A Father's Love - David Goldman
Posted On: Tuesday - November 10th 2020 11:14AM MST
In Topics: Hildabeast Books Female Stupidity Legal Stupidity
The topic of the book that I'm reviewing here is not particularly timely or relevant to any other stupidity going on, but I just read it, so I'll be danged if I won't write a short review on it.
A good thing about this review of David Goldman's book A Father's Love, written in '11, is that I'm not writing this one 2 months after reading it, or even a few YEARS later, as I've done. It's been just 2 days. I even have it on me, in case I need to look anything up, but this will be pretty general.
I think it was an unz.com commenter, as usual, who mentioned this nonfiction book about a 4 y/o boy's abduction by his mother and the father's (David Goldman's) great efforts to get him back. Just so you know, there's nothing to be "spoiled" by my mentioning the ending of the story. This is close to one of those feel-good books Okra or whoever's on daytime TV now might push, so we know the ending from the get-go. Even the book jacket mentions Mr. Goldman getting his son back.* Sean Goldman, 4 years old when he was kidnapped, in 2004, is now a young adult, and has been on TV with his Dad, talking about the subject of the type of crime he, and his father, were victims of.
OK, so this is not to be read for the suspense. It's supposed to make one feel good about Mr. Goldman's perseverance. There's no doubt about that, but really it's not a good read though. Because the author goes into so much detail on the legal and political struggle and shenanigans, which are enough to bring the blood pressure up 25 points, it's just a frustrating story, and I ended up skimming a bit to get to any happy parts. That takes a long while!
Without going into that much detail, let's get to the story. David Goldman, a model and fishing charter boat Captain, had a happy marriage to a Brazilian women named Bruno. They had met in Italy as he was doing his modeling work, he imported her to his nice part of New Jersey (near the shore, Bruce Springsteen territory), then got married in December of 1999, and they had a boy named Sean in May of 2000**. Here is one of the B&W photos in the insert section, this one being of the happy family, soon before the bad news:
Yeah, well, upon one of the normal-seeming vacations out of Newark, NJ to Brazil (they traveled a lot), wife Bruna and her parents, who were rich Brazilians who spent time in both countries, decided they were simply going to stay in Brazil, with son Sean but not his Dad. This was no spur-of-the-moment decision, though, as Bruna and her parents, who were heavily involved, had this planned out. David was by far the last to know what was going on. He received a phone call that changed his life. (There, do I sound like Okra, or a Yahoo headline, yet?)
There was a rich and powerful Brazilian guy involved from early on in this break-up, or perhaps before (that's not clear). It turns out that her problem with her husband, best as he could ever determine it. was just that Mr. Goldman, part-time model, co-owner of a fishing charter operation, loving Dad, and provider of a nice house on a beautiful spread of land in a New Jersey Whitopia, was just not rich enough for her.
Does this sound familiar? It should, if you enjoy humor and have read Peak Stupidity's one (so far) embedded Telenovelas are Hell video***. Yeah, David was not rich enough for Bruna, but it was bigger than that. Her new man, one Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, was a rich and powerful Brazilian guy who I guess wanted the new complete instant family. This is where it gets downright funny for a bit. Mr. Goldman's ex-wife Bruna's brother is only mentioned in only one paragraph, on the page right after the one that got me thinking "hey, this is starting to sound like a freaking telenovela." I about LOLed when I read "Bruna's brother had attended the famous Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and had made some minor appearances in Brazilian telenovelas". Haha, so THAT'S how it is in their family!
This was a hell of a thing for a father, as, though, at least David had been informed in that unexpected phone call, trying to even see his son was no easy matter, and it took years to even get to do that, much less bring him home. As I wrote earlier, much of the book is about the legal battles being fought against a powerful family in a country in which the rule-of-law is not set up for the little guy. There had already been the "Hague Convention" to try to help parents in this international parent abduction business, so that, and all sorts of law. lawyers, and legal battles are discussed. It's just too much, but Mr. Goldman wanted to tell the whole story.
Something like 60-odd kids had been kidnapped by Brazilian parents, and 3,000 or so throughout the world, with mostly the Moms as the kidnappers, as of the time of the book's being written. That's not really a big number at all in the scheme of things, but a terrible ordeal, over, in this case, 4-5 years, for any parent. Mr. Goldman is a tougher man than me, in being able to take the continual postponements, blocking of his lawyer's moves, and political and legal abuse, without having eventually beat the living shit out of some Brazilian lawyer or judge and spending the rest of his life in a hole there. That took real toughness and love for this boy.
One of the biggest things that helped out David Goldman in getting his son back is that Bruna died in childbirth down there in Brazil having Mr. e Silva's daughter. That was a big break in the case (that's the way I'd see it, after all that), as the only real parent was David Goldman. Still, this went on and on...
After so many efforts of Mr. Goldman and his lawyers, and Congressman, his case, as can be seen if one duckduckgo's it, became big news story finally. That didn't do it for a long time either, but even the big politicians got involved. (That explains the Hildabeast's being on the book jacket, and I'll give her one non-antiChrist vote for that one.) Any parent without all this help may never have gotten his child back.
Well, this one kind of went on a while, so I'll just bring up one more point. This book was mostly just about David Goldman's (eventual) high-profile case, and a little bit about other international cases. However, this stuff happens plenty within the US. I know personally of a guy whose wife absconded with his daughter with no word of whereabout or even who did the kidnapping for days and then months before he could even see his child. It is indeed better to deal within a legal system that is not quite so crooked, for now, but let me put it this way, as far as how things go here: Were it the guy I know who'd done that, he'd have been in jail for kidnapping for some years. He'd never, ever have custody of his daughter again, even if the ex-wife went off the deep end crazy. No, but for kidnappings by mothers, there is some kind of get-out-of-jail-retain-custody-anyway-for-free passes around.
Well, I read the book, I wrote the post, what more can I say, besides, this book is not that great entertainment. I'd only recommend it if you care about the political/legal angle, or maybe you are ready to import a foreign bride yourself. Be careful out there!
PS: Maybe there'll be a movie out someday. I'd go see that.
* Speaking of the jacket, it does, however, have a recommendation by one "Hilary Clinton, Secretary of State". That was quite troubling.
** Interestingly, the engagement date is given non-specifically as just "1999". I guess this could be called a shotgun wedding, but it didn't sound like either had to be poked in the back with the 12 guage.
*** It was only 11 days ago, but then we've been busy here. The clip we showed was of a Mexican telenovela, but there are Brazilian ones too. There will be more of those "Telenovelas are Hell" to come. As far as Latin American videos go, it's a tough call between hot bikini weather girl Flavia and the humorous takes on the telenovelas (Latin-style, extreme soap opera). Our friends down south are known for big tits and big drama. I've seen it myself.
Comments (3)
Joe Biden's subterranean homesick blues and the godless tornadoes
Posted On: Monday - November 9th 2020 11:26AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 The Russians TV, aka Gov't Media Humor Poetic Stupidity Zhou Bai Dien
Just a note here: Peak Stupidity won't use the term "President" for this guy until State governments have
An Instapundit link led me to a Jazz Shaw article on the hotair.com site about Joe Biden's rehashing the same old points about his fight against the Kung Flu menace. See Biden Prepares His Virus Response Which Looks Awfully… Familiar.
No, on second thought, please don't see this one. I only went to that site to check on the supposed plagiarism as hinted at by Glenn Reynolds' link. Mr. Shaw is a full-blown panicker. I don't need that, but his point was that Mr. Biden's big plans to defeat the Covid-one-niner are very much the same as President Trump's were (again, but Mr. Shaw takes it all as serious as a heart attack). Will we see any actual plagiarism, as Americans with memories may recall from The Lyin' Press of 1988? (The TV news was still a lot different then.)
I am only posting this because, if this election ends up the way everyone is thinking and assuming, there may be a lot of unintentional humor from this half-senile ex- and maybe current- plagarizer-in-chief. I mean, that is if we can hear anything about it by getting around the Feral Gov't's Lyin' Press Branch.
I guess they'll have a team of speechwriters for Joe Biden, but they'll need some other coaches too for any press conferences. Is there a basement in the White House? Hey, don't know, but Bob Dylan sang about this way back:
Joey's in the basement,
'ministrin' the government.
Hunter's on the pavement,
mixin' up the "medicine".
He sometimes wears a trench coat,
underneath clothes off,
wants to get paid off
from his pal Testicov.
Look out, kids,
no matter what they did.
Joe's wearing pantyhose,
hopped up on No-doze.
Not even he knows
what fungus grows on his big toes.
Watch out for the bros
and all their skanky ho's.
