The Liquor Talking

It’s Monday, January 23, 2012 and we’re back in Colstrip, MT this week.

It’s not exactly my kind of town, but the people are nice. I did get to witness something I’ve not seen before; two mule deer bucks fighting in the motel parking lot. Not sure what their beef was. Mating season is long since past and there’s not a heck of a lot to eat in the Super 8 parking lot. They went at it for about 10 minutes before they quit. No idea who prevailed.

Hooray for the interwebs!

In a rare display of doing the will of the governed, Congress has decided not to bring the SOPA legislation up for a vote. Even the bill’s creator, Rep Lamar Smith , R-Texas has backed away.

For now. I’m pretty sure the people that gave him money to introduce their bill are gonna want him to try again.

Senate democrat leader Harry Reid said that “in light of recent events,” he would postpone a test vote that had been set for Tuesday. He said he’s “optimistic” lawmakers can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.

I’m not sure what Harry thinks there is to compromise on. I think us netizens are pretty adamant about Congress tinkering with the Internet. I think we were pretty clear on the idea of handing over control of the Internet to the entertainment corporations. I’m pretty sure that we can all agree on the part about piracy and theft being a huge problem, but this SOPA thing is a pretty stupid idea.

Nice try though.

1. Regarding election dough, I think it’s a pretty good idea to know who’s giving money to people running for office. For instance, here in Montana, we got Congressman Denny Rehberg hoping to unseat first-term Senator Jon Tester.

   

   For those of you who don’t know, Montana is a state. We’re up north, kinda toward the left-hand side, between North Dakota (another state) and Idaho. According to the 2009 census, we have just under a million people. I think we’re a little over a million by now, but a lot of the new folks are from California, so they don’t count.

   Anyway, it’s the 4th biggest state in terms of acreage. It’s about 630 miles across and about 250 from north to south. We’re 48th in terms of population density. As I heard someone once say, there’s a lot of dirt between light poles.

   We have the de rigor pair of senators, but only one congressman. We only get 3 electoral votes.
   So it’s no surprise that you may not have heard about us.

   What’s curious though is the money being poured into our senate race this year. We got 2 candidates. Between them, they’ve raised about $3.5 million. What’s really, really curious is that of that $3.5 million, about 2.5 million of it came from out-of-state donors.

   More than 70% of each candidate’s campaign contributions are from out-of-state.
   

   So my question to each candidate is: Given all this out-of-state dough, whose side are you on?

   I’m sure both will answer that they’re wanting to represent the people of Montana, but how come $450,744 came to Tester’s campaign from the Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV area codes? Why are outfits in New York giving $284,600 to the Tester campaign? What’s important enough to outfits in San Francisco that they gave $45,000 to the Rehberg campaign?

   I got nothing against New Yorkers or the fine people of San Francisco, but what the hell is your interest in Montana’s senate race?

   Don’t worry, we already know the answer. In 2008, $5,204,675 in out-of-state money was raised by Senator Max Baucus, which was just over 90% of his total. $845,542 came from New York. Almost half a million came from Los Angeles and San Francisco.

   

   The trouble here is that I’m stuck between two candidates that I really don’t care for. I mean Rehberg is a republican and all, so if I’m about helping the party gain control of the senate, then it makes sense to vote for Rehberg.

   There’s no chance at all that I ‘d vote for Tester. He’s a democrat and what’s more, I don’t like the guy. I still remember the campaign he ran to oust Conrad Burns by insinuating he was part of that Jack Abramoff scandal. When Burns was cleared of any wrong-doing, Tester was pretty mum on the subject. Had he apologized, I might feel differently.

2. In all honesty, I’m not all that enthusiastic about either party having control of the senate. While I’m still a long, long way from voting democrat, I am increasingly disappointed in the Republican party as a whole. I’ve been a conservative all of my adult life. My political views haven’t changed one bit since I cast my first vote in 1980.

   But now, I’m a radical, tea-party extremist.

   

   Old enough to know better at least.

   I think the thing that pisses me off the most about the Republican party is that deficit spending is bad when democrats do it, but it’s okay when republicans do it. We’re for smaller government, but only when a democrat is running things. When it comes to pandering to special interest groups, we’re not that much different than the democrats.

   

3. In other news, I gotta give props to Newt Gingrich for his handling of CNN’s John King in the republican candidate’s debate last week.

   Talk about getting your ass handed to you! If you look carefully, you can see the other candidate grinning while Gingrich mops the floor with the scumbag.

   Newt just went from the “Hell No!” column to the “Dislike” column on the Official The Liquor Talking Scoreboard.

4. During the same debate, Rick Santorum moved From the “Maybe” to the “Dislike” column for his response to the question regarding SOPA. While he joined the other candidates in denouncing the bill, he left me with the impression that he thinks the government should be more involved in regulating the Internet.

   The other candidates got it right. The existing laws work. Working with authorities in New Zealand and Hong Kong, US authorities took down the the file sharing site Megaupload. It’s founder, Kim Schmitz (AKA Mr Dotcom) is now cooling his heals in the joint.

   They did it without SOPA.

   Mr Schmitz is now awaiting extradition proceedings to the US where he will enjoy the full measure of due process that would have been short-circuited via SOPA.

   The point that Santorum misses altogether is that the laws can be enforced without handing control of the Internet to special interest groups.