Because stupid is easy to understand

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I am reading a book which is a collection of short news items along the Dumb Crook News. The book does include plenty of dumb crook news, but also contains short quotes from the legendary politician Dan Quayle.

Quayle may indeed be an idiot, as evidenced by the sheer number of malapropisms he uttered and the fact he served in Congress. This, however, is belied by this: Quayle joined "Cerberus Capital Management, a multi-billion dollar private equity firm, in 1999 and is chairman of the company's Global Investments division. As chairman of the international advisory board of Cerberus Capital Management, he recruited former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, who would have been installed as chairman if Cerberus had successfully acquired Air Canada" among other high profile jobs.

This got me to thinking. Every time Quayle uttered one of his infamous statements, he was headline news all over the world.

Maybe Quayle is a lot smarter than people give him credit for being.

Attacked for "cheesy grits" statement.

Think about it.

By uttering a seriously stupid statement, Quayle put himself and his apparent idiocy into the media, dominating it for several days.

Following me yet?

Ok, a hypothetical - Say I lose my mind and decide to run for office. You can bet I'll have a load of policies and plans which some people are going to hate, especially the media.

When it comes time to introduce one of these concepts, I'll get in front of a bunch of reporters and do something idiotic and introduce the policy. Which do you think is going to dominate the news?

Are you with me?

Try this one: Which is easier to wrap your brain around - The Fed's monetary policy or politician Todd Akin talking about "legitimate rape." OK, which one makes you more upset?

And who's zoomin' who? as Aretha once asked

Which one is really, truly and genuinely going to have significant and long-lasting impacts on your life?

Are you with me now?

Politicians are masters of diversionary tactics. I'm wondering if the very best ones are the ones we think are the most stupid. I'm wondering if the ones we think are the most stupid are the very ones we need to watch for reasons entirely opposite to what the majority of people believe.

It appears the great majority of people prefer ridicule to comprehension. Because, stupid is easy to understand.

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that

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Crost my FB newsfeed today came this image:

Wellllll, it ain't exactly that simple.

I give you these real life examples:

Some time back I was talking with a community leader. The subject of jobs came up and I mentioned how a then-new industry in town had gone to just about an all-Hispanic workforce for the floor (i.e. the heavy lifting jobs). This plant had opened and hired all local and US natives, the vast majority being natives of this county.

Within six months, the only US natives still employed at the plant were upper management. The locals had mostly quit, a few were fired. Why?

The local folks came in late, left early, didn't bother to show up at all some days and complained vigorously about actually having to work.

I mentioned this to the community leader. He said he understood this, accepted it and felt it was right.

WTF?

He explained to me the people do not want and will not take factory floor jobs. They want (and presumably deserve) inside jobs in the air conditioning.

I suggested these people then need to pay their dues working the line before they can get promoted.

No, he said. We're not willing to work that way.

WTF?

Some of these folks now on the line at this local factory are making more than $30K a year, which is awesome pay in one of the poorest counties in Georgia.

And this one - http://growinggeorgia.com/news/2011/08/probationers-to-help-fill-south-georgia-farm-jobs-again-in-fall/. Most of the probationers didn't make it through the summer either. All their talk about wanting a job fell flat when they actually had to work. I could not find the link, but I recall reading a story of a news crew who shadowed probationers on a farm in Sumter County. Only one was still working after lunch.

The others complained vigorously, had to take smoke breaks, answer cell phones and so on.

OK, so both these stories deal with manual labor, not skilled labor. The central point remains-

Businesses which say they cannot find "workers with the necessary skills" aren't just complaining about the lack of people with training and education. They are complaining about people who think every job needs to come with Silicon Valley perks like free cappucinos, skateboarding down the halls, couches to lounge on and so forth. We have a generation of people who view work as playground, not a place to get busy and start being productive.

That is the real problem. You may disagree. if you do, get out and talk to the people who run business and industry. Ask them about workplace ethics.

Like Herman Cain or not, this man is an example of the kind of people this nation was, to some degree is, and needs to be. Until people get the idea that hard work is necessary, Mr. Krugman et al and going to continue to suffer from delusions of entitlement.

Lemmings are smarter than that

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Lemmings don't really plunge en mass off cliffs into the water to drown. They, unlike people, are smarter than that.

People are quite willing to follow the leader into a mass suicide. Blind, unswerving and fanatical devotion is nothing much new. Of recent times consider Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, Barack Obama.

(Aside - Ye presidential supporters and haters of Bush, please list for me 5 policies started by Bush which were not continued by the current president. Yeah. )

Historically, the record of humanity is packed with people who are willing to plunge off a cliff in "support" of a leader.

Most animals don't act that way. Some cetaceans, for reasons we don't understand, do. I suspect they are Reboobicans or Damnocrats.

The looming plunge du jour is the Fiscal Cliff which has some people worried. Not me. Not in the slightest.

In the first place, this "fiscal cliff" is an artificial creation of Congress. No action by a legislative body is permanent except for a decision to disband.

In other words, the "fiscal cliff" was created by Congress. It can be magically dispelled, negated, vanished, deleted, postponed or otherwise removed by an Act of Congress.

I say magically and I mean it. It is magic.

You are welcome to disagree. I ask you to explain it then.

Your explanation must eventually come down to one simple fact. Congress created this situation. Congress can decide to fix the situation.

