The World's Greatest Salesman

If you stop and think about it, there have been some incredible cons foisted on us over the years.  Some people can take an absolute zero idea and turn it into a gold mine, convincing otherwise smart people they absolutely must have whatever he was selling if they wanted to sit at the cool kids table.  These people are no doubt marketing geniuses.....Salesmen Extraordinaire.

 
First on my list as a candidate for World's Greatest Salesman is the farmer who planted a hundred acres of some in-demand, valuable food crop, but failed miserably, unable to grow anything but weeds.  That's it....just a hundred acres of weeds.  But knowing he needed $35 by Friday to pay off his bookie, he took his weeds to town and convinced upscale restaurants they needed a "garnish" on their plates, to create something he (or maybe it was "she") called "presentation".

 Today we call his weeds "parsley".  He calls it his ticket to unimaginable wealth and a life of luxury on a private island somewhere in the Caribbean.  Brilliant!

My second candidate for World's Greatest Salesman is the guy (or gal) who invented the Chia Pet.

This guy is good!   He probably (and I'll admit to a bit of creative license) bought the contents of an abandoned mini-warehouse unit sight unseen at one of those auctions. Inside he found a gross of some grotesque, reject pieces of pottery and a barrel of some kind of weird seeds.  Finding the seeds un-smokable, he dumped the whole mess out in his backyard in disgust and walked away.  

A week later he looked out in his yard again and saw a bunch of grotesque, reject pieces of pottery growing "hair".  By Christmas he had bundled every remaining crap piece of pottery with some crap seeds and had them in every Dollar General store in the land.  By Valentine's Day he was retired and living in Monaco.  That, my friends, is a salesman!

My final candidate for World's Greatest Salesman is the guy who convinced kids they didn't have to actually be homeless to look homeless.

A dyslexic buyer for some low-end retail chain, he thought he was buying a carload of men's jeans, size 36/32, "cash price, no refunds".  Turns out they were size 63/32.  Instantly unemployed, on his way to a bar to drown his troubles, he saw some kids living under a bridge and threw them a few pairs of his giant pants.   A week later he saw the kids again, and they were begging him for more jeans.    

Wha....what?  Before his next car payment was due he had placed the rest of his giant jeans in Aeropostale, Abercrombie and Fitch, and was featured on QVC.  Cha-ching!  Today he's living flamboyantly in a penthouse suite in Vegas, and it's rumored he'll be a regular next year on Shark Tank.  

My point here?  If I were Donald Trump, I'd find one of these smooth talking hucksters and make him my campaign manager.  I don't think anyone but The World's Greatest Salesman could possibly repackage The Donald at this late date and sell him as the 45th President of the United States.

S  :) 

The ultimate ego trip

The 2016 Summer Olympic Games are scheduled to open in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in just a few days, and already some in the media are writing it off as an epic fail.  They're saying crime there is high, the 'skeeters are deadly, the water is nasty, blah blah blah.  This begs the question, "Is it all worth it?"

Do you know what it costs a city to host an Olympic Game? Anywhere from $6.6 billion (Sydney, 2000) to $44 billion (Beijing, 2008).  Rio is expected to spend $11.1 billion this year.  And depending on the value they put on the publicity they receive, do they get their investment back?  Past history says it's doubtful.  Oh sure, the contractors who build the venues (and the politicians they bribe) will no doubt do very well, but how about the average Joe on the street who is ultimately going to have to pay for it?

The last I heard Brazil was in really dire financial straights.  How can they afford an $11.1 billion ego trip?  I'm thinking awarding the Games to a different city every four years is just a money-making scheme benefiting the International Olympic Committee, or as we've recently learned, the IOC members personally.  They had a license to steal, and they did!

So why not this:  The Olympics originated in Greece, right?  Why not just hold them in Greece every four years?  The historical connection is undeniable, and they already have much of the infrastructure in place after hosting the Games back in 2004.  I doubt the athletes would care....a gold medal is still a gold medal.  We'll still see their smiling mugs on a Wheaties box.  The several billion TV viewers who watch world-wide can still watch.  (Comparatively few of us can afford to go in person anyway.)  

