alt-right's Nick Fuentes put on the No-Fly list ...
Posted On: Wednesday - April 28th 2021 6:39PM MST
In Topics: US Police State Liberty/Libertarianism alt-right/MAGA Kung Flu Stupidity
... yet what does the alt-aight care about "muh Constitution? From everything I've read of Nick Fuentes and his leadership of part of the alt-right movement, he seems like a good guy. What I'll ask later on in this post is, have these young non-principled Conservatives not helped bring this type of thing upon themselves?
VDare's Washington Watcher II, one of my favorite writers on there, uses mostly a series of tweets to report America First Patriot Nick Fuentes Put On No-Fly List.
In case you don't know him at all, Nick Fuentes became known as leader of the "Groypers" (don't EVEN ask me what the name means), a college-age alt-right group. This group has greatly influenced the university so-called Conservatives, after a political battle with Charlie Kirk and his "Turning Point" college network. He's been on the good side of the immigration, culture, and anti-white issues vs. the wusses of Turning Point.
Because of his much-too-truthful views, Mr. Fuentes has been banned from all types of "platforms", media, electronic payments, AirBNB, what-have-you. Per Washington Watcher II:
Fuentes believes he was put on the no-fly list due to hysteria over the Capitol protests. He has suffered numerous bans since January 6.This first tweet shows what the Big-Gov/Big Biz coalition (often called Facism or Crony Capitalism) can do to an political enemy.. for now:
I believe Nick Fuentes here. After all this, I hope he's learned that if you get cancelled in this way by the Establishment, it's best to have very trustworthy friends. I also can't help here but think that these young people have put all of their eggs in the "TECH" basket over the last decade or so.* The Millennials I run into all seem to think that using cash is inconvenient and a practice from the Stone Age. Additionally, as Peak Stupidity has complained about numerous times, such as in Are the Millennials Retarded?, they do not seem to get the idea that I may not want to give out my life story to buy a voltage regulator!
I have something to say about that last item, Mr. Fuentes' being put on a (the?) "No Fly" list. This is the explanation from Mr. Fuentes of what happened back in December of last year, as he tried to travel on American Airlines:
Don't ask me to explain the order of things. Tweets often confuse me in this way.
OK, so now we get to the Kung Flu stupidity again here. What CAN'T the COVID-one-niner do, for anyone desiring a good old-fashioned Totalitarian society, at least? I've run into much of this business on the airliners myself. Because the Feds passed some ordinance, law, or whatever they call Executive Orders now, in February, as I recall, that mandates the wearing of face diapers on the airliners AND in the terminals, the airline management is relieved, while the gate agents and flight attendants have had to become even more Totalitarian to keep their jobs. The nearly 2-decades-running Motherland Security TSA stuff is one thing. As we noted early last summer, well before the mandate, airport terminals are reaching the COVID / TSA twin peaks of stupidity.
Mr. Fuentes ran into this before the Feral mandate, but the airlines were already well down with the PanicFest (season 2). From my experience, some airline employees have been taking their Totalitarian additional job functions more seriously than others (whether due to being true hysterics or being more worried about their jobs, I don't know). I don't think that NIck Fuentes was put on that "potential terrorist" No-Fly list that the horrid agency called the TSA maintains, just going by his tweet. I figure that it was a policy of American Airlines, as when a plane has to taxi back to the gate to kick someone off, that will kick off some management decision, one possibly predetermined as Kung Flu PanicFest policy. I give Mr. Fuentes kudos for raising hell though, but this part explains the next.
Much more recently, Nick Fuentes tried to travel from Chicago to a press conference down in Palm Beach, Florida on the airlines recently, as he really couldn't communicate worth a damn in any other way than in person, being banned from everything but pay toilets. Per a short video clip by Mr. Fuentes in this Occidental Dissent article, he tried to book both American Airlines and United Airlines flights and was told they couldn't, and the TSA hinted he was on this No-Fly list. Yes, this IS the kind of thing you would have expected in the old USSR, Red China (had they had enough airliners to matter), or Cuba (ditto) last century. History is rhyming, with a century as the timing, and we keep saying that, over and over...
Here's what Mr. Fuentes tweeted recently:
I give Glenn Greenwald a pass on what I'm about to say here. Though still somehow a deluded old-time lefty, he is a courageous stand-up guy, as evidenced by the Ed Snowden affair.
Maybe Nick Fuentes himself is even a Constitutionalist and not the typical Millennial in this respect. I don't know all he's said and written. I seriously doubt it though. In general the American young people have not been supporters of Constitutionalism and rule of law. They lean Socialist, as in "the government can do anything, but we just want it to do more for US, as Conservatives", or something. All I hear is the disparagement of "muh Constitution" and real limits on the Feral Government. Young people did support Ron Paul quite a bit in '12, but that's almost a decade ago. The government schools have been raising even more deluded Socialist Snowflakes, who are now maturing, or at least getting ripe.
Does Mr. Fuentes' Groypers group advocate for smaller government, the abolishment of the TSA and the NSA, DOE, IRS for that matter, the ending of the LOCKDOWN/face-diapering and other Totalitarian measures, and the termination of Dr. Fauci with extreme prejudice, in addition to their alt-right issues? You know, young people, that the Establishment doesn't have to defeat you in political debates for you to lose. They can just do what Totalitarian, and now Orwellian societies have always done, but often only dreamed of doing: banning you from financial transactions, banning you from traveling, banning you from communicating, and just plain un-personing you. You people never understood the reason for, and never supported, the basics of liberty, as laid out by the American Founders. Just what the hell did you expect was gonna happen?
* I'd say since smart phones, or maybe the original iPads, so maybe 15 years even..
Comments (3)
The new Children of Vision?
Posted On: Tuesday - April 27th 2021 6:54PM MST
In Topics: Music China Americans Big-Biz Stupidity
The 21st Century is supposed to be the "Asian Century", and by "Asian", they mean Chinese. I give lots of credit to those who said that back in the 1980s. I'd read it myself and thought WTF? Peak Stupidity was most optimistic about the nation of China about 15 years ago, from personal observation. We don't feel very optimistic now, after seeing something of a few years back, and reading more recently of, the Orwellian Police State well into the process of installation over there. (See our Dashed High Hopes for China - Part 1 and Part 2, but there's plenty more with the China Topic Key.)
Chinese it seems to be, though. We don't have to like it. We don't have to particularly respect the place and the culture either, as in the previous century, most nations around the world DID respect America. For one thing, we do know that the Chinese have stolen so many original technical ideas and business ideas from us. An article linked-to by Instapundit the other day reported on the theft, via the usual espionage done by those diverse HR hires, of technical information about the Coca~Cola beverage. I remember a number of $120 Million being bandied about, though for the life of me, I don't think the secret formula is worth that much! Hell, just put the cocaine back in it, Chinese Big-Biz thieves, and you'll get the sales.
OK, that article had had a paywall, but go to this Conservative Daily News article to read about it. It's not about the formula but about the engineering technological development of BPA-free cans. The manufacturing of the cans and the canning process are both amazing. Yet, diverse Miss Xiaorong You* stole it all, as part of China's "Thousand Talents" project.**
You know, this Coca~Cola talk had me thinking of an oldie by the excellent British band Supertramp, due to a lyric line in one of the album cuts. The last song on this band's best-selling album, Breakfast in America, from 1979, had not only a good tune, but this superb 4-minute-long hypnotic instrumental ending (over 1/2 the song), along with some really thoughtful lyrics. Child of Vision was an admonition to Americans about their commercialism and supposedly wasteful lifestyle. I always wondered how a British band would have any standing to criticize, but then, it was a different Great Britain back then. This album was released a couple of months before the election of Maggie Thatcher and only 1/2 way through the Jimmy Carter presidency. It's been a while!
Here's are the lyrics I remembered:
And you gave me Coca~cola.
You said it tasted good.
Then you watch the television,
cause they tell you that you should.
Are the Chinese getting so commercialized and so far from any moral grounding that Americans ought to have a song like this about them? Are the Chinese the new "Children of Vision"?
Supertramp:
Rick Davies – vocals, piano, keyboards, harpsichord, harmonica
Roger Hodgson – vocals, guitars, all kinds of keyboards...
John Helliwell – saxophone (on this track), backing vocals
Dougie Thomson – bass guitar
Bob Siebenberg – drums, percussion
(I didn't include all the different instruments these guys played. They were very versatile.)
PS: At least, for this latest theft of technology, we won't quite be selling out our manufacturing capability. I just don't see how the Chinese will penetrate the American market with their own Coca~Cola. There are just too many American consumers around that remember that old "pee-pee in your Coke" joke. (Well, I had to get that joke in here somewhere, dammit.)
* I'll give the Chinese this: They don't spend the time on preferred pronouns, as we discussed in Fun with Pronouns. Hey You, you say you want to change the world ... it's NOT alright ... .
** Peak Stupidity has personal knowledge of a similar deal regarding automobile airbags, as we related in Chinese grad students and airbag espionage.
