The trouble with polls

If you watch talk shows or listen to talk radio you hear some strange and confusing things.

The Democrats have a poll that shows that 67% of the people want a public option in the Health Care plan. The Republicans and the Tea Partiers have a poll that shows that 52 % of the people don't want any Health Care plan at all. How is it possible that both of them are right?

Simple. It depends on who is polled and how they are polled.

Take Jack Cafferty's poll. He editorializes before he asks the question which automatically skews the answers he gets. Take Ed Schultz's poll. His audience will come up with answers that he expects. The same goes for most of CNN's polls and the O'Reilly, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaughs polls. The same goes for Miringoff, Quinipiac, Roper, Gallop or anyone else.

They all have a list of whom to poll. After a few polls they have a pretty good idea of how a person will answer. They know who is Conservative, who is Liberal, and who is independent. So if they are being paid by someone who wants to show a  Conservative or Liberal leaning, all they have to do is call those people who will give them the answers they are seeking.

They will argue that having that list shows trends, which is somewhat true. If 10% of the people they call show that they are changing their position it is what some organizations want to know.

Unfortunately it also allows them to skew the polls.

You pay me enough to poll and I will get a poll that shows some people believe that Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh are the same guy. I will also get you a poll that says that most people do not believe any polls, because they have never been polled.

If you want to judge a poll, find out who paid for it. Think of what they are looking for, and how they benefit from the poll.

The problem with some polls is that we elect our officials sometimes because of poll numbers and they vote on legislation based on polling. Polls can be beneficial, but remember to question why they're done.

No poll can show what the American electorate really thinks. They are just samples and should be treated as samples.

That is why they are sometimes dead wrong.

Hypocrisy and the Hippocratic Oath

One last try to change at least one person's opinion an abortion and health care.

Abortion comes under health care in incidents of rape, incest, and the health of the mother. It does not come under health care when it is elective - if the mother just decides she does not want the baby. If  the Republicans and the Blue Dogs had only fought to have elective abortions uncovered, they would not have been hypocrites, that's their standard view. But to include rape, incest and health issues made their objections not about health, but about religion.

Religion should not be a basis for government decisions on health care.

Health issues are a basis for a sound economy. We cannot allow people who are sick to go without care because they cannot afford it, because ultimately the people who can afford it pay for it anyway.

Republicans and Tea Partiers denounce the so-called "Obamacare" as Socialism, but with the elimination of the public option, it's strikingly similar to the Massachusetts plan for which Mitt Romney takes credit. Why do they so vehemently stick to this cry of Socialism, when, ironically, the demographics of the aging Tea Partiers show a large percentage of them to be recipients of Social Security and Medicare, government programs much more closely related to the Socialism they claim to despise.

And what about the Republican congressmen and senators who receive government health care at the same time they lambaste the concept of government health care. If the government can administer their care why not the citizens who pay for it.

Two mad dogs are loose

Dick Cheney should be the last one to criticize anyone on how to handle terrorists.

The same goes for former Mayor Giuliani.

When you have a catastrophe most of the intelligence is to move people out of harm's way as quickly as possible.

That was done with the Tsunami. Done, though poorly, with Hurricane Katrina. Done when we have a tornado and almost any other catastrophe.

But in the 9/11 debacle Giuliani took the opposite approach. If you were stuck in the area during 9/11, Giuliani made sure you were stuck there. Buses and subways avoided the area. Traumatized New Yorkers had to go to Canal Street, which was quite a walk, to get a subway. if you were in a wheelchair or walked with a cane that became virtually impossible. You just had to stay and breathe the stale and suffocating air.

I am sure they thought there was a good reason for that approach, but it did not work out. Giuliani's plan may have been done with good intentions, but it wasn't good and he should not pretend now that it was. He should not take pride in saying he did a great job under those circumstances.

Afghanistan

Unfortunately those who want to continue the war in Afghanistan and those who want immediate withdrawal have no crystal ball and do not know how either approach will turn out.

