Top 10 political justifications/beliefs that are total bullshit.

Ok so this is basically a list of justifications people give for specific political beliefs that are so bad the justification doesnt even make sense, no matter if you agree with them or not. I was orginally going to rank them, but then I realized they all just fucking piss me off, so now its just an unranked list of 10.

Basically as a rule, anyone who uses one of these to justify their opinion shouldnt count. They are too damn stupid to be taken even semi seriously.

First off a double header. Two bullshit justifications with the same problem
1) I need guns to protect myself from the government/the government is coming for my guns.

Hey dipshit, if the government wants to kill you....

....you're already dead.

Ever heard of a predator drone? what about the one that "malfunctioned" and landed on your house You can own any gun you want. Still dead. Or what about the M-1 Abrams? AKA the most advanced tank in history, functionally indestructible.  You can double fist any two guns you want.....you aint making a damn dent in that. Just as two of an endless number of examples

Basically what I'm saying is at the end of the day your guns wouldnt do a damn thing if the government came to kill you. Which means they really have no reason to be interested in them.

2) Opposing abortion in the case of the life of the mother because your pro life.

Ironically enough, this one is most problematic if you accept its underlying premise, that life beings at conception and that abortion is murder.

See the whole thing about fetus' and embryo's is that basically they are parasitic. In that they can not live without the nutrients and oxygen they absorb from the host body.....AKA their mothers.

Which means if the mother dies.........they do too.

Which means two people die. As opposed to if you preform the abortion, the mother lives, the fetus doesnt, so only 1 person dies.

Now given that the supposed point of "pro life" is for fewer people to die......this is kinda awkward.

Its worse when you realize 2 things though. First, the person spewing this excuse doesnt understand the simple mathematical formula "1<2"; and Second, that mathematical fact is considered such a basic concept I couldnt find anything on the internet either teaching or mocking it.

3) "man look how unseasonly cold it is....guess that proves climate change is a hoax cause its not hot"

Yea, lets just think about this for a minute. You are saying "man its colder than it normally is" believing your disproving the point "the weather is changing"

So basically:

4) "gay marriage is a threat to my marriage"

Actually look to be fair, this one is actually completely logical in the following situation:

You secretly believe dick is delicious and that your missing out, and if we make it easier for you to get some delicious dick, AND give you the tax benefits your gonna leave your wife for it, because tax breaks was the only reason you tolerated putting in her in the first place.   

Cause yea otherwise this makes no sense at all. I mean what about swingers? You dont seem to have an objection to them, nor do you object to bisexual people, presumably because at the end of the day to get tax breaks they have had to shackle themselves to pussy just like you.

And hell you may not be huge fans of premarital sex, but I've never seen anyone suggest that my getting laid (as a single guy) would break up their marriages. Probably because I'm not getting a tax break like you are. Even if I am entertaining more than one woman (or man) at a time.

So yea since you seem to only dole out the restrictions on "teh gayz" I have to assume you'ev either never thought about this (or anything really)...........................or that your just a bigot pissed off you cant pick on the blacks and jews anymore.

5) "I dont fill out the census because I dont want the government knowing information about my home/family"

Ok so you only hear this one every 10 years, but once a decade it becomes a commonly held belief

And one that might be valid.....if they didnt already KNOW the information they are asking you for.

I mean I realize mail service is becoming obsoletem but theirs a reason why the postman knows where to deliver what little mail you have........because the government knows where you live. And they know what your house looks like, since construction and remodeling permits have to be issued by the government.  And hell they know everything about you, like say Social Security number.....since they are the ones who issued it too you

So your entire argument comes down to the government being too dysfunctional to check its own records, except that your also claiming they WOULD be able to check their own records of the census.....

Granted the only reason they ask you the questions in the first place is because they are too lazy and/or dysfunctional to check their own records.

However the part I never got was the magic exception to government dysfunctionality the Census Bureau gets, espesically as the information is gathered by temporary employees who wont work there in 3 months....in every other employer that would create MORE dysfunction not less.

6) "The president is driving up gas prices"

This is another one you hear frequently, but only at specific intervals, in this case any time a president is up for reelection.

Ok look I understand their are people who assume any president not of their party is an evil power hungry bastard.......but that's actually the problem here. If he's power hungry, he wants to stay in power.

So he's intentionally going to do something that would piss off a shit ton of people, and ensure people are less likely to vote for him to keep power?

How does this even make sense?

Ah, THATS how.......

7) "Abstinence only sex ed works" Or more specifically the thought process that leads to that belief.

Now this one is based on the bible.....which is a pretty good indicator of being justified by bullshit. But what makes this one unique is that the source material kinda calls bullshit on it itself.

