Things That Perplex Me: Set 6

ASocial Security: A short-short story about government

In an attempt to avoid the pontification and aridity of the how-to article, I've recently been embedding psychological and other how-to-do-life issues in short-short stories.

Today's offering is about someone who thinks government is a net negative.

Voting Smart

Political candidates spend a fortune to manipulate us into voting for them. My PsychologyToday.com article identifies some tricks to watch out for and offers a simple way to vote smart.

HERE  is the link.

Ignore Edwards' Affair

Yes, it's unseemly that John Edwards had an affair, especially with his wife struggling with breast cancer. It's also easy to snicker about Edwards, who so frequently held himself as more ethical than others, yet relentlessly lied about his affair.

But please, do not let this issue be used as a weapon against the Democratic party.

This is not the exhortation of a partisan Democrat--I more often vote Libertarian or Republican, but I do not want yet another irrelevancy to affect voters' decisions about whom to vote for. (For example, whites voting for Obama to prove to themselves and others that they're not racists.)

Look at the candidates' track record and positions on the issues that will most affect America. A non-partisan summary of those is at www.votesmart.org.

Why the Political Campaign is So Repulsive...And a Better Approach YOU can take

You've probably never heard of George Lakoff's Rockridge Institute nor political consultant, Drew Westin nor pollster Frank Luntz.

They are the Josef Goebbels of American politics--teaching candidates manipulative propaganda techniques to obfuscate the issues. They replace facts with focus-group and even MRI-tested manipulative phrases. It disgusts me.

We can't ban them but, please, avoid listening to the candidates--they are robots merely mouthing the focus-group tested phrases. Read commentaries from all quarters.

I cited my favorite sites in an earlier post, but here are some recent worthy articles:

FROM A LIBERAL PUBLICATION
The New York Times' comparison of candidates on the issues

Salon's recent take on the Obama and Clinton campaigns.

FROM A CENTRIST PUBLICATION
The Economist's endorsement of Obama for the nomination but not necessarily the presidency.

FROM A CONSERVATIVE PUBLICATION
Charles Krauthammer's support of Clinton for the nomination (in the National Review.)

FROM A LIBERTARIAN PERSPECTIVE
A call for a Libertarian-oriented president by the editor of the libertarian Reason magazine. (This was published in the L.A. Times.)

How to Pick Who to Vote For

I believe it was Churchill who said, "Judge a man not by what he says, but by what he does."

There's no better way to choose which politician to vote for. After all, our system virtually forces a candidate who really want to win to parse, massage, mislead, and even outright lie.

If we replace the blather with relevant deeds, the following facts about Obama come into evidence:

The nonpartisan National Journal rates Congress members' voting records on a scale from 0 (most conservative) to 100 (most liberal.) Obama's voting record scored 100. Is this a man likely to be a uniter not a divider? And if you consider yourself a moderate, can you be comfortable with a man whose voting record is maximally liberal?

Obama and his family, including his children, for 20 years attended the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama calls him "His spiritual advisor." He donated thousands of dollars to Wright's church. He named him to one of his presidential campaign committees. All these suggest he condones if not embraces the key themes in Wright's sermons. An ABC News review of dozens of Wright's sermons found "repeated denunciations of the U.S.," most memorably saying "God bless America? No. God DAMN America!" Wright also insisted that the U.S. created the AIDS virus to kill Blacks, that the U.S. brought 9/11 on itself, and that anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan is a great man.

Candidly, I do not follow politics closely enough to responsibly and representatively describe the full range of Obama's, Clinton's, McCain's, or Ron Paul's (Yes, he still is running--Here's his Apr. 28 CNN interview) relevant actions. I offer the above two merely because they're the two most glaring examples I've heard of. I don't mean to imply that there might not be equally important facts about the others.)

I invite you to search out the candidates' relevant behaviors, notably their voting records and examples of effective leadership. To those ends, a good place to start is VoteSmart. (When you get there, scroll down.) I'd also just Google the candidates and avoid sites created by the candidates, the parties, or advocacy groups. Instead, read liberal, conservative, and libertarian sites' reporting, not of what the candidates said, but of what they've done.