[11th J.P.’s Moment of Common Sense, my weekly oratorial exposition on Broad View, KBZZ 1270 AM Reno.  Click on the microphone to listen.]

Across the nation stupidity was rampant this week, aswarm like congressmen around an open bar.  Somebody must have been handing out free stupid pills somewhere.

We had scary stupid from President Obama, we had funny stupid from those seedy-looking ne’er-do-wells protesting Wall Street, and we even had silly stupid from Monday Night Football, which fired Hank Williams, Jr., for expressing conservative political opinions.

That’s right, in case you haven’t heard, we don’t get to hear Mr. Williams singing, “All My Rowdy Friends” on Mondays anymore.  I’ve got news for ESPN: sometimes the best part of the whole game on Monday night is Hank Williams and his song.  So far this year’s games have been good but wait ’til December 12 when St. Louis visits Seattle.  Hank and his rowdy friends would have been the highlight of that game.

Personally, I always thought Hank was a better fit for evening football than Faith Hill in those high heels and black stretch pants singing, “I’ve Been Waiting All Day for Sunday Night.”  Doesn’t that song title sound an awful lot like, “When are these stupid football games going to be over?”  which is what men hear all day from their wives?

Granted, Faith Hill in black stretch pants is pretty much always a good thing but maybe a football game isn’t the best venue, that’s all I’m saying.

Anybody surprised about ESPN being so politically correct, well, remember that’s where Keith Olberman came from and ESPN is owned by the Walt Disney Company which is run by Robert Iger, a progressive liberal and Barack Obama supporter.  Now it makes sense, doesn’t it?  The last thing liberals want is a two-sided conversation.  That’s why Disney squelched the documentary, The Path to 9/11, which made the Clinton Administration look bad, and squelched a miniseries called The Kennedys because the Kennedys objected.

Unfortunately for Disney and ESPN, it looks like Hank Williams won’t be so easy to squelch.  Hank is royally PO’d and he’s not some inconvenient documentary Disney can hide in a filing cabinet.

Meanwhile, over in New York a large mob of smelly, unemployed, radical-left nincompoops is trying to “occupy” Wall Street.  They can’t actually reach Wall Street because the police have them walled off in a park, which they’re filling up with trash and bodily wastes to such an extent that children may never play there again, but hey, give the bums credit for trying.  Wednesday they linked arms and charged the police line in a futile attempt to break through to Wall Street.  It was like the Charge of the Light Brigade... only without the glory... or the magnificence... or the horses... or a good poem from Alfred Tennyson.

The Occupy Wall Street protestors hate Wall Street but love President Obama, apparently blissfully unaware that Obama was bought and paid for by Wall Street.  The Obama Administration is so chock full of ex-Goldman Sachs people the investment banker probably has a staffing shortage.

Anybody who wants a chuckle should read the protestors’ demands.  They have thirteen of them and they’re so phenomenally, outrageously, wildly stupid, and caused so much ridicule, that they started saying, “Hey, that’s not our official list of demands!”  Two of them, numbers one and nine, contradict each other.  Number eight demands equal rights for all races... you know, like the Fifteenth Amendment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act already do?  Number five wants to end all use of fossil fuels, and numbers six and seven demand two trillion dollars to spend on infrastructure, planting new forests, and closing nuclear power plants.  But demand number eleven is the best of all: number eleven wants all debts erased, including mortgages, loans, and credit card balances.

Somebody should tell these protestors that we already have a mechanism for erasing debts.  It’s called going to work and paying what you owe.

The protestors are amusing but it’s not so funny when the stupidity is in the White House.  Last month a billionaire named Harold Hamm was invited to the White House and this week we read about that visit.  Mr. Hamm discovered the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota, which contain over twenty billion barrels of oil, and he could hardly wait for a chance to tell the president about the oil and gas revolution happening in this country.  He wasn’t sure Obama even knew about this revolution.

Here is what the president said when Mr. Hamm told him that enough oil and gas has been discovered in the last few years to make the United States completely energy independent:

“Oil and gas will be important for the next few years.  But we need to go on to green and alternative energy.  Secretary Chu has assured me that within five years we can have a battery developed that will make a car with the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon.”

I’m not sure I can adequately express the monumental ignorance on display in the president’s words.  Number one, a battery is not an energy source—it’s an energy storage device—so the whole general direction of the president’s reply is a logical non sequitur.  Whether Secretary Chu’s dream battery is invented or not, you still have to produce the electricity to charge it.

Number two, whether or not a car gets “the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon” is totally unrelated to the battery since the energy that charged the battery is produced at a power plant... almost certainly a power plant that burns fossil fuels produced by people like Harold Hamm.

And finally, the U.S. is nowhere even close—let me repeat: nowhere even close—to replacing fossil fuels with windmills and solar power plants.  The idea that our president thinks we are close is truly Halloween-level frightening.

How can our president not know this stuff?  Is he getting bad information or is the man simply unable to grasp the information he gets?  One thing is for sure: a man this devoid of basic knowledge is not capable of leading the United States out of the current economic crisis.

That’s just common sense.

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” —Bertrand Russell

From Reno, Nevada, USA        Tweet

October 8, 2011 - As I read this while sailing Lake Michigan's gorgeous fall winds, I tried to imagine this person that wrote this and to what end was the purpose. Now he must be an American, knows his American history, world history and maybe even knows the beauty, power, and limits of natural resources. Then I thought, does he/she have an agenda, a job supported to attempt to educate others that fossil fuels will last forever and we should make no attempt to alternatives. How many examples of vision by mankind started with a spark became solutions to civilizations longevity? Travel, medicine, shelter, farming,timekeeping, cognitive thinking, and EDUCATION. I suppose it's trendy to tell others what you want them to think, as well as thinking you know better than them, or what they are thinking. Well, that is a big leap and this is not the McCarthy era anymore. We want people to get real information from many sources, not the agenda people. Roy Cohn is dead. Died miserable. So did Hermann Goering. Write ideas to help us along, not prose of negativity, that;s WHY people don't vote or get involved. Apathy from medias' leaning toward a self serving agenda. Leave that to Murdoch. He is so good at it. Or is he? - Ray K., Michigan

J.P. replies: So, Ray, is Solyndra an example of “vision” and “helpful ideas?”  For a century now people have been predicting the end of fossil fuels and during that entire time reserves have continued to grow.  Windmills and solar panels are great for an outback sheep farm in the Australian wasteland but they’re a stupid idea for generating power for a modern civilization.  That’s the plain unadulaterated fact, and if you have contrary evidence, out with it.  Meanwhile, call me crazy, I’d just as soon not see Democrats throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at useless business ideas simply because the owners of those businesses donated to their election campaigns.

October 8, 2011 - Been saying since day one this guy isn't too bright. That's why he won't let anybody see his school records - Ted W., Georgia