2 questions that need to be asked-of all issues.

With the nation becoming more and more politically polarized because of the desires and demands of the Liberal movement for more and more Socialist policy by the Obama administration, a realization about people, and how they think, has become apparent to me...

In the world of Journalism there are a set of criteria for which all stories are based; they are 6 questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Two of these represent the most basic of all starts to forming any sort of philosophy and/or opinion about a topic: Why and How.
As I sit back, watch, and sometimes comment, on all that is happening in American politics today thanks to the overt Socialistic policies of the Obama administration, it has become very obvious to me that those who support these policies fail to ask these 2 fundamental questions; it is not just those that support these policies who fail to ask these questions, but those on the other side-that of the so called "Conservative" movement.
It is obvious to me that these 2 questions are never asked due to the proposals put forth by all parties as solutions to the various problems we face in America today.
Take the current health care "crisis" and the solutions for it being proposed as examples.
The current proposals include 2 dominant "solutions": a government "option" and/or a "commission" to establish some form of universal standards for providing health care. Neither of these proposals address what is wrong with our current health care system; such as the outrageous costs of malpractice insurance for doctors and what is termed "preventative" care or medicine. These are just 2 of many things which are responsible for the escalating costs of health care and insurance in our country, and 2 things which no plan currently in front of Congress (that I know of) addresses.
Sure, a current plan does away with insurance companies from declaring people ineligible for preexisting conditions, but it took the nation as a whole to scream about the first bill (known as Obamacare) not covering this very relevant and poor practice on the part of our health insurers. Regardless, demanding that insurers can deny coverage for preexisting conditions and creating a "government health insurance option" will do nothing to control the increasing costs of health care.

In these "solutions" for health care can be easily seen lacking the 2 questions of Why? and How?

If it had been asked, "Why does health care in our country cost so much?"; and the correlary, "Why is the cost of health insurance rising disproportionately to wages and inflation?", real explanations would have been found which would not have included either of the 2 primary "options" for "fixing" this "crisis" that are currently before our Congress.
Further, after asking Why?, our Congressional leaders would have then been able to ask to ask How do we fix it? and would have been able to find concrete solutions to the problems they found once they asked "why'"?

These 2 questions shouldn't just be limited to the current health care debate-they need to be asked of all issues we face, and yet they are not-particularly by those who are on the side of "liberalism". This is obvious to me because if you ask these 2 questions of every issue, they lead to the where the problem originate's, and therefore lead to solutions that fix the problem at its root causes-not in solutions which simply brush over the cause by giving "hand outs" after the effects of the cause have been felt.

Before we can solve anything, we must ask "Why"; that will lead us to "How"; which will lead us to the best solutions for all our country's problems. This is why, I believe, our Federal Government, in particular, always fails to provide any sustainable solutions to our nations problems.
I can only hope that one day this changes, and our national Congressional leaders learn to ask these 2 most important questions of every issue, but given the current political climate and social divisions within our country today, it's hard to see when that day may come.

Is Obama driving a wedge between American's?

This is a question that may shock some-after all Barack Obama has only been our President for 9 months. But given all that has taken place with Tea Party’s, demonstrations at Town Hall meetings, and other “counter” movements to Obama seemingly starting every day, it is one that begs to already be asked: is Obama dividing our nation? Perhaps, even, irreparably?

For many, this is an absolutely ludicrous question to ask of a president whose predecessor was one of the most hated in our history. But an argument could be made the George Bush brought us together as one as a president has never before: early in his first term he did it through the patriotism we all felt following the 9/11 attacks; and from the midway point of his 2^nd term on, he did so through the universal hate and anger we all felt towards a man whose politics and cronyism had made us the global “bad guy”-hated by nearly every nation on Earth.

But, this isn’t about any defense of what George Bush did-there is no defense for him-no this is about Obama, and what he is doing to us now.

Obama’s policies are, without question, Socialist; and to all American’s who have awoken to this, Socialism is not what America represents. And, despite what Liberals and Democrats would like to have the global community think, Socialism is not an ideology supported by most American’s.

