One Moore Blog

2010-03-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

I moved my blog over to Salon.com. Here's the link: http://open.salon.com/blog/cleverley

Sober Up and Grow Up: Time to Get to Work Americans

2010-02-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

I encountered a couple expressions of opinion lately that annoyed me enough to want to write. My rather crazily busy lifestyle of late has made this a rare thing (though I am profoundly grateful a job plays into the activity level). Generally, I avoid most of the media because popular news sources often fail to provide relevant information in a cogent manner, instead opting for bombastic carnival barking (to borrow a phrase from Cornell West). But the the most popular opinion among those barkers was represented by a patient I worked with, and then was reiterated by a CNN poll result released today. I must say something.

My patient was a man who required constant care due to extreme chemical withdrawal symptoms. When questioned by staff in an effort to assess his mental status, he responded immediately that the president of the United States was Obama and used a descriptive phrase involving misplaced genitals. The suffering patient struggled to remember where and when he was, but was immediately able to pull up not only accurate information from the brutally punished neural networks of his brain, but his opinion about said leader! This man had some powerful feelings about Obama.

Obama is the kind of leader who inspires strong feelings for many reasons. CNN is reporting that 52% of Americans currently believe Obama does not deserve a second term. The fevered pitch ringing out from the Republican party (you remember those guys- the neigh sayers to affordable health insurance, healthy economies, ethical wars, truth) seems to have caught on as a national anthem.

It's been twelve months- gosh darn it- why isn't our ailing economy, idiotic (at best)health care system, and military misadventures fixed?! Sure Obama told us these problems were all decades, in fact generations in the making, and that we would have to work hard and creatively together over years to fix them, but somehow millions of American feel betrayed anyway. They don't remember the call to duty and responsibility Obama rang out over the microphones. They only remember the word "hope."

Unfortunately for Obama, and therefore for the rest of us, when many Americans heard the word "hope," they likely associated it with religious ideas. Hope being hope in a miracle, which can only be bestowed by a god and fixes everything for us mere mortals without any effort on our part other than a plea. Time to grow up. This is not how sustained good happens in the world, and it is not how sustained good happens in our lives.

Perhaps I found the negative comments of my patient so poignant because he had, through his choices, developed a life that required huge efforts to save. He was taking a lot out of our system and had taken a lot out of the people closest to him. The mental obsession and physical decay of addiction is horrendous. I have compared overcoming addiction to taking on a grizzly bear. Those who overcome and live meaningful, good lives frequently find the strength to do so by devoting time daily to helping other people. Healing for addicts generally involves addressing the harm they've caused, and work to balance the cosmic scales. Healing is found through compassionate deeds.

My patient may have had a good amount of work in front of him to balance those cosmic scales. The speed and certainty with which he launched a personal insult at Obama, a leader who is gaunt and gray with constant exertion, was astonishing. It is very easy to criticize and insult our leaders, it is quite another matter to get involved politically, read up on history and current events,and engage intelligently with our fellow citizens towards finding solutions to our national and local problems.

To debate and question public policy is fair, necessary and good for our country. But that is not what has been happening in Washington, and I do not believe that we have taken up the work necessary on local levels, either. If our country is to heal and grow strong again, it will be a result of a dance between national and local efforts. Change starts and is sustained by our apparently humble community projects.

No perfect political leader is going to be dropped from the heavens to fulfill our "hopes" for the relief of suffering by enacting the miracles of God. The arch of human history cannot be contained in a ninety minute movie with a punchy, simple resolution. Obama, himself, warned us about reality repeatedly while campaigning and now as our president.

Time to sober up, folks, and start working in our own lives to balance the scales. Obama is not the miracle worker millions expected and he's not the uppity Black(I shutter even writing the term- but there is a strongly racist tenor to the criticisms of Obama) millions of others secretly consider him. He is the same intelligent, flexible, hardworking man we elected to the presidency a little over a year ago. If we expected too much of him, then there is evidence he overestimated our sophistication as citizens, as well. In the clear-eyed moment of the next morning, we see that there are no easy and instant solutions to our national problems.

What makes a good teacher makes a good human

2010-01-13T06:40:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed "What Makes a Great Teacher," an article in this month's The Atlantic magazine last night. It reported on findings by Teach for America that were collected, analyzed and implemented in order to be used to maximize the efficacy of its new teachers. If selected (a huge "if" because there are far fewer positions than applicants) new grads join the program and work in low-income school districts for two years. The data set on these teachers' performance as correlated with student performance outstrips any collected elsewhere. The findings have been used to improve their own teacher preparation and, incidentally or otherwise, also appear to have informed the new standards being used by the Obama administration to improve the nation's schools.

What they have found is great teachers get great results from their students independent of available resources. As long as these people have a room, light, something to write on and children to teach, the test subject competence of the students tends to go up, way up. (Incidentally, the article reported a backlash against these new standards by the national teacher's union. Lovers of education may need to contend with some educators when improvement is on the line).

The question then becomes, "What makes a great teacher?" There are several answers, one central being what researchers termed "grit." Those individuals who have the internal resources to overcome difficulties in their own lives tended to inspire the same in their students. These were the teachers who engaged in a constant and recursive cycle of self-improvement. When contacted by researchers to be observed, they often reported their classrooms were a mess because they had torn up their curriculum and were trying something new. They wanted to do better and were acutely aware when one or more students weren't understanding the lessons.

These teachers contacted the parents and made themselves available. They were always prepared for class and did not make excuses for themselves or their students. They believed in their own possibilities through self-improvement and believed the same of their students. One analysis found grade school students in low-income communities who were given the opportunity to be taught by these kinds of teachers would perform as well as students in wealthy suburbs by high school.

In contrast, one interviewed teacher cited the poor conditions of the communities, homes and schools as reason for poor student performance. This teacher also had very poorly performing students- worse after a year with her. Perhaps those who make excuses for their students may be making excuses for their own lack of efficacy.

I argue that the attributes of the excellent teachers are the attributes of all effective people. Hard work, "grit," and a belief that things can and will be better are the central concepts behind the best of American culture. The very best of who we are as a culture and country lies in the beliefs in limitless possibilities as per our ability and willingness to work towards these possibilities.

The problems that face our nation and our globe are problems of matter, of form. They are problems of written law, cast off waste, in short, human behavior. And human behavior can be changed over time and through perseverance.

What most people need is leadership, to be shown how to do this. Not ever person fights their way out of a difficult situation depending almost entirely on internal resources. These people are exceptional and uncommon. However, all people can learn and all people can change. We do not need every person to lead, we need a few and then country, community and family to be savvy enough to identify these people and follow their lead.

The last year in our national politics has been a sobering moment for those of us drunk from the possibilities made visible by last year's election. We had our blissful moment of inspiration. The moment we have now calls for the very thing the successful teachers from Teach for America demonstrated, GRIT. If we want to have an exceptional country created by what is exceptional in us all we have to downshift into low gear and trudge forward through the mire of corruption, callousness, and ambivalence. Time to get to work.

What Have You Done To Yourself?

2009-11-11T05:56:00.001-08:00

I work with alcoholics and opiate addicts who are in active physical withdrawal from their drugs. Night after night they are brought onto my unit on stretchers, in wheelchairs or on the arms of concerned family and friends. Often these people look and smell aweful, unbathed, unhealthy, and unhappy. My first task, once they get in, is to take their vital signs. I watch them through the corner of my eye, trying to be unobtrusive in their terrible moment, while the blood pressure cuff inflates. I wonder again and again, “What have you done to yourself?”

This is a question all of us need to answer and not to each other first, but to ourselves. Dr. Michael Stein wrote presciently in The Addict: One Patient, One Doctor, One Year of his experiences as a practicing internist. In his practice he treats people with maladies ranging from hypertension to diabetes to opiate addiction.

In his considerations, Dr. Stein put forward the idea that the most significant gains in overall health for people in the twenty first century will not be a result of science and hygiene, as in the previous centuries, but in lifestyle choices. The CDC reports on their website that two thirds of Americans are over weight or obese. It is not just the heroine addicts who resist making necessary lifestyle changes in the face of life endangering consequences.

What does this mean for the current health care debate? Work on the legislation that could change the way Americans access the health care system is under profound scrutiny perhaps as I write this. Our democratically-elected congress is literally pulling together new law that could make it possible for all American families to enjoy the security hundreds of millions of people in other modern democracies have in knowing health care is accessible and affordable to them. Let’s pray fairness reigns out over the bullies of industry this time.

But the possibility of these remarkable changes will not answer my question. Americans deserve excellent health care at affordable prices. However, health cannot be purchased. How we choose to live is the first and most necessary step towards good health. No legislator or doctor can hand that to us. It is something we must choose and then work towards every day.

An Educated Guess: Hasan Knew Difference Between Right and Wrong (He just didn't care)

2009-11-06T06:19:00.000-08:00

The details of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's life, accused shooter at yesterday's Fort Hood horror, are few and far between. There is, what I feel, an explanatory tone to what details have been given and some of the commentary offered on network and cable TV. Some of this tone concerns me.

The New York Times is reporting from multiple sources Hasan is an American born of immigrant parents from Palestine, a Muslim, army-educated psychiatrist, and, in the latter capacity, second-hand witness to the horrors of war. It was reported he was to be deployed to a combat zone later this month, and that he told a cousin he did not want to go. He was also reported in the NYT as being a vocal critic of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and was acutely aware of the brutality some soldiers experienced in these wars through his work treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, a severe and persistent anxiety disorder, in returning soldiers.

The entire episode is a horror beyond my abilities to describe and the surviving victims will be the appropriate tellers of the story. I simply want to point out the emphasis given by some commentators of Hasan's exposure to second-hand trauma through his treatment of soldiers, and the implication this could have been partly to blame for his outrageous behavior, may be misleading.