Individual national Olympic teams can still sell their sponsorship's to fund their training centers.  You can still get your official souvenir hats and t-shirts and stuffed animals on Amazon.  Except for the local cabbies and hoteliers and restaurateurs who have a gold mine overcharging tourists during those few weeks, who loses?  Oh yeah, the contractors and the politicians they own.

And for the Winter Olympics, why not just hold them in a non-controversial neutral site like Switzerland or maybe Norway?  Both of those countries are wealthy and can afford to build the facilities one time, or refurbish what they already have, then just dust them off every four years and do it again.  

It seems to me the Games will always be the ultimate test of athletic prowess, regardless of where they're held.  I suspect all those little Joe's (Jose's?) in Rio would be happy to have the Olympic monkey off their back. I think Rio's $11.1 billion could be spent on something better, like subsidizing new industry to move there, creating jobs.  I think Joe would agree....paychecks trump ego trips.

S

When George spoke, we should have listened

If I were Donald Trump's campaign manager, this is about as close as I'd let him get to a microphone.  And I'd delete his Twitter account, too.

All he had to do is pose pretty with his family for the next 100 days and show up for his inauguration.  Between getting caught stumbling from scandal to scandal and ducking whatever WikiLeaks is going to throw at her next, Hillary was doing her best to hand this election to him.

But then The Donald took the bait and said he "sacrificed" as much as Mr & Mrs Kahn's son who died in service to our country.  Wha....what? 

I'm sure Donald Trump is a smart man.  His grades in college showed it, his classmates said so, and his bank account validates it, too.  So then why does he say such stupid things?  Has old age somehow disconnected his brain from his mouth?

But here's the strangest part:  This may not necessarily kill his election chances.  Hillary Clinton "talks the talk", but she doesn't "walk the walk".  She's likely do something stupid herself, like getting caught on a hidden camera a la Mitt Romney saying something derogatory about a group she needs, which will even the odds again. 

Bottom line....we're being held hostage by a closed two-party political system that gives us bad options. 

Now more than ever, we should remember the words of George Washington:

 

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

S

I do what she asks, and I'm STILL in the doghouse. *sigh*

Pay now, or pay later

I can't for the life of me understand how a human mind could become so depraved as to think that slitting an 86-year-old Priest's throat is somehow acceptable.  To some, "the end justifies the means."  To me, and I'm guessing I have just a "normal" Western mind, the means ABSOLUTELY DO matter.  If you have to lie, cheat, steal, or kill to get what you want, then what you want is evil.

I read today in the Washington Post the results of an extensive survey* regarding Muslim attitudes towards ISIS in 5 Mid-East countries: Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine, and Algeria.  Keep in mind these do NOT include the dysfunctional Muslim states of Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, with Pakistan and Egypt "on the cusp".

Sorry for the blurry chart above, but the takeaway is this:  between .8% and 5.5% agree with ISIS tactics, and between 1% and 8.9% believe ISIS tactics are compatible with Islam.

With a population of 2.7 million, this means Jordan has 216,000 potential new terrorists.

With a population of 33.6 million, this means Morocco has 504,000 potential new terrorists.

With a population of 11 million, this means Tunisia has 165,000 potential new terrorists.

With a population of 4.3 million, this means Palestine has 382,700 potential new terrorists.

With a population of 39.5 million, this means Algeria has 3,199,500 potential new terrorists.

Now ISIS task is to convince these 4,467,200 potential recruits to "walk the walk" and not just "talk the talk".  If only .5%....that's one half of one percent....accept the call to arms, the world will have 22,336 new throat slitters on the loose.

I in no way mean for this statistic to be an endorsement of Donald Trump, but I will say, on this one issue, his suggestion that all applicants for immigration to the US from "certain countries" be thoroughly vetted, is prudent.  

If we don't, and we do let even a few hundred of these radicals slip in, and they do the unthinkable, Americans will panic.  Let's face it, we're quick to see murder and mayhem behind every tree and rock.  Imagine a hundred million gun owners running around looking for those who "don't look right".  Yikes!

Then there will be a wholesale backlash against every Muslim, which is exactly what radical Islamist terrorists want.  To see Westerners pitted against each other....whether by race, or religion, or whatever....means they have succeeded.  They will see us collapse into the abyss with them where for the first time in a thousand years they will be on par with us.  That's about the best they could ever hope for.

