The Bias Paradox

It does not take a degree to notice that the media in the United States (and really in the world) is bias. There are a few times whenever the news is actually unbiased and reports facts and events as they actually occurred and not through some kind of political agenda lens. Unfortunately, this is not the norm. Typically this is how the media bias is in US shapes up:

CBS: Liberal
MSNBC: Liberal
ABC: Liberal
CNN: Liberal
Fox News: Conservative
BBC: Varies

The reason why I say that the BBC varies is that I have seen instances where the BBC was extremely biased towards liberal points of view while at other times I have seen some of the best objective news coverage in a long while. So, for the BBC, it really depends on the issue they are discussing.
However, I have found that Fox News is more objective than MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN. The problem that I have found is that Fox News does have a considerable more amount of political commentary than the other news stations and as a result, individuals claim that Fox News is purely conservative, which actually is not the case. Individuals confused their political commentary for the actual news that is being reported. If one were to focus solely on the news aspect of Fox News then I think that one would find it be more objective than other news stations.
However, I have encountered a weird phenomena. I have encountered individuals who hate Fox News claiming that it is extremely bias; however, these individuals will watch CNN or MSNBC acknowledging that these news stations are extremely bias and yet they have no problem with it. One day I asked one of these individuals, "So, it's okay if a news station is bias, so long as the bias is liberal?" This individual replied, "No, the news should not be biased." I agreed, but the problem is that despite this claim, this individual found no fault in watching CNN or MSNBC even though they acknowledged the liberal bias. So then I asked, "If you have no problem with CNN liberal bias, what makes Fox News so bad?" Unfortunately, the response was, "They're biased." To that I said, "And?"
Some individuals say, "The people on Fox News are idiots." I ask such individuals, "Why?" The response, "They're biased." So, if the people on Fox News are idiots because they are biased then the people on MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN are idiots too because (as majority of individuals acknowledge) are biased as well.
Point being, the only reason why I can think that individuals have problems with Fox News is that some individuals think that liberal bias is acceptable while conservative bias is not. However, bias is bias, is it not? Whether the news is bias towards the left or right, bias is bias, and if someone has a problem with conservative bias then they should have a problem with liberal bias as well. Unfortunately, I do not think this is the sentiment of many people. People claim to have a problem with news bias but in reality they do not because they are okay with liberal bias, but not with conservative bias. So, we find ourselves with a paradox; bias is okay but bias is not okay, in logic this is notated as (b v ~b). I call this the Bias Paradox.
Why does this attitude exist? One reason why I think this attitude exists is that for a considerable amount of time the news has had a liberal bias so people have become accustomed to it, it's the norm, but whenever Fox News comes along with its conservative commentary and upsets the norm, that station is viewed with disdain because it does not fit the usual news station mold. Fox News is viewed as a kind of upstart by certain individuals.
Again, I think that when it comes to Fox News, many individuals confuse their political commentary with their actual news reporting. Some individuals think that their commentaries are the news, which is not the case. The Fox News commentaries are about the news, but are not the news. (In the same way, Rush Limbaugh's radio show is not the news, it is a commentary on the news.) Political commentaries are based upon a particular political persuasion but we should not be shocked by this.
Either way, the Bias Paradox is extremely perplexing to me. I want the news to be unbiased; as far as political commentary goes, that is fair game, it can be as biased as it wants to be, because it is political commentary about the news. In order to dissolve the Bias Paradox, people should disdain any bias in the news, whether the bias is liberal or conservative. Accepting one sort of bias but objecting to another sort is paradoxical and involves faulty reasoning.