You don't need a weather man
to know just whom Kamela blows.
Hell, I'm no singer. Let me call up The Byrds and see if they could do this one better this time.
Yeah, anyway, one of these days Joe Biden is gonna screw the pooch, even with all the help from the handlers. I look forward to the day he pulls a Les Nessman, so I can watch it on youtube.
"C'mon man! Just substitute "Covid Nineteen" wherever it says 'the Russians'".
Comments (13)
Your cheatin' hearts, will turn States blue ...
Posted On: Saturday - November 7th 2020 9:30PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Music ctrl-left
Not only the methods of cheating in the '20 election were myriad, but the various methods of determining that cheating was done are many too. I'll have to post on that later, at least linking to one web-page I've read that describes all the goings on. Pink to light blue, to red. That's the only way it ever seems to go. That's pretty curious.
They say it's over. I mean there's a map and all, on the Fox News site. The Associated Press declared Joe Biden, with his vice-slut Kamela the winner of this Presidential election.
They up and DECLARED it, like Michael Scott here:
(Please watch the whole The Office clip here, if you just want to laugh in general.)
Yeah? Since when does the Associated Press, or ANY media organization decide a national US election? The US Constitution says otherwise. I wish more Americans knew this. Other than the 2000 Florida brewhaha, the elections in my and maybe every single living Americans' lifetimes have been decided with enough votes in enough States to make the electoral vote count clear enough. We figured it the big news media wrapped it up, then it was a done deal. The cheating was never large enough, or at least blatant enough, to have made the difference. At least that's how it's looked, up till now.
This time the States with the very close results really need to stand up. I'm not saying they will, as States have given up their power to the Feds, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes involuntarily, steadily over the years. Likely most State legislators think deciding school closings and the state budget are their biggest powers. Nobody has the guts to stand up to anything Federal, but this time it's really the Big Media, kind of a branch of the Feral Gov't, that they'd be standing up to. That's also scary to them.
Trump can't do this alone.
Since the song may be in your head, here's Hank Williams:
Hank Williams wrote and recorded Your Cheatin' Heart in 1952. It was released in 1953, after he had died.
Comments (3)
Corporate liars, learning units, and violence in the workplace
Posted On: Saturday - November 7th 2020 9:02PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Race/Genetics Big-Biz Stupidity
It was time the other day to get started on some recurrent learning for my job, done on-line, of course. That was the case for this stuff even way before the Kung Flu. OK, it is mostly stuff that I do need to review, and I take it seriously.
About the only thing I usually don't like about this deal is the 3rd-party "learning" software itself, which can get buggy sometimes. I can't always count on not having to start a 10-minute lesson over, just occasionally. Secondly, at the beginning and end of a these units software takes you through 5 clicks, as in "click here", now "click here", wait for an arrow, "wait 5 second" click it, "tap anywhere on the screen". Hey, you're a computer program, dammit! If you know what you need me to do, then YOU fucking do it! I thought computers were good for that repetitive stuff... I dunno...
I will stop the rant about the Artificial Stupidity to get to the different point of this post. The first "learning" unit I got to this time was a new one. It was some corporate mumbo-jumbo (wish I could remember the name, but it's thankfully not on my virtual to-do list anymore!) about workplace threats and that. I'm not really in their world on corporate crap, and once I started the unit up, I realized I am REALLY not in their world at all.
See, every one of the bad guys in this lesson on how to see bad deeds done (dirt cheap) in the workplace was a white guy. It wasn't just the one obligatory police-sketch-artist drawing of mustached mean-ass looking possibly white guy. There's plausible deniability there, as, well, he could be partly black, hard to tell, and maybe even one of those immigrant mass murderers - do Moslems wear hoodies? (Maybe they do up in Dearbornistan - gets damn chilly up there.) No, but there were color photos of white guys, ONLY, who I'm pretty sure work at the company and had their mean faces and gestures on and up for the lesson. First, I hope they are hourly employees and made a few bucks at it, but secondly, I thought we were a diverse workplace environment, dammit! I keep hearing and reading that. There was absolutely no diversity in this 45-minute lesson. This was not my diverse attacker. This was not my beautiful workplace. It's these same old pale males again. Same as it ever was!
Keep in mind as you read this that it wasn't as though I was paying great attention to this lesson in "run, hide, or fight". Haha, the one fight" slide (do we still call them "slides"?) I saw had a lady with her laptop raised over her head. I mean she was ready to fight. That was no modern thin-ass, chicklet-keyboard style unit. I mean, it could have been a 17 lb. Lenovo 610S, so watch the hell out, workplace violence perpetrators! That thing is bulletproof. I don't know what happened as the sound wouldn't work for the last 2/3 of the lesson.
No, but the thing is, I know bullshit when I load it up, and even before I saw all the bogus white security-alarm-commercial white men, I was ready to blow this thing off best I could. I was in luck with 2 things. This particular long lesson (45 minutes, as I wrote above) did not have slides that require the user to click "CONTINUE" buttons. I'd have been screwed, as I needed to take a dump and subsequently a shower. After that, it was time for breakfast while perusing Steve Sailer post comments. Also, it didn't have a long test at the end, or I'd have had to make 5 or 10 runs at it.
I got out of the shower, and the damn tablet screen was dark. What a waste of 20 minutes of my life that I'll never get back! (Maybe if I get attacked later and beat all hell out of the guy with this tablet, I'll be more than even, though ...) I had the sound way, way down so I could barely tell if it cut off, meaning I'm supposed to to something, and I guess it got sick of waiting for me to shave.
After starting it over, I kept the tablet close so I could monitor it and touch the screen once in a while to keep learning while I read Sailer comments on another device and ate my fruit and a few carbs. That's when I occasionally noticed the plethora of white male attackers and the other stupidity. I'm very glad it didn't ask me any hard questions, involving race, immigrant mass murder syndrome (True or False), and the like. I actually aced the thing, all 3 of the random questions that, luckily, didn't time out on me.
It was very nice, BTW, to get back to the regular lessons on actual physical semi-technical stuff that I really do need to know. What a relief!
I really don't appreciate being blatantly lied to, whether I get paid for it or not. There probably are some young and naive people who really go for the narrative that was contained in that long presentation. The corporate people put it out to cover their asses, but corporations are places of great virtual signaling now too. I noted on this unit that there was some mass murder incident at a Waffle House. (The sound was either way down or not working, so I just saw some brief wording.) Yes, you can find white guys doing these deeds and cherry pick those incidents. I suppose in the Waffle House attack, some people really did get scattered, smothered, and covered. There were no lies of commission, just lies of omission. Any kind of black, Hispanic, or immigrant mass murder event was just not to be mentioned.
I'll let VDare cover the Immigrant Mass Murder Syndrome more comprehensively than we have*, but how about that Fed-Ex flight 705 attack 26 years ago? Is the cockpit of a DC-10 not a workplace? I'd heard of that incident for 20 years before I found out that it was a disgruntled black pilot (he'd lied about his flight time so was in trouble) that tried to kill the pilots and flight engineer with hammers and a spear gun and crash the bird. He almost did too. However, after one big struggle involving severe aircraft maneuvers all 3 of the flight crewmembers survived but were hurt so seriously they could never fly commercially again.
There was no mention of Fed-Ex Flight 705 in this unit. I would have really liked to learn something from that. Alas, #StoryTooBlack
* It was in Canada, not America, but the reader may want to enjoy our post Immigrants doing the Cannibalization that Americans JUST WON'T DO.
Comments (4)
Adam Smith's reply to Mr. Ganderson, on the PanicFest as a cult
Posted On: Saturday - November 7th 2020 10:22AM MST
In Topics: US Police State Liberty/Libertarianism Bible/Religion Kung Flu Stupidity
No, I wouldn't call it anxiety, in my case. I'd call it being fed up!
I thought this was another good long comment that deserved to be read by other readers who may not click to read comments. It's also from the thread under this post.
Note that the ideas about this PanicFest resembling, or BEING, a cult phenomena were originated by Mr. E.H. Hail in various of his many posts on the subject on his Hail to You blog.
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PS: Good afternoon Mr. Ganderson...
I hope this letter finds you well,
I'm sorry to hear that New England is doubling down on panicfest. It seems the true believers and the panickers want to amplify the insanity, forever. I can only imagine how depressing and troubling it must be for a sane gentleman like yourself to witness this in your daily interactions. I am watching from afar, well isolated from the nonsense, and I too find it deeply troubling.
[Mr. Smith has a link here to a Lew Rockwell article called "What are we going to say to the Children?" by Mark Sircus.]
