The Release of the J6 Political Prisoners
Posted On: Tuesday - March 4th 2025 11:20AM MST
In Topics: US Police State Trump US Feral Government ctrl-left Zhou Bai Dien
Roughly a year ago, in the post Trump v Bai Dien and 2020s v 1980s, Peak Stupidity discussed the changes in American Presidential election significance over 40 years. As with the Latin American elections, nowadays the election results here can be more immediately life-changing for Americans. When your country's government, the Potomac Regime for us, takes a thousand Political Prisoners, Latin American style*, well the results of this '24 election were indeed life-changing for those J6 Political Prisoners.
Trump won, and we were hopeful a the beginning of the year about this - see, also with a little Latin American flavor, The J-6 Political Prisoners - We Hear Their Heartbeats.
Well, we know that Trump has come through for them. I'd written before that if he hadn't, I'd have had no faith that Trump-47 would be anything different from Trump-45. I'm writing this post today just because I'd forgotten to add this (now old) news to my points noting the good things that President Trump has done already, both in our recent post El Caudillo Yanqui and in comments to Mr. Hail whose essay prompted our reply post.
This move was not something that will change America's future economically or (THE most important way) demographically. It honors a promise though, and it shows that President Trump is NOT down with the US Police State and the new Banana Republicanism. One could say that this reversal is a part of all that, as per our post linked-to above, but then, does anyone really think Trump will or even would do the same thing, locking up ctrl-left protestors for years, many with without trial, as Political Prisoners? No, he wouldn't. He IS taking well-deserved revenge against those in Feral Gov't (and hopefully elsewhere, Leticia fat-assed James, hint, hint...), but all of them deserve this revenge for Rule-of-Law reasons to begin with. I suppose the ctrl-left will call everything the President does along those lines Banana Republican (or Caudillo style) tit-for-tat, but that's not the truth. The ctrl-left don't care about the truth though, so that works for them.
Let me just finish with a quick re-cap of pardons given out by Presidents. Officially, "These counts include all grants of clemency (convictions pardoned, commuted, and rescinded)." This page, which includes that definition, has the numbers, but the numbers don't tell the real story.
Going by memory for recent years, I can relate what the pardons have been about. President Carter has the highest numbers ever, due to his pardoning of 200,000 (I'm sure that's approximate) Vietnam war draft dodgers. He did this on his 1st or 2nd day in office, in 1977. Back in the Clinton days, there were pardons going out in the last days/weeks, for reasons of political payback and probably, knowing the Clintons, much monetary payback too. More of this was done by the rest, as I recall, but it was the D's like Øb☭ma who delivered pardons to help out "the cause" of leftism. However, as we all WELL recall, Dark Brandon took the Presidential pardon to a new level. He pardoned family members and groups of people who had not been convicted nor (some) even charged with crimes yet. (The last shows a whole lot of obvious implied guilt.)
President Trump's pardon of the J6 Political Prisoners is different. Done on the first day also, as no payback to anyone, this is closest to Jimmy Carter's Vietnam draft-dodger pardon executive order**. Leaving opinion on the latter out here, it shows the honesty of both of these Presidents, as opposed to the grift and dirty deals involved with the rest over recent history. Dark Brandon's pardoning of the Capitol cops involved in the J6 investigations shows how extremely corrupt this power can get.
Peak Stupidity thanks President Trump wholeheartedly for fulfilling his campaign promise to free these Political Prisoners! Yes, I noted that very day, I could have been one of them, if not for logistics difficulties. That's not the main point here though. The Brandon Administration was a period of Totalitarianism beyond what America has ever seen. Let's hope President Trump and we other Americans put an end to it more permanently.
* Wasn't that an old TV show? Tyranny, American Style?
** This may have been legally a bit different. I don't know.
Comments (8)
Celluloid Heroes sometimes really die.
Posted On: Monday - March 3rd 2025 6:18PM MST
In Topics: Music Movies Bread and Circuses
Actor Gene Hackman, his wife, and dog dead. Nobody cares!
To be slightly more precise, I mean nobody on the Peak Stupidity staff cares. The country seems to - that's a problem for me. Bread & Circuses are bad, mmmkaaay?
I don't like the worship of Hollywood Celluloid Heroes. These are people that can act like they're someone else, reproduce human feelings, and memorize some lines for a few minutes. It's not like they work for a living or anything.
Of course, the idea is that many are very hot or handsome. This guy is not that either, not that this has anything to do with my point here. We can see those cute* and hot girls in the movies, which is much appreciated, but it doesn't mean I care a whit about what these people do off the silver screen.
I get that the death of this movie star and wife and dog with him is something of a mystery. Go read a Sherlock Holmes novel if you like that stuff. Lookit, in the week that this will be discussed throughout the Infotainment "Industry", probably dozens or hundreds of other strange/tragic events happened to other American families. But they weren't in the movies though. What's the diff?
I don't believe in Celluloid Heroes, but a band called The Kinks did. The same general principle applies. These guys made great music. What they think about Hollywood - hence the lyrics - means almost nothing to me. The song has a great melody and a great sound. I like this live version from The Kinks' excellent album One For the Road. The album is from 1979, but the band wrote the song back in '72.
frameborder="0" allowFullScreen>
The following actors and actresses are mentioned: Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino, Bela Lugosi, Bette Davis, George Sanders, Marilyn Monroe, and Mickey Rooney. They've got their lives' work saved in old celluloid, magnetic tape, or digital form, and we can walk on top of their stars if we give a rat's ass about Hollywood Boulevard. I have been long ago, but sorry, they're not my heroes.
That has got to be the best music Peak Stupidity has posted (first time) in a long while. The 2 minute long intro, with that synthesizer and then the great Dave Davies lead guitar, gives me chills.
I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,Actually, I think these Ray Davies lyrics are very good. I just don't agree, if that makes any sense.
a fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes,
because celluloid heroes never feel any pain,
and celluloid heroes never really die.
The Kinks:
Ray Davies – guitar, harmonica, keyboards, vocals
Dave Davies – lead guitar, backing vocals
Ian Gibbons – keyboards, backing vocals
Mick Avory – drums
Jim Rodford – bass, backing vocals
* When it comes to Gene Hackman movies, I will say that an obscure one called Full Moon in Blue Water was very good. That has to do mostly with the fact that co-star Teri Garr was soooo cute.
After hearing of it for many years, I found that The French Connection sucked. It was one long chase scene. The best car chases happen on the road as in Smokey & the Bandit, Vanishing Point, and Midnight Run**, although The Blues Brothers had a decent urban car chase.
** That movie is one of my favorites. I DO happen to know some things Robert DeNiro does off the screen, like freak out about President Trump. See?
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[UPDATED 03/05:] Changed post title to match the Kinks song.
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Comments (11)
Trump and Zelensky press conference
Posted On: Saturday - March 1st 2025 6:24PM MST
In Topics: The Russians TV, aka Gov't Media Trump The Neocons World Political Stupidity
Peak Stupidity has been very surprised and mostly impressed by the actions of President Trump-47 so far. I add that "-47" to contrast his current ways with the mostly ineffective, distracted, and miserable efforts of Trump-45. We can have arguments about the Existential Issue, of course, but that can't be every post here. (VDare should be covering that, dammit! Can someone please put that fat-ass Black! political whore Leticia James out of business... anyone... anyone ...
I haven't had so much respect for Donald Trump, because I don't care for the TV showman crap, the bragging, and the Caudillo style behavior. He's what we got, however, which will apply to another post coming. What you may want to watch below has given me quite a bit more respect for the man.
Due to all the hype about it, along with the suggestion by a commenter on ZeroHedge to watch the whole thing, I have embedded below the full 50 minute press conference by President Trump and V.* Zelensky regarding a deal to end the Ukraine/Russia war. Peak Stupidity has stated from the very beginning that we will not follow what we saw as a distraction (for Americans, that is) but more importantly something that should not be America's business. (See also this post from even earlier on.)
That was 3 years back. As usual, America, for some reason, has to act as the world's policeman, something the ctrl-left told us was very bad during the "police actions" and such of the Cold War. (They just wanted the Commies to win, without our interference.) Granted, the reason this time could be chalked up to the Potomac Regime having, if not started the whole thing, surely exacerbated the tensions and egged on the Russians 11 years ago, their already having being boxed in by NATO step by step for 2 1/2 decades prior. I suppose diplomacy is being more like the world's Judge Judy rather than the policeman, the former a lot cheaper.
If there is to be diplomacy, President Trump has impressed me with his ability to do it. He is that "Art of the Deal" guy, something I derided when he sucked at it last term (thinking more domestically then). Besides that the whole video gives us a view of Trump as a negotiator and diplomat, the first 40 minutes explains the latter part that is causing all the hype, as the peace deal probably has been cancelled. The latter is a big story involving and explaining a divide growing between America and Europe. (I would write "Western ..", but then I will mention a Polish reporter down below.) Comments below the video.
I don't see the same campaign-rally-Trump, the guy that talks round and round in circles, or the Joe Rogan 3-hour interview (catching OCD was the only way to get through it!) rambling and blabbing about TV Trump. What a difference there is, not just between Trump and senile old Brandon, but even between him and your Bushes, Øb☭mas, and Clintons. Obviously more lucid than Brandon, Trump was in his element and came across much more honest and straightforward than those others did in their day. (Granted, that may not be intelligence so much as they had Regime lies to support.)
There were just a couple of digressions. Early on, Trump spun off the subject to tout his first 30-35 day's worth of action. That was only a minute or two, kind of like an embedded commercial break. After the big blow up (48 min. in), while discussing Putin, he got into that Hunter, Joe, laptop, and Lyin' Press Russia! Russia! Russia!** travesty. He's completely right on this, and it's not actually that off-topic. Trump's point in bringing up the BS story of Russia's having influenced the '16 election is that it used Putin as one of the bad guys (Trump being the other, of course). What kind of foreign relations is that, the Lyin' Press ginning up a 3-year-long story and great distraction for Trump (the point of it, IMO), making an important foreign leader the evil protagonist? That's not at all helpful to the cause of world peace.
A true classic Trump literal-LOL gem occurred after a CNN reporter's questions starting at ~ 37 min in. Trump had a good answer, but then added that CNN "oughta focus right now on survival." ;-} I am still highly amused thinking of this right now!
Some Polish reporter asked a question, but it was one of those that was really a big statement. The man mentioned the horrible time (40 years) of being under the control of the Soviet Union and Communism. He seems very worried about Russia coming across Europe, as if this were 1985 at the Fulda Gap. This is the reason the Europeans in general seem to (or use in pretense) to support the Ukraine. It's Domino Theory 2.0. To me, Trump missed a great opportunity then to retort that "Yeah, that country was the USSR, see? We're talking about Russia now."
