I continue to be amazed at the levels of stupidity and wackiness that people are capable of. Cases in point are four items in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I'm having a tough time deciding which one is dumbest.
The first story concerns a woman who was caught faking a pregnancy, with twins no less, with the apparent objective of eliciting enough sympathy to avoid going to jail for mortgage fraud. The woman, who her lawyer says is an aspiring social worker, had trouble pulling off her hoax because of her belly: "One day it would be lopsided, another lumpy, as though it were stuffed to simulate someone expecting twins."
The second story is about a horse-carriage jacking (yes, you read that right) in downtown St. Louis. A man allegedly chased down a fleeing horse carriage and assaulted the driver with a wooden cane. The driver, who was not seriously hurt, knew what would happen next: The horse simply pulled the carriage back to its barn, where the horse-carriage jacker was subdued by two members of the military who had stopped to help the carriage driver.
In the third item, the P-D editorial board has a case of the vapors because of some political maneuvering by some politicians. How shocking! Apparently, those silly House Republicans want to attach a provision requiring approval the Keystone XL pipeline to a bill authorizing transportation funding. According to the editorial board, "the Keystone XL proposal is a hustle being sold on phony promises of tens of thousands of jobs and environmental safety," and not a project that passed through a three-year review process only to be halted in a bald-faced attempt by the President to placate the environmental extremists at the cost of the U.S. economy.
Finally, there is the story of a car driven by a 15-year-old that overturned while driving on I-70, injuring the driver and her three young passengers (ages 5, 8, and 10). The girl has only a learners permit but her parents were following behind her in a second car, rather than being in the car with her as required by law. Prior to the crash, police dispatchers had received calls about the girl's car driving recklessly along the interstate.
Who really knows why people are so wacky. Blinding stupidity seems to
have played a role in at least three of these stories, but I don't think
we can discount the possibility that alcohol and/or drugs also played a
role in one or more of them.