For example, one effect of panicfest that I find horribly troubling (as per the above link*) is that adults aged 25-44 saw the largest increase in “excess” deaths from previous years, a 26.5% jump. It has been suggested that the shocking increase in deaths among this cohort is attributable primarily to deaths of despair or deaths linked to the so called “lockdown” measures. According to the CDC, 100,947 excess deaths were not linked to the most sinister of viruses.
I believe, as does Mr. Hail, that Covid, peace be upon It, is a state sponsored religious cult. I do not believe this is an organic occurrence. I believe we are witnessing a global mass hypnosis, traumatic mind control event. This is why, as you say, "They are impervious to evidence...", and they will remain so. Their amygdalas have been hijacked, their rational minds have been bypassed and their behavior is being controlled by the manipulation of their subconscious minds. They are receptive to continued suggestions by the constant messaging, and other cues. I'm sure you've heard the radio, watched the TV, read the news, seen the signs, heard the background noise played in the stores...
"Social Distancing", "Virtual Learning", "Testing", "Stay Home, Stay Safe", "Cases!", "New Normal", "Pandemic", "Reopening", "Protect your family from the coronavirus with a flu vaccine", "Lockdown", "Believe the science", “SaveLives!”, “We must defeat this virus before we can fix the economy”, “Listen to the guidance”, “Stop the Spread”... These are not the best examples of the way the hypnosis words are used, but I'm sure you get the idea. The messaging and cues are ubiquitous.
Everything is laced with these buzz words and clichés promoting panic. The face diapering is a powerful symbol to the believers and those who have been entranced that they should remain in fear. Most dangerously, they believe anyone who is not in the cult is a threat who must be dealt with as such. It's instructive that they refer to us "corona deniers" in such denigrating terms.
I am unfortunately not surprised by these troubling developments. As a ponerologist I often view events and human behavior through what I call the Milgram/Asch lens. The vast majority of people will do exactly as they are told (including horribly evil acts) when told to do so by people perceived to be in positions of “authority” (Stanley Milgram) and most people do not have the courage to believe their own eyes if it means deviating from the collective opinion of strangers or peers (Solomon Asch). I also believe that primary psychopathy is not limited to a mere 1% of the population. In my opinion about 6% or 7% of the population have what I call primary psychopathy while another ~10% have what I call secondary psychopathy.** With this in mind it seems ominously easy to engineer such a mass hypnosis event provided you have control of some powerful institutions and an apparatus by which to disseminate your official propaganda. At the same time, all dissent must be ridiculed, censored, or beaten out of the wrongthinkers (when necessary). (Looking at you New Zealand.)
I agree with you when you say “I think what's happening is that there are largely two camps”...
In the Milgram and Asch experiments there are a small portion of the people who do not follow orders and those who will believe their own lying eyes. There are some people who are less susceptible to hypnosis. Most people are what I would call “authoritarian followers” while some smaller number of us are libertarians. I think these are primarily the two different camps.
Unfortunately, I do not know how to fix the sizable problem at hand. Like other recovering members of any dangerous cult, these people will have to be unhypnotized and deprogrammed. When the dominant part of a society is in the cult... well... interesting times are upon us...
Fortunately, we are not alone. There are pockets of resistance springing up. Many people are growing weary of the restrictions and the obedience training. This insanity cannot continue forever. Please try not to worry and please do not let these troubling developments scare you. Worry and fear are usually not helpful, and can often impair our judgment.
Perhaps there are ways we can reach some of our hypnotized brethren? It will likely have to happen just one person at a time as we do not have control of the all powerful electronic hypnotist.
Though I wish we did.
I hope you have a great day Mr. Ganderson.
And I hope you feel better soon.
☮
* I've no idea how accurate these numbers truly are, as there are so many fraudulent numbers flying around these days. I didn't have time to fact check this. Sorry if it is not entirely accurate.
** Primary psychopaths are the real nasty evil manipulators that truly have no conscience. The secondary psychopaths are those other folks who do have a conscience, but are more concerned with climbing the hierarchy. They will do horribly evil things when told to or if it will advance their career or sometimes just for kicks. They will rationalize away their evil behaviors. Together they make up about 16% of the population. Many of them end up in prison, or do not have the power to harm people on a large scale, but many high functioning psychopaths and sociopaths become powerful people with the power and capacity to inflict immense destruction. They are over represented in positions of power.
☮
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Hey, even Mr. Smith's peace sign emoticons came through here!
I've got plenty of blogging of my own on stupidity to come. This apple device just sent me a nasty message on the election. Nothing's over yet, just because the Associated Press says it is. I'll have more on that, but I've got another post cooked up about a "learning unit" I had to semi-endure recently. That'll be later today.
Comments (8)
Tom Woods - "The Fact-Free COVID Dystopia"
Posted On: Friday - November 6th 2020 7:01PM MST
In Topics: US Police State Liberty/Libertarianism Orwellian Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
It's been a week and a half since I wrote on Mr. Hail's site that I would put this video up "tomorrow". It doesn't matter when you watch it, and we have mostly a quorum of deniers here, ;-}. Also, this Presidential election has taken our minds off the Kung Flu PanicFest for a week or so.
This is a great talk by Tom Woods. If we could only get all Americans to spend the 45 minutes to watch it, this PanicFest would be all over with. I know, the authorities don't want it to end, no matter what they really think of the the Covid-one-niner, but most people would quit listening. Could we break this up into 180 15 second segments that could be put in front of "crazy cat antics" videos on youtube? That would reach a LOT of people. Oh, and let's put it before Chilean
Tom Woods on "The Fact-Free COVID Dystopia:
Thomas E. Woods is a Libertarian author/historian who is a fellow at the Mises Institute. He gave this talk on October 9th of this year on Jekyll Island, Georgia. I wish I could have been there.
Comments (6)
Mr. Ganderson's report from the Soviet of Massachusetts
Posted On: Friday - November 6th 2020 10:25AM MST
In Topics: US Police State Kung Flu Stupidity
I feel lucky to be in a State in which things are not so strict, or just people don't take things as seriously. At the auto parts store 2 days ago, I didn't wear a mask in the store, back out to mess with the car, back in again to pay ... I think everyone else did, and I am starting to give them all weird "WTF??" looks now.
Sorry, but this mask thing has been my biggest complaint about the Kung Flu PanicFest (note that almost all of the 13 Scenes from the Kung Flu Summer Re-Panic posts were about the masks). I know that the economic damage is really a much more important effect, but I believe the mask wearing is a show of compliance now. I don't know who the hell I see that is actually worried about getting COVID-19!
OK, on to Mr. Ganderson's report/rant from the Mass Soviet, written as a comment under our post We voted today. Please take the time!
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I posted this over at Hail- although I can't see it- when I attempted to post it again it said I'd already posted. Anyway folks, I'm really getting worried about the panic:
Looking at my paper this morning, it looks very much like we are heading back where we were around Eastertime- the panickers are back in control- maybe they never left, but they are intensifying their efforts to lock us all down- governments all over western Europe are locking down again, the Governor of Kansas is trying to institute a state wide, no county opt out mask requirement, people in Minnesota are talking about how 'bad' things are in South Dakota and Wisconsin DEATHS OFF THE CHARTS!!! CASES SURGING!!!
Hail, I buy your Corona as a religion, but this seem insane in a way I can't comprehend- it's like double the insanity of April and May. Maybe it's about the election, but the lockdowns in Europe certainly aren't about the election in the US.
I'm taking a course online right now. (it's training to teach online, not related to Coronadoom, but though a company that's been doing online stuff for awhile)
From what I can tell a huge % of the 30 or so of us that are taking the course are panickers- I think they really believe this is the Black Death, and I have no clue how convince them otherwise. They are impervious to evidence- look at the Tweets underneath the KS governor's announcement of her attempt to mask Dorothy, Toto, Auntie Em and all the other Kansans. Some are sensible, but most are panickers.
I think what's happening is that there are largely two camps- The Black Death maskers close everything down people , and those of us like the folks that post here. We see the panickers as dangerously deluded; not stupid, because most of our cognitive elites are panickers. They see us as deniers. I don't know how else to put it, but I don't know ANYONE who doesn't think there's a rather new (how new is open to question) virus in town, which presents some public health problems to be solved. We're not deniers. But what I see from the other side is the notion that the only reason to stop these draconian measures would be no positive tests for Corona, which is INSANE. Are we going to do this for every other bug in the world?
And just to repeat myself, what do your eyes tell you? Forget about Hail's and Briggs's and Heller's fine graphs and charts, what do you see in your daily forays into the world? Are we in the first 100 pages of "the Stand?" Are there bodies stacked up? People dropping dead on the street? How many people does anyone know that's really gotten sick? Or dead? Any increase in hospital admissions, for any reason, is now cause for more draconian measures. I had thought that when the President got sick and recovered we'd be done, but it seems like the White House illnesses led almost directly to the current doubling down.
