Thursday, October 06, 2011

Words, words, words

President Obama is talking on TV right now.  I am more productive in my job with the mute on.

Makes me think of the time Beavis and Butthead were using industrial strength glue to create beards on their faces.  Butthead looks at the warning label, but says aloud "... words, words words."

The President says his jobs bill will create jobs because "experts who do this for a living" affirm it, so therefore it must be true.  I wonder if it would be too Butthead of me to ask what these experts predicted about his earlier stimulus bills.

Oh, and apparently, Butthead was sampling Hamlet.  Check out Kenneth Branagh's interpretation at the 1:19 mark:


UPDATE: I found the B&B episode, go to the 1:50 mark:


UPDATE: Simon Black eloquently suggests the reasons for my impatience today:
While people like Warren Buffet are pleading with the government to raise their taxes and give away their wealth to sycophantic bureaucrats, Jobs showed time and time again that the best way to improve people’s lives is to create value and be productive.

Steve Jobs was one of the most productive human beings to have ever lived; he started several successful companies which directly employed tens of thousands of people. Indirectly, his businesses improved the livelihoods of millions across the globe, from Chinese factory workers to iPhone app programmers to Apple shareholders.

In building an empire and unimaginable wealth for himself, Steve Jobs enriched the lives and livelihoods of others by creating value. Not by forced redistribution. Not by giving things away. By creating value.

Ironically, just as I write this I am watching President Obama on Bloomberg Television trying to explain how many jobs his new plan will create– 1.9 million in his estimate:

“We’re just going to keep on going at it and hammering away… until… something gets done. I would love to see nothing more than Congress act… so aggressively.”

Politicians would do themselves and their constituents a great service by comparing their own track record for enriching people’s lives against Steve Jobs’ performance, and then kindly stepping out of the way. The path to prosperity is not paved in votes, but rather in freedom: the freedom to create, produce, risk work hard… and be rewarded for your efforts.

If you have the time, I’d encourage you to take a few minutes and read some of Jobs’ own words; there are boundless sources online that will praise his creativity, drive, and intellect, but perhaps no one is better suited to explain Steve Jobs than the man himself.

Below I’ve pasted in some key quotes ...

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