# NEW Stupid Republican Idea of the Day (Part 2) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 7, 2022, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018 "2022-02-07T00:52:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 257
**Author:** ![aurora\_maire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aurora_maire/32/328_2.png) [@aurora\_maire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurora_maire)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5122 "2022-10-11T08:59:27Z")
Sometimes the stupidity is breathtaking - as in laughing so hard you can’t breathe. She’s just “asking questions”. And they’re really stupid. > ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5123 "2022-10-11T14:58:28Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Meanwhile, here’s the head of the ADL comparing Elon Musk, FAVORABLY, to Henry Ford. To be fair: Ford, like Musk, had the bad habit of not listening to advice because he believed he knew better than everyone else. Which was why [Fordlândia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia) plantation failed and why producing anything other than the Model T took so long. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5124 "2022-10-11T18:57:13Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > You can also tell that she’s not a Republican because after this came out, she resigned, rather than using it as a campaign slogan. She resigned as president of the council. She did not resign from her council seat. So she stepped down from the position that the rest of the council members elected her to, but not the position that the public elected her to. I guess that’s fitting since the racist comments she made were about another council member’s children. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5125 "2022-10-11T19:24:52Z")
Hmm… I guess that LA matter could be followed up in another thread or its own. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5126 "2022-10-11T21:51:21Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > To be fair: Ford, like Musk, had the bad habit of not listening to advice because he believed he knew better than everyone else. Without that “bad” habit, the Model T wouldn’t have existed in the first place. There were _hundreds_ of US automakers around at the turn of the century, pretty much all building cars the way carriages had been built. I’m sure that Ford got plenty of advice from helpful people that his plan is crazy, that hundreds of factories using bespoke manufacturing techniques can’t be all wrong, and that these ideas about interchangeable parts and such will never work out. There is always the risk that ignoring reasonable-sounding advice will turn pathological at some point. But it’s also the only way innovation happens at all. Since successful innovations like the Model T can pay for quite a few Fordlândias, it’s probably best to have a bias _against_ following conventional wisdom. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5127 "2022-10-11T22:02:51Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > There were _hundreds_ of US automakers around at the turn of the century, pretty much all building cars the way carriages had been built. Except Oldsmobile, [which beat Ford to the assembly line.](https://jalopnik.com/henry-ford-did-not-invent-the-assembly-line-5412420) Henry simply made it move. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5128 "2022-10-11T22:06:57Z")
Interchangeable parts were the real innovation, to my mind (Ford didn’t invent that either, but he did bring it to the auto industry at scale). It may sound surprising now, but you couldn’t simply take any two engine components back then and bolt them together with any hope of getting a successful match. The precision and repeatability had to be greatly increased to make that happen. But once you have that, you can just dump a load of parts at each station, each one just adding their piece, and not worry about having to line up mounting holes or anything. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5129 "2022-10-11T22:34:38Z")
Mr. Cash would [disagree with you](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Piece_at_a_Time). _And that’s when we noticed that something was definitely wrong The transmission was a '53 and the motor turned out to be a '73 And when we tried to put in the bolts all the holes were gone_ ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5130 "2022-10-11T22:45:31Z")
I would strongly suggest you go watch “The Cars The Built America” for a better insight of Mr. Ford. Dude was a straight up violent asshole that got his striking workers killed by his hired goon. And while other manufactures had moved on to sleeker more aerodynamic cars that people actually wanted, he was still stuck on the model T. Despite his own son telling him to move the fuck on. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5131 "2022-10-11T23:06:37Z")
> [@Grrr](#): > > Dude was a straight up violent asshole that got his striking workers killed by his hired goon That’s unrelated to whether he was a successful innovator with the Model T. You seem unable to distinguish Ford’s personal qualities with his business qualities. > [@Grrr](#): > > Despite his own son telling him to move the fuck on. My point, again, is this: innovators, almost by definition, ignore reasonable-sounding advice. That’s not exactly what makes them successful, but it’s what enables them to be successful at all. The people that listened to the advice have a 100% failure rate, since they never even made an attempt. The people that ignored the advice have perhaps a 90% failure rate. As I mentioned, this can turn pathological. Most of the time, I’d expect. No one has a magic formula for distinguishing actually good advice from reasonable-sounding but actually bad advice. Which means that innovators will keep doing their thing until they fail badly enough that they lose the resources to keep trying. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5132 "2022-10-11T23:29:37Z")
In 1798 Eli Whitney built a firearms factory near New Haven. The muskets his workmen made by methods comparable to those of modern mass industrial production were the first to have standardized, interchangeable parts. It’s not THAT new of an idea. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2022, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5133 "2022-10-11T23:48:34Z")
