John Gruskos has a new version of "Turn on, Tune in, Drop out".
Posted On: Wednesday - July 21st 2021 8:19PM MST
In Topics: Preppers and Prepping Liberty/Libertarianism The Future
Under a cryptic post by Steve Sailer on The Unz Review, there was some good discussion by the commenters regarding the role and prospects of former members of the US military.
Commenter "Prime Noticer" usually has good comments. This particular comment of his was kind of pessimistic about things, reading:
It’s pretty alarming to see that we really have very few actual allies and half or maybe even the majority of putative allies are just grifters. the patriotic Americans who keep the country running are a really deep treasure chest to be plundered for decades. the grifters might as well get while the getting is good, because in a decade or so they won’t be able to run this scam anymore as core America will be so utterly defeated and dying off, literally. Democrats will have largely made the Republican party illegal, so that will be the end of the scams.
"Woke soldiers and Bai Dien's coming. We're finally on our own."
I can't argue about the type of people patriotic Americans are dealing with today. However, a commenter going by the name of John Gruskos replied with a very nice comment - here - with a number of ideas as prescription for our ills, prepper style, with a touch of the 55 y/o Counterculture mantra "Turn on, tune in, drop out". Here is Mr. Gruskos' comment in its entirety:
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That is why I advocate an entirely different paradigm.
Instead of “help your friends”, I say “hurt your enemy”.
Instead of “give till it hurts”, I say “force your enemy to give till he hurts”.
If your method of “fighting back” is to give money to “the cause”, you just make yourself a piggy bank for grifters – impoverishing yourself while enriching cynical frauds.
On the other hand, there are no downsides if you STOP giving our money to known and open enemies.
Wall Street:
Don’t give them interest. Instead of borrowing, save and buy with cash.
Don’t give them insurance premiums. Don’t carry any form of insurance, just live a careful and healthy lifestyle.
Don’t give them rent. Blackrock is on its way to becoming the only landlord. Don’t make your adult children pay rent to Blackrock. Let them live at home while they save to buy their own house with cash.
Hollywood:
Cancel your cable subscription, cancel your Netflix subscription, don’t go to the movie theaters, don’t rent from Redbox etc.
Sell any and all Hollywood related merchandise currently in your possession.
Federal government:
Eliminate (alcohol, tobacco) or minimize (gasoline, guns & ammo) your purchase of goods subject to Federal excise tax.
Never visit DC – don’t give the DC local economy a penny.
State and local government (if you live in a blue state):
Eliminate or minimize purchases of goods subject to sales tax (junk food, fast food, “durable goods”)
Refrain from any home improvement which would increase your property tax.
Don’t visit NYC or any other ultra-liberal area as a tourist. Never give the bastards a penny!
Academia:
Tell your daughters to get married instead of going to college, and tell your sons to use higher education strictly as vocational training, with the explicit goal of paying as little as possible. Emphasize that an Ivy League degree now carries negative prestige in your eyes.
Mainstream media:
Cancel subscriptions, and don’t click on their websites (eliminate their click-count based advertising revenue)
Big tech:
Use a $5/month “kid phone”, delete your facebook account, cancel your internet access, use the library for free internet access.
Big Pharma:
Eat healthy, stay hydrated, exercise, get a good night sleep, and when you are very old and its time to die, just lie down and die gracefully. There is no need to ever give a penny to the so-called “Health Care” industry, staffed with murderers who perform abortions, perverts who perform sex change operations, and drug dealers who sell Oxycontin.
Basically stop paying for things which not only give you no benefit, but do actual harm to you. Save your time, save your money, avoid the mental strain of being subjected to enemy propaganda, all while depriving your enemies of revenue streams.
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If we haven't already, we all need to face this now. The Establishment is hard left, Woke, SJW, or flat-out virulent Communist. It hates us. It is not on our side. It is our enemy, and we are "finally on our own." We are the Counter-culture now.
The hippies half a century ago "turned on" to drugs. We don't need more drugs. We need to turn on to freedom, in a different way as the hippies, but we need to turn on our imaginations to understand what freedom even is - the young people just don't have a clue about it.
The hippies half a century ago "tuned in" to the new (most excellent, you gotta admit) rock and folk music and the new ideas spread outside the Establishment media. We need to find ways to keep up our communications and stay tuned in to the few honest, patriotic Americans in the media. It would be nice to have some decent music too...
The hippies half a century ago "dropped out" of the "system". They wanted to ditch the traditional way of American life. They were quite in the wrong on this in 1960s America. In 2020s America, yeah, that's not our America. We've had enough! We need to drop out of the system as much as we can.
Mr. Gruskos' prescription is not all-encompassing, but it provides some good ideas for those who have not thought this all out yet. The overriding theme of his comment is: at least don't give the bastards who are trying to kill you and your country any more of your money than you have to.
Thank you, John Gruskos!
Comments (7)
Walking on the Moon
Posted On: Tuesday - July 20th 2021 7:28PM MST
In Topics: Music History Americans Science
It was 52 years ago about 4 hours ago, when Man, but specifically, 2 Americans named Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, first walked on the surface of the moon. This historic "giant step for mankind" is one of the few events that Peak Stupidity DID remember to memorialize on the right day. On the half-century anniversary, we posted Peak America - 1/2 Century Ago Today.
Even when looking back from 52 years, but especially at the time, this was not only an amazing accomplishment, but a thing of awe. Two men were walking on another world! (10 more did, and some of them drove around and even drove a golf ball.)
For years afterward, Americans had a standard complaint that I believe started out as "We can send a man to the moon, but we still can't cure the common cold!" Peak Stupidity's version of 52 years later, with help from our new hero to replace Neil Armstrong, Dr. Anthony Fauci goes "We can cure the common cold, but we can't send a man to the moon anymore!"
Upon request by commenter "The Alarmist", we feature today some more music by The Police, a great 3-piece English rock band of the 1970s and '80s. They are a favorite of ours, and we've featured at least 4 of their songs here already our posts: Of course the Russians love their children, you dumb bass player! - De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da, The Carbon Neutrality of Davy Jone's Locker - Message in a Bottle, Surgeon Colonel Sting on Social Distancing - Don't Stand so Close to Me, and Ghost in the machine - Re-Humanize Yourself.
I didn't expect to find a video with the old Saturn V rocket at Kennedy Space Center and the moon landing footage - nice job by the video maker - I assume this is the official video. Also, they flew in there in a Piper Navajo, which was cool too!
The Police:
Sting – Lead and backing vocals, bass guitar, keyboards.
Andy Summers – Guitar, backing and occasional lead vocals, keyboards.
Stewart Copeland – Drums, percussion, backing and occasional lead vocals, keyboards. saxophone, and harmonica.
In the video, both Sting and Andy Summers are playing guitar. Who's playing bass, doing that reggae beat, then? Stewart Copeland may have gotten kind of bored, so he just occasionally drums on the rocket, haha. This song was from the band's 2nd album, Reggatta de Blanc, from 1979
Giant steps are what you take, walking on the moon.
Comments (12)
Peak Constitutional Amendment - Conclusion
Posted On: Tuesday - July 20th 2021 11:48AM MST
In Topics: Liberty/Libertarianism US Feral Government Morning Constitutional
(Continued from Amendment XI, Amendment XII, Amendment XIII, Amendment XIV, Amendment XV, Part 1 on Amendment XVI, Part 2 on Amendment XVI , Part 3 on Amendment XVI, Amendment XVII, Amendment XVIII, Part 1 on Amendment XIX, Part 2 on Amendment XIX, Part 3 on Amendment XIX, Amendment XX, and Amendment XXI, Amendment XXII, Amendment XXIII, Amendment XXIV, Amendment XXV - Part 1: Housekeeping, Amendment XXV - Part 2: Presidential Incapacity, Amendment XXVI, and Amendment XXVII.)
Peak Stupidity hasn't had a Morning Constitutional in over 3 months. [That can't be good for ANYONE! - PS medical staff, Dr. Fauci and Uncle Salty presiding] We had promised in that last post, on Amendment XXVII, to write a conclusion about these 17 post Bill of Rights Amendments, ranging in American history from XI in 1795 to XXVII in 1992, after all that writing done about them - see all those links above.
During arguments between the Federalists and the anti-Federalists (the original antife?) at the time of the drawing up of the US Constitution in 1789, objections were made by the anti-Federalists, such as Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Elbridge Gerry, and James Madison (after his change of heart. The wanted to put limitations on this new US Federal government IN WRITING. 17 articles with the limitation that were written up were boiled down to 12 Amendments, 10 of which had been ratified by 3/4 of the States (14, then 15 at the end of this) by 1792. This was done per the Amendment Process itself, as stipulated in Article V.
Peak Stupidity has no objection to any of these 1st 10 Amendments. Without them, the Federal government would have likely become the Feral government a lot sooner than it did. Without that Article V Amendment process, the limitations on the new government would have had to been put into the Constitution body itself, something Mr. Madison and others were pushing for. More importantly, we may have been better off without Article V. Here's what we got out of it so far:
Yes, we are aware that these are over-simplifications in this graphic. It's a quick run-down, though, and, the Peak Stupidity reader may peruse the links above or go to our favorite Constitution site (linked to more specifically for each Amendment in our posts).
