Stupid People: The “Birther”

Now let me begin by making it clear this isn’t meant to take sides on a political issue, nor is this an analysis on President Obama. I could care less if someone loves the man and thinks they should carve a fifth face on Mr. Rushmore in honor of his greatness, or if someone thinks he is the worst President in history and not only should be impeached but have his Presidential portrait replaced by a picture of the output end a donkey.

My point about those who question President Obama’s citizenship or those who proclaim he wasn’t actually born in the United States (which are commonly referred to as “birthers”) are just stupid. I wish I could sugarcoat it and claim they were just uniformed or ignorant or otherwise confused, but after all that has been said on this subject, there really is no other way to describe these people other than stupid. It is not stupid to have strong political beliefs nor is it stupid to want to find clever ways of attacking your political opponents (rude and childish perhaps, but not stupid). It is also not stupid to ask questions until the answers have been provided time and time again.

However the issue with the birthers is that they are so convinced of this silly rumor that even now – well over two years since Obama has been sworn in as President – they are still running around trying to pretend he isn’t a legitimate President. They have ignored mountains of evidence, they have invented convoluted conspiracy theories, they have filed multiple lawsuits claiming Obama is not our legitimate President, and they have even gone so far as to fabricate a Kenyan birth certificate which was presented as evidence to show that Obama was not born in the US. Granted the Kenyan birth certificate was put together via photo editing software and was proven to be forgery about 15 minutes after it was released, but you still have birthers claiming it is the real thing.

In at least one case we even witnessed a member of the US military (U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick) who refused orders because he believed Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces. Personally I feel Mr. Frederick is merely a coward and didn’t want to have to fight in a war since he is merely a reservist, but in any case he used the birther argument to the best of his ability.

So what is it about these people that makes them so ignorant of facts? We know the Hawaiian Secretary of State and two different Hawaiian Governors have verified Obama’s birth certificate. One of the two Governors (Governor Linda Lingle) was even a Republican, and she go so sick of these idiot birthers wasting state employee time that she signed a law that state government can ignore repetitive requests for Obama's birth certificate. So basically, a new law was created due to the stupidity of a very small select group of idiots, and people sometimes wonder why we have so many laws on the books.

In any case we know the Hawaiian State Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino testified that she had seen vital records that prove Obama was born in the state. We know the Hawaiian state registrar of vital statistics verified that the Health Department holds Obama's original birth certificate. We also know that Obama’s birth announcement was printed in Honolulu’s two largest newspapers at the time of his birth, and unless Obama has figured out a way to time travel back 50 years to insert fake birth announcements, it seems unlikely that there would be more than one Barack Obama born the same day.

Of course, in the mind of a birther, the birth announcements in two newspapers aren’t good enough because for all we know, Obama’s parents has the foresight to realize he could be President one day… so they could have faked them I guess. I know this doesn’t make any sense, but bear with me here – this is how the mind of a birther works.

A copy of the official Obama birth certificate was actually released back in 2008, but even then the birthers made claims about it not being real or arguing that it didn’t include an official seal etc. Time after time after time the state of Hawaii confirmed it was real, and time after time the birthers refused to accept the facts.

So it seems the birth certificate provided and verified by the state wasn’t good enough, so they decided to change the game and claimed they needed the “long form birth certificate” to verify it exists and that it is not a forgery. So this begs the question… what exactly is a long form birth certificate? Well, put simply, a long form birth certificate would be a certified copy of the very original birth certificate rather than an electronically produced document as we commonly receive today.

So now just this week Obama decided he was tired of all the distraction so he released the actual long form birth certificate.  Personally I think it was a bad idea because it doesn't change anything, and now instead of birthers asking for the long form, now they are already starting to claim it is a fabrication which is why it took two years to produce.  Rest assured in the mind of a birther, the release of the long form birth certificate hasn't changed a thing because they continually move the goal posts time and time again.

It goes without saying that anyone who is still questioning Obama's ability to be President is obviously on the fringe of the political spectrum, and more times than not these people are from the far right (his opponents). Most would probably also consider themselves members of the Tea Party although I’m sure there are a handful from the far left too… crazies come in all shapes and sizes and are members of all political parties.