The idea for the press conference was to show progress, and that everyone was going to be happy, and peace will break out, not to air grievances and hash it out in front of the press. Besides that Zelensky interrupted Trump, while Trump did not interrupt him, at points, this thing looked like a Sunday morning talking heads TV show. That would have been OK in private. Guess who else was watching besides Peak Stupidity.
Finally, as to the last 10 minutes that has been The Big Story. You don't do diplomacy the way V. Zelensky acted throughout the first 40 minutes. The last straw was at that 40 minute mark or so. Zelensky kept inserting his animosity and Putin-is-monster opinions and anecdotes throughout, as Trump did as a diplomat should, not trying to favor either side. Whatever the 2 (or with Rubio and Vance too) talked about before, Zelensky obviously went off script much of the press conference due to his hopes in changing things to a deal in which America supports the Ukraine. He couldn't help himself, but he screwed the pooch. His idea would be the same-old-same-old wartime, except with some minerals changing hands.***
I imagine Trump didn't like much of this talk all along, but he looked down and kept his cool. He may have been thinking "This may not work out if this keeps up." Still, Trump's ability to keep a stance of fairness may have worked out until Zelensky went way overboard, interrupting Trump again with an anti-Putin rant. Hey, maybe he was even speaking the truth there, but that's how you ruin a deal. He did. Trump can't go agreeing with this, and then, what, tell Putin that was just for show?
After this, well, things got real, real quickly, out in front of everyone. I think that's why this is a big story - it's some actual Reality TV.**** One can see the last part elsewhere, but please watch the whole thing to get a feel of: a) What really happened, and how you DON'T do diplomacy, no fault of Trump's whatsoever and b) How impressive Trump can be as a diplomat, were he not to get blindsided by the airing of grievances inappropriately.
PS: I had 3 other posts, some of which should be up here today, but they'll have to wait until next blog-week. America v Europe is one, then a couple of short ones I'd spoil by mentioning, and I have been thinking about the topic of deflation.
* I just plain don't feel like spelling it - not my problem - how about Americanize (?) it to Vlad.
** Trump said it this way. I had no idea this was the terminology in broad use. I'd thought Peak Stupidity started this first. Does the President read here?
*** Trump LUVS him some Raw Earth, haha! Does he not mean Rare Earth metals? That's a chemical term, but then what does the Art of the Deal guy need to know about no periodic table? Still, someone's got to correct him at some point, right?
**** Trump made some remark along these lines too.
Comments (10)
El Caudillo Yanqui
Posted On: Thursday - February 27th 2025 6:53PM MST
In Topics: Trump Pundits
(Not to be confused with Los Banditos Yanquis down Bolivia way - really they were just old movie characters Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, respectively. That movie is now 56 years old. Yikes!)
Per Mr. Hail, this image comes from a Washington Post article by one Ishaan Tharoor.
Writer E. H. Hail, of the Hail to You blog has a new essay up, The Trump-as-Caudillo theory revisited: Fighting Third Worldization through another form of Third Worldization?. This is something of a follow-up to a section within an essay of his from Nov. '24, The Sailer Strategy vs. the Trump Caudillo Strategy.
While I like and agree with the analysis, description, and depiction of President Trump as The American Caudillo (explained well within Mr. Hail's posts), I don't agree that this Third-Worldification (to fight Third-Worldificiation) is a bad thing. Note, by the former, Mr. Hail means the Banana Republicanism and King/Big Man style behavior of a man who rules by Executive Edicts, excuse me, Orders, coming out by the dozens(?) daily. By the latter, he means the demographic Third-Worldliness by invasion that we elected Trump to fight.
This is the point often brought up by Constitutionalists. "No, they aren't abiding by it, but we can't fight them unConstitutionally, or we're being just like them!"* You've probably heard/read this in various forms. "You don't play whiffle ball, when they're playing hardball." "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.". Whatever. Well, if you let your nation get rolled by the Globalists/Communists, they aren't going to let you restore the old American Constitution. Most importantly, you've got to win!
Now, I'm not sure that Mr. Hail is particularly against the use of E.O.s for now.. Let me digress here to say that Trump HAS gotten the US Congress involved, something Peak Stupidity has been ranting about since last term - if you don't make anything into actual law, it can and will
I understand the unAmerican-ness of the whole Gulf of America renaming, the Greenland thing, and even the Ukraine mineral resources as payback for arms supplies. (I get that he likes the Art of the Deal, but how about he stick to his instincts, and ours, that we just remove ourselves from involvement - period?) However, I am both surprised and impressed by what the Trump-47 Administration has gotten started on and gotten done in these first 5 weeks.
There's already discussion under Mr. Hail's post, so let me paste the following I've already written:
You wrote: In certain isolated respects, we can say 2025 is better than 2017.
I would not say isolated myself. We both agree that the Immigration Invasion is THE existential and far-most-important issue. I’ll write another comment about that, because there is a lot to it. The numbers on the outflow are not very serious yet, I agree.
However, rather than isolated, I see the many efforts Trump is making against the ctrl-left and Globalists as a barrage or a blitzkrieg. Granted, that doesn’t go against your theme of Trump acting like a Banana Republican Caudillo. This executive order business is of course, unConstitutional and un-American, but I’m sure you read Peak Stupidity bids Hello to Kings, in which I reckoned that if this is the way it goes these days, I’d rather have “our King” in place.
He ditched the Paris Accords, same as late time. That one may not sound important, but Trump understands a scam – the Climate Calamity™, that is – when he sees one. The often successful attempts at control of whole big sectors of economies based on this scam must be stopped. Trump knows that.
It’s just words, but the Wokeness, as with the Chinese Cultural Revolution, starts with words and goes on. Of course, its precursor AA and now D.I.E. is more than words. This campaign to wipe it out in the Feral Gov’t is a great start, because Big Biz follows, generally, in this Crony Capitalist system we’ve got.
Yes, USAID is peanuts in terms of money, but just the new visibility into the extreme corruption and worse (using our money to create and support NeoCon, Globalist, and Communist fiefdoms is a great thing. The pain of those being unfunded is delicious.
There’s a lot more, most of it which might have been promised by the man in ’15-’16 but never even got started.
I wrote more on immigration therein, but let me leave that for now and get back to addressing Mr. Hail's point as it is in his title.
I will now be the kid at school going "But he started it!" Teachers never seemed to like that, but it's a perfectly valid point. This slide into complete unConstitutionality (most especially Amendment X) has been underway for over half a century, but the Bai Dien administration lowered the slope drastically. The very Bills of Attainder** style lawfare on Trump were part of it. Caudillo Trump may be seen as enacting retribution (we discussed this here before the fact), but all of it aligns with proper punishment for traitorous acts against America and blatant violations of the Constitution.
I've stated it this way before: What Trump is personally angry about lines up pretty well with what MAGA Americans want right now.
Can Trump go after these people, enough to squash them for long enough to get things done, by the book, Constitutionally, with all due process and procedures and benefit of the doubt? We don't doubt who they are - they need to be squashed.
Please read Mr. Hail's essay to get his side of the question, but let me excerpt just a small part:
I've written before that Trump doesn't have solid principles. I also see his use of his family members as Third-Worldly. On that, however, the way things went for Trump-45, he couldn't trust the people working for him. (That's the case when you are working to destroy the Swamp and the livelihoods of the Swamp creatures.). He IS a braggart and a showman, and definitely not your Coolidge-era government official, as I imagine one.
A caudillo regime (or Caudillo Strategy), if totally divided from a firm moral-ideological commitment — an ideology that is coherent and honorable, and which makes sense beyond slogans, personal whims, and close-in patronage networks — can become a little ridiculous, can sometimes turn dangerous, and eventually always undermines the state and civic culture. It’s generally a bad thing. Government on a basis of demagogic drifting along feelings-of-the-moment is a bad thing per se. White-Western people have known this for centuries. The tendency against this sort of rule might be said to trace back to prehistoric ancient times and the emergence of Western Man millennia ago (which is the argument of the political philosopher Curt Doolittle).
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Caudilloism is not a solution to Third Worldization. Caudilloism is Third Worldization.
He's what we've got though, and, I think he IS doing a bang-up job right now. Will this Thirdwordization via Caudillo Banana Republicanism be reversible? That's not likely with the demographic changes going on... which simply leads us again to the fact that if Trump doesn't do the job on immigration, what's the point of anything else?
* Ultra-Constitutionalist Ron Paul is still against eVerify, for example. The intrusion on privacy it entails is over-a-century-old water under the bridge though.
** I'm thinking especially of the deal in Georgia in which the Statute of Limitations for the BS "crime" Trump was charged with was extended just to charge him.
Comments (11)
Roots ZeroHedge post explains the Rock & Hard Place thing
Posted On: Wednesday - February 26th 2025 12:31PM MST
In Topics: Websites Global Financial Stupidity Economics
The post discussed here hearkens back to the old ZeroHedge roots, from when I'd read it thoroughly (all articles and comments, most days) a dozen years ago. They've branched out to all things politics since then, but I like the basics.
Of course, with ZeroHedge, there usually is a sales pitch somewhere. As I wrote in an old post, The Non-Science of Economics, ZH commenters would rightly rail against the system while still discussion how to make a buck within it. ZeroHedge's "Tyler Durden(s)" and others have always been gold/silver bugs, hence the hook in the headline and recent story Gold Revaluation: Solution Or Desperation?* However, precious metals are not the point as far as this post goes.
The writer here gets the Rock & Hard Place thing, the situation America's economy (along with many others around the world) is in. You make serious cuts to the budget, and, due to the near-irreversibility** of Socialism, people will be financially hurting. If you don't do that, you won't be able to pay off the debt, even as you struggle to by holding interest rates in the basement. Then, inflation happens, and people are financially hurting. Let rates rise, and the interest expenses rise to where, at some point, psychologically, everyone realizes the budget is a bust and the $ will become worthless. There's no easy way out - it's financial pain one way or another. Speaking of pain, yes, the horse is dead, so I'll stop.
Let me excerpt the boring part:
Boring Bond YieldsAlong with Mr. Piepenburg's Only Desperate Options Left (4 of them) and the case for gold, discussion of President Trump's role in all this follows. Trump's Treasury Secretary is one Scott Bessent. This writer reckons Mr. Bessent knows the score. "And deep down, Scott Bessent (a private gold buyer) knows this, too." What can he do? What can Trump do, even if he did have his own ideas on the matter? It's musical chairs (ahhh, an old-timey ZH theme). Sooner or later the music will stop, and the President, the guy standing, will get the blame. Why should he stop the music himself, by not continuing to contain interest rates in the basement?
Given that the USA in particular (and the world in general) is witnessing the greatest debt crisis of human history, should we not be equally concerned rather than politically divided when it comes to such boring things like bond yields (which reflect the very cost of debt)?
As for those boring bond yields, let’s just keep it broad and simple.
Yields on the 10-year U.S. Treasury represent the cost of money/debt for nearly everyone on the globe, in general and Uncle Sam in particular.