Sorry for the rambling, but I'm starting to get scared- detention camps in New Zealand, arrests in Australia- the sick level of mask compliance and panicking here in New England. The word of the day is INSANE!
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If it's OK with Commenter Smith, I will put his comment reply to this in another post.
Comments (4)
Re-bunking the Sailer Strategy after Nov. 3rd '20 - Part 2
Posted On: Thursday - November 5th 2020 2:42PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Pundits Race/Genetics
(Continued from Part 1.)
NOTE: I noticed one big mistake here and a couple of small ones. so I redid the numbers. The large mistake was my multiplying/subtracting of the under-18 percentage from only the white non-voters. Obviously, it should have been taken off all voters. How much of the under-18, or conversely 18 and over population is white/non-white is another story.
Take a state like Minnesota, please! (Never gets old.) From the US Census (estimates for 2019), 79.1% of Minnesotans (just for example, but a good example because it shows dark blue right now) are white non-hispanic. There are 5.6 million Minnesotans total ( everything here is 2019 numbers), making 4.43 million white Minnesotans. Of those, if we take the 23.1% that the census page above says are under 18 y/o off (with an assumption that this percentage holds throughout all races/ethnicities, we get 3.41 white Minnesotans able to vote, age-wise.
From the vote total from Minnesota of 3.19 million on the Fox News site map, one can calculate that 57% of Minnesotans voted and 74% age-eligible voters did come out (big assumption here is no cheating. Yeah, right.) If the people who did vote are also equally weighted equally by race/ethnicity, then that'd be 2.52 million white people that voted. That leaves right at 2/3 of a million white people who didn’t come out but could have.
Would at least 35% of those white people able to vote have gone on-line to register, and spent an hour to vote early, if Trump had been at least giving some good speeches that didn’t tout all he could do for everybody BUT White people? Who knows? If that many had gotten enthusiastic from some Trump enthusiasm* showing he at least was working a teensiest bit to help them and understood they’ve been getting screwed over and disparaged for years, well, that’d have been a 230-odd thousand, the amount that would have put him over the top.**
OTOH, there were only 6% Hispanics in Minnesota (legal that is) in 2019, per that Census estimate. Of the 77% age-eligible (and that is generous, as they are likely younger) and taking into account that they are not very politically active, I estimate that they represent 1/4 million votes TOTAL in the state. If you double a 20% Hispanic Trump vote to 40%, it's only 50,000 more votes.
Sure, Texas and California have an order-of-magnitude more Hispanics. Their votes do matter, but still, they should not be sought at the expense of the white people who just stay home out of disgust, in large numbers.
Those are the numbers, from just one State picked as an example, that I think are what one needs to understand the Sailer Strategy. I only pulled out the one paragraph’s 35% by back-calculation, but you see that white vote numbers can still be overwhelming, were they to vote like a bloc even half-assedly compared to blacks.
To get back off the numbers for this conclusion, let me say this. People's expectations of the Hispanic and black vote for Trump were greatly exceeded (at least on the former). Of course we are happy about that and somewhat surprised. However, the numbers are still below a majority, and for a more conservative guy, even if he does pander to them, if doing that better than Trump is even possible, there won't be a majority. You can't make it up in volume, people. OK, so visit Hispanic areas on the campaign, eat some #2 meals (usually that's 2 tacos and one enchilada) with the amigos. Fine. Just don't blow off the white vote by doing things like giving $500,000,000,000 of mostly white people's money*** for a "Platinum Plan" for blacks because, they were really upset for a while. People remember that sort of thing and stay home. I don't blame them one bit, really.
I added a whole lot to this post, but this one more point ought to have been written before. Even those who do not agree with the Sailer Strategy may still very well be anti-immigration-invasion. I get that. The "make it up in volume" thing is a moot point if you just state that we are trying to work with what we've already got. It's still easier to win by going after the votes of discouraged, disaffected, and rightly pissed-off white people than Hispanics.
The Hispanic vote for Trump was encouraging. That in no way debunks the Sailer Strategy.
* I am not saying that President Trump has been at least as good as anyone else who was in any kind of running, in terms of white interests. He just didn't try hard, and he didn't campaign on it. He's a great campaigner, so bringing up some red meat for the white people would have gotten him elected, in my opinion.
** Of course, I back-calculated to get the 35% for this example.
*** That's 1/2 a Trillion, STILL not
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[UPDATED Morn., 11/06:] Redid the numbers. I had taken that % under 18 numbers off only the non-voters, which was well, stupid. I took it off everyone, but I am pretty sure, the way US demographics are, that the under-18 percentage consists of a lower number of whites, but a higher number of non-whites. OTOH of the people who voted, would more be white, since they are older in general.
Another thing is that I had seen "white alone", thinking that meant non-Hispanic, but whites/non-Hispanic is shown below that, at 79.1%.
While I was at it, I added more general ranting. ;-}
Lastly, I had forgotten the link to the Census Bureau 2019 numbers.
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Comments (2)
Re-bunking the Sailer Strategy after Nov. 3rd '20 - Part 1
Posted On: Thursday - November 5th 2020 1:57PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Immigration Stupidity Pundits alt-right/MAGA
(If "debunking" is disproving, then "rebunking" is un-disproving it.)
Really, there are so many articles and posts on the web written by alt-right or just conservative writers on the "Sailer Strategy" that one can even find it on google (sure, somebody fucked up. Heads will roll!) I won't point out specifics, as Mr. Sailer writes so many posts on unz.com that I'd spend hours finding the specific posts. One could try to search using VDare's search box for Mr. Sailer's or other's writings on this idea, but VDare's search function doesn't seem to be so hot.
Let me just say concisely that Mr. Sailer's idea* is that the Republican Party should have been, and should be, doing what they can to get white votes. Even with white people being a lower proportion of the US population than in 1960, or 1980, or 2000... we still can be a large bloc. This bloc could still overwhelm all the other tribal interests that blacks, Hispanics, and other race/ethnic groups that DO voter for their own needs about that of "the many" very easily.
White people are still a majority of the population here, though no doubt the proportion is dwindling rapidly. Not only that, but White People, being mostly the type to care about the overall good, by far more than other groups, are civic minded and do (in general, besides Øb☭ma elections) vote in big proportion to their numbers. Lastly, because we are an older population (there's that dwindling) we are even more prone to vote. After all, who's got the time to vote more than the seniors? Who's got the time to keep up the most on CNN, ugghhh, let's not go there.
In this election, those supporting President Trump in his still-ongoing re-election bid have been very pleased with the results of the Hispanic vote. I myself am pleased, as if Texas had fallen, it'd have been over by the evening of November 3rd. Yes, there were largely Hispanic counties in southwest Texas and other places (S. Florida) who voted for Trump in big numbers. Sure, that's encouraging.
Is that the deal then, that the Hispanics are "natural conservatives" they've got those "family values", and all that jazz? No, I don't think that is the deal. Peak Stupidity noted long ago in Mormons, Commies, Shitholes, and Crown Jewels, Latin Americans are natural Socialists, Commies, and 2% elite Conquistador-Americans**. That's just whom they be.
It doesn't meant that they don't like a brash, macho braggadocio-ist(?) guy like Trump who fights, though, over a senile old sleep Joe and some half-mix .Indian-Jamaican slut. That's about personalities and appearances. I guess the Latin Americans also don't really have any sore spot (if they, and I include all races/types here) even remember the 5 years-ago Trump talk of "rapists, murderers, etc." coming from the south. I also think plenty of settled Hispanics have no problem shutting the borders on the rest of them, I mean once their own Mamasitas and Grandmamasitas make it over here.
To think that Hispanics are for Constitutional rights, the rule of law, due process, and all that jazz, in large enough numbers, is just silly. Voting GOP ≠ voting conservative. It's great that we got a lot of help from Hispanics. That makes me happy but it doesn't make pandering to them a winning strategy.
Mr. Sailer's strategy only works until the immigration tidal wave we are undergoing has wiped out lots the white vote, at time that will come, the way things are going. I am not implying that those who disagree with the Sailer Strategy and push the R-politicians to pander to Hispanic votes are for open borders either. They just want to survive this with the GOP intact. Personally I don't know care if it does. What's more important is that the White People of America get some power back.
The next thing coming is the numbers. A commenter under a recent thread about the election asked for the numbers, so it is convenient that I replied with an example of the numbers that make the case for the Sailer Strategy. That'll be in Part 2, coming very shortly.
