People choose to see things as would best suit their beliefs or needs. Rarely do we recognize there is a much bigger picture, or that the information we are receiving is not as we believe it to be. Sometimes it seems like someone is doing something for one reason, when there is something going on that we don't even fathom to be a possibility. The facts, even when presented, sometimes are not even believable.
I don't know why my car does what it does, though I have a sneaky suspicion that during the vibrations of driving something metal is touching something metal under my hood. The metal to metal contact may, then, be making contact with my battery terminals on occasion, which may then be adding power from the battery in short, quick spurts, to the alternator power as I am driving. When this combination of events happen, if my air conditioning is on the fan blows a little harder for that short moment of contact. In the early morning the brief metal to metal contact makes my headlights brighten for just a moment. I can tell when it takes place because the "battery" light on my dashboard flashes on as well, and then turns back off when the contact is broken.
It happens rarely, so I haven't investigated the actual cause, but when it does happen, and the headlights brighten for a moment, it causes misunderstandings to blossom in the minds of the drivers around me.
When the headlights brighten, they usually only brighten for a couple seconds, so it looks like I am flashing my brights.
Usually, on the road during the early hours of the morning, I drive with few other drivers on the road. There are normally not a lot of vehicles on the road at 2:30 AM, so they must think it strange that a car with all of the room in the world to change lanes is flashing his brights to get the car in front of him to move over so that he can pass.
When I am on the road in the early morning hours, and the battery light on my dash pops on, therefore indicating that my headlights have flashed brightly too, dimming back down immediately, and the car in front of me, not knowing the details of my mechanical trouble, assumes I just flashed my brights at them, the response is not always the same. Sometimes I get angry looks, or I am flashed a particular finger that does not necessarily mean the person believes I am number one in their book. More often than not, however, the car in front of me simply changes lanes in order to allow me to pass, even though I had no intention of doing so, and did not actually flash my brights as they believe. What I will do is go ahead and speed up and pass them, just to make them feel as though they did the right thing in being courteous, even though I had no intention of driving at that faster speed.
I am willing to bet that none of these people ever consider that the truth of the matter has nothing to do with me flashing my brights. None of them, I believe, ever thinks to themselves, "Gosh, that poor guy is having an electrical problem that is causing his lights to brighten for just a short moment."
My car situation is a great example that things are not always what they seem. Quite often we see things one way, not knowing that there are factors pointing the facts in a different direction.
Politics is a great example of this. On the surface, for a lot of people, the George W. Bush administration made errors along the way. Digging deep, and doing what I can to understand the facts, in many cases I agree. I had a big problem with his amnesty ideas in regards to the illegal alien issue, I was not a fan of "No Child Left Behind," and the stimulus bill at the end of his presidency carried with it catastrophic consequences.
No administration is perfect, nor ever will be. Even the most well intentioned administration is capable, for political reasons, or personal agenda reasons, of doing things not in line with what is best for the nation when it comes to the big picture. Though, as an American voter, I am not always fully aware of all factors involved, or the information available to the President to help him determine what it is he is doing. However, I can usually determine if the administration "can" do what they are doing by simply applying the U.S. Constitution.
Invading Iraq, for example, was the right thing to do, in my opinion, if it was to be a part of protecting the nation from further terrorist attacks. If the reason was solely to build a democracy in Iraq, or to oust Saddam Hussein, then it was for the wrong reasons. Those were acceptable consequences of the invasion, but I don't think they should have been the driving factors.
From a legal point of view, despite Leftist opinion, the move into Iraq was perfectly legal, partially because Hussein was continuously violating the treaty we had agreed upon with him after the War in Kuwait.
I don't know what Bush's intentions were, or if the violation of the treaty was part of Dubya's reasoning for going into the Iraqi region. We, the American People, were not in the President's shoes when he made an oath to himself to never allow something like 9/11 to happen again. We may not have always recognized the love he had in his heart for the U.S. Military. And we were not in the room with him when the realization struck him that the very different culture in Iraq had been severely underestimated, and that the fight would be more vicious than originally thought. It may be very possible that he, or those around him, began to come to the belief that invading Iraq when they did may not have been the best plan of action at that time. But, at that point, the initiation of the invasion was no longer the issue. We were in the area, and with the Iranian government sending in fighters to influence the war, and the possible perception of the U.S. Military by the Islamic World and our allies should we suddenly cut and run, abandoning the war (be it right or wrong that we were there in the first place) was out of the question.