This means that when those yields start to climb too high, just about everything and everyone (including the country you reside in) starts to fall deeper into “uh-oh.”
And those yields rise when demand (i.e., purchasing) of those bonds starts to fall.
Read that last line again. Let it sink in.
When trust, love and/or demand and price for UST’s falls, pain for just about everything but the USD (and now gold) spikes.
Boring? Yes.
But relevant?
Absolutely.
From Boring Bonds to Just About Everything
So, what does such boring bond/UST talk have to do with your currency, your wealth or your lives?
And what does such boring bond talk have to do with market risk, gold prices, BTC’s direction or the fate of Trump’s America or even world trade and peace?
A lot.
DOGE may make bigger inroads than I have ever imagined, or CAN, imagine, but, no. We're between a rock and a hard place. If you can't get what Peak Stupidity has been preaching here, that great ZeroHedge article explains it pretty simply and concisely . And, of course, Gold, Bitchez!
Actual final words: "So, yes, gold gets the last laugh – but the circumstances couldn’t be sadder." Yep.
PS: The Immigration Invasion is the biggest and most important issue for President Trump to work on. I agree with Mr. Hail on this, but we don't agree on how much good Trump has been doing, coming up to Week 6. Please see the latest and greatest Hail To You post with Mr. Hail's viewpoint of Donald Trump as El Caudrillo Yanqui***. I'll write more on his post and Trump's efforts shortly, but back to Climate stupidity and a few other flavors too.
* This post comes originally from one Matthew Piepenburg of VonGreyerz.gold.
** Socialism increases entropy, let me put it that way.
*** The actual post title is The Trump-as-Caudillo theory revisited: Fighting Third Worldization through another form of Third Worldization?.
Comments (3)
The new pie charts are out!
Posted On: Monday - February 24th 2025 9:00PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity Economics US Feral Government Taxes
That is the same thing Peak Stupidity excitedly exclaimed last year, almost to the day. We showed these simple graphics out of the IRS 1040 tax instruction
No, we're not excited about the income tax, particularly the paying of it. My wife noticed some chatter on anti-social media about people thinking of blowing off this deal this year in the hopes of a Trump/DOGE complete overhaul of the Feral budgetary system. I mean, who'd want to be the one paying a big bill on April 15th, if the whole thing were to be thrown out a week later?
Well, that's very hopeful of these people, but no, it ain't gonna happen. One might start to compare this to the student loan debtors who were hoping for Dark Brandon's attempted voter bribery loan forgiveness to stick. That's not a good analogy, as those debtors got into their own messes, with help from yet another Big Gov moral hazard, while NONE of us opted into the Feral Income tax. Anyway, I'll wait until that cruelest day. I like the pie charts though, so here's the one from the '24 1040-Instructions .pdf, that is, for the '23 fiscal year (page 108):
What do you make of that, Johnny? Well,
Now, there are many ways to categorize those expenditures, with hundreds of thousands of programs that are all about spending the money of those who may
1. Social security, Medicare, and other retirement: These programs provide income support for the retired and disabled and medical care for the elderly.Whatever. It's glorious to see the DOGE at least take a good stab at some of this. Still, as Peak Stupidity has been ranting about since our beginnings, the long-term gains from eliminating Big Government are great, but there must necessarily be much shorter-term financial pain when you back out of a hole like this.
2. National defense, veterans, and foreign affairs: About 13% of outlays were to equip, modernize, and pay our armed forces and to fund national defense activities; about 5% were for veterans benefits and services; and about 1% were for international activities, including military and economic assistance to foreign countries and the maintenance of U.S. embassies abroad.
3. Physical, human, and community development: These outlays were for
agriculture; natural resources; environment; transportation; aid for elementary
and secondary education and direct assistance to college students; job training; deposit insurance, commerce and housing credit, and community development; and space, energy, and general science programs.
4. Social programs: About 17% of total outlays were for Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), temporary assistance for needy families, supplemental security income, and related programs; and 6% for health research and public health programs, unemployment compensation, assisted housing, and social services.
Here's the hole again: That 11% is of $6.135 Trillion spent. See, the 11% is just half the story here. In fact, the '23 expenditures are actually 2% lower than last years'. (See postscript of last years' post.) Well, that's good... but the end-of-fiscal-year '23 debt is ~ $2.6 Trillion, or 8% higher than eofy-22 debt. Last time, we calculated - very simply, interest paid (pie slice % x total pie expenditures) / debt - we arrived at a 1.4% net** interest rate. For eofy '23, the interest paid was 11% x $6.135 Trillion = $674 Billion. The net interest rate was $0.674 Billion / $34 Trillion (debt at end of '23) = 2% (very close to that). What happens if interest rates on the bonds being redeemed are up at 6%, even if the debt would be kept constant by a Hyper-DOGE that has cut the deficit to 0? That piece of pie would be 33%, right at a third of all expenditures BUT, and a big but, 46% of the $4.441 tax collected (the left-hand pie). I'm sorry, but that's just not a good look for a country.
Peak Stupidity appreciates the till-01/20/25-unimaginable efforts by Trump & the DOGE to point out and cut slices out of the massive Feral Beast. However, we're just between a rock and hard place. I found a very good ZeroHedge article, one of the best I've read in years, to back up what I'm saying. We'll get to that soon. Until then, errr, keep yawning... sorry... we'll have plenty of other stupidity mixed in that doesn't require the green eyeshades.
* The 8% was in '19, and it was down to 5% in '21. That's good, right? I think the '21 sector was so low only due to it being in comparison to the Kung Flu Panic big spending going on.
** Why "net"? This has something to do with which and how Treasury bonds are redeemed and issued, I believe.
Comments (13)
Tony Flenderson's gift to Climate Alarmists: Best Fit Linear Regression - Part 2
Posted On: Saturday - February 22nd 2025 9:18PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Science
First, it's funny cause it's true... and REAL:
We have to SCARE The Planet in order to save it!... or at least KILL the economy! OK, moving on ...
Tony Heller, EE, Geologist, and Climate Sanitist, made this 13 minute video, My Gift to Climate Alarmists. After you watch it, let me explain the gift bit, as this doesn't detract from the amazing (due to the exposure of SO MUCH blatant graphical lying) points he makes.
Perhaps that math lesson of earlier today was a little overboard. Most PS readers would easily understand the basic idea without the math - come up with a best fit curve, usually a line, to fit observational data. That would include data of climate (T's, ice cover, number of Cat 5 hurricanes, whatever) over time that is used to ascertain whether The Planet is gonna boil or something.
Watch and see the simple way that Climate Alarmists screw around with their Linear Regression obtained lines designed to alarm people. Most people don't get into the numbers enough to catch their lying via graphs.
Yes, easy-peasy - just pick the perfect time scale to make The Planet look well and truly screwed. Mr. Heller offers to help these Climatological frauds with their work. He's facetious, but then he sounds serious about his software.
Sometimes the cleverness in an idea is in the thinking of it, not the implementation. Mr. Flenderson's software does something simple, at least it is in the day of almost unlimited computing power and speed. The idea is obvious once you've thought of it: Let a computer program find the time range (x-axis here), with a beginning and end that give the most alarming best-fit line. In other words, do a meta best-fit based on all possible ranges that you have data on (or admit to having data on*) to get the "best" best-fit line. By "best" we mean the most alarmist.**
Again, this idea is ready-made for a computer program. Instead of the Climatologist having to play with his ranges on a spreadsheet to get the curve that helps get the most funding, he will be able to let the program just spit out exactly what he needs. Wallah! There's your paper for the journal, some accolades in the New York Times, more funding, and maybe an interview on TV one day.
Thank you, Toby. Now get back to the annex.
PS: The steady rise in sea levels shown in the video is interesting and something I hadn't known about. This goes way back, at a rate of just over an inch per decade, so 1 ft per century. Florida beaches have only been crowded with residents for under a century, but those are the places that would notice. Has anyone?
* I watched the video a few days back, but I remember that to get one good best-fit line, the Alarmists stated that there wasn't satellite data for earlier. Toby shows that there indeed was, and it was used elsewhere.
** One can let the software do a brute-force approach, running through all possible ranges to the get that "best fit". OTOH, we can do some more math beforehand... Make a bigger function that includes the variables tstart and tend, then take 4 partial derivatives to get the minimum of that 5D surface and ... OK, OK! Nevermind. "You never go full geek!"
Comments (2)
Toby Heller's gift to Climate Alarmists: Best Fit Linear Regression - Part 1
Posted On: Saturday - February 22nd 2025 8:51AM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Science
His name is *Tony* Heller. The Peak Stupidity reader will have to forgive us for occasionally accidentally-on-purpose calling him Toby Heller, Tony Flenderson, or Toby Flenderson. See, this guy is one of the scientists featured in the educational video Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth). (Please check it out - the whole movie is there.) Tony Heller is a Geologist, Environmentalist, and Electrical Engineer, but a die-hard The Office fan would have a hard time not seeing the uncanny, or at least not very canny at all, resemblance between him and timid, butt-of-the-jokes HR representative Toby Flenderson. That's the case with both his looks and his voice, the latter only of which is in this short video I came upon.
Mr.
The video will appear in the next post, as I really want to get to the math first. Our title here is somewhat facetious itself. "A linear best-fit 'curve'" and "Linear Regression" are the same thing. The joke is that Mr. Heller has expanded the use of Linear Regression to best fit Climate Alarmists' needs! Another best-fit (groan) term for this analysis is "Method of Least Squares".**
In this upcoming video, Toby shows a graphic with a dozen or so different highly alarming climate graphs and then shows the subterfuge behind each (or most of them). All of them are single variable attempted correlations of supposed climate trends to time, as in "The sky is falling!".
The math: You've got a graph like the one above, and you want to find the "best-fit" curve, often a line, to keep things simple. What's the best fit? Well, you 'd probably want to minimize the average error (distance from the y-values of the points) from said line. What line?! Why, mx + b, of course. Every line can be written in this slope and y-intercept (where the line would cross the y-axis) fashion. Yeah, but we don't know m and we don't know b! Right, that's the point, but what we DO KNOW is all of the many x and y values of our observational (the case with the climate) or experimental data. Call the points (x1, y1), (x2, y2), etc, or (xn, yn), where n goes from 1 to the last one of your data points. These are all KNOWN, keep in mind.
So, you take the difference between each point's actual yn value and the y from y = mxn + b. Yeah, but you don't know the equation for that line. Just humor me, and pretend we do. That's how mathematicians think. (It works.) Let's sum up all the differences over all those points, between the actual y's that we've got and the y's were they on the line and minimize that sum to get the best-fit line. Those differences will each be yn - (mxn + b).
Well, a couple of things crop up. First, numbers below said line and others above might start cancelling each other out - they'd make a line look like a great fit, when the data is all over the place. OK, then, just square these differences to get rid of the negatives. Do we need to take the square root later though? No, we don't, because we really don't care about the total sum of differences in the end but just about minimizing such. That square root would make the math messy. Nobody likes that, even, no, especially, the geeks.
