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Presidential Candidate Questions

Fri, 01/06/2012 - 5:23pm — xrayspx

There are several pointed questions I'd like to see people ask our presidential candidates. I'm going to start a list below, if anyone goes to an event, and can get one of these off before being tossed out, I'll buy you a coke. If it gets a reasonable answer, I'll buy you two cokes. If anyone has anything to add, tell me and I'll add it.

I'm going to do them by issue type and candidate, I guess. Most of them are probably pretty interchangeable. I started thinking of these in the context of "questions I would want to ask Rick Santorum", so I'm starting with him.

Civil Rights / Social issues

Rick Santorum

  • Make a case against gay marriage that wasn't also made against interracial marriage
  • ...Or in defense of slavery for that matter
  • Give Three non-biblical reasons to prevent two consenting adults from marrying the person they love.

    • Note: Dogs cannot enter into contracts. Neither can minors. Don't let him pull that pedo/bestial nonsense. No state with legal same sex marriage has 4 partners getting married, or people marrying dogs or children

  • Ask why his wife's abortion was more moral than any other doctor trying to save a mother's life

    • Fiscal Issues / Debt & Deficit Reduction

    Newt Gingrich

  • You're very focused on Food Stamp and welfare reform. Can you address your position on farm subsidies, which take the form of direct handouts to farmers and result in artificial price inflation at the point-of-sale for consumers?

    • National Security /

    Barack Obama

  • Please justify the targeted killing of an American citizen without due process of law in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki. -- I get that there are bad people, and bad people must be stopped, but there is a world of difference between targeting a camp in which there may be a US citizen, and targeting that individual. If they can target him for death, they can target him for capture and repatriation to face a court.

    • Ron Paul

  • Are you really this fucking nuts, really?
    • xrayspx's picture

    A new job for the little Asus

    Sun, 02/20/2011 - 4:40pm — xrayspx

    I think I've finally found the perfect job for the little Asus EEE, since it's just too weak to show good video. It has the following tasks:

    • Linux machine I can ssh to
    • Spam Sorter and mail filter
    • Tor Exit Relay
    • CIFS fileserver for my CD collection

    Using this as the "Linux machine I can ssh to" means I'm not running a 4 core Mac Pro keeping all those disks spinning all the time anymore. This works out great, and the Pro can hibernate 95% of the time now, which should do good things for the electric bill.

    I'm doing the laziest mail filtering ever. I'm running X11VNC with a Thunderbird instance doing spam filtering on my IMAP account. I don't care how lame, that was just easiest, and it works.

    I decided a few weeks ago at the start of the Egyptian uprising that the good that can be done by providing a Tor exit relay is worth the risk of people using it for bad things, and the risk of a knock on my own door for activity originating from my IP. Now that feeling is stronger since people in more and more countries are standing up and trying to topple dictators, and are getting slaughtered in the streets for it. These governments might permit access to Twitter and FB and Google, but believe they're only doing so so they can track activity and target individual Twitter users. If you're in danger from your government, and more importantly, if your government is in danger from you, always use Tor.

    So there it is, it took six months to find a niche for this machine, but once found, it's filling the niche perfectly.

    I have a bunch of Amex gift cards which amount to about 2/3 the price of a Mac Mini. I'm on the fence about whether a Mini, even at 2/3 off, is worth it. My T60 solution seems to be running great for the time being.

    xrayspx's picture

    The Goth Militia Is Rising!

    Mon, 03/29/2010 - 1:36am — xrayspx

    This past weekend the feds conducted raids in three states targeting the Hutaree militia group. These guys are Christian survivalist extremists, "Preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive". They believe the Anti-Christ walks among us, that kind of thing. Nevermind that as I understand it, if the Anti-Christ is walking among us, that means the rapture has already happened, which means "You Lose".

    Other militia groups want nothing to do with these guys apparently, so they've definitely at least won the Nutjob Arms Race.

    Anyway, I found their site and they had a training video posted on the front page:

    That's right, they're Sisters of Mercy fans! Of course, they think it's "weird 80's music from Germany", but still, that's the greatest thing I've seen. I wish it was Pet Shop Boys, or Erasure, but this will definitely do nicely.

    I'm sure that video won't be sticking around YouTube for too long, but I did download it locally, so if it goes away, I can always put it back.

    xrayspx's picture

    I Love NH

    Tue, 01/05/2010 - 12:48am — xrayspx

    I'm very proud of my state this week. On January first, NH House Bill 73 went into effect, finally providing equal rights under the law for one more state's residents. AFAIK (and I'm not going to hunt this out now), New Hampshire is the first state to allow gays full access to marriage via legislation, rather than a court ruling. I am ambivalent about the court-based approach, but I know a lot of people feel very strongly that such things should be handled through the legislature. At least this way "activist judges" can't be held accountable. This is "activist duly elected representatives of the People". My personal opinion is that sometimes it takes a court to decide what is right, as in the case of certain other landmark civil rights cases.

    This is a topic that has been discussed to death on my site in the forums. I'm just happy for this outcome.

