The Liquor Talking

I think you’re wasting your time in trying to debate someone who can just parrot the newest talking points on a poster.

I’m one of those independent voters that drive you so crazy and I voted for Obama. Unlike a lot of other independents who did, I can easily articulate why I did.

I can also easily articulate why I won’t again. Please forgive me if I don’t make a poster. My reasons are but three:

1. The economy IS getting better, but it didn’t get better fast enough or better enough, fast enough. When we can get excited by a .3% decline in unemployment, over six months, we’re in some pretty sorry shape. I’ve miraculously survived 8 rounds of layoffs, but I go to work every day worrying that it might be my turn next.
2. The day Obama took office, it cost me $1.68 a gallon to fill up my truck. Today it was $3.48. This is more than double.
3. Despite promises aplenty to the contrary, my health care insurance went up and this is AFTER one of my kids went off my insurance.

I’m still undecided as to who I support as a replacement, but that’s probably due to my being a mush-headed, undecided, independent.

Roy

Yeah, I probably didn’t change anyone’s mind with my rant on Monday. I had to try all the same.

I wouldn’t say you were entirely mush-headed. I mean you’ve at least made the decision to not vote for Obama again and what’s more important, you know and can say why.

Moreover, you can list reasons that pertain specifically to you and not just a bunch of vague, general proclamations.

Elim

It’s not often that I respond to blogs. Unless it’s particularly profound or blatantly silly, I’m content to leave people to their things, as I expect them to do for me.

You’re mostly right on your response to the poster, but are 100% wrong on Obamacare. It needs to be repealed in its entirety. It can’t be fixed and if you really listened to Ron Paul, you’d see that market forces should drive insurance and health care costs instead of another 2,700 page pile of steaming legislation.

Markus Maximus Ultimus

It’s not often that I get properly slapped down by a reader, but I’ll order an extra serving of humble pie for desert tonight.

You’re right of course. Health care and health care insurance should be consumer driven industries and like all such things, cost less in an atmosphere free from needless regulation.

That said, I think it’s reasonable to think that we’ll somehow need to be weened off the regulatory tit. Something to keep insurance companies from going hog wild in the slack time between deregulation and the natural assertion of market forces. I see a lot of potential for people, particularly those with preexisting conditions to get dropped overboard in the transition.

Remembering of course that there are a few things that our founding fathers believed were the purview of the federal government.

So that’s what I meant by “fix it.”

Still, 12 Hand Salutes for pointing out my error.

Elim

The thing is that most people just don’t think it’s important to check things out for themselves. So, some idiot makes a poster and a bunch of people just think it’s the truth.

Or, they might click on a YouTube video of some celebrity running off at the mouth and think it’s the truth.

Or get sent some chain-letter email from someone they never heard of and think it’s the truth.

People don’t seek truth anymore. They just pick up whatever “truth” happens to come their way.

I think there’s something in the Bible about that.

Steven

I’m gonna have to make it clear that I don’t have any idiot friends. I have a number of politically liberal friends, who I view as misguided, just as I’m sure they view me, but I avoid idiots fervently.

With that cleared up, yes you are correct that a heck of a lot of people build their political views with some pretty flimsy materials.

What baffles me is that a lot of people don’t seem think it’s important. For instance, let’s take a little pop quiz:

Which presidential candidate claimed that 10% of all deaths in the Netherlands are from euthanasia?

No fair Googling for it!. Click on the image below for the answer.

I don’t know why more people aren’t engaged. Is it apathy? Is it cynicism? Is it hopelessness?

What gives, people?

Elim

“How much, I’m talking a numerical quantification here, is a fair share?”

10%. 10% if you’re a prince or a pauper. No more deductions, no more incentives, no more tax credits, no more loopholes.

If a million bucks comes your way, be it via wages, capital gains, winning the lottery, finding it on the ground, or being granted it by a genie, you owe $100,000.

If you only bring in $1,500 for the year, you owe $150 of it to the feds.

There’s you a no-brainer.

Eli

You’re gonna put a lot of tax preparers out of work with that!

No to worry though. I’m sure there’s enough lobbyist around to make a simple tax code complex enough to where the average taxpayer can’t understand it.

