Stupidity

Are You a Useful Idiot?

Wayne — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:19:21 -0400

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=...

My husband got the funniest e-mail a while ago. It said: "Official Business order #64587216Z5FE456J9. Cash Bailouts are Finally going out. Please register for your Official Stimulus package here: http://--- The sooner you register, the sooner you will likely receive your Stimulus Package."

I mean, honestly – what idiot would fall for this?

Or how about this one. I answer the phone and hear: "HOOOONKKK … This is your captain speaking!" The voice tells me I can win a cruise to the Bahamas for answering "10 simple questions." I've never answered the questions, of course, because I have no interest in being a useful idiot.

Nearly as amusing was a survey I received seeking my consumer purchasing preferences for a variety of products. Do I use adult diapers, for instance, and if so which brand? This survey went on for pages and queried me on everything from my musical tastes to my grocery shopping habits and preferred medications. I thought it hilarious that anyone could be idiotic enough to answer.

Or how about this piece of merriment? Another survey wants to know my household income, my educational level, how I get to work, what type of house I live in, how much it's worth, when it was built, how it's heated, what insurance I have, what languages I speak, how many children I have and everyone's physical, mental and emotional condition.

Ha ha. That's gotta be the funniest one yet. I hear 3 million people received this one.

Oh, wait a minute. This was the 2009 American Community Survey, which supplements the U.S. census. And all the answers I wouldn't reveal to anyone, much less the government, are required by law. Isn't that nice?

Count me out.

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Police State in Gwinnett

Wayne — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:19:29 -0400

Gwinnett County Police practice "regulatory checkpoints" wherein they check your license* and registration*. They're using a SCOTUS-created loophole in the Fourth Amendment—there is no such loophole, regardless of what the SCOTUS says. That's just what we need: while the fedgov is busy destroying any semblance of individual rights, denying Natural Law, and trampling on the Constitution, local government chooses to destroy any semblance of individual rights, deny Natural Law, and trample on the Constitution. Thanks, jerks. I guess they'd rather be counted among the enemies of freedom than its defenders.

May God help anyone brave enough to assert his rights at such checkpoints. If history is any indicator, such patriots will likely be Tasered until they comply or die.

Today's "checkpoint" featured over 20 cops, cars, lights, bikes, the works. It was a large show of force. If anyone who was actually a criminal saw this, they'd simply veer off, go through a nearby neighborhood, turn around, etc. In other words, the tactic is utterly without value except—here comes the golden nugget!—if their goal is to assert their totalitarian authority over the general populace.

*The very concept of government licensing and government registration of anything flies in the face of Natural Law, violating God-given rights to property, among others. This means the very basis for the checkpoint, even if such a Constitutional loophole existed (it doesn't), is bogus.

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Too stupid for freedom

Wayne — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:18:42 -0400

If ever there was evidence that the people are too stupid to self-govern, the comments on this public poll are it. The cries for enslavement, this time in the medical industry, are deafening. I used to wonder how the ancient Israelites could be so colossally stupid as to revert to paganism just days into their hard-earned, long-awaited freedom and repeatedly thereafter in spite of overwhelming evidence. I still wonder*, but it's no longer just ancient history; it's a present horror.

*While I can make intellectual sense of it, I still can't seem to grok this level of stupidity.

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Aviation Security

Wayne — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:51:46 -0400

http://www.newsmax.com/us/us_airport_security...

The government has spent $42.3 billion on aviation security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to TSA.

An alternative—an actually Constitutional one!—would be allowing passengers to arm themselves. All the expense would be born by the private sector and voluntarily at that. Oh, yeah, and the security would actually work! I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Sept. 11 would not have happened if the people had not been illegally disarmed.

And here's another favorite:

The TSA has removed 60 puffer machines from airports since last summer. TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee said the machines are being removed on a case-by-case basis, and their removal does not create any security gaps.

If these puffer machines' removal does not create any security gaps, it means they added no security value when present. So which is it, Big Brother? Did you waste "more than $6 million" of our money on machines that added no security? Or do you now have security gaps? You can't have it both ways. Maybe it goes like this: they wasted $6 million on machines that don't work properly, and there are no security gaps because there is no security to speak of. The lawless have no problem bypassing TSA's laughable security. Only the lawful are victimized by it.

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Just Here For Jobs

Wayne — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:36:14 -0400

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article...

One of the nine people charged in the kidnapping and stabbing death of a 15-year-old boy in Montgomery County, Md., is an illegal immigrant who escaped a prison in El Salvador where he was jailed for homicide and gun trafficking, according to the Montgomery County Police Department.

For every "illegal immigrant" (foreign invader) here supposedly for employment, there's another here for crime. Of course, the stupid leftists (pardon the redundancy) forget that the "just for jobs" ones are already criminals because they failed to use the front door.

All you fools who think there's a substantive difference between the two Parties, tell me this: where's your alternate choice when both factions treasonously support illegal immigration?

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They still don't get it

Dave — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:29:43 -0400

In a pair of columns (here and here), Ashley Herzog describes a very interesting test that was presented to college students by the Young America's Foundation (yaf.org). They asked students what they thought of a policy that would distribute grades more evenly, taking points earned by strong students and giving them to other students that hadn't done as well. The response from the college students was near-universal opposition, even to the point of disbelief.

