UberPocky

The Political Compass is a website to assess where you are politically. It displays your location on a graph of two axises. I first introduced this website to my readers on Feb 1st 2008. Just before Super Tuesday in the 2008 Primaries. I took the test, showed you all my results. Just out of interest however. I took the test again recently, yesterday in fact.

If you would like to learn more about The Political Compass, please see their website or my Feb 1st 2008 post.

I looked at my old posts and compared my results then to my results now. I was shocked. I moved, my political beliefs have changed over the last couple of years. But let me step back for a moment.

The two axises are Economic and Social. Going Left and Right as we know it the economic scale. Rating from Economic Conservatism to Socialism.

Going Up and Down the axis we are not used to measuring, Social issues going from Fascism on the top to Libertarian on the bottom. Please keep in mind the way they use Libertarian is not the way I’d use it, but I’ll get to that later. I would call the bottom of the Social Graph Anarchy, because that in short is what it is. A lack of laws to control how people act in society. A lack of police, a lack of control in the society as a whole. Complete Social Freedom.

Going Left and Right the axis we are used to measuring, economic issues, measured from left to right as we do in the US, Conservative to Liberal. That everyone is used to. The question is what’s a social issue and what’s an economic issue. That’s harder to answer in fact many are both. I think, however, the political compass does a good job breaking it up.

Here is the grid: continue reading…

I strongly believe that politics has become one of the biggest problems in American Culture. Not only does politics discourage rational thought it promotes slander, anger, discrimination and ignorance. This is the absolute worst of politics. Now the kicker… If you are a Democrat you are now saying to me “No! Democrats are not like that! Republicans are!” If you are Republican you are saying to me “No! Republicans are not like that! Democrats are!” So wouldn’t that raise a red flag? Is it not possible that BOTH sides are right… and also both sides are wrong?

If you can’t consider it from that angle. Please stop reading. You are not ready to take a step into a broader larger world. For those of you who would like to keep and open mind and broaden horizons a little bit please stay with me.

So first and foremost, let’s take the issue of Logical Thought. What defines logical thought? My definition of logical thought would be thought processes that are unclouded by emotion. Generally logical thought is a slow ponderous process of weighing risk and reward. The bigger the problem the longer it takes. Correction, the bigger the problem the longer it should take.

In comparison, there’s Emotional Thought. These are thoughts driven by fear, anger, pity, sadness, desperation, guilt. You can find these types of thoughts in the main reason for each bill congress puts forward these days. Healthcare is a great example. “We the richest country in the world do not cover every one of our citizens with health insurance.” This is a heaven of emotion. Pity for those who don’t have the kind of healthcare you do. Guilt that you have good healthcare and you don’t see why other people shouldn’t because good health is a “human right”. Possible anger that you do not have health insurance and other people do. Desperation that your health insurance may run out and you need to be covered by something soon and you either have pre-existing conditions or cannot afford health insurance.

Decisions made on Emotional Thought usually will not consider all the angles and will not be a complete decision, they may need to be changed or modified shortly after being implemented. They are very frequently crisis. They need to be handled and solved immediately. This leads to rash and incomplete decision making. Even those who have “thought” about it emotionally are incapable of seeing it from certain angles. That is a genetic fact of humans. When you get emotional part of your brain shuts down and you become incapable of seeing the issue from any perspective but your own.

And now, I’d like to continue with the other issues I planned on raising. continue reading…

Healthcare is a tough topic, no doubt about that. And changes have to be made, noone disagrees with that. INCLUING REPUBLICANS. That’s right if anyone cared to watch C-SPAN or C-SPAN2 and inform themselves about the reality of the situation they would see that republicans don’t oppose change… They just oppose massive and needless changes.

And on this topic. I’ll be honest. I agree with Republicans about healthcare (mostly). For those of you that are leftists and don’t have an open mind, and want to get this passed now regardless of the 10-20 year consequences, that’s fine you can stop reading now.

I’m here to talk to everyone that has an open mind and is willing to think and challenge their ‘leaders’. And i’m going to talk about this bill by talking about something everyone knows and should have been to and should have learned from…

I’m going to talk about an experence everyone had.

KINDERGARTEN

Yes, i’m going to try to convince you that this healthcare bill is a bad idea based on what I learned in kindergarten. Healthcare is a massive issue, and there are massive amounts of people in this country that don’t have health insurance (for whatever reason) and can only get healthcare by waiting until it’s a major problem and going to the E.R. (if they don’t have a savings account to pay for it out of). To the majority of Americans that is unacceptable. Myself included.

Another major problem is those that have pre-existing conditions find themselves uninsured. This in my opinion is the largest problem facing our healthcare industry right now.

So all in all, it’s a big problem, a massive problem… In kindergarten, what was the first thing you were taught to do when face a problem? For me it was very simple, break it down into very small problems and take them one at a time, see if they help the situation over time, if not undo them and try something else.

So, why shouldn’t congress do that? Why should it pass a super huge bloated bill that tries to fix everything at the same time. I’m sure some of the things in there will do well, and some clearly will not (everyone admits this). So why even do the things that won’t work!?

Why not just pass 100-200 smaller bills that can be easily undone if they don’t work? Why not fix the topics one at a time? This would be my solution. Fix the problems one at a time, and see where they stand with the populace of this great country of ours. I bet most of the country would support something to put people with pre-existing conditions that have been denied private insurance on medicare or medicaid. I also bet people would oppose the idea of people with pre-existing conditions put into a new bureaucracy to handle “all Americans”.

And that’s how I see this problem. Rip it apart… Make it many smaller problems… Take them one by one. Why can’t the people in Washington take the simple straightforward answer?

The only time I want them to act like children, they refuse to.

So, in short, I oppose some of the things in this bill, but I am also in favor of some of this thing about this bill… However, I think this bill should be defeated because of it’s SIZE…

This has been the phrase of the Chicago Bears as of late, and becuase of the nature of this year’s Cubs team I can watch the foot ball and get into it all season

So, what I saw… was HOPEFULLY the worst game of Jay Cutler’s Bears career. That’s all I feel I need to say… Four Interceptions, a new career high for him…

The fact that our first points were scored on a SAFTEY… Just kinda feeds into the idea that the Bears offence sucks and the defence rocks…. Well, I guess that’s what I’m getting into

Anyway, this was the first game I’ve watched to watch and enjoy. And Carie and her room mate Kristen helped me thought the process… Although, I realize today, foot ball is going to be “state dependant” memory.

So as the Cubs season slides to an end… Football is starting up….

GO BEARS!

GO 2010 CUBS!