I would be surprised if hearing the horrors of war from fellow soldiers didn't negatively impact Hasan. But it is the way in which it effected him that singles Hasan out from other mental health professionals, soldiers, and people in general.

In my work, I have had opportunity to do forensic interviewing with mental health professionals and am trained in the field myself. I have seen a therapist so effected by years spent listening to children recount their stories of abuse and neglect that this woman literally cried the entire time I spoke with her. A coworker happened across this therapist's garage sale around the same time and mentioned how the poor woman began crying in a casual conversation. This is an understandable secondary PTSD reaction in a therapist.

I worked on a case through the juvenile court system as a child advocate that became so upsetting to me I literally had an anxiety reaction to the sight of the social worker on the case. She had the same reaction to the sight of me, and we snickered sadly at how upset we must be to have such a reaction.

Some people in the helping profession who are experiencing what is called Compassion Fatigue, or "burnout," may have difficulty with personal relationships, develop compulsions and even commit suicide at least partly as a result of bearing too much witness to the agony of others. The line that connects these varied negative responses is one that did not intersect with Hasan's deeds yesterday. Burned out helpers generally cause harm to themselves. Of course, people closest to them may suffer, as is typical when a loved one is having a difficult time. But for Hasan to take aggressive action against the very people he was trusted to heal is completely out of bounds and has a different rationale entirely, I suspect.

Hasan's behavior points much more toward anti-social personality disorder or perhaps narcissistic personality disorder than it does a severe anxiety disorder. It certainly sounds in the reports that he was scared as hell of being deployed into a combat zone where he could not control the violence. So why would he walk in and do so much violence, likely aware he would be hurt or killed in the process? My guess is that it wasn't violence this man feared, but not being able to decide who does what violence to whom.

In short, he may have simply wanted control. Where this level of need for control exists, I believe, there cannot be empathy, as well. And empathy for the lives of more than forty people should be an easy thing for a psychiatrist to feel no matter how many horror stories he heard or negative comments he may have gotten from ignorant people about his heritage as a Muslim or Arab.

If I am correct, a desire to control so powerful that it entirely supersedes a person's natural ability to empathize with other people may have a lot to do with serious mental health problems and emotional limitations Hasan developed over a lifetime. These mental health problems, notably, a personality disorder, are distinct from other mental health problems in several ways and very importantly here, because someone with anti-social or narcissistic tendencies knows the difference between right and wrong (unlike people suffering from something like a psychotic stress response). They just don't care what they are doing is considered wrong, because they believe they are unique, separate from others, and not rightly subject to the rules the rest of us live by.

The distinction between knowing the difference between right and wrong and not for this surviving gunmen will become very important when he stands trial. It could become that of life from death. I doubt anyone will afford him any more control when it comes to those matters.

A Threadbare Representational Government

2009-11-01T06:18:00.000-08:00

Ms. Scozzafava’s withdrawal from a congressional race in up-state New York apparently under the pressure put upon her campaign by outside support of a puppet candidate, Mr. Hoffman of the "Conservative Party," may be another death rattle for our representational government. However painful to acknowledge, it is not only the Neo Cons who are working towards the end of any legitimacy to our government. Even our faulty news sources have inadvertently brought us word from all corners of corruption this week.

But starting with the Neo Cons, The New York Times reported this morning that, despite local Republican anger over manipulation of their electoral process, the Neo Con movement moved in aggressively against Scozzafava's moderate views on gay marriage and abortion rights. Perhaps directed by their relationship with "God" or perhaps out of pure ambition, mental giants like Sarah Palin and our own Tim Pawlenty, put their support strongly behind Hoffman. Hoffman recently demonstrated in an interview with the local newspaper, Watertown Daily Times, his unequivocal ignorance of issues in a district he does not live in, but which he apparently believes he is the fittest representative. But why should someone need knowledge of a people or an earnest desire to represent their best interests when you have the will of God on your side?

It is clear that having a competent, moderate African American man in the White House with his equally competent and moderate African American wife has literally driven the Conservative movement (and by that I mean the Conservative White Movement) completely off their rocker. They are running on fear with hair sticking straight out and hands flapping over their screaming heads. Truly ridiculous. But the very degraded state of our economy, financial institutions and every system that supports a strong citizenry, including education and health systems, leaves us very vulnerable. Fanatics are given an ear during desperate times. In fact, in the U.S., fanatics have been given an ear in flush times, as well.

Then there was the leak of information about congress people being investigated on potential ethics violations including several Dems last week. I cringe at the potential involvement of such people as Maxine Waters (D-CA) in ethics violations, but fully support an outing of any and all shady dealings. She has been a strong advocate for economic fairness for all citizens. We need to make sure she hasn't been using her position to advocate for her husband's business interests in a federally-bailed out bank. If this is simply an investigation into unfounded accusations, lets hear who those accusations came from. Any under-handed players potentially involved in this "leak" by political competitors to the Dems may be discouraged by the reactions of Dem supporters.

I say, "Lets have it!" The time for truth is nigh. We need to know, just tell us the truth, who exactly is our representational government representing at this point? Is it the small groups of wealthy folks who control the vast majority of wealth and easily manipulate our government to get that wealth out of the grocery and heating budgets of our citizenry when their business ventures collapse? Is it the angry, White, conservative Christians who consider themselves the foot soldiers of Christ as they work to pummel with their negativity and rage the people they consider less human than themselves? Do these groups overlap? Maybe, maybe not. What they have in common is a deep sense of entitlement to legal, cultural and/or economic resources at the expense of others.

My point is this, competent, moderate folks of all kinds need to stay very active right now. This is a vulnerable time for our nation and our people. Voices of reason need to continue putting pressure on our representatives to act in our interests. We want easily afforded health care, strong investment in our infrastructure, and the acknowledgment and support of all families including those that include a same sex couple. All of these are moderate positions that seek only fair and respectful treatment of our people.

Nobel Peace Prizes for All of Us!

2009-10-09T06:25:00.000-07:00

In a rather breathtakingly unexpected manner, the Nobel Peace Prize was delivered this morning to our sitting President, Barack Obama. Wow. What could have motivated a body to shift from honoring individual accomplishments to honoring the possibility of future accomplishments? That is what many of us are wondering right now. I have an idea.

Obama has been under relentless, brutal attack by the religious and political right of our country for years (the attacks intensifying even since inauguration), buoyed by the millions of Americans whose opinions they mirror. Maybe the Peace Prize is being used by a progressive, liberal European body as a kind of friendly helping hand. When a person is embattled within the confines of their highly conflictual family of origin, sometimes higher functioning extended family members seek to help out by giving him or her a pep talk, some encouragement as this person must face again and again the challenges that go to the bone.

This Nobel Peace Prize may be akin to a pep talk or encouraging hand on the back for Obama and the rest of us who have supported his efforts to take the United State, like a backwards family where bullies run the show supported by followers of weaker wills but motivated entirely by fear, and make it a nation where respect for the basic dignity of human life is expressed through excellent health care, education systems, and public and private works.

I write again: the challenges that our nation is facing right now go down to the very bones of who we are and how we envision ourselves as a people, as a nation, as an expanded form of family. We are laid bare by our struggles over health care and the seemingly impossible choices to be made in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our people have been bullied by an unseeing industrial elite for decades, perhaps longer. The idea of personal responsibility has been used to club us over the head with exploding costs and reduced quality in our health care, our higher education, and ever-shrinking real wages.

The reality for young families is and has been one of a profoundly diminished quality of life set starkly against the dreams and expectations we developed as children that ours would be a country where an education and work ethic would interface with a basically equitable economy to create stability for our families and hope for our future. But these hopes have been repeatedly dashed by the realities of our profoundly uneven economic playing field. This system has been promoted and protected by people who appear to have utter disregard for basic human dignity. These people are not interested in an equitable, free market system where the best of the best win out. They apparently believe in the use of advantage to manipulate markets and political bodies to protect their vested interest in mediocre performance with outrageous returns.

Many of our political "leaders" have represented the interests of these elite few like dogs chasing a trail of fleshy bits left behind for reward by their masters. Through these dogs, unchecked corporate interests have been allowed open access to our government bodies including military. And millions of us have yelled, protested, read, voted, and written about the injustices. We have used our non-violent, legal forms of protest for years apparently to little avail.

And then Obama showed up on our political scene and he campaigned on exactly what we had lost- hope. Through him we began to allow ourselves to hope that our government could represent the best interests of all of us. We began to imagine, for the first time in a long time, justice for the people who have worked and toiled and benefited the larger system for years.

For us political wonks, we began to imagine a government led by people intelligent enough to recognize that there are environmental, political, economic, and military challenges to our nation right now that are so deep and so wide as to require us to dramatically alter our public and private sector behaviors. Even the very lifestyles of individual families need to significantly change if they are to be a part of the solutions.

With most of our hopes focused on the economic and political dynamics of the immediate family of our nation, Obama surprised many when he put forward an agenda for worldwide nuclear disarmament to the U.N. A world free of nuclear weapons. A world family no longer in any danger of blowing itself up. Over the entirety of my life, that dark, looming possibility of human annihilation has always been. The idea of it not being there anymore, the anvil hanging above our heads plucked and permanently removed as a threat, fills my heart with joy.

Yes, Obama has inspired hope. He is a kind and sane person within the profoundly dysfunctional American family. Forward-thinking people from our extended world family have offered through this Nobel Peace Prize award a kind of "atta boy" to Obama and all of us supporters inside and outside the government.