Comments (10)
EXTRA, EXTRA, IRS tells all! (in .pdf 1040 Instructions)
Posted On: Tuesday - April 27th 2021 5:39PM MST
In Topics: Economics US Feral Government Taxes
The '20 tax booklet, put out at the beginning of '21, shows '19 budget numbers. Each one is a year behind, understandably.
You really wonder who's been dropping the ball on this each year, as the IRS tax instruction booklet continues to include the 2 pie charts on income and outlays for the US Feral budget. The reader may want to go back to 2 Peak Stupidity posts, also written around tax time (well, one about a 1 1/2 months later). A bit after the '17 tax season, we posted a Quick glance at the budget from US-Gov crack Green-eyeshade boys, and a day after The cruelest day of the cruelest month, of the, I dunno, 8th cruelest year? in '18, we posted a Comparison of '15/17 US Government Budgets. Shouldn't the Feral Government have tossed these pies already with extreme prejudice?
There's some financial reality baked into these pies. It's not that I think these simple charts are the be-all-to-end-all. I imagine plenty of black budget "defense" money is left out or put in the other categories. There's a whole lot to it than what you see here, but I get the numbers out of it that I care about. (Well, that is, besides the running Total Debt, which I can get in tabular form elsewhere.)
As pissed off as I was a week or two ago that I STILL owed money after having extra taken out over the year '20 (pissed off enough to put off sending anything in till a week after the deadline), seeing these pie charts near the end of the .pdf booklet made up for it a bit. Sure, the finances of America and the American Feral government are beyond redemption, but it was just nice to see an attempt to do some basic accounting by those green-eyeshade boys in some office or another.
After pulling some up, I see these pie charts appear in older on-line 1040 "booklets" as far back as I've looked (2011, but I'll check way back later). I've decided to put some of this info a nice table to show the gist of the pickle the FED has put the budget and whole economy in after years of setting basement-level interest rates. Let's just compare a little bit from this '19 budget to the '15 one, shown in the link above, in which '17 is compared to '15. (We just so happened to get to this at 2 year intervals.)
These numbers are only to the nearest percent, but taking them for what we see, the net interest on the Federal debt has gone up by 33%, from 6% to 8%. This interest is being paid on a larget pie too. We calculated in the first post, with only the '15 pie chart, that the (also) 6% of that '15 outlays of $3.89 Trillion = $220 Billion, being paid on ~ $17 Trillion, gave an average interest rate of a low, low 1.2 - 1.3% being paid by the feds. (Is that the average rate for Treasury Bonds being redeemed? I don't know enough to state this categorically.) OK, so that 8% of the '19 outlays of $4.49 Trillion = $360 Billion. On a '19 end-of-year deficit of ~ $22 Trillion gives an average interest rate of 1.6%. Interesting... no pun intended.
The absolute amount of interest paid in '19, that $360 Billion is 63% higher than that $220 Billion in '15, an additional $140 Billion. Just that amount of additional interest is more than the Total US Debt amount in 1943, in the middle of WWII! Oh, but a buck isn't worth nearly as much, so why compare? That's one point of this all, pointing out that the US dollar is being made worthless. The other is that the FED is in, or has put the Treasury Department in, a real pickle. If the interest rates were let to rise to natural levels, the price of money, the whole budget collapses. Imagine rates of 7%, likely only 3 points above the REAL inflation level. That's 4 3/8 times the interest, meaning that 8% of the pie goes to 35% of outlays!
We haven't even considered the financial shitshow of the Kung Flu PanicFest year of 2020. I am soooo looking forward to my '21 tax booklet when it comes out next January! Will they keep the pie charts that I love so much? I'm guessing these have gone un-noticed by the muckety-mucks and the AA hires underneath them. Oh, and it could be because nobody but me does taxes by hand and even glances at these .pdf's anymore.
That longer-term tabular comparison is coming, hopefully by end-o-bidness week, as Peak Stupidity has other, less important posts to write first. Mostly for my own benefit, I'm including right here a link to a really nice page on the national debt over US history, from The Street.
Comments (2)
Tips for Chinatown
Posted On: Monday - April 26th 2021 7:27PM MST
In Topics: Humor China
This was quite a while ago in one of the Chinatowns in New York City. They've got the real Chinese food if you like that sort of thing. My wife does. It's a tad healthier than the American style "Chinese Food" with the added salt and sugar, but then I'm still partial to Panda Express and Wok n Roll.
In these place full of non-assimilated Chinese people, one would not know he isn't in China but for the vehicles and lack of smog. You might think "when in Chinatown, do as the Chinese do". What the Chinese people DON'T do in China is tip for anything. It's just not common practice at all, or at least wasn't last time I was there (over 3 years ago).
Therefore, my wife figured "no, you don't need to give them a tip", on our $12 total breakfast. I was about to lay down 2 more bucks, not a lot, but at least cash, and "Cash is King"*, and was especially for Chinese people back then, before they were Harmonized**.
"I see they are Chinese, but this is New York City. It's still in America, and so they expect us to give a tip." "No, I'm pretty sure these Chinese people don't expect a tip. In China they don't, so ..." She was insistent about it. Rather than bet her money, which I've done before, I just gave up. "OK, fine."
We got about 20 yards out the door before one of the Chinese women caught up with us. "Wait, you have to tip!" Well, first of all, I don't HAVE to tip - that wasn't at all my point. I played along. "No, but you're Chinese right? Chinese people don't do tipping." "This is New York, not China! You have to tip, you know." "It sure looks like China, and it's too late now. I'm not giving you squat."
"That's too bad.", said my wife, as we walked off, "I wanted to eat later at that other place down the street, but these people know each other. They'll spit in the food."
"I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so."
* See also Part 2 and Part 3.
** This post is Part 1 of a 4-part book review - Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4
Comments (5)
Harrison Bergeron and the Virginia Department of Education
Posted On: Saturday - April 24th 2021 6:01PM MST
In Topics: Websites Political Correctness Movies Orwellian Stupidity Books Educational Stupidity
I started perusing Instapundit (#3 on the tiny blogroll of ours) occasionally again. Professor Reynolds has a handful, maybe 2 handfuls, of bloggers who mostly do the same thing, writing short blurbs with links by the multiple dozens a day. (Perhaps the Professor is still the only one allowed to say "Indeed" and "Heh!" as stand-along commentary.)
Instapundit links to PJ Media's Stephen Green*'s Insanity Wrap regularly, likely daily. That one seems worth 5 minutes a day or so - I like that title too. One of today's 5 or 6 items (all good) included the clip below, a video version of the Kurt Vonnegut Sci-Fi short story Harrison Bergeron. IW's/Green's/Vodka's point was to compare that to a story of the Virginia Department of Education's elimination of advanced classes until 11th grade to make everyone "equal". VDare's James Kirkpatrick did a good job with this story yesterday with The Real Hate Crime Against Asians—Eliminating Accelerated Learning Classes.**
I'd never read the short story till last week or so, amazingly (to myself), as I've heard of the title for years. I did not realize it also is a 1995 full length movie, right there on youtube ... for now.
This is the same thing I linked to above. Could this movie have been made 25 years later? Nah, it hits too close to home.
Thank you, all you Peakers, for reading this week. Next week, more anti-feminism, a glance at the odious Feral Gov't budget, and much more stupidity!
* Oh, this guy used to be "Vodkapundit" - it brings back memories of a smaller blogsphere.
** Insanity Wrap links to Fox News - I value VDare's take more, as usual, plus Fox News is likely to be a visually-ass-painful website to read from.
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[UPDATED 04/27:] Youtube coincidentally knocked off that ~ 6 minute cut that matched the short story. They have lots of other Harrison Bergeron clips, but not that one. I updated to the full movie, which I watched today.
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Comments (7)
Don't jab me - I'm only the Piano Teacher
Posted On: Saturday - April 24th 2021 3:44AM MST
In Topics: Music Kung Flu Stupidity
Peak Stupidity has not chimed in any opinion on the COVID-one-niner vaccines. I have no more knowledge about vaccines than your average Joe Blow. Everyone in the immediate family has some suspicion of a new TYPE of vaccine with this mRNA, not just the normal dead/small dose of a virus to activate the antibodies, and one that was hurried to market during this Kung Flu PanicFest. There have been vaccines with long-term ill effects before - just sayin'. So, we have not gotten jabbed.
I do understand numbers, and, from what we've seen, if one can trust news in any way anymore, is that the risk of ill effects from the vaccines is very small. Were I someone very vulnerable to the COVID-one-niner, say an obese 75 y/o, I would have wanted this vaccine. We have an older relative who has taken the two jabs and is much more relaxed about the virus now.
To me, that's the benefit of the vaccine, the lessening of the hysteria, whether it's actually just herd immunity kicking in or the vaccine. Personally, I don't care less about getting jabbed. Were I forced to from work, I would be scared much more of the increasing Orwellian Healthcare State than the vaccination itself.
That all out of the way, I've read quite a bit about the possible effects of the vaccine on fertility and ongoing pregnancies. One of our favorite and one of the most trustworthy pundits I read, Mrs. Michelle Malkin, posted this article about the risks for pregnant women.
