Since Obama is in this conversation, I want to give my opinion of our top three presidential hopefulls:
Obama: Quite possibly wasn’t really ready for the office, but still worked for his campaign promises. He hasn’t fucked anything over too bad, so he will have my vote.
Romney: He wants to run the Executive branch like he was a CEO. If he’s elected, not much will happen. Maybe the economy will get better, maybe it won’t. He doesn’t have any “vision” - so look for the status quo (whether you like it or not)
Gingrich: Power hungry bastard. He could get us in some very deep shit if he gets the office. This is not a guy that will listen to anybody on his staff. He will be smart enough not to do anything that is quite illegal, but that doesn’t mean he will make good decisions.
Does a permanent moon base by the end of his term sound like a workable idea? Seriously, the most expensive project in the history of the world, funded by cutting taxes? Is that what passes for profound insight these days?
Maybe he is planning to have poor inner city school children build the moon bases after class. The kids would actually do work; they’d have cash. They could also be put into service installing giant mirrors to reflect ambient light so it covers entire areas reducing the current danger of criminals lurking in the darkness. Mirrors could be arranged to light given metropolitan areas only during particular periods, so there would be darkness late at night for sleeping. It sounds like genius.
"thefloating mirror idea isn’t on this list. Instead, it’s included in Gingrich’s recap of a June 1979, NASA-sponsored new concepts symposium in Woods Hole, Mass., “where 30 experts brainstormed a range of pioneering options for NASA worthy of Lewis and Clark.”
“Also as a futurist, Gingrich has called some and missed some. In 1984, he saw more clearly than most that computers would touch every aspect of commercial and private life…”
As far as I can tell, this was never a policy initiative.
Back to objectivity and relevance now, I think he has very good ideas, like immigration, drug testing people who get federal aid, entitlement reform, replacing obamacare, replace the EPA, and quite a few solutions for the education system.
I, for one, believe that humanity’s future (if it’s to have one) is in space. One of the great disappointments of Obama has been the dramatic scaling back of the Constellation Project and the shift away from manned space flight.
Gingrich may be a broken VCR, but blinking 12:00 isn’t wrong when it’s noon.
An excellent idea. Any idea how much money it’ll cost to drug test every aid recipient every month including adding all those government employees needed to administer and process the tests? And any idea whether that number will be smaller or larger than the amount of aid currently given to people who would fail the test? [Hint: it’s not smaller.]
This is a perfect example of the difference between being a smart person and saying things that sound vaguely smart as long as you don’t think about them.
Okay, now I have to ask in all seriousness: how old are you?
Space is expensive. Really expensive. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly expensive it is. I mean, you may think it’s a lot of cash to pick up your prescriptions, but that’s just peanuts to space …
(Sorry, Doug!)
Presidents would love to put money into manned space exploration - especially since that money would be spent in vote-rich states like Texas, Florida and California. Problem is every manned space goal more interesting that an occasional trip to low orbit is a budget buster. We’re talking Sagans of dollars just for a manned space station. It’s more for a moon trip - let alone a semi-permanent station.
I am not an American. But Romney seems like a good candidate to me.
From wikipedia:
“His experience at Bain & Company and Bain Capital gave Romney a business-oriented world view – centering on a hate of waste and inefficiency, a love for data and charts and analysis and presentation, and a belief in keeping an open mind and seeking opposing points of view – that he would take with him to the public sector.”
That sentence sounds like it’s written to state what the best hypothetical president would be like. Someone who not only understands economics, but is good at it.
It has become sort of a critique that he is really rich. But he made most of his wealth himself, by making sensible business decisions. Isn’t that exactly what you want in a leader? Someone who understands how to make good economic decisions. As the governor of Massechusets, he eliminated the deficit. He also introduced health care reform, in a way that both benefits the poor and is economically beneficial.
Of course his social policies are bad from a European perspective, but so are those of every republican candidate.
I suppose it’s easier to knock the metaphor than discuss the facts. It just isn’t cost effective to drug test welfare recipients. Even worse, are you seriously going to tell kids they have to starve because mommy failed a drug test? Is this what’s known as compassionate conservatism?
I think people are more making fun of Gingrich’s idea that he can give billions away in tax cuts (he wants to cut Captial Gains to zero, for example) and go to the moon and build a moonbase on a timetable more ambitious then the Apollo program. For reference, the Apollo program was absorbing something like half a percent of GDP a year during its height, which would be like 150 billion dollars in todays money.
Thats what people mean when they say he’s a stupid persons idea of what a smart person would sound like. His ideas sound pretty cool when he throws them out there, until you sit back and crunch a few numbers and realize they make little or no sense and he’s not really making policy proposals, he’s just throwing out whatever whim passes through his head.
Then you’re willing to send me some money so I can get high? PM me for the mailing address. Hell send me March’s paycheck in advance while you’re at it, I wanna invite some of my friends over so we can all get our party on.
You know, it is possible to smoke pot (or use other drugs) once a week and still have enough welfare money left over to feed your kids. Such parents aren’t harming their children any more than parents who have a few glasses of wine on the weekends, and refusing those families financial support will harm the children more than their parents’ occasional drinking or drug use.