I’ve recently taken a liking to looking at poll data, questionable though they may be. If nothing else it’s a large collection of opinions. My favorite is Rasmussen. A recent one shows that 61 percent of those surveyed say Congress is doing a poor job. The same percentage think that Congress should drop healthcare and focus on jobs. Obama made a big deal last year over the fact that thousands of Americans were losing their health insurance every day. May have been true, but most of the time it was because they were losing their jobs. If what Democrats want is for people to be able to have access to healthcare, then the best way to do that is by doing what must be done on their end to create jobs. I agree that Congress should “focus on job creation” – but not in the same sense as Congress “focused” on providing universal health coverage. The command and control approach clearly scares people. If Congress wants to create more jobs, it needs to allow private sector people the prosperity to do it. That means tax cuts and less spending. Will the president actually do any of that? Well, Obama recently said he would implement a spending “freeze.” That sounds nice, like a lot of what Obama says. But another recent poll from Rasmussen shows that only 9 percent of Americans surveyed think that Obama’s spending freeze will actually have a significant impact on the national deficit, which stands to put each individual American somewhere around $40,000 in debt. Good thing I don’t have any student loans to pay off. Maybe American’s skepticism stems from the fact that Obama’s “freeze” is only about $250 billion to address a $13-or-so-TRILLION problem. I’m not sure you could really call it a spending “freeze.” I’d more likely call it Obama’s spending gentle breeze.

Just now on Facebook a friend of mine, "CFL," posted this:

[CFL] still doesn't understand "listening to God." How do you know what your thought is and what is God inspired? I don't get it. Help!

I asked that exact question to a Dominican priest while I was in a Catholic seminary in Fall 2006. He responded by saying, [paraphrasing here] "I would guess on the Meyers-Briggs test you're more of an either-or thinker than a both-and thinker. You're wondering if it's you or if it's God. What if it's both?" I sat in stunned silence for a moment, and he said, "I just messed you up didn't I?" Just because something is your thought doesn't mean God hasn't inspired it. "His ways are not our ways" does not mean that what we want and what He wants for us are never going to coincide. It rather means that we often want to take shortcuts around our obligations to love God and one another. But that is an entirely different issue. If what you hear when you "listen" is not calling you to take some kind of shortcut, is not calling you to do something we understand to be sinful, then stop worrying and just go with it. God places desires in our hearts for a reason. He also gave us free will for a reason. He speaks to us through the desires of our hearts. Unless God sends Gabriel down to annunciate something to you, it just is not going to get any clearer than that.