Questions I'll Never Ask

I have been listening (and reading) to both you and Mr. Lehrer since the days of Lawrence Spivik (Excuse me if I misspelled it). I am afraid that you both, among others (like David Brooks, McNeil), have ruined me when it comes to comment, opinion, and true ethical reporting. Admittedly, not everyone is up to these standards. It takes some work to find them. I hope you guys stay put and stay busy. I don't know what I am going to do if any more of you retire. Thank you for all the hard work. Please don't stop. I have almost got to the place where I have forgiven Mr. McNeil and I am working on Mr. Lehrer. Semper Fi!
Jay Saldana

I would definitely watch that debate!!

I would definitely watch that debate!!

Ask: please give us your honest assessment of the Presidency of George W Bush. If you had been President would you a) have gone to war in Iraq, b) failed the people of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, and c) presided over the largest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. How long should it take to put all of that adminstrations mistakes behind us?

Re: Elizabeth Quinn;... Cool... Mistakes are always easier to make than unmake; but the first step has yet to be taken by the right, of admitting they were had, by rove, and others, and are trying to be had again, because who ever they are voting for is not a democrat, and that is all they think they need to know...
One of the many good pieces of advice my father left me with is not to kick myself for making mistakes... Mistakes are easy to make, and not making mistakes is hard... That is why the rush to judgement about Mr. Obama in the recent inflamation of the Muslim world irks me... There are times when all the care in the world is required, and if we cannot afford the peace, we can certainly not afford the war... If you want to shoot off your mouth, then that is your privilage as a citizen, but do everyone a favor and shoot off your face too... Having to look at stupid people on the news for 4 years at a time gets as old as cheese...
Why don't we elect engineers like the chinese... Engineering involves lots of complex problems... Lawyers face complex problems with pat answers that never work as the text book case suggest...Here we have x formula for y problem; but unfortunately, human relationships have moved beyond the form, and the relationship demands a new, and more informal form...I have to agree that the electoral college, and many of the gimmicks of government, like divided districts do not work, and have only served to further divide us... Now what...What do we do now that division has been pushed to the ultimate extreme to elect parties to government... What government can possibly unite what was so purposefully divided??? Government by party is a dangerous game in which the people always lose...
Thanks...Sweeney

I hope Mr. Lehrer reads this column and gets some ideas about what to ask... And I also hope he looks at question a) posed by Elizabeth Quinn. The most powerful tool in human communication is, very simply, the question.

Re: Masako;... Does that mean I can hire a question mark and give my fingers a rest??? You know what this is???: Me holding up seven fingers... No!, a weeks supply of these: Me holding up one finger... Want more??? I got the best ones...

I would almost agree with you for fun were it not for the fact that life is one big question, and the ones with all the wealth and power are those who are stupid enough to think they have all the answers...I have gotten almost every question wrong... I feel like a failure though I am fairly well off...I have studied and read most of my life to have a handful of answers; but there are answers, and then, there are answers... Who cares if I fail the test and get the right questions right???...
It is in the correct asking of the question that most answers lie... There is half the problem, and the worse half... In my opinion... What money buys is the pathos of distance... If you own enough of that you don't have to suffer much slander...
Thanks... Sweeney

Greetings again from Australia.. I am a retired school teacher, formerly from Minnesota, but now a dual national living down under. I get the PBS Newshour weekly which is great for keeping a finger on the news in the US. Mr Shields and Mr Brooks...keep up the good work in your weekly commentary.. always insightful and refreshing.

QUESTION TO ASK

Mr. President, and Mr. Romney , the level of political discourse and debate as well as civility has been greatly eroded in Washington. What specifically can you do to restore collaborative rather than partisan discord in congress and raise the standard of governance?

In Australia there is compulsory voting for federal elections. Would you favor such a system in America as a means of restoring the value of one man one vote and diminish the slush funds of the pacs?


Thanks Mr. Shields for your always insightful columns.

Regards,
Martin Horrigan
Warrnambool, Victoria Australia

Re: martin horrigan.... Choice is strictly limited in America...The parties together agreed to limit the numbers of members in the house, and it is not for want of room, but to keep the house manageable... Where is manageable written in the constitution???...It is not the government which should be managed, but the government which should manage our problems... So they robbed from us the only responsive department of government we had...Even if I agreed that if you do not vote that they do no even know you exist, or speak to your issues, still, there is no getting around the fact of no choice, and if there is nothing to vote for, then why vote???

Mr. Rogers who owns this district is in every respect a party flunky... I do not think he is very smart, and yet he sits on the intelligence commitee... It does not matter how many times I vote against him because his seat is safe, and this is a rotten bourough... I do not think denying the affect and influence of so many on their government is wise or Just... And it is not working for the republicans either... Their leaders and officials get elected year after year calling us the enemy, and when their electors see them holding hands with democrats in D.C., the district becomes more radical yet, and pushes out moderates who actually believe in working government- no matter what they say to the mobs who elect them...Majority rule is still rule as apart from self government...
If you can only get elected by hype, propaganda, and rhetoric designed to inflame then the result will be a raw and injured population demanding change to address their issues... For many years now, government could only ensure more and more success stories to inflate the work ethic of Americans at the cost of the very Americans whose work ethic was inflated... This people is used, and we feel it... We are angry and cannot deny it... The anger on the right is bounded only by the anger on the left, and no one can get the government to work as they think it was intended to...