The argument of course is that a millionaire can afford a 10% bite a lot easier that someone on minimum wage gigs. Taking 100 grand out of a million bucks still leaves you with $900K. That same 10% grabbed out of minimum wage pay leaves you with $13,572 to get by on.

That’s kinda rough to do.

Not really, but if we’re talking fairness, I don’t see it as liberalism to recognize that taxes don’t hurt us all with the same intensity. I think simply cutting the tax tables from 14 pages to 1. I’m talking 3, maybe 4 tax brackets, with no graduation within and no difference between filing single or jointly.

I’m not sure what this would do to federal revenue, but if we’re talking fairness here, the less the government gets, the better off we are.

I do however agree with putting the zap on all the deductions, incentives and such. I’m pretty sure the free market can push money to where the consumers want a lot more efficiently than the government.

Elim

God forbid someone makes a buck in this city. Maybe they should take a vacant lot, install power so that the food trucks will have electric & have all the food trucks park there. That way all the food is in one place. Free enterprise wins! Just sayin.

Deedee

Miss you lots.

You know, that wouldn’t be a bad idea. I wonder what it would cost to buy a little chunk of space downtown and turn it into a street-level food court.

You’d get killed in the winter, I think.

Plus, you’d have to find the perfect location. I’d walk a couple blocks for a decent Polish dog, but not a lot more than that.

No doubt though, the Billings city government would find a way to screw it up.

Elim

I can’t even comprehend the arrogance it would take to pull a stunt like that and NOT expect to get your ass kicked.

You have to admit though, this government expansion crap does bring a few laughs with it.

Ralph (Provider of The Ralph Effect)

I’m not sure how my mom would have reacted. I think somebody would have had a pretty bad day.

I’m not sure how much of it is arrogance and how much is desperation. If a it’s your job to find lunches that aren’t nutritious and you find none, some could say that you’re not doing your job. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that the Nutritional Enforcement Officer had a quota to meet.

Yeah, and I guess it’s funny, in a train wreck kind of way.

Elim

I think the chicken nuggets thing was just handled badly. I don’t see a problem with making sure kids are provided with a healthy lunch or giving parents guidance on what’s healthy and what’s not. Everybody wants to make this out like a bunch of jackbooted thugs coming down on a kindergarten kid.

Sarah,

Handled badly. You think?

One of the last things a 4 year-old kid needs is the perception that their parents are less than 100% perfect. Regardless of intent, putting the notion into a child’s head that some stranger knows what’s better for them than their parents is inexcusable.

While I doubt there was a SWAT team involved, the message is the same; “Your mom screwed up. Here, let us fix that for you.”

I’m no nutritional expert, but the lunch involved seems perfectly fine to me. If the kid showed up with a bag of Snickers bars, that’d be a different thing.

Plus, I’m wondering how the Nutritional Enforcement Officer determined what the kid had for breakfast and what she was going to have for dinner. What did she have the day before? What would it be tomorrow? I know enough to know that this isn’t the sort of thing that can be determined by a single lunch.

No, this is at best jackassery. At worse, it’s another not-so-subtle attempt at telling parents how to raise their kids.

Elim

I have you now!

If your religion forbids contributing to the sins of others, how can you justify your support for gay marriage and abortion?

If kids are raised in a society where they think these things are okay, then you’re contributing to their sins.

Charles

Not so fast there.

For the 50,312th time, I do not support gay marriage. I don’t support abortion either.

Not opposing a thing does not mean supporting that thing. Why is this so hard to understand?

I oppose banning things where there is no Constitutional authority to do so. Trying to impose moral standards via law leads us down paths that we as a free people can’t set even one toe upon.

We outlaw certain behaviors because they cause injury or harm to others. Running a red light for instance puts others in danger. I’ve yet to have someone explain how a man marrying another man or a woman marrying another woman injures or harms someone else.

Using your logic, we should outlaw homosexuality because if it’s not illegal, then kids are being raised to believe that it’s okay. While we’re at it, let’s outlaw adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, strife, jealousy, wrath, selfishness, divisions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like.

Okay, murders are already illegal, but I trust my point is made.

Nice try though. Be a nice fellow now and go pound sand.

Elim