Didn’t I already say that > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > (Ford didn’t invent that either, but he did bring it to the auto industry at scale) I guess I did. Cars have a lot more parts than guns, and require higher precision in the parts that interface with each other. It’s a more difficult problem. It’s weird that people have this intense need to consider other people on a single axis. Because Ford was a violent, antisemitic asshole, he _must_ not have been an innovator either, because that would mean he’s good on one axis and bad on another. And then they go and search for some complexity in the history, which usually amounts to discovering that the child’s version of the history that they were taught doesn’t quite match the reality, and conclude from that that yes, they were right all along to conclude that because the person was bad at A, then they were bad at B and C. Thought-terminating cliche completed. Bill Gates didn’t invent Windows, he was ruthless in business and just stole the idea from Xerox. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the smartphone, he was a poopy butthole that parked in handicapped spaces. Etc. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5134 "2022-10-12T00:18:29Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > As I mentioned, this can turn pathological. Most of the time, I’d expect. Right, if you ignore “common sense” and that makes you successful once or even a few times, then you are inclined to continue ignoring more and more common sense, even the bits that actually make sense. Fortunately for the wealthy, once you have wealth, you can pass the cost of your failures onto others. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5135 "2022-10-12T00:49:03Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Because Ford was a violent, antisemitic asshole, he _must_ not have been an innovator I am not so sure that anyone is actually saying anything quite like that. We do point out that founders George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were slave owners, but it is not normally used as an excuse to villify them. Charles Lindbergh was a NAZI sympathiser, but he is still held in high regard. And JFK was a member of America First (opposed to US involvement in that big war over yonder, which arguably cost many more lives because of the delay) but few people say that that made him a bad person. Not to mention that International Business Machines supplied the Third Reich with tabulating machines that aided them in their genocidal efforts, but no one seems to hold that against them, _per se_. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5136 "2022-10-12T00:57:08Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > then you are inclined to continue ignoring more and more common sense, even the bits that actually make sense. And a few extra factors on top of that: - Even legitimately good common sense may only be true statistically, when what’s important is the exceptional case. It probably _was_ true that Ford had a low chance of success; that the odds were that he’d go broke dumping all that money into developing a car for the masses. Even if it was just dumb luck that he succeeded where others failed, well, it was still the case that he was the one that took the risk. - There is the all-too-human trait of thinking that success in one area translates to success elsewhere. Jobs’ legitimate genius in consumer electronics did not translate to good ideas for cancer treatment. - There’s no surefire way to distinguish good common sense from bad, anyway. If you’re going to ignore any of it, you’re probably going to ignore all of it. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5137 "2022-10-12T01:05:50Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Even if it was just dumb luck that he succeeded where others failed, well, it was still the case that he was the one that took the risk. Where do you place the contribution of luck to a person’s success? This is kind of a non-trivial matter. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5138 "2022-10-12T01:25:35Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Where do you place the contribution of luck to a person’s success? This is kind of a non-trivial matter. It’s obviously a large contributor. But it has the most relevance when combined with (smart) risk-taking. Risk-taking is crucial for innovation, since almost all ideas are bad ones, and the only way we know of separating good from bad is to try them and see which succeeds. But there’s also a large luck factor here, since even among the best ideas, some will fail just due to a bad turn of events. There is currently a lot of churn in the space launch industry, with hundreds of startups. Almost all will fail, but a few will win big. That’s just the way things go. Happened with autos, happened with CPUs, happened with graphics chips (my industry), and it’s currently happening with space. I have a great deal of respect for the “glorious failures”, as I expect some of the more out-there ideas to be. I don’t have any need to play armchair quarterback and point out why they were “obviously” doomed, even though it’s likely non-obvious (except in the case of fraud). In short, we can respect a person’s accomplishments independently of other factors. Luck plays a part, but it only distinguishes successful risk-takers from unsuccessful. Those that did not take the risk don’t even get the lottery ticket. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5139 "2022-10-12T01:41:28Z")
Senator Ben Sasse, who has been pretending to be anti-Individual 1, has resigned from the Senate just to muddle things for a few months so that he can be the new President of the University of Florida. The announcement of Sasse as President has been met with dismay and anger from Florida’s students, due to Sasse’s past anti-gay comments. His website still calls for the “sanctity of marriage”. > **[Ben Sasse’s anti-LGBTQ past recalls deep-rooted history of campus prejudice ...](https://www.alligator.org/article/2022/10/ben-sasses-anti-lgbtq-past)** > > The committee announced its recommendation of Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, to the outrage of many in the UF community foreshadowing a bleak future for UF’s inclusivity toward LGBTQ students and faculty. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5140 "2022-10-12T15:02:32Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > She resigned as president of the council. She did not resign from her council seat. Current reporting has her attacking Jews and Armenians as well during her little rant. > **[Nury Martinez also makes crude comments about Jews and Armenians in leaked audio](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-11/nury-martinez-leak-reveals-crude-comments-about-jews-armenians)** > > In the same audio clip in which she disparages Black people and Oaxacans, Nury Martinez insults Jews and Armenians too. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018/5141 "2022-10-12T15:19:00Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Current reporting has her attacking Jews and Armenians as well during her little rant. I guess she didn’t want them to feel left out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018.md?page=256) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day-part-2/959018.md?page=258)