I learned that the truth and fact are not the same.  For example, A kills B.  Yet we go to court to try A for this crime and we discover that A’s crime occurred at the behest of another person’s intent.

Truth is what we believe and fact is what actually took place.  So your truth can be different than my truth.  You saw A pull a weapon and I saw A take out a Snicker’s bar.  Neither of us is lying, we are both telling the truth as we perceived it.  We both take polygraphs and pass.  However B fell over dead and it seems unlikely her died by a Snicker’s bar.

So how do we get to what really happened?  We collect and analyze information that we know to be factual.  We change the word weapon and Snicker’s bar to “something was pulled out of the pocket”.   If there is a chocolate stain on the person we tend to accept the truth of the Snicker person, if there is a knife wound our belief shifts and so on.

I do not know the facts about GMOs because no one presents them.  They tell me their truths.   Granted they are emotional and interesting but not supported by facts.

So I search for facts and find all the avenues to facts blocked.  Let’s start with a simple fact.  The labeling of GMO s in the food we eat is blocked.  Simple enough, we follow the money to see how something so simple can be prevented.  So at the very least I am suspicious of the government representatives let alone the advertising dollars and campaign contributions.

Then I turn to the scientists and hear more truths but few facts.  Most important is the lack of research that will put an end to this debate.  In the search I find conspiracy theories, pay offs, schemes and incompetence, but no facts.  Conspiracy theorists have one thing in common, they can’t connect the facts to support their theory, but it sells media.

In 1947 there was a report that cigarette smoking proved a health hazard.  The battle over those findings took over 30 years to uncover what study after study revealed.  Again follow the money and you find tobacco states and lobbyists and doctors and representatives denying the obvious.  In fact, hiding or blocking the facts from the light of day.

There is only one fact that haunts me.  It comes from a researcher who is profiting from the information and using the same logical fallacy as the GMO companies;  the rise in certain illnesses coinciding with the rise in GMO use.  As important as those number of illness are to me, I need to see the numbers on the GMO side.  For example, how much GMO food was available back then and consumed.  But those numbers are not available.  Yet the researcher stretches one known statistic to coincide with another.

Seems like somebody is hiding something, but that does not prove the researchers claim.  It does stop one from looking for added proof.

GMO, seed banks, world domination are bandied about and there is only one thing I can do.  Write about it and vote.

My writing is unemotional and I do not want to claim that all illnesses are the result of GMOs, just can’t get the facts to back up the truth.

I have learned much about myself and the way people think.  I start researching a topic in the morning and next thing I know it is time for bed.  I found things about things I didn’t know existed.

I have held back my GMO and vaccination discussion because I found a well educated researcher who has a very compelling argument which I tend to agree with.  I got stuck on her using a logical fallacy in her explanation.  (Heck, I did three blogs on logical fallacies I may as well use them.)  It doesn’t mean she’s wrong but I get suspicious when the researchers use the same arguments as the alleged perpetrators.

As I am reviewing my research, the argument that keeps crossing my path is “this can be changed at the ballot box.” The people in the U.S. have found a problem and for some reason will not solve it.  The way people think is the interesting component of all my blogs.  The train in the tunnel is heading straight at you and you see it, identify it and DO NOTHING.

Ah, there my friends, lies the problem.

Never paid any attention to gun control except what I read or hear on the news media.  Based on the media my report is that there is a huge cry for gun control mainly because of the mass shootings.  I can understand that.

Then I look at the statistics and realize that the media is either ill informed or has an agenda.

The second amendment has a strong connection to the fourth amendment.  Back in the colonial times the government had the right to quarter the military in your house.  So having a weapon had a purpose.

The statistics clearly show that there is an urban subculture that allows the media to focus on guns as the issue.  However the statistics show that eliminating guns would increase the violence.

We have federal laws that already prohibit automatic weapons.  And in locations where the laws are state or city laws the amount of automatic weapons in the hands of the mentally limited is very high.  Don’t these people obey the law (sarcasm inserted here)

A psychological principle of the avoidance of pain suggests that entering a house, city or state where someone can do to me what evil I have in mind for them makes me avoid that possibility

.http://www.downfacebook.com/download-facebook-video-806713486044197.html

P.S.Part of the A-Z to me is finding things.  I think I published a 6 minute video website.  that I base my opinion on but I know there is a better way to post it.http://www.downfacebook.com/download-facebook-video-806713486044197.html

Maybr this is it.  Six minutes will at least challenge your beliefs if not change them.

