If it's someone you already like and trust, it sounds great. If it's someone you already are opposed to and distrust, it sounds like "self righteous pontificating".

The ear hears what the mind and heart have already decided to hear, and that is true of virtually all people. They are not nearly as impartial and objective as they imagine themselves to be.

For instance, my Mother (who is absolutely obsessed with politics and follows it daily on TV like Sherlock Holmes cracking a case) HATES Hillary Clinton with a vitriolic hatred. I'm sure she would be delighted to see her dead. Accordingly, EVERYTHING Hillary says sounds very bad to my Mother, but she LOVES everything Obama says. If fate (which works in mysterious ways) had arranged to have her loving Hillary and hating Obama instead, I can assure you she'd be interpreting their respective speeches in the diametrically opposite fashion...and Obama would be able to do or say nothing that she approved of.

I like Obama way better than Hillary. However...I thought Hillary gave a superb speech on Tuesday night and I remarked on that to my Mother. She had nothing but scorn for Hillary's speech. I reminded her that I too, much prefer Obama to Hillary, but that I simply thought that Hillary had given an unusually good speech on Tuesday night (despite conceding nothing). She finally, grudgingly admitted that Hillary's speech had been, for a political speech, a pretty good one.

You see, her utter loathing of Hillary Clinton simply does not allow her mind to hear anything good coming out of Hillary Clinton's mouth. It would get in the way of her enjoyment of her loathing for Hillary Clinton.

That's what the more rabit political people on this forum are like. They don't want anything to interfere with their emotional biases.

I think you have a problem like that where Obama is concerned, Rig, although I'm not suggesting you loathe him. I'm just suggesting that you're already against him as the Democratic candidate, therefore your mind can't help but make everything he says sound bad in some way...like "self righteous pontificating"...whereas if Hillary had said it instead, and in just the same way, you would put a much more positive interpretation on it.

That's how people's minds tend to work. The emotional underlay of their likes and dislikes shapes their interpretation of what they hear, and in a profound way.

But they do not question their reactions in that sense. To them it is reality, and they don't question it.

Someone who becomes aware of this dynamic working in himself is well on the way to taking note of that great saying, "the unexamined life is not worth living", and acting upon it and questioning his own biases now and then...engaging in self-examination. And there, I submit, lies one possible path to wisdom.