The most helpful thing the government could do would be to multiply the representatives by two, and divide their districts in half, and if that does not work, then divide and multiply until government can become again responsive to the people...No ones virtue should be affordable to another... The only reason I am not more corrupt than nature made me is that the value of my virtue is more than anyone would offer me for it...It should be the same with the house...If we cannot rid ourselves of the parties, then make the parties powerless to influence those people working in the interest of their electors...We should ask each and every one of them whether their loyalty to party is greater than their loyalty to the people of the United States...Some people never cross the party line...
You see that our leaders inflame the people for their gain... They do not tell us the truth, or educate us, or guide us in our decisions... They anger and confuse us, and once elected, they go back to Washington for a love feast on our dime... All the honorable so and so, and I would like to thank my friend on the right/left etc. does not get to the issue, that THERE our problems should be solved even if it comes to people breaking out canes, swords, and handguns... Instead, there they play nice, and here ulcerate the population with the need for change, making clover of our frustration, and making hay out of our misery... This people is hurting and suffering great fear and insecurity- WHEN it is to combat fear, and to exile insecurity that governments are formed...
Thanks...Sweeney

Sweeney: I love ya, but you are getting way too incoherent and wordy in what you write. I honestly can't understand your point half the time, and I suspect I have a lot more will to do so than the vast majority of those who read your comments. You are an Ironworker, which makes you tops in my book, since you have known real work, real creation, and real danger, unlike most of those who bloviate their words out in these columns, but I still can't figure out what you are trying to say.

You have great stuff to say, I have no doubt about it. Just break it down for us, and try to say it in fewer words.

Thanks, Masako

Re: Masako... I'll try... The Jews and Christians wrote one book and now look at how many there on the subject... I understand... I really do... The most successful people in life, hitler being only one example, were simplify-ers.. The right is full of simplify-ers who never think deeply nor consider the consequences of their thoughts... The usually use their ideas as accepted rather than as always in need of evidence... I get your point... I really do... But we are a diverse people facing complex problems, and the easy way is the one that actually seem most difficult, and that is for us to hold the old constitution in suspension while we work on a new one that actually address the needs of the society we have become... It is not as simple as taking it away from the rich... It is not as easy as what is going on now, which is taking it away from the poor...There are a lot of moral issues involved, and people accept morality on the surface without swimming in it, or giving it deep thought... Essentially, we have no language and vocabulary for morality, and you see the right continually use numbers applied to people problems when numbers are only good for physical reality, and physical forms... I believe we can be reconciled, but we are headed toward war, or revolution which will result in war... None of it is necessary... The greatest tragedies of human kind are among people who speak a common tongue, and can not hear each other...Consider the Iliad, the Peloponesian War, the Protestant Reformation and all of our civil wars...For people to find justice, everyone has to look for it... Just one looking out for his individual gain screws up the search...
Thanks again, and I will try to be brief... BTW, I have often told people I know I will die trying... I am not ready to give up on people, but looking at us as we are, so often reflecting our inner being in outward appearance, then clearly we deserve as humanity the suffering humanity has caused...What will it take to make people conscious of their own power in their affairs, of cause and effect, of right and wrong as suffered and enjoyed by all??? I know I will die trying... I hope I do not die trying not to laugh, or cry...I want to believe we deserve the good we do not enjoy more than the evil we do deserve... I wish I were better, more intelligent, better educated, stronger and handsome and good... I is what I is, and we are what we are, and I do not see simple as part of the solution...Obviously...
Thanks...Sweeney

Re: Masako... Some of the Iroquois in my life worked on the World Trade Center buildings... I asked one of them once what he thought of those Muslims tearing down his work... He thought for a moment, and shrugged...
The culture of philosophy is hard to get out of a people, and they are nothing if not stoic... You got to be...
People talk about the high wages of construction workers who have no sense of what it takes to do that work... That statement that you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps- some times applies... I have met people who were walking disasters, with their emotional lives and finances and practially every facet of their lives stuck together like some frankenstein with chewing gum and tie wire... I have met people who were super intelligent, genius level individuals with hospital corner minds- with every range of mind in between...I used to say that desparation made more ironworkers than talent... Ocbs, druggies and drunks, and a whole lot of trying to be good family men..
One ironworker who is a pretty smart cookie, told me of going to marriage counseling with his wife, and the psychologist said: I have had some ironworkers in here for counseling before, and from my experience, they do not form relationships, but take hostages...
As much as you would like to protect your family from the effects of the job, the deprivation of it, the heartless asshole bosses you must some times suffer, the slugs or idiots you must call your brothers, and upon whom your life depends, the pain of bitter cold or blistering heat, or need without relief; and then you look at your family demanding ever more when you have already given your job a hundred percent plus, and think, without you folks depending upon me, I would murder my boss, and take a short walk off a long beam side ways...
The nice way of saying it is that the people who fit the job don't fit anywhere, but that the job make people unfit anywhere, even in their own families, is also true...The job at times is like a secret that is too terrble to share and too big to keep... Much as you want to protect people from it, you cannot protect them from what it makes of you...You become what you do...
I have seen jobs torn down that I risked my life to build... I left something of myself on that iron that no one will ever pay me for... I have seen buildings fall into disuse that people died to build... People paying too little for labor or for anything else waste it, employ it for nothing, and then trash it when used... What can anyone do but shrug, like a Mohowk... It's a job... Not worth a fraction of the misery that we put into them, some times; but what a job..What men we were...Hok a hey!!! It's a good day to die...
That line Dylan put into the mouth of Jesus on the Watchtower comes to mind... None of them along the line has an idea of its worth...
Thanks...Sweeney

Re: James A, Sweeney: You may find this hard to believe, but in pre- and early teens, the Wakan Tanka (the "Great Mysterious") was my guiding light, along with a science fiction author named Andre Norton who wrote a lot about American Indians.