Ok so the basic idea is behind this thought is that if you dont tell dudes they can stick their dicks in some chicks girls, neither they or the girl will figure out how do it. Therefore people wont have sex until marriage.

Which is kinda weird since I've been to a lot of weddings and i've never yet seen the priest or minister slip the couple a "how-to" book yet......yet somehow everyone seems to figure it out.

But then again the people who believe in Abstinence only sex education are also the ones who call sex "original sin"

Which gets us to the even bigger reason this is a total bullshit belief.

In the beginning God created Adam and Eve. And its worth noting that he created Eve expressly so Adam could have a "companion".  And at least as originally intended Adam and Eve were supposed to live out their days in the Garden of Eden with no further instructions from God.

Now according to the story Eve bit the apple and that's when everything went south. After all God finds Adam hiding in the bushes ashamed of the fact he's naked.

Now heres where it gets interesting. Because see when Eve bit the apple, this is NOT what happened.

Its' not what happened....because Adam was ALREADY naked, despite the fact that it appears nakedness is immoral. So biting the apple didnt cause "immorality" just humanity thinking such a thing existed.

At this point its worth pointing out that Adam and Eve both appear to have been created with fully functioning sex organs too. So it follows God was fully intending them to fuck each others brains out. Apparently without couching or education of any kind.

What I'm getting at is, according to the bible of the people who believe in abstinence only education, humanity came pre-programmed to fuck, and trying to stop that/assuming its bad is actually a symptom of the apple Eve ate that fucked us all over.......you know the mistake we are supposed to be avoiding making to get back into Eden......OOPS

8) "guns dont kill people. people kill people"  

So this excuse is pushed by the pro gun side of the gun control debate, and their point usually is, we dont need to regulate guns, because guns arnt inherently dangerous and have never, on their own killed anyone.

And technically I suppose they are right. I've never run into a pack of wild guns roaming the streets at night.

But now lets apply that logic elsewhere

You know what ELSE never killed anyone?

For those who dont recognize it, that is auschwitz birkenau, the worlds most infamous concentration camp.

But here's the thing.....Auschwitz never killed anybody.

And calm down I'm not denying the Holocaust or the over a Million people who died at Auschwitz.

But the thing is, all those people were killed by Nazi's.......Auschwitz just happened to be there, minding its own damn business.

Auschwitz never gassed starved, or even locked up a single person on its own. That was all PEOPLE.

Which raises an interesting question. Why did it go out of fashion to build prisons with crematoriums and gas chambers on site?  Its clearly not dangerous or indicitive of anything, or even designed for anything. They would be totally harmless, because like Auschwitz they would never kill anyone on their own.

So hell anyone who wants one should be able to build one right?

Now show of hands, how many people would think I was crazy and needed to be locked up and/or institutionalized if I actually made it for real?

If your hand is up, which I assume is ALL of you, I rest my case.

9) "I dont vote because I dont like any of the candidate"

Yea, see heres the thing. YOURE WHATS FUCKING WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY!

Apparently if someones not a 100% match with you you dont want anything to do with them.

So with that in mind, could you PLEASE let me in on your dating secret? I assume you and your significant other have never had a fight, arguement, misunderstanding, or difference of opinion. And heck I cant say that about the exes I think most highly off. Hell I  cant even say that about my wife, and I havnt even met her yet,

So apparently you can compromise your beliefs to find the person you want to fuck.....just not the person you want running things while your off fucking.

And even if you really do hate the candidate options, they still disagree with each other
For example:
Candidate 1 is promising to sodomize you if they win.
Candidate 2 is promising to sodomize you with this:

Now in this instance you would vote for Candidate 1. Not because you want to be sodomized but because if your going to be sodomized you'd rather not deal with the barbed wire.

Because hey, even if they cant have the perfect candidate, wouldnt you want the one who's position is closer to what you believe in and not farther away?

Or even hell, go vote for Candidate 3. He has no chance of winning, but at least he's anti sodomy.

I get it. People who dont vote think they are  pulling a James T. Kirk on the Kobayashi Maru and by not playing the game, they win. But  here's the thing people dont get. It's not important to a politician that you support him.....its important that you dont oppose him.

If 90% of the population opposes a politician, but 85% doesnt vote, he's likely going to win with 2/3rds of the vote.....even though thats only 10% of the population (the 10% who supported him originally)  Which means that politician will never bother to change his position, or never be removed from office because he keeps winning in landslides, all because 85% of the population couldnt be bothered to oppose him by voting for someone else they disagree with less.

Hell even if the politican still won, if the other-side but up a close fight, he's going to moderate his position, so that next time, less people will oppose him, and hopefully he wins by a more comfortable margin.