What about that minimization thing? We want to find that line, the "m" and the "b" that gives us the least (see?) sum of these squares (see?). We've got one long function with lots of constants we know, the data pairs (xn, yn), with m and y being variables. How do we minimize a function? Take its derivative, and set it equal to 0! That's not me shouting, that's a Professor from untold years ago shouting, because, by George, we got it and were saying it with him.
The derivative*** of a function gives the slope of that function, and, unless said function is itself a line, the derivative is a function itself. When we are at a maximum or minimum, the slope of the function at that coordinate(s) = 0. So we solve for the coordinate(s) such that the derivative = 0. Wait which is it, max or min? Well, we'd have to take the 2nd derivative, that is, the derivative of the 1st derivative function. That 2nd function tells the slope of the slope curve. If it's negative at that coordinate(s), well it's a maximum, because, going along, the slope is decreasing, from upwards though 0, and then downwards. Vice versa applies.
Ahaaa! Is that what Peak Stupidity's Title Bar, up for over 8 years now, is all about? Indeed, BUT, we put in the fancy Greek δ's (deltas) just to make it look more mathy. (Yes, welcome math geeks!) For a derivative of a function of one variable, the symbology for derivative has plain old English "d"'s instead. However, what we have in this Least Squares/Linear Regression problem IS a function of 2 variables (hence, the "(s)" written after "coordinate" above).
Remember that the function we're minimizing is NOT that line y = mx + b, but it's that sum of the squares of the differences between the yn's and the y's of the best-fit unknown line. It's a function of 2 variables, m and b. This can be imagined easily, as it looks like a 2-d surface, its height a function of the variables m and b on a plot on the paper.**** (See above, but you don't really NEED the color scheme unless your are one of those Alarmists. Then, it helps, a lot.) There is a lowest point on the surface, for which both m and b are minimum values.*****
To get these, we must take partial derivatives, one for each variable. Doing that means we treat one variable as a constant while we take the derivative of the function "with respect to" (important wording) the other. Partial derivatives make use of that small Greek δ's instead of "d".****** We set each of these resulting partial derivative functions = 0. We end up with 2 equations and 2 unknowns. This should be easy. Well, I'd forgotten that maybe I never did actually do this part in the past.
The calculations with all these various sums look like a lot of work, but one can see that they are perfectly made for use of a spreadsheet. That wouldn't be hard. Better yet, though, the spreadsheet programs have long, long had the Linear Regression functions built in them. Graph your stuff and right-click somewhere, and Wallah! - there's your best fit line. (Or if you want, a higher-order polynomial or maybe all kinds of things.) Computing power is nearly free!
That's what the Climate Alarmists do. They probably couldn't understand this math, but they can use spreadsheets. Wait, so is Peak Stupidity upset because these people are using the 200 y/o simple Linear Regression math to show us our bleak carbon-wrecked future? It seems perfectly scientific and all.
I'll put the short video up later today, and you'll see what they're up to. The Peak Stupidity reader likely already knows the form of lying to be addressed, but Tony Flenderson will explain it nicely. (Beats filling out HR D.I.E. paperwork.)
* Another, also simple-math-based method will be described herein, as learned during an on-line argument with an Unz Review commenter about ice mass at the Earth's poles.
** This term does not apply only to linear regression. It can be used for best fit polynomials, or I guess, whatever.
*** For a polynomial function, taking the derivative is a simple easy procedure.
**** Once you get to 3 variables or more, good luck imagining the function's shape. Certain drugs may help.
***** How do we know we'll get a minimum vs. a maximum with the Calculus here? Ahhhhh, well, it's got to be a minimum because [hand-waving ensues]... there is a reason within the math.
****** Could the value of Stupidity be a function of more than one variable - it's time right now - so we can use those fun δ's legitimately? Why not have a variable "d", which is distance from... the nearest border or coastline of California?
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[UPDATED 02/22 Eve.:] Added the 3-D plot graphic.
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[UPDATED 02/23:] Updated the 2 equation graphic.
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Comments (14)
MOAR sob stories!
Posted On: Thursday - February 20th 2025 11:44AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Music Media Stupidity
Peak Stupidity's order of posting is often nothing but random "what do I feel like today?" items. Some are from on-the-spot thoughts, but there's usually a back-log of both recently thought-of posts and long-pondered ones. Speaking of the latter we'll get to those thoughts on deflation (along with another example of hidden inflation), and some long-due Climate Calamity™ debunkment, yeah, with graphs and everything.
Our bread & butter, were we making any money here to buy it with, would be the Immigration Invasion Existential Issue for America. We've discussed the Deportation program with excitement, mostly here, but with a little bit more on perfect sob-story target here. Is President Trump just making a show of it right now, albeit at least trying to clean up the violent riff-raff imported most recently?
From the numbers, things don't look promising. They may be on the order of 1,000 a day*, meaning only those most violent and recent arrivals could be kicked out with a year to two. That's not good enough. Even 10x the current numbers, though 10,000 deportations daily would be extremely encouraging, would mean a decade and a half timeline to really take care of the illegal side of the problem. That is IF, and a big IF, the program stays in place.
There'll be sob stories. The Border Tsar** Tom Homan does a nice job making use of the sob stories, from what I've seen. To paraphrase "Yeah, that's sad for them. They shouldn't have illegal entered. You know what's sadder? Emergency Rooms closing, higher housing prices, oh, and murders, rapes, drunk driving accidents ..." Here's hoping Mr. Homan will not be reined or reigned in by Administration cowards or Trump himself, the latter for whatever stupid reason.
Yeah, these guys are focused right now on the DOGE findings which are both financial AND, more importantly, political matters. That stuff has been great. President Trump is also fighting the D.I.E. evil very well. I praise him for all this. However, he CANNOT drop the ball on the Immigration Invasion, or the rest is really for naught.
I wrote the intro. paragraph to explain that the yahoo story captured above is almost a month old. Writers Douglas Magno with Facundo Fernandez Barrio in Sao Paolo of AFP (I dunno.) are sad, as Brazil slams US after dozens of deportees arrive handcuffed. OMG, handcuffs!
Per people I know, some of the worst of the Salvadorans, those with the MS-13 tattoos all over, are shot upon arrival in San Salvador, so, wearing handcuffs for 4 hours kind of pales in comparison. Brazil's government has expressed outrage though.
When the plane landed in the northern city of Manaus, Brazilian authorities ordered US officials to "immediately remove the handcuffs," the justice ministry said in a statement.Well, yeah, that was the problem to begin with - they're Brazilian citizens, not Americans. By all means, take off the handcuffs, IN BRAZIL. Now, some of the problems the 88
Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski told President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of "the flagrant disregard for the fundamental rights of Brazilian citizens," the statement said.
"Things have already changed (with Trump), immigrants are treated as criminals," he said.By Jorge! I think he's got it!
I want to see more and more of these sob stories. There seems to be a lull, which is not a good sign. More sob stories = more serious deportations going on. Not only that, but were the deportation numbers to go up to levels like 10,000/day, the sob stories would greatly encourage self-deportations, easily bringing the timetable down by a factor of 5 to 10!
So please, Lyin' Press, don't listen to Chrissy Hynde!
Yes, we've featured this song before. I realize it was written by the great British band The Kinks, I listened to their version and it didn't compare to The Pretenders', this song being their very 1st single. YMMV.
* As Mr. Hail has noted, no larger than that during Bai Dien's reign. OTOH, I hasten to add that the numbers coming in are way down. That's a start, is all - the incoming numbers could be set to 0 anytime with the military presence Trump has sent.
** Gonna go with the old Russian spelling today - see some background. (Ha! That post of ours has 28 uses of the term, and all of them are spelled with a "c".)
Comments (10)
Sharp Aldi's Employees on the look-out
Posted On: Wednesday - February 19th 2025 11:54AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Humor Economics Muh Generation
Yeah, but it was a White guy this time, one Richard Seeger, who was reported by ZeroHedge to have been passing 2 Dollar bills off at the Monticello, New York Aldi. Monticello is a village of 7,000 people in the Catskill "mountains" region (western portion of the southern part of "Upstate" New York. Yep, they've got an Aldi - Aldi is big now.
Mr. Steger is, or was, a regular there, but 2 cashiers dismissed his phony baloney money as obviously fake. I mean, come on! Personally, if I were to make up a new denomination of US currency, I'd print up $200 bills and put Harriet Tubwoman on the face. ("Yeah, you know, they finally, at long last, pushed this thing through. She build the Transcontinental Railway, you know, pounded in that last golden spike, she did!")
Whoever heard of 2 dollar bills, supposedly with Thomas Jefferson on the front and John Trumbull's famous painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the back? The 2 young cashiers, per ZeroHedge, were onto this counterfeiting scheme right away:
The cashier claimed the phrase "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE" indicated a fake, a clear misunderstanding of its meaning (debatable, we know).Who writes that on the money?! I never ... These young people could have used the method I often explain to people to help detect counterfeit 1's. "Fold the bill thusly. OK, what do you see in between?" "An eye." [of George Washington] "OK. If you see an asshole there instead, it's counterfeit."
More on this anecdote from ZH:
He then handed the bills to a female coworker. The woman asked if the young man had checked the bills with a counterfeit marker.OK, Zoomers!
Steger wrote: “He whispered ‘no, they’re fake.’ So, without even checking them, she rudely and arrogantly told me, ‘We’re not accepting them!’”
Aldi did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.They never do. That is, especially when it's THAT embarrassing.
My friend likes these twos and spends them widely. I think I'll try to get some at the bank and have some fun. Back in the late '90s, I had a pack of Clinton 3-Dollar bills. Hilarity ensued.
Comments (13)
DIMS? - Revenue replacement of Income Tax by Tariffs
Posted On: Tuesday - February 18th 2025 2:23PM MST
In Topics: Trump Pundits Economics US Feral Government Taxes
DIMS is an acronym for Does It Make Sense. Oh, of course, the idea of scrapping the personal, or any and ALL, Federal income tax and replacing that revenue with tariffs does make sense in that it would be a great return to a state of much more Liberty and a return to our country's roots*. It'd be VERY welcome to the Peak Stupidity crowd, and hopefully and likely, most Americans. We listed the Top 5 evils of the personal income tax in our Part 3 of our discussion of the odious Constitutional Amendment XVI.** Believe it or not, "The Money!" did not make it to #1 on the list!
In this post, the DIMS? question applies to the even-keeled, still-too NeoCon, but Libertarian and common-sense-oriented Instapundit. He's, in actuality, University of Tennessee Law Professor Glenn Reynolds. Besides his famous blog - one of the first I can recall - Professor Reynolds writes weekly(?) columns for The New York Post***, possibly still USA Today, and he also has a substack column. It's all pretty fair and reasonable, but this Law Professor made a simple mistake in his latest, Abolishing the Income Tax.
