Archive for the 'Idiocy' Category

Silvio Berlusconi, best known for fascism, lechery, corruption, and uttering idiotic, self-pitying remarks, has really outdone himself this time. Responding to the news that an Italian court ruled that he is not immune from prosecution, Berlusconi declared himself the most persecuted person “in the entire history of the world“:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has described himself as the most persecuted person “in the entire history of the world”.
Mr Berlusconi also said he was “the best prime minister we can find today”.

In an impassioned statement, he then mistakenly told reporters he had spent millions of euros on “judges”, before correcting himself to say “lawyers”. Mr Berlusconi was speaking two days after Italy’s top court lifted a law granting him immunity while in office. Correspondents say the Constitutional Court’s ruling means the 73-year-old billionaire will probably have to face a number of trials for corruption and bribery within months.

If it weren’t for Mussolini, Berlusconi would be the worst Italian head of state since Caligula.

Proof that Fox News viewers are hopelessly uninfromed

Here’s the latest idiotic hoax that Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beckkk, and most of the wingnuttosphere has fallen for: black Christians praying to Obama.

Seriously, how delusional would you have to be taken in by that story?

Given America’s school dropout rate, especially among African-American males (less than half graduate from high school), you’d think that everyone would be urging President Obama to use his position as the nation’s first African-American president to urge students to stay in school.

Now the President is doing just that, offering a short speech on the importance of education to be broadcast to schools across the nation. But instead of getting behind him, a significant fraction of Americans are attacking Obama’s efforts. That’s right: they’re attacking the president for telling students that they ought to stay in school and take their education seriously. Not surprisingly, Michelle Malkin is among the most hysterical of the critics:

Obama’s classroom campaign: No junior lobbyist left behind

Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables, diagramming sentences, or learning something concrete, America’s kids will be lectured about the importance of learning. And then the schoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will be exhorted to Do Something — other than sit in their seats and receive academic instruction, that is.

[Apparently, Malkin thinks that students are more likely to be motivated by doing an extra multiplication table than by watching a 5 minute speech by the President of the United States. I guess she’s as stupid as she is crazy.]

The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teacher’s unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events.

[See if you can follow the logic here: if some activists have enlisted children in political activities, the president shouldn’t address students on the importance of staying in schools. And if you’re wondering why you didn’t hear about any of the events Malkin describes, it’s because they were all voluntary activities for which the children received parental consent.]

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Really, Kathie Lee? You’re really that offended about a doll that breast feeds? Here’s the reality of the situation: toys like this are for little girls whose mothers have recently given birth. The girls see their mothers doing something, and they want to do the same thing. That’s why toy makers sell little stoves, little brooms, and little dolls with little baby strollers. If they didn’t sell nursing dolls, the girls would just pretend to breast feed non-nursing dolls.

Remember those little dolls that would wet their diapers after they “drank” from a bottle? I don’t remember Kathie Lee getting offended about those. I can’t imagine what her problem is with dolls that breast feed instead of drinking from a bottle.

The new “cash for klunkers” program helps address three immediate problems, and in a way that costs relatively little. So naturally congressional Republicans and their apologists in the media are against the program.

Under the program, people can turn in their old gas-hogging, pollution-spewing cars for more efficient new cars. This helps us reduce greenhouse gas production and energy dependence while stimulating new car sales. It’s a step in the right direction in terms of global warming, improving America’s foreign policy position, and stimulating the economy. And the initial cost was just $1 billion. The program became so popular that Obama and his congressional allies are now asking for another $2 billion to extend the program through November.

The results have been impressive. Consumers have rushed to trade in their inefficient old vehicles and purchase more environmentally friendly new vehicles. They’ve been telling reporters that the incentive came at a perfect time, enabling them to stretch their budgets and invest in new cars that they otherwise couldn’t afford. And dealers across the country say that the program gave them a boost in sales at a critical time.

Predictably, all this success has inspired the Party of No to rise up in opposition:

The clunkers program, originally funded for $1 billion, faces strong headwinds from conservatives who view it as another taxpayer bailout for the auto industry.

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, suggested lawmakers “take a time-out” so they could receive more details about the program before providing more money. “I’m concerned that somebody’s going to have to pay for this, and $4,500 for everybody that wants to take advantage of this program is a lot of money.”

“We were told this program would last for several months,” Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said. “It ran out of money in a week, prompting the House to rush a $2 billion extension before anybody even had time to figure out what happened to the first billion.”