It feels like they're telling us, yes, you are on the right path. It is no easy thing to transform the dysfunctional meta-human relationships of economies and governments. It is no small hope to hope we can improve the quality of life for our citizens from being far below the quality of life for citizens in other developed nations, to being something comparable. And as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it is no small hope that our international policies are fueled not from power lust, but from a deep, intelligent desire for peace, prosperity and justice for the extended family of our world citizens.

These are our hopes, the hopes of millions of Americans. And perhaps it was in acknowledgment not only of Obama's efforts and dreams, but of our hopes that this Nobel Peace Prize was awarded.

Comparative Shopping

2009-10-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

Following are some of the results from the U.N. report released today on worldwide standards of living. This index compared such factors as educational levels, life expectancy rates and GDP.

Anyone still standing in the way of such things as a public health option might want to take a peak at how much better many people in the dreaded "socialist" health care systems are fairing. (Here's a hint: they're doing way, way, better than we are).

2009 report

Main article: List of countries by Human Development Index

The 2009 report was released on October 5, 2009. It was titled "Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development". The following countries were classified under "Very High Human Development":^[1]

Norway 0.971 (▬)
Australia 0.970 (▬)
Iceland 0.969 (▬)
Canada 0.966 (▬)
Ireland 0.965 (▬)
Netherlands 0.964 (▲ 1)
Sweden 0.963 (▼ 1)
France 0.961 (▲ 3)
Switzerland 0.960 (▬)
Japan 0.960 (▬)
Luxembourg 0.960 (▼ 3)
Finland 0.959 (▲ 1)
United States 0.956 (▼ 1)

Pawlenty Another Neo Con Hack?

2009-09-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

Tim Pawlenty, a man of mediocre intellect and average capabilities, and also the current governor of Minnesota, spoke last weekend at the "Values Voter Summit." Along with break out sessions about "masculinism," a take-off of feminism, where such bold assertions were made including all pornography leads to homosexuality, the most homophobic people are prepubescent boys and we should learn from them, and that "science" has proven homosexuality is entirely a behavioral choice, the summit also provided a place for Pawlenty to go radical.

He was seen for a long time as the vanilla ice cream of the political world (and not that french vanilla stuff with the little extra something, something). Just plain old Pawlenty with his tired political positions, moderate man's mullet, and blocky-cut suits- the entire package of him being so unremarkable that I'm still convinced it simply didn't occur to many Minnesotans they were voting for him. He was a name on the ballot that looked familiar and safe.

And he's a Republican. Many Minnesotans seem to have a strong desire to strike a perfect, immovable balance in the universe, which leads them to vote both Democrat and Republican apparently in the hopes the two cancel each other out and nothing is much seen or heard from the state capital for a few years following each election season.

But we must toss aside our previous assumptions about Pawlenty. In his probable future running mate's terms, he's gone "rogue." He not only turned up at the ridiculous "Values Voter Summit" ("Values" here means that one believes his/her rights to express his/her religious beliefs usurps the basic human rights of other citizens), he spoke. He actually drew attention to himself with cameras in the room.

After making it clear to the summit attendees he does not believe in the basic acknowledgement of gay relationships through the legal bonds of marriage (Gay people in their belief system apparently are not full citizens or fully human), he went on to land blast the Obama administration for our national debt. Pawlenty said Obama should apoligize to our youth for the debt.THIS IS A NATIONAL DEBT THAT WAS WAITING FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WHEN HE GOT IN THE DOOR. THIS IS A REPUBLICAN DEBT!

But shared reality, as we know by now, is not welcome among the extremist right. Theirs is not a reality based on evidence or even the observable, it is a doctrine based on religious and racial extremism. They do not read, explore, think and debate, they wait for signs from God and ridicule anyone who chooses another route for gaining perspective on decision making.

Pawlenty has chosen to steer hard right. And why? Well, it looks like his motivation is the same deep, underlying motivation that all of these extremists act upon. Take away the religious talk, and the pseudo-economic speak, and the angry protests of other people's private lives and what do we have? A will to power that is so fundamental, so bedrock to their psychology that one needs only know that about them to predict their next step.

Am I surprised by Pawlenty's choice to align himself with the extremist "Values Voters?" No.

Politics is a blood sport: Some thoughts on 9/11, and Turing

2009-09-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

Politics is a blood sport: Some thoughts on 9/11, and Turing

Public Option to Health Care NOT Immoderate

2009-09-12T10:10:00.000-07:00

I feel a strong need to correct the language being tossed around by our oft idiotic media in regards to "moderate" positions on health care reform. The Dems from such well-known progressive states as Montana are being termed by the media "moderate" in that they disagree with a public option for health care coverage among the most needy five to ten percent of our population. There is nothing "moderate" about a position that willfully refuses to acknowledge the suffering and immediate needs of millions of Americans. I argue that taking a stance against the development of a public option is akin to consciously denying our fellow citizens care that they need and piece of mind that we all deserve.

Recently, I was jogging in my Midwestern neighborhood. Mine is a working and middle class neighborhood where everyone take the time and pride to trim their lawn and paint their house. I am proud to say I live in a place where there is a pride in where one lives, whether it is owned or rented, large or small. We like living here, for the most part, and it shows in our little neighborhood. I passed a woman in her forties with a bandanna covering a bald head, large, homemade signs reading "Help Me Please!" and apparently all of her jewelry neatly organized on pin boards for sale on her lawn.

One sign explained she was trying to get some money together somehow to pay for her cancer treatment. I acknowledged her and kept jogging, but couldn't stop thinking about her. When I turned to jog back, I failed to find her home again or she had taken down her makeshift shop. Either way, I was at a painful loss as to what to do about the very sad situation. I emailed my legislator and hoped for the best.

I find nothing moderate about supporting a status quo that has enabled large companies to take away profits without adding into the system of health care what they have extracted from the public. I find nothing moderate about a system where a woman must sell her modest jewelry collection in front of her home apparently to pay for chemo. There is nothing moderate about a country where some people are cared for, some people are not, and some people gain wealth off that terrible equation.

Changing the status quo is not an extreme measure when the system it seeks to change is corrupt, inefficient and indefensible. One needs only do the briefest review of this country's history to know the large, powerful economic systems we employ are not loath to loose a few on the way to green pastures. And there's nothing moderate about that.

Van Jones Taken Out By School Yard Sucker Punch

2009-09-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

Van Jones, leader in the profoundly progressive movement to train people in impoverished American communities into Green jobs, has resigned from the Obama administration saying,

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide. I have been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."

An admirable position for him to take. I'm not so impressed by the position the administration took.

This uprising against Jones got started and fed by Glen Beck on his hateful tripe of a Fox TV show. Beck is a man whose work is actually banned in Britain. Beck, who appears to completely lack the moral center, intellectual abilities, and skills in emotion regulation to add anything of merit to the current national dialogue. Beck,who essentially is the school yard bully with a deep, unacknowledged desire to be the center of attention in a room full of adults. This Beck is the one who SUCCESSFULLY unseated a man like Van Jones, who has been doing that whole community organizing thing not for a few years, but for decades and seen POSITIVE solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

As hard as it is in the face of the deeply wealthy, politically entrenched and apparently soulless cancer of corporate opposition to health care reform with its legions of easily-manipulated hysterics as followers, to act with integrity, the need for integrity persists. There is no "negotiating" when the opponent completely lacks a common moral ground. These are people actively working to gain the support from millions of people who themselves depend on government assistance, particularly in health care. Our opponent here is so sadistic as to work diligently to convince people to surrender what little safety they have in the world in order to gain a sliver of advantage. And this advantage they would immediately use to tear apart the very government organizations that assist their supporters!

The Obama administration will not, through strategic resignations and obfuscated policy positions, tame and integrate the opponent into an alliance. The administration cannot make these opponents more like them. In fact, if the current course becomes the deep channel followed, the reverse may be true. Because these battles do not end the day the health care legislation is passed. That's just one moment in an on-going battle to reorganize a system where the profoundly powerful and wealthy few have stood squarely atop the disadvantaged to gain their height.

There is some ground that cannot be surrendered towards the ends of passing changing legislation because it is that ground that defines the difference between progressive legislation and repressive legislation. That's the moral high ground. We must stand up for our friends when they are under unfair attack. We must stand by those who do the good work inspired by love and passion to help out their fellow human beings.

Politics is a blood sport: FreedomCare

2009-08-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

Politics is a blood sport: FreedomCare

Obama's Daemon

2009-08-18T07:37:00.000-07:00

I am a huge fan of the Philip Pullman series, "His Dark Materials," a three part fantasy series that is akin to the Harry Potter series on steroids. One key part of the story is the relationship between a person and his/her daemon. The daemon is like an externalized part of self and takes the form of an animal. During childhood, the daemon shape shifts depending on the mood of the child. During puberty, the daemon takes one shape.

I am reminded of this part of the story when I read about the relationship between Rahm Emmanuel and Obama. One is cool and collected, the other a kind of tazmanian devil whirling around in a cloud of profanity and influence. What Obama cannot express, it seems, Emmanuel can (including the word "fuck"). What Obama cannot do (cozy up in the carriage with any person of power and wealth at any time and clop down the road whatever direction he or she decides to take him) Emmanuel can't seem to help but do. And Obama and Emmanuel seem from the news and newspaper reports to be connected with a kind of psychic tether of influence.

The last weeks have made it clear, Obama' administration is in its childhood. I suspect his daemon, in the form of the preternaturally large-eyed, tiny framed Emmanuel, seems to be everywhere in the engineering of this monster mess of health care reform. I'm reliving parts of the campaign through Richard Wolffe's book "Renegade" and am reminded of how clear the Democrats, including Obama, made it that they would radically reform health care if put into office.