Now to the Kung Flu anecdote, then. Due to people having finally lightened-the-hell-up from the hysteria where I live, we can go to piano lessons in person again. The teacher is a cute young lady of ~ 25 years. Because of the school's rules we still had to wear masks inside, annoying as that was. After I asked they teacher if we really, really, had to do that (yeah, "the rules"), she told us that she had gotten vaccinated.
Again, I'm no Dr. Fauci, but I really think that was a stupid move on her part. I mean, she's a 25 y/o in good health - no obesity whatsoever, and believe me, I checked from all angles! A young cutie like that has a very large number of chances or opportunities to get pregnant. Yet, her risk of the Kung Flu killing her is minuscule! Where's the greater risk, possible unknown-as-of-yet side effects of this vaccine on a future pregnancy or the known tiny risks of the virus?
It's just an assumption here, but in general the artsy types are not particularly numerate. (Yeah, she can count in 1/32nd notes with great precision - I don't mean that.) Did she really think this over calmly and logically, or did the PanicFest Infotainment cause our young piano teacher here to make this bad decision to get jabbed? I am pretty sure that was the case.
I am particularly proud of the post title this time. Because Peak Stupidity has been on an Elton John kick, the title of this obscure early-career album came to mind. It's Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player from early 1973. Elton John released a 2nd album that same year, the blockbuster double-record Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (to me, one of the best pop albums of all time).
Don't Shoot Me ... had 2 hit songs, the ballad Daniel and the fun Crocodile Rock. You've heard those, but maybe not this other song, called Elderberry Wine.
Drunk all the time, feelin' fine, on elderberry wine.
Comments (19)
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
Posted On: Friday - April 23rd 2021 10:17AM MST
In Topics: Commies History Books
It seems I get enough books through mentions or recommendations here in the comments and in unz posts/comments to keep me busy enough. I believe it was a commenter on unz (but maybe here) who recommended George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia for some reading material regarding the Spanish Civil War.
Peak Stupidity did review the movie Guernica, which was set in this war, in our post 3 years back called Guernica - The Propaganda and the Movie. Who cares about the Spanish Civil War? Well, besides that I'm just interested in history, I've been told that learning about this war may give clues to how thing are/will be going in this country, as things break apart. I read Mr. Orwell's book per recommendation to note the parallels.
I've got a review to write here, but let me write this first point that, no, I don't think Homage to Catalonia fits the bill as a book that can help us in that respect. There are 2 reasons for that. Firstly, Mr. Orwell wrote this book from his experiences in one small area of Spain, in his little part of the war, and only from the first half-year or so of this ~ 3 year long conflict. The author came to Spain in late 1936 to report on the war but decided to fight in it on the "Republican"* side instead, against the "Facists"**. Rather than Homage to Catalonia, a better name for the book would have been simply Report from Catalonia.
Secondly, the reason this book doesn't help me is that it was written by a young George Orwell. This is a way of thinking that I'm not good at. While I'm reading, I always picture the author of an "important" book as someone that has wisdom, knows more than me about the subject, etc. The author wrote this book back in England after getting out of Spain in late June of 1937, and at the time of writing he knew neither the big picture nor the ending. Orwell wrote his more famous books Animal Farm and 1984 in 1945 and 1948 respectively.*** What I'm getting at is that Homage to Catalonia was written by a young foolish George Orwell, not the much wiser 8/11 year-older man who wrote the latter two.
Speaking of 1984, I suppose George Orwell already saw the Totalitarianism of the East Bloc Communist World, and the Fascism in Europe was gone. Was it those societies he was projecting into the year 1984 (OK, he was off by ~35 years)? Yet, young foolish George Orwell left England in late 1936 to go fight those Fascists, not seeing that this made him basically a Communist. Live and learn, I guess.
Before I go any further, let me just insert this first Wiki paragraph from their Spanish Civil War page for a quick background summary:
The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: Guerra Civil Española) was a civil war in Spain fought from 1936 to 1939. Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, in alliance with anarchists, of the communist and syndicalist variety, fought against a revolt by the Nationalists, an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives and traditionalists, led by a military group among whom General Francisco Franco soon achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as class struggle, a war of religion, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, and between fascism and communism. According to Claude Bowers, U.S. ambassador to Spain during the war, it was the "dress rehearsal" for World War II. The Nationalists won the war, which ended in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.OK, this is a book review, not a history lesson, so let me start with this: The version that I read, shown above, has a Foreword and an Introduction. Don't read the Foreword and Introduction first, no matter what you are supposed to do. They spoil the story of the book! "What the hell?, I inwardly exclaimed. I'm guessing these 2 writers were under the impression that everyone else reading this book is a literature professor or critic as they are, and we've all read it before ... or some damn thing. Who does that?! You could read them AFTERWARD, I suppose.
I will try NOT to spoil much of the story. The book is a diary, basically, of Mr. Orwell's time in this part of Spain, Barcelona and thereabouts, in the province of Catalonia, of course. This province is in the very northeast corner of Spain, bounded by the Pyrenees mountains and France to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the southeast, the province of Aragon to the west, and, for a small stretch, the province of Valencia to the southwest. Aren't all these province names romantic sounding? I looked at a map, and you've got Castile, Navarre, Andalusia, etc. No wonder these foreigners like George Orwell (bringing his wife with him, of all things****) wanted to do this young romantic thing and fight for those romantic Spaniards against these evil Fascists, running guns and arms across the Spanish border*****
The very beginning of the book has Mr. Orwell admiring the new way of life in Barcelona, as the leftists have made everyone equal in status. No more wearing of Bourgeoisie clothing - everyone wore demin. Nobody said sir, bowed his head or tipped anyone******. Great, big damn deal. Again, George Orwell didn't call himself one, but he was basically a Commie at heart at this point in his life. This "all animals are equal" bit carried right on into his time in the militia itself. Nobody had to obey orders, exactly. They had to agree first. Mr. Orwell says this worked. I doubt that very much - ask a veteran.
Mr. Orwell left his wife in the safe (at the time) big city of Barcelona and joined a P.O.U.M. militia group on the front lines in the mountains in the Spring of 1937. This militia group was so poorly trained and equipped that the fighting was a joke at first. I don't mean that they were overwhelmed, because the Fascists didn't have a whole lot of equipment at this point either.
The front was in the mountains, with a great distance between the lines. There was just not much real fighting, with a few exceptions. (Luckily that "we are all equal" stuff mentioned above didn't matter so much.) Most of the hardship was the withstanding of the cold through the early Spring and the lack of decent food and clothing. During this period, Mr. Orwell's militia band was fighting with rifles that could have been in service in the previous century, with no modern equipment such as automatic weapons and decent grenades or mortars. The danger from the rifles was mostly to those on his own side. The author's description of all this was basically the first half of the book. That's all the personal experience of the war he encountered, in this little remote line out there in Catalonia. Compared to the whole war, with German and Italian modern fighting equipment (such as aircraft) being supplied to the Nationalists and Russian supplies to the Republicans, there was a whole lot more to it than what Orwell saw. He had to learn the rest from newspapers like everyone else, and his later experiences (see next paragraph) taught him that you're not going to easily get the truth that way.
As Mr. Orwell went back to Barcelona for leave, he encountered an increasing mini civil war within his Republican side (full of Anarchists and Communists). Things got dicey for his P.O.U.M. group. There were lots of different factions, this P.O.U.M., being just one, all of them supposedly fighting against the Fascists together, that were against each other in this confusing, violent time in Barcelona. The author has a couple of Appendices, originally having been chapters in the book, with the complicated political factions described. It will remind the reader very much of the Monty Python scene in The Life of Brian regarding the People's Front of Judea, the Judean People's Front, or was that the Popular Front, Reg? (Did the Monty Python guys possibly have this sort of thing in mind?)
One thing that may be, after all, a parallel in that Spanish Civil War to modern America is that bit with the "splitters". All those factions of malcontents, Commies, Anarchists, what-have-you, they were all against traditional Spain and those evil Fascists. Yet one group of them was rounding up other groups, putting them in jail, and shooting them (including a few of Mr. Orwell's close ex-patriate Brit comrades-in-arms and a Belgian guy). As with the Steve Sailer-dubbed "Coalition of the Fringes", they could only stick together when they focused on their hate of the traditional society. Here, the author had spent 4 months on the front line, as it was, cold and hungry, fighting these Fascists, yet he had to live like a wanted man in Barcelona due to these other Fascist-fighters! George Orwell and his wife were barely able to escape this madness in Barcelona with their lives, making it to France, and later to England, where he could write Homage to Catalonia in peace.
There are big differences between the sides in America's ever-increasingly-hot civil war and the Spanish hot war of 3/4 a century ago. As in current America, the government is on the side of the Commies and Anarchists. In 1936-39 Spain, however, the opposing side still had most of the institutions of society, such as the important Churches. In America, the entire Establishment is part of the enemy now.
