Q&A Friday #30: 5 Questions For The Price Of One

Question: “Where do you think you would be without politics?” — Schwartzenheimer2

Answer: Before I started RWN, I ran a humor blog/zine called Brass Knuckles Webzine that pulled around 2000 daily uniques per day. If not for RWN, I would have stayed with it and hopefully improved those numbers

Question: “I notice that you haven’t written much about the Alito nomination recently. Do you think his confirmation is relatively safe, and doesn’t need to be constantly discussed, or is it just that there’s a lack of things to say while we wait for the hearings to start?” — maledicta

Answer: Things will pick up with Alito once his hearings start and although I expect a lot of carping from the Democrats and maybe even 2-3 Republican defectors, I expect Alito to be confirmed without a filibuster. We’ll see if it works out that way.

Question: “Now that we know George Bush could sell ice to an Eskimo, who do the republicans have that could come even close to him in selling their program in 08?” — Lyle_E

Answer: He can, “sell ice to an Eskimo,” huh? But, I thought the liberal line was that he was a dangerous, incoherent moron who needed Karl Rove to think for him? But, after he gets a little bounce in the polls, he’s another Reagan. Of course, when Reagan was actually in office, liberals said he was a dangerous, embarrassing moron who was led around by his advisers and could never bring down the Soviet Union. Funny how opinions change over time when a Republican President proves himself under fire. In any case, there should be multiple candidates including, but not limited to, George Allen who are capable of moving the ball forward for conservatism.

Question: “Here’s a question: Many US military weapon systems have been heavily criticised for potentially dangerous flaws (HMMWV, V-22), limited capability (Stryker ICV) or for going massively over budget (F/A-22 Raptor). Many programs have been cancelled for any combination of these factors (Crusader, RAH-66 Comanche, OICW), but only after a large amount of money has already been spent on them. The question is; can the US military’s large budget be better spent; and if so, can it even be cut slightly?” — lmbrjk

Answer: The military is like every other branch of government: it wastes enormous sums of taxpayer money because of inefficiency, bureaucracy, and general incompetence. In some cases, the military is even worse than other branches of government because it has such an enormous budget and pols up on the Hill love to play games with that money. They keep open bases that aren’t needed, push weapon systems because a company in their district is the producer, and generally make political decisions that have nothing to do with military necessity. When it comes to any programs run by the Federal government, including the military, the answer is always yes.

Question: “The latest issue of Fortune magazine has an interesting article on investor Richard Rainwater, see : http://www.fortune.com/fortune/investing/articles/0,15114,1139979,00.html

My question is this, do you buy into the notion/hysteria surrounding the pending “Oil Crash” and the subsequent demise of basically all economies on the planet? Whats your take on sites like ‘LifeAftertheOilCrash.net’..” — BlogReader

Answer: We will never run out of oil because the market will automatically adjust. As the price of oil spikes, more money and research will pour into alternate technologies that were never worth it to produce when oil was cheap. Then, over time, products using those alternate energy sources will slowly but surely take the place of oil. Worst case scenario, we may have a crunch for a few years at some unknown point in the future. That’s it.

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