spend too much time off the gauges? Were this speculation correct, it was still no excuse for getting the plane into this state, but it might explain it.
I have considered the relationship between Mr. Kennedy and his flight instructors. I imagine he hired the best around. However, were one to be teaching a guy like this, said instructor would not be inclined to be a hard-ass. 1999 was still a tough time for aviation jobs, and having a "sugar daddy" like JFK, Jr. who would bring you along on trips to ritzy places with expenses paid was a good gig. Of course, you teach as much as you can, but you wouldn't berate the guy, and if he just let you fly when he's not in the mood to, you'd just be his corporate pilot, a pretty nice deal. Mr. Kennedy may have unintentionally used his flight instructor as a crutch. That can happen.*******
The Graveyard Spiral has killed pilots before, and even with all the training that the FAA has pushed for decades, this will still happen. If this fatal accident had one benefit, it was to bring more awareness of this to the pilots that somehow had never read about this danger. (Not likely, though.)
What else might have happened? Why is there speculation that this likely interpretation by nearly everyone who knows about flying is not a good enough EXCUSE?
We'll delve into the article that I am using for example of how not to make EXCUSES - conspiracy theories - next post. This one got WAY too long!
* Then there were the Bushes, of course, hopefully a defunct dynasty, and the Clintons, even defuncter, thankfully.
** Unz Review commenter Ralph L. kindly informed me that Ted Kennedy has been in his own aircraft wreck, a pretty bad one too, with serious injuries for him, in a Rockwell Twin Commander back in 1964. One wonders, had he died, how the Hart-Cellar immigration act he supported in '65 would have fared. I AM sure that Mary Jo Kopechne and her family would have been much happier.
*** The Cherokee 6 (for 6-seater), the Lance, and the Saratoga are basically the same plane.
**** The one example I know of Democrat's huge properties being called "compounds". Usually that term is reserved for rich Conservatives and Preppers, who really would like to have compounds. (Is Trump's Mar-a-Lago ever called a compound? Maybe the term has come into disuse.)
***** You may exclaim "no duh!" here, but one might get into the beginning of that on purpose, in training.
****** IMO, it's a crutch. For a plane like that, it shouldn't be a problem to go on 3-4 hour flights without one. Use the trim!
******* One thing not enough pilots training for instrument flying do is to fly with a "safety pilot" - just there to keep you out of trouble - looking outside for other planes, and keeping you from entering airspace you shouldn't be in and from hitting the ground. You can make bigger mistakes and learn more quickly, than with an instructor who's likely to give hints.
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Canadian and Ukrainian flags flying together
Posted On: Thursday - April 3rd 2025 7:09PM MST
In Topics: Music University Trump The Neocons World Political Stupidity
I really need a couple of solid hours to finish the JFK, Jr. post. No, posts don't usually take nearly that long, especially anecdotal posts like this one.
Has anyone else seen this? It's only one house (so far) that has the flags of The Ukraine and Canada hanging on poles off of the porch supports. It's the same house mentioned in this post of last summer in which we noted that these people bought a brand new Ukrainian flag. (Gotta support the team!)
Why the Canadian flag? I'm sure the PS reader has an idea, but let me go back to many, many years ago for an anecdote. I visited a friend in our college's dorm room one time and noticed he had a huge Canadian flag on the wall. (It might not have been THAT big, as the rooms were really small.) The guy didn't sound Canadian, though I may have never met a Canadian at that time. He sounded, well, normal.
"I didn't know you were from Canada." "No, I like Rush." This wasn't about the late jolly Conservative AM radio personality but the band out of Toronto*. (In fact the former may not have been on the radio yet.) Whaaaa? "But, but", I thought, "Rush is from Canada. You love Rush. (Who didn't?) Does that necessarily mean you love Canada, enough to have its flag on your dorm room wall?" We'd both taken the SAT's, so I mean...
He was just a big fan. I'm glad for his fandom too, as he did turn me onto this band, one I regret having never seen in concert.
The deal with the flags at this nearby house is something like the opposite end of that. "We HATE Trump! Trump HATES Canada." (No, not really, as his levying of tariffs is strictly business, deal-making, and influencing - without the Making Friends and ... part.) "So, we LOVE Canada. Oh, Canada, Oh, Canada, thy candles shine so brightly... , wait, no." These people don't love Canada. They have no reason to. Flying that flag is just a stupid ridiculous gesture, designed to impart to us the information that President Trump is a bad guy.
We already know the house is full of anti-MAGA warmongering NeoCons from their Ukraine flag.** What's next? Thankfully, Trump got us out of (again) the Climate Calamity™ based Paris Accords. How about the French tri-color flag next? Does NATO have a flag? If so, surely they need that one. It's a must-fly.
One day on the campus at some outdoor event that Rush fan, named Jeff, I just recalled, put his walkman headphones on my head and said "You gotta listen to this!" It was a tape of Moving Pictures from some years ago, and I got a taste of Tom Sawyer and Limelight. Wow! Even without Geddy Lee's bass guitar - these were no modern Bose headphones - that was some great stuff ... but it didn't induce me to buy a Canadian flag for my dorm room.
We've featured Red Barchetta already more than once, so here's Limelight:
I can't do it - I can't listen to this on small computer speakers! I hope you can play it loud somewhere.
* Hence their instrumental song YYZ for the IATA code for Toronto Pearson Airport. I had no idea what that means for many years too - there was no internet! Since we have it now, I just learned this:
"YYZ" is an instrumental titled after the IATA airport code for Toronto Pearson International Airport; its rhythm is that of the letters "YYZ" in Morse code. ( ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ; ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ; ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄)Pretty cool!
** By the way he's been acting in foreign policy, they may want to reconsider.
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