Government Health Care and Profits

I am sure by now some have heard Obama say that if the US gets government run health care the government will turn a profit. However, here is the question that needs to be answered: "How can a government produce a profit via health care?"
The way that government is set up, governments do not create profits because governments operate and function via taking money from the private sector by means of taxes. This aspect of taxes is necessary because without taxes a government cannot operate or function and without government there is chaos and disorder. Every single government in the history of the world operates off of taxes. Therefore, since the government operates and functions off of taxes, the government cannot create a profit by the very nature of government. The private sector creates profits and the government taxes those profits; again, this is just how government functions. The ideal situation would be that the government and the private sector have a symbiotic relationship but more times than not the government becomes a parasite on the private sector. Government grows exponentially which then leads to more taxation in order to survive; in this scenario the government becomes a parasite.
So to tie my premises together, given the very nature of government, the government cannot under any circumstance turn a profit under any circumstance which thus entails the conclusion that the government cannot create a profit via nationalizing health care. Nationalizing health care will cost the government more money and in order to pay for this new nationalized health care the government will have to raise taxes. One proposal in the Senate to raise taxes on the rich but I believe this should give a reason to pause for a moment because this brings the whole concept of the government turning a profit off of nationalized health care into question.
If the government was actually going to create a profit via health care then why is the government going to raise taxes? If the government was going to create a profit via health care then the government would not need to raise taxes at all because profits would entail money being earned on behalf of the government. If the government was going to make a profit then raising taxes would not be even considered because it would be absolutely unnecessary to do so. Government profits would totally negate the need for raising taxes, but again, as I have been arguing, the government cannot create a profit by design.
This new nationalized health care system is going to cost the government approximately 1.2 trillion dollars over the next ten years. Well, the government has created an unprecedented amount of debt because it does not have the money it needs to pay for the bailouts and stimulus bills. Therefore, if the government does not have the money to pay for the bailouts and stimulus bills, it logically follows that they do not have the money to pay for nationalized health care.
Therefore, the idea that the government will create a profit via nationalized health care is plainly false since governments cannot create profits because they exist via taxing the profits of the private sector. Nationalizing health care will cause the amount of taxes the government needs to survive to increase, not decrease, and in which case the very idea of the government creating a profit is utterly foolish. There will be no government profits; there is no other way to argue it. It would be better if Obama just was honest about the situation and tell the American people that the government will be spending more money as a result of nationalizing health care.

Wall St. vs. Congress

Is it the role of government to dictate what individuals on Wall Street can make? Does the Federal government have the Constitutional authority to cap the pay of CEOs and other cooperate executives on Wall Street (or anywhere else in the country)? The answer to both of these questions is simply, "No."

I read this from FoxNews.com:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/28/frank-wants-tougher-rules-wall-street-pay/

The proposal by Rep. Barney Frank, which will be considered Tuesday by the House Financial Services Committee, would give the government unprecedented power in how financial executives are rewarded.

Obama has shied away from such direct intervention, even as administration officials argued that excessive compensation in the private sector contributed to the financial crisis.

"If the risk pays off, you make money," Frank said at a National Press Club luncheon Monday. "And if the risk doesn't, you suffer no penalties. Heads you win, tails you break even. It's like selling lottery tickets that only cost you money if they pay off."

Here is the fundamental problem with all these arguments that the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats are using; as previously stated, Congress does not have the authority to dictate executive compensation or pay. The whole idea behind the concept of capping executive compensation is that if these executive were not paid so much then their companies would not go under (i.e., financially collapse). However, is there really a direct cause and effect relationship between executive compensation and their companies going under? Did the executive compensation cause the company to go under? We are dealing with an extremely complicated causal chain in which the cause of a companies downfall cannot be isolated to one particular cause.

So, not only does Congress not have the Constitutional authority to cap executive compensation, the premise which the argument for capping executive compensation is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that executive compensation was the cause of the downfall of some of the Wall Street companies.

A company can choose to pay their executives anything they want because the company has the freedom to do so. If the company pays their executives too much and that contributes to their downfall then that is the companies problem. Did the company act in an unwise manner? Yes they did, but that is the nature of running a company in the first place. A company that makes unwise decisions will fail, such in the nature of capitalism. However, it is not the governments job to step in and begin dictating to companies what they can and cannot do insofar as executive compensation. That is up to the company to decide, not the Federal government.

Victory not the Goal?

I read this morning on FoxNews.com.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/23/obama-victory-necessarily-goal-afghanistan/?test=latestnews

President Obama has put securing Afghanistan near the top of his foreign policy agenda, but "victory" in the war-torn country isn't necessarily the United States' goal, he said Thursday in a TV interview.

"I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur," Obama told ABC News.