The dashboard warning light was on, and we knew that pulling the plug would kill all of the good we had done in the region, and leave Iraq open to foreign invasion by powers that had plans much worse than what Hussein had been doing in Iraq before we arrived.
I am not saying that good intentions condone poor actions. Just about everything the Democratic Party proposes in the way of legislation is filled with, according to them, the greatest of intentions. The policies, however, once in place, more often than not proves to be damaging to American liberty, and the economic stability of this nation.
Sometimes, however, we jump to conclusions that are not always grounded in fact.
Obama's health care, for example, finds its foundations in the greatest of intentions - to make sure everyone is insured. On the surface, a very noble endeavor. President Obama, and crew, have told us that the plan is not designed to eliminate private insurance, even though Obama has also said that it will do exactly that in the long run. The goal is to provide an added option so that no one is left without insurance. However, now it is coming out that destroying private insurance is their full intention, and it is inevitable should a government system be put into place. We are told by the Democrats that his plan is nothing like Britain's or Canada's socialized health care systems, yet once the capitalistic version of health care is killed off, Obama's universal-style medicine will be exactly like those other failed nationalized systems. What is being said, or shown to us, on the surface, cannot be trusted. There is no consistency, and truth is not exactly the liberal politician's strong suit when it comes to this issue, either.
The American People, however, has jumped to the conclusion that Obama knows why the dashboard warning light is on, and is taking the appropriate steps to fix the problem.
The best way to determine the true story is to look at history, and to break down the facts we have available to us.
Obama's followers claim that private insurance is poorly administered, and that the cost of health care to the citizen is outrageously high. I agree. Therefore, to fix the problem of poorly administered programs the government would like to replace it all with an even more poorly administered program funded by the U.S. Government. The factors of unions and lawyers haven't even played into their thinking process. Why? Because the unions and lawyers are big supporters of the Democratic Party, and many of them are lawyers anyway. So, they have selectively chosen their villains, painting them out to be greedy doctors and greedy insurance salesmen. This is not to say there are no greedy doctors or insurance executives and agents. But how can we allow them to use Obama's dissatisfaction with health care as an excuse to insert government control over our lives with Obama's health care plan, while ignoring the real culprits that arise in the form of frivolous malpractice suits?
Just because Obama is a politician, it doesn't mean he knows why the dashboard warning light is on.
The Democratic Party claims that 47 million people in America are uninsured. It doesn't cross their mind that close to 20 million can afford insurance and chooses not to buy it, another 10 to 20 million are people who qualify for government funded health care options and choose not to enroll, about 10 million are in between jobs or are new on the job and are therefore in between coverage, and only God knows how many millions of those folks that are uninsured are illegal aliens and shouldn't be insured because they are here "illegally." In the end, the true number of uninsured Americans who are uninsured for the reasons claimed by the Left is probably less than ten million people.
Ah, but that is ten million people too many, according to the Left, and so to turn off that dashboard warning light we must make sure they are all insured on the taxpayers dime with a system that will influence every single American.
The root of the problem is not the brights. The root of the problem is not that I am flashing my brights on the freeway. So, a mechanic should not discard what I say, and then put a safeguard in my car to keep me from flashing the brights. Like with health care, the problem is not what seems to be the obvious answer.
Tort reform is a real part of a solution the Democrats are not willing to consider. Costs skyrocket because of rising costs due to the lack of restraint in awards given in medical malpractice suits. Lawyers find any way they can to take advantage of the system, including suing for minor problems the physician may or may not have been able to anticipate. As a result, the medical industry does everything they can to protect themselves from these lawsuits, which in turn increases the cost of doing business because of the extra procedures being ordered, and the rising costs of their own insurances because of the rising danger of being sued.
The lawyers are the ones going around and flashing their brights maliciously. All of the rest are simply minor problems causing a few wrinkles that were unexpected.
Tort Reform would not allow the government the ability to access your life more than they do now, nor would it allow them to determine if you should or should not be treated for a medical ailment because of your healthy or unhealthy lifestyle. Tort reform would not allow the government to get involved with your medical life, have access to your private medical records, and it would not allow them to determine, when you get older, if you should be allowed to live or die based on your ability to contribute to the common good.
So, they choose a Marxist-style health care policy, instead.
The dashboard warning light is coming on because somewhere two metal items are brushing against each other, causing a surge in power that makes the headlights brighten intermittently. The Democrats, after listening to all of the explanations by the driver, and after looking under the hood, have determined the best way to fix the problem is to rip out all of the electrical in my car, replace it all with cables and pulleys, and then charge my neighbor for it.
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Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
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