Much of what Glenn Reynolds relied on for his substack post comes from the substack post DOGE and Military Cuts Could Enable Eliminating Individual Income Tax by one Brian Wang.**** I like the optimism, the attention to the details of what could be cut included in Mr. Wang's post. The discussion of tariffs is an afterthought in his post, with different numbers, but Glenn Reynolds refers to his important number of $1.2 Trillion in spending that could be cut. Then, though, Professor Reynolds says DOGE may cut $2 Trillion, not $1 Trillion, in annual spending. I don't think so.
Peak Stupidity recently murmured "Uhhh, no..." when it comes to the $1 Trillion in cuts. This Brian Wang, along with those doing the work (work?! It must be a blast!), think otherwise. I'd be glad to
If the deficit, the amount the national debt goes FURTHER into the red each year, can be cut in half, I'll be amazed. However, that leaves another $Trillion added to the debt each year, roughly '10s levels of accumulation. Interest due stops for no man, not unless you want to default on the whole thing.
Well, that was pretty pessimistic, but, wait, there's MORE! We discussed in the post Budget Cutting v Austerity that, long-term results would be great, but Full-Retard Welfare-State Socialism has the
Let me finally get to tariffs, Glenn Reynolds, and DIMS? T I'm surprised he made this mistake, but the Professor's contention that tariffs could cover the loss of income tax revenue***** was based on a mistake.
Estimates are that a 10% universal tariff would bring in about $2 trillion in revenues. Under these circumstances, it’s realistic to talk about abolishing the income tax and still paying down the national debt.I put his same link in the excerpt here. The writer Erica York of that Tax Foundation article, uses a couple of rectally-extracted numbers to determine how much money tariffs could raise. I don't mind that bit, but keep in mind, without the elasticity and compliance factors, revenue raised would be even higher. The mistake made not therein, but in Glenn Reynold's (quick, I imagine) perusal of those calculations is this, from right in the beginning:
We estimate a 10 percent universal tariff would raise $2 trillion and a 20 percent universal tariff would raise $3.3 trillion from 2025 through 2034, before factoring in how the taxes would shrink the US economy.Forget the last clause, though it does lead to valid discussion in the post. The $2 or $3.3 Trillion to start with is estimated for a 10 year period. Glenn Reynolds didn't catch that. I would like to inform him, but ...******
$2 Trillion in tariff revenue yearly?! Leaving the couple of factors aside that would make it higher than $2 Trillion, that would mean we are importing $20 Trillion in goods and services, the kind that could have tariffs levied! The GDP, for what it's worth, is only under $30 Trillion. Does It Make Sense? No. Besides my being surprised Professor Reynolds didn't use his common sense there, my point is that the estimate is $200 Billion yearly instead, about 10% of the personal income tax revenue. I know I've stated about this proportion before just using the method of ... you guess it, rectal extraction. Let me refer to his into that can be seen above:
President Trump has talked about ending the income tax and replacing it with tariffs and spending cuts. Most people pooh-poohed that as unrealistic.Heh! Indeed. I'm one of them. First, you've got to get the rough numbers right.
* That post comes from way back, last time around - Trump-45 - written in July of '18. It referred to a Pat Buchanan column, among others. Mr. Buchanan was still humming along in '18.
** See more on the, for the most part, other odious Amendments (past the 10 Bill of Rights ones) to the US Constitution using the Topic Key Morning Constitutional.
*** Note Post, NOT Times. The latter would never have him. The former can be pretty fair some of the time. The Post had its important Hunter Bai Dien laptop story squashed by censored anti-Social media just before the '20 election, possibly making the difference along with the cheating.
**** I think I knew this before, but substack writers are allowed an alias name or slogan to go with their accounts. It may or may not be in the URL. Glenn Reynold's is his full name "Glenn Harlan Reynolds", but Mr. Wang's one is NEXTBIGFUTURE. Then, there is a title too. Prof. Reynolds uses his name, Mr. Wang uses that alias, and Ann Coulter has "Unsafe" as her title.
***** Even the personal income tax system itself could use some reverse cuts, let's call them. It would help to get those millions of illegal aliens that get refunds based on their many dependents, down in Guatemala or made up out of whole cloth, as per my friend who worked at H&R Block (until he got disgusted), by kicking their fake-documemted selves off the rolls, hell, out of the country.
****** I thought about emailing him, but it's not been easy to extract his email address. (His HTML tries to open email clients that I don't have.) One has to join up to comment on his substack site. I'm not doing that, and so far I haven't read a comment that corrects this mistake. That doesn't say so much for the commenters, IMO.
Comments (10)
With spies like these ..
Posted On: Friday - February 14th 2025 9:53AM MST
In Topics: Humor Global Financial Stupidity China Economics
... your country has to die.
Unclassified material follows. (HEY, how are you still reading?! I thought I'd made this clear!)
Peak Stupidity is well aware that just one of the many evils of open or porous borders is the risk of espionage by bad "actors" ... like, who's that guy in Get Smart? No, wait, he's a good actor, but a bad spy. Seriously, you let foreigners, many without even citizenship, work in industry and government facilities, and what would you expect? For whatever reason, likely because the Indians are just not as conscientious and loyal to a home country that sucks so much worse, of the large contingents of H1B (and what-have-you) technical types, it's the Chinese who seem more prone to this.
Peak Stupidity has featured 2 stories on government espionage by Chinese people, the 1st about "LA woman" Si Chen and the 2nd about UCLA Professor Yi-Chi Shih, with his accomplice, Pasadena man Kiet Ahn Mai.* Additionally, we told a personal anecdote involving industrial espionage in Chinese grad students and airbag espionage.
This latest episode of spying involves an American, though, who has been passing on US Gov't secrets to the Chinese. It's the old fashioned espionage you got when you didn't let any T'mei, Deik, and Hari into your country. ZeroHedge reports Former Federal Reserve Adviser Arrested For Allegedly Passing US Trade Secrets To China
Holy crap, secrets from the FED, no less! I mean, yeah, these guys made a bunch of money by knowing inside info on when the next rate hike, cut, or quantitive easing (that's PhD-level economics speak for "printing money") was coming. The corruption aspect of this is one thing. It's not what is doing damage to the country. (Which country? I'll get back to you on that.)
I mean, the FED runs our economy. Controlling interest rates by lending recently created money out at specified rates is what made America the solid stable economic power it has become. It's been 112 years now, and look at us! We can't give this secret economic formula away to the Chinese!
Because this latest is just too much, Peak Stupidity hereby petitions Pooh Bear, aka, Xi Jinping in Beijing for mercy. We know you're reading. (Yes, we've connected visits to this site by your advisors to the Forbidden City main IP number.)
Please, please, please Chairman Pooh ("It's XI!" Whatever.), do anything else! Steal the last of our manufacturing technical secrets. Make our trade deficit with China go up to a $Trillion! Condone the ripping and burning of The Office DVDs on the streets of Canton! But, please, Sir, we beg of you, DON'T STEAL THE SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE!
* "He's a little old Commie from Pasadena (go Yi-Chi, go Yi-Chi, go Yi-Chi, go!)" Not impressed? Look up Jan & Dean sometime, and get back to me. ;-} I know, the Vietnamese guy is the one from Pasa ..... that didn't work for the meter.
Comments (30)
DEPORT OMAR!
Posted On: Wednesday - February 12th 2025 7:52PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity US Feral Government alt-right/MAGA Poetic Stupidity
Peak Stupidity has mentioned a piece of work named Ilhan Omar before, most recently in this rambling post. As the DOGE group has been digging deep, they noted that this US CongressRagHead Omar (D-SO) has used USAID to launder, well, it's just peanuts, $2,300,000,000 to support civil war in Somalia. Well, it's in our best interests as Americans ... apparently.
Since we've been on an MTG (Marjorie Taylor Greene) kick elsewhere today, with great respect, admiration, and a little bit of a crush, we'll show the following video again. It's from out post MTG v IOU from just about a year back. (IOU is Ilhan Omar, Undocumented.)
MTG has a real spirit to her - it used to be called the Spirit of '76 years ago, when quite a number of American politicians still had it. All MTG was after a year back was to censure IOU, which is a pretty big deal in Congress (see Steve King: Walking through the Fire), for treasonous influence on the Feral Government. Even talking about that was as far as anyone would go last year, and MTG is most definitely ANYONE. Of course, this resolution got nowhere with the UniParty.
The Overton Window has been shifted through efforts of the Trump Administration. Additionally, the even more treasonous actions by this Congressional Representative from Somalia linked-to above call for further efforts against her. A Congressman from Texas is just the man to do it. I looked up Brandon Gill, after reading the following headline on The Gateway Pundit: ‘The Time Has Come’: This GOP Congressman Wants to Arrest and Deport Ilhan Omar to Somalia For Treason. Ha! I guessed beforehand that he was from Texas, north Georgia, or east Tennessee! Brandon Gill is from Texas's 26th District, just south of Oklahoma about halfway west from the Louisiana border to the TX panhandle.
So the reader doesn't have to wade through nasty ads on GP, I'll paste in the text of the 2 emails, Rep Gill sent to his constituents. Yeah, they were fundraising emails, so this is not even a resolution subject to vote, AFAIK.
Friend, we should have never let Ilhan Omar into our country.
And frankly, America would be a much better place if she were to be sent back to Somalia.
Recently, it came out that Ilhan Omar is hosting free workshops for Somalians, who are in our country illegally, on how to evade ICE and deportation.
It could not be more blatant: Ilhan Omar is more loyal to illegal Somalians than she is to the United States, or the office she was elected to.
It is an absolute disgrace.
A sitting Member of Congress is facilitating a full-scale invasion of our country…Well, yeah, it's a petition, and I imagine it's one that has an urgent request for campaign donations. I suppose it's a start though.
A normal society would refer to that as treason…
But regardless of labels, one thing is clear: The time has come to arrest and deport Ilhan Omar.
I have had my fill of foreigners storming our border, complaining about and disparaging our country, and then helping more and more of them invade our lands… And I know the American people are too.
If you’re as sick and tired of it as I am, sign my petition and let’s send her back to Somalia where she belongs
Yes, the time has come ...
The time has come,' the Walrus said,(Thanks, Poetry Foundation.) I always imagined a "weather pig" when hearing that poem, like this:
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.'
Traitor Omar has been advising illegal alien Somalians how to evade ICE and work the immigration racket. She has been a part of this herself, personally, in the past, with actions involving a crooked and weird bromance, so it's not for nothing that her current base of Minneapolis may be re-nicknamed the "City of Brotherly Love". The way things have been going for decades now, Omar would not be deported until pigs fly. We'll see now that the new King has been enthroned - it all depends on weather pigs have wings.