Right now we are at war in Afghanistan with Al-Queda and the Taliban and those who are in a war have one thing in mind, "Victory", at least that is end result of war. Unless the war ends in a stalemate, one side in a war is going to be victorious. This brings me to an interesting point; even in a stalemate, whenever both sides decide to agree to a cease-fire, typically why this occurs is that one side knows that it is losing and if they do not find a way to end the war, they will eventually lose. So, the winning side (perhaps due to their tiredness of the war) agrees to the cease-fire. However, returning to my original point, whenever two sides go to war, both sides have the intention to win, i.e., to be victorious over their opponent(s).

So if we examine the Afghanistan War, why did the United States go into Afghanistan? This is a problematic question because the answers widely vary--some say we went into Afghanistan for drug profits, to seize land, etc., etc. However, the original intent for the US going to war in Afghanistan was that it was safe-haven for Al-Queda and the Taliban (which the US is to blame after we abandoned Afghanistan to its own devices after we saved their butts from the Soviet Union, I will accept this). We went into Afghanistan to be victorious over Al-Queda and the Taliban.

Therefore, if I take Obama's comments at face value, if victory is not the goal, then what is? Obama said:

"We're not dealing with nation states at this point. We're concerned with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Al Qaeda's allies," he said. "So when you have a non-state actor, a shadowy operation like Al Qaeda, our goal is to make sure they can't attack the United States... We are confident that if we are assisting the Afghan people and improving their security situation, stabilizing their government, providing help on economic development ... those things will continue to contract the ability of Al Qaeda to operate. And that is absolutely critical," Obama told ABC News.

However, the question that I would like to ask is the following: "How can the Afghans establish a stable government and prevent Al-Queda from attacking the US without first be victorious over Al-Queda?"

In the end, true peace is only achieved through victory. If we examine the situation in North Korea, the Korean War did not end with one side being victorious over the other; instead, both sides agreed to a cease-fire but do we have peace in that region? No, we do not. The lack of peace does not entail war, but there is a considerable amount of unrest there right now because in the end the threat of North Korea was not neutralized. If we are not truly victorious against Al-Queda and the Taliban in Afghanistan we will be right back where we are now give or a take a few years (or maybe even a decade).

I want to shift to Obama's statement of, "I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur," Obama told ABC News. First off, Obama, no I do not know about the "notion" of Emperor Hirohito surrendering to General MacArthur, but setting that aside. Why would Obama say this? I think there are two reasons.

First reason: Bush. Some of us may remember after the fall of Baghdad and Iraqi forces surrendered, Bush stood on the Carrier deck with a huge sign behind him saying, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED", and he declared victory in Iraq. Unfortunately, his words were too hasty for the bloodiest years of the war laid ahead. The media attacked Bush left and right saying that he was an idiot for declaring victory in Iraq, etc. So, it seems to me that Obama is afraid to use the word victory because he does not want to "make a mistake" of declaring victory in Afghanistan and then Al-Queda relaunch their offensive and he (Obama) be criticized in the same fashion Bush was.

Second reason: Losers are victims. We have seen a trend in society the past few decades that has said losers are victims. At certain sporting events involving children, score is not allowed to be kept because people are afraid that the losers will feel bad about themselves. Losers, in some sense, are victims because they lost. However, are losers victims? No; losers are losers; losers are what they are because they failed to be victorious. This is just the fact of the matter. As an aside, even though score is not kept at some kid sporting events, the kids are keeping score and they know who the winners and losers are.

I think that Obama thinks that Emperor Hirohito is (or was) a victim, and how dare we (the US) make the Japanese leaders stand upon the deck of the USS Missouri and sign those surrender papers! We humiliated the Japanese by making them surrender! Maybe Obama should apologize to the Japanese on his next trip around the world. (And while he is at it, let's apologize to Germany for defeating the Nazis.)

I think Obama as the mind set that being victorious over someone else is not right because it makes the defeated (i.e., the loser) feel bad about them self. Therefore, I think that Obama considers Al-Queda and the Taliban to be victims; they are not terrorists, but they are victims. They are victims because we are beating them. We cannot use the word "victory" because we make the terrorist feel bad about themselves.

Good!

We are in a war and in war one side wins, one side loses (eventually). One side is victorious, one side is defeated.