So if these birthers are still making this an issue and still trying to argue a point which fair minded Americans have long since considered settled, it actually only serves to harm Obama’s political adversaries. It puts members of the Tea Party in a difficult position when they are forced to comment on the issue, and it creates countless opportunities to make those on the right appear petty, ignorant… and dare I say it – stupid (yes I'm looking at you Donald Trump).

Granted if we had a Republican President in office under the same circumstances, I can promise you we would have more than a few birthers from the far left demanding the same thing and making the same ignorant statements. In fact, to some degree this whole debacle resembles the issue with George W. Bush’s National Guard records. President Bush would never release all his records, accusations were tossed around, idiots forged documents, and it remained in the headlines for months. To some degree I feel that President Bush used that controversy for his political advantage just as Obama uses the birth certificate issue to his advantage.

This all goes to show that stupid people do not have any loyalty to one political party and that we have more than enough to cover the entire spectrum. Unfortunately we really didn’t have a clever name for those who continually demanded President Bush’s military records most likely due to the fact that they were never well organized, but if we had… they would have been just as stupid as the birthers.

When a person refuses to accept fact, ignores common sense, believes hundreds or even thousands of people could all be in on some vast conspiracy without a single one of them coming to the surface to blow the whistle, it seems obvious to everyone that the person in question is stupid.

Stupid might not grow on trees, but it does seem to have roots, and unfortunately those roots run pretty deep for anyone who has attended a political rally and held a sign with a picture of President Obama near the words “undocumented worker”.

Stupid People: The “I Can’t Grasp The Concept Of Volume” Person (Volume 3)

Note: If you haven’t read either of the first two posts on this particular subject do yourself a favor and either go back and scan them, or just skip this one altogether.

This is yet another one of my posts about stupid people and how they lack any sense of dimension or volume. These are the same types of people who put king size waterbeds in their bedrooms and only after they have assembled and filled the entire bed do they realize they can no longer close the door of the bedroom without hitting the frame of the bed.

We all know these kinds of people – you have probably seen their homes with a pool table in a room that makes it impossible to actually shoot pool. These are the types of people who tell you that their master bathroom is “literally as big as a football field”. These are the type of people who build bookcases with dimensions that cannot fit through a standard doorway and don’t realize it until they try taking it out of the room they built it in, or the type of people who buy a brand new $58,000 Ford F350 quad-cab longbed truck only to realize when they get home that it is six inches too high to fit in the garage door, and even if it did fit it would be two feet too long to fit in the garage itself.

So this leads me to the occasion where I found myself carrying a bookcase for a young college aged woman only to reach her car and realize it would actually fit… if she didn’t already have the entire vehicle packed from top to bottom with stuff. She had garbage bags full of stuff, boxes, piles of clothes, shoes, trash, what I think was an old stereo, laundry baskets, and who knows what else. I’m not exaggerating when I say that aside from the driver’s seat area, I don’t think there was more than one or two square feet of available space in that vehicle – I think the ashtray might have even been packed with junk by the looks of it.

I’m not sure if it was my standing there with my jaw hanging near my belt buckle, or her sudden acknowledgement (or embarrassment) of the situation, but she told me to leave the bookshelf there at the car and she would “rearrange” some of her stuff to make it fit. I never did go back and check on her… but something tells me she was there for at least an hour taking stuff out and playing a life size game of Tetris in an effort to find a way for all the pieces to fit back together without leaving anything behind.

So how does someone like this drive up to a store with the goal of purchasing a large bookcase and not stop for a second to wonder how it would ever actually fit into their vehicle?

All I can say is people are stupid.

Stupid People: The “I Can’t Grasp The Concept Of Volume” Person (Volume 2)

I'm pretty sure you're doing it wrong.

If you read my initial post about stupid people, and the subsequent story about people who can’t grasp the concept of volume you will understand where I’m going with this. If not this will probably make as much sense as watching the Star Wars films in reverse order. In that case I’ll do you the favor of providing a brief summary similar to what they play at the beginning of the second part of a two part television show.

The premise here is I once held a job in retail where I was responsible for carrying out and loading large items for customers. This is one of those stories which I feel displays how people are stupid (queue Law and Order gavel-esque sound effect).