What we've gotten instead is a president seemingly allowing his daemon to jerk him around by that tether. Meanwhile, the entire health care issue has run amock. The constant shifting forms of the health care "reform" being put forward by the democrats is, at this point, indecipherable. This is not what we voted for, this is not what we need, and these half-assed measures being suggested by the president will not restore the integrity of a wealthy, powerful, and utterly corrupt government.

Keep this in mind, Americans are the MOST productive workers on Earth, according to a U.N. report (2007), and we have millions of individuals and families underinsured or uninsured. Millions of families must make that call in the middle of the night, "Do we bring our sick child to the hospital tonight and risk loosing the house for the bills, or do we hold off and hope for the best?" Some of the people I love most in this world have made that call.

We need an adult in office capable of putting bullies in their place, looking after those in need, and STAYING HIS GROUND when that ground is unequivocally solid. Children, women, men, workers, and the unemployed, all human beings deserve to have access to medical care. The greed of the few and the powerful have the daemon's ear, it seems. And apparently our child president can't make up his mind about what form those who influence him will take.

Town Hall Meetings- The Two America's

2009-08-12T06:25:00.000-07:00

I have been as flabbergasted as anyone watching footage of the town hall meetings being held around the nation by publicly-elected officials to discuss health care reform. Working my gears, I have not come to any explanation that truly settles my mind or stomach. Aside from the shitty avarice of special interest groups hiring enraged (though what they actually are enraged about has not been touched on by the media covering them except for Jon Stewart)citizens to use violent language and behavior to control the discussion and neutralize the national push for health care reform.

Did you see the man who actually strapped a gun to his thigh to intimidate folks at a town hall meeting where Obama was to speak? The guy arrogantly accepted an interview on Hardball with Chris Matthews where he demonstrated his profound lack of understanding of the issue or ability to use reason.

Aside from the paid-for assholes, there are still legions turning out to shout down their representatives over an issue so critical in the lives of millions of Americans at this point, that it's like shouting down the scientist who came up with penicillin ('Ta hell with 'ya Alexander Flemming). How fucking dare you try to save our lives!

I'm afraid, watching the footage, this is simply about two America's: those citizens who regularly use the fancy, new-fangled frontal lobe that helps with reason, and those who can't give up the hormonal pay-offs of the tried and true reptilian brain. There is reason and there is emotion and those capable of moving between the two cannot deny the obvious, which is that if good medical care capable of improving quality and duration of human life is available, all humans have a right to it. To believe otherwise is something akin to subscribing to the brutal logic of wolf culture where resources are dominated and distributed by the most aggressive in an attempt to control genetic representation in future generations.

There are parts to this "debate" that are downright laughable. When Senator McCaskill asked the legions of screaming citizen protesters how many received Medicare, many in the crowd raised their hands. She asked how many would like to give up their benefits because they're government provided. No hand was raised. This astonishing lack of insight and understanding about the very system they depend on profoundly disqualifies the validity of their position. But they don't realize that.

Even less understandable to me was the woman my age crying, literally weeping about the loss of her country to socialism. Considering the downright forceful Obama policies launched to save our capitalist economy save no expense, the use of the word "socialist" is a weird, inaccurate cover word for "Black." Obama is Black, his wife is Black, there's that Hispanic lady on the supreme court now. She's not black, but she is brown. When folks from the Obama administration go in front of cameras, it's not uncommon for the person to be non-white, non-male.

And then there's all this caring from the administration for the poor.It's almost as if some of these protesters are offended that powerful men would care about the health and welfare of the poor. These seem to be people most comfortable with being abused then disregarded by their government.

Or maybe it really does come back to the wolf analogy for many of the protesters. People of political and economic power have come from the European ethnic groups for the last several hundred years. To acknowledge and accept leadership from outside of the Euro-American male background, say maybe Black people, women, dare I even consider it...Black women, is to acknowledge that something truly remarkable and perhaps even unprecedented is happening here.

The consciousness of the majority of our voting public has risen above the confining, base impulses to protect the interests of one group above other groups-one tribe over the others. Millions of Americans are considering the actual gifts, ideas and abilities of individuals regardless of their skin color or cultural background. When true individualism is respected, somehow it seems to work that the best interests of the larger whole are also served. Go figure. But there are many citizens left behind in this evolutionary leap and many of them are showing up at town hall meetings promoting, or rather, forcing down our throats their reason-less debates.

The reasonable majority must continue to put pressure on our political process right now. If we are not showing up to the town hall meetings, we need to give our senators and representatives a call on the phone. They need to know most of us can use reason, and if they come up with a reasonable bill, we will support it.

Oh What A Night That Was

2009-08-10T07:28:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, my family was puttin' around our neighborhood and passed the high school where our district's Democratic Caucus was held a year and a half ago. It seems like longer ago than that since I found my classroom in the large building I'd never had reason to enter before. On that fucking freezing February night, I participated in an entirely ad hoc, peaceful, representative democratic process. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

By mid-winter of last year, I was already profoundly preoccupied with the dramatic, compelling and utterly surprising twists and political turns the Democratic primary season had issued forth for a national and international public. It really was like a dream come true for a progressive, Gen Xer like me who got to decided between a competent, intelligent woman and competent, intelligent bi-racial man for the top of the ticket. Life experience does inform perspective, focus and drive. Obama's way of approaching issues intellectually and communicating his perspective won my political allegiance almost immediately, but I appreciated that the other choice was digestible, too.

So when I drove up to the school and turned into the frozen parking lot, I was genuinely excited to participate. There were no legitimate parking spaces left and I was a half hour early. The packed parking lot was, I felt, a good sign for Obama. The extra enthusiasm that political season was definitely spun up by the Obama campaign. I pulled my car onto a small stretch of ice-clad concrete, looking around to see if someone would make comment or implement punishment for my aggressive parking strategy. A teenage-looking girl who had just pulled the same parking scheme I had looked at me briefly then turned and walked towards the school.

There was some confusion inside, but a round middle-aged women in mommy jeans and a puff paint sweatshirt figured out my room for me using my address and a clipboard of worksheets. I climbed up a couple flights of wide, cement stairs and turned into my classroom. A beautiful women who's accent and appearance placed her in my mind as being one of Minnesota's many African immigrants was seated at a desk just over the doorway's threshold. She asked me my address. I asked her how the process in our room was working and she smiled nervously saying wasn't sure. She was given the job of managing the lists and checking people in a few minutes after arriving in the classroom. She did not know anymore than I did about how a caucus was run, but she was managing. By the end of the evening I had also been recruited to count and report the votes. I was as excited as a child picked by the teacher to do a special job.

The room filled up and the time to begin arrived. I mentioned how busy the streets had been and suggested we take a look outside to see if people were still arriving. I looked out the window of our room, then ran out of the room to look out other windows, too. The memory of what I saw still bring tears to my eyes. In every direction, for as far as the eye could see in that dark, freezing cold night, people were coming. The road to the highway was a solid line of lights. People were parking everywhere in the surrounding streets, in front of houses, businesses, anywhere a car could be negotiated out of the way of traffic.

I went back into the room and suggested we wait for any important votes, as there were still people coming. We took the time to decipher the instructions, elect officers and generally get our democratic process in order. There were people there of a surprising ethnic, age and gender background in our room given the reputation of the Minnesotan suburbs for human homogeneity. However, there was a large number of old, white, men. I admit here my prejudices at that moment. I didn't really imagine who they were there to vote for, but I assumed it was not Obama.

I was quite wrong.

In fact, when we finally made it to a vote, the room was split between Obama and Clinton with Obama winning by a significant margin. One Hillary supporter, a man I knew from other political events around our community who always came with a list of unrelated complaints, was so flabbergasted by Obama's win that he cried out. Seeing the solemn looks on the old men's faces and their nod that indeed, the vote was correct, he resigned himself loudly, "Well, okay then!"

I went out, reported our results, then quickly made my way back home in the black, frigid night. From the comfort of my home, I watched the tallies coming in. It was Obama, Obama, Obama.

Now Minnesotans are not an easily dazzled bunch. In fact, I've never met so many people whose personalities are best described as "laconic" in my life. Of course, I haven't been to the ancestral homes of Norway and Sweden, yet. I hear it's a similar emotional landscape there. We do not get too excited about things over here. But we got excited about Obama.

Though the putrid muck of Washington politics seems to be sullying our golden child, it is important to remember the reason we voted for him in the first place. He inspired us to be good citizens and to believe better things are possible for our kids and for ourselves. Be good citizens, read the legislation available on-line and make up your own mind. Tune out the din of commercial TV and find some media sources that seem fair and balanced. These are important times, tough, but important.

We have already seen some positive things happen since Obama became our president. Personal savings rates are way up, Americans are returning to more measured consumption practices, the economy is out of a tailspin and leveling off, ready for a positive return, and our government is finally fighting back against a health care system that makes millionaires of a few, and peasants out of millions.

Have faith, remember the caucuses. With focus, determination, and a willingness to participate this time, we can make this a fair and good place to live.

A Little Ecological Story: Trying to Write Ourselves into the Scene

2009-07-24T08:35:00.000-07:00

This morning my husband told me one of many charming tales he uses to illustrate his point when teaching the biological principle: you cannot do one thing. The Army Corp of Engineers built a couple bridges along the Mississippi River near where we live in Minnesota a human generation or two ago. The purpose was to manipulate the channel and river's current to assist the human endeavor of large container shipping up and down its course. A side effect of these changes was the accumulation of silt in one slew in particular (particular to this story). Muddy, marshy land developed where before there had been water.

A community of turtles, long-time inhabitants in this ecological community, found the new property quite appealing. As the rest of us would, the turtles settled into their new home and grew their families. Currently, this is one of the most robust turtle populations known to local scientists and turtle enthusiasts. My husband was working in the area yesterday, and noted with delight the time he spent watching the little faces of the turtles pop up through the thin membrane of the water's surface.

