Every once in a while, I click on “news of the wierd” type stories on HuffPo — you know, the kind of thing you usually find as filler in local papers. This morning, I clicked on a story with the headline “Man Alleges He Bought Safe with $26,000 In It on eBay“. I figured it would be a feel-good story about a guy who got lucky. I didn’t expect to click away shaking my head at the rampant stupidity of what appears to be the general population.In a nutshell: a guy who’s been selling stuff on eBay for 15 years sold a locked safe for $129. The buyer received the safe, then posted in the buyer’s feedback that he’d found more than $26,000 inside the safe when he got it opened. The seller, incensed, wrote to the buyer asking for a cut of the find. The seller refused, stating the seller’s own policy, which reads no returns, no exchanges, no money back. At that point, the story went public locally, with the seller calling himself “the stupidest man in the world” and complaining about the moral of the guy who wouldn’t share his good fortune. According to the latest update, the seller now says the buyer was playing a practical joke, and there really was no money in the safe.

But the story is not the story. The story is the comments that follow the story. These seem to fall into several different sentiments, every one of them cringe-worthy. They are:

• What a stupid buyer! He announced the find and now he has to pay taxes on it!

• The story is fake becase:

1. who is stupid enough to sell a safe when they don’t know what’s in it? or
2. who is stupid enough to buy a safe without the combination? or
3. who is stupid enough to announce they found $26,000? or
4. what kind of stupid joke is it to say you found money?

• Why is this news and why are you stupid enough to read it here instead of going to AOL and reading it there?

• Whoever wrote this story is really stupid because it’s poorly written, doesn’t stick to the point or talks about a stupid story

That’s a whole lot of stupid on display there — and every single one of them is reinforced by people saying “Yeah, that’s pretty stupid!”

Not a single one of them — at the time I read it anyway — had a single person responding with surprise, incredulity or even headshaking chagrin of the stupidity of the comment itself. All I can figure is that:

• The maojrity of people think its acceptable and even praiseworthy to evade paying taxes.
• Nobody understands the concept of calculated profit. i.e.: the safe, as is, is unusable and worthless, but it may contain something valuable. If I crack the safe open and there’s nothing in it, I destroy any value it may have. If I sell the safe unopened, I can recover my investment and make a little money.
• Nobody understands the concept of calculated risk or the allure of a mystery. These same people probably think nothing of plunking down $5 on a lottery ticket but somehow can’t see that paying $129 on the chance that there was something in the safe was worth it to this guy.
• People believe that it’s stupid to pay taxes, or put yourself in the position of paying taxes or being asked for loans by friends.
• Quite a few people think they have magical insight into what should be news and where people should be reading it.
• Everyone’s a hater, and a lot of the critics know nothing about what makes an interesting story.

And now, having spent close to an hour noting the stupid on display, I’ve added my own stupidity to the collection, because when you come right down to it, it’s pretty stupid to extrapolate widespread stupidity from a few pages of comments on one HuffPo story.

Because, you know, they posted the birth certificate with no prompting and for no reason whatsoever, and if they hadn’t posted it, there would be no question about Obama’s birth. Like.. what?? I had to look twice to make sure that the talking head was not a Republican shill. Nope. The TH in question is a proud bearer of the Progressive banner, and his contention — supported by Keith O’s stand-in for the evening — is that the Obama campaign essentially created the birther controversy by responding to it. Circular reasoning, anyone?

Even more frustrating, that statement is almost never followed up by the facts–that the stimulus has created jobs, or that the economy is improving, or that the deficit is actually lower this year than last year.

The tele’d in guest was RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who was there to take potshots on the misinterpretation of Harry Reid’s remarks comparing the passage of revolutionary health care reform to other legislative revolutions in history, most notoriously, to the passage of emancipation legislation. Like the other Republicans, he is in high dudgeon, acting as if Reid had just called them all sadistic slave owners – though Steele did put a finer point on it. Reid’s analogy, he said, is an insult to the millions of African Americans who are descended from slaves because it compares their situation to the situation of people who don’t have health insurance. It almost makes sense viewed that way – almost – if it didn’t completely miss the point of the analogy: that medical care is a basic human right, and that legislation that recognizes that fact is as revolutionary and game-changing as legislation that outlawed the ownership of another human being.

So what did Deutsch do that made me want to kiss him? He brought the analogy back home after Steele deliberately distorted it, and said it that plainly. “When you bring it back to the basic intent of the analogy,” he said, And he laid out the analogy as it was intended, to portray the Republicans as akin to the naysayers who have tried to block every major revolution in American government by saying “It’s not time yet”.

