About

Welcome to our blog, glad you could stop by. I believe, and expect, that this blog will be a bit different from what you have seen before. I, RixKix, am an early 60’s American, retired and living in Thailand, more about me later on. The other creator of this site is my daughter, early 20’s, living in the NW USA, again, more about her later.

Our opinions on some issues are sometimes just a wee bit different. Ok, sorry, but I come from a line of understatement masters, what can I say. Prior to my moving over here to Thailand going back over the years, we have had some rather spirited political discussions. In fact, I believe the only time we agreed was to the statement that if we could find a candidate for national office who could convince us first, that he was being 100% honest and sincere, and second that if elected, the dream candidate would try their very best to do what they honestly believe to be in the best interest of the country, that both of us would vote for that candidate in a heartbeat.

Our discussions were very interesting, in that we both have respect for each other’s opinions. We have both said some things along the way that totally blew the other away, I know I have been blown away a few times. But that’s ok. Because I know my daughter, and I know she is not playing games, she is calling like she sees it, which is perfect, that is exactly what I am doing. We’re just getting this thing going, but I am confident that we will begin pretty much at opposite ends of the political viewpoint most times. And we are probably going to end up agreeing to disagree most times. And that is ok too. Because we will both be learning a lot about truly important and significant issues along the way.

I really don’t care which issues we dive into, I have some I plan to bring up, and am open to about anything. We live in very dangerous times, we have many very serious issues to deal with, electing a new Pres, the economy, terror, Iraq, Illegal Immigrants, and more. From where I sit, an old fart, I have some very genuine concerns for the future of our country, the issuesWe can do it; we as a nation have tackled serious problems/issues in the past and solved them.

But today we have the leaders of our nation/society inundating us with often contradictory information, and using every trick in the book to get us to believe THEIR position, so we will vote for them, buy from them, donate to them. How do we filter out the BS and get to the facts, the reality of the situation. And without that, how can we make an intelligent decision?

Let me give you a simple example. I heard Hillary say something the other day about how she will work to stop jobs from leaving our country, by stopping the tax incentives to business that exist now helping them do that. My initial reaction to that is, hogwash, yes, I am conservative and find it hard to believe that any politician would pass regulations which encourage business to ship jobs out of the country. A bureaucrat who was sincerely looking out for the best interest of the nation would not do that. Politicians under the influence of special interest groups sure would. How do I find out if that is true, who do I listen to? Is this just a politician being a politician, thinking nothing of using pure BS to get me to vote for them? Aside: No slam intended towards Hillary by that last statement, that slam intended for ALL of our candidates for high public office. IMHO, ALL of them will lie as necessary, until proven different.

Can I go to my favorite media outlet and rely on them to give me the facts? Nope, sorry, too many of them are distorting to much too often for me to be able to take them at face value. Can I do an internet search and find the facts? Probably, but it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I googled “global warming” yesterday, and it reported more than forty million hits. We all know that you can find about whatever you want to find on the net, so how do we find the hits that are reliable?

That takes time, and effort, and quite a lot of both. None of us have the time to conduct that research on our own for one of the major issues, let alone all of the major issues. So let us help each other find reality, the real cause of the issue, the true facts, the weapons we need to be able to look at solutions, to make up our own minds on what solution is best. It is likely that we will often not agree with what the best solution is, and that is fine. At least we will be making our minds up based on as accurate a picture as we can obtain.

As we look at these issues accurately, we can then compare the candidates position on them, and help us to decide which will receive our vote.

This blog is about pooling our time and talents to filter out as much of the BS as we can, allowing us to make our decisions/judgements based on the best most accurate information we can collectively acquire.

I have observed, for quite a few years, actually, a stead decline in the ethics of our leaders. Not only leaders in public office, but also in media, business, anywhere in society. We have a lot of corrupt people in our society. Not necessarily taking money to do or not do something, but certain many cases where they so something in their personal best interest contrary to the best interest of their employer. In the big picture, it all matters, it all feeds into the bigger issues, the economy for example.

In public office, too few people elected to represent us, conduct the business of government, honeslty and sincerely doing their best to protect our collective best interests. In the business world, very hard to find members of the management team honestly doing what they were being paid to be doing, gain maximum return on the owners investment. Far too often, they are doing what is necessary to keep us (the owners, the customers) happy while they proceed to maximize their personal gain. To me, these are ethical concerns. When we elect someone to office, we are hiring them, to perform a job, and only on a temporary basis at that. We want them to perform, we want them to try their best to keep us safe, and provide us the environment where we have the opportunity to fulfill our dreams. We should expect that from any candidate we are voting for.

How are they doing, what do you think? Choose a recent or current President, how do you think they did/are doing? Did/Is he really trying to do what he sincerely believes is best for all of us collectively? This is not a light question, think about it some and give it a serious answer. Now ask the same question for the last several presidents. Sad, isn’t it?

Here is the big question, how did you decide, upon which information do you base your answer? Where did it come from? Is it accurate? Are you willing to bet your life on it being accurate? Unless you are willing to say that nothing you can do can make a change, then you are ultimately betting your life on it. I am not willing to bet my life on my sources of information being completely accurate.

I am inviting my son to join it, and will be inviting some of my friends. I have asked Doj to invite some of her friends also. Anyone making a serious post here will be welcomed. The way I look at it, the more people we have participating, the more quality information we can gather. And that is good for all of us.