One day while working I received a call to assist a customer carrying out her purchase. When I arrived near the service desk I found a woman who bought a wicker loveseat for her patio and just needed help carrying it out and loading it. She even made the point to tell me that she had a full size truth to load it in, which was quite a relief considering every other piece of wicker patio furniture I ever loaded seem to go inside of a small sedan or half way into the trunk of a Ford Escort.

However, my optimism was soon eradicated when I discovered she had a brand new snap-on tonneau cover which her husband had explicitly told her was NOT to be removed or unsnapped. It seems that the cover was stretched so tight that unsnapping it was next to impossible, and if she did unsnap it she would never be able to get it snapped again without the assistance of her husband… who would obviously be displeased.

Now aside from the fact it sounded like these two needed marriage counseling, and aside from the fact I failed to see the benefit of having a cover on the bed of a truck which essentially made the bed of the truck worthless, this meant the only way for me to load this loveseat was to either place it on top of the tonneau cover (and risk either puncturing it or leaving permanent indentations from the weight) or open the tailgate of the truck and try to slide the loveseat under the cover.

Long story short, it wouldn’t fit under so we ended up laying it on the tailgate of the truck and tying it down. So here is a woman with a full size truck hauling a wicker loveseat on her tailgate with the legs hanging off the back because she couldn’t actually use the bed of the truck for hauling anything. That has to be a solid five on the stupid scale right there.

Now this particular incident might not seem too bad until you realize you have a stupid woman and a stupid husband all wrapped up in one. There is a high probability these two stupid people will eventually breed, which just exacerbates the problem of stupid people, because although I’m not an expert on the subject, I would guess having two stupid people as parents exponentially increases the risk of a person being stupid.

Seems like some type of reverse Darwinism at work.

Stupid People: The “I Can’t Grasp The Concept Of Volume” Person (Volume 1)

There are countless stupid people out there walking around unsupervised. They come in all shapes and sizes and from all parts of the globe, but one of my favorite examples of human stupidity comes from a job I had back in high school.

I worked for a retail store called ShopKo (think of Target but without the clever marketing campaign or the flashy logo, or think of Walmart without the automatic desire to take a shower when you are done mingling with the other shoppers ), and part of my duties of this job included carry-out for larger items. This typically included ready-to-assemble furniture, televisions, patio furniture, swing sets, or any other item which was probably too large or heavy for one person to carry, or too awkward for fit in a standard size shopping cart.

The basic idea was that I would go to the warehouse area of the store, load the item onto a cart and meet the customer at the checkout counter where they could pay for the item and I could help them load it. For the largest items sometimes this would take two or more employees, and in the case of a children’s swing set we generally would just have the customer pull around to the rear of the store where we would load it for them.

Sometimes when loading a bookshelf or computer desk, the customer would have a full size pickup truck, large SUV or maybe a car with a trailer so it wasn’t an issue. Nevertheless, inevitably in at least three or four times out of ten, we would arrive at the customer’s vehicle only to realize that it was highly unlikely the item would fit in their vehicle. Most of my stories involve hatchback automobiles because for some odd reason when someone drives a hatchback they think basic rules of volume and space don’t apply to them. In the mind of a hatchback owner, if you are determined enough and strong enough, you should be able to wedge a full size refrigerator, snowblower, or even a couch in the back end because after all… that is the benefit of owning a hatchback right?

I witnessed people with small hatchbacks purchasing the largest entertainment centers we had in stock which came in two boxes over six feet tall, three feet wide, and each weighing what had to be around 100lbs. Not only do they lack the interior cargo room to fit such an item in their vehicle, but it never even occurred to them that it might not fit at anytime during the purchase. They didn’t think about it when seeing the fully assembled item on display. They didn’t think about it when seeing the boxed item being wheeled up to the front door, and they surely didn’t think about it when getting to their vehicle and realizing their car isn’t as big as they remembered.

This is the part of the story where the customer would typically do one of three things. They would (A) either call a friend or relative to come pick up the furniture for them, they would (B) return the item for a refund (which meant I got to haul it all the way back into the warehouse), they would (C) suggest taking the item out of the box would allow it to fit (as if a six foot entertainment center is only four feet tall when you take it out of the box) or they would (D) try to convince me that it would fit if I just “loaded it right”.