And Steele’s response?

“I won’t even dignify that with an answer.”

Yeah. Good call when you don’t have any dignity with which to dignify a blatant mischaracterization. That’s the answer that every bluffer knows – it’s a cheesy way to avoid answering a question when you don’t have a good answer. Deutsch’s question called Steele out, and Steele’s best shot was to stand on dignity that he doesn’t have and refuse to answer. And Deutsch noted that as well.

So go Donnie. You’re the golden Ken doll today. Keep this up and I just may have to start looking beyond your hot exterior and start thinking you might have a brain.

Lately, you’ve been musing a lot about things like why the president’s approval rating on things like health care and the economy is dropping. You’ve been asking dramatically why people are so. afraid. of. change. You wonder why the polls show that fewer and fewer people like the “president’s health care plan” or why more and more people “think the stimulus bill was a bad idea”.

Gosh, I don’t know. Do you think it might be because guys like you keep airing shit like John Boehner declaring that the stimulus was not creating jobs by putting on that unctuous voice and asking guests:

“Well, you know, Congressman Boehner says that the stimulus is not working. That not a single job has been created by stimulus money. Now why is that, do you think?”

What I would really love to see is someone on your show who would respond to a question like that with the truth. Something like:

Well, Joe, I have to think it’s because John Boehner is an incompetent ass who has no idea what’s going on in his own home state, since at the time he stated that not a single infrastructure contract had been awarded from the stimulus funds, his own state of Ohio had already awarded over $87 million in infrastructure project contracts, and several of those projects had already hired people and put them to work. I have to believe that John Boehner is an inadequate nincompoop who is out of touch with his own state, because the alternative is admitting that John Boehner is a barefaced liar.

But see, that’s just the start of the intellectual dishonesty. You and guys like you give a voice to total idiocy without ever countering it. Idiocy like:

- Virginia Foxx stating that the U.S. government is going to “put seniors to death”.

Once upon a time, news guys would have looked up that bill, found the relevant clause and responded with something like:

Now, I don’t know what the good Congresswoman has been imbibing before she steps out on the floor, but she’s got to be on something to misinterpret the language in this bill so badly. This thing in the bill that they say is all about euthanizing senior citizens actually says that IF YOU’RE ON MEDICARE and IF YOU ASK YOUR DOCTOR to talk to you about things like “what the hell does palliative care mean?” and “what if I don’t want a tube shoved down my throat the rest of my life?” and “who gets to decide if I can’t?” - that if you ask your doctor to take fifteen minutes to talk to you about these things, Medicare will pay for it. That’s it. That’s all it says. It says that the doctor must answer your questions and Medicare must pay him for his time.

But hey, it’s easier to let liars and fools assert that the health care bill will outlaw private insurance and force everyone into a public option than it is to treat the American public like adults and explain what the health care exchange is and how it works, and to explain what the requirements for a health care plan will be under the exchange.

That’s boring, though. Nowhere near as much fun as presiding like a dictatorial papa over your dysfunctional family, making pompous proclamations and out-shouting anyone who disagrees with your point of view.

But hey, I know. That’s not as much fun as stirring this fake bullshit controversy with mock solicitous questions like “Why does our government want to kill old people?”

At that point, Watson interrupted Pence to quote the CBO’s assertion that over two-thirds of the cost of the bill would be offset by cost cutting and other measures and asked Pence if he was certain that the bill would raise money for health care reform with $1 trillion in new taxes.

Spence’s response: “Yes. I’m rounding up.”

The CBO report estimates that “new revenues” – i.e. taxes, fees and penalties – will account for $583 billion of the offset cost to the $1.04 trillion cost of the health care bill. Rep. Spence claims that the health care bill will be paid for with a $1 trillion tax increase. His figure is off by $459 billion – because he’s “rounding up”.

Most people think of rounding up as adding a few cents to the next whole dollar – that is, $1.98 might as well be $2. Rounding up $583 billion to $1 trillion is sorta like rounding up $50.01 and saying you have “about $100″. Technically, since it’s 1 cent over halfway to $100, it’s correct. Intellectually – not so much.

And the truth is that no, most of the time most of the people really do not hear what “he” just said. Oh, we hear the words, but we don’t understand the subtext. Like when they ask, “Isn’t saying you want Obama to fail saying that you want the country to fail?” Most people don’t get the fact that the “failure of the United States” means something different to conservatives than it does to liberals.