So yea, you really dont have an excuse. Go vote. Unless you truly can not see any difference in the candidate, in which case your either mentally incompetent, or Mommy and Daddy need to pay closer attention to what your looking at on-line, your too young to be reading my blog.

So yea there you have it, the top 10 most bullshit political justifications. (And if your wondering where #10is, remember #1 was a two-for-one. Or you can consider the previous sentence bullshit justification #10)

Carmageddon is coming to Virginia...

So one of the first blogs I ever wrote, I pointed out how the new pay lanes of 495 looked like they'd be a fucking disaster.

I suppose technically I was wrong. They didnt make traffic worse, but its only because people were actually smart enough to recognize a scam when they saw one, and no one is using the damn things.

It seems rather than pay an even increasing sum of money for a slightly maybe shorter commute, most people figured "fuck it,I already know how long it takes to get to work, its just not fucking worth it"

In fact according to the end of year reports, the 495 HOV lanes lost 51 MILLION dollars last year.

And that was before the silver line opened, finally allowing metro access to the same area as the express lanes. So I kinda doubt those numbers are going to get any better.

So whats the company going to do?

Well it turns out they had a plan B:

Enter the 95/395 pay express lanes.

This is the second part of the project signed into law by former Virginia Governor Bob McFelon.....sorry McDonnell.

And its the same basic idea as the 495 express lanes but more evil.

See just like the 495 lanes, the new 95 lanes charge you an ever changing rate to use by promising you a allegedly guaranteed travel speed.

Basically the way it works, quoting myself in my older blog.

"So how exactly does the company plan of enforcing its "45+ MPH guarantee"? well thats where the semi random pricing comes in. See the company is going to monitor the traffic flow and make second by second adjustments to the price. High traffic flow on either the HOV or main lanes will lead to prices to get on to the HOV to shoot up, essentially as a disincentive to keep you off of them unless you want to pay consistently inflating prices just for the privilege of driving."

So the more people on the main road, the more people are going to want to use the Express lanes. In order to keep most of those people on the main road, the price goes up, so the people rich enough to afford it can go faster.

But heres where the "more evil" part comes in.

According to the company behind both projects, one of the reasons the 495 lanes are failing is that no one is in the "habit" of driving them, because they were new, and people didnt want to spend the money if they couldnt figure out how the road works.

To that end the company has actually offered free days to try to get people to drive the lanes.
But of course since they want to make money the free days tend to be some of the least traveled days of the year, so the project has met with almost no success.

But thats a problem they wont have with the 95 lanes, because the 95 lanes have existed for years, For decades even. People are totally used to driving them because they drive them all the time.

See the 395 HOV lanes were originally built in the 1970's......at tax payer expense.

And despite the name, they are HOV lanes only 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. The other 18 hours and all of Saturday and Sunday, they are open to anyone. So many, if not all residents of the greater washington metro area are used to driving them.

Because normally 395 is 3 lanes wide on each side, but with the HOV open to all traffic that becomes a 5 lane road. So they actually do reduce traffic very well during the 18 hours a day they are open to all, and severe their stated purpose during the 6 they are restricted.

But after they reopen as toll lanes, you can say good bye to all of that. "normal 5 lane non rush hour traffic" will suddenly become "mild to heavy 3 lane non rush hour traffic"

Unless of course people are willing to suddenly pay cash to do something they have been doing their entire lives for free.  Which seems unlikely.

So most likely most of those people are going to wind up very pissed off and very stuck in much heavier than they are used to traffic.

But hey, at least some people will use these new pay lanes, since they are familiar with them right?

Actually again, probably not. Because these new lanes are confusing as fuck.

For starters, like most toll roads on the east coast, you need an EZ pass to enter this one.

Seems easy enough? but what about if you were one of the carpoolers who had previously used the HOV during Rush Hour?

Well YOU need an EZ Pass FLEX, which is a brand new kind of easy pass used no where else in the country.

But what about if your a carpooler who already happens to have the regular EZ Pass? Well you too need the new unique EZ Pass Flex, which you can exchange your EZ pass for.....for a processing fee of course.

Ah but given that its unique maybe we should explain how the EZ Pass Flex works:

Basically it has a little toggle, you toggle it one way it its a regular easy pass, you toggle it the other its a free pass and you dont get charged for the trip because your carpooling.

Well at least on the 95 express lanes. Everywhere else its an easy pass no matter the toggle.

Sounds easy right?

Yea well there's a catch. If you dont use your EZ Pass Flex in "flex mode" (read carpool mode) frequently enough, the toggle self disables, and it reverts to a regular EZ pass.......and if you try to use it, you're gonna pay....literally.

And at least as originally conceived, you were going to have to pay a monthly fee to use your EZ pass flex as a flex. You can thank current VA governor McAuliffe for getting rid of that feature though.