Introduction: Christian Faith vs. Irrationality

During a conversation with a fellow classmate during my time as an undergraduate philosophy student I was challenged with the hyperbolic claim that, “Faith is nothing more than pure irrationality”. Being a theist, the answer that immediately came to mind was, “No,” but then came the ultimate philosophical (and unanswerable) question, “Why?”
I read in many apologetic books how Christian beliefs are rational and I see nothing wrong with this approach but I have yet to see someone approach Christianity from the irrational side of the discussion. “Christian beliefs are rational” and “Christian beliefs are not irrational” are two ways of saying the same thing, but I believe the implications of these statements are different because a person may have justified false beliefs and yet we would not call them irrational for we would say that given the evidence they have in conjunction with their background beliefs they were justified in believing something even though it was false. So, someone can have false religious beliefs but not be irrational (depending upon which account of rationality one is willing to accept of course).
I do not believe that faith is irrational and I believe that there really is no ‘significant’ problem when it comes to Christian faith and rationality but just because I believe there are no problems means nothing in the grand scheme of philosophy (or the world for that matter). But I do not believe it to be the case that if someone has faith, particularly religious faith, does not automatically entail they are irrational; this is not to say that there are not irrational Christians for I believe they do exist, but the statement that I concerned with is the universal generalization, “All Christians are irrational,” or in logical symbolism, (x) (Cx → Ix). This is empirically difficult to prove (in my opinion even impossible not the mention the fact is commits the fallacy of making a hasty generalization) but what is more important is that if majority of Christians are not irrational, given the modern philosophical construct of what constitutes rational behavior and rational beliefs, then an account must be given on why this is so and this is my main intention in this work.
The main point that I wish to “drive home” in this work is the fact that everyone has faith; faith is not something only isolated to Christianity and/or religion and consequently the claim that having faith automatically entails irrationality is utterly false for this leads to other absurdities. Are we to call St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Anselm of Canterbury, C.S. Lewis, and many of the other great theologians and Christian philosophers (which is not an oxymoron) throughout the ages irrational? I am not denying that some theologians have been irrational throughout the ages because whenever humans are involved there is always a possibility of irrationality sneaking into arguments, thought processes, and actions; however, the point is that being a theologian or a Christian philosopher, or a Christian for that matter, by no means entails that one is irrational nor can that charge be leveled unless the individual making the accusation has sound logical and epistemic grounds for doing so. It is appears absolutely unfounded to label someone irrational simply on the basis that they believe in a God or that they are a Christian. What about great philosophers who themselves are Christians? Are we to able them irrational simply on par because of their Christian beliefs? In the philosophical and scientific communities, there exists a great hubris, a hubris that has shrouded it, and that shroud is atheism, and due to this shroud anyone with religious beliefs are looked down upon as being irrational, unintelligent, ignorant, and the list goes on.
However, the question that I pose is, “Why is being an atheist or agnostic considered to be more rational than being a Christian in our modern philosophical age (or in any age for that matter)?” One reason I think this is the mentality in many intellectual circles can be summed up in one word, “Science.” Science gets propped up as the only universal authority on what people can and cannot believe and religious beliefs, consequently Christian beliefs, are thrown to the curb. The mentality of some in the academic world is, “Science is true; therefore, religions are false.” If science says that something is false then it is false because science as shown it to be so. Some accuse me of making a false analogy here but definitely this seems to be the case of some individuals. The theories and hypotheses of science are usually accepted without a great amount of contestation by many individuals simply because science has said that a certain theory or hypothesis is true.
“Well, individuals who believe that science is the ultimate source of knowledge truth are simply misguided about the role of science.” This was told to me once and while I agree with this statement it is nevertheless the case that there are those who believe that only science is true.
What is true is that there are some who believe that science can never be questioned from the outside, that is, people from the outside of science cannot question what science says is true. People who question science are often labeled as ignorant, ‘backwoods hicks’, and again the list goes on. Within philosophy this is especially true of those who are in the field of the philosophy of science. Philosophers of science (as well as other philosophers) in some cases present themselves as the people who really know what is going on and go around patting people on the heads saying, “You poor ignorant soul, I am here to save you from yourself.” I am not saying that all philosophers of science are this way; in fact, I have had many stimulating conversations with philosophers of sciences. My first experience discussing issues with a philosopher of science was with Dr. Neill Shanks during my undergraduate work at Wichita State University. While he and I had widely divergent views of the world we talked frequently and all of our conversations were great and I enjoyed talking with him. The point is, though, that some philosophers of science (as well as philosophers from other philosophical realms) look down upon individuals with religious faith simply because they feel they are ones who really know what is going on in the world and people who have accepted a religion are just too ignorant to know any better.
In our modern society some have bought into this fundamentally flawed and idealized notion of science. This idea is reflected in much of our popular culture today; in science-fiction shows people who are religious are labeled as fanatics, irrational, incapable of rational thought, blind-followers of lies, and 100% subjective, whereas the scientists of these shows are purely rational, completely unbiased, and 100% objective. Both extremes are simply not true. There is stupidity and irrationality on both sides of the aisles.
I am not against science in the sense that it is this ‘monster that should be slain’; I believe science is a good thing and the scientific advances that have been are absolutely wonderful and astonishing; however, I believe that science has been idealized to the point that many intellectuals have become “blinded” to the fact that there are some things in this world science cannot answer and some things science can never prove because there are some things that go beyond science’s reach (heaven forbid). In addition, some have bought into the idea that science is the only epistemologically correct realm of inquiry but I do not believe this to be the case either.