There is talk by the Army Corp of "rehabilitating" the slew to its "original" state by means of a dredge to remove the accumulated silt. An interested turtle enthusiast and local biologists involved in this stretch of river front are questioning the utility of "rehabilitation" in light of the clever group of turtles enjoying the sloppy interzone between dry land and water where they prosper.

Here's the trick in imagining our environment, imagining ourselves in it. My husband noted the irony of humans, while engaged in their own business of survival, unintentionally helping a few turtles out to the point where trying to undo what was done would harm our new friends. You cannot do one thing.

Humans have phenomenal imaginations and I would argue this alone truly distinguishes us from any other known species. But imagining ourselves in our environments is extremely difficult. Seeing ourselves in our mind's eye, then evaluating and anticipating how we interact with our physical and relational environment is something akin to cognitive yoga- stretching in all manner of directions we're not entirely sure we were meant to go.

Despite the brain discomfort, I argue we need to develop the cognitive skills (and make sure our children do as well!) to be able to stretch and manipulate our minds into significantly more sophisticated poses than generations previous have needed to manage. We must be farther seeing than our human ancestors and turtle cousins. Finding a nice little mud slew to hole up in and raise a family without worries beyond this season will not do. To survive and survive well, we need to be able to deeply imagine our species in ecological systems.

Those turtles were opportunistic in an altered ecological system. If that land had been drained and paved over, not even our crafty reptilian neighbors would have managed to survive. There are man-made changes to ecological systems that complex life forms (like us) cannot adapt.

Three Cheers

2009-07-20T16:05:00.001-07:00

I have three cheers for media I have found useful and/or informative of late.

1. Cheers for Repower America, http://www.repoweramerica.org/, associated with Al Gore and pushing hard to create a national network of people interested in advocating for the renovation of our energy system into one that is both environmentally and politically sustainable. This is an organization that is promoting the kind of drastic change needed to actually address environmental degradation. And this is a pretty good time to invent new industry.

2. My friend Brent's new blog, http://www.garrulous.org/, where he has begun a series of essays on the last year in which he has survived oral cancer, the end of his relationship with a long-time partner, and further illness in his family. Brent and I have been friends for nearly twenty years and he happens to be a very gifted writer. I encourage anyone with a particular interest in cancer survival, or simply in the mood for a good read to check this one out.

3. The book "The Addict" by Dr. Michael Stein. He is a internist who has, as part of his practice, a buprenorphine clinic. The drug buprenorphine is used to assist opiate addicts in recovery. He writes with clear-eyed honesty about his experiences treating drug addicts with special attention on one young woman. The book really offers insight into addiction that is worth the read.

The joy-side of the information age!!

Happy Fourth of July, Soldier

2009-07-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

On the evening of the most recent Fourth of July holiday I was at work in a substance abuse treatment setting. A young man was brought in by his father and was attended by a security guard. The security guard is typical accompaniment for new patients and does not necessarily indicate any behavioral problems with the attendee. I did notice immediately that the young man was huge, like professional football player huge. He was a statistical anomaly of muscle laid over a monster frame. And he was loud.

Within moments it became clear there was a problem. The young man wanted help, but didn't want help in our program. Attempts to explain how the process worked for substance abuse treatment fell on deaf ears because he was too agitated to process auditory information. He explained quickly he was a veteran of the current war in Iraq and had PTSD. This information was either a warning or an excuse for the coming behavior, I do not know which.

He quickly decided he wanted to leave, and bolted when one of the two locked doors was opened for a staff person. Security followed him into the hall and a seasoned staff working the scene identified the man as hostile and perhaps dangerous to the staff and other patients. The staff called for help.

I worked to get the other patients to the safety of their rooms and returned to try to be of some help. I saw that the young man was in the hallway between the two locked doors letting fly the F-bomb and generally posturing in a very threatening manner to the security guard, who was sweating and seemed to be cowering a few feet from the soldier. And just for the record, anyone not fighting heavy weight in the UFC would have been scared shitless, too. Even with a tazer and mase, the first few men to try to control this soldier, if it had come to that, were likely going to the ER with injuries.

This huge, reportedly specially-trained soldier was a kind of physical threat to our safety like I had never seen before. If a human being can be considered a weapon, this young man would be one. And he was making verbal and nonverbal threats.

The staff on the floor were able to deescalate the situation and get the young man to sit down and consider his situation. His father, who had witnessed the scene, but did not seem particularly effective at controlling his son, seemed unhappy with the staff suggestions for the next step. However, the soldier considered his options, made up his own mind, and agreed to get the help he needed in a setting appropriate for him. The situation ended as well as it could.

In all, it took two hours to address the situation and everyone, including the other patients, had been stressed out by the goings on. The young man reported he had been in treatment for PTSD for several months. If his behavior was explainable by the PTSD, then the treatment needed to continue, perhaps for several more years. This guy had a ways to go.

After the fact, I spoke with people who had dealt with him before he came onto our floor as well as the staff on my floor. Most everyone suspected the man had been doping. The steroids would have helped explain his aggression and his unnaturally large size. Others offered that he was a bully who enjoyed frightening us. Whatever the deal with this soldier, we were not equipped in our community setting to deal with his level of threatened violence and probable skill in causing physical harm.

Reintegrating some of the veterans from the Iraq wars may end up being a profoundly difficult challenge. None of us want a repeat of what happened to many Vietnam vets who did not get the psychological treatments or the community support that they needed to successfully begin life again as a civilian. But the challenges we may be facing with these newer vets are quite different in some ways than from previous wars. Access to help has been spotty at best. Even in parts of the country where sophisticated treatments are available, they may not be sufficient for getting these people back on track.The brain trauma many soldiers have sustained has been highly associated with PTSD and treatments for those traumatic brain injuries may not yet be adequate.

Also, there are new dangers to people trying to heal their minds as well as their bodies after tours, particularly repeated tours, in Iraq including availability of drugs and other substances that have been manufactured by drug companies to be of help and make money, but have ended up being just another albatross on the shoulders of soldiers. And those are legal drugs available through docs, which doesn't begin to address illegal drugs and booze. Even the seemingly innocuous activity of playing video games has known negative neurological effects as it can activate the parts of the brain associated with aggression.

We need a strong VA system that can take these soldiers in and help them get better. There must also be the expectation that they do learn how to be in the world again in non-violent ways. We need them to contribute in positive ways to our nation and in our communities both for the betterment of us all, but very importantly, in order that their lives and what they have been through have meaning and purpose.

I would hate to think of the soldier who shut down my workplace for a couple hours becoming a drag on society. Instead, I hope he keeps up the work on healing his psychological and substance abuse issues and goes on to become an invaluable member of his community. It would not be fair to him and to the service he provided our country if he is lost to the war wounds that we cannot see. I hope very much that he gets better and gets on with it.

His apparent ability to make a tough call to accept help even when he knew someone he loved might not understand or agree may have been a sign of his internal fortitude. That could be the strength he learns to draw upon when life gets tough and scary instead of the threat of his brute, physical force.

Misadventures in Clothsline Hanging

2009-06-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

I decided recently to return to the tradition I learned from both my grandparents and, for a few years, my parents, of hanging washed clothes on the clothesline during the summer. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, there was really no point trying to use the clothesline in the spring, fall or winter. It used to rain a lot during those seasons.

Currently, I live in Minnesota and, though moderated, our winters are still long and below freezing. I can imagine the protest I would get from my family for freezing the laundry. But now it is warm and sunny most of the time, a perfect time to begin utilizing the natural, clean energy sources of wind and solar power to cut down on my electric bill, and perhaps help out a tiny bit in the global problem of excessive CO2 emissions.

So I loaded up the kids in the car and headed to one of those home and garden megastores. Having made it through the parking lot safely with the kids, and through the first temper tantrum when my youngest saw the only available car-shopping cart hybrid so popular among the under 3 years demographic, snatched up by another mother/child duo, we were in the store. I asked for help locating the detractable clotheslines I saw on-line and was so impressed by. Just think of the convience, I could pull it across the yard when there was laundry and detract the ugle thing into a tiny eye nuisance descretely screwed into the side of the garage when the laundry was done.

I found what I was looking for, but instantly became suspicious. It was a plastic number made in China. I was recently burned after purchasing a couple very simple contraptions for around the house that broke within weeks. These products became just more plastic garbage after their brief lives that included being manufactured thousands of miles away, shipped using huge amounts of petro products, finally to arrive in my home, where they were of use for a profoundly brief moment then shipped off to their final resting places for something like an eternity. Screw that.

I bought instead a length of rope and some wooden clothspins, leaving the store with five dollars worth of materials that will likely be with me to my dying day and hopefully not too long afterward.

Once home my kids watched with wonder then anticipation, "What is she doing and do I get some of that rope to play with?" It took a few minutes to put up the clothesline and the extra length of rope I lent them to play with until such a time as I need it for another clothesline or to tie one of my cats to the ski rack on my car (kidding).

I washed a load in my washer in cold and was actually excited about hanging the laundry. It was a sweltering hot day and I expected to be able to get all the laundry washed and dried in a few hours. I pinned the laundry to the line and took off with the family for a couple hours on an outing. We got back tired and cheerful. I quickly unpinned the laundry and dropped it in the basket.

That night we had a terrific storm which dumped inches of much needed rainwater. I enjoyed the stormy weather and slept comfortably. The next morning I looked outside at my new clothesline while sipping coffee and generally feeling optimistic about my new environmentally-conscious choices. And then I noticed it, the laundry basket with a day's worth of wash sitting atop a soaking lawn, uncovered.