The proof of this can be found in Obama’s and Congress’s approval ratings since Obama was elected.

Two weeks after Obama was elected he enjoyed as high as a 76% approval rating in a CNN poll, and Congress a 39% approval rating in a Fox News poll.

Eight and a half months later? Fox News’ most recent poll has Obama’s approval at 49%-the lowest it has been since his election; and Congress? The same day Obama got his lowest approval rating, so did they, with a pathetic 24% of American’s approving of how our Congressional leaders are conducting their jobs.

(The Congressional approval rating is just as important as Obama’s because Congress is currently controlled by the same party that Obama is from, and, as President, Obama is that parties unanimous leader so long as he remains president).

Needless to say, most American’s are not happy-and I am one of them.

We are not happy that Obama has socialized 2 of America’s Big 3 auto’s; we are not happy that as part of his health care reform he is trying to force a government option on us (therefore attempting to Socialize that industry); we are not happy that he has pandered to our enemies and refuses to help the U.N. enforce sanctions against North Korea and Iran; we are unhappy that he is not keeping his word in Afghanistan, and seems ready to allow it to become another “Vietnam”; we are unhappy that he is saddling our children, our children’s children, and their children, with $100’s of thousands of debt each before they are born; we are unhappy that he was awarded something (the Nobel Peace prize) without earning it; we are unhappy that he seems to be tearing apart all that was once great about America and that there are nearly 50% of us out there gullible enough to buy into his rhetoric.

Obama ran on a platform of “Change you can believe in”, but for many of those who voted for him, the platform wasn’t supposed to start with the destruction of all that was American first; that platform wasn’t believed to be capable of dividing America so decisively that people who have never voted before, much less attended at town hall style meeting, appeared at Town Hall meetings all over America to get into the faces of their representatives and demand that they stop Socializing American industries. And, as I see it his ideologies, and his policies, are driving a wedge between all Americans: on one side are those who still believe in the traditional American values of hard work, self reliance and responsibility, and a small Federal Government; and on the other are those who want the easy way out-the way of Big Government intervention and control, the way of a Universal Equality that can only be achieved by Government controls and Dictatorship.

I know which side I stand on, do you?

No "peace" in this years Nobel prize winner

The whole world was shocked last Friday when President Obama was chosen as this year’s Nobel Peace prize winner. Globally the response was overwhelmingly negative in the sense that people failed to understand what he had done exactly to earn the reward. Here in the United States the response was also mostly negative, both for the aforementioned reason and because Obama’s policies and ideologies are seen as being extreme on the “socialistic” side of things.

In explaining the decision, the Nobel Committee which awards the prize said that Obama received the award for what he “represents” and for what his policies could lead too in terms of future world peace. To those of us who believed that the award had to be earned, we also learned that there was president for winning the award without actually earning it or having any relating accomplishments…

As a result of Obama’s “winning” the Nobel peace prize, we have learned 2 important things about the Nobel’s: first, that you don’t have to actually do anything to win one and secondly, if this is how they are going to be awarded they have no meaning what so ever.

It is a thorough joke that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace prize, and the reasoning of the Nobel commission doesn’t fly on me. Barack Obama’s ideologies are not avenues for peace. His ideologies are based on socialistic tendencies which history has proven to us to be “anti” peace. Socialism breeds both corruption and envy, which inevitably leads to conflict and class warfare. Take a look at the history of any society on our planet which was purely socialistic and these truths become evident.

Obama’s ideologies stand for peace? Hardly, and if more proof is needed, look no further than America where we have become more divided than ever before.

The illiterate U.S. Congress

In case you missed it last week, a few stories made news stations which told what many American’s already knew-that members of Congress do not read the legislation they are attempting to make into law.

Where this sudden “enlightenment”, last week, about members of Congress not actually reading the bills they are supposed to sign into law came from I don’t know, but it can perhaps be traced back to an interview conducted last Friday with Senator Thomas Carper, a Democrat out of Delaware.

