Did you happen to catch President Obama's question and answer session the other day with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer in North Carolina?

A woman by the name of Doris Ravis (from South Carolina) asked the following rather straight forward question, "...in the economic times we have now, is it a wise decision to add more taxes to us with healthcare?  Because we are over-taxed as it is."

Pretty simple, right?  Nope.  As we've learned over these past fifteen months or so, there is no such thing as a straight answer to a simple question with Barack Obama.  In fact, as his policies have become more convaluted, his explanations have become more incomprehensible.  Maybe I'm just not smart enough.

Obama's response to poor Doris may have been his masterpiece, however—all glorious 17 minutes 12 seconds and 2500 words.

Already several minutes in and aimlessly meandering about (or so I thought), he put forward this gem in trying to explain why insuring 30 million additional people doesn't have to cost more money:

But let me give you an example. If you’ve got a house and you’ve got a big hole in your roof, and it’s raining and snowing through that roof and there are some people who are inside the rooms where the roof is okay and they’re nice and warm, and then you got a few — your family members in that room where there’s a big hole in the roof and they’re shivering, and they’re cold — if you repair the roof, that’s going to cost some money. But if all the water damage from your floors and all the heat that’s going out of the roof, you count all those savings, over time it may turn out that it actually is saving you money and, by the way, all those family members now are warm, too. You’re not the only one who’s warm, right? That’s essentially what we’re trying to set up.

Ahhh, now I get it.

The president also helped to clear up any confusion over COBRA:

See, those of us who have health care right now ask ourselves, well, is this something that should be a priority right now, but anybody here who lost their job and then COBRA ran out, or COBRA wasn’t subsidized the way the Recovery Act made sure COBRA paid 65 percent of the cost of COBRA — and if you had somebody at home who was sick, or you had a child who got sick, you’d suddenly say to yourself, well, now I see the need.

Boy, I think I'm finally catching on to Obamanomics.  COBRA paid 65 percent of the cost of COBRA.  All these years and I never realized I could pay my American Express bill with my American Express card.  Brilliant!

Please read the transcript or watch the video, because I've only been able to scratch the surface of our president's complex, multi-dimensional policy analysis.

More than anything, though, what his response helped me to realize is that mere mortals cannot hope to understand the answers to questions either posed by or to South Carolinians.  Apparently, the respondents are operating on a much higher plane than us.

As such, I now have a whole new respect for Miss Teen South Carolina 2007, Lauren Caitlin Upton.

When she was posed with the question, “Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can’t locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?” I initially had no idea of the intellectual, socioeconomic, geopolitical, and metaphysical significance of her answer.

So, with the help of our president, I've been able to begin to contemplate the deeper meaning of her elegant prose:

“I personally believe, that U.S. Americans,
are unable to do so,
because uh,
some, people out there, in our nation don’t have maps.
and uh…
I believe that our education like such as in South Africa,
and the Iraq,
everywhere like such as…
and, I believe they should uh,
our education over here,
in the U.S. should help the U.S.
or should help South Africa,
and should help the Iraq and Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future,
for us.”

Magnificent!

Lauren Caitlin Upton for President, 2012.