Jophiel wrote:
Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
Longer than all of you.
I meant one who bothers to post about politics more deeply than blanket ******** about the air and space programs.
Those are important! And don't forget the blanket ******** on critical infrastructure needs such as transportation and investment in technology and how our research money has been cut to the bone, my less than popular views on proper application of military force and when to extricate oneself from a country, Security and intel matters, Missile defense, and the occasional economic matter. Other aspects of politics I do have distinct oppinions on, but I try to limit myself to areas of political discussions where I have relevent factual input and sufficient subject knowledge to make and maintain a point. Other aspects, you aren't going to change the minds of the "true believers" anyways, so why bother rehashing the same arguments? Besides, sometimes I just want to shout "STOP HELPING!" at certain people...
So, a brief rundown of my political beliefs for anyone that cares:
1. I don't believe in marriage benifits for same sex couples.
2. I don't believe in marriage benifits for opposite sex couples. Why should us single people get screwed on our taxes?
3. If you are on welfare for an extended period of time for any reason other than major medical issues, you should be reporting to a government job site every single workday day until you find a job. There are thousands of miles of park trails that need clearing and maintaining on national forests. Government agencies need additional data entry and processing capabilty, or at least manual labor. Yes you should get time off to look for jobs, but paying people to do nothing is not cost effective.
4. Funding for our transportation infrastructure needs to be increased at the federal level to what it was in the 1950's and 1960's. Power infrastructure, water infrastructure, rail, data, gas, our deepwater ports all need to be repaired and upgraded. Right now there are zero west coast ports that can accomodate the draft of a post panamax cargo ship for example.
5. The space program is important, fully fund it. We need a heavy lift rocket capable of orbiting large objects at a reasonable cost, and once we have that, we need to start construction of a skyhook / orbital teather now that we have materials that meet the requisite tensile strength.
6. Military spending is important. Most of our larger surface ships are ageing. Especially the cruiser fleet. CG(X) needs to be revived and built. The Ford class carrier program, dispite cost overruns resulting from the development costs of CG(X) being folded into it needs to be accellerated to retire the nimitz fleet faster, due to the Billions per year in operating cost savings per ship. F-35 is overrated, we need more F-22's, we need a carrier variant F-22. we probably need more drones but they don't really replace manned combat aircraft at this time, etc. Plenty mroe where those came from.
7. The education system is underfunded, and college tuitiion is out of control, however college tuition assistance should be merit based, rather than due to ethnicity and the fact that some people don't know how to use birth control and have 50 kids. We shouldn't be rewarding that! see: "idiocracy"
8. Abortion, except in the case of rape or medical emergancy is wrong. Yes, Women have a choice, but that choice ends after they make a decision to engage in activities that result in a baby.
9. Birth control programs, sex education, public education etc. programs that can be shown to result in overall lower costs to society should be implemented to the fullest.
10. The U.S. government should have no records of anything related to myself other than census records, birth records, tax records, employment records relating to tax purposes, and whatever else I choose to voluntarily provide, unless a judge has issued a warrent for additional information on specific cases; it should also be illegal for corporations to maintain massive profiling databases. 11. If it isn't national security, infrastructure, defence, research, education, economy or space, the government should stay the hell out of interfering with it. The govenrment shouldn't care who is sleeping with who for example.
12. Bailing out major corporations with taxpayer funds can be effective, but not at rediculous levels that mortgage the country for generations to come and eventually result in a debt load higher than total GDP for the next millenium or so. John Maynerd Keynes has much to answer for.
13. It's a ******* plant, dig it up and move it over to the left a few feet so we can build the interchange. if it's an endangered animal, it will probably move out of the way before you pave over it, and if not, did we really need one of those anyways? Environmental protection is all well and good and should be persued, but some of the absolute asenine crap that people have to go through to get anything done these days is the main reason why things cost so much more to build than they did even adjusting for material cost prices.
14. Copyright law is horribly broken. we prosecute people for software license violations, when we don't even have a legal definition of what actually constitutes proof of ownership of a software license. Patent law is horribly broken. The Digital millenium copyright act is a travesty. Our supreme court is headed by technologically illiterate nincompoops.
15. the war on drugs is a massive failure due to operating under restricted warfare rules similar to vietnam. we know where they are growing the stuff, we know where they are making it. Wipe them out. Any country that doesn't is contributing to the problem. Double the coast guard budget overall, Nuke Colombia from orbit, Tell Canukistan to lock down their ports better or we will, etc.
16. All of the remainign republican candidates are ******* disasters and will hand the election uncontested to Obama.
17. Obama's birth certificate is likely legitimate, he's probably not a secret muslim jihadi in communication with aliens, and he is an absolute disaster for this country. Though palin / mccain might have been worse, especially if mccain kicks the bucket.
18. The "Tea Party", whatever the origional intents were, was hijacked by radical elements early on and no longer represents any form of mainstream demographic.
19. Dinosaurs are awsome, evolution happened, I think there probably is room for some sort of influence or oversight from some sort of higher being, though I realize that is hypocrytical in certain aspects. I also try not to make a huge deal over my religous beliefs, especially in regards to politics beyond stating that the seperation of church and state should be absolute.
20. Jimmy Carter was the worst president of all time.
There, does that pretty much cover it?