The Spanish Nationalists had external help from the German and Italian Fascists. The Republican side had help from Russia (but, of course) and, apparently, Mexico. Traditional Americans have no more establishment institutions and no external help from anywhere. Nope, Trump was not the new Franco, not as if that's the guy we really need anyway. We are completely on our own.
As for George Orwell and this book Homage to Catalonia, he accrued some wisdom over the years. This book was written before then. One can learn a few details about the Spanish Civil War and the activities in Catalonia, sure. Otherwise, it was written by a young foolish romantic who didn't know squat about the world. I give it 2 thumbs down.
PS: The word "Homage" in this book's title does bring up one point that Mr. Orwell brought up a few times. He really liked the personality of the Spaniards, with no political angle involved. He brought up their general goodness and one scene he particularly remembered as an example. As the opposing "Guards" (of some sort, don't have the book on me now) did a search of Orwell and wife's apartment bedroom for any contraband. They tore up everything else but would not rouse Mrs. Orwell out of the bed to do something like check under the mattress for, say, guns or the like! No matter how much they saw him as an enemy, they had this general civility - of course, that works out as the opposite of efficiency in this case - they were Spaniards, not Germans.
* There were anything but real Republicans, but since they fought on the side of the then-current government of that particular Spanish "Republic", that was their appellation.
** Yes, there were the Fascists, such as Franco himself, but both sides of the war were comprised of varied factions. On the Nationalist side, beside the Fascists, there were the Clergy, traditional Spaniards in general, and general anti-Communists.
*** I've read the latter book twice, once per assignment in High School (I wonder if it's even ALLOWED now, much less ASSIGNED) and once about 15 years back. I've got to admit I have not read Animal Farm, so I suppose I'll get to that soon.
**** Sure, I guess some antifa guy from Chicago might bring his fat-ass purple-haired girlfriend up to Kenosha for some rioting, but then would he really care that much if she got backed over by a police cruiser?
***** Yes, big Al Stewart History Rock genre fan over here. This is the part from On the Border - not to be confused with the Eagles song with the same name - it's much different but also a good one:
The fishing boats go out across the evening water,
smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border.
The wind whips up the waves so loud.
The ghost moon sails among the clouds,
and turns the rifles into silver on the border.
I know, guns ARE arms, but give this songwriter a break.
****** Got a great story on the tipping thing regarding China. Coming up...
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Lost Comms
Posted On: Wednesday - April 21st 2021 7:30PM MST
In Topics: Kung Flu Stupidity
We're told in school that learning and understanding cool stuff is not enough. We must be able to communicate. Big Biz corporate staff repeatedly tell us that communication is so important to our jobs. It's so important that they have to write emails to us to both show communication skills and demonstrate that their high positions are viable.
What I'm running into now is a real failure to communicate, in Cool Hand Luke parlance, due to the idiotic face masking push, the most visible manifestation of the Kung Flu Hysteria. With all the people that have been vaccinated already, and the rest of us obviously not giving a rat's ass about getting the COVID, you'd think the face masks would be going away.
Nope, per Dr. Fauci and others, we need to double-down, literally. If one face mask on your face makes you feel safe from the 'Rona, then two of them has just GOT to be better, right? Sure, I mean, if you can still breath as if you are still living under an eighteen thousand feet pressure altitude, then what's the harm?
The harm is that I can't understand people very well anymore. It's not my hearing. Yes, I went to my share of extremely loud rock concerts back in the day, but my hearing has been fine. It's too bad I have to pick on them today, but the communications problems for me when dealing with black women seem to be the worst. Is it just the mumbly speech from some to begin with, the mask interference with their lips, or what?
The other day I was having a conversation with a not-too-close colleague. We don't work together often, is what I mean, but we were close in distance - about 3 ft. apart. Luckily the talk was about nothing important, just some stories, because I couldn't make out half of what the lady was saying. I asked for her to repeat a couple of things. Then I noticed she was wearing two face masks, one of the blue medical type ones on the inside and one of those black cloth ones on the outside. Maybe an acoustics engineer could explain it - all I know is that the sound was muffled to the extreme.
I had to just nod a few times, then go back to doing something, You try not to be rude, but it's hard to converse with someone who sounds pretty much like Charlie Brown's Mom.
If the masks don't go, communication suffers. What's it gonna be, corporate big shots? What? You're coming in broken and unreadable.
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Feminism and Human Nature - Part 1
Posted On: Wednesday - April 21st 2021 6:23PM MST
In Topics: Feminism
We used up the title already that would have fit this post too, long ago, with the post It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!. That was Peak Stupidity's 3rd post in the area of Feminism. As a continuation from yesterday's, this post is a summary description of this whole ball of stupidity that has been pushed on Americans for over 1/2 a century.
American women have gone along with this stupidity pushed on society because, well, it's "for women". Like the creatures they are and were made to be, women are not so much concerned with society as a whole but their families and themselves (especially the latter when the don't have the former). As with that commenter Rosie over on good old unz.com, they can often speak clearly and logically about important issues, but when it comes to women vs. men, they will take the side of what women are supposed to be for, with no concern for fairness or any understanding whatsoever of men's issues. The shame of it is, what they are convinced to be for is not the best thing for either for women or men, it turns out.*
One of the finest commenters on the iSteve comment threads is a fellow that goes by the handle AnotherDad. I doubt I have disagreed with him significantly on more than 2% of his comments**. He has OK's Peak Stupidity's excerption of most of this comment of his. It's not the only time AnotherDad has tried to explain this point of real Conservatism, but I really like this:
But this really is just feminism 101:I don't think I could have said this near as well as AnotherDad. Thanks!
If men are doing something–and it has status–then women should get at least 50% of it. Business, law, medicine, politics, sports, science, tech jobs ….
But the plain fact is that men are just better at most of the “thingy” stuff of the material world that have high status. Men are evolutionarily designed to engage in sexual competition/warfare and to hunt. This involves a whole palette of “thingy” skills.
Women are evolutionarily designed to bear and nurture children and secondarily to gather. They tend to be better at sensing and navigating interpersonal relations and in a few particular “thingy” skills–fine motor control, color perception (berries/herbs).
Essentially men and women are beautifully complementary. Men are somewhat to a lot better at most things involving interaction with the material world–which is most things. (And thus smart–mostly white, some Asian–men have given us a world of amazing material abundance, for which we all should be thankful.) While women are infinitely better at one thing–one thing which is absolutely drop dead critical for survival. But a lot of women, don’t feel that reality is how things ought to be. Sad.
I've got some more thoughts on this myself, with a little bit of personal experience to throw in too. I'll have a Part 2 sometime soon.
* OK, it didn't just "turn out" that way - I am pretty sure that there are people behind these
** I should except the few in which he was just ever-so-slightly on the pro-panic side of the Kung Flu PanicFest divide, but he has been very reasonable as of late.
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America's Kung Flu recession, women hardest hit! - Conclusion
Posted On: Tuesday - April 20th 2021 8:01PM MST
In Topics: Feminism Female Stupidity
( See previous posts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, and Part 9)
Feminist writer Chabeli Carrazana, author of the 19th News*, had such an all encompassing work of feminist stupidity that we spent 7 months here sporadically fisking it. (Amazingly, the article, America's Kung Flu Recession is still up.)
One can refute every detail of an article like this, as we did. Is it a waste of time? Yes, most likely it's a waste of time. What a Conservative can see in this article and others like it from feminists, is that it's not so much the small points that should be argued, but the entire premise that all Miss Carranzana's arguments are based on. That premise is WRONG.
I don't need to know the numbers of women vs. men employed in this field or that one. Though it's simple logic based on men's vs. women's working habits and preferences, the differences in pay aren't something I need to argue either. I don't need to argue over whether men are doing as much "caregiving" as women. No, the whole premise that women have equal roles as men in society is simply wrong. That's the basic argument against the whole damn rotten field of feminism. When you get into those arguments on the details, you have already left this basic idea behind and are accepting the erroneous premise of feminism.
Let's get to the root of the issue, call it "Roots Conservatism". Most Conservatives are afraid to go this far. They've been scared for a half a century to bring up the simple "yes, you ARE a baby-making machine", and "yes, I like it better when you're around the house a lot", and "yes, our kids will be better off if you are home with them". It's really been more like 55 years, since the middle 1960s, during which this wave of feminism has been trying to obscure or strangle the roots conservative argument that men and women are simply different and made to have different roles in life.
Now, I've heard there have been various waves, actually, and we are on wave 3 or 4 of feminism in America. From my knowledge of American history, it's been since the middle 1960s though, when feminism started being taken seriously, by men. (However, it still had it's fun moments in the 1970s.) Men didn't put a stop to this nonsense, and they, along with the women, have been paying for that mistake ever since.
Chabeli Carrazana based her whole long whining article on the usual "I want it all" and "can we have it all?" business, meaning having a rewarding career, as (only some) men do, and raising a family too. They have been brainwashed for those 55 years that they DO want that, and they deserve that. The whole idea that "having it all" for a woman might not even mean that takes wisdom to understand. That wisdom is something that will not come to most of them until it's just too damn late. (At that point, they want to argue, that, yes, we can have kids at 45 years old - no problemo!)
