COMMON SENSE by Thomas Payne

As I have said in a previous Blog, I really don’t know all the ins and outs of Obamacare, or the government budgeting process, or exactly how bills are passed. I have a life that fills in my time, but these issues are important, and do affect me. So, I do just like I do for things in life like computer repair, plumbing, expressing dog’s anal glands, etc. All of those issues are important in my life, but maybe a bit too complicated for me to really know enough to not to find myself in trouble.  Therefore, I get myself “people” to handle those issues for me.  The same is true for politics. I get people to do the research for me. “people” are the likes of Rush, Hannity. Beck and Levin. Why do I use those folks as my people and not Maddow, Mathews, Schultz or Toure? Because I have listened to all of the above, and the people I have chosen make common sense to me; they describe life the way I have experienced it. The others? Not so much.

I have used the words “common sense,” but sense, as we all know, is anything but “common.” We may even find in our short time here together that some of you won’t agree with what I would call Common Sense (CS), and that is probably why we have such division in this country. Let’s just try out a few things.

Obamacare--We had a health care system that had many flaws that did need to be addressed. Common Sense (CS) tells me the government should have taken each problem area and addressed each individually, but the administration decided to address about every possible issue in the medical world, short of expressing anal glands,  in a seven foot high stack of regulations that CS tells me no one person, nor gaggle of persons, could really understand.  CS tells me that when you introduce 40 million new people into the system with the same number (or less) of doctors, most people would not find that helpful. CS tells me that the way the rate structure is designed will eventually produce a single payer, socialized medical system, just as President Obama has been quoted as wanting (part of “fundamentally transforming the country”).  Once the government has total control of the health system and the money set aside (I’m sure in a lock box like Social Security) for them to distribute, CS tells me here comes the “Death Panels.”  Of course they would not be called that, and will be vehemently denied, but “something” has to say how the health care money will be spent—what criteria will they use?  CS tells me it will be some combination of age and expense. Ninety –five year olds with new pace makers will be a thing of the past, which is OK unless you happen to be a ninety-five year old who needs a pace maker..

Gun Control—CS tells me if laws are passed restricting the amount or types of guns one can have, only those people who obey laws will be affected and they are not the ones we should be worried about.

Global warming—Of course it is/will warm. Then it is/will warm again. The earth’s climate has been changing since the earth was invented. CS tells me that humans contributed to the climate changes, but I’m hard pressed to believe that humans caused climate change which has been going on before humans existed. What caused it before and why is that not the cause of it now?

President Obama— CS tells me a young man with virtually no management experience, other than managing a few members of his Senate staff, (and that was for only about 140 days most of which were spent campaigning), a man with little or no budgeting experience who has spent most of his formative years outside of mainland USA, was, surprisingly, not ready to “supervise” 300 million people with a “budget” in the trillions.  I think I hit that one right on the head.

Negations/Compromise—Republicans would sign a bill putting the government back to work if the administration will agree to delay Obamacare for one year and require Congress and the administration to abide by the same healthcare the peeps are being required to live (and die) by. The President said he would only sign the bill if it were “clean” (no Obamacare attachment). So, if either side gives in the government goes back to work. Neither side gives in. CS tells me both sides therefore are to “blame” for the government not working. Pointing fingers at the “other” side is just for the benefit of the low information voter.

There is a distinct possibility I may be wrong on some of the above issues, but for me they are just common sense conclusions arrived at through my life experiences and reinforced by my people. Since we have not all shared the same experiences, or have the same people, we tend to view things in life through the bottom of different beer mugs. Maybe we can never convince others of the error of their ways, but hopefully we can work on ourselves to better understand how anybody “could ever think that way.”

THE ELUSIVE MIDDLE GROUND

There is a good chance I’ll get myself in trouble saying what I’m about to say, but here goes. Men and women are different.

I’m not sure why this obvious statement tends to cause problems, but it does seem to. Not with the men, but with women. (This puzzles me because I know a lot of guys, and I’m not sure why women would want to be like any of them.)

Anyway, here goes. Women and men both have an emotional and rational side. So far, so good. Since people rarely have a 50/50 dose, one of the two sides tends to show itself more often. In general, women tend to be more emotional than men. From what I have experienced, emotion tends to be more of a Liberal trait. So, when you get an emotion- based woman in an emotion-based political philosophy, you have a perfect storm. 

Let me give you an example. This is a summation of a “discussion” I had with a Liberal woman on Facebook:

She entered a FB post chastising the House for proposing a bill which would cut the food stamp program by $38 million dollars while doing nothing about the cost of war (the classic “Guns and Butter” economic argument).  This is a very devoted woman who teaches at a “poor” school and experiences every day the effects of being poor in America. I understand and admire her for doing what she does, but my rational side took ove,r and I pointed out to her that $38m is only 5% of a $40B poorly managed program. If this is like most other federal spending “cuts,” it means they are agreeing to reduce the rate of food stamp spending by 5%. The food stamp program is increasing at a rate of 13% per year, so with the proposed 5% cut, the program will only be increased by 8%. (How would you like your household income to be increased by only 8%?)   Her response, minus the sarcasm, was to point out the children in her class who, every day, say they are hungry. 

She is talking about the Congress taking money from needy children and I am talking about, with a debt of over $17T, taking money from those, with means testing, who would never be eligible.  I fell into the trap I fall into every time I debate a dedicated Liberal. I try to address, with logic, an issue arrived at with emotion. I guess this is why I seem to have much more heated discussions with Liberal women than Liberal men (along with the fact that I know more Liberal women than Liberal men). Addressing emotional problems with ration answers never seems to work, and yet both left and right try it all the time, which is why compromise can be so difficult.

If Liberals can just crank up their rational side a bit, and Conservatives their emotional side, we have a chance at compromise—slim, but a chance, rationally speaking.