Let's look at the gist of these 17 Amendments, #11 through #27, shall we? Only #11, ratified just 3 years after the BoR, #22 to some extent, and #27 on a what's now a minor issue, put any new limitations on Federal power. Amendments 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, and 26 give it more power. (Regarding #24, I put it in this group because any power given to the District of Criminals* is more power to the Federal government itself.) That's 10 out of 17, 59% of them, that expand Federal power and only 2 - 3, 12-18%, that decrease it.
Of the Amendments, numbers 15, 19, 23, 24, and 26, that's 29% of them, expand the franchise to a bigger set of voters. See, this is a problem the Founders must not have anticipated. They were White, British (well the White, then, went without saying then), men. They somehow imagined they and their like-thinking progeny would be the ones carefully controlling this "dangerous servant and fearful master"**. Them more the franchise was expanded from property-owning White men (as decided by THEIR OWN States), the more voters there were who didn't care about this small government idea so much, and the more they would agree with expanding the franchise further. It ended up a big ball of cascading franchising stupidity. Not only that, but all these Amendments moved the power of determining who does get to vote from the States to the Federal government.
Three of the Amendments, numbers 12, 20, and 25 read as simple housekeeping - clean up of loose ends in procedures that were not thought out well when the Constitution was drawn up. However, it is questionable that that's what Amendment XII was only about. Then, there is Amendment XVII, which might seem like a simple change in procedure to those who haven't thought much about it, but actually takes away the States' power.
Amendment XXI was a good one, but that was only because it was not much more than a repeal of the ridiculous Amendment XVIII decreeing alcohol prohibition by the Federal government. (I wrote "not much more", because though #21 doesn't increase Federal power, Section 2 therein encourages more State authoritah.)
Many fairly young people may be surprised to learn that the last Amendment of the Constitution, Amendment XXVII, was ratified during their own lifetimes, in 1992. I'd forgotten about that myself until I wrote the post about it. It's also surprising that this latest one was one of the few and far between good ones***, actually resurrected from one of those articles discussed by the Founders way back in the early '90s, uh, that'd be the 1790s!. Well, it had good intentions anyway, stipulating that Congressional pay raises given via legislation can not apply to the Congress in session that made such legislation. Yeah, good intentions, but this would have been great for the first century or two of the country, not the corrupt government of today.
Does the pay really matter in today's world in which Congressmen and especially Senators make bigger bucks from donors for their excellent books and speeches made after the fact as payback for services rendered? As corrupt and anti-Americanss as the Feral Government is now, any decent Constitutional Amendment would have to be both proposed via State-called conventions, a very risky idea.
Is there any point in proposing and ratifying another good Amendment anyway? The Feral government officials ignore the document and the highest court doesn't even give a damn about it anymore.
I would have to say here, in conclusion from this long stretch of posts about the 17 post-BoR Amendments to the US Constitution, that our Founders really fucked up by writing Article V! Now, as written early, the 10 very important (during our serious period) Amendments were created via this Article V procedure. However, James Madison and other anti-Federalists back in those founding years would have rather incorporated these limitations within the document itself.
That could have been done nicely by including each limitation along with the appropriate Article/Section that it applied to. While they were at it, they really should have jerked out that stupid "General Welfare" clause out of those two intro paragraphs within which this touchy-feely language had been written. Who knew, though? Who of these wise Founders knew that the country would become full of people who took advantage of that language to supersede the clear enough, plain English safeguard they'd inserted as Amendment X - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.. Is that too obtuse for modern Americans?
Listen Ben Franklin, the reason we we couldn't keep it is because YOU PEOPLE inserted that "General Welfare" crap and Article V. Whaddya' think, the country would stay a patriarchal society filled with independent-minded White people from the British Isles? Oh, ya did? Why didn't you put some immigration limitations in there?
OK, that was harsh. What is now the United States was an unimaginably huge piece of land in the 1790s, and nobody
Could good Americans possibly propose and ratify an Amendment that would nullify most of the 17 Amendments that Peak Stupidity has discussed during our Morning Constitutionals? It would have to have a final Section that also nullified Article V. Call it the Amendment to End all Amendment. For the geeks, call it "The Amendment Worm 1.0" OK, let's just hold off until Peak Stupidity proposes Amendment XXVIII in the next post of this sort.
* More common Peak Stupidity nomenclature is simply "Washington, FS", for Federal Shithole.
** George Washington quote.
*** It also had that great story behind the resurrection of the idea and the work done to get it ratified.
Comments (2)
Fool for the City - Foghat
Posted On: Saturday - July 17th 2021 9:16PM MST
In Topics: Music
Yeah, it was Aerosmith early in the blog-week and now Foghat to end it. Peak Stupidity is a fool for that classic rock. Slow Ride is more well known from Foghat's Live album from 1977. I could have sworn it was called Live - Bootleg, as I had an old 8-track that said this on the case. I wonder why that 8-track format lost out to the smaller cassette tapes - was it that really loud click made when the player changed tracks, most of the time in the middle of the song somewhere?
Foghat:
"Lonesome" Dave Peverett – Rhythm Guitar and Lead Vocals.
Rod Price – Lead Guitar and Backing Vocals.
Craig MacGregor – Bass and Backing Vocals.
Roger Earl – Drums.
All of the posts this week but one (not counting this one) were of the "look at what he wrote" variety. We'll have more original "content", as they call it, next week. Yes, I did waste a lot of time writing under Steve Sailer, PC Roberts, and a John Derbyshire post. Thank you all for reading.
Comments (5)
Paul Craig Roberts on the Kung Flu Stupidity
Posted On: Saturday - July 17th 2021 5:19PM MST
In Topics: Pundits Kung Flu Stupidity
Paul Craig Roberts is a well known pundit who has at least some experience in high level politics, what was it the Coolidge administration, no, Truman... possibly Reagan. I knew him a couple of decades ago as a real Conservative and Libertarian from the Lew Rockwell ("anti-state • anti-war • pro-market") site. He's still on there, as I just checked, something a bit surprising to me.
Peak Stupidity had written off this guy back about 3 years ago, maybe 4, due to his blow-up on The Unz Review over commenters who questioned his ridiculous panicky views on the Global Climate Disruption™. Mr. Roberts got so upset at being argued with that he turned off, or asked Mr. Unz to turn off, the commenting feature for his articles.*
I read his writing again only one more time, and learned that Paul Craig Roberts had left his Libertarian beliefs behind and was now a Socialist. That was it until I saw his column in large print on the unz site with an article I just had to check out - How the Covid “Pandemic” Was Orchestrated. Well, I gotta give this guy another chance now. This one is a really good summary of the PanicFest and possible nefarious motives behind it.
I wish I could just paste in the whole thing, or 90% of it in here. I will just urge the reader to go to his article as linked-to above. P.C. Roberts covers it all:
- The fact that this is a disease of the elderly and otherwise especially vulnerable due to other health problems.
- The pattern of all types of problems being chalked up to the Kung Flu.
- The mistakes made in treatment, including the heavy use of ventilators.
- The media/government suppression of information and treatment with "two highly successful, safe, and inexpensive treatments based on HCQ and Ivermectin."
- The problems with the use of the PCR (not Paul Craig Roberts) test.
- The dangers of the vaccines, and the suppression of information about that.
- The Totalitarianism being cranked up to force the vaccines on populations.
- The attempt at a PanicFest revival bases on the new Delta-variant.
It's a great summary. Then he had to end it with: "NOW WE COME TO THE CRUX OF THE MATTER." Nope, sorry, now we come to another who-done-it that is a distraction, IMO, from the issue of the PanicFest and hysteria. Mr. Roberts says this virus was invented in the US in '02-'04. It reads as though this politician/pundit tried to be an instant virologist, and talks about SARS in general as if it were the very same. I don't know - is this just in there to be a contrarian like Mr. Unz and be anti-all-things-American?
As Peak Stupidity has explained before, the knowledge is in plain site that both the Americans and Chinese operate labs, in COLLABORATION, that are for “Gain of function” research (see Gain a function, lose a function). Though the purported purpose is to enable the creation of vaccines for viruses that haven’t even formed yet naturally (and my never), the difference between this purpose and bioweapons research is nil other than the name of the lab. Knowing Chinese Q/C practices, my common sense tells me the virus came from the lab in Wuhan.
That last bit aside, I hope this Paul Craig Roberts article on the Kung Flu Stupidity gets widely read. Along with that, I hope Mr. Roberts can get born again as a Libertarian and Constitutionalist. Good luck and God Speed, Roberts!
* There was a little bit more to it than that. I happened to have been writing on this and one other thread under his Global Climate Disruption™ posts. One commenter had spoofed Mr. Roberts and threatened to shoot one of the commenters if he ran into him, or something like that. That just made things worse.
Comments (9)
Immigration Stupidity v Kung Flu Stupidity
Posted On: Friday - July 16th 2021 4:44PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Websites Pundits Anarcho-tyranny Kung Flu Stupidity
Writer Alan Wall with his Memo from Middle America: (formerly Memo from Mexico:) and Said in Spanish: series, has been on VDare.com since before I started reading. That means at least 15 years ago, by my estimation. He's had some great writing lately. Peak Stupidity discussed a very good post of his that linked up the Kung Flu Stupidity with the Immigration Stupidity in MEMO FROM MIDDLE AMERICA includes Kung Flu sense a couple of months back. Immigration is THE purpose and single of the VDare website, but other topics get touched on. Now, James Fulford, also a long-term VDare writer, has another post linking these two flavors of stupidity.
(Graphic straight off of VDare.)