Donald Davidson whom I consider to be in the pantheon of ‘philosophy gods’ (figuratively speaking of course) committed a great amount of time and effort into exploring the realm of rationality during his philosophical career and I believe he made some strides to expand our philosophical knowledge on these issues and it is his arguments found in his collection of essays Problems of Rationality, that these strides were primarily made, but one must also take Davidson as a whole for many of his arguments “bleed” over into other arguments found in other article that he wrote throughout his philosophical career. I do not know if Davidson was a theist or not, a part of me thinks that he was not, but in either case philosophers borrow themes and pieces from other philosophers all the time so I do not see the harm in using Davidsonian philosophy so long as I do not adulterate it or botch what Davidson was arguing.
Primarily I will draw my arguments from philosophers and not from Christian theologians for they dealt primarily with issues within Christianity and do not have much to say about rationality; my goal is to examine Christianity from the “outside looking forward,” to look at Christianity the lens of modern philosophy and utilize modern philosophical arguments as a means to show that Christianity is not some irrational conceptual schema, one that lacks any type of rational merit, but in fact that Christianity is a rational conceptual schema. To those who would object to this project, they are entitled to their objections but I will let them object and I will continue writing.

In addition, I have decided to do something new in this work; I adapted a somewhat Wittgensteinian approach to this philosophical inquiry. In his work, Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein appears to be having a conversation with a skeptic for as Wittgenstein writes there is someone interjecting questions to Wittgenstein’s arguments. Wittgenstein’s approach is a type of dialogue where the reader is carried along with it exploring the philosophical problems as they develop, are examined, accepted or rejected. This style of writing I have adopted for this work, not to the absolute T, but I hope that it will engage you, my reader, and you yourself will feel part of this investigation into faith vs. irrationality.

Introduction: Miracles Reexamined

It has been almost a half century since C.S. Lewis published his last theological work entitled Miracles. Much as occurred in philosophy since then and to my knowledge no one has written another treatise on the topic of miracles. It is not my thesis to argue against C.S. Lewis but to reexamine the concept of miracles through the “glass” of modern philosophy. Some may view this work as just another work in the debate between philosophy, theology, and science. Well, I will not hide the fact that this work does fit that mantra. The debate between philosophy, theology, and science has been raging for centuries and by no means will this work settle this debate; however, I hope to shed new light upon the issue of miracles because given the advances in modern philosophical analyses and theories.

The very concept of a miracle runs in the face of science. Miracles are breaches of the natural order for the physical world. According to the natural order, people cannot walk on liquid water, and yet the Bible claims that Jesus and the Apostle Peter did so. According to the natural order, shadows do not cure people’s diseases and yet it said in the Bible that whenever the Apostle Paul walked past the sick and his shadow touched them, they were healed of the their diseases. Down through the ages there have been reports of miracles taking place but now in our modern age miracles have been all but ‘explained away’ by modern medicine and science. Under no circumstance do I hold modern medicine and science in ill-repute; such fields are essential but I believe that there are some events in this world that neither modern medicine nor science can explain. Am I setting modern medicine/science on a collision course with Christianity? No; the lack to provide an explanation for absolutely every event that occurs in the world (and the universe for that matter) is not a failing of modern medicine or science. The lack is due to two things; first, human reasoning is finite, and secondly, there are some things in this world that we just cannot understand. I tend to think of science and Christianity in the following way: Christian picks up where science leaves off. This is blasphemous to any hardcore science-minded individual but science cannot provide substantive answers to some of life’s most important questions as much as it would be like to think that it can. Science cannot provide us with an ethical theory which objectively tells us what is ethical, unethical, right, wrong, etc., and many scientists have bitten the bullet on this.

