No, Jill Stein, I don't side with you.

An online quiz that has been popping up with annoying frequency on social media is supposed to tell you which 2012 presidential candidate you side with. I already know where I stand, having voted for Barack Obama 3 times now, but I can't resist these things for their amusement value. Well, I took the quiz, and I'm not at all amused.

The quiz guides you through a series of questions about various national issues, a mix of social, economic, and foreign policy questions, asking you where you stand on them, and how strongly you feel about each of them. At the end of the quiz, there is a bit of hokum as you see the faces of the two candidates for president, together with candidates representing the fringe parties, shuffling in a motion reminiscent of Robby the Robot's mechanical brain chunking and whirring away at a problem.

Chunk...chunk...whirrr...chunk...

When the quiz is done chunking and whirring, you are told who you stand with. According to my reliably progressive answers, I appear to side with lunatic fringe candidate Jill Stein, who is representing the execrable Green Party this year. In the event that any of my nonexistent readers are too young to remember the 2000 presidential election, the Green Party put George W. Bush in the White House that year.

Wait, what? You thought it was Palm Beach County in Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court? Nope. In 2000, the combined votes for Al Gore and - Jesus, it's hard for me to even type this name - Ralph Nader in New Hampshire amounted to 50.7% of the vote there. Had Gore won NH and its 4 Electoral College votes, Florida wouldn't have mattered. As it was, the Greens split the left and awarded the state to Bush on a plurality. Bastards. 

The rest, of course, is history. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. The Bush tax cuts. Willful blindness as the banks and the energy companies raped and plundered. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. New Hampshire. 4 EVs. Thanks, Greens.

So no, Jill Stein, I do not side with you. Sure, I want to stop global warming. Sure, I support women's rights. Sure, I want to get the fuck out of Afghanistan, close Gitmo, and work diplomacy on Iran. But I want you, your butthole Godfather Nader,  and your oh-so-ideologically-pure followers in the pissed-off left to just go away. Just. Go. Away. And don't punk me ever again.