Guess which option was the most common? If you guessed (D), go ahead and treat yourself to an Oreo.

Now keep in mind arguing with a customer is never a great idea, so in my case I most often chose to simply humor them. If they thought they could fit a few six foot boxes into a Geo Metro who am I to argue with them? So eventually they would figure out ways to flip seats down, remove boxes of junk from the hatchback area, slide the front seats all the way forward, try to convince me it could fit in the back seat (a six foot item generally does not fit across a car with an interior width of five feet), or when worse came to worse try to bribe me to give them some rope so they could tie it on their roof.

It goes without saying that most small cars are not meant to carry much weight on their roofs. Sure a few have roof racks, but aside from a few suitcases or bikes, they really aren’t intended for heavy weight loads, and because of that I would always tell the customer that I would help them get it on the roof, but I could not be held responsible for any damage to their vehicle. I also reminded them they would need to tie the items down and for those without roof racks that could mean going through the windows – which then would mean they not only could not roll the windows up all the way, but they might have to play “Dukes of Hazzard” in order to get in to the driver’s seat.

Keep in mind stupid people rarely think ahead, so telling them about possible roof damage and explaining the need to tie down their cargo served as a trigger which suddenly made them realize it might not be such a great idea.

More times than not however, I managed to get most of the item into the vehicle although the trunk or hatchback would almost never close. This is the part of the story where the customer would ask if we had any bungee cords or rope or string to tie down their trunk or hatchback, and this is the part of the story where I would explain we don’t provide rope or string, but they were more than welcome to revisit the store to purchase a package of bungee cords or some rope (clothesline rope was my personal recommendation).

From time to time someone actually had a strap or cord but had no idea how to use it or they thought fastening it to a license plate frame or wrapping it around a muffler was a good idea, and on other occasions they felt some small twine, string used for a kite, or even fishing line was strong enough. Are you starting to understand why I say people are stupid?

It is probably important to point out that once a customer leaves the parking lot, we didn’t really care what happened to their purchase, so if they dumped it out of the back end a mile down the road, or if their hatchback flew open and everything in their vehicle spewed out on the middle of a highway… I didn’t really care. I might feel a little bad about it, but for the most part I figured stupid people get what they deserve, so I tended to keep my mouth shut.

On more than a few occasions I loaded the item into the vehicle in such a manner than there was no possible way anyone other than a single driver could occupy the car, and in one case I remember a mother telling her kids to go back in the store and she would pick them up on a separate trip. I didn’t ask where she lived, but that might suck for the kids if it was an hour away.

I had to find the humor in the fact that the furniture received top billing while the kids stood on the sidelines. To make matters worse, I’m not sure the kids were old enough to be unsupervised, but apparently she felt ShopKo employees would do a great job of keeping an eye on her kids while she was dealing with her delivery. Again – people are stupid. Not only stupid, but irresponsible as well.

There are numerous other examples that I still have never been able to erase from my long-term memory, so I’ll make a point to document them for future blog posts. I almost have a duty to share such moronic behavior with others so they too can be amazed and/or incredibly disappointed at the intelligence level of the average person.

Stupid People: The “I Don’t Know How To Park Because I’m a Moron” Person

There are days I’m amazed at the collective intelligence of the human race. Examples include when I see how we are able to launch spacecraft into orbit without them crashing back to Earth. Or when I see how we are able to pack what is essentially a powerful computer with limitless possibilities, wireless access to the Internet, a GPS, and a telephone into something no larger than a deck of cards. Or when I realize how medical advancements have resulted in the ability to prevent disease, replace organs and joints, prolong life, treat conditions, and address illnesses that would have meant years of suffering and/or the distinct possibility of lifelong disability or death only a few short decades ago.

Then there are days that I’m left shaking my head wondering how it is possible we have such stupidity in our world. Examples of this include the fact there are at least 50 accidents in my city during the first snowfall of the year which suggests people actually forget how to drive in less than 12 months. Or when I see those idiots from the Westboro Baptist Church preaching hatred and protesting at funerals. Or when people cannot understand how a four-way intersection works even after driving for 40 years. Or when I see people drag their toddlers along to hold a sign for some random politician or to protest an event or an issue with more concern about their cause than the child freezing in the cold or being rained on or getting surburned.