In this latest post, If El Paso Illegals Won't Take The Vaccine, Can We Send Them Back?, Mr. Fulford points out the Anarcho-Tyranny going on at the border. Some of it has been going on since well before the Kung Flu, but Mr. Trump had the Border Patrol, ICE, and what-have-you working with at least a semblance of sanity The Bai Dien administration is pushing hard to increase the Anarcho-Tyranny through insane policies.
Mr. Fulford excerpts a piece of this article from the El Paso Matters by one René Kladzyk (not a Mexican:
Despite an increased effort to vaccinate migrants held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, a large number of people in El Paso-area ICE detention have refused the vaccine, according to local officials and legal advocates.I don't blame these Mexicans/Guatemalans for not wanting the jab. I'm pretty much with them on that. However, were it regular Americans getting forced to get a shot of a possibly deadly vaccine, as the Bai Dien administration wishes, the government agencies involved won't be so concerned with our "access issues" and medical neglect. Mr. Fulford writes:
El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego [who has been leading efforts to get Americans in the county vaccinated] said that among those offered the vaccine at local ICE detention facilities, only about 33% accepted.
Immigrant rights advocates said issues with the vaccination efforts are linked to an array of structural problems with the federal agency, including: a pattern of medical neglect that fuels distrust among migrants, language access issues that spur confusion and lead to misinformation, and a lack of a systematic nationwide protocol for vaccinating people in ICE detention. ICE officials in El Paso did not respond to a request for specific vaccine refusal rate data.
“As much as we’d like to do it, we cannot force them to do it,” Samaniego said. “In the facilities they feel a little uncomfortable and they’re not trusting … because they’re captured, they’re captive at that point.”
Of course, if people in Florida refuse the vaccine, they're considered ignorant rednecks, but the concept of "ignorant wetbacks" doesn't exist in the media. It should, though. Many Mexican illegals only have fourth-grade educations, and many do not, as I've pointed out repeatedly, understand the germ theory of disease.Since these people have no business being here, it's one situation in which I don't have any problem with these people getting any kind of treatment that's good for Americans (their getting the Kung Flu vaccine or not is not a concern for me). Screw 'em - not my problem I've been following VDare for a long time, and their writers have brought up many examples of diseases not seen in the US in 5 or more decades being spread back in our country by these illegal immigrants. "Bedbugs, they're baaaack!" Duckduckgo just pulled me up 4 articles about Chagas Disease, an import from Latin America. Good old Sam Francis gave us an early warning about it in Diversity Is Strength! It's Also Disease back in '03, Randall Burns told us Chagas Disease Seeks The American Dream! in '06, James Fulford wrote about Chagas Disease in Los Angeles County in '07, and A.W. Morgan posted Baylor U Buries The Lead On Chagas Disease—“Mostly Imported From Latin America” more recently, in '15. Chagas is not fun at all, but it's baaaack! I'm telling you all, VDare really has kept up with all aspects of immigration, as THE go-to site for immigration stupidity.
This applies to Central Americans too, and even more to the Africans who use the Mexican Border to sneak into the US.
But their countries have strong public health laws, with compulsory vaccination for things like measles, as The Week noted during a 2015 measles outbreak:
Americans have been letting nasty diseases invade this country for years. Could it be because the general Lyin' Press makes no effort to report on any of this? Maybe they think otherwise, but what goes on both at the border AND with the other types of illegal immigration is not the immigration experience of a Vito Corleone. It's anarchy.
Well, this problem at the border now is just a bit of a pickle for the ctrl-left, the Blue Squad, and the portion of a Venn Diagram that encompasses open-borders idiots along with Kung Flu hysterics. Not all this is stupidity though. It's not that the evil Bai Dien people and the elites behind them are really scared of the virus. They really don't care a lot about the fate of these Mexicans and Guatemalans down at the border. They just are in a quandary about which method of destruction of the US is more expedient, the Kung Flu and further variant PanicFest or the immigration invasion. When the two stupidities (OK, evils, probably) are in opposition, they have to choose one or the other. They could tout all-out Kung Flu vaccination as part of their Police State/Orwellian push. They could ignore it for now, let the poor bastards slide, and push this latest surge in the immigration invasion.
I think the latter, the immigration invasion, results in quicker destruction of American society. Therefore, for our evil elites and their stupid government bureaucrat henchmen, the winner in Immigration Stupidity v Kung Flu Stupidity is ....
Immigration Stupidity wins by 10 fewer years of an intact America.
Comments (2)
Stupidity in everything, including the bathroom sink
Posted On: Thursday - July 15th 2021 8:05PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Curmudgeonry
Peak Stupidity has ragged on some "features" of modern hotels in a couple of posts before, most directly in a post called Green is the new Cheap-ass long ago. I do remember the writer John Derbyshire writing a curmudgeonly post or segment of one of his monthly "diaries" with about the same complaints as I've had. No, I don't go down to the desk to actually complain, because the young lady at the desk would likely tell me "this is part of the new renovation. Isn't it so cool!" (And, "yeah, the rates have gone up to pay for this cool renovation....")
It's like this: Just because there are new, different-looking, and differently-operated, appliances, light fixtures, bathroom fixtures, etc. for sale for the yuppies who want it, doesn't mean I want to figure this new crap out when I stay at your formerly reasonably-priced hotel. Yes, I am too old to think it's all cool. Somebody in management wanted to get all edgy and shit, yeah, I get it. Don't take it out on me.
It'd be OK for people staying a whole week. "Oh, HERE'S the switch to turn on the lamp! How cool. Now I know." "I see, the shower mixer goes the wrong way*. OK, I'll remember this in the morning, or if not, the next morning." I really don't want to spend all my excess brainpower, you know, after work and blogging and all, ;-} on remembering how every little damn new thing works.
The fancy sink shown above is not something I had this problem with. The mixer worked the way you'd figure. No, it's not that. This sink is different and fancy because, hey look, it's a big bowl attached ON TOP of the bathroom counter, instead of sunk in. It's the "above-ground pool" of sinks, except the above-ground pools are for the slightly less affluent folks who can't afford to get a pool dug in**. This above-counter sink has got to bring up the cost over the standard style.
Look at it, all made of beautiful thick glass. It's so pretty. it's another one of the retro products that are so popular. The retro muscle cars are popular with those Boomers that everyone hates on... because they got to drive real ones back in the day that really were cool. On the other hand, you may have to be 90 or older to be excited about this retro bathroom sink. Hasn't it been since the 1930s or so since houses actually had a separate basin one would place on top of a table, that they would fill up with water? After that, with indoor plumbing, you had your old fashioned ceramic sinks that hung off the wall (with possibly some more support below it), and then people got the great idea to sink them into the counter, with room underneath for cleaning supplies, more soap, roach spray, and roaches to go along with it.
That sink above is retro stupidity. The built-in counter sinks are much easier to use*** and space saving. This thing is just silly, has this room underneath the curve that's not useable, and it's got to be more difficult to clean to boot. But, it's modern and different. Yeah, but this isn't my house anyway. Who would I be trying to impress with this expensive sink?
I realize that this is a 1st World problem in a country with problems infinitely more serious than a stupid sink, such as turning into the 3rd World. As with the Peak Stupidity post How much electronics do we need? of long ago, regarding automatic windshield wipers, I don't like the modern practice of building something different, but of lower usability**** just because it CAN be done.
* I'm pretty sure that there used to be an agreed-upon standard of CCW motion resulting in hotter water, or more flow vs. less (CW to turn it off). Maybe that was just a gentlemen's agreement, not an ASPE spec., but then, where are the gentlemen anymore? It's anything goes now.
** OK, it may also be because you will want your yard back later, after the family figures out how much trouble a pool can be.
*** What I wonder is why the older sinks had separate hot and cold faucets for such a long period. I realize there were probably not the nice materials around to make good seals for these new mixer designs. However, could the designers not have plumbed water from both valves into one faucet? I'm guessing that people were very used to using a bathroom sink differently from the days of having to fill up a basin. You'd mix the water into the old sinks with the stopper closed, and then shave with that water, wash off with it, etc. Now we just let it run. Come to think of it, DO we all just do that? I only see people fill up the basin in old movies. I could use some input here from the commenters, if it's not just too boring a subject.
**** Reliability, in the case in that old post.
Comments (13)
The Kung Flu - just a virus, bro.
Posted On: Tuesday - July 13th 2021 7:00PM MST
In Topics: Music Science Kung Flu Stupidity
I am very thankful that Peak Stupidity has been able to safely let the subject go for a while. Let's see, it's been just over a month since the last post with the Kung Flu Stupidity topic key, but the last one about the hysterical panic fest, the real "issue", as it were, was back on June 3rd. I read this article on a site called Medical Express a couple of weeks back:
Man, who woulda thunk it? So, with this virus, see, if you get exposed to doses of similar virus, maybe in small amounts, your body can, like, fight off the current virus going around. Whaaaa? I took biology, but that was a long time ago. I do remember something about "building up your immune system" from my Mom, along with a roommate who told me how he used to throw hamburger meat on the ground before eating it* occasionally while on the hiking trails to build up his immune system, but I thought these were all old
A study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators hints that people with COVID-19 may experience milder symptoms if certain cells of their immune systems "remember" previous encounters with seasonal coronaviruses—the ones that cause about a quarter of the common colds kids get.The middle of the article gives the details about the antibodies, T cells, peptides, and so on that I'm sure I should have heard about from the HS Biology teacher, if I hadn't been perusing the female reproductive system chapter so much during class. It really is amazing stuff, all these complicated goings-on that happen in our bodies while we are only concerned with the female reproductive system part, eat all manner of crap, and go around with our mouths and noses all exposed to the AIR, and occasionally leave all manner of other things exposed.