    Either way, I'm sure this isn't completely handled in New Hampshire either, and we have to be vigilant and make sure there aren't any abuses. From here on, married gays should have full visitation, survivorship and community property rights. I'll be very interested to see how long we can go before any of these rights are infringed or challenged.

    At some point, there will be a tipping point. Enough states will provide equal rights for their citizens that the rest will fall like dominoes. Hopefully that tipping point is just around the corner.

    Come on guys, equal protection under the law for all Americans. It's not hard.

    xrayspx's picture

    Dumbest argument ever, a 2 minute rant.

    Fri, 10/02/2009 - 11:50pm — xrayspx

    This is the DUMBEST argument against "public option" healthcare I've ever heard, and I've been hearing it more and more, even in such Lieburul Hotspots as NPR:

    "CNSNews.com
    With 50 Million New Patients Possible, Nation Needs More Primary Care Doctors"

    On the one hand, these mouthbreathing fucking cretins challenge us to show them "a SINGLE American who ever went bankrupt because of medical bills", well, that was easily disproved, hell, I personally know a couple of people who came close to losing it all. People are denied care all. the. time, and many who get treatment are denied payment for the care they receive.

    Now they're saying that since there are 50MM uninsured, if we suddenly insure these people it will be disastrous for the country because we'll run out of doctors. Right now, if these people get sick with an acute illness, they can go to an emergency room at their local "hospital of last resort". They must be treated for serious illnesses, then the hospitals chalk it up as "money someone should pay us sometime". The money that gets paid is generally in the form of the taxpayers paying the hospital. That system works great for "gunshot wound", but does not work for "colon cancer" or "congratulations, you've got diabetes". What it does do is encourage people to use ERs as PCPs. This stretches ERs limits.

    What they're really saying is "These people are too poor/stupid to have medical insurance, therefore they don't deserve medical treatment, and should die". That is not "oversimplified" or "out of context". What they're saying is, "If you can't afford or are denied medical insurance on the basis of 'pre-existing conditions', you should not see a doctor, and you may die". After all, the claim is that if these unwashed masses suddenly had insurance, the healthcare system as we know it would collapse, because suddenly poor people and sick people can visit doctors for free.

    Assholes. Staying alive is not a privilege. Where's your "right to life" now? What about the right-to-life of the worker who loses his job and can't afford COBRA, or COBRA runs out before he gets a new job? What's that? Fuck him? Ok, thought so, thanks for clearing that up.

    xrayspx's picture

    Auto-Tune the News

    Sun, 05/24/2009 - 1:05am — xrayspx

    Study this, there will be a quiz at the end of the week:

    More from Schmoyoho with bonus Ron Paul

    Whoops

    Tue, 03/18/2008 - 12:33am — adminx

    This is the saddest thing I saw all day. I really can't think of a more appropriate way for things to play out though. Dying to protect his tiny piece of rock, protecting it from someone who really loved him, but wanted to take his rock away.

    I remember very little about that book because I never really read it when I was a little kid. I was way too damaged, and I probably still am. But that story sums up a lot about warring over politics.

    Also, if the German had held up, it could have easily been "95 year old French author shoots down superfan".

    xrayspx's picture

    I've been Push-Polled

    Sun, 12/16/2007 - 7:30pm — xrayspx

    [music | The Coup - 5 Million Ways To Kill A CEO]

    Tonight I received two calls within three minutes of each other, the first was an invitation to a Barack Obama rally in Nashua, which I've said I'll go to even though I'm not sold on him, and the second was an automated poll.

    There were only three poll questions:

    • Do I plan to vote in the upcoming NH primary (yes)
    • Would I consider myself to be "Pro-Life" (no [totally Anti-Life, thanks])
    • Would I characterize marriage to be a union between "A man and a woman" (no)

    Take a look at those questions. They seem somewhat designed to be "yes" questions. Especially the marriage one, of course marriage is "a union between a man and a woman". I just happen to also think it's a "union between a man and a man" or "a union between a woman and a woman". Of course this practice of push-polling is designed to get people to answer a certain way according to a candidate's stance on whatever issue, and is a hugely scumbag move, though not as crappy as phone-jamming.

    The poll organization was Common Sense Issues, Inc.(Hey look, racist videos) So I did some Googling. They're apparently a group working for Mike Huckabee. Mike Huckabee claims to denounce "push-polling". It's a bold assertion on my part, but my guess is if he wanted it stopped, it would stop.

    Now it seems if I'd said "Yes" to the above questions, I'd have been asked via followup call a few more questions and eventually, if I answered everything right, asked to be a "Precinct Captain", at least, that's how things have gone down in Iowa. Precinct Captain? Sure, hell I'll be a fuckin' Precinct PREACHER, and spread the word of Huckabee & Jesus both to my local precinct. At this point, I'd kind of love to see Huckabee get the nomination because, much like Ron Paul, he gives Democrats a snowball's chance of somehow failing to lose in 2008.

    I really wish I had that phone call back. Please, Common Sense, call me back, I've made a huge mistake.

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