We are there because our previous president thought wrongly that we should be there.  The hawks who got us there are still hawking about how it is necessary to be there. I would like to get out of there as quickly as possible but the president has made his decision and he thinks it is the right one.

Unlike our previous administration I do not believe he minimizes the horror of the war or the expense or war's burden on the American people. I am confident he would like to get this mess over with as quickly as possible.

The one phrase I was looking for was a challenge to the Afghani people: "Get your government to take over the fight against your enemies and our enemies and those who believe terrorizing the rest of the world is the answer. When you can prove you are capable of protecting yourselves and other countries from terrorists we will withdraw."

If I were President Obama I would say. . .

Fellow Americans;

When I ran for the presidency I promised to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, regulate Wall Street and banking, clean up the real estate industry, the credit card companies and the Insurance companies. I also promised health care reform and fair Immigration policies. Those were my priorities.

The framers of the Constitution, in order to protect our citizens, divided the powers into Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches. They envisioned all these groups working together. They did not foresee the enormous power that big business would attain, and the money its lobbyists would spread around to buy your representatives votes.

There are representatives who keep blocking our road of success because they would like to see me fail. There are representatives who pledge their allegiance to the campaign contributions of big business. There are others who vote for their constituency to the detriment of the country. They refuse to realize we are one nation and as president I am sworn to serve you all.

Fortunately, in our democracy you can make the changes I am fighting for happen. If you believe in these changes you have the final vote. You can tell your representatives to support the policies you elected me to enact or you can vote them out of office.

Thank you.

(I am sure he would say it better - if he took off the kid gloves and spoke up for himself.)

True campaign reform

1) No elected or appointed official who receives a pension for his/her government work can then go on to work with or for a lobbying group without forfeiting his/her pension.

Reason: It makes no sense to have an elected official use his/her job to further a career at voters' expense, and then work against the voters' interest.

2) All candidates shall have a cap put on the amount of money spent on their campaigns, beginning with the smallest political jurisdiction. The candidate running against an incumbent  shall be allowed to have an additional 50% to spend.

Reason: An incumbent has the advantage of name recognition and office and record. This levels the playing field a bit.

3) The campaign shall not be allowed to spend the money alloted to it until a specified date which should not be six months before the election.

Reason: This will help do away with the incumbents' needs to start fundraising while they are supposed to be working on legislation. This will also help because it eliminates the need for the outrageous sums of money spent on elections by parties and candidates.

Realistically I do not expect these points to be taken seriously by incumbents, political parties, TV networks, newspapers, radio stations or anyone else who makes money on elections.

But one can hope.

Beware of Bi-Partisan Compromises

While bi-partisanship occasionally works to improve legislation, it often leaves both sides unhappy. Compromise is only possible when both sides have a common goal and a common desire to succeed. When one side only wants to make the other side look bad, compromise is nearly impossible.

There's no satisfactory compromise on Gay Marriage or Universal Health Care, there are only compromises on ways to achieve those goals. Either you want everyone to have the right to marry or you don't. Either you believe everyone should have access to affordable medical care or you don't. Now, compromises are possible in determining how you achieve affordable medical care but not as to whether or not you should have it.

Here are two examples of the problem with compromise:

A group: All people should have the right to marry.
B group: No.
A group: Let's compromise- Only those over 35 years of age.
B group: OK, but only if they were previously married to a person of the opposite sex - and had the marriage annulled.
A group: In the interest of bi-partisanship and compromise we can go along with that.

A group: We should increase taxes on all those who make over $1,000,000 dollars a year.
B group: No.
A group: How about if we make it $1,000,000 dollars and they must have
$10,000,000 in the bank.
B group: How about $10,000,000 and $5,000,000,000  in the bank.
A group: In the interest of bi-partisanship and compromise we can go along with that.

Someone always ends up with the short end of the stick. Add in campaign finances, lobbyists and the need to get re-elected and the all of the public ends up with the short end of the stick.