* I don't maintain that this is some unique idea of Steve Sailer's. However, he laid out details with lots of numbers, as he likes to do, and, just as importantly, he's not afraid to write this idea out in the first place.
** That's another great Steve Sailerism for you! Great stuff!
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Site note - down this morning, let me explain...
Posted On: Thursday - November 5th 2020 10:13AM MST
In Topics: Websites Artificial Stupidity
After being extremely pissed about my hosting company up to and during a 9-minute wait on hold, I can say that the tech support/billing guys do a splendid job! Wheewww.
Here's what it was: If you have been reading a month, then you may have seen our post Site Note: DO! NOT! BE! ALARMED!. That was posted because we'd been down for a day or so, due to the SSL (Secure Socket Layer, don't ask, I can't explain) certificate* being expired, or so I thought.
Well, with help from commenter Adam Smith in the comments under that post, I got into installing the free 90-day SSL certificate, rather than paying an inordinate amount for it from the hosting company. It was an experience in the type of learning that someone like me honestly doesn't give a damn to learn about, except that Peak Stupidity was down. As a matter of fact, I already have forgotten the exact steps that took a while to get right, but I do happen to remember where I stored the notes on what I did.
That was one month ago, though, and I gave myself a reprieve from the artificial stupidity for 90 days, I'd thought.
No, but the site not only said insecure this time, it was plain down. The SSL cert. I installed showed expiring in January '21, a few days after my alarm reminder to "get off my ass and take care of this". Upon looking at email, I saw that my hosting company had tried to bill me ~$160 for SSL stuff, and that's what, after 10 minutes of fuming, I brought up the the nice, helpful, and most importantly, American tech dude (well, the latter is also important - sorry, but I have more confidence in a "dude" on this type of matter). Ahaa, "you''re back up. Check it" he told me, after about 30 seconds of looking at this.
OK, but, what was the problem? He had said before the fix that my certificate from his hosting company had just expired, hence the charge. "Wait, but it already expired back in October. That's why my site went down, and I fixed it." "No, we give you notice ahead of time, but it just expired yesterday." Hence the attempted billing**. "But, but, the SSL cert. I installed is good through January. It shows that."
Yeah, but I had forgotten the last step, to virtually mash some INSTALL button, he told me. Unbelievable! So, the one I spent that time on was not in use till now, but at least I know it's working. This tech support guy went beyond the call of duty, or beyond the scope of what I pay for, more importantly, by just doing that step for me. (Normally, that costs, like 100 dollars.)
When we finally left this dreary subject on October, 8th, Adam Smith and I, with some comments to help by Mr. Blanc and Robert, Mr. Smith noted "the mystery remains". IT STILL DOES! Why did my site go down in October, a month before my SSL renewal from the hosting company was due? I asked, but the answer wasn't clear to me.
If you see problems on or about the 7th of January, it is not the Biden/Kamel-Toe administration with some sort of Head Start program for the Orwellian world to come. It's just me and this computer crap... probably... if it's a couple of weeks, bring some hound dogs to look for me ...
* No, it's not something I earned in night school. No need for congratulations, but thanks anyway.
** I detest leaving any kind of card on file or auto-pay for ANYTHING, and I am more than paid up on everything else. Plus, due to occasional scammers, the card must be changed out every 1/2 year (lately) anyway. You can't bill to the old one.
Comments (6)
Carson City, get me outta this!
Posted On: Wednesday - November 4th 2020 6:20PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Immigration Stupidity California Trump Geography
(Hey, what can you do for a title when you still have Warren Zevon and that great guitar riff in Lawyers, Guns, and Money in my head, since the last post.)
This has been the situation for this whole afternoon:
First of all, you gotta hope and/or pray that North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania stay the hell put. The latter, Penn., could be a problem, as were the Silver State to go for Trump in the end, then the ctrl-left would go all out for new votes in the Philadelphia area. I'm sure some mail with some questionable, but what-the-hell, postmarks could be had for cheap.
It's amazing that this race possibly has, or will soon, come down to Nevada the "Silver State". As I mentioned in the previous post, Nevada used to be a conservative bastion. Really, it was as Libertarian as one could get, probably more than even the "Free State" project location (Vermont or New Hampshire, it's been a while ...) due to there being so much more land in Nevada. Liberty flourishes more easily when there is lots of room.
Besides the libertine paradise of Lost Wages (at least for those who are smart enough not to play!), the State was full, if you could call empty "full", of ranchers and mining types. I've driven multiple different routes across Nevada - see I've been everywhere in this here land. - mostly on the two lane roads, and one could just get away from everything and everybody out there. Get out of the car, set up some bottles or old computers, and start plinking away. Well, in the modern electronic world, I suppose one can never be away from the prying eyes of somebody, but when can still be tempted to think he is alone with nobody but God, out there.
Peak Stupidity has 3 posts from almost 3 years back about the great Libertarian pundit Vin Suprynowicz, a name I have to cut and paste EVERY SINGLE TIME. I met the guy, a former editorial writer of the Las Vegas Review Journal, in person in Las Vegas once, and he gave me a copy of this book of his. If you're interested, see "Papiere bitte!" - "Your papers, please!" and memories of Mr. Vin Suprynowicz, "Papiere bitte!" - "Your papers, please!" - Part 2 and "Papiere bitte!" - "Your papers, please!" - Stories from the real deal. Mr. [ctrl-c, ctrl-v, there] Suprynowicz was in the right place to be a Libertarian writer for a big newspaper. He'd be out of place now, and well, no he doesn't write for them anymore.
It's been the Californians bringing their California politics to both Vegas and the Reno/Tahoe area (Lake Tahoe straddles the border in central CA/NV) that's part of the change. A commenter under an unz (either Sailer or Epigone) article today put this nicely: They are like plague refugees of the 14th century. They run far away to get away from the disease, but just bring it with them to spread in their new home. Along with the Californicators, hundreds of thousands of, hell maybe a million(?) counting offspring, by now, illegal aliens were imported to do that card shuffling, crap table cleaning, and all usual manner of menial work that American, well, they used to do it, so I don't see how they CAN'T do.
Back to the great Libertarian pundit, Vin Suprynowicz, I did note from his later columns, ~ 2010 or so, unlike the Reason magazine fools, Vin saw the ruin brought on by massive illegal immigration.
Anyway, with that long background written, I will just conclude this point by saying that Nevada is not the libertarian State that would have put Trump on top before PST poll closing time,were this 1985. Well, that is, if no decent Libertarian were running. The place sure as shooting wouldn't have gone for the extreme-left Biden/Cameltoe ticket!
It is the current year, though, and the current day after another 50/50 divided Presidential election. The reader should be able to see those numbers above. The vote counts have not changed since my late morning, maybe earlier, but the "Reporting % in" has gone up from 67% to 75%. I don't know what the deal is with that. I wrote 8,400 votes in the last post in haste and got it wrong. It is the same number now on the Fox News site as it was then, but it's actually 7,647. That's 7,647 votes that could change the country. I really hope that of the ~ 390,000 more votes that could be coming*, not a damn one is from a former Californian who knows how to do things better, or an illegal alien that doesn't know Jack Squat about how this country is supposed to run!
I was voting in Nevada,
I just left to take a piss.
Send lawyers, guns, and money
to get me out of this!
We're all innocent bystanders
and somehow we got stuck
between a rock and a hard place,
and we're down on our luck.
Oh we're down on our luck.
Yes we're down on our luck.
Trump, send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan. - Help!
* Simply based on the total votes tallied so far, 1.168 million x 0.33 (1/3 of that 75% already in).
Comments (6)
Is it all gonna come down to Philly or Carson City?? Send lawyers, guns, and money ...
Posted On: Wednesday - November 4th 2020 9:54AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Music Trump
... before the shit has hit the fan.
First, an apology is due to the great Peak Stupidity readers and commenters for the lack of anything, including reply comments, since Saturday. I got a little burned out for a bit.
It's been 20 years, the 2000 election, since I watched returns on TV, and I wouldn't have done it even if I could (least, at home, by the fireplace) for this one. I guess it's nice to get various Senate/House wins, additional weird-ass referenda results from California, etc. fed continually to keep one entertained.
However, I waited until about 2 hours after the east coast polls closed and then started with the PJ-Media live blog site* and then pulled up the Fox News site, which is set up pretty well. I'd rather just check things occasionally on my own. And, it's gonna be a while ...
Things looked very good at around 2 hours after E.C. poll closing, but then Wisconsin counted more of the city votes (I guess), N. Carolina and .... we've now got a bad situation in which all we can do is wait for the cheating to get done.