You may say that is not magic. I disagree.

This how the fed works

The convolutions, contortions and distortions of Congress cannot be explained completely, fully and totally. Cannot. You can get "experts" in any field to discuss Congress and get diametrically opposing views. They can even use math to prove their points.

Congress conducts mysterious ceremonies with secretive rites and lots of invocations and WHOA! Stuff happens.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I agree. But with Congress, there ain't no technology involved. It's nothing more than a group of people in an arcane ritual after which things happen.

Unless Hari Seldon steps out of hiding, I will continue to insist it is magic. But even Hari had to rely on the paranormal eventually.

So there is no fiscal cliff looming. It is an illusion created by magicians to divert American attention from the real issues at hand. It can be dispelled by the magic of Congress or by anyone who's really willing to look through the holographic projection.

The problem is Americans prefer illusions. This "fiscal cliff" is going to be used as an excuse to continue this road to perdition which we are rightly zooming down in our Chinese-made grass-woven carrying apparatus and the vast majority of people are gonna buy it.

I'll bet you 80 percent of the nation cannot remember the last "fiscal cliff" of a few years ago and how the nation got through that. Three years from now, this bit of magic will be forgotten as well.

Having traveled recently to Washington State and back via planes, I went through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening twice.

Woohoo! TSA porn!

I was not impressed. But then I generally am not positively impressed by the things the federal government does. Negative impressed every time I read about what the federal government does, yes.

Flight out, I went through the full body screener. It dinged. Of course.

I stood in front of a TSA agent who eyeballed me from a foot away. Never laid a hand on me. He passed me right through after I took my hat off and showed him the inside of it.

The tote bag I carried went through a second time after taking the Kindle out. Zipped right through.

Coming back, it went right through the first time.

Coming back the full body screener was shut down. As I prepared to step through the metal detector, I told an agent "It's gonna ding."

It did.

He asked me if I had any metal implants. I don't. He suggested I take my suspenders off and try it again.

I took my galluses off and they went through the X-ray machine. I went through the detector without a hitch.

We had a fist-bump (am not kidding) of celebration when I passed this time.

Frankly, I go through tighter security (and looser) getting into the prison where I preach.

On the flight out, being me, I set about figuring out a few things.

I peg a 95 percent chance I can get a working gun into the cabin of a commercial airliner if I'm working by myself. Chances to 97-98 percent with an assistance. Chance of successfully getting a gun onto a plane with three people, so close to 100 percent as makes no never mind.

I also figured out how to get a knife on board.

National Remove Your Rights Agency, rather

I note I did not take a gun or a knife on the plane when Jesse & I went to Washington. I shipped 'em out west UPS and shipped 'em back FedEx.

The problem is the security protocols were created by man. Anything a man creates, man can finagle, dodge, get around or otherwise defeat. There can be no absolute security as long as a person has freedom of mind and to a lesser extent, freedom of the body. The Matrix movies come to mind here. But that's a whole 'nother subject.

Simple fact is, I betcha I can get a gun on a plane. The more people I have helping the higher the rate of success gets. Given a dozen or more people working with me, there's no chance I could not get a gun on a plane.

And that's all the details yer gonna get from me about this.

I do add on the flight from Atlanta to Minneapolis, I did not give into the urge to do a Freddie Mercury impress and sing "I don't wanna die." But I seriously wanted to.

A few words about TSA screenings...

Having traveled recently to Washington State and back via plane, I went through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening twice.

Woohoo! TSA porn!

I was not impressed. But then I generally am not positively impressed by the things the federal government does. Negative impressed every time I read about what the federal government does, yes.

Flight out, I went through the full body screener. It dinged. Of course.

I stood in front of a TSA agent who eyeballed me from a foot away. Never laid a hand on me. He passed me right through after I took my hat off and showed him the inside of it.

The tote bag I carried went through a second time after taking the tablet device out. Zipped right through.

Coming back, it went right through the first time.

Coming back the full body screener was shut down. As I prepared to step through the metal detector, I told an agent "It's gonna ding."

It did.

He asked me if I had any metal implants. I don't. He suggested I take my suspenders off and try it again.

I took my galluses off and they went through the X-ray machine. I went through the detector without a hitch.

Frankly, I go through tighter security (and looser) getting into the prison where I preach.

On the flight out, being me, I set about figuring out a few things.

I peg a 95 percent chance I can get a working gun into the cabin of a commercial airliner if I'm working by myself. Chances to 97-98 percent with an assistance. Chance of successfully getting a gun onto a plan with three people, so close to 100 percent as makes no never mind.

I also figured out how to get a knife on board.

National Remove Your Rights Agency, rather

I note I did not take a gun or a knife on the plane when Jesse & I went to Washington. I shipped 'em out west UPS and shipped 'em back FedEx.

The problem is the security protocols were created by man. Anything a man creates, man can finagle, dodge, get around or otherwise defeat. There can be no absolute security as long as a person has freedom of mind and to a lesser extent, freedom of the body. The Matrix movies come to mind here. But that's a whole 'nother subject.

Simple fact is, I betcha I can get a gun on a plane. The more people I have helping the higher the rate of success gets. Given a dozen or more people working with me, there's no chance I could not get a gun on a plane.

And that's all the details yer gonna get from me about this.