I will put that excerpt by the Unz Review commenter in the next post, in which there will be more philosophizing on the subject of the stupidity of feminism.
* You know that's trouble, as that on-line magazine's name refers to the US Constitution's 19th Amendment, if not necessarily THE biggest fuck-up of the amendment sequence, it'd be in the top 5 with a bullet. See Part 2 and Part 3 of Peak Stupidity's take on Amendment XIX.
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I can bitch, I can bitch, I can better than you ...
Posted On: Monday - April 19th 2021 7:37PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Female Stupidity
I just really wanted to write this quick post because of the song here and how it fits our earlier story about one Bich Nguyen, writer for The New Yorker, discussed in the posts Life ain't easy for a girl named Bich and GTTFC, Bich!.
The lady is now Beth Nguyen, but she's still sore about the fact that Americans made fun of her first name throughout her childhood years. They were supposed to withhold their senses of humor just for this one Bich, apparently.
I was just wondering if you would hear from HR later, over at the New Yorker offices, if you just happened to be playing a certain track off of Elton John’s Caribou album when she showed up for work in the morning. We did this to a girl back in college when she came into the dorm room, but she was pretty cool and took it in fun. The HR Ladies do not usually have the sense of humor you see in normal people, so, before following our advice we ask that you consider a pre-paid legal plan.
Normally, hit songs like this are ones I've heard so much over the years that I never like them as much as some more obscure songs. That's not the case, for some reason, with The Bitch is Back. What's the song about? Per Wiki, Bernie Taupin's wife at the time, Maxine Feibelman, would say, "The bitch is back," when Elton was in a bad mood. It's got the good tune and the great sound, so the lyrics don't matter, Elton John was a great artist, but the fans should appreciate that excellent band of his too:
Dave Johnstone - Guitar
Dee Murray - Bass guitar
Nigel Olsson - Drums
Lenny Pickett played the tenor saxophone solo.
(It's the same with the American version of the Piano Man. Billy Joel did a lot of hard rock numbers with a good band behind him.)
Speaking of that Caribou and obscure songs, Peak Stupidity featured Dixie Lily long ago.
* See also Part 2, Exhibit A - Toby Flenderson, and Part 3.
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America's Kung Flu recession, women hardest hit! - Part 9
Posted On: Monday - April 19th 2021 8:48AM MST
In Topics: Feminism Economics Educational Stupidity
(Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.)
Wheewwww! We're here, folks. It's been over 7 months since we started the complete fisking* of a piece of feminist stupidity called America's Kung Flu Recession by a piece of work named Chabeli Carrazana. Her writing has pretty much the whole field of feminist stupidity wrapped up in one article that can be read in one convenient shitting. Peak Stupidity has been bound and determined to finish this fisking effort, and this we be the last part of it, as we reach the very last word in stupid. Tomorrow, we'll have a conclusion, with a nice excerpt included from one of the best commenters on the iSteve blog.
Let's go!:
More than a decade ago, Mara Geronemus left a job at a big law firm in New York, moved to Miami Beach and started seeking out more flexible law opportunities. After her third child was born, she opened her own business doing remote work for clients across the country, a position that let her stay deeply involved in the lives of her elementary school-age children. She recently launched a working mom’s networking group called All Before Dinner and she’s finishing off a stint as the chair of the board of her children’s private Jewish faith school. [My bolding.]Miami Beach? But, I thought Miami Beach was for old Jewish people, getting out of that New York cold into their air-conditioned land yachts for carpooling to the Early-Bird special to go gum down that creamed corn. From the article's picture, you don't look near old enough, Mara Gernonemus... wait, what the fuck?! What kind of name is Geronemus? Usually it's Geronimo, which you may yell when you let go of that lift strut on the Cessna, and well, she does look like maybe she jumped out of a "perfectly good" airplane before but unfortunately pulled too low. (Remember to pull that pilot chute out when the people look like ants, not when the ants look like people, people!)
Where was I? Oh, yeah, New York law firm - I'm sure that was very productive work, good for American society. Now it's "networking" and sitting on a chair of the board. Oh, it's the Jewish faith school - no networking with the cholos and homies in the Miami Beach government schools, Mrs. Geronimo? If you care so much about all the poor working women, than you really ought to hang with them more, these schools being "manned" by almost nothing but women these days.
It was all part of the plan. Her husband stayed in his inflexible, but well-paid, position as an interventional radiologist.Right, because you can't do interventional radiology in your family room. (Though I guess one could just do the looking at x-rays, but I've heard that will get automated soon enough and is already partly outsourced to India.) Maybe because the husband works hard at a REAL JOB, it is not quite as flexible, "flexible" meaning allowing one to easily get away with just writing emails within short-enough intervals to show one's "at-work" status.
When coronavirus sent her kids home, Geronemus said it was like watching her house of cards collapse.Allright, so she's getting the work done in 4 to 5 hours, and there's probably a sleep period in there she hasn't mentioned. Was it ever a real job?** It doesn't sound like she's really pulling her weight in this economy, compared to her husband.
She worked throughout the day to keep her kids on track with school responsibilities but found herself sitting down at the computer at 10 p.m. to start her own work. Often, her day wasn’t over until at least 2 or 3 a.m.
“I haven’t pulled all nighters since law school,” Geronemus said.
No matter how hard she tried, though, it wasn’t enough. When the school year was over, her 6-year-old daughter had more than 200 unfinished assignments.Whoa, wait a minute. The 6 y/o has assignments? You were supposed to do these arts & crafts with her, right? Maybe if you homeschooled, you wouldn't have to stress out a 6 year-old with 200 assignments in a school year. Just a thought... Oh, and in that same March through June, I got my 8 y/o doing geometry (with ruler, compass, and protractor), geography (finding cities based on lat/long on the globe, with the inclusion of the concepts of estimation and interpolation) and adding/subtracting/multiplying fractions.
“We can’t spend another school year or even another month doing things the way that we did it between March and June,” she said.
But when she starts to think about what would have to get cut, the calculation materializes quickly: “My husband is not quitting his job, he’s not leaving the hospital. My kids are not dropping out of school,” Geronemus said. “So, what gives? Probably my work.”By
She worked hard to get here, to leave New York and plant roots in a community that she is deeply invested in, to be the mom her kids rely on.That's a win/win for all of us, Mrs. Geronemus. Not only will your kids be better off, but the whole country could use a whole lot fewer New York/Miami Beach lawyers.
When she shuttered her Miami Beach office this summer, it felt like it was starting to slip away. She was already halfway out.
“I want it all and I had found a way — and other women have found a way — for a short period of time to have it all or most of it, or have it all on some days or most days,” Geronemus said. “Now 2020 is forcing us to reconsider, I guess, saying, ‘Can you have it all?'”You, and women like you, have been TOLD you want it all by feminists for the last half century. Do your really want your 3 children to be raised by some Brazilian, Jamaican, or Squatmalen working mom nanny, while you're gone all day and stressed out the rest of the time? Hell, your husband isn't even there most of the time and probably has to spend significant money to go back and forth on the weekends. You all should have stayed in New York, if that's your thing, and raised those kids right, either by homeschooling or starting in one of those Steve Sailer-mentioned fancy kindergartens for which you have to submit pre-SAT's for admission. You could have let your breadwinner husband do what he's supposed to do, be proud of him, and have him at home more, so the kids can be proud of him and learn from him.
"Can you have it all?" Reconsider what that means, and you'll get your answer, Mrs. Gernonemus, reconsider what that means. More ranting will come in the conclusion.
* Peak Stupidity explained this ancient blogology back in the post A Visual Fisking of Cortez the Killer, in this paragraph:
OK, let me explain that ancient-to-the-blog-world term. Way back in 2001, some idiot NY Times reporter (but I repeat myself), named Robert Fisk was taken to task on an article in which he defended his being stoned (via rocks, not on-the-rocks) and beaten by Afghanis. He'd be called a hard-core "cuck" nowadays, but the subsequent evisceration of Fisk's stupidity by Australian blogger Tim Blair (I remember that guy, wow!), and the use of the term "fisking" subsequently by Godfather-of-bloggers Glenn Reynolds, aka, "Instapundit" pushed the term into common blog-use. We've not heard it a lot over the last 5 years, at least, so it may be time to bring it back.I wonder what Tim Blair is up to now. As for Robert Fisk, I couldn't care less.
** I'd be the first to tell you that lots of white collar days may only involve 1/2 a day of actual work (or let the guy in Office Space tell you).
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J.R. Kipling - "What I Saw at the Rally
Posted On: Saturday - April 17th 2021 7:56PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '26 Trump Americans alt-right/MAGA
I had a browser tab open on one of my devices, as we call them now, with a VDare post from this past January 10th, that I hadn't read yet. (That's why I have lots of tabs open. I mean 50 of 'em sometimes.)
A guy named J. R. Kipling had written a great essay on the events of January 6th. It is not very much about the breaking into the Capitol*, but about the Americans that made up the big crowd outside and about Donald Trump. Mr. Kipling is not at all enamored by the Donald, and this blogger agrees his Presidency was one final lost opportunity to turn this country around peacefully.