I had to cut off this post, after a look at the map again just now. Biden/Cameltoe have a 30,000-odd vote LEAD now in Michigan. I swear Michigan was pink a little while ago!** It had been a gap of ~400,000 votes early this morning. I knew downstate votes would come in to close the pretty big gap that Trump had, but now ...
It looks to me like even without that possible 3rd D electoral vote from Maine, Trump will lose this even if he wins Pennsylvania. My post was going to be that it may all come down to how much cheating can get accomplished by the D-squad in Philadelphia. The reader may recall that this was the place where there was blatant Black Panther intimidation a few elections ago. (Man, time flies - that was in 2008!)
OK, the Dems only need Pennsylvania now if they somehow lost Michigan or Wisconsin, or Nevada. The gap in Nevada is only 8,400 votes right now, but that State is small in population. Doesn't anyone remember the Libertarian State of 1970's Nevada, before the huge influx of illegal replacement workers to Las Vegas and Californicators to Reno? (Peak Stupidity even mentioned this in our Part 5 of our review of the prepper novel The Mandibles.) What a shame about those 6 electoral votes from that former paradise of freedom! Sure, it would have been 3 votes, I guess, before the huge influx, but they'd have been Trump votes.
If Pennsylvania goes for Trump, should we send the lawyers, guns, and money to Carson City instead? I can imagine a shoot-out at a dusty saloon to settle this thing - it would be a lot more civilized.
I love the guitar riff in this one. Warren Zevon was a great musical artist.
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Got to go - will edit this up some more in a couple of hours.
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* They are pretty conservative/libertarian, but the tweets are in some weird-ass order in which you keep seeing the same ones over, and the commenters seemed a bit tipsy by late night (OK, Stephen Green TOLD US he'd be drinking).
** Wisconsin has a similar gap, out of only about 60% of the voters, but I knew that this morning.
Comments (6)
VOTE TRUMP TOMORROW!
Posted On: Monday - November 2nd 2020 7:23PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Humor Trump Zhou Bai Dien
(... if you haven't already.)
Comments (8)
The Democrats: Party of the Dark Winter
Posted On: Saturday - October 31st 2020 9:01PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 TV, aka Gov't Media Trump Media Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
I believe this is the guy I saw.
Steve Sailer has a long thread of comments (287 of them as of
I was forced to sit near a TV yesterday while eating my pudding. CNN was on. When Trump came on, I was just about laughing out loud about his mask remark. He is so enthusiastic and right. Then that guy (Anderson Cooper – does he have white hair now? That’s the guy. I think) came back on, bitching about the Kung Flu and that Trump is not taking it seriously enough. Between that and the President’s way, I understand why there are some really gung-ho Trump supporters.
Were I to know nothing of politics and just have seen that 5 minutes of TV while eating my jello brand pudding, I’d be heading to the polls in the morning for an early Trump vote.
That’s no prediction… I’m just sayin’ …
A commenter going by "AnonAnon" on that thread brought up a very good point regarding the Kung Flu stupidity and its connection to the Democrats. Mr. E.H. Hail, of the Hail to You blog, and a commenter here, has written numerous times that this panic/anti-panic divide cuts across normal political lines. That has been true, at least early on. However, I think a few factors have made it align with the R vs. D divide in this 2020 election.
President Trump's having gone through a quick bout of the Kung Flu and coming out none the worse for the wear and tear and couple of day hospital visit has been a good thing. In the meantime, well since it was a PanicFest to begin with, the Democrat Party has been using the Kung Flu to try to bludgeon the President with, though, even if he wanted to, he couldn't have pleased even the worst of the panickers. "Don't stop the incoming flights, you xenophobe!" "We're gonna run outta of masks, so shut up about wearing them!", but now "wear a mask - you're setting a bad example and spreading germies all over your rallies!" The latter was I think what the newsmaker Anderson Cooper was on about.
When he switched to video of President Trump, I truly enjoyed the few seconds of his humor and encouragement. The Democrats are now the party of some "Dark Winter" crap I just read about. Biden goes around with the stupid face diaper, which pretty much disgusts me, well, more than I already am with the guy.
Joe Biden seems to have made Kung Flu Panic part of his platform. Because the Democrats have been harassing the President about it, that's their story now, and they are sticking to it. Do people really want more of this on again - off again LOCKDOWN business and the incessant mass wearing? Biden had hinted that it could be Federally mandated. That's when this guy will not comply.
I think a lot of Americans besides me and the Peak Stupidity readers and commenters have had enough. If you didn't have a reason to vote for Trump before, here's another one for you. You can help end this idiotic religious-cult-like PanicFest with your vote.
Comments (17)
Big-"Tech" censorship and Section 230
Posted On: Saturday - October 31st 2020 4:23PM MST
In Topics: Humor Trump Big-Biz Stupidity Legal Stupidity
Going back 2 weeks to our "The Bad" portion of our series on President Trump, The Bad, the Good and the Ugly, I will excerpt 2 paragraphs that relate specifically to what can be done about Big-"Tech" tyranny. (This was part of a large point about Donald Trump seemingly only acting politically when things get personal for him.)
The problem is that the President doesn't fight when he has the tools to beat the ctrl-left, as brought up by many a smart policy wonk or pundit, unless it hits him. I'm talking right now about Big-Computer-Tech (I'll grudgingly call it "Big Tech" for this post for brevity, but I don't have to like it!) and their censorship. The Constitutional issue of free speech (Amendment I) doesn't limit the actions of private companies. I do get that.I'll just admit right here and now that Peak Stupidity does not have the budget for an expensive legal team. Peak Stupidity's legal
However, you may have read that there are ways to get Big Tech (Facebook and Twitter, specifically), as they basically are seen by law right now as "platforms" rather than "publishers". That makes them immune from liability on libel/slander/consumer protection laws. There is a Section 230 of some Communications Act administered by the FCC. I am no legal eagle, so I will not get into it, but VDare has been for a few years, and one Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri is too.
Therefore, rather than explain Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1934, enforced by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), we refer you to FCC lawyer Thomas Johnson, Jr. and his statement regarding possible Trump administration action. The nice thing is that this page also has a concise background of the Communication Decency Act as a whole. In 1996 a new Communications Act was passed, which incorporated the 1934 laws but also added new laws for the new thing called the internet. Here's the portion about "interactive computer services" and "information content providers":
Section 230 provides, among other things, that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” It further provides that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of . . . any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” The term “interactive computer service” is defined “as any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.” That broad definition is commonly understood to include websites that host or moderate content generated by others, such as social media companies.[Peak Stupidity's bolding there]
That was pretty on-the-ball for 1996, when most of us were just using the internet for searching for nude photos of Claudia Schiffer. The internet wasn't even big enough for more than a couple of dozen funny kitten videos. I give credit to some forward thinking congressmen, who probably were given nice donations by forward thinking geeks.
Let me give an example of what the law's about. If Peak Stupidity were to just claim that Joe Biden, working his lifeguarding job, had molested 2 young black boys at the swimming pool, making them call him Corn Pop during the process, well, we could be sued ... had we any money at all. However, in the comments section, since it's open to anyone, we are supposed to do our best to clean up comments, but only as far as our abilities. Even in 1996, any hack programmer could write a routine to wipe out certain words, or comments with certain words. How could one clean up every bit of libel, though, without reading every post? You don't need to read every post, because you are just a lowly platform, not an erudite publisher who edits stuff and shit.
There should be, and often are, disclaimers to this effect. You know, our legal team here may want to work on that in their small periods of spare time between the efforts drafting up our "we got nothin'" statements. [PLEASE NOTE: WE ARE NOT CLAIMING THAT JOE BIDEN MOLESTED ANY KIDS AND WANTED ANYONE TO CALL HIM "CORN POP"! IT MAY HAVE BEEN "PORN COP" THOUGH. - PS Legal] See, now this is what I get from the PS legal pigeons, uhhh,... problem is that this note was written by an intern, and why fire an intern, he doesn't care.
[The intern responsible for that erroneous statement regarding our purely hypothetical wording about Joe Biden, written for instructional purposes, has been severely reprimanded and is on still-unpaid leave. I am the new intern, and believe me, you'll get some quality here, as I have been promised to be promoted to a paid position "just as soon as COVID-19 has been completely eradicated, so that we don't have to spend money to keep supplying the staff with
Now comes a real digression. Going back to those early internet times, the reader may recall that sales taxes were also an issue that came up. The internet companies that began selling everything one could think of under and even out of the sun (iDouche.com, wasn't that one of them?), with support from $100 million IPO issues didn't want the customers to have to pay sales tax. Really, at the beginning, there was probably not even an electronic "mechanism" to collect the tax.
