Dan Quayle Quotes

O'Neill: Stupid is as stupid does

Their irritation is understandable. Nobody likes to be told they might be a little dim, especially people who take offense at having pointed out to them examples of just how dim they can be.

Not everyone on the left wing of the political spectrum is smart, of course, and not everyone on the right is stupid. Generalizations are always a dicey proposition. Still, any fair-minded assessment leads to the conclusion that right wingers are likely to accept a high degree of illogic and outright stupidity if it's offered by politicians they support. Right wingers were not put off by the stupid things George W. Bush said on a daily basis, nor are they bothered by the most obvious contradictions.

When Dick Cheney said "deficits don't matter" back when the Bush administration was beginning to rack up big debt, the right wingers all nodded in agreement as the deficits began to skyrocket, what with tax cuts for the rich, and two wars funded on credit from the Chinese. Nope, deficits didn't matter then, but now that they're being told to think differently by the people who do their thinking for them, the right wingers are now sure that deficits are even more important than maintaining the full faith and credit of the United States. That seems kind of stupid to me, and even unpatriotic. It is surely dangerous, but then dumb ideas are often dangerous.

And, except for stupidity, how do you explain the characters they keep throwing up as their heroes? Locally, the right wing continues to champion guys like Doug LaMalfa, Dan Logue, and the ever-popular but none-too-bright Wally Herger. Just recently, LaMalfa was quoted in The Sacramento Bee making the kind of "joke" right wingers love to chuckle over. "Global warming made me freeze in my home yesterday," LaMalfa said.

Right wingers deny climate-change science because they don't want any regulation on industrial polluters, so they spread the idea that if you ever have to put on a sweater, then that's proof positive that it ain't getting any warmer on this planet. Lots of people will buy such foolishness because-and let's say it plainly-there's always a market for stupidity.

3 Pages and a Kleenex Box Made Out of Popsicle Sticks | The Hack ...

I edited 3 pages today and am feeling a little sickly. I’m coming down with something and am pretty sure it is stress related. For those running betting pools for when The Hack Novelist will finally crack, here’s a bit of insider advice: I’d put the kids’ college funds on this week, because right now I’m feeling a bit fractured.

I could go through a whole list of stressors, but that’s a pretty lame way to spend our conversation. Instead I’m going to acknowledge the state I’m in and concentrate my energy on pushing through it.

[insert slightly sluggish Bazinga here]

In other news, my mother’s birthday is today. For those that have been around a while, you know that I’ve spoken of my brother (a.k.a. The Artist time.