Mr. Kipling has only written once on VDare before, and that was almost 5 years ago. His January 10th article that I urge you to read is What I Saw At The Rally—Profound Patriotism, Trump Fecklessness, And, Yes, Antifa. I'm gonna paste in the first portion to get you interested:
Unlike Ann Coulter, I believe Trump won the election and I believe that this matters. And the millions that voted for him did so knowing all his personality flaws and failings. Donald Trump didn’t build the wall (well, just 400 miles of it), he didn’t deport all the illegals, he didn’t stop H1B, he didn’t even end the notorious Carried Interest loophole. Yet people kept faith in him. Why?Mr. Kipling has more faith in regular Americans than Donald Trump. I concur. We need to look to each other for support and leadership, not a politician, even the best one we could think of. "TECH Tyrants and Biden's coming. We're finally on our own ..."
Standing in the bitter cold of the Mall on Jan 6 with perhaps 400,000 others waiting for hours to hear Trump speak the answer seemed simple and as old as the basic human need to organize in self-defense. The people were there to hear their leader. Shivering and waiting, they wanted someone to give them some hope for the future—a sense of resolution and confidence and superior strength.
But strength against what? What were these people afraid of that made them stick with Trump through all his personality flaws, shrugging off the relentless attacks from the Left that have gone on for years?
A common view is that they were fooled by Trump. But they were not fooled. They saw everything and looked beyond. They ignored Trump the quasi-literate vulgarian who really thought having a "top running reality show" was boast-worthy instead of an embarrassment. They stuck with Trump because Trump was one of them, only with the power to stop the Globalist nightmare.
What the Left is setting about doing now tells us more about the Trump movement than Trump ever did: the complete dissolution of a people and a nation, the relentless lying and propaganda, the Big Tech censorship and surveillance. Trump’s voters instinctively sensed this threat. So did Trump, but he did nothing about it.
* though he strongly suspects that there were antifa, doing the breaking of windows and such.
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TECH Technicians
Posted On: Saturday - April 17th 2021 5:05PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity
Nope, it's not about the "TECH Totalitarians" (VDare terminology) this time but actual computer hardware technicians doing what anyone could call real technical work. We've got a Dell laptop with only about 4 years on it that won't take any power. I brought it into a local fix-it/used sales shop that I am very glad is still in business.
Let me first tell you all the problem with this computer, a) for this anecdote's sake and b) well, Adam Smith may be of help*, haha, or someone else. Why not, right? It ain't like we're charging here.
I'd thought for sure this was a matter of a loose connection of the DC power input socket. My boy has not treated this computer very well. (It's not his - tragedy of the commons, bitchez!) In addition to spilling milk all over the keyboard one time, he has put lots of stress on that connector. OK, this should be easy really, or so I thought. The back came off easily, and this socket was very easy to get at. The socket has one screw to attach it for mechanical support, and the other end is a flat ~ 7 pin plastic connecter that goes into a board. It has 4 red wires, so I guess this power goes that many ways. The actual wires are not even 1" long. There really can't be anything wrong there, but I'm open to disagreement.
While playing around with the power supply, connecting and trying to find good conduction, I saw that the power light would go on for 5 seconds and cut back off, no matter what position I put the plug at axially. This is not a conduction problem. I even saw the fan start, and the screen get some light a few times. Battery or no battery, it's the same story. The power supply has a green LED lit up, but does that mean good DC power out or just good AC power in?
I did 1/2 hour of searching for this problem with no good answer so far. OK, down to the shop. These guys know what they are doing, right?
Well, I have no complaints here about racial or gender issues - there were 5 or 6 White guys in there - that was all. Maybe a couple were sales types with no technical knowledge, so I asked for help on the problem.
"Oh, look, your plug is bent. That's it." He meant that the plug (the DC side of the power supply at the computer end) was bent about 5 degrees. I knew that, but then, you'd think if this were the problem, I'd have an intermittent connection, but not on a regular basis. What the heck, though, this guy might know something, and it would be great if this were all. Nah, he plugged in another (but only the DC side), and the same problem occurred.
"Well, maybe it's the motherboard** ..." Geeze, what does that tell me? Getting a new computer is what that would come down to for me, as with that part, and a few hours of his time (I just wasn't up for a complete overhaul), we'd be close to the price of something new. Here's my problem: no damn thought, no problem solving or troubleshooting ability was in this guy, it seemed. I was kind of hopeful about this mechanics of miniature devices being a substitute for the work of the shade-tree mechanic of yesteryear, as discussed long ago here in DIY and mechanical aptitude in Americans vs. Chinese - self rebuttal.
Let's compare: As opposed to a remove & replace guy at the dealer service center, a good mechanic has some deep understanding of the workings of the vehicle along with troubleshooting abilities. With a car, that troubleshooting could involve a great ear, use of the multimeter on all the electrical problems, or just the common sense (learned from a lifetime of doing the work), that says things like "OK, even with starter fluid sprayed in, I'm getting nothing, so it's probably not the fuel pump as I'd thought..." etc. With this laptop computer, I'd like to have heard "let's see, it's getting power, but the computer doesn't see it as good power, so the power control chip is bad or it's not getting enough current..." I'm making this up, but it's just an example of the kind of thinking that I expected more of.
The car mechanic might say "OK, I think it's the ABC module, so we can try that first, but it's not refundable. If that's not it, then I'll try B, but that's hard to get to, so it'll take a couple of hours. At least then I can see if DEF gets a signal from ___ once I get that part off...." This guy, given the symptom, had nothing but "It's not your bent power plug. Maybe it's the motherboard." That's like: "It's not that wire hanging loose. Maybe it's the engine."
The guy did have one more idea: "You could replace that connector (the part I described, taking power from the socket end of it and distributing it to a board via the flat connector)." Yeah, well, fine, spend a couple of weeks waiting for a part that really doesn't have much of a way of breaking? That's an idea. It has nothing to do with the symptoms - it's nothing but 1" of dumb conducting material - and looks fine, but it's an idea ... not a good idea, just something to do. Nah.
Perhaps I expected too much. I was ready to learn, and yes, pay what money it took if it was worth it to fix it, but this guy had nothing to teach me. He did have one piece of hope: "We can ask Jody." He had already left, but I can go find him another time, when I get a chance to go back. I guess Jody is the one guy there that actually understands a bit about the workings of these devices. If you're locked up, it's "better call Saul." If you're computer's locked up, it's "better call Jody." I hope Jody has got the understanding and troubleshooting skills, as I'd really like to get to the bottom of this.
If nothing else, they can get our data off the drive, so there's that ... which IS important, in fact.
Is America losing our human technical capital? It seem like that's the case. Don't we need it? I sure thought so.
PS: I may still find the answer to this very reproducible problem on the web. In the meantime, I realized just a while back that I had forgotten to at least check the DC voltage output on my power supply. See, the guy at the shop had only used the DC side, due to ours being bent. It'd be great if it were nothing but a bad power supply still. I can't get to that computer right now... long story.
* Keep in mind, there's one simple thing I haven't even checked yet, but I can't get to the device right now, at press time.
** Are they still saying "motherboard"? I thought it had changed to "main board", but maybe it reverted, or this guy has been messing with computers a long time - I had no problem with that.
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No justice for Ashli Babbitt
Posted On: Friday - April 16th 2021 8:08PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '26 US Feral Government Orwellian Stupidity Anarcho-tyranny
It's Banana Republic or Totalitarian State behavior, either one has no honest system of justice. American justice had it's big flaws before, but it's completely political now. The Bidet Administration Department of Justice announced yesterday that there will be no prosecution of any sort of the black Capitol cop who murdered Capitol Gang member and Trump-rally attendee Ashli Babbitt.
Every single time that the late Mrs. Babbitt is mentioned in the Lyin' Press, her "Air Force veteran" status is touted, as it that made her an existential threat to the lives of members of Congress, as she attempted to get through a panel with glass broken out in the Capitol that day. A handgun was seen in a black hand of a man who shot her from only 10 ft away or so in either the throat or shoulder, killing her. I've read in one article that Mrs. Babbitt was only 5'2" tall and weighed 110 lb. I'm not sure on that, but, as she traipsed through the "People's House" with the rest of that unarmed crowd she was no immediate threat that required being neutralized with deadly force.
The statement following is from the murderer's attorney , as taken from the Washington Post and is part of an excerpt in yesterday's Steve Sailer post, Media Reactions to Daunte Wright and Ashli Babbitt: You Can't Get Much More Who-Whom, about the Department of Justice dropping the whole matter vs. the new big narrative for the criminal Daunte Wright. This is after 3 months of never divulging even the murderer's name! He's not a juvenile, so withholding his name, as was the apparent policy of the entire Lyin' Press, is an odd way to act.
Mark E. Schamel, the Capitol Police officer’s attorney, credited his client with showing great restraint.Lawyers do bullshit occasionally, but this statement is positively Orwellian. Lieutenant REDACTED shot an unarmed woman. He wasn’t heroic. He didn’t save ANYONE’s life. He should have been arrested and charged with murder. That statement above is a sick lie!
