The Debates are over. What Did You Learn? (Poll)

It is all over but the shouting. The debates and the big endorsements are over more or less. The debates and endorsements were only useful if you learned something from then. What did you learn?

Live shot from the last Presidential debate (Unmodified). The question is, which of these men would you want to lead the nation? The one who is leading, or the one trailing.

There are two things you always have to learn about in any political race, the hard facts and the soft facts. These facts are only useful to the extent that you are capable of applying them to your self-interests and the Nation’s interests which should be the same. That is, what the people need, is what the nation needs and vice a versa. A person’s self-interests can easily be pictured in their Top Three Issues. These are my Top Three needs as an example, yours may be different. Feel free to tell us your top three.

Top Three Issues (3 of 10)

2008 Presidential Election

1. Universal Sick Care (USC) (Pro-life for grown ups)

2. End the Iraq War in 30 days (Use money at home)

3. Green Moon Shot in 10 years (fix economy and form the future)

Key: They include my personal self-interests and what I think is important for the National interests.

With this in mind, let’s take a brief look at the hard and soft facts that you should have already applied to your own Top Three. Then we will look at what could prevent you from applying the facts to your self-interest.

Hard Facts,

The hard facts should start with your Top Three Needs. The more thoughtful citizens will expand that list to at least a Top Ten List. Doing this helps to confirm or adjust your Top Three Issues.

Key to the usefulness of your facts is where you get the facts. The standard places to look for the facts include Candidate Web sites, MSM and ISM (independent Stream Media). The key to having your facts match reality is variety of sources. If you only listen to fox news, or you only listen to liberal news, or you only listen to the news from your ethnic group you are in trouble. It is especially important to listen to information from sources you do not necessarily agree with, for it is here, where you hear the arguments against your position. In the end, it is only when you have the arguments for and against your position in hand that you are actually in a position to “decide”.

You should have matched your Top Three and the hard facts by now. What’s next? The so called getting the measure of the man is what we are looking for now. You see up until now the “man” has not been important. Blue, Black, White, Republican or Democrat is not relevant to the hard facts. Either a candidate is for Universal Sick Care or they are against it by record and word. The fact of the message and the messenger are not necessarily connected.

Soft Facts

I will not go into detail about soft fact for they are too mushy, I will simply list some as a base line, leadership, vision, Subject Knowledge, tone/temperament, understanding the people’s/Nation’s needs, steady hand on the wheel in calm seas and rough

Face to face tells you a lot about the soft facts that you don’t get from a stump speech or reading the facts in the news. Few Americans actually get face time with the candidates our time is near face to face like in modern video conferencing. But that is enough to get the measure of the men and woman.

How did you take the measure of the man? In the end, we must take the soft “emotional” and the hard “concrete” facts and match them to our self-interests. America is not a socialist nation or a communist nation we want to be a Democracy and believe the people should decide our direction.

Fear

What can prevent this natural process, replacing facts with negative emotions. Fear and distrust is the political antidote to self interests and facts. In the book 1984 Big Brother gave the people two minutes of hate daily. When I hear Palin on the stump daily it reminds me of 1984.

Examples.

Democrats fear four more years of Bush and the forty thieves (neo-cons).

Republicans fear, Blacks, Arabs, Latino’s, Terrorists, “Losing” the Iraq war, Socialism, Communism, Taxes, regulation, non-Christian religion.

Undecided – If you are the information poor and you have not matched your Top Thee to the facts. Do it now and stick to it unless something happens in the next days to change your mind.

Here is my final argument. If you can’t apply this process because you run from your gut, than the pictures in this article are for you. If you are still undecided when you see these pictures you should be decided after you see them. LoL

The lead picture is odd to say the least, but it is telling. My reaction was WTH? What is your reaction and what did you learn from the Debates?