Moron Roundup

Someone complained to me that the name of my blog, "Marginalizing Morons" was arrogant.

In the spirit of a previous blog, they should consider the ridiculous alternative, "Elevating Morons".

Here are the results of a recent Moron Roundup.

Teachers now avoid red ink because it is too stressful and demoralizes students. Purple is apparently much more sensitive.

Legislators don't want cops chasing criminals in California. The proposed law actually would make cops personally liable for anything that happens during a car chase. Look at this nugget from State Senator Sam Aanestad,

"Probably the worst way to catch someone is by chasing them."

Sarbanes-Oxley legislation is making companies go private and scaring away foreign companies from listing in the US.

Salton, maker of the George Foreman grill is on the verge of bankruptcy. This is truly amazing considering that they sold over 70 million grills. George has made around $150 million from it though. (also making the Moron list is anyone who claims that the grill is "easy to clean".)

Stephen King – at the University of Maine commencement, urged graduates,

...to "give away a dime of every dollar you make," arguing, to applause, that "if everybody did it, maybe we could make Mr. Bush let go of the weapons he loves so well and give back some of the money that he spends on them to the farmers, the unwed mothers and the working poor.

Last I checked I give away 40% of everything I make via confiscatory taxes – it surely would be a different world if lowered to 10%.

The logical gaps between giving away money and “Mr. Bush’s weapons" are only outdone by the socialist talking points. Yeah, let’s be more like foundering Europe. What a shock, another rich celebrity and beneficiary of capitalism wants to uproot the system that made him.

Meet Coco Crisp[sic] of the Cleveland Indians. Yes, as in the cereal. Pretty much if your last name is Crisp, there are only two names your parents should avoid, “Burnt-to-a” and “Coco”.

The Chinese think they can bolster their stock market by limiting new issues. From Briefing.com

According to the WSJ, Chinese regulators are trying to support sagging share prices on the country's two domestic exchanges, by restricting access to them. The move risks marginalizing China's stock mkts even more, as a slew of Chinese co's head overseas to raise capital, say securities analysts. With the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index near 8-year lows, the China Securities Regulatory Commission has quietly imposed a fresh moratorium on new share issues that will likely last through Y05, say senior exchange officials. The move follows an earlier freeze on new share issues in the 2H Y04. The latest freeze coincides with a reform program begun in April to unload billions of dollars of existing but currently untradable state-held equity in the Chinese stock mkts. The worry is that the domestic mkts can't absorb so many shares; the two Chinese exchange officials say it is better first to fix the bigger problem of finding buyers for the state-owned stock, which has a total value of about $250 bln. These state shares, which aren't considered new issues, aren't covered by the moratorium."We have to let the current reform play out," says the Shanghai exchange official. "There's no timetable" for resuming new stock issues, he adds.

This economic illiteracy is redolent of the French limiting the work week to 35 hours. They thought that there was a finite amount of work and that by reducing the hours of “overworkers”, they would eliminate unemployment. Could they be any more bleepin' retarded?

Researchers have found that male circumcision reduces the risk of contracting HIV by 70%. Why does this make the Roundup? Because the world is spending billions of dollars to find an HIV vaccine whose targeted risk reduction level is only 30%. When are people going to realize that scientists are mostly a government subsidized welfare demographic?

Furthermore about male circumcision, when my son was born the doctor asked if we wanted the procedure. They gave us all sorts of pamphlets and information about circumcision. One such item said that many people opt for circumcision for "...religious, cultural, and social reasons." We requested the procedure and told the doctor that it was for "social" reasons, i.e. we didn't want our son excluded from the foreskin-free cliques at school.

Also, in a country where male prison inmates in California can get sex change operations and breast reduction surgery paid for by the state, circumcision for baby boys is not covered by major HMOs.

This great headline yesterday, "CBS to Join the Storytelling Business..." I guess after the Dan Rather fake documents fiasco, why not make it official.

Morgan Reynolds, a former economist for the Department of Labor, thinks that the government secretly imploded the World Trade Center on 9/11. Shouldn't he be institutionalized?

Steven Spielberg is lamenting the dearth of recent UFO sightings. Let's give him a break, he may just be totally immersed in his work.

And lastly this beauty from the global warming whackos:

Global warming looks set to be much worse than previously forecast, according to new research. Ironically, the crucial evidence is how little warming there has been so far.

When are these nutjobs going to realize that trying to study larger weather trends with less than a 50 year sample period is like trying to predict the winner of a baseball game from witnessing a single pitch?