Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Why Would Anybody Publicly Claim That They Believed a Political Promise

Think about the most embarrassing thing to which you’ve ever publicly admitted. Now breathe a sigh of relief because no matter how embarrassing it was, it wasn’t this embarrassing:

The founder and owner of CustomMousePad.com, Jennie Stewart, came forward yesterday with what she believed was a promise from a Republican congressman to save net neutrality. Last month, Stewart alleges that she was assured by Rep. Don Young (R-AK) that he would sign the Democrat-led discharge petition to force a vote in the House, which would reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s December vote to revoke the rules.

Why would anybody publicly claim that they believed a political promise? I have a hard time believing that there is a single person above the age of six who isn’t aware that politicians lie for a living and that everything they say should be treated as total malarkey. What really blows my mind though is that anybody published this story as if it were news. The only time a political promise is newsworthy is when it is kept.

Government Creates the Problems It Solves

Here’s a familiar story. A government body implements a new policy that causes major hardships for a large number of people then swoops in to “fix” the problem. That’s what’s happening here:

The Trump administration plans to offer up to $12 billion in aid to farmers hit by tariffs on their goods, an emergency bailout intended to ease the pain caused by Trump’s escalating trade war in key electoral states, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue told reporters Tuesday.

First the government created the problem by implementing tariffs then it offered to redistribute some wealth to those hurt by the tariffs. Of course the redistributed wealth has to come from somewhere, which means another problem will be created by the government that it will then claim to solve.

Foreigners Influencing Elections

Anybody who has been paying attention to the news is aware that there is a lot of evidence that foreigners are influencing our elections! Before those of your who have assigned yourself to the left of the binary political spectrum jump up for joy thinking that I’m finally going to lambast Russia for defiling our most holy of traditions, I’m not talking about Russia. It’s actually time for those who have assigned themselves to the right of the political spectrum to jump up for joy because I’m going to talk about illegal immigrants being allowed to vote in a domestic election:

San Francisco began registering non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants, to register to vote Monday in the November election for the city school board, reported The San Francisco Chronicle.

The move follows passage of a 2016 ballot measure by San Francisco voters opening school elections to non-citizens who are over the age of 18, city residents and have children under age 19, reported the publication.

Just kidding, I’m not really going to talk about this either. Instead I’m going to use this as a launchpad for mocking both of you!

Both sides are flipping their shit over foreigners influencing domestic elections… if they believe those foreigners are interfering with their agenda. Those who have assigned themselves to the right generally take aim at those who crossed the imaginary line separating the United States from the rest of the world. They believe that these line crossers only vote for people on the left side of the political spectrum. Meanwhile, they are entirely fine with the possibility of Russia influencing domestic elections because they believe that Russia is manipulating elections in a way that will ensure politicians on the right of the political spectrum will win. People who have assigned themselves to the left believe the reverse. They want line crossers to vote because they believe that they will vote for candidates on the left and they don’t want Russia to influence elections because they believe it will work for candidates on the right.

If both sides would be honest and admit that they don’t care about the issue of foreigners influencing domestic elections but only care about forwarding their agendas, they wouldn’t be a bunch of hypocrites.

I Bet Spain Hears That from All of the Subs

I enjoy reading about engineering SNAFUs, which is why this story amused me so much:

An attempt to deploy a new submarine for Spain’s navy has run aground again, after it emerged it cannot fit in its dock, Spanish media report.

The S-80 boat was redesigned at great expense after an earlier mistake meant it had problems floating, and it was lengthened to correct the issue.

In the immortal words of Billy Mays, but wait, there’s more!

Excess weight of 75 – 100 tons has been added to the sub during construction and the current design is not able to resurface after diving. A former Spanish official says the problem can be traced to a miscalculation — someone apparently put a decimal point in the wrong place or by the addition of new technologic devices.

Billions of dollars flushed down the toilet because nobody bothered to double check the math. That ranks right up there with the old National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) SNAFU that resulted in a Mars probe crashing because an engineer failed to properly convert English to metric units.

The Last Time the United States and Russia Were Friendly

A lot of Democrats are furious that the United States and Russia may be becoming friendlier towards each other. I prefer peace over war so my initial reaction to any prospect of peace is usually positive. However, after giving it some thought, I can see why people are angry at the prospect of the United States and Russia developing a friendship.

Every time the two countries have become friends in the last 100 years millions of Jews died and two Japanese cities were nuked.