“His bravery on January 6 was nothing short of heroic,” Schamel said in a statement. “He stopped the rioters from gaining entry into the Speaker’s Lobby and saved the lives of countless members of Congress and the rioters. His heroism should be no surprise to those who know him.”
Some commenters on iSteve said that this cop panicked. From the video I've seen before (and on the page linked-to below), I don’t at all agree that this cop panicked. Ashlii was on the other side of a broken glass panel to the side of the translucent-paneled door.. There is still a lot of glass in that frame. You don’t just sail right through that – you’d either want to clear all the glass out (but yet, they didn’t even have sticks or bats to do that with), or you get through very, very carefully. I think this cop just wanted to shoot someone.
As usual, big foreign media have more information than the American media does. This UK Daily Mail article has some good videos.* Of course, they also run through the few minor unsavory features of Mrs. Babbitts life, something the Lyin' Press always seems to leave out for other unfortunate "victims", like George Floyd.
From a site called the NWO Report I got the picture of this murderer and some more info.
Any criminal justice for Mrs. Ashlii Babbitt is off the table. That would go along with neither the "black lives matter most, by far!" narrative, nor would it go with the "Insurrection!" narrative. There's no point in it then, agree "our" Feral Government officials.
Not my favorite political figure by any means, but a guy who I have more respect for now than I used to, one John F. Kennedy, said:
R.I.P., Ashli Babbitt
* Something weird seems to be going on in the 3rd video down - the one that runs 03:27 - at the 0:35 mark. A masked up guy and a couple of others say some words and high-tail it away from the scene - antifa or other instigators?
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The unmasking of the Kung Flu stupidity?
Posted On: Thursday - April 15th 2021 7:31PM MST
In Topics: Kung Flu Stupidity
I did not see these EXACT flight attendants at the MSP airport. However, these kinds of pictures keep the eyeballs on the site.
This anecdote, taken from a time period 1/2 hour earlier than that of the previous one, is more encouraging.
Before the gentleman of the other post conversed with this blogger, there was a family of 3, then one more (when the granddad came up the stairs), in that pleasant observation deck. The boy was about 3 years old, and like most, loved watching airplanes. Unfortunately, this was a dead time, at least for traffic on runway 30R at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport.
I asked where they were headed, and vice versa, and we had a nice conversation. I had not been wearing my face mask, being un-observed (even unobservable by cameras? Nah, I dunno) in that location. The boy had no face mask on, at least, but the 2 parents at first did. Before 5 minutes were up, with my example setting the tone, we were all face-diaperless, and LOVING IT, JERRY! Everyone enjoyed acting normal.
This family was not at all worried about the Kung Flu. They had been worried about getting in trouble at the airport but were able to leave that fear behind for a spell. Now imagine if we all just started taking them off, walking to the gate, and ignoring the gate agents's admonitions, who, at some point would have to just give it up.
Alright that was a nothingburger of a post, but we'll have more feminism, Lyin' Press, and other forms of stupidity coming up.
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Two more posts from the Observation Deck
Posted On: Thursday - April 15th 2021 3:27PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Political Correctness
Back last summer, Peak Stupidity posted Pictures from the end of America. That one was about the desolate economic scene during the height of the Kung Flu summer re-panic. Because I had been in that great observation deck accessed* from the D Concourse at Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. I did speculate also about whether one could tell that the city was undergoing riots and the like, if I had been there the previous month. (The city is visible about 10 miles away to the north.)
Maybe because it's nice and quiet up there, with not many passengers knowing about the place, and with the classical music playing, it's a good place for thinking, as just an hour or so up there recently resulted in 2 more blog posts. These are just your pretty typical anecdotal posts, and I am writing them in reverse time order, just due to wanting to write about this new black outrage thing first, then the lighter and brighter theme of the abating of the Kung Flu madness later.
One guy up there happened to be one of the few passengers who already knows about that observation deck. I got to talking to him, so he told me that, and that he travels nearly weekly and is from the local area. (I.e., he knows MSP very well.) This 65 - 70 y/o guy was in a specialty field as a technician, wanted as much as he wants to work. He told me that he gets paid by the hour, and that includes all the travel time, so often 50-60 hours a week at what I'm sure is a good rate.
We were up there watching the planes take off on runway 30R, as in, to the northwest, which had them rotating to get airborne a little prior, or just abeam us in this little tower. It was a great view. We're there talking about planes and talking about the amazing machines he works on. He's got to be a good guy, I figured. Besides a little bit about the masks, and that, no, I was not wearing one where nobody could give me shit about it, I saw no reason to talk politics.
On the SE side of the airport, across that runway, there is a Minnesota Air National Guard outfit with a dozen or so C-130s. We were watching the 2nd one already get across the runway, taxi down to the southeast, and take-off, when he asked wondered what they might be up to. "Probably just training or something", I said. "Oh," he surmised, "I think they are going to that Brooklyn Center thing ..." and something else. With his mask down on his chin, I should have understood, but then I am no news-hound, so I had not heard of the new outrage there, due the shooting of Duante Wright, another worthless black criminal.
Uhhh, cause he's another stupid black thug?
Well, first of all, what the heck would these lifter planes be going there for? For observation there are helicopters. Luckily, the current-era rioting/looting events are not up to the level that requires Puff the Magic Dragon AC-130 gunships... yet. Still, I didn't know what he was even talking about. "What's going on there?" I asked. "This black guy was shot by the cops." Ahaaa, well, here we go again, but I couldn't tell what he thought of it all. An older, white, technical guy like this ought to be conservative, by all rights. I didn't intend to talk racial politics, but just to set the record straight and for fairness' sake I noted "yeah, a couple of days ago, this black ex-football player shot and killed 5** white people, including 2 kids, down in South Carolina".
At this point this guy just clammed up like a ... clam, I guess. I was surprised. He had nothing more to say, for pretty much the whole rest of the time I was up there. I'm telling you, it's something about the Scandanavian-background folks up there or something. They can't believe that everyone is not so nice like themselves. OTOH, they can believe the white cops are bad guys though, but not those poor trodden-upon black guys that they've been lucky to never meet certain examples of in the wrong place.
* Directions are in that other post.
** It's 6 now, as the other HVAC guy shot in the yard died at the hospital a few days afterwards.
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Lyin' Press Department Cadre spills all during honey pot tinder date
Posted On: Wednesday - April 14th 2021 8:02PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Media Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
You may have heard of an outfit called Project Veritas, headed by a courageous young man named James O'Keefe. What he used to do himself was to attend meetings, dinners with drinks (drinks are often the key), and other events with groups of the ctrl-left and secretly filming the utterings of some of these people. He has released many videos of those moments when the attitudes and plans of these evil/stupid people come out of their mouths.
Now, I'll say that some of these videos are hard to watch because they are at odd camera angles and with sound that's not very clear. That's what you get when you are an amateur spy. I try to think of good ways to set up the cam and mic, but no matter, I give kudos for Mr. O'Keefe for spreading the truth on what our domestic enemies are really about. This has got to be a blast for him, as I know it would have been for me at that age.
We have mentioned James O'Keefe before in these pages, in the post Still think Communism is dead and buried, do ya?. He had infiltrated a group of young Bernie Sander's campaign manager types, and showed the true colors of these guys, red, red, and more red*. In the post, about Mr. O'Keefe, I called him an "actual Gonzo kick-ass investigative journalist".
Peak Stupidity commenter Dieter Kief pasted in a link for us to the latest interesting infiltration job by Project Veritas. I had heard of this from a friend this morning, and, of all things, my wife all of a sudden knows about Project Veritas, Mr. O'Keefe, and his lawsuits against CNN and the NY Times for libel (the latter business of which I had had no idea). This is the kind of guy we need more of.
It turns out that, unlike Peak Stupidity, Project Veritas is more than just the one guy. It's a whole domestic espionage outfit now, on the side of American patriots. In the case of the video below, the way into the hearts of darkness of the left was via Tinder, the hook-up act. Hey, the Ruskies did it, I'm sure the CIA did it, and it's part of the charm of the spy v spy world, the Honey Pot. (I do wonder how far along as a honey pot Mr. O'Keefe's employee went on this one.) This is cool stuff though. I have felt sorry for the young people, having to put up with this PC stifling world, but this kind of thing, with the electronics we have now, is cool stuff.
OK, about the video finally: This stuff goes right along with what Peak Stupidity has been saying about the Lyin' Press's Kung Flu Infotainment PanicFest. I'm sure there are some shrewd, evil types in that world who knew right away that this PanicFest could be used to knock President Trump out of office (with whatever cheating was necessary to clinch the deal). Maybe they really wanted to derail the economy.