These immune cells are better equipped to mobilize quickly against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, if they've already met its gentler cousins, the scientists concluded.
The findings may help explain why some people, particularly children, seem much more resilient than others to infection by SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. They also might make it possible to predict which people are likely to develop the most severe symptoms of COVID-19.
After the science behind the idea of building up immunity is explained, we read:
As the pandemic progressed, Davis mused, "A lot of people get very sick or die from COVID-19, while others are walking around not knowing they have it. Why?"A description of the observational analysis performed follows. ("There's that fag talk again.")
Memory cells are by far the most active in infectious-disease defense," Davis said. "They're what you want to have in order to fight off a recurring pathogen. They're what vaccines are meant to generate."From everything I've read this "vaccine" is a lot more than your simple small dose of active or "dead" virus material that will bring out the right antibodies, memory cells, what-have-you. Speaking of memory cells, have people all lost those memory cells of theirs that had the knowledge about how the human body deals with viruses?
Killer T cells whose receptors target peptide sequences unique to SARS-CoV-2 must proliferate over several days to get up to speed after exposure to the virus, Davis said. "That lost time can spell the difference between never even noticing you have a disease and dying from it," he said.Right, so best to have been exposed to something before, which I have been. So, wait... then it wouldn't be so prudent after all to walk around forever with a face diaper on, because my immune system may not be ready for the next strain of virus? But, but, Doctor Fauci told me ... This is the guy that may have cured the common cold forever, as long was we only take the masks off for quick bites at 6 ft. Amazing, we can cure the common cold, but we can't even send a man to the moon ... anymore!
But, Uncle Fauci told me ...
Uncle Fauci told me, stories of a lonely,
virus with a deadly life to lead.
A narrative was dusted. Economy was busted.
the scientists are trusted while the story bleeds.
Now, on TV at night, no one cares....
Now, the TV at night, went insane!!!
Oooh, it's a sunny day outside my window...No, this Aerosmith song, one from the most excellent Toys in the Attic album from 1975, has squat-all to do with the rest of the post in my opinion too. It's just that once I wrote "Doctor Fauci told me..." it got in my head. Peak Stupidity has featured this band only once before, in the post called The Origins of Rap. Instead of the well known Walk this Way from the same album, we embedded the obscure song Adam's Apple. They do deserve to be on here. Some don't like Steve Tyler's style, I guess, but they put out some pretty good music back in the day.
Aerosmith:
Steven Tyler – Vocals, keyboards, harmonica, percussion.
Joe Perry – Lead guitar, rhythm guitar, slide guitar, backing vocals, percussion.
Brad Whitford – Rhythm guitar, lead guitar
Tom Hamilton – Bass guitar.
Joey Kramer – Drums, percussion.
* I couldn't get myself to do that on purpose, but I do remember an incident in which two slices of pizza slid right off the paper plate onto the floor of the busy pizzeria restaurant, unfortunately, face down, and I went ahead and ate them up for lunch with a colleague. No bad effects resulted, and keep in mind that this was the good stuff, NY style. Whaddya' supposed to do? You don't just go asking Mario "may I have some more" like you're Oliver Twist or someone. He was probably in with the mob, maybe a made pizza man.
Comments (13)
Fudging the markets - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Posted On: Monday - July 12th 2021 7:58PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity US Feral Government Socialism/Communism Zhou Bai Dien
Zhou Bai Dien's pick for HUD Secretary is Marci Fudge shown above. It's that Fudge Factor that got her the plum job, I'm sure. HUD Secretary is a Black Position, period. White people wouldn't understand things like Housing and Urban
"Housing is important infrastructure.", the lady says. Other than in remarking that this stupid broad doesn't know the difference between private property and infrastructure, as doesn't the whole Bai Dien Administration, I'll leave her out of this post from here. This is more about the people that run the Fannie Mae's, Freddie Mac's and the like pieces of government Central Planning stupidity.
The title here was taken directly from this Steve Sailer post, as is the long excerpt from Politico that I'm including from that post. However, Mr. Sailer is not known particularly for free-market Conservatism, so he means that title in a slightly different sense. His astute (as usual) point is that the Bai Dien Administration sees nothing wrong with implementing a bigger version of the iSteve termed "Minority Mortgage Meltdown" of '07. I mean it in the sense that no Central Planning of the housing market should be implemented at all. Our Feral Government has been Fudging with the housing markets since Great Depression 1.0.
Here is the long excerpt from Politico's report on this by one Katy O'Donnell from July 7th:
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s move to fire the top U.S. mortgage regulator is triggering calls from fellow Democrats to use the agency to expand access to loans for lower-income people, who have struggled to buy homes since the financial crisis.Mr. Sailer didn't have much to say about this one. He had one great line of sarcasm - "The equity agenda will inevitably focus on your home equity because, as Willie Sutton might say, that’s where the money is." You'll read good points in the comments about why this is all being done completely wrong. There's not much about how the housing market in the US can work right when the damn Government has been fucking with it in every conceivable way for most of a century! Here's my take on it:
… The president installed as interim director an agency veteran who says she’ll make affordable housing and combating discrimination a top priority, but who has underwhelmed those on the left, who say she is a mere caretaker.
Progressives are concerned that Biden will be too timid in changing course at the powerful agency overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two companies that stand behind half of the $11 trillion U.S. mortgage market….
The pressure from the left poses a tough choice for Biden. Democrats for years have pushed the agency responsible for Fannie and Freddie to expand homeownership and narrow the racial wealth gap. But making mortgages cheaper and more accessible could also raise the risks of defaults and increase the odds that the companies would need another bailout in the future. Fannie and Freddie were seized by the government in 2008 to avert their failure during the subprime mortgage crash. …
While Biden has proposed a raft of home-affordability measures, having control of Fannie and Freddie might be his most effective tool.
The FHFA director “is the most powerful and consequential job on housing in America,” said David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference. “There is no close second.”
Dworkin and other housing advocates want FHFA to allow Fannie and Freddie to take on more financial risk — meaning more government intervention backed by taxpayers — in the name of expanding access to mortgages.
Among their ideas: Giving Fannie and Freddie free rein to purchase mortgages with lower credit scores, allowing private lenders to make more of those loans; cutting fees; and expanding investment that supports the construction of multifamily rental properties.
Advocates want FHFA to immediately do away with Trump-era limits on Fannie and Freddie’s purchases of “high-risk” loans — characterized as having some combination of low credit scores and high debt-to-income or loan-to-value ratios.
Allowing the companies to purchase and guarantee more of the loans could lead to lenders issuing more of them, which would extend credit to more low-credit-score, low-income borrowers without requiring higher down payments to compensate for the risk. Fannie and Freddie would pick up the tab if the loan defaulted.
… On her first day at the helm of FHFA, Thompson said she was committed to ensuring that the housing finance system operated “in a safe and sound manner” while keeping a “laser focus” on community investment. She said there was a “widespread lack of affordable housing and access to credit, especially in communities of color.”
Erika Poethig, special assistant to the president for housing and urban policy, said the administration is “committed to expanding access to affordable homeownership, especially for low-wealth borrowers and communities of color that face challenges in the housing market.”
“In the coming months and years ahead, we look forward to working with FHFA leadership to use the levers of housing finance to address the racial wealth gap, expand housing supply and ensure housing affordability,” she added. …
That 4th paragraph about the "tough choice" the stupidity in a nutshell. It’s a tough choice, see? You can screw around with the markets even more than the Feral Gov’t already has, in order to force prices and sales to where they benefit the poor money-challenged Americans that you’d like to favor. However, it sometimes takes a while, but often when you screw with one part of a market, the damn basic economic laws start kicking in and messing your plans up. It’s tough to get it right, or at least have it go right until you are out of office, so the damage to the economy can be blamed on someone else.
Thinking that one can do Central Planning and the disregard for the handful of basic immutable economic laws that must come with it takes a lot of hubris. OK, it’s a mixture of hubris and stupidity, and the amount of it in these would-be Communists and the real Communists is amazing to me. They really think that people with a different ideology really just don’t want to help people. Those other people, the Conservatives, Libertarians, and such, just must hate people, because they don’t want to use the great power of the Government to help them. They are just plain hateful!
So, like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao before them, these modern Central Planners will again put that heavy Government hand into the markets, this one being one of the biggest. When you do this, you face those tough choices about which moves will trigger those damn economic laws again. All you can do is take a deep breath, build up your hubris level, and you try A, then, if it causes havoc somewhere, somehow in the economy , you try B and A, then, if that doesn’t do the trick, you add C to A and B, and so on, all the while crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. It’s pretty tough, I’m telling you, but if you’re gonna make things fair, you know … you gotta break some markets, errr, eggs, that is.
Comments (5)
Chauvin:Floyd !:: Byrd:Babbitt
Posted On: Saturday - July 10th 2021 7:04PM MST
In Topics: US Police State Race/Genetics Anarcho-tyranny
Remember those SAT analogy questions? Does anyone use the above symbolic syntax anymore? Even math geeks?* Well, I stuck in a little C/C++ syntax there (the "!" for the NOT in a comparison), as they couldn't have asked SAT questions the other way around, could they?