I just read in this 2018 Forbes article that a 1992(!) Supreme Court ruling, Quill Corporation v N. Dakota, that sales tax must only be collected if the company selling a product had a physical presence in the State where the buyer resided (but, really, I guess where he had the stuff shipped to). For Amazon, pretty early on (2000) that meant just Washington and Delaware, but soon enough Kentucky, Nevada, and Kansas with new, huge warehouses in those States. I really don't know if this made total sense or not, but the customers were cool with it, and my view is that anything but a head tax is better than income tax, State or Federal*. (Actually, I shouldn't write too soon on this - they'll think of something.)
It turns out that in 2018, in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., the Supreme Court changed their Constitutional interpretation (at least this WAS an actual Constitutional issue). Tax is now collected, no matter where you are. (I had first thought that it was just that Amazon is present pretty much everywhere anyway, which they are.)
Digression over with, Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996 is another cut-out, like the sales tax thing early on, to give internet companies a break. It is completely understandable, don't get me wrong, but it's a BENEFIT to the blogs, Twitters, Instagrams, Facebooks, etc. The threat to remove Section 230 protection is no illegal move by a banana-republic strongman, though. They have simply been acting as publishers, NOT as platforms.
If you are a platform, as I wrote, you are supposed to make an effort to remove indecent writing and pictures, but then indecency has changed a whole lot since 1996. Anything goes now, so I will submit that these publishers in the guise of platforms are not even doing much of that. Fine, standards have changed. However, can your "platform" really get away with deciding that your software, or live humans (but let me get back to that), must eliminate comments, messages, pages, tweets, whatever that has certain political opinions? Maybe, software-wise, one looks for "Trump, Hunter Biden, China, under-age" and combinations like this. Where something like this comes under "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable." is open to interpretation, the last 2 terms especially. Can it be one-sided, as it is now?
Live humans are obviously programming in the censorship, or inserting the "unsuitable" words or phrasing into some database, and they may even be doing some of this more manually. Is that not what a publisher does, this editing?
You brought it on yourselves, bitches.
I'm getting lost a bit now, so let me just excerpt the point of the FCC statement linked-to above, from the Trump Administration FCC paid lawyer, Thomas M. Johnson, Jr.:
Last week, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his intent to move forward with a rulemaking to interpret Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934. Under certain circumstances, Section 230 provides websites, including social media companies, that host or moderate content generated by others with immunity from liability. In announcing his decision, Chairman Pai noted that “[m]embers of all three branches of government have expressed serious concern about the prevailing interpretation” of Section 230, and observed that an overly broad interpretation could “shield[] social media companies from consumer protection laws in a way that has no basis in the text” of the statute.....
And like the jurisdictional and preemption provisions, Section 230 contains ambiguous terms: What constitutes an action “voluntarily taken in good faith” to restrict access to material? What constitutes material that can be excluded as “otherwise objectionable”? As in City of Arlington and City of Portland, the Commission has the authority to clarify these ambiguities in Section 230. As the Supreme Court observed in Iowa Utilities Board, this conclusion is nothing more than application of the general principle, derived from the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), that “Congress is well aware that the ambiguities it chooses to produce in a statute will be resolved by the implementing agency.”That would be the FCC administered by people selected President Donald Trump (for NOW!)
Maybe, if President Trump gets re-elected, he will not forget how he has been treated by Big-"Tech" and even think about the rest of us in this matter. It will be HIGH TIME for the Trump FCC, with hopefully no swamp creature in charge, along with the more Conservative Supreme Court** to re-interpret Section 230 with extreme prejudice.
PS: Man, this post ended up 5 X longer than I had intended. I just enjoy inserting the humor and get carried away. For some readers that may be a turn off, so I apologize.
* See also Part 2 and Part 3.
** We got 2 and then 1 more in the nick of time. Of course they could all go native by some point, but getting to pick 3 in 4 years worked out pretty well. Maybe Kagan and OscarMayer will both rethink their life goals and resign to head up women's softball leagues or something.
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No signs are good signs
Posted On: Friday - October 30th 2020 9:34PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Trump
We first had one Trump sign at a time, with a daily rotation, out on the lawn, but now we're firing both barrels. These are kind of unique signs too, not the simple ones below.
A guy pulled part-way off the road, still blocking part of the near lane, to thank me for putting out the Trump sign about 3 weeks ago while I was doing yard work. We started talking politics. I waved a couple of bicyclists around, as this guy also may have thought we'd talk a couple of minutes, and then he'd drive home. It turned out he is a fairly close neighbor.
It also turned out to be about 45 minutes, as we agreed on pretty much EVERYTHING. This new friend was another Libertarian/Conservative, and you don't find that awful many.
The next day a guy who walked during lunch hour on a usual route tried to talk to me about the Trump sign, but I was on an important phone call, so I just waved. I was hoping to see him again, because it seemed rude, what I'd done. I saw him a week later, said hello from the porch, and we ended up talking for 20 minutes. He told me about the places in which one could vote early, which, as I already posted about, we did,
Besides some other thumbs up by passers by, both pedestrian and vehicular, a neighbor 2 doors down said she like the signs. Yet, my wife asked me how Trump could do well, when all we see is Biden or BLM signs on the yards near us (maybe one in 4 or 5 yards). It's because people are worried about not only having the signs stolen or vandalized, but about having other things vandalized. Run-over frisbees are the least of your worries.
You don't know how many Trump voters there are around, due to their keeping a low profile due to the Anacrcho-tyranny going on. I hope that's a general thing - no signs = Trump voters.
Tomorrow's pro-Trump post (or maybe 2) will be about the media.
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Telenovelas are Hell
Posted On: Friday - October 30th 2020 9:34AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Humor
I nearly-literally LOL'd after watching this one, embedded by an amused unz.com commenter. This may have to become a regular feature here - there are a ton of these 5-minute videos on youtube. I will warn you, that the high-class Spanish accent of this narrator is quite the turn-on. If she weren't engaged to the rich doctor ...
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Peak Constitutional Amendment - XXI
Posted On: Friday - October 30th 2020 9:11AM MST
In Topics: Economics Liberty/Libertarianism US Feral Government Morning Constitutional
(Continued from Amendment XI, Amendment XII, Amendment XIII, Amendment XIV, Amendment XV, Part 1 on Amendment XVI, Part 2 on Amendment XVI , Part 3 on Amendment XVI, Amendment XVII, Amendment XVIII, Part 1 on Amendment XIX, Part 2 on Amendment XIX, Part 3 on Amendment XIX, and Amendment XX)
Note: Section III, the last part, states the often-used 7-year deadline for ratification.
Here's the complete Amendment XXI in text form:
Section 1[My bolding, as the typewriters of 1933 might have had double-strike, but not real bolding. We are so advanced ...]
The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2
The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
Section 3
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Man, it's been 7 weeks since our last one of these posts. I WILL FINISH, DAMMIT! One can get awfully backed-up with, errr, stupidity these days. This will be a short post, regarding our favorite Constitutional Amendment since the first10 in the Bill of Rights. Amendment XXI is the only one that was created to reverse the power given to the US Feral Government by a previous Amendment, in this case Amendment XVIII, regarding the prohibition of the sale of alcohol.
Something I didn't know until just now, upon reading the interpretation section for Amendment XXI on our go-to site for all things US Constitution (here) is that this one alone was ratified via the convention process. That is, rather than 3/4 of the various States' legislatures passing ratification measures, Constitutional conventions were formed. (Could that even happen now, as disunited as this country is?) The interpretation writers have their explanation for this unique case:
Why did those who proposed the Twenty-First Amendment take the unprecedented step of calling for ratification by convention delegates rather than by legislators? The answer seems to be that though prohibition of alcohol had lost a great deal of popular support by the early 1930s, the political power of the temperance lobby remained intact in a great many states. Many state legislators and legislative leaders were likely to be unwilling to risk the lobby’s wrath. So political prudence pointed in the direction of ratifying conventions as a way of leaving gun-shy legislators with their eyes on re-election out of the process and “off the hook.”If we called for a Constitution Convention now, would Twitter block the invites due to "harassment" and "hate"?
Man, when I first read this headline (not in person, but in the picture!) I read it as "Roosevelt asks nation to all go to the bar or saloon", as in a general celebration. I was about to write "I guess he wasn't a complete asshole, after all." Alas, I read it again more carefully.
