Stupidity

On Wednesday of this week, three men robbed the bank where my wife works. They were caught within minutes of leaving the bank. One customer was injured but not seriously, so overall little harm was done. I am glad about that, though a bit scared about my wife being involved in a situation like that. It's the third time in five years that she's been robbed at that bank.

The crooks were not particularly brilliant. They did not seem to realize that the bank was less than a quarter-mile from the headquarters of the Bellaire Police Department, they set a lookout but had no plan on what to do if/when police arrived, and they did not even plan ahead on how they were going to carry the cash they stole. Real brainiacs, these guys. It appears that once they got the idea to rob a bank (I guess on the theory that banks have a lot of money and therefore it would be a big score), they went ahead without messing around with a lot of thinking.

Stupidity is not limited to crime, however. A lot of the Obama policies, as described so far, are real big on emotion and not very planned in detail. Pretty much in every case, when asked about an issue or his plan to address a crisis, Obama's answer is a variation of 'trust me I'm the right guy'. OK, so we've heard that before with politicians, but at least in the past we knew their track record, their resume, and so there were indicators to tell us what we should expect. Barack Obama is a young man who dresses and speaks well and he uses a lot of what I call 'Oprah words' - words which sound good but are so vague they could mean just about anything.