No, Minneapolis city cop Derek Chauvin v George Floyd is anything but analogous to Capitol cop Michael Leroy Bird v Ashli Babbitt, as perhaps we are to think, per Lyin' Press narrative. Well, actually, even that is not ludicrous enough for them. We are to believe that jailed-for-22-years Derek Chauvin did something WORSE to the late George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis last summer than Scot-free did to the late Ashli Babbitt in the US Capitol building past January 6th! Can the narrative GET any stupider? Are we there yet?
Let's drop the SAT question talk, switch to TV shark-week-style mode, and consider Chauvin on Floyd v Byrd on Babbitt today.
"In this corner, known to ALL, with a Federal Holiday motivated by his passing, we have George Floyd ... loyd, oyd ... oyd...." Even those who avoid TV and try not to hear still heard a whole lot about this George Floyd and his death a year ago May in Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Cops CAN get out of control. White people don't like it anymore than black people, but they don't have proportionally nearly as many dealings in bad circumstances with cops to begin with. They aren't stupid enough to let average wrongful detainments or arrests get violent, as they hope, sometimes futilely, but alive at the time, to get justice later. Some of us call it "calming the fuck down". At the same time, the total number of black people wrongfully shot by cops is said to be in the neighborhood of a dozen times a year, versus the shootings of black people, many innocent, by other black people which is in the many thousands annually.
This one guy, George Floyd, is not exactly the guy you'd want for the poster child for police brutality, as he was a criminal reprobate well before the incident in May '20. Could they have found a better poster child? Apparently, it's not so easy.
There was a cause to arrest Mr. Floyd. He had passed a counterfeit 20 dollar bill, and that's still illegal, at least for us White and Oriental folks. Maybe for the black guy, they were just doing the arrest for old time's sake, and, well, he was a violent criminal to begin with. As I wrote in the caption above, it's not even clear that Mr. Floyd's death was a result of how he was restrained by Mr. Chauvin. Not only that, but nobody can say that his death was intentional on Mr. Chauvin's part. He was on camera(s), for crying out loud. What a really corrupt cop out for murder would have done is, at some point inside the squad car: "Hey, quit resisting! Let go of my gun! Owww!" to get that part on tape, shot the guy straight out, and then later "Ooops my body came failed in all this melee! Whatddya know?"
"And, in this corner, a name remembered only by American patriots and others who respect the rule of law, the purposefully forgotten MAGA insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt ... abbitt, ectionist... ist, ... ist ..." I've had to pay attention for half a year to get the name of the cop who killed her.
Nobody in Ashli Babbitt's close vicinity was being detained or arrested. They were perhaps too exuberant, as getting inside the Capitol was making a statement about the ridiculous 3rd-World-style '20 election, and patriots wanted to DO SOMETHING. (Nobody else was gonna, as has been proven out.) However, there were cops with rifles right along side many of these people, just in case it ACTUALLY got out of hand.
Mrs. Babbitt was carefully climbing through an interior window that the glass had been broken out of. She wasn't moving quickly. She wasn't armed. She wasn't threatening, as if there were that much of a way that a short, slender 35 y/o woman could be, to armed cops with freaking body armor on. There was no physical contact between Mrs. Babbitt and the Capitol cop Michael Byrd who was on the other side of that door/window divide. Any one of the cops could have grabbed her by the neck with one hand, in fact, not that it's the way to handle things. Yet, the cops behind her were not getting involved, and not trying to detain, much less arrest her, at this point.
Therefore, the stupid, viscous black Capitol cop Michael Byrd up and shot Ashli Babbitt in the head or throat from what now looks like closer to 5 ft. away to me and killed her. He was not under attack. He could have pushed her back through the window with one hand, if he really had something to worry about regarding her getting further into the building. He could have tazed her, though it wouldn't have been warranted either. Michael Leroy Byrd just plain murdered Ashli Babbitt right then and there with no cause.
George Floyd's death was in national and international headlines for months and even a year afterwards. The incident caused months of destructive rioting and looting all over the country in the inner cities. (That is, unless you're Portland, in which case it's now a continuously operating city attraction.)
Ashli Babbitt's death received attention only from patriotic Americans who made an effort to keep up with the murder. Her death was put behind that of Capitol cop Brian Sicknick, who was a decent man by all accounts, but died of much more natural causes the next day after the Capitol gang excitement rather than from the throwing of a fire extinguisher at him. There was talk of 3 total Capitol police officers who died later, but not so much about the near-point-blank murder of Mrs. Babbitt. Her name has not been brought up in the Lyin' Press daily. She's getting no statue of her paid by any taxpayers. There will be no Federal holiday.
There were investigations of the George Floyd death, with lots of taxpayer supported parties involved. The cop that possibly unintentionally killed him got a 22-year prison sentence. In the other corner, there has been NO investigation into the murder of Ashli Babbitt. The cop that can be, and has been, seen on video killing her has not only not been arrested, but his name has been kept from the public for 6 months by the Lyin' Press. We're supposed to just plain forget about it. Forget it, Americans, it's
Winner by a knock-out in round, I dunno, it just keeps on going: Michael Leroy Byrd! As a prize, Mr. Byrd will receive a "Keep out of jail for free" card, signed by the Capitol Police Internal Affairs Department and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. His victim will remain dead and infamous as an insurrectionist.
The loser, Mr. Derek Chauvin, besides his 22 year jail time, will be hounded as a "Gasp, Racist!" for the rest of his life out after prison. His victim will be memorialized until our memories are gone due to dementia, or else!
Oh, I forgot to clarify the definition of winning and losing in this contest at the beginning. Winning means one is on the Anarcho side of the Anarcho-Tyranny. Losing means one takes it up the ass from the Tyranny side. Oh, and in these contests, due to the horrible legacy of slavery, it helps to be black. It's only fair.
* I'll try to get an answer from John Derbyshire in the comments section of one of his columns on the Unz Review, but he doesn't usually respond.
** I don't know. I've not been a cop, and I don't know many cops. Perhaps the Lyin' Press could have enlightened us on the police tactics in Minneapolis, had it fit in with any narrative of theirs.
Comments (19)
Ann Coulter on the attitude of the Globalist elites
Posted On: Friday - July 9th 2021 9:02PM MST
In Topics: Globalists Race/Genetics
(Header image taken from VDare yet again.)
With no time to write much of a post today and tiredness setting in, I will publish this quick "lookey here!" post to the most recent Ann Coulter column. It can be read here on VDare. VDare's title is Ann Coulter On Anti-Populist Elites: NYT—Why Are All These Racist Losers So Angry? Even for Peak Stupidity's favorite literary pundit, this column one of the best.
I'll excerpt here the mid-section of the column, in which Miss Coulter is referring to the bilge out of some Globalist NY Times columnist named Thomas Edsall:
But ever since the 2016 election, there’s been a frisson of viciousness to the elites’ usual contempt for ordinary Americans. Never mind that Trump ended up betraying his voters. The establishment is appalled that the issues he ran on were popular. Five years later, they still sputter in rage, unable to comprehend why Jeb or Hillary didn’t end up in the White House.She even went THERE! (That last part.)
To explain this calamity, Edsall rolls out all the Timesian cliches about losers being upset about losing. He calls this the “ubiquity of loss,” as if we’re talking about a natural phenomenon, like beach erosion.
Trump voters, he says, are people who are angry about:* their inability to achieve “a standard of living as high as that of their parents,”Edsall acts as if these things are immutable laws of physics. Actually, they result from the deliberate policy choices of our ruling class to benefit some Americans to the detriment of others.
* “the decline of the gender pay gap … and other types of loss relative to women,”
* and losing “employment and earnings to China and other countries.”
Specific policy decisions were made to import an endless stream of low-skilled workers. Employers got boatloads of cheap labor, while ordinary Americans saw their wages plummet.
Oh, and if we’re pretending to care about “democratic norms,” Americans have voted for less immigration over and over and over again. If anyone in the establishment gives a crap about “democratic norms,” then why do they keep foisting more immigration on us?
Specific policy decisions were made to explicitly discriminate against white men in order to give jobs to women, simply because they were women.
If you don't read Ann Coulter regularly, I highly recommend doing so. She is not the pro-GOP part-Neocon she was 20 years ago. Ann Coulter has grown in punditry.
Comments (7)
Murderer of Ashli Babbitt revealed: Michael Leroy Byrd
Posted On: Thursday - July 8th 2021 8:04PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 US Police State US Feral Government Race/Genetics Anarcho-tyranny
I watched a clip of Tucker Carlson talking for a few minutes with Ashli Babbitt's widower and the guy's lawyer. You can watch the clip on Gateway Pundit's post about the murder here.
What's interesting is that not a one of these three men would name names, when the name could be determined after a simple search after their discussion. What they did note is that the Capitol cop who shot Mrs. Babbitt from close range in the neck or head is the same one who was in the news in February of '19 for mistakenly leaving his gun in a Capitol restroom*, with no punishment allotted to him. (He was black, you know, so ...) See, here's the weird thing: the name of the absent-minded Capitol cop from '19 is KNOWN. His name is Michael Leroy Byrd. It's a simple step in basic logic to move from "we know the guy that left the gun in the restroom" and "we know that the guy who murdered Ashli Babbitt is that same guy", to a big-ass headline saying:
EXTRA: Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd found to be murderer of Ashli Babbitt !
