Conservatives are so busy sabotaging every little thing Obama does while trying to recreate a utopia that never was that they're ignoring the future.
Forget the projected costs to our economy for taking care of the elderly and other right-wing deceptions. What about our children?
Children growing up without proper healthcare, unable to afford needed checkups and immunizations. Growing up with "pre-existing conditions" that could have been prevented before they were five years old.
Eventually they will have to be covered in some way. Usually through their employers, who will have to pay more for a workforce who will be less healthy than their parents. Memo to employers of all sizes: Your HMO is not your friend. Not when they're fighting healthcare reform over the loss of projected higher profits. Profits extorted from you. Obama is not raising your costs.
Less healthcare when they're children means more--much more--middle-aged and elderly who are less healthy than their parents. The cost to the government will be staggering. This is not voodoo economics healthcare-style but plain common sense: Sickly children = sickly adults = sickly seniors = increased government spending.
There is no yardstick to measure the impact of missing healthcare because the problem will get worse. Sickly people without healthcare will have children, and these children will be even worse off. (Word: epidemics.)
This cuts across all barriers, all classes, all races. People shouting asinine slogans and waving placards blaming Obama for a conservative mess over 20 years in the making are helping no one--not even themselves.
Disputes over access to healthcare are meaningingless when we are faced with no healthcare available. Or even worse, healthcare denied.
The political leaders opposing healthcare reform know this. They have to in order to oppose it for reasons having nothing to do with the common good, reasons having nothing to do with the future of the American people.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
A + B = ?
There are times I think of remaking this blog into one titled "AayPlusBeeEqualsSee."
I have spent my whole life using Critical Thinking. The nice thing about CT is it doesn't require any degrees to know how to use it.
Most CT is simple. I've found a good rule of thumb for critical analysis is A + B = C. Applying this to the statements of people and organizations is very pragmatic.
Take for example the recent mass hysteria about Obama addressing our nation's school kids and "indoctrinating" (their word, not mine) them into being socialists. Or at least planting the seeds of Obama's "socialism" in their minds.
So we have: Obama (A) + Addressing school kids (B) = (C) Socialism.
Since C is made up of A and B combined, inverting this equation shows:
C = A + B, or A = C and B = C. (This is straight Algebra.)
With C = Socialism, socialism--or some form of it--must also present in both Obama (A) and our school kids (B).
A quick examination of both shows neither have anything to do with Socialism: Obama has never espoused Socialism during his political career and to do so in the Oval Office would be worse than foolhardy. (A search of "obama socialism" results in hundreds of entries who claim Obama is socialist but offer little or no reliable evidence. If Conservatives do it, it's "capitalism." If Obama does it, it's "Socialism.")
The idea of our nation's school kids as fertile ground for socialist contamination is not just ridiculous but appallingly ignorant. Children are not socialists from the cradle; they have to be told to share their things. For more on this, see my post Have Faith in Our Young.
In light of this the term "socialism" has no meaning. It is not a menace nor a threat, just a handy label to defame our elected President with.
I have spent my whole life using Critical Thinking. The nice thing about CT is it doesn't require any degrees to know how to use it.
Most CT is simple. I've found a good rule of thumb for critical analysis is A + B = C. Applying this to the statements of people and organizations is very pragmatic.
Take for example the recent mass hysteria about Obama addressing our nation's school kids and "indoctrinating" (their word, not mine) them into being socialists. Or at least planting the seeds of Obama's "socialism" in their minds.
So we have: Obama (A) + Addressing school kids (B) = (C) Socialism.
Since C is made up of A and B combined, inverting this equation shows:
C = A + B, or A = C and B = C. (This is straight Algebra.)
With C = Socialism, socialism--or some form of it--must also present in both Obama (A) and our school kids (B).