PS: Sadly, those were just fundraising emails. I wonder if Rep Gill has the guts to say just what he wrote there in front of the US Congress, as our MTG would.
Comments (13)
Trust the EXPERTS
Posted On: Tuesday - February 11th 2025 6:59PM MST
In Topics: Humor
Comments (6)
Back to China: That glitter? It ain't all gold
Posted On: Monday - February 10th 2025 5:06PM MST
In Topics: China
It's been more than 2 week since our post about China called Back to China: All that glitter.. Peak Stupidity criticized pundit Ron Unz's view of all that glitters in China based on his viewing of youtube videos by (I'm guessing pretty) young Western ladies living or visiting there. I posted a long comment extracted from the long thread of comments under Mr. Unz's post. As SafeNow wrote in the PS comments, no, just looking at the peeling paint on buildings and stuff like that doesn't say too much.*
The commenter in question had some other good details too that refute the glittery views, but true, it was narrowly focused. Having been to China either 11 or an even dozen times, and, more importantly, having dealings with Chinese people I can trust there, I can say that I know a bit more about the social and economic scene than a guy who has watched a lot of youtube videos of pretty woman narrators. ("The bubble-headed beach blonde, comes on at five ...")
Let me start with that peeling paint though. ;-} The longest time I stayed in China was for 6 weeks. The apartment building we stayed at was OK, but then with concrete construction, interior walls need a lot of decoration to look nice. There was no elevator in this 8-story building. That was not a bad thing for me, on the 6th floor, as I needed that cardio exercise, but for old ladies and movers(yikes!), I don't know. OK, well, I figured the building was 25 or 30 years old from this and the general shape of it, but, nope, it was 8 years old.
All the dozens and dozens of new 35-30 story buildings in this "village" have elevators, of course. The facts that property is only owned for 70 years before it belongs to the government and that the owners aren't responsible for the outside - including the rarer detached houses - means effort is not taken to clean and repair the exteriors. This includes the often rusty or broken burglar bars - wait, burglar bars?! See Cat burglars and entrepreneurship in China.
I read comments such as "I didn't see any trash cans in Shanghai. The Chinese are so neat and tidy." Haha! That's when I realize I'm dealing with a propagandist or a dupe. No, dummy, the Chinese throw all manner of things on the ground and in the bushes, but there are armies of low-paid old ladies continually sweeping, sweeping with those non-American style brooms.**
OK, well, enough of that, because they do have a large 2-D network of high-speed trains, many new airports being built each year, new coal and nuke plants being put on line weekly, and a population smart enough and conscientious enough to build it and keep it running. We've written plenty about this - see our many Planes, Trains, and Automobiles posts with pictures from Summer '23 here. Also, the governments there, no matter how greedy corrupt, and often Totalitarian, are not doing evil things like flooding China with foreigners.
So what's the problem, besides some minor things being shoddy? Aren't the people in the videos right that China would be a pleasant and convenient place to live out one's life, assuming they'd let you do that, which they won't, as I just noted? Or, are the videos made to show that "your country sucks now compared to ours, so nah, nah!!" They've got a point in that our country sucks compared to the old America that none of the young people, Americans or Chinamen can imagine. However, China has its inherent problems, enough that I really think I wouldn't move there even if I could, for life. The future I see for both places tells me that we Americans still have a better chance against the Globalism and Totalitarianism than the Chinese people do. (Maybe they just don't mind all that... good for them, I suppose, but this is part of the reason I don't think so much of the place.)
There will be no analysis of the Chinese economy here. Other than that I'm sure that the Chinese real GDP has surpassed that of America years ago - "P" stands for Product(s) - I have no numbers to give the reader. One can get numbers from the Chinese Gov't that are worth even less than those out of our BLS. (At least, with the latter, we have a good idea about how and where the BS is introduced.) One can watch Epoch Times videos and see that the whole Chinese economy is about to implode any day now. Then, one could read Unz Review propagandists and get a rosy picture about the huge, happy, and prosperous middle class, or look at graphs from one Godfree Roberts*** that show how Mao Zedong greatly improved the Chinese economy, including that Great, but meatless and vegetable-less, Leap Forward even. The truth is in there somewhere. [/Fox Mordor]
I've just got anecdotes of real people, factory owners, Chinese yuppies, single Moms, Mooncake boys, and Fat Boys.
The factory owner is a real piece of work, trying to pawn off a whole rejected (by the German customer, naturally) shipping container full of goods on the Mexican customer, who, dammit, somehow had learned Chinese, and that was that. Enough about her.
The Chinese yuppie has the now-government favored "big" family of a husband and 2 kids. There are 4 grandparents around, along with the hard-working 2 parents, to dote over the 2 boys. The parents still must work long days in their white-collar jobs, for the pay that is not a whole lot more in spending power than some welfare queens here. They do have cars, as do a number of people that I'd seen back in '17 not have any. Then too, so do welfare queens here. This Chinese middle-class family does have an apartment that is worth something like a million US dollars at this point, so that is their big savings account. They're doing OK. For some reason though, rents are cheap enough that they just don't pencil out for any kind of return for a landlord. A month's payment for one place elsewhere was only $300 or so, yet the apartment was still worth a quarter million or so. Is the rent subsidized in places, or is the real estate in a real bubble?
The single Mom has only the one child, as required, though he's grown-up now. When I first met him I noticed he had a wide face, not unusual, but I called him the Moon-face kid, due to that there's no freaking way I could remember a Chinese name, were it not written out for me in PinYin (phonetics). That somehow morphed into his being the Mooncake kid. He dropped out of college that his mother worked very hard 6 days a week to pay for after his 7th semester. (Yes, that's out of 8!) That "Lying Flat" thing that you may have seen in videos is not necessarily a widespread thing like say, the hippie movement in 1967 America, but some kind of national malaise is not out of the question.
The social ills that we see in America are not things that Chinese people are somehow immune to. One would think that jobs should be easy to get, what with all the amazing infrastructure work, the manufacturing, and the AI and Orwellian software and networks being built, with a much smaller labor force compared to the flood of young people 20 years ago.**** Lot of the actual manufacturing of consumer items has been outsourced to Vietnam, Bangladesh, Malaysia and what-have-you though. Then, with their engineering prowess and lack of such things as California Air Resources Boards to stop them, the Chinese have automated a lot of work. I suppose that's what it is.
There is much competition for the good jobs now. This Mooncake boy has some sort of job now, but he's kind of dropped out in a way. His single Mom finds it very hard to get hired at new jobs - they say it's difficult above a certain age. The employers must still want that lower-cost and higher-energy young labor that they could get 20 years ago.
The Fat Boy was born during the 1-child policy but he does have a sister. (That caused some trouble for the family.) He was born about a decade after the time of food ration cards, and his Mom could afford to feed him well, if by well, one means all the rice he can eat. White rice has one high-ass Glycemic Index, and so unfortunately, this guy's always been fat. No, he's not people-of-Wal-Mart level fat, but he'd have been called obese in 1970's America. What was he doing hanging around at 3 PM away? I wasn't sure what day it was due to our travels, but... yeah, it was Monday. "Oh, he works for the country government. They've got good hours." His pay is not good though. Back to the "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us." thing? Almost.
That same Godfree Roberts*** could show you a poll on how much Chinese people love the CCP and their national government. Firstly, one thing about China is you can get away with quite a bit - drive like a maniac, pop a beer that spews out everywhere at the airport in the morning*****, pop off a bunch of firecrackers outside the restaurant just for the hell of it, and you won't see cop 1. However, you cannot go railing about the government and Pooh Bear up there in old Peking. No, no, none of that. So, as little as I trust polls in America, I trust those social polls in China even less.
China is not as Orwellian (YET!) as I'd thought before my '23 trip, those thoughts having been based on my reading of a book titled We Have Been Harmonized****** back in '20. I've seen videos about the Social Credit system, but I don't have much to report on that unfortunately. I don't think these scores go into effect at all if you're a pretty young White Western lady taking pictures to show all the glitter as gold.
One can still pay for goods and services with cash, albeit with cameras focused for that purpose in the big cities, train stations, airports, etc. The use of smart-phones for payments is very common, and as with the crazy '22 Kung Flu re-Panic documented here on Peak Stupidity in pictures and even video, I think the Chinese will be mostly compliant when the system gets completed and
I'll insert here something about High- v Low-trust societies. America has been changing much for the worse in this respect. China is a place that doesn't have much social trust at all. I had thought for years that this was due to the 40 years of hard-core Communism laid on them. Now, I'm not so sure. The cause may go back a lot farther than that.
A big reason for not wanting to live in the China is not the present but the future. With the Globalist threats and Orwellian AI stuff coming, we've got a few important factors here that will be of help: Guns and Trump. OK, OK, maybe not Trump himself - we'll see - but the kind of people that can and do vote for Trump... and have guns, lots of 'em.
Finally, with all that glitter - the bright lights (and they DO like their colored lighting there) of the city, you go to the Great Wall, the very symbol of the Middle Kingdom, and you still see that they have had to put up a sign that says in Chinese "No peeing or poohing in the corner here". (At least that's what my source says.) The American version is errr, cleaner, but unclear on the concept.
* SafeNow sees a difference in mindset between Western and Chinese people being important, and he linked to an article (just reading today) to explain. I can't get into all that here, today at least.
** They are neither our normal sweep brooms nor push brooms as we know them, but you do push them rather than sweep.
*** ;-} While doing a search to find this guy's writing on The Unz Review, I found a number of comments referencing the guy. This one was by Mr. Unz himself, badmouthing both Mr. Roberts and one Larry Romanoff, both of them near-idiots who Mr. Unz had picked in the past to write for his site! Not a good judge of character, this Ron Unz ... He's got an open mind... scary open ... I quote: "This is an alt-media website, so I’ve published numerous articles by both Larry Romanoff and Godfree Roberts, so I’ve very familiar with their work, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever trust it." Heh! Oh, and there's a comment by our own Mr. Hail there too (2nd page).
**** That 1-child policy was implemented by Chairman Deng in about 1980. That means the number of people under 45 is a lot smaller than those over that age, who are now not exactly ready for hard intensive work, as they look to retirement at 55 - 60.
***** See I had it in my luggage due to having been forced into a 1st-class ticket, wanting my money out of it, and forgetting it was in the luggage for a week. Then there was the Chinese version of the TSA, so, it wasn't going to waste.
****** Our 4-part review: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 and Part 4
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Rain Forest Music
Posted On: Saturday - February 8th 2025 9:25PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Political Correctness
Political Correctness, started way back in the 1980s perhaps, at least named such by then, was a bit more innocuous than its roided-up version Wokeness. Back when it was called PC, there really were lots of well-meaning people who thought we could make people feel better by using inoffensive terminology:
Euphemism creep has been going on, the idea being that we need to introduce new terminology to hide whom or what we are talking about, cause... connotations. "Oh, whenever they say 'teens", they mean..." Someone get to work on a new one, stat!
