Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Alcohol - the Cause & Cure

As the Occupy movement grows and grows, it does this old cynic's heart good to see that many progressive outcomes have been won this last voting day. (I'd call it election day, but it was mostly about initiatives and recalls, if I understand the news correctly) Off-year voting days are less than normally populated, but we apparently had a pretty good turnout, if only because a lot of dumb initiatives got shit-canned.

Here in Washington State, one of our largest retailers paid good money to be allowed to sell liquor, and they got their money's worth - you'll be able to buy booze in places other than state-run liquor stores as of June of next year. Meanwhile, the government-run shops will mostly close down (inventory's too expensive for the current franchisees to be able to buy themselves into the likker biz), and the only place you'll be able to buy booze will be in stores with a footprint larger than 10,000 square feet. This lets out the local gas stations, but it also lets out the kind of places I saw in San Francisco last time I was down there, such as the Beer & Bourbon store between Castro and Noe Valley.

Meanwhile in Republican politics, you have Herman Cain's campaign flaming out in grand style on various and sundry charges, ranging from being a deadbeat diner to sexual harassment to outright sexual assault. Of course, when the charges are being aired, he plays the race card, while simultaneously negating said card by saying he doesn't have any "hard evidence" to back it up.

Being an asshole is trans-racial.

While I abhor his behavior regarding Ms. Bialek, I think stiffing a couple of invited guests for the cost of dinner, after you order the most expensive wine on the menu, seems like the sort of behavior we need in a President right now. How are we going to erase the National Debt? Cain's solution: stiff China for the bill...

Rick Perry has now had many offers for either a new mixologist, or perhaps less effective drugs. His last speech had all the earmarks of Bad Lip Reading's work, but it wasn't them; it was really he, Rick "Goodhair" Perry, who couldn't make an English sentence work in his favor for nearly fifteen minutes. Unbelievable that someone didn't hook him off the stage after the first three.

Newt tried to up his cred by debating Cain and Cain alone the other week. Haven't really heard from him since. Not sure what they talked about.

Ron Paul has taken to calling Elizabeth Warren a Socialist, because Ms. Warren had the audacity to tell her audience that, without education, roads, bridges, cops and firemen, all this rugged individualism that Republicans espouse would have taken place in a much smaller arena. Yes, they might have succeeded on their own, but they'd be lonely. Very, very lonely.

Mitt Romney is probably going to be the front runner. Which means he still has a chance to fuck up even worse than he already has. Once he's determined the appropriate stance to take on a subject, he will then discover a better stance to take, and then a different stance to take, until finally, he decides on a final stance to take, just before he takes his stance on that subject. He will then be criticized by a tiny demographic within his larger demographic, after which he will have a new stance on the same subject with a small change in nuance designed to make that stance seem as much like his original stance as possible, while bearing no resemblance to it at all.

Here in Washington, the change in liquor laws can't come soon enough.

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