I say lets just do the responsible, prudent thing now and not give them the satisfaction later. 

S

* The Arab Barometer survey was done by: 
Mark Tessler is the Samuel J. Eldersveld Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Michael Robbins is the director of the Arab Barometer. Amaney A. Jamal is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics at Princeton University and director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice.

Look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, no wait...are those PIGS flying??

I love waking up in the morning so I can see what screw-ball political news popped up overnight.  Last week I saw a guy who used to be a billionaire Democrat, who raised millions of dollars for them, be crowned King of Republicans.  Then in his acceptance speech he talked about being the voice of the underdog, the working man, and underpaid women workers.  He says he'll bring back American jobs, and he's against a trade deal that [some say] would enable his fellow one-percenters to move jobs overseas and maximize their profits.  Wha....what? 

Then this week I've seen a woman who's been a lifelong liberal Democrat and is on the cusp of being her party's nominee for President, but who is today actually, quietly, the Darling of the Rich Establishment.  She publicly pledges to take down their Big Banks at the same time she gives speeches to them at a Quarter-$Mil a pop, and stuffs her campaign chest with their "donations".   *wink wink*   

She's been scorned for months by a crusty old Independent-Socialist Senator who fought tooth-and-nail with her, but now is having to beg....absolutely beg....his followers to not do anything to upset her status quo.  ('Cause, you know, socialists just loooove the status quo.)  And his loyal followers aren't buying it!  They're in the streets chanting, "Hell no D-N-C...we won't vote for Hill-ar-y."  Double Wha....what?

In my lifetime I've seen Republicans do a 180 and embrace positions that used to belong to Democrats, and vice versa.  The party of Lincoln today rarely gets any African-American votes, while the party of George Wallace gets millions.  Now I can't tell a Republicrat from a Demolican.  I'm so confused.

Are we watching some long-lost episode of The Twilight Zone?  Is the ghost of Rod Serling just jerking our chain? 


On a side note, are brownies supposed to have seeds in them?  ;)

S

How can supposedly smart people do such dumb things?

So the Democratic National Committee got caught playing favorites with their candidates.  It seems that WikiLeaks made public thousands of damning emails between DNC staffers, including the DNC Chair, and others, talking about how they could cripple Bernie Sanders' campaign and help Hillary Clinton's.

Yes, I'm outraged (but not surprised) it happened, but I'm even more dismayed that all those supposedly smart people would put anything in writing that they wouldn't want to see made public.  Nothing is secure these days....that's common knowledge.  Some smart geeks somewhere in the world can and will hack into any and every high profile account they can just to cause trouble, if not outright extort.

If you don't want to get caught writing embarrassing, vulgar, slanderous emails, don't write embarrassing, vulgar, slanderous emails.  "Paper trails" work both ways....they can hurt or help.  Haven't we learned that by now?  Have you ever sent an email meant for one person to someone else by mistake?  I thought that was just a rookie mistake.  So now we know the Democratic National Committee is full of rookies?  These are the people assisting the potential leader of the Free World?  Yikes!

*Looks like the DNC will soon be hiring.  Experience not required*

The same goes with cameras.  How many times have we seen videos of a policeman just beating the beejebers out of some guy after, for example, a chase.  He'll get the guy on the ground and then commence to just beat the crap out of him, and then a few seconds later the other less fit, fat, flatfooted cops catch up and jump in, too.  Then it goes viral and the cops are indicted, or at least looking for new employment.

BREAKING NEWS:   Every mouth breathing knuckledragger with a cell phone (and they all have cell phones) lives to take a video of something to embarrass someone else with.  Security cameras, cell phone cameras, traffic cameras, body cameras, dash cameras....they're everywhere.  How can anyone with even a low-double-digit IQ not know that?

  Even I know that!  ;)

Don't want to be photographed picking your nose, or staring at some well-endowed babe's cleavage, or stealing your neighbor's Amazon package off their porch?  THEN DON'T DO THOSE THINGS!

How can we be so smart and so stupid at the same time?

S