Expert Michael Scott explains some more:
The Wokeness, seen for a decade or so at its worst (hopefully), is much more edgy. Names and terminology are changed to erase history. That's the Communist Way, the Communist Truth, and the Communist Shining Path. It makes one pine for the old innocent days of Political Correctness.
Apparently the word "jungle" has been out of favor for a few decades already. It took me a couple of years to figure out that those people trying to "save the rainforest - like these people* - were talking about the jungle. "Jungle" has certain connotations though, snakes and bugs and such, so who wants to save it? The Rain Forest sounds very nice. We really SHOULD save it. (The check's in the mail.)
Now, for over 50 years, many small airliners have been built in Sao Paulo, Brazil by the Embraer company. There were nearly 500 EMB-110 18-passenger Bandeirante turboprops built, and that model was dubbed affectionately as The Bandit by pilots. Embraer came out with the EMB-120 Brasilia next, followed by their regional jets. There are plenty of the EMB-135 and many more EMB-145 ERJ's flying around still.** Due to the simple fact that they were built in Brazil, and Brazil has a huge jungle, the -135s and -145s have long been dubbed The Jungle Jet. Truly, there was nothing slur-like about this.
Pilots and air traffic controllers have had their affectionate names for lots of airplanes. The grand old Boeing 747 was The Whale - no slur there, as it was and still is a hell of an airplane. The shortest version of the narrow-bodied Airbuses (319/320/321), the 319 has been called The Baby Bus. (Yes, "short bus" for it is indeed a slur, but then the planes do call the pilots "retards" during landings!).
Well, about 20 years ago, my friend was going on a long trip, and I asked him about the equipment. The first leg was to be on an ERJ-135 or -145. I told him about the name, so he'd sound familiar with the lingo. When the day came, he went up the built-in stairs into the plane and commented "Hey, this is the Jungle Jet." Of all things, it turned out that both pilots and the flight attendant were Black!. Remember, folks, if you're in customer service, "The customer is always right." My friend survived the journey unscathed.
The new and very-improved President Trump has been a real trooper by not putting up with the PC/Wokeness name-changing business. Peak Stupidity figures we should get on-board with this and un-rename the Rain Forest. So, we will feature 3 Rain Forest songs with their originally changed names to see how dumb this PC stuff sounds.. These songs go back about half a century.
Run through the Rain Forest was by Creedence Clearwater Revival. This is one of my top 10 favorites from a band that made nothing but favorites. That's John Fogerty with the best voice ever in Rock & Roll.
Bungle in the Rain Forest (too bad that doesn't rhyme!) was by Jethro Tull. That's not a guy - the leader of this great rock band was Ian Anderson. I have no idea who Jethro Tull himself was. This band played some much longer and weirder material, but this was more of pop song. Good stuff! And, what other rock bands had flautists? Marshall Tucker, and I know I've been reminded of some others...
Rain Forest Love was by The Steve Miller Band. This is not the same Steven Miller who works for Trump, though he was also from California. I doubt the immigration invasion mattered to this Steve Miller. It was the mid/late-1970s. He did sing a song about USAID, though. What was it... oh Take the Money and Run. "Whooo, hooo, hoooo, go on ..."
I know I missed Guns & Roses' Welcome to the Rain Forest, but it's just not one of my favorites of theirs.
* That link goes to a movie review of The Green Inferno. There's a Part 2... of the review that is, not of the movie. The latter would be more than I could stomach, pun intended.
** The most recent and fairly successful models have been the EMB-170/175/190s. These things stand tall and look like Airbuses. They could be called "cross-overs", as they are between regional jets and "mainline" aircraft.
Comments (23)
Trump-47 and alt-rec History
Posted On: Friday - February 7th 2025 6:14PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Lefty MegaStupidity History Trump alt-right/MAGA ctrl-left Zhou Bai Dien Karmakarma Kameleon
What is the ctrl-left of the D-squad had not stolen the election of '20? This speculation has been made by loads of pundits since the '24 election and more so since his E.O. Blitzkrieg started 3 weeks back. Instapundit Glenn Reynolds wrote one of his weekly NY Post columns about this, as have many others. Peak Stupidity does not purport to have nearly a majority of original material, so we'll get in on the speculation here too. It's fun, and it's schadenfreudealicious!
There's a genre of fiction writing called "alt-history". Often it has science fiction elements in it. It's very enjoyable to imagine one small event or phenomena having caused the future we live in now to be different, maybe even better. There was "alternative rock" back 35-30 years ago, but we didn't call it "alt-rock", because "alt-" still sounded stupid then, unless you were a Unix geek. There's the "alt-right" now. How about we call this genre of speculation "alt-rec history" for alternative recent history?
So, yeah, what if the ctrl-left Commie radicals had let the election results of the night of November 2nd '20 stand? We remember Trump-45. Besides a few helpful but incomplete non-permanent moves on the Immigration Invasion, he didn't accomplish much. The ctrl-left really didn't have a logical reason to hate him other than was not of the Regime-favorable UniParty. (They had plenty of irrational reasons, as usual.) The worthless Mike Pence was still Trump's vice-presidential candidate. Was the distraction of Russia! Russia! Russia! even over with? If so, there would have been more of them. Trump had not learned that much yet. He'd been harassed and railed against but not put through the fire as he has since then.
4 more years of that muddle-headed bloviating, with that small chance of, whoop-dee-freaking-doo!, Mike Pence now carrying the GOPe torch... we'll he'd have gotten trounced anyway, as the ctrl-left would have had someone more powerful and odious than the Bai Dien crowd and Kamala Kamelion ready to go.
We can be very very thankful that the ctrl-left made mistake after mistake after mistake since the time of Trump-45. First off, they picked Zhou Bai Dien, a former plagiarist, half-century-running Washington grifter to run in '20. No, I guess they didn't know how soon dementia would set in, but still... and then, due to the help Bai Dien needed to win that early South Carolina primary from those old black church ladies, there was a deal with that race-mongering Jim Clyburne to put a black woman in the high positions, VP candidate, SCROTUS judge, or both. Could then not have found someone, ANYONE, other than Kameltoe? Nobody voting in the D-primaries liked her. If they couldn't find their Oprah or Big Mike, how about a block man (but I repeat myself) instead. There are plenty of race-mongering Commies, such as, just as an example, Kameltoe's Dad. (Just an example. He would have been on the old side and lives in Jamaica, but so??)
Then, what'd they do? With the (real, not administrative) Deep State running things, you don't really need the guy to be cognizant. Things still get done. However, in the re-election campaign of '24, you've to to know when to fish or cut bait. They could have kept Bai Dien in the basement again, but like idiots, they put the guy in a debate. Hilarity ensued.
Then, instead of taking some stock in the situation in early Summer of '24 and putting some just-as-odious, but less ditzy, drunken-crack-whore-resembling, person in the primaries and having a contest of meritorious evil, they went with Kameltoe. They thought they'd pull off the My Fair Lady routine, but she was too far out in the weeds. They'd only WISHED she'd had a Cockney accent! That drunken sorority sister rambling thing is, well, by George, I think they were screwed! Again, hilarity ensued.
The ctrl-left made ... errrr, even more "mistakes were made" due to hubris, as the ctrl-left did everything they could think of to put Trump out of commission. The massive Anarcho-Tyrannic lawfare efforts could have worked on a less-helaciously-wealth, less-confident man.* All this did, early on, was to get people like me to drop all other candidates and rally around the man, because reasons. This effort did put a drag on the time of this high-energy guy, but the backlash from potential, say, DeSantis supporters , overrode any possible downsides to all the missed campaign opportunities due to court dates. Possible Regime-friendly contenders like Nimarata Haley were all falling by the wayside due to our resolve to not let the lawfare win. Nice going, ctrl-left!
Then, they went all out, going back to their Leninist Commie roots. Trying to shoot the guy dead thing almost worked. It was not a mistake as far as their idea, I gotta admit, but NOBODY expects a blessing of that half-second turn of the head that saved Trump. That was divine intervention, if anything was! Who sees that kind of thing coming, these days?!
Then, I'm sure they tried to cheat again, and very close they came, but we were miraculously unburdened of 4 more years of ctrl-left destruction.
Trump-47 has had 4 years to mull over the mistakes of Trump-45. He HAS learned a lot, and, yes, this has taken me by surprise. You can call some of the moves Trump has been doing revenge, but going after people who've tried to take him down comports with the rule-of-law anyway, as we explained here. He has many reasons to be angry and at a lot of people in the government. These happen to line up very well with what MAGA wants too.
The ctrl-left really screwed the pooch with that '20 cheat-fest. They thought that they had their destructive plans sewed up by that point and would mop things up with the use of old Dark Brandon. Nope, but I guess it wasn't over completely. 4 more years of old-Trump from '21 to '25 would have slowed down their plans, but they'd have been in a good position now. Oops! MAGA is having it's day in the sunshine NOW.
Oh, the fun they would have had, in that alt-rec history scenario. Were it not for those 5 or 10 big mistakes ... Too bad, so sad.
* Hell, they did on VDare, which is a married couple with some help from a few good people, and this was without any even BOGUS charges!
Comments (9)
The pilots of Pat-25
Posted On: Thursday - February 6th 2025 9:27PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Political Correctness Feminism US Feral Government
Just adding a little bit more here to the previous post.
This post is speculation due to that I have no experience in the military. I do know that there are call signs used for different types of missions. The "PAT" one I knew was the label for mission that flew military "brass", i.e., honchos around. I just learned it stands for Priority Air Ttransport.
Whatever the mission was - obviously not a real PAT mission, as the only passenger, per se, was the crew chief (basically, a lead mechanic) - Pat-25 wanted to get south via the Potomac River "Route 4". It was an instructional flight, from everything I've read. That doesn't mean that this Captain Rebecca Lobach was learning to fly helicopters or first learning to fly at night. (I sure hope not, and think not, regarding the latter.) She was getting trained for this mission, maybe just as a one-time check-out.
Here's the part where the military flying differs from civilian flying. In the military there are ranks. Rank is important! Rebecca Lobach was a Captain, but not in the sense of "who's in command of the helicopter?" That was her Army rank, while Andrew Eaves, the instructor, was a Chief Warrant Officer 2. The latter is above all non-commissioned officers but below all commissioned officers, starting with Leutenant, Captain, and up...
In general aviation, I noted in the comments that it's possible someone may be teaching his boss how to fly, so that could get a little dicey as far as what they call CRM (Cockpit Resource Managment - OK, it's really Crew RM now, but I'm not woke so...) In the airlines, there are 2 pilots, the Captain - in charge of the flight - and the First Officer. It IS possible, due to career paths, that the F/O has more experience than the Captain on a given flight, but still, there are no ranks. It's simple.
I don't know how the relationship would have been between a higher ranking officer getting trained and her instructor. I emphasized her, notice, because I can see that being a part of a problem.