What the Lyin' Press REALLY wants, as this video shows, if for people to WATCH and read. In this case, it's the TV branch, the most hated by this blogger. We noted some of this in our Part 5 of our Scenes from the Kung Flu Summer re-Panic series. Some of the news types may be stupid enough to have been and still be scared shitless of this COVID-19. Many are just good actors and actresses. They have enjoyed the attention, but must act scared and think this is the most important thing happening in the world. They love the panic, as it gets people watching. As the man (CNN technical director Charlie Chester) says, "fear sells" and "if it bleeds, it leads". The latter is an old saying in the press business.
CNN's Charlie Chester here admits that part of the reason for the PanicFest was to "get Trump out of office". The next big fear-mongering project will be "Climate Change", he says. I didn't know that would still work. Just as with the movies nowadays, these people are not very creative. We heard from little
CNN has not responded yet ...
* One of the 2 videos is gone now, and I doubt I can find the replacement very easily.
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Tucker Carlson fires back
Posted On: Tuesday - April 13th 2021 7:18PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Pundits Globalists Race/Genetics ctrl-left Zhou Bai Dien
Note: The busy time is over for a while here, so we'll try to get the posting rate back up to normal, about 8 - 10 per week. Today I spent too much time on the unz blogs, but then that's what this post is about anyway. Most of our commenters, and likely most readers, read Steve Sailer, so this one will be old news. However, I want this video to be seen by as many people as possible, so Peak Stupidity will do its small part.
Peak Stupidity hasn't posted a clip of Tucker Carlson in a long while. He's our favorite TV pundit, but the one below is no ordinary good stuff from him. This episode goes back a couple of days. I won't show the first salvo by Mr. Carlson on the immigration replacement, as, since then, the other (stupid) side of this argument fired away, and the video below is a response to that.
Regarding the newest push for massive immigration, both legal and illegal, after the Trump slight pause (that's all it was), Tucker Carlson laid it out there that the ctrl-left wants traditional Americans replaced. He stated right out there on TV that the D-party wants to dilute the vote. Well, yes, that's been the basic Blue-squad idea for a long time regarding immigration. The Red-squad has its donors that want the immigration for the cheap labor, illegal for the manual labor, and legal via all types of visas, for the "TECH" work. Note it's just the donors on the Red-squad side, not the voters, but, then, who you gonna listen to when you're running a campaign? It's expensive, man!
Behind all this is the elite Globalist class that pushes those two idea for the two squads but really has its own goal. They want to eliminate any kind of big middle class, especially a White one. A White middle class tends to be competitive in business and has the time and extra cash to interfere in policy, which is apparently supposed to be determined by Globalist elites only.
Tucker Carlson didn't get to the Red-squad push for cheap labor, but I'm almost positive he had before. Recently he was focusing on the vote dilution idea by the Blue-squad and ctrl-left. However, it isn't your Daddy's (even if he had you at 15 y/o) ctrl-left that we're dealing with now, - they are just plain out-in-the-open anti-White people at this point. The question is, does Mr. Carlson not know this, or is he just being very careful to stay on TV by never mentioning race, or going in baby steps on this?
That's been part of the debate under the latest iSteve thread on this. To back up just a few days, Mr. Carlson used the word "replacement" to describe what the ctrl-left has been trying to do, again as if it's about the voting only. That's part of it indeed, and again, Tucker didn't want to go too far. However, even using that word "replacement" and the phrase "by people of color" regarding the American population, has got the Jewish gatekeepers at the ADL with their panties in knots. It's not like people on the left have not already admitted that's what their up to, using this word. The ADL just doesn't like ANY truth to be uttered about these matters. OK, that's possibly only until the situation has been stabilized, and it's only historians writing about any kind of country full of lots of White people.
It's not just that the ADL and the like don't want the truth told, but they are extremely hypocritical about population replacement. As VDare writers have written about for years, including Steve Sailer, the Jewish left are completely against any such policy when it comes to Israel. Over there, it's all about Nationalism, but that's a dirty word over here. Well, Mr. Sailer brought up this hypocrisy a couple of days ago, after Mr. Carlson's rant in question (the earlier one), as the ADL pushed for Fox News to fire him. Amazingly Fox network's Lachlan Murdoch did not back down.
Mr. Sailer brought up in the post linked-to just above some ideas of what Tucker Carlson ought to say next, including bringing up the afore-mentioned hypocrisy of these evil ADL people. Mr. Carlson came right back at the ADL with some examples of their hypocrisy, as if he got this straight off of Mr. Sailer's post. I'm not saying he did get it there, but either way, this is a great thing, his fighting back like this. Mr. Sailer discussed all this in Tucker's Overton Window-Smashing Broadside. (That's what I spent a portion of my day on, instead of blogging.) VDare is all over this too, with this Washington Watcher II post: Defiant Tucker Defends His Discussion Of Demographic Change, Exposes ADL Hypocrisy and then James Fulford's post about the excellent Mark Steyn on this, in CNN After Mark Steyn For LISTENING To Tucker Talk About Demographics, Steyn Treats Them With Contempt..
I urge you to watch the whole 20 minutes. Note the smirk on Julian Castro's face in the segment, about 3/4 of the way through, when they discuss this replacement. Hmmm, did the ADL have anything to tweet to Julian Castro about this term? Nope, we know which side they are on. The ADL is not even really on the side of the Jews in all this. They are simply on the side of quicker cultural destruction of the US of A, as in, a part of the ctrl-left.
The discussion of the racial population displacement, even if not said specifically as anti-White, is no longer confined to the pages of Amren, VDare, and Unz.com anymore. Instead of 1% or so of Americans reading about it, maybe more like 1/4 or more Americans heard Tucker Carlson talk about it, right there on their idiot plates, normally reserved for just that, idiocy.
The ctrl-left, via the ADL or whomever, may keep trying to cancel Tucker Carlson. I can't say I know for sure how that will go. Still, this light of truth has already been shed on these hypocrites and liars. You shine the light of truth on these people, and they are fucked, like a cockroach caught out in the middle of the kitchen table when I already have a beer bottle in my hand.
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Kung Flu at the City Zoo
Posted On: Saturday - April 10th 2021 2:37PM MST
In Topics: Treehuggers Kung Flu Stupidity
I couldn't find an image with a masked zookeeper feeding a Sea Lion standing on his flippers, but that's what we had.
This is just the latest Kung Flu PanicFest anecdote to round off the low-effort week here. (Next week will have to start slow too.) The kids were on Spring Break, and with not any trip planned, we at least went hiking one day, and went to the zoo another. For the zoo, I had boys from another family with me - free tickets, thanks, Redacted!
I'd called about the tickets and some supposed reservations deal to keep the crowd down. (Whaaa? The place was packed as it always was in the past.) With guest tickets, an entry time wasn't required, but I did hear the voice system tell me about face masks and the city laws.
Now, I could have walked on in there starting a fuss right away. With the other people's kids and all, I really didn't want to start trouble, so we all had them on, and I was prepared for 3 hours of being annoyingly masked up. We hadn't gotten 100 ft in from the entrance when I saw a whole family with no masks on. I complimented the Dad on that, but he told me nobody was worried about it. Excellent! Except of one of the boys (whose parents are plenty young, and should have no reason in the world to worry) we all took the masks off for the duration of our zoo visit.
It was close to 50/50 on the masking. Now that I am writing this, I realize I could have done a nice survey while the kids and I were eating Icees and popcorn. That's a rough guess though.
Unfortunately, a couple of the cool non-animal-related attractions that the kids were excited to do were closed. The old guy in the booth at which I asked about it told me: "They won't be open until there's no virus." Oh, that's a good one. Once there are no viruses, we can all play. It's kind of hard to prove that there aren't any viruses around. I made some remark about how they were gonna know that, and we went and saw more animals.
Besides those being closed, there were 5 daily animal special events with times listed on the map. (It was an old map, because you can only take a picture of the new map, because... the COVID.) One, involving the seals and sea lions, was going to be in 1/2 an hour. Nope, none of the 5 things were happening, because the COVID.
OK, but since we were near the seals and sea lion tank anyway, which is pretty cool, we came from the inside where we viewed them swimming through the thick glass, up to where the stands were for the feeding show that was not going to happen. It was feeding time. COVID or no COVID, they get hungry.
This worked out great because, since this was not officially the daily feeding "show", per se, there was no young lady haranguing us the WHOLE ENTIRE time about not throwing our trash into the river! Peak Stupidity documented that shit-show long ago in the post Someone told me it's all happening at the zoo.... (Yes, it's got the fun Simon & Garfunkel song there.) The 3 zookeepers feeding the sea mammals fish out of buckets were getting them to do a few tricks anyway. The zookeepers saw us all watching, and maybe they wanted to keep the animals current on the tricks for "when there's no virus". It's not like riding a bicycle for these guys, I guess...
Yes, the zookeepers that were feeding fish to sea lions and seals were wearing face diapers, in the open air and the sunshine. At least that kept any of them from giving us a lecture about "the planet" the whole time. Thank you, COVID-one-niner!
PS: Oh, I almost forgot. The merry-go-round for the little ones was operating at what looked like capacity. Come on' guys, are those horses, dragons, frogs, and unicorns all 6 ft apart from each other? Think of the children! Oh, wait ...
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