Whoopsie

There are some jobs that are so critical that many people believe they must be performed by government agents. One of those jobs is protecting radioactive material. But what happens when you give an important job to an organization that historically sucks at everything? Exactly what you expect:

Two workers from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory lost an undisclosed amount of plutonium and cesium from a rental car parked overnight in a San Antonio, Texas, hotel parking lot in a neighborhood known for car break-ins and other crimes, according to an article published Monday by the Center for Public Integrity.

The loss of the highly radioactive material occurred in March 2017 and was discovered when the two workers awoke the next morning to find the window of their Ford Expedition had been smashed. Missing were radiation detectors and small samples of plutonium and cesium used to calibrate them.

The best part? This isn’t the first time government agents have lost plutonium:

The missing plutonium and cesium join the ever-growing amount of MUF—short for material unaccounted for—that has resulted from thefts or losses over the years. In 2009, the Energy Department’s inspector general took account of radioactive materials the military loaned to US academic researchers, government agencies, or commercial firms. The conclusion: despite being listed until 2004 as securely stored, one pound of plutonium and 45 pounds of highly enriched uranium were missing.

Who needs a uranium enrichment program when you can just take what the United States has already produced?

This news shouldn’t surprise anybody. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has a history of losing guns, the Pentagon has a history of losing money, and the Department of Health and Human Service has a history of losing children. The federal government flat out sucks at keeping track of anything left in its care.

How Tariffs Work

People who subscribe to mercantilism tend to favor internal trading over external trading. If external trading is to occur, they prefer that their nation only export goods while the other nations of the world only import goods. But that ideal is difficult to realize because people in one nation are often interested in the goods and services provided by people of other nations and that interest leads to mutual trade. How can a mercantilist thwart this mutual trade? By imposing artificial barriers on international economic activity. While there are many such barriers that can be raised, the most popular barrier today is the tariff. The Mercantilists imagine that implementing tariffs means that its people will develop a preference for domestic products over foreign products while foreigners will still prefer importing the goods of their nation. Nobody likes an unfair deal so in actuality all that happens is that the nation implementing the tariffs is bypassed:

The European Union and Japan have signed one of the world’s biggest free trade deals, covering nearly a third of the world’s GDP and 600 million people.

One of the biggest EU exports to Japan is dairy goods, while cars are one of Japan’s biggest exports.

The move contrasts sharply with actions by the US Trump administration, which has introduced steep import tariffs.

If the United States won’t play fair, then it won’t get to play at all.

The current administration is playing a stupid game. It’s trying to develop domestic economic activity by artificially raising the price of imported goods even though the United States doesn’t have the experience or capacity to manufacture many imported goods on a scale that can satisfy demands. The result of this game is that consumers in the United States will be forced to pay more for their goods while the rest of the world bypasses the United States.

Fairness

“It’s not fair that I have to spend eight hours a day at a job I hate just to survive!”

“It’s not fair that my job at McDonald’s doesn’t pay enough for me to afford a two bedroom apartment all by myself!”

“It’s not fair that the CEO of the company I work for is a millionaire when I only pull in $30,000 a year!”

These are all common complaints made by people who are demanding that the government give them free shit (which is a euphemism for demanding that the government take shit from other people to give to them). When I hear such complains, I can’t help by acknowledge that we live in an indifferent universe that hosts an unfathomable number of things that could kill any one of us in less than a heartbeat for no other reason than because we, entirely unaware of what the immediate future held, chose to occupy a very specific space at a very specific time.

Knowing this I find people who whine about things being unfair rather obtuse.

Sometimes I Swear That the Universe Is Sentient

I’m generally of the opinion that the universe itself is insentient. However, once in a while sometime happens that causes me to wonder if the universe is actually sentient. For example, when I see a quote like, “Life isn’t about responsibilities, tough decisions and hard work, it’s about feeling bliss and living in the moment,” in a story like this:

Three members of a YouTube travel blogging collective have died after falling over a waterfall in Canada.

Ryker Gamble, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper were part of High On Life, who post videos of their travel adventures.

The quote I mentioned? It was from one of the people who died after plunging over that waterfall:

In one of his last Instagram posts, Gamble, spoke about the things we can all learn from “our younger selves”.

He wrote: “Life isn’t about responsibilities, tough decisions and hard work, it’s about feeling bliss and living in the moment.”

I swear that the universe saw that statement and said to itself, “I have to teach this pile of carbon and others like it how wrong this is.”

You may not think that life is about responsibilities but if you fail to be responsible, you will very likely end up fall off of your mortal coil sooner than you anticipated.