I won’t hire Joe the plumber

It wasn’t long ago that I entered a contest to win an AR-15 rifle from the Joe the Plumber website. After I entered I was given the chance to sign up for the free newsletter, which, in the interest of journalistic freedom and my own innate curiosity, I did and, no, I’m not sorry yet.

Well, the big day finally arrived today!!! I got my first newsletter. Was I surprised by the contents, no. Again, in the interest of journalistic freedom and my own innate curiosity, I explored the site. Joe the Plumber website is a member of the Liberty Alliance which, for the unadventurous journalists reading this, screams “Tea Party”. Liberty Alliance promotes itself as “a network of web sites dedicated to advancing Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Our members and strategic partners leverage the power of new media to promote traditional values and generate more than 1,000,000 page views each day.” Anyway, back to Joe for a minute. As I was perusing the reading(?) material, I came across and article on California called The “Golden State”??????, by Michael Becker, posted on April 1, 2013. Having lived in California I scanned the article to see what all the question marks were about. If you really have an interest in determining the gist of the article, you can read it yourself at the link I’ve provided. What I found of interest was a number in one paragraph of the article…

Forty years ago California had a school system that was the best in the world. Today, after 40 years of pandering to teachers unions, educators from the US Department of Education and the whims of every progressive minority group, California now consistently ranks in the bottom five of our 57 states. (Ed: emphasis is mine)

Now, we had company over the weekend, the kind of company that usually numbs my mind a little (yes, you guessed it—family), so I was more than I little tired when I went to bed. But if I remember correctly, when I went to sleep we only had 50 states. What do I see in this article—look closely—yes, 57. Where in the hell did we get the other seven states? Did I miss something overnight?

I guess I’ll have to put my journalistic freedom and innate curiosity into determining what the other states are, big thing here, where they are. (Ed: I’m in the State of Confusion now, so does that count as one?) On the good side—at least someone named Michael Becker claimed credit for this piece. Not so the next one.

While I was at the Liberty Alliance website I saw another website they hosted called Saving Our Future and they had an interesting (I know, I know—but it’s in the interest of journalism) post titled Is Obama Foaming At The Mouth To Declare A State Of National Emergency? The post was dated April 1, 2013 and didn’t have an author’s name or anything, not even anonymous. So much for their belief in the facts! If you can’t put your name to it, it isn’t worth the number of bytes that make up the article.

Now, to the meat of the post—

We have all heard of the massive DHS build up of ammunition, AR-15s and MRAPs. We have heard the numbers and The Department of Homeland Security now has enough bullets to kill each of us 5 to 6 times over. Alex Jones says six times over but even five times is enough. These are not false reports.

These claims can be verified through a government website that advertises open bid opportunities for those who do business, or seek to do business, with the federal government. For any of you who may doubt me, that website can be found here. This is exactly where the info is coming from that you read in the conservative media.

Wow, here we go again!!! Well I clicked on the here in the paragraph and was taken to the FedBizOps.gov website. I was expecting to see some big thing on the government website soliciting for (if their “kill each of us 5 to 6 times over” is to be believed) about…let’s see, where is my calculator???? Ok, the population estimate in 2012 was 313.9 million people. So 313.9 million times 6 is (*waiting for calculator total* *SIGH*) 1,883.4 million or (rounded) 1,883,400,000. So anyway, I was looking for a request for bid for about 2 billion bullets. That’s a lot of bullets!!! What I did see, and you can too in the screen shot below, was a lot of different bids. Most of which were for less than lethal training ammunition. Now I don’t know about you, but if you shoot me with non-lethal training ammunition you’re just going to make me mad.

I believe I told you in an earlier post that I used to be an auditor before I retired (no, I also told you that I didn’t work for the IRS). During my audits if someone handed me support for their program or assertion with such a wide-ranging website, I’d throw it in the garbage and tell you to try again. If you can’t support it with more than BS, well, it’s no good and this support provided by whoever-wrote-this-argument is just that—BS³—no good!

You know, one other thing I did find out—some of these people consider the Republicans too liberal. Lets see, Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right, some of these people see the Republicans to the left of the right, so they are right of the right. Does that mean they are hanging on to the edge of the world by their fingertips?

OK, I’m done exploring. I’ve satisfied my journalistic freedom and my own innate curiosity. Do I feel like I’ve advanced MY “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness” No. I feel dumber. Have I advanced responsible journalism???? I hope so, otherwise I’ve wasted a lot of time pushing this BS around my house.

If you figure out what the other seven states are please let me know. Also, please let me know if the DHS units near you are shooting folks with non-lethal ammunition because I want to take some pictures. Now I have to go meditate and do get-smarter exercises, whatever they are.

One more thing: If you want my take on these types of issues my post:

Government takeover: http://ricksroute66.net/2013/02/20/government-takeover/

Second amendment: http://ricksroute66.net/2013/02/24/the-second-amendment-for-dummies/

Link to: http://joeforamerica.com/2013/04/the-golden-state/