A quick examination of both shows neither have anything to do with Socialism: Obama has never espoused Socialism during his political career and to do so in the Oval Office would be worse than foolhardy. (A search of "obama socialism" results in hundreds of entries who claim Obama is socialist but offer little or no reliable evidence. If Conservatives do it, it's "capitalism." If Obama does it, it's "Socialism.")
The idea of our nation's school kids as fertile ground for socialist contamination is not just ridiculous but appallingly ignorant. Children are not socialists from the cradle; they have to be told to share their things. For more on this, see my post Have Faith in Our Young.
In light of this the term "socialism" has no meaning. It is not a menace nor a threat, just a handy label to defame our elected President with.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Have Faith in Our Young
In regards to all the recent hysteria of our chief elected official addressing our nation's school kids about the importance of education and the need to study hard (which, by the way, helped propel a man of color into civic duty and finally achieve the oval office) and thus through some nefarious charisma indoctrinate our children into a socialist mania.
Parents of America, you may heave a sigh of relief. Your kids, the ones you have to stand over with a club to get anything done, are not so easily swayed. These are the same kids who won't do their chores, won't clean up after themselves, won't do their homework, insist on watching the very TV shows you forbid them to watch, playing with the other kids you tell them not to play with and going places you specifically tell them not to go to.
Against these determined efforts to assert their independence and do things their way, what chance does Obama's svengali-like socialism have?
Your kids are so busy deprogramming themselves not to believe what you tell them is true, they're going to apply this same ruthless skepticism to anything a senior elected official is going to tell them.
Your children are not living in cocoons (unless you're trying to put them in one) so they probably know all about it already. They're googling with their smart phones, the home PC, their school laptops, the library computers. They're checking the news feeds to find out what all the fuss is about. They're social networking the heck out of it and Twitter is keeping their little fingers a blur on their phone keypads.
And if a scheming Obama chortles with glee at the chance to slip in healthcare while addressing our nation's young--it's waaay too late. Chances are your kids already know a lot about it. After all they have to sit at the dinner table night after night and listen to their elders hold forth on it and argue it back and forth. So they already know amongst themselves that some of their parents are against healthcare reform for this and that reason.
So our kids get together and put their heads together and draw their own conclusions. So by the time Obama speaks to them, our school kids are ready and waiting--their minds already made up.
We as parents have not fully realized the effect of the Internet on our children. Parents will watch the news channels on TV and sit and argue about what may happen or could happen. Our children are doing searches on the Web, and learning all about it instead.
Parents of America, you may heave a sigh of relief. Your kids, the ones you have to stand over with a club to get anything done, are not so easily swayed. These are the same kids who won't do their chores, won't clean up after themselves, won't do their homework, insist on watching the very TV shows you forbid them to watch, playing with the other kids you tell them not to play with and going places you specifically tell them not to go to.
Against these determined efforts to assert their independence and do things their way, what chance does Obama's svengali-like socialism have?
Your kids are so busy deprogramming themselves not to believe what you tell them is true, they're going to apply this same ruthless skepticism to anything a senior elected official is going to tell them.
Your children are not living in cocoons (unless you're trying to put them in one) so they probably know all about it already. They're googling with their smart phones, the home PC, their school laptops, the library computers. They're checking the news feeds to find out what all the fuss is about. They're social networking the heck out of it and Twitter is keeping their little fingers a blur on their phone keypads.
And if a scheming Obama chortles with glee at the chance to slip in healthcare while addressing our nation's young--it's waaay too late. Chances are your kids already know a lot about it. After all they have to sit at the dinner table night after night and listen to their elders hold forth on it and argue it back and forth. So they already know amongst themselves that some of their parents are against healthcare reform for this and that reason.
So our kids get together and put their heads together and draw their own conclusions. So by the time Obama speaks to them, our school kids are ready and waiting--their minds already made up.
We as parents have not fully realized the effect of the Internet on our children. Parents will watch the news channels on TV and sit and argue about what may happen or could happen. Our children are doing searches on the Web, and learning all about it instead.
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