I follow a blog of a well known blogger.  He claims to thoroughly investigate current issues.  But after my researching logical fallacies, I noticed that he firmly employs many of them.  His most recent is to paint with a broad brush vilifying a money hungry big business and linking the GMO debate, which he writes much about, to a wide variety of health issues.  It is saying that if you understand that GMOs cause cancer then look at this illness.

It strikes me as strange that I read so many complaints from so many people on so many health related issues, yet the link between these big corporations and government keeps turning up the same elected officials.  Maybe that is not so strange.  Maybe that’s the way a culture thinks.  To blame but take no action where it will really can make a change.

President Obama ran on “hope and change.”  In my opinion he has been the worst offender of increasing the wealth of the one percenters.   Oh you want examples.  What about the CEO of GE, Jeff Immelt, appointed to lead  President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness  .   What taxes did GE pay in recent years?  Did they send jobs overseas? What about a health care bill that has nada/zilch/zippo/zero,nyet controls on health care spending ?  I could run pages of these examples but it would lead to refutation with logical fallacies.

The bottom line – break the long time connections from government to business.  I would strongly start at the local government level and then go for the federal government.  In fact vote every incumbent out of office.  They spend more money advertising for reelection than they make.  Ask yourself how that is?  At the very least you would be voting a new person to be corrupted.  Look at it like sharing the wealth.

Do I agree with the death penalty?  Short answer, no.  Long answer.  If you change the question to ask do you agree with a death penalty? Or What would you change in the death penalty to make it a deterrent? Then my response changes.

The death penalty in most states has some type of phrasing that says the crime must be heinous and absolute.

First let’s dispense with all the illogical claims.  It is not cheaper to house a person for life than to execute them. Unless you pay both sides a phenomenal fee for the ten years the person waits on death row.  In most cases that is not the case.

Secondly, for those who believe the prisoner would suffer more being incarcerated may be true but then what is the answer to the death penalty is cruel and unusual since it does not involve years of misery as you suggest.  Never understood the logic, pretending to be caring by making you suffer more????

Thirdly, for those of you who believe the logical fallacy that years after the execution they find that the person was innocent because a new technology does not put him at the scene of the crime.  Just because there is no DNA on the scene does not exonerate a person.

Fourthly, for reasons unknown when I ask one’s opinion on the death penalty the phrase “eyewitness testimony is unreliable”  Hello!?  I don’t see how that relates to my question.

Fifthly,   and this is cruel ( suspect because of years of dealing with death row killers)I would drag them outside immediately after the sentence is handed down and publicly dispatch them, sell tickets to improve education or a woman’s shelter or help the homeless or mentally ill.  Appeals would be a small window between verdict and sentencing.

As a forensic neuropsychologist I have been on many death row cases.  In fact, I made friends with several.  Even got Christmas cards until they were no longer able to send them.  In all my cases everyone charged was admittedly guilty.  I have one case right now where I refuse to testify for the defense because they got the guy off death row, set him free and he killed again. In my original report, I mentioned that his attorney did not display a spirited defense (many of these appointments are pitifully paid, in fact the attorneys are obligated to put in their time if they expect other court appointments).  Because of my mention that the defense attorney did not do adequate work I am being asked to give testimony to possibly get this guy off death row again.  I didn’t want him free the first time.

A win win situation in most criminal cases would be that if the client loses both he and the attorney do time, of course to be fair the attorney should do less  time.

The logic that a person or persons have been killed, families ruined, futures lost can be compared to the punishment to the perpetrator astonishes me.

This week two death penalty cases are on the table.  One is a slam dunk, the other will end in life as enough haze was cast to make a life imprisonment sufficient.

Maybe the 31 years of testing criminals, working with attorneys and counseling those left behind has hardened me.  Either use the psychological principles of immediate and public execution or get rid of the death penalty.  But don’t tell me it doesn’t work.  Just look at your response to my suggestion.

We send brave young men to their death in wars the country begs to end but we fight to keep those alive who take life so readily.  Is that a logical fallacy?

You want to end a war send the politicians into the front lines.