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Archive for July, 2010

Obama: “My Policies That Got us Out of This Mess” Part 1

16 Jul

:Edit:
Just a quick note: The article has been removed from all archives of the Associated Press and all of Google’s records by The Ministry of Truth. Perhaps this retroactive censoring of news from 1984deserves it’s own post.  (8/17/10 Second Jon)

President Barack Obama said in an NBC interview that the 2010 elections are “a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and my policies that got us out of this mess.”

Good news everyone, Obama’s policies “got us out of this mess”!

I’ve previously written about how the unemployment rate stayed low until Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then-Senator Barack Obama, and others in the Democrat party were running the legislature. Then unemployment skyrocketed.

But that started when Obama was just in the party writing the laws. Let’s look at some information about the impact of his major economic policy accomplishment: The stimulus.

Obama's stimulus and Americans who have left the workforce

Obama's stimulus and Americans who have left the workforce

From Ed Morrissey’s July 10 article, this chart represents “the gross numbers of able-bodied workers outside the workforce and no longer looking for jobs.  The red star indicated when Barack Obama’s stimulus was passed, and we can see the effects or lack thereof on the workforce afterward.  Not only has the unemployment rate gone up and the number of jobs continued to drop since February 2009, Americans are increasingly leaving the workforce instead of joining it.”

There you have it – we’re out of the mess. We can thank Obama’s policies for nearly doubling the amount of Americans who have left the workforce.

 
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Posted in Politics

 

How to Fail at Arguing #4

15 Jul

Often heard in political, theological, and other arguments is the line “That just doesn’t make sense.”

This insults the person making the argument – how foolish they must be to believe in something that doesn’t make sense. But this isn’t just an insult, not just an ad hominem attack.

It insults idea itself. Some ideas don’t make sense – but this is not shown by calling an idea stupid – it’s done by working through the argument with logic.

Usually an idea does make sense – at least from a certain perspective. If any thinking person has ever believed the argument, it made sense to them.

For example, anyone who says the idea of believing in God doesn’t make sense is judging some of the smartest minds in the history of the world. If brilliant minds believe it, it must make sense to them.

If you can’t understand how an idea could make sense to others, the first problem is with you, not the idea.

If you can’t understand how an idea makes sense to someone else, how can you ever think you could argue against that idea?

It pays to seek to understand before seeking to be understood.

 
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Don’t show me the calories!

14 Jul

I know its not good for me, its dessert!

 
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How to Fail at Arguing #3

14 Jul

Dole vs. Clinton

In 1996, senator and military veteran Bob Dole ran against Bill Clinton, who fled the country to avoid the draft at the time Dole was serving. We elected Clinton after being told that military experience was irrelevant, and it wasn’t a big deal that Clinton dodged the draft.

Eight years later, veteran John Kerry was running against George W. Bush, who served in the reserves and never saw combat. The same people who discounted military experience and defended draft-dodging in ’96 were now saying military experience mattered, and that Bush serving in the military wasn’t good enough.

This brings us to How to Fail at Arguing #3:

Reverse positions as it suits you.

It’s a quick way to lose credibility and make everything you say irrelevant.

W. Bush vs. Obama

Do you remember this picture of Bush and McCain with a cake during the Katrina days? How dare he eat a piece of cake during a disaster?! What about Bush playing golf, as villainized by Michael Moore in a documentary as shown in this clip (it seems an insult to the word “documentary,” but that’s what it was called):

YouTube Preview Image

And now, only two years later, Obama is excused for spending all sorts of time throwing parties and playing golf – in fact more golf already than Bush played during his 8 years in office – all while saying he “wont’ rest” until the Gulf of Mexico disaster is resolved.

If you criticized Bush for golfing but you don’t criticize Obama for the same thing, you fail at arguing.

 
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Goal 5: Blog Consistently

13 Jul

Blog man

Blogging is helpful to me as a personal writing exercise and also allows me to engage others in more meaningful online communication than tweets and status updates.

I’ve decided to “really start blogging” several times, but haven’t followed through. So far with this Second Jon blog, I’ve blogged at least once per day for a few weeks. I think I can keep this up (especially now that I have more control over every aspect of my blog having left blogger.)

Goal 5 on my list is to blog consistently – 300 blog posts by my next birthday.

  1. Attainable: So far, so good! I’m averaging more than one post per day.
  2. Meaningful: Improves writing skills, may allow me to connect with friends/strangers online in a more meaningful way.
  3. Difficult: It means coming up with something interesting to write about every day.
  4. Quantifiable: 300 blog posts over 365 days.

Current Progress: 18/300 (6%)

 
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Jason Gray – More Like Falling in Love

12 Jul
YouTube Preview Image

I heard this song recently on a local radio station. I had a problem with the lyrics I heard, then I looked them up. I think my concerns were valid.

When we tell God: “It’s gotta be like this, not like that,” then haven’t we put ourselves above God, telling him what things should be like?

The fact is, we are called to give our allegiance to love himself. We are given words from the one who is The Word. We’re given obligations by the one who laid down his life for us. There is something to believe in. And religion is just a set of beliefs about reality, which we have.

We don’t get to demand how God should act. That’s prideful self-idolatry.

What do you think?