I later mentioned the fiasco to my sister who noted that it is a challenging thing indeed to change one's habit. How right. Next time I'll remember to bring the laundry in from the rain.

"Awake now, it is time again"

2009-06-27T16:33:00.001-07:00

I enjoyed the Bill Moyers interview with poet W.S. Merwin aired last night on PBS. One of the quotes read from Merwin's poetry was the one above, "Awake now, it is time again." This was a line in a poem about, in part, the ancient tradition in Macedonia of women singing the land awake again after a long winter.

This line resonated very deeply with me as being an expression of such ancient intelligence. These women called out what they knew, that they were a part of this natural world, and all that was in it began again anew.

Although I love the big ideas, it occurs to me that I need to live the small ones. Moyers and Merwin talked in the interview about tossing and turning at night awake with the terrible knowing of the world they leave behind them. Moyers in particular spoke about being haunted by the thought of his grandchildren inheriting a terrific mess.

Of the multitude messes, one is most immediate: the degradation of our environment. Being married to a biologist, I am continually aware of the burgeoning research. Having lived in the far north for a few years and still having friends there, I hear of the climactic changes so obvious to them and predicted decades ago by the scientific modeling of the greenhouse effect. I know that our industrial complex has reached a level of interaction with our ecological systems where a recursive cycle is under way and is gaining momentum.

If all industrial pollutants were to stop being added into the system today, the effects of what we have already done would continue for generations. To continue as we are is expediting the process and making a solution less likely. We're shutting our life support system off on ourselves.

Folly. Human folly is so well known throughout the entirety of recorded human history and one assumes, as long as humans have walked upright, we cannot hope to escape it entirely. But this particular folly could pull the curtain on us entirely. Human drama cannot continue without the Good Earth as stage.

There may or may not be big answers to this mess. But there are small answers everywhere. It is a matter of the very mundane, the way in which we live. I am in the process of remembering what I knew as a child, what I was taught by my grandparents. I am learning to see my small yard as a solution to the problems of my lifestyle. I am researching ways I can reduce the impact my family is having on the environment within our economic realities.

I have begun with modest projects. I'll write about this ongoing process of relearning how to be in the world in a more careful and sustainable way. Please, anyone reading this with simple ideas on how to better align our lifestyles with ecological realities, respond to my blog. Changing lifestyles is no easy matter. It will take inspiration and commitment.

Need for Long Term Care of Mentally Ill Unmet for Decades

2009-06-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

Having worked with people living with serious mental illness for several years, I have seen the sad cycle many of their lives rotate through. During times of severe impairment due to psychotic episodes, severe depression, and/or extreme substance abuse, people with chronic mental illness will often find assistance in local hospitals. The staff will help them get stabilized on medications and sober then send them to outpatient programs that often are short of duration. Within weeks or months, many will be suffering again with serious symptoms and unable to care for themselves or make good decisions.

I first worked with the children of people with serious mental health and substance abuse problems. Unfortunately, many people who are unable to care for themselves have children that they cannot take care of either. Many of these children end up in the truly unhappy and often utterly dysfunctional child welfare system. I have seen families where the children of mentally ill people grow up and suffer with mental illness and themselves have children who are put into the foster care system. It's a devastating cycle for those in it and can be deeply saddening for those professionals who work with the families.

It is a system of perfect madness.

During the 1980s, under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, state run institutions lost federal funding and the hospitals that provided long term care for mentally ill people went by the wayside. Community programs were supposed to take their place and provide less restrictive environments so that people with mental illness could interact with the community. Unfortunately, this variation on the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" theme has failed to address the serious needs of millions of people. Many of the people who previously lived in state facilities are now basically homeless. This situation presents many dangers both for people with mental illness, and often to family and community members when some of these people become violent.

We need a system like whole cloth that sanely addresses the needs of people with mental illness. For those most afflicted, on-going, life-long care is simply needed. Finding funding for this kind of care is a tough task, especially right now. The U.S. systems for resource distribution aren't even managing to get basic health care to millions of children, let alone sophisticated mental health care to the chronically mentally ill. We have such a distance to go back towards our humanity when it comes to the care of our most vulnerable.

But I argue that the emergency only care many people with mental illness receive is extremely costly as well. One of my current patients is in a facility that costs thousands of dollars a day and is designed for acute, short-term care. Unable to find appropriate housing, he's been at our unit for weeks. As with anything else, failure to plan often ends up more costly in the end.

Our nation needs determined leadership in the field of psychiatric care.There are highly effective and economical systems being developed to address the needs of the nation's very large elderly population. Perhaps we in the mental health field could borrow some of these ideas.

Having facilities that can address a spectrum of functioning levels as they have in retirement communities could work. People in these communities have options for fully independent living through end of life care in one facility. A comparable facility for people with mental illness could function similarly except people may be able to live in different sections at different times during their illness. For example, people stable on their meds could live in less restrictive environments, but people whose symptoms become more severe or who abuse substances are moved to more restrictive environments.

Innovative answers are out there. This, like the other issues that need to be addressed in our country, requires great will to support follow through.

Domestic Terrorism

2009-05-31T16:53:00.000-07:00

If it is legally established that the killer of Dr. Tiller, a man who provided legal abortions in Kansas, was motivated to kill Dr. Tiller because of his profession, then the killer should be charged with terrorism. If this is the case and he isn't charged with terrorism as well as murder, it will be an injustice.

Dr. Tiller was attending church when shot and killed. He had survived a previous murder attempt ten years ago. The killings of physicians who perform legal, safe, medical procedures including abortions are blatant acts of terrorism because they have a political objective. It is a heinous act of violence against an individual and a message to other medical professionals who provide women's health services that religious fundamentalists often find objectionable.

Just as people killing in the name of Allah is of particular offense against humanity, so too is killings that find their inspiration in the religious texts of Christianity. We, as Americans, should come out strongly against anyone who would seek to terrorize our citizens. The networks that provide information on doctors who perform abortions to individuals considering and/or planning violence need to come under serious review by federal agencies and prosecuted vigorously. Terrorism, whether foreign born or domestically grown must be rejected on every level.

Add Meaning to "Family Values"

2009-05-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

Social progressives have in front of us a time of real opportunity for having our positions more accurately represented within the political and cultural milieus. Further, this opportunity allows us to influence public policy and popular culture currently and in the future. Simply put, we have the floor- politically, socially and, I argue, morally.

It is the latter that I focus on here. Towards the end of bringing about a broadening and deepening of the dominant culture's understanding of and sanctity for human life, I suggest we shift then expand the meaning of the language put forward by the politically right of center folks over the past thirty years. Specifically, I believe we need to adopt the term "family values" and define it in a meaningful way for the twenty-first century.

If we are to be effective in shifting the direction of our political, economic and environmental systems, we must shift the idea of "family values" off of its fundamentalist Christian foundation and secure it as a cornerstone of secular cultural, political and economic values. Lets simplify the meaning of "Family Values" to family values, the valuing of families. If we adopt this shift of meaning, the public policies and private choices become less convoluted and more direct. When facing questions on such varying topics as tax code, marriage eligibility, school funding initiatives, or cause for war, we need to begin with two questions, "Does this serve our families?" and "Does this serve my family?"

Answering these simple questions will often become a complex endeavor, as the two answers may sometimes conflict. But at least we would have a clear focus on the conflicts as they arise. And the resolutions to conflicts would likely have a far greater humanitarian emphasis than we would otherwise have.

Certainly, answering these questions with the previous definition of family values has incited great eruptions of deep pain in many families. The previous definition of family values has little to do with the welfare of many families and everything to do with serving an ancient and often vague doctrine followed in a very specific way by a minority of Americans. A befuddling task indeed is serving this answer.

Focusing the debates on all manner of issues addressed in the political and economic sphere to answer "How does this serve our families," and "How does this serve my family," incidentally, would also clear up the Gay marriage issue. Does allowing Gays to marry cause immediate harm to my or other families? This question invites concrete answers that may help dispel the ether of religious doctrine that confuses the mind and seems to leave people unable to discern the difference between an idea and the agreed-upon "reality" that, by definition, must be shared in order to be valid.

Answering the questions, "Does this serve our families," and "Does this serve my family," may also lead us to conclusions that many among the more liberal left may find disconcerting. For example, does massive expenditures on failing individuals and failing families always make sense? Are there times when supporting the programs that benefit the higher functioning individuals and families make more sense when answering "Does this serve our families," even if the answer conflicts with the more individually focused, "Does this serve THIS family."

For example, does dumping hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars attempting to rehabilitate wayward individuals end up hurting the school programs that promote and support excellence in our communities when push comes to shove in the local government budget debates? Are there far less expensive ways to treat low-functioning individuals and families in a community setting?

Huge issues face the Gen Xers and those younger than us. Our strength is definitely our creativity. We have to come up with and follow through on the big answers, but we must ask the right questions before we can even begin. Let's ask the right questions, lets start with our families. And lets adapt family values to mean actually working on projects and policies that demonstrate our valuing of families.

You Don't Get Something For Nothing

2009-04-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

My family and I are in the process of buying a home in the twin cities area. This is an uncomfortable process, to put it mildly, even for those of us lucky enough to be solidly employed and in good financial standing. We are also fortunate in that we are able to buy a home without trying to sell another. A significant advantage. Although the process for us is more straight forward than it is for some in the market, I have noticed something about today's real estate market: you can't get something for nothing.

Being inspired by the record number of available properties and many anecdotal stories of people getting five bedroom estates for a hundred and fifty thousand, we stepped eagerly into the market. However, we have not seen these stories to be accurate. There are incredibly good deals on newer homes in our area, but these homes are in suburbs built up thirty or more miles out of the cities. Living in these far flung fifth and sixth tiered suburbs would significantly increase our already considerable commute. Long commutes take away from our own well being, that of our children, and require a significant use of economic and environmentally-degrading resources. A low mortgage does not equate with reduced individual, family, and environmental stress.