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Yesterday, I asked if Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was the stupidest man on the planet, and implied that he is. But it’s obvious that Bill O’Reilly is even more stupid:

In my defense, I have to say that this clip confirms what I said about the Republicans’ math problem.

The folks at Fox News, who have been telling us for almost a decade that Iraq is the central front of the War on Terror, can’t even place the country on a map.

Note, though, that Fox isn’t the only news outlet where ignorance reigns when it comes to the Middle East. Just before the 2004 election, while President Bush was busy eking out a narrow victory by riding a wave of fear and loathing of Muslims, Newsweek published a photo of Iranian tanks massing “at the border with Israel“. The photo and caption served as a non-sequitur illustration of a story about Israel spying on the United States.

And people wonder how why Americans gave a second term to the Worst President Ever.

(cross posted at This Old Brit)

Sen. John Cornyn

From Talking Points Memo:

Sen. John Cornyn’s office has apologized for his statement last week that America needs the F-22 fighter plane in order to deal with the national security threat from India — which is an ally of the United States — saying he misspoke.

“Senator Cornyn misspoke saying ‘India’ when he meant to say ‘China,’” Cornyn’s spokesman said in a statement to the Times of India.

It’s hard to imagine the US getting into a war with China at any time in the next 10 years, and even harder to see the F-22 providing any significant advantage for the United States. The fact is, the US would have no trouble establishing air support in the event of a war with China, using only currently available aircraft. Any way you slice it, Cornyn’s correction is as stupid as the original statement.

This is what happens when Republicans try to do math

Why do wingnuts find it so hard to figure out what numbers mean, and how to use them effectively to describe the world? Here’s a few examples of the sort of mathematical failures that I’m talking about:

Jonathan Schwarz dismantles Mitch Albom:

Albom

In explaining why it was OK to sock a new 5.4% tax on the highest earners in this country — to pay for health care reform — President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said this:

“The president believes that the richest 1% of this country has had a pretty good run of it for many, many, many years.”

Ah. So that’s it. The old “You’ve had it good enough for long enough” policy. That’s why a family earning a million dollars a year should now cough up $54,000 of that — in addition to all the other taxes it pays…

Schwarz

Someone making $1,000,000 per year wouldn’t pay $54,000 more in taxes under this bill. They’d pay $9,000.

That’s because the 5.4% surcharge would only apply to someone’s income over $1,000,000. Your tax bill wouldn’t suddenly go up by $54,000 if one year you made $1,000,000 instead of $999,999.

Here’s how the proposed surcharge would actually work. There would be:

• an additional 1% tax on income between $350,000 and $500,000. Thus, if someone makes $500,000 per year, they would pay an extra 1% of $150,000, or $1,500.

• an additional 1.5% tax on income between $500,000 and $1,000,000. Thus, if someone makes $1,000,000 per year, they would pay an extra 1.5% of $500,000, or $7,500.

That’s $9,000 more in taxes ($1,500 + $7,500), or 0.9%.

THE BEST PART: The best part is, Mitch Albom has a degree from the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism plus an MBA from Columbia’s Graduate School of Business.

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From the Cape Cod Times:

Voters narrowly approved one of four zoning amendments late Tuesday night at the annual town meeting. But town officials were still looking at the exact vote count on that article yesterday.

In a vote of 136 to 70, voters passed a new time limit on how quickly a cottage colony, cabin colony, motel or hotel can be converted to condominiums. The new limit requires that those properties be in operation for three years before being converted to condominiums.

The exact count of the vote — 136 to 70 —had town officials hitting their calculators yesterday. The zoning measure needed a two-thirds vote to pass. A calculation by town accountant Trudy Brazil indicated that 136 votes are two-thirds of 206 total votes, said Town Clerk Cynthia Slade.

Brazil said she used the calculation of .66 multiplied by 206 to obtain the number.

But using .6666 — a more accurate version of two-thirds — the affirmative vote needed to be 137 instead of 136, according to an anonymous caller to town hall and to the Times.

My favorite part of this story is the fact that the local newspaper refuses to take a firm position as to whether or not 136 is 2/3 of 206, as if the matter were subject to interpretation.

As Albert Einstein demonstrates in the illustration above, 2/3 of 206 is 137.33333…, so if the law doesn’t give the formula to be used, then either 137 or 138 votes are needed to pass the measure, depending on the actual wording of the law.