Lyrics:

Give me rules
I will break them
Give me lines
I will cross them
I need more than a truth to believe
I need a truth that lives, moves, and breathes
To sweep me off my feet
It ought to be

More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in love

Give me words
I’ll misuse them
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
‘Cause all religion ever made of me
Was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet
It never set me free
It’s gotta be

CHORUS

…It’s like I’m falling in love, love, love
Deeper and deeper
It was love that made
Me a believer
In more than a name, a faith, a creed
Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me

 
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Posted in Spirituality

 

Goal 4: Handwritten Letters

11 Jul

Mail BoxesI love racing to the mailbox every day. Like the cheesy host of Blues Clues, I want to shout “Mail Time!” I love the idea of getting something in the mail. Unexpected, handwritten content from a friend.

But it’s been years.

We all gave up on handwritten letters and turned to less-personal email.  Now I eagerly await email but am met with impersonal newsletters and advertisements just like my physical mailbox. Then we gave up on email and switched to depend on 140 characters of SMS text messages, twitter, and the slighly-longer Facebook status updates.

Do I know more of you now with status updates than I would have through written correspondence? Doubtful. Now I may know more about where you are and what you ate for dinner – but that’s not who you are.

Our Rotary PhoneIn some respects, I’m among the most tech-savvy of my friends. I’m a software engineer. We own a robot vacuum (or two). We have more computers than people in our house. In other ways I’m a luddite.  I’ve got a reel lawn-mower with rotating blades and no motor. A rotary phone that I’ve re-wired is our main house phone. We have no microwave.

Technology has transformed the world, saved lives, enhanced business, and extended relationships. Damage in all of these areas has been done as well. Lives have been ended, businesses have been shut down, and relationships shallowed.

Technology is best viewed with a healthy skepticism.

And that’s the reason behind my 4th goal for this year. I am going to write handwritten letters to friends and family – specifically those I’ve lost touch with.

Current Progress: 0%

  1. Attainable: This is 2 or 3 letters each month. That should be attainable.
  2. Meaningful: Improves writing skills and relationships.
  3. Difficult: The time commitment, writing skills, and learning this ancient art of letter-writing will all add difficulty.
  4. Quantifiable: I’m shooting for 30, but it depends on how many names and addresses I can come up with.
 
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Posted in Goals, personal, Technology

 

Obama Inherited This: From Democrats

10 Jul

Obama’s mantra changed when he took office. He used to say “Hope and Change!” Now he says

“It’s not my fault!”

That’s leadership! 2 years into his term Obama still spends his time pointing fingers, and still talks about how he inherited this economy. He inherited the rising unemployment rate. He inherited…

But who did he inherit these things from?

This chart is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over-layed with the House Majorities

Democrats lead the way to unemployment

The unemployment rate was low and was dropping until the Democrats took over the House. As we all learned from Schoolhouse Rock (video embedded below), the House has to vote and pass any bill before the senate can even consider it.  Everything starts in the House.

YouTube Preview Image

Next time you hear Obama say he inherited the problems, just remember – he inherited them from Nancy Pelosi and other Democrat friends in the House, who were doing what he thinks they should have been doing.

 
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How to Fail at Arguing #2

09 Jul

My copy of A New Kind of Christian is full of notes in the columns of all the times Brian McLaren fails at making his argument. Here’s the first one that caught my eye when I read the book:

Claim unquestionable authority for your argument.

God’s Unquestionable Authority

This isn’t often in the form of “God told me to tell you this,” but often God’s unchallengeable authority is bestowed on one’s self of, as in McLaren’s case, a fictional character invented to be McLaren’s mouthpiece but with divine authority.

Neo said, “My pastor at Saint Tim’s tells me that I have the spiritual gift of putting into words thins people already know but didn’t know they know – or didn’t want to know. On several occasions I’ve offered to return the gift to the Lord…. It’s not always a pleasant job. People often don’t thank you for it.” – A New Kind of Christian, Chapter 1. (That’s not an added ellipsis “…”, it’s how McLaren wrote it in the book.)

For the rest of the book, Neo’s words are absolute truth. To deny Neo’s words is to deny God’s gift.

Certainly there are arguments where Divine authority can be claimed, at least in a conversation between Bible-believers – when you’re making an argument from scripture. Then again, most of the time when this happens, we’re assigning our interpretation and eisegesis God’s authority, which is another way to fail at arguing.

Experts’ Unquestionable Authority

Outside of religious circles, how can you claim unquestionable authority? One way is to exalt “experts” to godhood. ‘

global warming - the globe is burning, according to experts

We’re told global warming is true because experts say it is. We’re told children are raised better by schools than parents because experts say so. Often experts are invoked with unquestionable authority because the conclusion drawn from these experts contradicts common sense.

If you can’t convince someone without pulling out the sledge hammer of unquestionable authority, you’ve got a lousy argument indeed.

 
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How to Fail at Arguing #1

08 Jul

My ears perk up when I hear people fail at arguing.  It happens all the time by many people, though I notice it most from self-described left-wing “progressives.” I see this as being an ongoing series on this blog with examples as I see or hear them.

screen capture of facebook comments

How many times can he fail in one conversation?

Here’s a clip of a recent attempt at a conversation on Facebook. The article linked was the one I wrote about earlier about NASA’s new mission.

How to fail in argument as Tice did here:

  1. Simultaneously express agreement, skepticism, and disagreement about the same thing.
  2. Avoid talking about the issue at hand altogether.
  3. Call the other person names.
  4. Insult the source instead of the facts being reported, or the factworthiness of the report.
  5. And a bonus combo of the above: Agree with a source, then attack the source and say that anyone who agrees with them is stupid.

Yes, he just called himself stupid. Gold star. That’s how to fail at arguing, first edition.

Have you seen someone recently fail at arguing? Leave me a comment or drop a note.

 
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Posted in How to Fail at Arguing

 
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