To the true conservative mindset, capitalism – naked, greedy capitalism – has not failed us. When they say that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong”, that’s exactly what they mean. The fundamentals of capitalism DEPEND on the scenario that we are currently living. It’s all part of the cycle. A company grows until it is too large – or too stupid – to sustain itself any longer. At that point, it fails and its assets get gobbled up at bargain prices.

The only real solution to the banking crisis is to leave the banks alone, let them collapse and let new banks step in to pick up the business that the fallen banks can no longer service. The solution to the real estate boondoggle is to let housing prices fall until people can afford to buy them again. The solution to the auto makers crisis is to let them go out of business so that the plants can be bought by people who will run them “more efficiently” – read, pay workers lower wages because they’ll be happy to get a job paying -anything- by that time.

In their eyes, the success of a country is not measured by the average standard of living of ALL of its people. It is measured solely by the growth of the GDP, and if the bulk of that growth goes into just a few pockets, that’s what capitalism is all about.

Somewhere along the line, there’s a disconnect. Things got reversed. Instead of capitalism being a tool that serves the country, the country and its people became a tool that serves capitalism, a money-making machine for a privileged few.

Right now, I’m sitting here with the window open for the chat, waiting for Mr. Welch to sign into the chat and realizing that most of my questions for him start with “Hey, idiot…”

This is the man who just said “We have to fix the housing market before we can think about fixing the economy.” That was in reference to – oh, you know – creating jobs. Green energy. Infrastructure improvements. Those things should go into buckets to be addressed AFTER we fix the banks. Give the banks more money and more assurances. And yeah, some banks are going to fail – we should let the LITTLE banks fail and save the big banks. Oreally??? Letting these banks get so big is what screwed us up so badly in the first place. I think what we just proved is that any bank too big to fail should get broken down into smaller bits. Thank you, that’s all there is to see here, move on.

I’ve never quite figured out how nominally smart people can’t wrap their heads around the idea that people who don’t have money and jobs can’t buy houses. Or groceries. Or televisions. And it starts there because when enough of them can’t buy houses or groceries or – well – put their money in the bank, yeah? And when people don’t buy from businesses, then businesses fail. And when businesses fail, more people lose their jobs. And the more people that lose their jobs, the more businesses fail. So – how do you fix it? You do things that put money to spend into the pockets of the people that fuel the engine – the people who buy the groceries and the houses and the televisions.

And the chat is starting… here goes:

Mr. Welch, do you think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in the current economic crisis?

Jack Welch: Good morning everyone. Thomas — No, I think we’re getting our arms around it. And if we can get Congress and the government to focus on the banks and get them functioning, we’ll see a recovery within the next 18 months.

Comment From Jim Thompson]
“Buy America”, how do you feel about this?

Jack Welch: Good morning Jim. I think it’s a disaster, we went through this with Smoot-Haley in the 30s and it reduced global trade by two-thirds in 24 months

[Comment From David in Selinsgrove, Pa]
How is this stimulus package going to benefit struggling home owners with their mortgage?

Jack Welch: David, right now this package isn’t going to do a thing for them. The government treatment of the banks has to include mortgage relief in some form and I think it will.

[Comment From Josh B]
Good morning Jack…Do you feel executive pay cap is a good idea?

Jack Welch: Dear Josh — they have to do something and the president’s proposals are reasonable and if the banks perform the restricted stock that will be granted to the executives will make up for the lost compensation. I like the incentives.

[Comment From Jason Barnes]
What advice do you have for small business owners and how might we take advantage of any of the stimulus funds?

Jack Welch: Jason — business owners of any size have two areas to focus on: one is preservation, and that means getting costs in line for the tough times ahead. And secondly, innovation has to be part of every employee’s job. Every business needs new ways of doing business.

[Comment From Bob Belinke]
Jack: Why not have the Gov’t buy all home mortgages and people pay it back lke they pay taxes. The banks can lend money just to business (for the most part) and if you don’t pay your taxes/Mortgage to the gov’t, you loose what you would loose now

Jack Welch: Dear Bob, I think you’ll see something along these lines of government intervention in the mortgage market. The exact form it will take, I don’t know.

And that was that. Obtuseness, they name is business executives.

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Everyone got a chuckle out of it, and the conversation moved on. So much nicer than Bill O’Reilly’s whining and defensiveness whenever MM mentions his name. That’s why I can like Barnicle even when he’s an idiot.

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Pair of cardinals sitting on my back yard fence yesterday morning. In Massachusetts. In January. In the middle of a snowstorm.

I gotta figure that they were there to deliver a message. Cardinals where they don’t belong – is that a good omen for the Cardinals in the Super Bowl? I guess we’ll find out Sunday.

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