A blogger/pundit Conservative activist who was right there in the Capitol when this happened, one Tayler Hanson, has either broken or is trying to break this story. I can't believe I'm linking to a twitter page from some Millennial with a misspelt first name, but that's the way they do it now - His page here is worth scanning through**. I see this Mr. Hansen as a brave young patriot trying to get through a media blackout on the simple important very-easily-determined fact. It ain't a "Who shot JR Ewing" mystery. Hell, he was tweeting about this murderous cop back in late April, 2 1/2 months ago!
Your Peak Stupidity blogger happened to run into a member of the Capitol Police Department while traveling a couple of months ago. This guy was very nice to spend the time to talk, as he was on the way from some guard-a-CongressRat detail. I asked him about the deceased Brian Sicknick, and this guy happened to know him quite well.*** I was hesitant, due to the politics, and that this guy could be considered a customer, but I did ask him "do you know the guy that shot Ashli Babbitt?" He said yes, but he didn't know him well at all. There was no way he was going to give me a name, so I saw no reason to put him on the spot by asking.
That inside information wasn't given to me is to be expected. I'm not an internal affairs investigator. I'm no beat cop asking questions. I'm no Grand Jury, and I'm especially not a Congressional investigative committee. How come there ISN'T one of the latter, for that matter, seeing as the normal police investigation and arrest process has simply not occurred? You had a guy shoot and kill an unarmed woman from 10 ft or so, while other cops were right nearby with rifles, getting along just fine with everyone, and NOTHING HAPPENED! Again, this isn't some mystery that requires the services of Jim Rockford or the 5-0.
This is USSR or Mao-era China behavior here. I wouldn't have expected it in America.... so soon! On the other hand, we have that free and independent press, right? For some reason, they all are independently deciding not to look into this story that even a Journalism major could figure out. Apparently, the information about the culprit of a high profile murder right inside the US Capitol is not part of the news that's fit to print.
Then there's the race angle. Were it a White man who murdered Ashli Babbitt, the Capitol Police might have thrown him under the
Or, is this really something bigger, with the Deep State and Feral Government having decided to teach us a real lesson here? Anyone does something like this again, and we will just shoot whomever we want with no repercussions, lock others away for months and throw away the key, and create a widely-spread narrative that this simple slightly out-of-hand protest or minor riot was TERRORISM and a threat to the US Constitution, Dammit! (Like they give a shit about that document.) In the meantime, other groups, on the correct side of the ideology, can do much more serious damage with no one spending a single night in jail The Anarcho-Tyranny is palpable.
What is this teaching us? The lesson many patriots will learn is that if you're going to raise a little hell, you may as well go all out and raise a whole lot of hell. There will be lone wolves at some point. Michael Leroy Byrd ... well, I'll stop here.
* This news can still be found, as there was no effort to hide this smaller story - see this Fox News story, with the name Michael Leroy Byrd right out there.
** This page by The Deplorable Patriot is a bit more like a story than that series of tweets.
*** It's not part of this post's discussion, but more pertinent to the one just linked-to, that, in answer to my question or musing, he said that he didn't know of his friend Brian having any medical condition. In writing that post, I'd read that Mr. Sicknick had a heart condition. Would a friend not know that? That IS possible, though, as when you have a job that could be terminated due to medical problems, you may very well hide a problem from everyone. (Even a friend might accidentally mention it at the wrong time.)
This post of mine was from mid-February, so almost 5 months ago, well before I talked to this other Capitol cop.
Comments (11)
When things get real... minor jet bridge version
Posted On: Wednesday - July 7th 2021 7:47PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Feminism
These posts pop in my head out of almost nothing sometimes. In this case it was just a few words said by a lady being wheeled up the jet bridge into the airline terminal.
There's probably a special section of building code for it, but these airport jet bridges must be limited to a certain maximum slope. To embark on one of the big birds, one often goes up slope, while the people going off need to go down ... down to the customs/immigration* hellhole. For the smaller birds, usually you go down slope to board, and uphill to get into the gate level of the terminal. As hooked up to a 757, they may be fairly level, if it's a fairly small terminal, as in not so high off the pavement. These jet bridges come in an amazing number of configurations. Additional length can be used, of course, to decrease the slope.
The slope is important not just for ambulatory passengers, but especially for the wheelchairs. I noticed a blue-died-hair lady getting help off the plane in a wheelchair the other day, still near the bottom. (It was a regional jet.) First of all, she was not that awful old, maybe 55-60. She could have had lots of misfortune, but more likely she was diabetic. That blue hair thing just put me off, for that age, I mean. Geeze, what's that about, is she planning on going to some raves like that? Anyway, that's not the point here, but it made me look and pay attention a bit.
Now, I have helped a few people off the plane and into the terminal by pushing them in wheelchairs up top. I have pushed people weighing 300 lb. even. I was glad to do it, but it's a quick cardio workout, let me tell you. With these chairs with nice bearings and rubber tires, it's all ΔPE = mgΔh these days.
The small airport terminals may have 2 or even just 1 person available each shift to do this work for all the gates (along with other passenger service chores). In this case the airport employee was a smaller lady. She had blue haired mama pointed in the right direction there, and was pushing hard to get her going.
All I heard as I went by was the passenger in the chair saying "are you sure you can get me up there?" Now, see, I'd bet money that a lady looking like that had leftist, feminist, and PC tendencies. She would likely be the first to tell you that there are no "man's jobs" and that women could do anything at all just as good, and often better, than a man could. She shouldn't be questioning or bothering this small female employee. She should be glad that a woman had taken that airport service job. Gyrrlll power!
However, her ass was on the line here. If that wheelchair tipped over going over one of the joints (they are steeper), or worse yet, got released and headed back down backwards or forwards, it would be a bad day** When it becomes real, and you're worried about your butt getting busted, oh, all that PC, feminist crap goes right out the window. "Are you sure ...?" Hahahaa! Enjoying the ride?
* As I've written before, it's a GOOD thing for a country to have tough-asses in the immigration hall though.
** With the help of a good lawyer, it would be a bad day for lots of parties, the assisting employee, the airline, the airport management, the jet bridge manufacturer ... and I'm sure I'm missing a few parties to be held responsible to make this lady whole.
Comments (6)
RayOVac batteries are a scam
Posted On: Tuesday - July 6th 2021 10:41PM MST
In Topics: Preppers and Prepping Curmudgeonry Inflation Scams
I wish I could include the Cheap China-made Crap topic key with this post, but as, I hated to find out, these batteries, are (Proudly?) "Made in the USA". That is, the AA's at least.
You try to be a prepper or at least "be prepared" as much as a former Boy Scout knows he ought to. Batteries are part of it. This was about kids' toys at first, as I realized years ago that you really need a load of double-A's, triple-A's, quite a few D's, and a few C's and 9 Volters to keep all the toys running.
As with lots of things that I have bought over the years, I've seen the price of batteries go WAY up. I just seem to remember prices while most people's minds are more forgiving and forgetful about them. Peak Stupidity has noted the big increases in lots of products and services, especially over the period from the mid/late-1990s through recently. (It's going to get much worse soon.) Though we noted the big increase in car battery prices, we haven't covered small batteries, as I don't have hard data. I just remember that it wasn't that long ago - probably in the mid-1990s - when one could get multiple D or C cells for a buck, while now you're paying 2 bucks EACH!
"OK", one, might say, "but they last much longer, so you aren't comparing apples to oranges here". Well, first of all, we've noted before that BLS inflation calculations don't seem to take the reverse of that into account, when products last for shorter times - see Tire Inflation by Deflation. But additionally, and as the original point of this post, "they lie!"
I don't expect Duracells to last the 10 years on the shelf as they tout, but they've been OK for me. However, with all that battery purchasing, I decided to by a couple of cases of Ray-o-Vacs. The case of AAAs has 1 1/2 gross (216), and the case of AAs has 2 gross (288). I should say had, not has, as after something like 4 to 5 years, they have almost all corroded in their original packaging! Now, I didn't expect them to go the 10 years that is advertised right here, as an example, for the exact Alkaline AAAs - part # ALAAA-18 (ALkaline AAAs - 18 pack). Maybe they'd be weaker and last 1/2 as long in a toy or flashlight. I just didn't expect them to all corrode like this.
This is disconcerting for a number of reasons. One way to fight inflation, something we all ought to be ready for as if this were 1975 again, is to buy in bulk when things are on sale. We discussed this a bit in The different levels of prepping. This is only worth doing for items with a long shelf life, as I found out the hard way with sneakers long ago. (The glue fails over time.) Batteries are one of THE prepper items*, though, not just something bought for the sole purpose of saving the paying of higher prices later. I was happy to see those long life-times advertised, as that would make them a very worthwhile prepper item. That seems not to be the case.
Even if one is not concerned with any Shit Hitting any Fan, just normal Boy Scout style "be preparedness", he would say you need batteries for emergency use. You need flashlights for emergency use, kept in the appropriate places, with, yes, batteries in them. Nowadays, even for Duracells, after a year or so, the damn batteries have corroded to where not only is the flashlight not going to work with them, but it won't work with any more batteries, as they have corroded all the contacts and more! They are a preppers and a Boy Scout's nightmare, as the flashlights now must be kept with batteries next to them, I guess. One has to put the batteries in when needed, in the dark, and hopefully when in not too much of a hurry. Sure, that's what you want.
No, I don't live by the beach, and the 2 cases of RayOVacs were inside the house in a closet not near open water, in temperatures varying from the mid 60s F to the low 80s F.