Miracle simply fall outside the purview of science as does ethics, and other existential questions. But, why is it that science holds the concept of a miracle in such ill-reputed? It could be any number of things really but I think the most fundamental is that miracles stand outside human comprehension; it is not that we cannot comprehend what a miracle is, but whenever we read or hear about accounts of Paul’s shadow healing ailments we cannot, in our own rational self, really come to grips with what exactly that entails. Miracles defy human reasoning and even the imagination (at times).

From a scientific standpoint, the universe and thus the Earth is a completely causally closed system; the only causes in the universe are contained within it, and we may label this account as inner causation for only causes inside the system cause anything. In contrast is the Christian perspective which believe in inner causation as well as outer causation; outer causation, as I call it, is the account which states that there are causes which can influence the universe (including the Earth) which lay outside the assumed locked causal structure of the universe. Christians do not deny the causal structure of the universe; in fact, Christians affirm it because without the causal structure the very concept of a miracle would be empty. Miracles defy the causal structure of the universe; no causal structure, no miracles for how can miracles defy a non-existence causal structure? In a universe without a causal structure miracles would be the norm, or that universe would not exist at all. (Who knows, philosophers can come up with some really wacky thought-experiments and possible worlds when they are allowed to set their creativity to work, such as Robert Stalnaker’s impossible world where contradictions are true, which in itself is paradoxical because how can the impossible world be a possible world?) Science utterly rejects outer causation because it threatens the nice little theory (or theories) they have constructed about how the universe operates. If somehow outer causation could be empirically proven, most (if not all) modern science theories would have to go back to the drawing board.

[...]

Other-Nation Argument

I know it's been a very long time since I have e-mailed out any of my thoughts on various political issues but I seriously thought that this topic was worth it.

As some of you may know, on July 26^th, the House passed the Waxman-Markey Bill which is essentially a huge tax increase on energy, specifically energy resources that utilize fossil fuels (coal and natural gas). If it passes the Senate then Americans will see an unprecedented increase in their taxes and energy bills. The bill was sold on false premises that,

1. It will not cost anything

2. It will create jobs

3. It will increase green energy investment

4. It will save the environment

While these are false given the studies that have come out from Spain and other European countries, there is an argument that I want to discuss which is coming from those that oppose the Waxman-Markey Bill. I will entitle the argument the “Other Nations Argument”, abbreviated ONA, and ONA is essentially stated as the following:

ONA: We should not pass the Waxman-Markey Bill because it only attempts to cut back on the environmental impact of the United States and not other industrializing nations such as China and India. Since China and India are going to continue polluting there will not be any significant global environmental change for the better; therefore, the Waxman-Markey Bill should not be passed.

I am completely against the Waxman-Markey Bill because I think it is bad for the economy and is built upon false premises as shown above. However, I think the ONA is a terrible argument and can easily be responded to by the following counterargument. Consider the following thought-experiment:

There are three households, Household A, B, and C, and they are pumping their sewage into a nearby river. Someone within Household A sees that what the activity of pumping the sewage into the river is a bad thing and thus proposes that Household A stop doing what they are doing. The head of Household A goes to the other Households and proposes that they too stop pumping their sewage into the river but they reject it and say that they are going to increase the amount they pump into the river. Therefore, the head of Household A says, “Well, since B and C are not going to stop, I guess we won’t either.” Is this sound reasoning? I do not believe so.

So my recommendation is to reject ONA all together because it is based upon faulty reasoning. Thankfully, the opponents to the Waxman-Markey Bill have much more powerful arguments than the ONA. One of the most potent arguments is that the science behind man-made global warming as been seriously attacked and has shown in many cases to be faulty. Furthermore, the Waxman-Markey Bill will lead to a serious economic downturn in the United States. There are better ways of going about lessening the United States’ environmental impact (what little impact we have) then enacting terrible legislation which in the end will do nothing to save the planet.