All of those examples aside, one of the most common areas where human stupidity is displayed is in a parking lot which leads us to my first blog post in a series devoted to human stupidity.  Now it goes without saying that everyone is well aware of what the purpose of a parking lot is, what the general rules of parking are, and what actions are required to park a vehicle. However, you cannot possible visit a large retail store on any given day without witnessing at least one of the following:

• A car parked so haphazardly that there is no way possible to occupy the space directly adjacent to it.
• A large vehicle which ignores all conventional understanding and is parked at least five to ten feet away from the front border of that particular parking space which in turn leaves a large portion of the vehicle hanging out in the aisle where people are supposed to be driving.
• A car driving down the opposite direction of a one-way lane totally oblivious to the fact that even if there was an open parking space, their only option to get into the space would be to back in (or ‘reverse in’ if you are British).
• A full size SUV or truck parked in a space clearly marked as “Compact Car Only”.
• A large vehicle with trailer that decides it is best to park perpendicular to the parking outlines thereby taking five or six spaces when they could have just as easily parked near the far end of the lot where they could pull through in line with the painted outlines and only required two spaces.
• A vehicle crossing the parking lot at an angle at no less than 35 or 40mph oblivious to anyone who is actually driving down the center of the aisle as intended.
• A vehicle which decides to invent their own parking space which follows no normal rules of logic to the point you start looking around for Ashton Kutcher to see if you might be witnessing the taping of an episode of “Punk’d”.

…and my personal favorite (which only applies to those of us lucky enough to deal with snow covered parking lots)

• Vehicles trying to guess where the actual parking outlines are, and rather than line up in line with an object like a shopping cart corral, light pole, sign, parking island, or curb… they just randomly park anywhere. This not only reduces parking capacity of the lot by a solid 20%, but the rows of cars will often weave back and forth until they resemble the trail a snake makes as it crosses a sand dune.
  
  In some cases this actually creates rows that are so close together, cars are actually unable to navigate down the middle of the row and instead find themselves needing to back up the entire way creating mini traffic jams that only serve to infuriate those inconvenienced by the stupidity of others.
  
  Just a month or so ago I was at the mall at witnessed this exact event, and the lines were so screwed up that I actually saw a parked car behind a car which was already parked across from another car – essentially boxing in the center car. I was amazed at this – because although I could understand thinking it might have been a legitimate spot (even though the tail end of the third car was easily six feet behind any other car in that row), you might have thought when the person got out of their car and realized there were two cars in front of it and that they had just boxed someone in they might have had the intelligence to move to another spot, but sadly… no.

This whole parking situation bothers me on a personal level because I simply cannot understand how someone who pulls into a lot and has been parking in lots for years cannot actually park a vehicle without a visible yellow line telling them where to park. This would be like going to a movie and sitting on the floor in an aisle because there was nobody there to tell them which seat to occupy. That isn’t only stupid – that is bang your head on a hard surface kind of stupid.

Thus, being from South Dakota and dealing with snow covered lots for several months a year, I get to deal with these idiots on a regular basis. You have the moron who parked seven feet away from the car next to them thinking that was a typical spacing method, which then forces every other car in line to adapt and when the original car leaves you are left with random spaces that aren’t quite large enough for two cars, but far too large for one. These are mixed with other spaces that would only be suitable for a motorcycle or 1982 Chevy Chevette with the exterior mirrors removed, and of course you need to add the people who are unable to judge whether they are even remotely parallel to the vehicle next to them.

Now granted several of the items in my list above may be considered rude more than just stupid, but I’ve witnessed all of the above often enough to know that most people just don’t know they are being morons. Rude people might purposefully park diagonally across two lines to prevent door dings, or park in a fire lane because they think they are special, or leave their shopping cart in the empty space next to them because they just can’t take the ten seconds required to return it to the shopping cart corral, but the difference is rude people know they are being rude and they just don’t care. Stupid people don’t even realize when they are being stupid, and because they are generally surrounded by so many other stupid people, then tend to think their behavior is normal and acceptable.

Maybe it is true you can't fix stupid... but can we at least tag them like cattle to warn others?