So closer to our workplace and schools we go looking for homes. In the well-established working class and middle class neighborhoods, there are some very good deals. Banks are getting more efficient at pushing through paperwork for liquidating their repossessed properties. The past headaches associated with buying foreclosed-upon properties are lessened, and in some instances are far less painful than dealing with a private seller!! But these properties are often abused and neglected. The money needed to get them into good shape would likely bring the price tag up to something closer to a traditional-seller situation. For the perennial fix-er upper type, these could be a good deal, but not so for the rest of us.

So what our family is left with is looking at well-maintained properties for sale by the owners, for the most part. Prices have been pulled down on these properties as well. But the prices are nothing close to the pre-bubble levels a few years ago, and I don't think they will ever return to those levels. Real wages have continued their downward momentum over the years and this isn't even factoring in unemployment rates and the life situations for families facing that difficulty. My question is this: why should housing prices be many, many times that of the average yearly income? How is it good for the economy to force working families into a form of indentured servitude to get into a home? Those top-market prices were entirely absurd and should not have been allowed to rise to those levels.

I am aware that if my family had been looking for a home only a couple years ago, we would have been stretching to afford a home that needed significant work and was the size of a large shoe box. And we would have gone for it! It is only through luck that we didn't find ourselves hugely upside down in our mortgage because of being in the wrong market at the wrong time. For those families, especially the ones with small children, I feel deep sympathy.

What many of those families can do is refinance their debt at much, much lower interests rates. The President was on TV advocating for this approach yesterday. Although this will not solve the big ass housing and personal finance problems faced by millions, it may help many families eek by until a more prosperous day breaks. And it is coming, that brighter day is coming.

A Cosmic Dance: Why We Need Capitalism and Collectivism

2009-03-04T06:27:00.000-08:00

I strongly believe capitalism is an ingenious system that plays boldly to the best in humanity. Also, it is equally powerful in its exaggeration of the worst in humanity through silence on all issues of broader social concern. How can one system provide the opportunity for the expression of the best and worst in us all: by respecting the free will of the individual.

But here's the rub, we are social beasts evolved over millions of years to live in interdependent groups. When one person acts within her/his own free will towards outcomes of self-interest, the spinning cosmic dance of tension between opposites can quickly become one person stepping all over someone else's toes. This has been the inherent conundrum within our economic/political system which we have been dancing with for hundreds of years.

How do we learn to dance gracefully between individual and collective needs? Is this even possible? I believe it is, and it is the next evolutionary step in human thinking, living and governing.

We must see beyond the false separation of individual/collective needs to the truth of opposites. At the most basic level, we are all of equal import and value and our basic needs cannot be in competition if the integrity of the individual and the collective is to be supported and protected. At the same time, we must promote a system that encourages and rewards the spectacular possibilities of individual expression. We must learn to live with both seemingly conflicting truths in tandem. We must learn to tolerate and move between the opposites in our own minds and get beyond our childish need for certainty and absolutes.

When we can mentally allow opposites to exist within our own minds without reflexively choosing a position on one side or the other, we will begin to think in more fluid ways and see novel solutions to real time challenges.

As our ability to do this develops, we will find that in many situations, the needs of both individual and collective somehow, quite magically at times, get met. For example, the real collective human (and all other life forms), need to have a healthy environment must outstrip individual interests in personal wealth. However, within our economic/political system, the people who find the best solutions to our environmental woes will be rewarded with extraordinary wealth. Come up with a cheap, easy way to convert all cars on the road to electric and you will become a billionaire. Develop and implement a plan to use the unused lands in the American midwest and west to produce enough wind and sun energy to run our country, and you will become a billionaire.

Here's another rub, the people who have become billionaires off of fossil fuels will not be the same people to become billionaires of of clean energy. But lucky for 99.99% of us, we are not part of the first group and would benefit hugely from the actions of the latter group!!! And in this becoming, the tension of the opposites resolves into one happy forward direction for the collective and each individual who makes up the collective.

I Don't Know, Either, Bill Maher

2009-02-24T05:23:00.000-08:00

The documentary by Bill Maher, "Religulous," was released last week and I had to rent it. I already saw it in the theater last summer, but decided it was worth a second viewing.

The theater I saw it in is located in a conservative 'burg of the twin cities. I drove to the show with much anticipation and a little trepidation. Would the viewing have the local Baptist ministries picketing outside on a warm summer eve? Or worse, would the church elders have purchased tickets and be waiting for their affront to everything good in the universe in that big, dark room? I thought, "God, if you're out there, it's me, Patty. Please, please, I beg thee, don't let a group of religious zealots talk through the whole thing."

I got my agnostic fix and then some in the well done, very funny documentary that was one part exploration of the world's religions and two parts crusade on behalf of the world's not-knowers. I wouldn't say the movie was for nonbelievers, though my husband thoroughly enjoyed the film. It was more a nod then shout to those of us who say earnestly and honestly, "I just don't know what happens after this life."

This seems such a moderate position, this not-knowingness. In most of the modern, Western world it is considered a moderate position. But here in the states those of us with a position of not-knowing the answers to the ultimately unknowable still hold a quiet, tongue-biting minority.

But this is my response to Maher's challenge to those not-knowers out there. I'm putting it out there in a public, if rarely viewed website. I say it loudly, "I don't know either, Bill."

Pawlenty: Party, Not County, First

2009-02-18T05:56:00.000-08:00

Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota made a point to get himself heard and seen nationally in opposition to the stimulus package that got signed in Denver yesterday. I strongly suspect he's positioning himself to be the leading GOP presidential candidate in a few years. His nod from McCain for the running mate job then cold shoulder must have stung, but he kept up his party-first attitude through the entire failed GOP run last fall.

No matter how absurd and painfully ignorant McCain and Palin exposed themselves to be on the most important issues facing our country, Pawlenty was there on Morning Joe or whatever cable tv show would have him putting party first. The country, it seems these GOPers think, is for their enjoyment to rule over, not a solemn responsibility to their fellow Americans.

What makes Pawlenty an excellent example of the profound failure of Republican political imagination, intellect, and integrity is that not only did he fail to provide any new, well-considered alternative suggestions to the stimulus bill, his hand flew from his side to accept the monies being offered in it to the state he is governor of. What a worn position is yours, Mr. Governor: support failed policy, promote opposition to attempts to solve our country's truly horrendous problems while offering no real helpful alternatives, then accept whatever advantage comes your way no matter its source.

If you truly believe this stimulus package is bad for our country, Mr. Governor, why don't you refuse the federal monies being sent our way and pool your energy into getting other Republican governors to do the same?

Why won't Pawlenty do this? The answer is painful and obvious, it's will-to-power before responsibility-to-people with these folks.

That's How It's Done

2009-02-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

Congrats to the House and Senate for managing to put together the last great hope for rescue from the sinking ship of our economy. The Huffington Post is reporting today that insiders tell the story of Joe Lieberman when talking political shop on how this bill got put together. Apparently, the process was floundering as the Dems struggled to keep their focus (big surprise) and keep each other behind closed doors and away from the cameras (no easy job when dealing with this population). But it was that homely old man, a regular "blood traitor" for you Harry Potter fans, that stepped up when he saw things going sideways and got the process moving in a forward direction.

Now this is how politics is done.

One of the most amazing things to me about the previous thirty years is the strong-hold people of modest to non-existent political gifts have had on politics. By making party loyalty akin to fidelity in a marriage, the Republicans somehow managed to pervert a perverted system. Over the last thirty years (and it's hard to discount the Clinton years all said and done) mutated the low-grade case of political Clap that keeps the lawmakers alert and motivated into a deadly, thrill-killing kind of political AIDS that destroys its host by attacking the very systems in place to protect its long-term survival

Our ingenious political system influenced not only by great European thinkers of old, but also the forms of government our founding fathers observed in the Iroquois tribes of the Northeast (their longhouse counsels provided a framework for the two houses of Congress) is designed to tolerate low-grade infection. The new administration understands this. By bringing the wandering Lieberman back into the fold, Obama created a necessary ally.

In the end, the possibility of service for the people was made available. It remains to be seen if this new rescue plan can act as lifeboat for the people whose livelihoods are sinking with the ship. But I'd rather have something done than nothing. And I hope this most recent political intrigue is further evidence that Obama is able to minister to our sick political system not to its perfect health, but at least to its relative health.

Plane in the River Apt Metaphor

2009-02-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

The US Airways plane that ditched into the Hudson River a few weeks is, for me, a remarkable story and a useful metaphor when seeking to imagine our current economy. Even more unlikely than a large plane being taken down by a flock of geese, was the extraordinarily competent landing of the plane by the pilot onto a body of water and the survival of every person on board. I was watching my favorite news/commentary show last night and became agitated by the frenetic energy of the journalists and policymakers. I had to turn it off and consider the matter in silence. When trying to arrive at an understanding of our current economic situation that rises above fear, I remembered the story of that airplane and its passengers.

The images were remarkable. A large plane landing so gracefully on the water that one observer said it took him a moment to realize the plane wasn't supposed to be landing on the Hudson. This may be the best our economy can do at this point, a purposeful ditch. Our economic vehicles, especially in the forms of the banking and automotive sectors, have run straight into difficulties that, though foreseeable, were not, in the end, avoidable. The plane is going down and the most this administration and those with significant power in these matters can do is decide how and where to land it in a way the manages to do what is most important, save the passengers.