Herzog, herself a college student, then points out that while professors may expound on the virtues of socialism, that's not how they run their classrooms. Most, in fact, are rather pointed about the necessity to work and produce results in order to earn a good grade. Herzog challenges them to announce a grade redistribution scheme on the first day of class:

See how many students continue to show up to your pompously boring lectures about how America is a colonialist oppressor. See how many complete the assigned readings or study for tests. You’ll either have to force students to do those things—just as the Soviets had to force people to work on disastrously inefficient “collective farms”—or you’ll have to watch as your class deteriorates due to lack of productivity.

But, as the students themselves say, "Earning money is not the same as earning grades." Really? How? I'd like to ask a few questions of those who took YAF's test: Why bother to get good grades if the money you earn at your high-paying job is just going to someone who didn't do as well in college, or who didn't go to college at all? Are you working hard in college for yourself, or for the privilege of working later on for someone else? If the latter, what's the problem with giving up part of your grades now? Anybody? Come on, hands in the air, people!

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Twits

Wayne — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:24:37 -0400

As if Facebook and MySpace weren't stupid enough, enter Twitter.

Not surprisingly, the California-spawned Twitter phenomenon is about "me." Not me personally, but about members of the Facebook/MySpace generation, to whom nothing in life is more interesting, more precious, more important than their every action and their every thought. (As Groucho Marx said, "I've talked enough about me. Tell me, what do you think about me?")
...
It is difficult to imagine any person of real accomplishment wasting his time on such nonsense, but among those who must stay in touch with their imagined audiences, each tweet, whether or not it reaches the maximum 140 characters, is a worthy record of self. Each mini-message makes them part of a greater whole – like members of an ant colony.
...
If accounts about the prevalence of Twitter are to be credited, we must conclude there is a mass of people who not only have lost the capacity to be bored, but also the inclination to grapple with the important. Millions of Americans can be captivated by anything from a shopping excursion to a belch, but they can't focus on anything as complex as the economics of the auto industry or the tensions of the Middle East.

The more cynical may ask if tweeting friends truly are enthralled by one's latest banality, or if they are just feigning interest, so the sender also will pretend to care about the minutiae of their existence. If so, the energy expended in dissimulation will cause matters of actual consequence gradually to vanish from public concern, the trivial will come to dominate our discourse and rhetoric will replace reason in our politics.

Wait a minute. We're already there.

I must say, the name is fitting. Twitters are indeed twits.

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Over My Dead Body

Wayne — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:34:48 -0400

A dozen FBI agents black-bag a teenager in the middle of the night because he was alleged to be a terrorist, thanks to the PATRIOT Act. Supposedly, it was a bomb threat issued via a hijacked IP address erroneously traced to the boy's computer (he wasn't even home during the alleged event). Was he so much of a threat to "national security" (there's a euphemism!) that he had to be kidnapped in the middle of the night? I wonder how many thousands of real terrorists calmly walked across the Mexican border while federal resources were dedicated to chasing ghosts.

What a bunch of cowards! They sent 12 armed storm troopers to break into a home at night to kidnap an innocent boy from an unarmed widow. There was a time when these 12 "men" would have been ashamed to be associated with such cowardice, let alone demonstrate their complete lack of testicles—to say nothing of such willful violation of the supreme law of this land. Let's call these jackbooted thugs what they really are: eunuchs. They're mindless, sackless slaves to an evil master with no conscience.

The mother said, "We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution."

"I was terrified," Lundeby's mother said. "There were guns, and I don't allow guns around my children. I don't believe in guns."

And there is her mistake. She was not equipped to defend her son. Had she attempted to defend him with due force, even at the cost of her own life, she'd have countless thousands (millions?) of patriots rallying against the evil storm troopers who violated their oath to defend the Constitution.

I expect events like this will eventually wake sleeping patriots. They will begin readying themselves for civil war. I can only guess this is what the fedgov ultimately wants. A civil war will bring out into the open tyranny's enemies. With the gross disparity of power (in violation of the intent of the Second Amendment), it's all but assured that the true patriots will be slaughtered in this civil war. This will leave the fedgov little to no opposition as it transforms the land of the free into Oceania.

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Dinosaurs' Demise

Wayne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:06:06 -0400

Naturalists—those religious fanatics who invent all kinds of wacky "theories" in futile attempts to deny the historical truth recorded in the Bible—have again had their stupidity flaunted before the world. The asteroid-killed-the-dinosaurs fantasy has again failed to pan out. The impact crater in Mexico is predating the mass extinction by a long time. (Of course, their methods for measuring geologic time scales are totally screwed up, but that's another matter.)

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The police really are stupid

Wayne — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:30:54 -0400

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2009/04/police-rea...
Old article about the same guy:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_56314.ht...

The candidate scored an IQ of about 125. Best case, with a standard deviation of 15 (newsmen are generally too stupid to know that an IQ number isn't too meaningful without knowing the SD assumed), it means this guy had less than a +2σ IQ—nothing to write home about—and yet he was "too smart". My theory is that the police prefer slow candidates because of their criminal tendencies. A smart cop might see the ethical problems and raise a red flag from within their ranks. Of course, I think most judges aren't terribly bright, either, so it's no wonder they tend to protect corrupt governmental systems.

I'm glad there are a few who are principled enough to do their jobs lawfully. (Is this really asking too much? Seemingly so.) However, I fear these are far too few to make much of a difference when it will really matter.

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