Besides the reasoning in the old joke that “after fourteen years with nothing to drink the American people got thirsty.”, the interpretation writers go nice and Libertarian with us on other reasons for this repeal:
More significantly, in all probability, is the judgment of a great many citizens that Prohibition had been a failed, if noble, experiment.The interpretation writers on this site have let me down before a few times, but they are different writers, so a mix of good and bad. I like these guys, Mr. Robert George and Mr. David Richards! I couldn't have said any of this better myself.
This is not to say that Prohibition had failed to reduce the consumption of alcohol or lower the alcoholism rate or ameliorate in some measure evils associated with drunkenness and alcohol addiction. Especially in the years immediately following Prohibition, the hopes of progressives and others who had supported ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment seemed well-founded. But soon evils on the other side of the ledger became apparent: The black market in alcohol quickly grew; and the inability or unwillingness of law enforcement agencies at every level to stop the illegal production, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors resulted in beverage alcohol being more or less easily available to anyone who wanted it, and at prices that ordinary working people could afford. Although the price of liquor, once it became illegal, shot way up in the period immediately following Prohibition, it soon fell dramatically. The Anti-Saloon League (founded in 1893) and its allies had shut down the saloon, only to have it replaced by the “speakeasy.”
What’s more, Prohibition had turned out to be a great boon to organized criminals, such as the notorious mobster Al Capone, who for their own reasons loved it as much as Frances Willard’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union did. Organized crime syndicates used profits from illegal liquor to corrupt police, resulting in non-enforcement of Prohibition (and other) laws in some cases and selective enforcement in others. The public was appalled.
Add to this the feeling that the widespread flouting of Prohibition laws was undermining respect for law in general and encouraging an attitude of contempt for rightful authority, and it is easy to see why support for repeal of Prohibition grew.
One loose end here is Section II. Really, why was this necessary? Amendment X of the Bill of Rights makes it clear that a right to regulate like this, barring, of course, the fixin'-to-be-defunct Amendment XXIII is left to the State or the people. The States always had this right, but I'd guess Section II here was written to appease those who wanted alcohol sales to still be greatly regulated. It caused lots of other Constitution-related litigation and not it a good way:
Litigation of Twenty-First Amendment issues has nearly always concerned the meaning of the Amendment’s second section, and usually the scope of state authority under it. Often questions arise concerning the impact of the second section of the Twenty-First Amendment on the power of Congress “to regulate commerce . . . among the several states . . . .” under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The courts have held that the Amendment means that the power of Congress to displace state regulatory policies is narrower with respect to alcohol than it is to other goods and services; but precisely how much narrower has not been fully established.Look at that (my-) bolded part. Where do you get the one from the other? See, that, and the 2nd paragraph in the excerpt, are why you just repeal the 18th, and just shut your cotton-pickin' mouth after that! My bolding!!
Other significant litigation has concerned the impact of the second section of the Twenty-First Amendment on the interpretation of other provisions of the Constitution, such as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (see Craig v. Boren (1976)) and the Freedom of Speech Clause of the First Amendment (see 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island (1996)).
Who says these things are forever? Even Ruth Ginsberg wasn't.
I'd call Amendment XXI a local maxima in Constitutional Amendment.
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Hunter Biden and Chinese Blackmail
Posted On: Thursday - October 29th 2020 9:05PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Trump China
Hunter Biden's first strike against him was that last name first name. I had no idea parents have been doing that for so long, as he, least by the picture up top, Hunter is no spring chicken. As Peak Stupidity wrote early on in a post titled I should have named him after a man of the cloth, we are just not fond of this naming style.
Plus, he's a drug snorting wheeler-dealer whose been taking advantage of his Dad's influence on American foreign policy for a living.
Really, I don't care who the Presidents' redneck brothers or estranged half-brothers in Africa are and what they do. Of all the past black sheep kinfolk of Presidents we've heard about, besides that Øb☭ma in Africa, a continent that is in no shape to influence anything, they've just been low-class Americans. This Hunter Biden, however, is a jet-setting international wheeler-dealear. That matters if his father becomes President.
The stuff Hunter Biden is into will matter because his consorting with foreign businessmen and government officials would make Joe Biden a target for blackmail and threats.
What I've heard from the Chinese channels of information is about the Biden son and Chinese underage girls. Mind you, I don't claim anything specific, as the videos I saw were not clear enough to conclude anything from, and I don't know how real they even were. This guy is just prone to trouble, and foreign powers could use that against a (perish the thought) President Biden. Joe Biden lost a 1 y/o daughter in a car wreck long ago, and his other son, Beau, to cancer in '15. He may do anything to keep his son from getting in trouble via embarrassment (blackmail) or from getting thrown into jail in China or somewhere (threats).
Peak Stupidity mentioned this before sometime early on in President Trump's term (we weren't blogging yet before the '16 election), but this is what is good about having a rich, flamboyant playboy like Donald Trump: We already knew that he's no saint. Yeah, he picks up trophy wives for a while at a time and that sort of thing. If the press showed us an important scoop about "OMG! Pictures show Trump cheated on his 2nd wife! " the biggest reaction out of anybody would be "so?" His playboy lifestyle, without a sociopathic personality that would entail really sick stuff hidden away, makes him mostly immune to blackmail. His wealth, and that he's not the typical politician, makes him immune to bribery. He is not immune to threats though. We have speculated on this before, in, for example, The Deep State vs. Donald Trump - remember Candidate Ross Perot?.
In the latest Fred Reed column A Vaporware Executive: An Attitude, Not a President (mostly a rant full of exaggerations and contradictions), one of his questions is, to paraphrase, "why would the Evangelicals vote for this known philanderer?" Mr. Reed really does know better. Americans are far beyond being able to judge a candidate by his proper conduct. The Gary Hart episode was long, long ago. Americans are just glad to see someone running who gives just the smallest damn about them. The Evangelicals support Trump because the fact that the country may continue for longer as the kind of place where they can even worship at all overrides the personal conduct of the one man. (Duh? Dig it, Fred?)
The stories about Hunter Biden are about more than just his personal conduct. I wouldn't care if it were all in America. This guy could end up putting a President Biden in the pocket of the Communist Party of China. That's just something to think about, when, or if you ever, get to hear the stories that Twitter has been blocking for weeks.
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We voted today. Please take the time!
Posted On: Wednesday - October 28th 2020 6:27PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24
As Peak Stupidity stated yesterday, we are more gung-ho about Trump than we have been in a long while. I figure that Peak Stupidity readers are aware enough politically to where you all will not really need any admonition or reminder, but what the heck. I'll write something every night for anyone new, through election eve.
My wife and I voted early, around noon today. The map below gives an idea of what the situation is in terms of voting fraud opportunity, State by State. However, I couldn't find a good current one - this one is 2 years old, and I know there have been very recent changes, such as in Pennsylvania. Those Soros-elected Secretaries-of-State gotta earn their money, you know...
In our State, the early voting requires no such explanation, as hinted at in the map. It's be a farce anyway, as once you get to big numbers (same as with absentee balloting), nobody is checking anything. The electronic "machines" we first used were just there to help one make up the ballot. They put the info. onto a card, which one could check. I don't think they wanted me in the place coaching my wife right at the booth, but she done good.*
Now, when one feeds the cards into a scanner machine, with a big bin to keep those cards, well, that's when one wonders. It does seem just as secure as the old way, so what can I say?
Other States, plus the mail-in voting in ours and others, are much more ripe for cheating. One of our favorite pundits, Mrs. Michell Malkin, had a couple of columns about what's already been seen. I can find only the one now - Who's Funding Shady Ballot Harvesting Schemes? What Is the "Center for Tech and Civic Life?"
Mr. Steve Sailer discussed the cheating by the Chicago machine, Mayor Daley presiding, way back in the 1960 Presidential election to put Illinois's many electoral votes in the Kennedy column. See . (Nixon would still have lost, BTW, as he lost Texas, due to the Socialist bastard with him on the ticket being from Texas.) As usual with Steve Sailer posts, there is some interesting discussion there, in this case about methods of cheating. The beauty, if you want to call it that, of the Daley cheating way back 70 years ago, was that they knew they could come up with the extra votes for Kennedy in Illinois somehow in Chicago, but they needed to know how many exactly. The news of the time reported over "the wire" that votes were in from all precincts but the ones Daley and his fraudsters worked with, and they gave the number Nixon was ahead by. That's all Daley needed.
Now, with the mail-in ballots "trickling in", it's worse. Votes will be even easier to come by, after the fact. If President Trump doesn't have a nice wide margin in the critical States, it's all over, four-leaf-clover.
* Except for her bugging me about the wearing of a face mask. They may or may not have had a sign up, but one guy didn't have one on, right inside. It'd have been he and I, but ... the wife ... didn't want her going in there pissed off at me... things could go wrong with the election process.
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