In this interview, Carper states that, in commission, bills are written in “plain English” (i.e. laymen’s terms), but when they come up for vote they are written in “legislative language. Amongst his many comments while discussing what is apparently health care legislation, he goes on to say that he understood little to nothing of the verbiage of the bill as it was written for law, and believes that no one else could understand it either. He also implies that he doesn’t believe anyone who says they can understand these bills-as they are written before Congress-is lying to themselves and anyone who asks them directly. In case you don’t believe me, you can find the portion of the interview which I reference here: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/10/02/democrat-sen-tom-carper-read-the-bill-are-you-kidding-me/.

Of course, this begs me to ask a lot of questions such as Why are our members of Congress not able understand “legislative language”? Isn’t this the job we have hired them for?; and How do they expect anyone to be able to obey, follow and enforce a law which they themselves do not understand?; or If legislative language is so hard to understand, why are bills written in it to begin with?

Further, if our Congress is writing legislation in a manner which they can’t understand themselves, then isn’t it a natural assumption that these people aren’t qualified to do the job we have hired them for and, even more importantly, fail to understand the job which they are supposed to do?; and Why aren’t they simply written in the “plain English” under which they are originally written in while in committee?

(This last question could possibly be answered by saying “it’s for legal purposes and enforcement”, to which I would say bull shit: If there is a law that says “you can’t pee on the side of a public building”, there are no legal or enforcement justifications for why those 10 simple words are rewritten into 30 confusing ones for the adoption of the law. In fact, the only reason I can think of is that legislatures intentionally write these laws so that the vast majority of people cannot understand them. Why this would be, I can only suppose and form conjecture on, but seeing as how there is no other logical reason for our national, state and local laws to be written in such a confusing manner, I am left with no other explanation than that it is done intentionally so that government corruption can always exist in a manner which is hard at best, and impossible at worst, to discover and eliminate).

Of all the questions I could pose, the most troubling to me is assumption to be drawn about our elected officials’ ability to do their job. It’s a serious assumption that deserves to be addressed: if Congress doesn’t even understand these bills as they are written, how can we assume that they even understand the basic requirements of their job?

One thing that must be clarified is that this isn’t restricted to just those members of Congress who are Democrats; it is obvious that Republicans (and the lone Independent) have this problem too-otherwise, why would we have proposed legislation like H.R. 3200 (i.e. Obamacare) proposed by John Dingle of Michigan make it out of a bipartisan committee?

As it just so happens, unlike most-including, apparently, our members of Congress-I can understand “legislative language”, this of course doesn’t help those who can’t because even in the effort of explaining these pieces of legislation to people, important aspects of them are lost; and despite those earlier posed questions this all leads to the most important ones of all: How is it that we, the American public, the ones who are supposed to live and conform to these various laws and legislative members; how is it that we have not only allowed ourselves to elect Representatives and Senators who fail to understand the laws they have written but also allowed so many of them to stay in office for so many years?

Logic vs. Common Sense

Logic[1]: 1. the scientific study of the principles of reasoning, especially of the method and validity of deductive reasoning; 2. valid reasoning; 3. A particular system or method of reasoning.

Common Sense[2]: beliefs that people in common would agree on; that which they "sense" as their common natural understanding and used to refer to beliefs or proposition that most people would consider “prudent” and “of sound judgment” without relying on knowledge relating to the object or topic in question, but based upon knowledge that can be seen as “common”.

Those who know me well know that much of the political and social philosophies I believe in are derived from conclusions I have reached through my use of logic. Throughout much of my life, when I have been asked about my use of logic to draw the political and social conclusions which I do, I have been challenged that “that’s just common sense”, to which I am forced to reply that, “if it is, then why isn’t (it) accepted as such?”.

To me, as a student of logic, the differences between logic and common sense are obvious, but as I learned recently from a friend they are seen as one and the same by most people. This same friend challenged me to explain the difference between the 2…He asked and so he shall receive. I hope the following helps himself and others learn to not only recognize the differences between the 2, but to understand just how much it takes to establish theories and solutions by one, and to simply use the other when it’s appropriate…

The definitions at the top of this discourse lay bare the basic difference between the 2: one requires education (of some kind), the other does not; however the differences go much deeper than just this simple difference.