And that just covers getting ready to get on the road. When you actually get on the road, things dont get any simpler.

See your in the HOT (high occupancy toll road) lanes, driving along, by your self, EZ pass on, the road stretching out for miles ahead of you, and suddenly your pulled over by the police and ticketed for violating the occupancy rules. What the fuck? Arnt you paying to use the HOT lanes?

Yes.....but you may have left those behind miles ago. See the preexisting HOV lanes ran from DC itself to Dumfries,VA. The new HOT lanes, extended the Virginia end to route 610 in Stafford County, 9 miles below the current end.

However the HOT lanes only extend north to Edsall road, 2 miles north of the beltway, but 6 miles short of the city line. But the road itself keeps going unabated, it just reverts to its preexisting HOV-3 status.....so you better have 2 extra people in your car, or your'e getting that ticket.

And its not like that exit is any better marked then most of the exits from the HOT, just a single white sign annoucing HOV-3 from that point forward.

Now yes I'm aware I-66 does the same thing, becoming exclusively HOV after 495. But there is still a difference between the interchange with a major highway as 66 has, and a random exit kinda in the middle of nowhere.

Now to be fair, I should point out originally the plan was for the pay lanes to go all the way to DC....the problem was the counties of Arlington and Alexandria refused to turn over their portion of the HOV to a private company, specifically because they didnt think making them pay lanes would actually help anything.

Which is actually kinda amazing if you think about.

The former republican governor of virginia gave away (read stole) roads the tax payers had already paid for, to give to a private company, that it turns out he didnt actually have the right to give away....a fact that he appears he didnt tell the company until later.  All to avoid having to raise taxes to allow the state to build the 9 mile extension on the southern end, which to be fair was sorely needed.

Although emphasis on the "was" in that last sentence, because now they probably wont make a damn bit of difference, because the most likely outcome (if the 495 lanes are any indicator) is people wont use them.....and possibly even less people will be in a position to use them then were prior to the "creation" (conversion) of the toll road, since the whole system is designed to dissuade people from using the HOT lanes to keep the traffic flowing.

But, that whole edsall road thing isnt the only really fucking confusing part of traveling the 95 HOT lanes, and this time their isnt an excuse outside of the company trying to gouge people.

Basically, depending on where your trip takes you, you have to pay twice.

Ok so explain this, I again have to explain how things work on the 495 lanes.
Your driving along, you decided to get in the 495 HOT lanes, when you do and your EZ pass is scanned, the prices at that moment are locked in. So say your driving the whole length of the lanes, from the mixing bowl to tysons corner, but after you get in the lanes, the prices go up because traffic gets more congested.

Well lucky you, since your price was locked in when you enter the lanes, you'd still pay that lower price when you exit the HOT lanes.

Not so on the 95 HOT lanes. Instead the price could get locked in twice. Once when you enter the lanes, then once again if you happen to pass a certain point (the fairfax county parkway), so if the price happens to go up when your driving (which is highly likely during rush hour) and you drive past the Parkway.....well hope you enjoy getting charged more than you expect....sucker.


Then again, I suppose you COULD always just get off the road before then, and sit in the congested traffic.......but that kinda defeats the whole point of the express lanes in the first place.

Oh, by the way, probably worth pointing out that if you ask Transurban (the company running this thing) about the second charge, they actually wont tell you the same thing I just told you.

What they would tell you is that the second toll point is Heller Road. Which is cool and all, except their ISNT a Heller Road exit going northbound.

Because Heller Road doesnt actually intersect with 95 at all. It runs parallel to it on the South Bound side briefly, which is why it's name appears on the southbound side at the same exit as the Fairfax County Parkway, But since it never crosses 95, its not reachable from the northbound side without going on the Fairfax County Parkway first.

Which might be a problem if your a northbound driver trying to avoid the second toll and looking for the name "Heller Road"......

And actually come to think of it, they do the same thing with the end of the road at Edsall Road.....or as they call it Turkeycock Road.....or Turkeycock Creek depending on which Transurban resource youre looking at.

Which is odd, since according to google (and my own memory of driving 95 every day) their ISNT a turkeycock anything near 95. They seem to have just made the name up (I couldnt find a single thing on google linking to a turkeycock in the right place that wasnt either put out by or quoting transurban).

So yea, hopefully you know ahead of time when to get off the road, and dont actually go to the company in charge for help.......(and they wonder why no one wants to use their roads)

So yea, seeing as how the HOT lanes are just now opening for regular business, you best brace yourself, your commute is only going to get worse with more traffic on the non HOT lanes and a shit ton of confused drivers in the HOT lanes...but hey, at least rich folks will get to enjoy the road your tax dollars already paid for that you cant afford to use anymore right?

Happy driving......