I talked to a former Army helicopter pilot today who assured me that, no, there's no big deal about a higher-ranking officer receiving instruction from a lower one. Each knows where he stands. Oh, that was he. I don't know the guy well enough to ask him about problems with the sexes in said situation. Some would say it's a bad idea to have women involved in military combat roles period. I would tend to agree. At this point I'll refer to the wise Unz Review commenter AnotherDad as he explains this whole problem here.
Rebecca Lobach, using her leverage as a member of the IN crowd during the Bai Dien
Diversity, Inclusion, Equity: Live it, learn it, die by it. This garbage does need to stop.
Comments (18)
Did D.I.E. cause 67 people to die?
Posted On: Wednesday - February 5th 2025 9:46AM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Feminism Trump US Feral Government
Likely not a soul reading hasn't heard about the crash of an Army Blackhawk helicopter and a PSA* (dba American Eagle) CRJ-700 over the Potomac River at Reagan Airport last week. There were 67 souls lost, 60 passengers, 2 pilots and 2 flight attendants on PSA, and 2 helicopter pilots along with a crew chief (like a lead mechanic). President Trump immediately called out the D.I.E. madness as a cause, aiming that talk at the Air Traffic Control system. I've discussed a whole lot of specific details elsewhere. They'd make this post 10 ft long, so excuse me if I really don't explain everything in that much detail here.
The helicopter crew caused this crash. I listened to the DCA (Reagan Airport) tower frequency for the period in question, as taken from a scanner and saved for anyone to listen to here. As someone who does know this business, I find no fault with the guy in the tower at the time. (No, I'm not the NTSB, but with this not involving a mysterious malfunction and all the data out there - the recording being most of what one needs, it's a simple one.)
Let me go over the causes here very briefly. There's a "corridor" or route down/up the Potomac River very close to the runways at DCA - 1/19, the longer, main one, 15/33, quite a bit shorter (but with 33 being straight into the wind this night), and 4/22, the latter not used so much. There are not many ways to get out of FS (Federal Shithole) what with all the 9/11 paranoia/Police State style restricted areas all around.**. The route required (past tense now, I think) helicopters, with no airplanes allowed, to stay under 200' above the river right on the east side. PSA flight 5342 was asked it they wouldn't mind landing on 33, on a visual approach, accepted after about 20 seconds of making sure the length was legal for their weight and the conditions, flew from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, about 4 miles south of rwy 1, flew right to belly out a tad, and then made a left turn to land on 33.
Well before this, the Blackhawk, dba (OK, call sign) Pat-25, had asked for passage down the river. (We can't hear Pat-25's transmissions due their using the UHF radio, a common thing. The tower was speaking on UHF and the normal VHF frequency simultaneously, also the norm.). The tower asked Pat-25 if he had that PSA flight in sight, which would be (not yet though!) coming around for 33. Whichever pilot was on the radio must have answered "Affirmative" and, more importantly, agreed to "maintain visual separation" with that "traffic". One only need hear the tower calls to understand that.
I've looked at the geometry for the use of landings on 33, and even that altitude limit just doesn't work. So, did the tower screw up? This is where I can't explain it all here for reasons of brevity, but no. That assurance of "maintaining visual separation" relieves the controller of maintaining separation. If Pat-25 had answered "negative" or told the tower they'd lost visual contact (or never had it) at ANY TIME, the tower would have given the helo a hard turn or some instructions to keep the flights separated. Now, should that corridor have been used with traffic landing on 33? No. What was the procedure though? I imagine there wasn't one - now there will be, or the whole route for helicopters may be shut down even for 01/19 only operations.
Even that was too much, so let me get to the D.I.E. question. D.i.E. was not a direct cause here in terms of tower personnel, that is, the job done that night. However, if it's true that there would normally be one more guy up there - there were a handful, but there's ground control and other positions - and he could have solely dealt with the (many, as heard on the recording) helicopters, than that was a staffing problem.
Is the staffing problem due to D.I.E.? That is Steve Sailer's well-thought-through contention - see Obama's Diversity Push in Air Traffic Controllers Is Eventually Going to Get People Killed and DIE in the Air. His point was that the anti-White-man diversity efforts got people hired who would then wash out at higher rates, causing said staffing problems. I don't disagree that this is a factor and an anti-White travesty anyway, even were we talking art school with no safety concerns.
There is more to it now, though, as I tried to explain to him. (He didn't listen one bit.) I've talked to air traffic controllers about things. One guy spoke of a small/medium sized facility normally requiring 22 total staff having only 13 as of last year. A lady at one of the centers (ARTCCs) told me she was working too many shifts and also shifting-hour shifts due to this. They both told me that training got held up greatly during the Kung Flu PanicFest. It's just not easy to catch up, when it takes 3 years or so for people to become actual productive Air Traffic Controllers.
Then too, both the airlines and ATC along with them, figured the big depression in air travel*** would go on for longer than it did. The airlines caught up by offering pilots big bucks. ATC had people retiring early during the PanicFest, probably with some encouragement that might not even have been needed, as it's a really stressful job for most of them. Along with all that, there was the mandatory jab problem. (I'm personally familiar with a situation in which a sector of Jacksonville Center was not taking traffic due to a one day walk-out to protest the jab. Good people!) Staffing has been behind ever since.
Now, it's possible both of the controllers I talked to did not want to mention D.I.E. Is it possible the problem is solely what Mr. Sailer, and others, have said? Rather than keep using the Edie Brickell approach, I went ahead and looked a few things up. This section of a DOT report written in June of '23 gives some good information, though without as many numbers as I'd have liked. The "Academy" in Oklahoma City closed down for only a few months, they went remote, etc, but it wasn't just that. Controllers have to train at real ATC facilities. You know that masking, Social Distancing, getting all sent home due to one pozzed individual, etc? Yeah, well, Air Traffic Controllers were not immune to this PanicFest either. Check out that easy-to-read report on ATC staffing.
The D.I.E. business was a factor since the Øb☭ma administration. Even before that, someone I know ran into the milder AA version of this more than 20 years back. I don't if Trump put a temporary stop to it - he was a different guy as #45 - but though D.I.E. has been bad for staffing, the Kung Flu PanicFest became a BIG factor in this problem too, and more recently.
OK, that's ATC, but it was the Army helicopter pilots who caused this crash. We know who they are now, after Rebecca Lobach's info was finally given out (giving someone enough time for a scrub of her antiSocial media). Then we find out she was a big-shot in the Bai Dien White House. I have no doubt she was a D.I.E. hire, at least in terms of moving way up the chain. Is this what President Trump was talking about?
However, Andrew Eaves, who was what they call the Aircraft Commander in the military, was still in charge. He was a White man. I don't know where he stands on anything, as I don't do antiSocial media. I can see a host of possible mistakes here. The 1st and primary one was that neither pilots had the actual PSA plane called out by the tower in sight. Yet, they said they did. At any time, they could have told the tower they didn't have the traffic.
Were they busy training on this "Continuity of Government"**** mission? That was a mistake. Take it down the river, and THEN train. Or, just demonstrate. Looking for the traffic comes first, in a tight area like that. They were said to be above that 200', but then the transponders that send out altitude readings are only good to 100' (barometric) and are allowed to be off by more than that. (Again, separation for "visual contact" doesn't work this way.) Did either of the pilots even know the layout of the DCA airport well? They knew where it was, of course, but "where's 33? I don't know - let's just keep to the left side." That wouldn't work, as it turns out, but they apparently were out of the corridor horizontally too.
The Army version of the NTSB will investigate and answer any questions remaining. Will they divulge all this as to the NTSB for its own investigation, especially if it makes the military look bad and diversity look bad? Over a dozen years ago, after a massacre by a nutcase Moslem American soldier (whaat??) at an Army base, one General George Casey said "... as great a tragedy as this was -- it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well. No. It wouldn't. It's be a very good thing, but I'd say President Trump may have spoken too soon. Maybe not.
Over the long term, D.I.E. was one factor, along with the Kung Flu PanicFest in this crash IF the tower staffing is seen as a contributing factor. When it comes to the Army, it all depends how the blame is spread between Warrant Officer(2) Andrew Eaves and the Diversity-promoted-quickly-to-Captain Rebecca Lobach*****.. How badly was she screwing up? It looks like a lot. Still, why was the instructor, A/C, distracted enough teaching to let the flight get way off, most importantly ignoring the most important task of the moment, spotting the aircraft to stay away from or, better yet, not calling it, so there could have been some tower-controlled separation? Was the young lady that distracting in with her flying? He could have taken the controls at any time, but then, just possibly, he didn't want to get "told on" about this, if his student was a grievance monger.
D.I.E. was indirectly involved here, but not really directly involved, IMO. Trump has good instincts though, so he might be doing the right thing by making this a D.I.E. issue. After all, I hate to think about the casualties, 60 PSA/American Airlines passengers, the 4 crew members, and that innocent crew chief, but, "it would be a shame if this crash is not used as an example of how diversity can get people killed."
* They got the name from the old Pacific Southwest Airlines. The name doesn't apply at all now, as they fly mostly the old US Air Express routes out of Charlotte, NC, Philadelphia, Penn, and, yes Washington National, Ronald Reagan Field. Airlines do that sort of thing - they may have just bought the Air Carrier Certificate from that old defunct airline out in California with the smiles on the front of the DC-9s (and such).
** In fact, the Naval Observatory (do they do any Astronomy there?), the residence of the Vice President, has a circle around it that results in take-offs on runway 01 (about north) having to take a very low immediate left turn.
*** I refer to passenger numbers rather than flights, as there was that sweet CARES ACT money. (Passenger counts don't mean much wrt ATC.). Flights were down significantly for a couple of years and may have only just caught up to '19 over the last year.
**** Yikes! That's some serious Potomac Regime imperial arrogance there. Patriotic Americans would have no problem with a Discontinuance of Government mission by, well, anybody right now. It's what President Trump seems to be going for.
***** That's not to say she was a student of helicopter flying itself. She was the student in this Continuity of Gov't (flying some big shots out of Dodge when the SHTF) situation.
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[UPDATED 02/06:] Added helicopter pilots' names.
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Common Sense courtesy of the John Birch Society
Posted On: Tuesday - February 4th 2025 2:54PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity
I may have mentioned that I am a member. I should have joined 30 years ago. I get the magazine, The New American, but don't always have time to read it. I would say that this meme alone has made good use of my dues.
(Thanks to "Almost Missouri" for posting this in comments on Steve Sailer's blog on The Unz Review.)
Here's hoping Trump assigns ICE agents to round these people up in cities in California and all over the Estados Unidos of A, not M. I swear that would put his popularity with MAGA and a majority of other Americans at a level #NeverBeenSeenSinceTheFoundingOfThisNation! Although, there IS lots of competition from other nice moves he's made from January 20th on. Yes, we'll have some posts....
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