The Liquor Talking

It’s Monday, January 16, 2012 and you think you got it rough?

I used to wonder if His Obamaness was evil or stupid. I now think he is evil, but has managed to surround himself with stupid people. New reports coming in suggest that the Solyndra debacle is just the tip of the iceberg and that the $500 million costs to taxpayers is just a drop in the bucket compared to what’s coming next.

As much as I hate to say it, you’re gonna have to watch for this on Fox News in that the other “news” outfits probably won’t give it very much chars.

1. Okay, okay! I’m not gonna spend all of Wednesday’s Reader Mail talking about the quiz at Select Smart. I took the quiz.
   Here are the results:
   

   I’m not sure how much stock to put into this thing. As I’ve said before, I think some of the questions are clumsily worded and some of the answers are imprecise. For instance:

   

   My “ideal candidate” would not necessarily support OR oppose same sex marriages/unions/whatever. My “ideal candidate” wouldn’t see it as a “gay & lesbian issue” but rather as one of civil liberties. Make no mistake, opposing the ban on same sex marriage IS NOT the same thing as advocating same sex marriage.

   I actually oppose same sex marriage in that I don’t think you should do it, because I believe it is a sin. I oppose banning it though because I believe, with equal conviction, that it’s none of the government’s damn business.

   And again with this question:
   

   I don’t support either the US Chamber of Commerce or the AFL-CIO. I think they’re both full of crap. My “ideal candidate” would support strengthening labor laws to the point that organized labor would be irrelevant. I want a candidate that’s make this a “right to work” country. The USCoC and AFL-CIO can go pound sand.

   You get the idea.

   So that’s probably why the closest anyone got to me was 72%.

   What’s strange is that while Newt Gingrich tops my quiz-generated list, I don’t like the guy. What’s more is that I don’t trust the guy. It seems that I agree with 72% of his positions, but I think the guy is a pompous ass and I got a real problem with the way he’s been attacking the other candidates. Pretty sure I’m not gonna vote for the guy.

   This troubles me as well:
   

   I like Rick Santorum, but he and I have a major disconnect where education is concerned. Santorum holds that “Education is the responsibility of parents, local schools (public and private), and states in that order.”

   

   I believe that an educated We The People is vital to the greatness of our nation. I see it as a national problem, requiring a national effort to solve. I contend that education falls under three specific parts of the Preamble:
   

   
   
   1. Form a more perfect union
      
   2. Promote the general welfare
      
   3. Secure the blessings of liberty
      

   An educated populace would (in my singularly UN-humble opinion) would require LESS government on the whole. Someone who can read, write, do math and who has a rudimentary understanding of history is far and away, better equipped to handle their own problems.

   Further, you simply can not demand a liberty that you don’t understand.

   I agree that active parenting plays a crucial role, but if your parents didn’t/don’t value education, chances are that you won’t either. Lather, rinse and repeat until we’re a nation of complete idiots. Putting it on the parents/states will surely reduce federal spending, but we gotta remember that there ARE some things the government SHOULD do. When a kid graduates high school from an inner-city school who reads/writes 6 grade levels below that of a kid graduating in Wyoming, we got a national problem.

   Santorum wants to “Build an America that believes in you” but I’m not sure how that’s a good idea, where education is concerned. The you he’s talking about has fscked this up in a big, big way.

   That said, I don’t know what the fix is, but I damned sure know where education is concerned, Santorum ain’t it.

   I ‘m pretty sure that I don’t like Mitt Romney. I admit that I need to look at the guy more closely, but I’m kinda weirded out by his comparing his work with Bain Capitol to that of the federal government (Obama specifically) when it bailed out General Motors.

   

   As a result of the government takeover, dealerships were closed and people lost jobs as a result. Same-same as when Bain took over some outfits. I get it, it’s a ploy to snatch the wind from the sails of the liberals who will undoubtedly make hay of his Bain Capitol doings, but he’s going about it all wrong. How can you criticize Romney for this when Obama did the same thing?

   It’s the wrong message though.

   The government has no business sinking taxpayer money into a failed corporation, regardless of how big it is. That’s what the private sector is for. Yep, the government should have turned its back on GM (and the banks, and the insurance industry) and let the venture capitalists do their thing sans taxpayer bucks.

   The weird thing is that I kinda like Ron Paul, but according to this quiz, I dig his rap only 68% of the time. I’m not sure where the big disconnect here is in that I only have one bone of contention with him and that’s over foreign policy.

   

   I agree that we shouldn’t have any agenda-less military incursions and that nation re-building is up to the vanquished, but the US is a global power and needs to project that power on a global scale. Along those lines, Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is a big deal. The governments of every other nuclear-capable country are sane enough to realize that using one, even one would result in an response that’s both catastrophic and unsurvivable.

   Iran doesn’t strike me as having that kind of sanity. I’m all for giving Israel first dibs on laying the smack-down, I mean it is their back yard and all, but they damn sure had better have any aid we can lend.

   What’s really, really weird is the bottom of the list:
   

   Really? According to this quiz, I agree with Obama more than a third of the time? I agree with Biden almost a third? I mean there are some things I applaud The President for doing (whacking terrorist being at the top of the list) but, I don’t think they cumulatively come close to 37%. I think Biden is a snapperhead, so I’m hard put to figure out where he and I agree.

   

   But according to the quiz, that’s how I roll.

2. But, It does make me wonder. How many people are going to vote for a candidate based on if they like the candidate or not and how many are going to vote for a candidate based on their agreement with the candidates beliefs?

   How many of us will again be voting against a candidate as opposed to for one?

   

3. “The soap all been [unintelligible], so I gone for saucin’ [unintelligible] trucker. I can’t with these shoes.” – Some peculiar looking gentleman, speaking to the frozen hash browns in WalMart.

   

   Yes, I had my hearing aids in, so I’m fairly certain of what he said.

   Well, at least he made no attempt to engage me in conversation. I’m just glad I got my hash browns out of the case before he started talking to them. No telling what that’d do to the flavor.
   

4. Lastly, the White house has come out against SOPA.

   

   A White House blog says in part:

   “Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small”

   Now we wait to see if Congress actually passes the thing. Given the response to businesses that supported it, I really can’t see this happening. Then again, this Congress seems to have failing us as its primary objective. What’s another couple points in the old disapproval rating when they’re down this far anyway?

   Plus, since the White House is against it and a republican introduced it, there’s absolutely no predicting how this will play out. It will however be interesting to see if the Internet gets mad again.