Just for the record, here are the AA's. Note "Made in the USA"!:
I might have sworn that these cases came from one of the Batteries & Bulbs stores, but I don't see them on the web site. This was a few years back, and I will check my records some more soon to see if I did get them there. I don't know where else i would have bought so many. If I find out where, I WILL be bringing them back, if nothing else to let them and maybe other customers know about this scam.
I'm not sure where to turn to now, for the good stuff. I suppose it's time to get back to reading some of the prepper sites regularly. This kind of thing is a concern to the good people that prepare, if nothing else, for the next hurricane or earthquake, but most of the time for long-term trouble.
AVOID RayOVac batteries. They are crap!
PS: It's not just me with the problems. When I brought this up to a friend he told me that one mechanic friend of his that I am also acquainted with has the same complaint.
* No, buying a few cases will not get one through decades of hard times, but it were a couple of years, it'd be nice to have 5-10 cases of various types.
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Them US Blues - 2021
Posted On: Sunday - July 4th 2021 8:49PM MST
In Topics: Music The Dead Americans Holiday from Stupidity
This is the first blog-post here on a Sunday. Peak Stupidity is only breaking our rule in order to keep another tradition up, which is the posting of The Dead's US Blues every Independence Day, with a few lyrics. Son of a gun, when I looked back I see every one of the previous 4 posts has a youtube video that has since gone missing!
Well, that there's a good reason to put it up too. Any non-DeadHeads should also please note that, though you may think of them as counter traditional American culture and a bunch of druggies, this band was truly an All American band. That goes for the music AND the players - Jerry, Bobby, Phil, Mickey, Billy, and Brent, all of them.
Stays seventy-two come shine or rain.
Wave the flag, pop the bag,
Rock the boat, skin the goat.
Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.
Summertime done come and gone, my, oh, my.
Happy Independence Day, or what's left of it (the day and our independence).
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Marshall Crenshaw- There & Back Again
Posted On: Saturday - July 3rd 2021 6:41PM MST
In Topics: Music
Peak Stupidity has featured the bright sound of Marshall Crenshaw before at least once - my favortie is probably She Can't Dance from his self-titled debut album. That album had 2 songs that I'd heard played on the radio, the hit Someday, Someway and my 2nd favorite, Cynical Girl.
I bought a CD of Marshall Crenshaw's Miracle of Science sometime around 2000. It's not quite as good as that self-titled one, but is still full of good songs. The album was his 7th one, from 1996, and I doubt 1% of the American population has ever heard any of the songs. His career peaked, unfortunately, with that 1st album.
From Miracle of Science, here's There & Back Again, with a good melody and a bright voice and bright guitar. Enjoy!
So ends the blogweek. Next week, more curmudgeonry, something about cheap American-made crap, revisiting the Kung Flu Panicfest for a post, hotel room stupidity, and MORE!!! Thanks for reading.
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Erroneous Road Rage
Posted On: Saturday - July 3rd 2021 10:21AM MST
In Topics: Cars Curmudgeonry Peak Stupidity Roadshow
(Note: Just a file photo - woman in question looked more seriously pissed off.)
Road rage: There's a time for it, just like there's a time to every purpose under heaven. I've had my share, coming and going, though, when my Dad long ago would emphasize not letting myself get taken advantage of, he made an exception for events on the road. No matter who's in the right or who had the actual right-of-way, it really isn't worth the months of intermittent paperwork and hassle to get the car bashed up.
The problem for me is, as this one comedian went on about one time, those retards poking along ahead of me (at 2 mph over the speed bumps in their 4 by 4's*) and those assholes riding my ass behind me! Haha! Yes, my Dad was right, as I went through a lot of trouble based on one "I'll show you for cutting me off" incident many years ago. When you drive with the limit of bad driver points allowed in your State, and for a while over the limit, you learn to mellow out. "Want to cut me off? Go ahead. Have a nice day!" ... yet still, I'd really like to teach people how to merge.
Anyway, part of mild road rage, or incipient road rage, let's call it, is overuse of the horn. They'll be another post coming on that one. The horn is a safety device and another communication device in addition to those oft-misused turn signals. As a communication device it's supposed to be for warning others not chewing them out.
There's a road in the downtown area nearby on which even 30 mph is too fast, per common sense, as it's just one lane with parallel parking on the right and angle parking on the left. The point is to keep the parallel parking right next to the small stores, and the angle parking by the middle median, for people who will stay longer and/or walk a bit farther. That's the reason, but I can see that having angle parking on the left is worse for safety than having it on the right.
The problem is the visibility for backing up into the one lane of traffic. The driver is on the vehicle's left side, closer to the car in the direction he would like to see when backing up. Think of the geometry, and you will see that one has to go farther back to get a good sight line. It doesn't help at all that the modern vehicles have wide-ass pillars between doors to contain airbags (I think) and windows that start much higher up. Visibility sucks in the modern crossovers especially. The back-up cameras, something I think is a necessity now, the way these things are built, don't have that wide a view angle for help in backing up from that angled space.
Therefore, you just have to ease out, and hope for the best until you finally get a view past that big pickup or SUV to your left. That was us driving by, probably not more than 20mph just based on common sense. Pedestrians can come out from either side, someone may start backing out, etc. Well, this lady did. I saw the reverse lights on with the brake lights. That's normal, as you have to slowly get to where you can see. However, I was past the point at which I could stop and let her back out, and she kept on moving, too damn quickly and closely. I doubt she was even 4 ft. from me when I beeped the horn 3 times sharply. That did it. It's simply defensive driving.
That's what the horn IS for, as I explained to my son just a second after that. "It's for warning people, not to yell at them that they shouldn't have done that." (Then, he had to bring up "yeah, but what about that time when that guy was on the phone and you honked it when you passed him?" Kid have the darndest memories!)
Well, the lady pulls up next to us at the stop light only 100 yards past, and she was pissed. I really was hoping to just tell her nicely that I wasn't sure if she could see me. Nope, she kept her window up and said something that is not within my lip-reading capabilities. No flip of the bird, mind you, but just anger. Seriously?? I just wanted to make sure I could keep my old vehicle, as anything more that a scratch and the insurance company would tell me "you'll take $1,500, or you'll get nothing!" If the lady had backed up her much newer Subaru** (but none dare call it a station wagon) into us, she would have had months of intermittent hassle, paperwork, and higher premiums. With the number of complicated plastic parts on the new vehicles, minor wrecks are no longer minor. Everything's a big damn deal.
That's the thanks I get - some old lady getting pissed at me for warning her to quit backing up or there'd be a wreck. There really should be a Misanthrope topic key here, rather than just Curmudgeonry.
* See also Sport Utility Drivers - GET OFF
** Yeah, it's Honda for lesbians, but let me tell you, there were no fantasies going on in my head about THIS lady, me, and a willing lady insurance adjuster.
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LittleFreeLibraries in the leafy neighborhoods
Posted On: Friday - July 2nd 2021 8:46PM MST
In Topics: Race/Genetics Books
In the latest (June) John Derbyshire's monthly "diary", as published on VDare and on on the Unz Review, with comments, I got another book recommendation. He hasn't let me down so far with the handful of books I read per his advice or suggestions.
What I noted is that Mr. Derbyshire got this latest book that I'll pick up from one of the "Little Free Libraries".* I am not sure if every reader will be familiar. There are lots of these cute and neighborly volunteer built and operated** things around, such as the one pictured above. I started seeing these ~8 years ago, by my recollection, but per the FreeLIttleLibraries website, it's been 12 years since the altruistic and creative Mr. Todd H. Bol made the first one. It says there are over 100,000 of them in people's front yards all around (occasionally at a part too).
We have the Little Free Libraries all over my neighborhood too. Most have either books for children, which we’ve taken advantage of on probably 10 to 15 occasions, or some self-help books, women’s novels, and lefty stuff. I did find one book on sailing I liked that I’ve been carrying around for a while.
There’s lefty stuff, mildly that is, not Das Kapital or Mao’s book, because there is a lot of that woke stuff going around the neighborhood. I think there’s a silent majority, but we’ve got our share of BLM, “We Believe”, etc, signs.
This Little Free Library thing was a great idea, I gotta say. There's the "sharing economy", as it's called, with your AirBnB's, Ubers, urban rent-a-bikes, etc., so I guess this is a "sharing charity" operation. No matter the BLM signs on the lawn of one of the Little Free Library volunteers near us, they've got to inherently know that:
a) This is not an idea that could possibly have originated from anyone other than a White person, such as Todd H. Bol.
b) Even if thought of by someone in China, Latin America, or the black ghetto in America, it would be dismissed out of hand, as who is going to build that nice dollhouse-looking structure of wood, mount it on a 4x4, and put some books in for the taking, knowing that the contents will be just all grabbed by someone and his handiwork will be vandalized soon enough? Oh, and where's the money in it? What would the point be, if there's no money in it?
c) Not so many people in the BLM movement even read books.
Oh, and these Little Free Library people have a "read in color" section on the web site. But, of course! You can sign a pledge on the internet that promises you will "share diverse books". I'd love to do that, putting an Ann Coulter book or a Vin Suprynowicz book called Send in the Waco Killers in that neighbor's Little Free Library for some diverse views, but I'm afraid that neighbor will trash it before it has a chance to get read.
* Mine is coming from the free! county library, free, as in is running off of that 80 million or so dollar bond issue they needed to renovate a bunch of the branches and the main one that all looked perfectly fine to me before.