In the case of Common Sense, it is both regional and cultural and many times can be based on a person’s field of mastery. For example, to the tribal huntsmen in Africa, it is “common sense” to never leave your home with out your preferred method of hunting or protection; in an industrialized nation with police forces to protect us (in general), it is common sense to never leave home with out a means of communication (as in your cell phone); to the parent whose child breaks their arm, it is common sense to first call your spouse (or your child’s other parent) before heading off to the hospital; to the doctor uncle who was watching over his nephew or niece, it would be common sense to first exam the arm before contacting their parents and headed off to the doctor.

In each of these examples, and any others I could come up with, the “common” theme to the reactions of each situations is what would be considered as being natural to the person or people involved: To someone who has drove a car for 10 or more years, its natural to check around you before proceeding with a turn; to the new driver on the road they have to remind themselves, or be reminded by others, to look before turning.

In the case of the Logic, there is little that is “natural” or “common”.

Logic is-as the book definition says-something of a science. It’s the deduction of a solution relative to the facts and knowledge at hand; it is a distinct process that requires conscience thought and effort. It’s use and application can be most easily defined and found in the mathematical formula’s many learn in algebra, geometry, calculus and the various sciences of physics and astronomy. (This is not to say that “learning” Logic makes one use it all the time, just that its use can be found there. Using and applying it to everyday and theoretical situations is another thing entirely).

In the above driver analogy Logic would tell both the experienced and inexperienced driver to look before turning because you can (as opposed to “may”) be hit by another car if you did not do so.

Like common sense, Logic is situational; unlike common sense, Logic can be applied to every situation-Common Sense is specific, Logic is not.

It can be said that there are components of common sense to logic, but most times, there is no “common sense” to logic. As example, the common sense of a drug dealer going to pick up his supply of drugs: it is common sense to be “packing” a weapon of some kind when doing so for protection; logic would say that you shouldn’t be a “drug dealer” to begin with because the potential risks are not worth the potential rewards.

There was a time when I really did believe that to be “logical” was “natural”, but as I have gotten older, I have learned that this is not the case at all. In fact, the ability to use logic, much less master it in any way, is a rather unique and rare gift: unique because most people lack the patience to think things through before acting; rare because, even those who know of logic-and/or are practiced in it use-fail to use it regularly.

Therefore, it can be said that perhaps the biggest difference between Common Sense and Logic isn’t the thought processes or knowledge involved, but the simplicity in acknowledging that one is “common” and the other is not.

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[1] Take from Riverside Webster’s II Dictionary.

[2] Taken from Wikipedia and edited and paraphrased for content by myself.

Obama's first loss-but Rio does deserve it..

It's most likely not His first, but i think it's His biggest loss so far-Obama not convincing the IOC that their host city should be Chicago for the 2012 games; so that Obama has a place to "celebrate (his) election" and, I'm sure, so that he can show the world "how far we've come" during his administration...Now i suppose if "you" agree with "his" idea of what the responsibilities of the Federal Government should be, then you want His policies in place, and because there are enough supporters of his opinion out there, he thought it was a slam dunk. Not so...Besides, Rio and South America finally have their chance and hopefully they will do it right.

Too bad for Obama...Guess he wasn't as popular overseas as everybody, including himself, thought he was. It will be interesting to see what his foreign policy towards Brazil will be like in the future, after what will probaly be an entertaining media "field day" that will get us no where and only seek to muddy the picture even more.
Unfortunately, lost in all of this will be Rio De Janiero, which, even based on my limited knowledge, deserves to have it's "day in the sun". What Beijing did for the '08 games was amazing-it literally changed a culture-with 5 times the population the Chinese are only just now learning about Capitalism, and then there is India, in some ways much farther along than China is.
Brazil, and South America are largely forgotten about.
Rio is one of the Worlds largest cities and has much in the way of culture to offer...But I digress...I'm gonna sit back and enjoy what I'm hoping will be an entertaining show.