In regards to the second question I think it is two separate spheres. There is a huge difference between law based on morals and law based on justice. Many times some one does something that may be morally remiss and yet it's not illegal. Attorneys use this tactic to influence jury's because jury's are not attorney's trained to look at situations from a legal standpoint. There are also many court cases that don't have a jury and the judge decides everything. In those cases persuasion really has no say in the matter. It becomes all about what is legal and the interpretation the judge takes to the laws before making his/her decision.

I think that 1) we do need to make decisions and 2) they are not black and white. In many cases I think people worry about making the wrong decision especially in court cases where finding precedence is key. If they view Rodney King as necessary force, then where is line drawn for unnecessary force. Many times, prosecutors have to find the balance between two words that may mean different things to different people.

I am leaning towards agreeing with what Josh said. When dealing with our political parties when you have two alpha dogs fighting for the lead, nothing gets done. You get a lot of frustrated citizens who don't really have a better solution but are angry at the system. I am not saying that our government should be run like Jay-Z ran his career, because our government is not a business, but we need to find a middle ground on our issues. We are obviously not going to be able to find an answer with all the bickering between two parties, especially when they are on two opposite extremes from each other.

1) Is it true that the market is destroying true healthcare and has reduced it to just a business with no qualms about morals?

2) Do you think that the market will eventually fix our medical fields like it has been predicted the market model will do? Or do you think that there needs to be intervention by citizens to reform so that everyone has a say in which direction our healthcare goes in?

2. I do sometimes find myself seeing patterns where there wasn't intention to be. For example, sometimes when in class, I can parallels between material being taught and what I learned last class. Clearly, no pattern is intentional, but sometimes I think that there is. Ridiculous I know, but like what was said above, it is probably a pattern that is related to previous thoughts or sights they have seen. Much like deja vu, we can swear that it has happened before, yet it has been proven that its the mind playing tricks on us. It makes connections for us much like how Google can interpret what we want to search by just typing in a few letters, our brains fill in the blanks in a situation that we may never have been in before.

The more I think about it, the more that I realize how the average person is not a "good citizen". Pericles from History of the Peloponnesian War said that a person is not a citizen unless they are well informed of the nations goings ons. It is the responsibility of the citizen to know all the ins and outs of a policy they are voting on. Arguments that say that its not the citizens problem are the reasons why the government has so much control of our everyday lives. Its the reason why people who blame McDonalds for being overweight win their cases. There is no accountability in this country anymore. Plus, democracies are not about finding the truth, its about who orates the better speech.

I think to get a good grasp on this we should look at a fluctuation of when giving to Africa first began. If we can correlate between "when Hollywood starting making Africa" and "how much money was given", we might be able to see if there is in fact a correlation between the two. You could also argue that while celebrities use it for publicity, maybe Hollywood did Africa a favor, by publicizing Africa and making America more aware of its situations.
In answer to the second part, I can understand both sides of the problem. On one hand, you have real improvement that should be reported but on the other hand, you still have epidemics and widespread diseases and corruption. I think that as a country, we place so much emphasis on the corruption and disease because it is "News" and money. I would also say that without foreign aid, Africa wouldn't be where it is today. Sure, we can give them credit where it is due, but to say they did it without the help from other countries and political clout is ridiculous.