** Basically just keeping things orderly if the users don't, adding some books here and there, and painting or replacing a nail or latch occasionally,
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Aggravating scene from Hereafter
Posted On: Wednesday - June 30th 2021 7:58PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Political Correctness Movies Bible/Religion
This post was not supposed to be a movie review. It came to mind from one particular scene from the '10 Matt Damon movie Hereafter. However, since I watched it, I'll just give a short review to go along with the main point.
I'd never heard of this movie before. It ought to have been my kind of movie, as I do like these types that speculate about the afterlife. Of course, this one had to trash the traditional religions in one very minor scene, I think mainly to make the story work there. That is not the scene this post is about, but it shows that was a PC influence, even with a movie directed by Clint Eastwood (found out to my surprise in the closing credits).
The whole opening sequence had the PC influence, come to think of it, as it was the dark people saving whitey meme again. In this case whitey was the TV news lady, played by Cecile de France, who, true to central casting, was French in the movie. I did not even think of turning the movie off due to that initial PC bit because the best part of the movie by far was the opening scene tsunami* sequence**. Whatever they did for these special effects, this scene looked awesome to me!
Hereafter flips back and forth between three different stories that come together in the end. There was the French part, starred by Cecile of France, a story about two identical-twin 10 y/o boys in England, and then Matt Damon the psychic who lives in a kindler, gentler 2010 San Francisco.
Commenter Alarmist mentioned I should use the film-buff term "production values". I do need to mention production values, but not of the movie, but the production of the CD. Here was my problem: The scenes with the French people were in France with English subtitles. However, the way it played on our player, only the first line of two appeared on the screen. I could make some of it out, but only enough to get the gist of what was going on. Then, in the British scenes, these people had enough of an accent (probably realistic) that I couldn't make out half of what they were saying either! That'd be OK if the normal DVD closed-caption feature would have worked. No dice on this. The only scenes I could follow completely were those of the San Francisco story. Talk aboutcher bad production values!
I'm glad IMDB agrees with me, but before reading it I had already planned to write that, interesting subject notwithstanding, this movie didn't have much of a point. So, here's what we have: Great opening scene disaster sequence, hard to follow 2/3 of the movie, too much PC, and no point.
OK, about that aggravating scene finally. After his soul-mate twin brother had died (not much of a spoiler really) the surviving twin wore the ball cap his brother had always worn everywhere. He attended a new school, and there was just a quick scene with he, two classmates, and the teacher. The other 2 kids were ... ready? A black girl and a Moslem girl. This was 2010 Britain. Yeah, there were plenty already, I guess, but was this a typical classroom, or was someone (Clint Eastwood, even?) pushing this stuff on us? I think you know the answer.
That's not my complaint, though. The boy wore that ball cap to class. Now, the young Moslem girl is wearing the full-out canvas-to-the-floor get-up. She has no veil but has her head wrapped up like a mummy whose slaves had barely ran out of material. Then we hear, to paraphrase, as, remember, I could barely understand half of it, "You need to take off your cap in the classroom.", from the teacher. What damn hypocrisy! I'm pretty sure the movie was NOT making a point about the hypocrisy. Whoever wrote, produced, or directed this scene was telling us that this is what we'd better put up with.
This boy is a character that the audience is supposed to feel sympathy for. He didn't like to take off his brother's cap off, as it was his only tangible thing left of his brother.. Are we supposed to feel that the Moslem girl must be allowed to wear any damn thing she likes, while this poor sad boy must take off his cap because "the rules"? There's your Anarcho-tyranny on display, courtesy of Hollywood.
I didn't like that scene one bit, and the more I think about it now, I give two thumbs down for Hereafter due to it alone. I just hope Clint Eastwood had nothing to do with it. Otherwise I say Hang him High ... is what you should see rather than this PC bilge.
* This was in some place far away from France, possibly Asia, but not made clear, so they would use that word. I think we are supposed to say "tsunami" instead of "tidal wave" now. It's one of the few PC "let's do as the foreigners do" terminology changes that I am down with, as "tidal wave" is really misleading.
** Speaking of your special senses or clairvoyance, which I haven't gotten to yet, that scene preceded the huge Japanese tsunami. The movie was released in Japan about 3 weeks before the tsunami, and the movie was pulled from theaters early.
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Visa Account Updater - Part 2
Posted On: Wednesday - June 30th 2021 4:51PM MST
In Topics: Economics Big-Biz Stupidity Scams
(Continued from previous post.)
It's not so easy to find out information on the operation of this Visa Account Updater system, but I'm almost positive it's run by Visa itself. When doing searches on this subject most of the results are pages on credit union sites with information for their customers. I really wonder how many Americans know about this system other than those who've already had to deal with it based on some problems like ours. Americans are pretty savvy consumers - well, when it's our OWN MONEY - and "we" consume a whole lot. I think word on this will get around.
BTW, I assume by "Visa" they mean this applies to MasterCard, or are there even MasterCards at all anymore? American Express has its own deal called Card Refresher that does the same thing. There is one difference I see right away with it, which I'll get to later on.
Here's how this thing must have started: Americans use the hell out of these credit cards. Additionally, as I wrote about last time, many merchants with products for sale like to arrange recurring payments. This way, Americans can more easily live paycheck-to-paycheck which, unfortunately, seems to be the preference for most, and there's that almighty convenience factor* too. Then, as noted last post and in the comments there too, there's the huge amount of scamming going on, resulting in credit cards and debit cards being canceled more often. That has been happening in our household lots lately, perhaps averaging 3 times yearly lately.** I used to go with a debit card that simply wore out.
I'm sure lots of Americans with all those recurring payments have lots of instances of either canceled service or late payments due to the company on the other end not able to get their money regularly. Then there's a complaint or a call to beg for or demand satisfaction from the CC company. I put the blame mostly on these customers, with, of course, the contributing factor of getting into these situations due to the incessant scamming.
When a charge is disputed by a customer, the way it goes, it's usually the CC company that decides to cancel, or at least strongly recommends canceling of, the card number. When the scamming is more regular, urgent, or annoying, there's one good option for the customer to stop the theft of his money - cancel the card, prontomundo. Not all the scamming is blatant There may be a disagreement resulting in an unsatisfactory conversation with "customer care". One can try to hash it out, or one can just hang up and cancel the card to JUST END IT. That is the leverage we had and thought we still have.
Therefore, there was motivation for all three parties here. For the consumers, it's having lives too complicated to keep the card numbers all up with all their creditors, getting burned by fees or lost service. The motivation for the card-issuing companies is that they have had to deal with complaints from consumers about the late fees and interactions with, and complaints from, the merchants about charges they can't collect. The merchants had a big motivation for this too, as they had to deal with lots of missing payments monthly, some to be recouped later and with late fees added, and some they had to eat. The impetus to set up this Visa Account Updater could have come from any of the 3 or a combination thereof.
They got this thing up and running. Who knew? Seriously, who has heard about it? You think you cut off the flow of the money to that alleged auto warranty service, but, whoa, next month, there it goes again!
The good for a consumer that has come from the Visa Account Updater service is that, after another unsettled dispute, or another scam is settled with the solution being another card cancellation, he doesn't have to update all his merchants or servicers(?) right away or get charged extra fees. The card issuer saves on the time dealing with complaints from both sides. The merchant or company providing a service comes out the best . Now he doesn't have to deal with complaints on said late charges (well, maybe they are actually a "profit center") and can be more confident in those receivables coming in every month. What if he's not on the up-and-up? He comes out ahead too! Win/win/win/win?
The bad aspect for the consumer is simple. His main leverage, "I'll cancel the card", is now gone. The bad news for the CC issuers is ... hmmm... nothing. Big Biz usually comes out pretty well for itself. However, I'm not completely sure about that, as they may end up with more work in the charging disputes departments. How's it going to be when many a customer can't end the money drain from some outfit, legit or not, and must call continually for months to "claw back" (as they say) the money? One Philadelphia lady tells her experience here that involves getting
The merchants have to love this new system. An example would be the Uber driver and/or Uber itself, as mentioned in the postscript of the previous post. Lastly, oh, yeah, those scammers have got to love it.
Back to our particular story now, yes, as the customer, you can opt out. That's what I did after getting the scoop, and the first thing I'd ever heard about, the Visa Account Updater. The American Express site linked to above says you need to apply to opt IN. I like that better. Maybe my wife did, without knowing anything about it, but then she applied for this card at least 5 years ago. I don't think this deal was around then, simply because one's payments WOULD be cut off to a customer if the card were canceled.
I realize that the Peak Stupidity readers are going to be on the savvier side of this consumer stuff, but I'll put my "advice to consumers" here anyway:
1) Don't set up any more monthly automatic recurring payments than you have to.
(2) If you ignore (1), decide if it's easier for you to continually make the effort to keep current CC numbers available to all those people charging you legitimately as you keep your leverage to cut the scammers off or easier for you to just fight all those charges, but not have to worry about the legitimate payments getting made.
3) Gold, Bitchez!
* It does take a dollar each month for each of the regular bills, unless I trust the outfit enough to pay ahead. Stamps are in the neighborhood of 50¢ and checks cost about 50¢. apiece. (I do know you can make up your own checks, or at least used to be able to. So far, that's not worth the effort.)
** One of these instances was an exact $150 one-time charge from that Venmo outfit. First of all, I don't usually make payments on round numbers like that, and then I didn't recognize that lame-ass internet-style name. Sure enough, people had been scammed to use Venmo before, per the bank, and the dispute was quickly settle for me. I noted that this charge was incurred one day after I stayed at a •Indian-run motel. Coincidence? I'd be generous to think that.
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