When watching tape of the airplane story, most of us were not thinking, "Oh no, US Air lost a plane. And it's been generally such a tough year for airlines." Of course not. We were thinking, "Holy shit, every single passenger survived their plane getting ditched in the Hudson!" (Or something to this effect). With an economic ditch, this too should be our most fundamental intention. It doesn't matter ultimately what becomes of the outer vessel. Our economy is a system by which the goods that sustain life are produced and distributed. This is its most sacred purpose and should be our primary concern.

It seems that there is much posturing around what form the stimulus package should take and how our economy should look in the end. But we can take a lesson from the US Air flight situation. There were life rafts in the plane already, as there are some safety features built into our economic system, but it was ferry boats that provided the vessels that brought people to safety. Captains paying attention headed over to the crash site immediately and a transport system became a rescue mission.

What do our people really need? What does our economy really need in order to provide these things? People must have housing, food and clothing. Our economy must have a banking and credit system to make those thing available in large part through supporting businesses that provide jobs. The economic stimulus package may do well to abandon it's flight plan and focus on finding a safe way to ditch the plane and identify economic rescue vessels that can be used to get our people safely to shore. Fund jobs (jobs that will create more jobs), food stamps, figure out some quick, temporary fix for keeping people in their homes or help fund organizations that find affordable rental properties for families who lost their homes, and shore up enough banks to keep the system afloat (saving every bank need not be a priority, just the ones that can help the most people the fastest).

If our economy, and thus our people, are in as dire straights as the president is saying we are, then he and everyone else need to make decisions from an emergent perspective. Get as many people out of the water as fast as you can. The rest can be worked out from the relative safety of a stabilized economy.

Will Obama's Achille's Be Deep Irony for Electorate?

2009-02-02T09:11:00.000-08:00

Obama demonstrated his awe-inspiring acumen in understanding other people through extending an open hand when he gave his first interview from the White House to an Arabic TV news reporter a couple weeks ago. The remarkable peace with which Iraqis went to the polls over the weekend may be in part an expression of the disarming of international tensions Obama seems literally designed from conception to promote. However, peace is not the order of the day here at home with the economic stimulus package heading up nearly every news half hour and front page.

There is much ado about this package now going in front of the senate after sailing along the Democratic majority in the house. Unfortunately, the ado may not be about nothing. The package is deeply unpopular among Republicans, who in typical "C" student fashion didn't stay until the end of their microeconomics class where the other side of the balanced budget equation was revealed: cut spending when you cut incoming revenue. But the irony here is going to be revealed if the Democrats, in holding to their fiscal ideals of middle class tax cuts and increased government spending, fail to turn this outgoing economic tide back towards land.

The reality seems to be that we cannot afford to cut taxes to middle class families who are currently enjoying stable, reliable income. This campaign promise needs to await a new day. What Obama and the Democrats can do is insist, better yet, impose ethical reform to tax laws particularly in terms of the upper-most income brackets and run-away corporate tax breaks. Make this a fair equation and most reasonable people will tolerate the continuation of income taxes at this rate without deposing the Dems next election cycle. That is, however, if jobs are created quickly, national debt stagnates then decreases, and the war in Iraq dwindles into a small, police-action-sized endeavor.

I believe Obama is uniquely qualified to create a sense of political understanding between peoples that will greatly expedite the ends to both the Iraq and Afghan wars. Further, the Democrat impulse to spend government monies are future-reaching projects like infrastructure and clean energy development as well as honoring American human potential through challenging schools and parents to produce world-class students. But making nice with the middle and working class right now with tax cuts across the board is folly.

Obama told us he would be honest with the American public. The honest truth is that we must pay our taxes and find innovative ways to help each other out through these difficult days without bankrupting our future in a misled attempt to get ourselves out of hawk right now.

Blago Just Another Psycho

2009-01-29T15:05:00.000-08:00

I have been unwillingly exposed to excessive media on the subject of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich over the last few weeks. I did not want to make comment on this guy, as I truly believe any attention is bad attention for a guy like this. However, after so much input, now I must output, just a bit.

No commentators in the media that I've heard or read have touched on what I find excruciatingly obvious: the guy acts like a psychopath. While wringing their hands and hurting their brains in an effort to comprehend the going's on in the man's head, they have greatly over-thought the matter.

I would not dream to diagnose someone without even meeting the fellow, but his behavior, particularly on talk shows this week, smacks of good old fashioned psychopathy. I don't mean the watered-down, likely racist and classist new-fangled DSM III & IV (Diagnostic Statistical Manual- used to described identified mental disorders) diagnosis Antisocial Personality Disorder. This anemic newer addition looses the imaginativeness and accuracy of its predecessor, Psychopathy.

Blago's behavior seems to indicate the traits Dr. Robert Hare, of University of BC, describes in his Psychopathy Checklist particularly remorseless and a disparate understanding of social mores. Basically, people with this disorder don't understand what the big deal is. When viewed from this prism, perhaps Blago's behavior follows a known pattern. He makes grandiose references to Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi when discussing his situation not necessarily because he feels persecuted- his demeanor is astonishingly lacking in tells for anxiety or passion of any kind. Instead he seems unnaturally calm and cheerful. I suspect he might make these absurd comparisons between himself and history's greats because he thinks that's just what people do. They relate their stories to highly sympathetic ones in order to inspire a similar feelings of sympathy.

But Blago just doesn't seem to understand what makes some people very special while other people are simply spectacles. If any attention is good attention then he must be pretty important, just like those other guys. Right? Perhaps he lacks the same ability most people have to feel deeply inspired by other people and so cannot comprehend the crassness of his comparisons. In fact, I would wonder if the likely outcome of all of this for him really will take him by surprise. What's the big deal? No one really cares about sincerity, justice and truthiness (Colbert), do they? This is all just a game where everyone is looking to get some fame and some cash, right? Those other guys were like him underneath the self-sacrificing facade, right?

What really disturbs me about this is a man with a demeanor that reeks of a serious and dangerous personality disorder as well as a nose job that should have lost someone their medical license, was elected to a position of real power. And I bet he was just the best pick on the ballot that year. Scary, scary stuff folks.

It is time for new leadership on every political level, especially state and local.

Obsessive Compulisve Lawyers and American Justice

2009-01-17T14:08:00.000-08:00

There is a growing drumbeat among Americans to have the Bush administration prosecuted for crimes committed during the last eight years. Krugman in the NYT was the most recent op ed I've seen on the subject. I completely agree. When in Argentina a few months ago, I asked what a group of Argentine scientists liked about their current government, among the many complaints they had, and they cited the prosecution of crimes against the people from the "dirty war" more than twenty years ago. People need justice and time does not change this. The American people deserve justice and specific parties harmed by illegal government activity deserve it doubly.

The Obama folks on Capital Hill signaled in the confirmation hearings last week that they do not intend to pursue legal justice for our citizenry. This is a grave mistake. Yes, there are many, many problems to get straightened out right now, not the least of which is processing the detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere around the world. But it doesn't take an army of lawyers to make a lot of trouble for people. Remember Ken Star? That was one guy literally tying down an entire administration over a blow job!! And how did he do it, just one gangly-limbed dork? Will, he had the will to pursue the story of that blow job to the salty end.

A small, elite team of prosecutors is all it would take. Have any of you ever worked with lawyers? They're bloody relentless. I say put a handful of well regarded, obsessive-compulsive prosecutors on each potentially big legal problem for the outgoing administration, including the dubious circumstances around bogus intelligence used to get us into Iraq, the Valeria Plame disgrace, and the Halliburton contracts as well as the circumstances of soldiers being harmed in subcontractor's facilities, to name just a few. Give these lawyers some freshly-trained, obsessive compulsive (I'm telling you, more bang for your buck with the OCD types) lawyers with a stipend to live off of and student loan forgiveness option, and let those folks go to work.

We need justice for our people and the people of Iraq. There is nothing as persuasively pro-democracy as seeing the former president and his men go to prison for crimes committed when in office against the people of America and the people of the world. Democrats, our moment is neigh, show the people of the world and the Republican party that we have the political will to bring justice and punish those who deserve it. I know it's like a buzz kill, man, but sometimes we're going to have to be the heavy.

Great link for info on workings of local/national gov't

2009-01-09T09:24:00.000-08:00

I became aware of a fantastic information source to satisfy curiosity anyone has on how local growth coalitions operate and why. This site was linked off of the blog Politics is a bloodsport. The address is http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/local.html.

I have only begun looking around on this site, there is a tremendous amount of information about every level of government. I encourage everyone to take a look.

A Short Stay for the Boomers at the Top

2009-01-07T07:12:00.000-08:00

I have been wondering lately if Hillary's run for the White House will mark the last great attempt by her generation to secure the White House. If so, the Boomers succeeded in electing only two presidents and were summarily rejected for another go. Have the ideals of that generation, the quest for personal freedom and, for some- glory, reached their conclusion in our current economic and political situation? Has civilization found, again, the limits to the expression of individualism? And if so, can we really argue it's all been bad? I don't think so. I believe the legacy of the Boomers is a mixed bag of triumph and defeat on a scale rarely seen before.

Barak Obama's presidency heralds in the maturation of the successors to the Boomers and oh the work to be done. With the help of the Boomers and even the few remaining of the WWII generation, our legacy is one of breathtaking challenges and opportunities unimaginable to previous generations. Though the Bush administration represented a tremendous push back against the devotion to personal liberties precious to the Boomers via Cheney's proxy, we still have in front of us a nation ready to tolerate and accept personal expression on a level never before seen. In Portland, Oregon, their mayor is openly gay, in a smaller Oregon community, the new mayor is transgendered, and closer to my home, U.S. House Representative Keith Ellison out of Minneapolis, a practicing Muslim, became the first U.S. rep to do the Hajj pilgrimage. During his election campaign there was a story reported that he was confronted by one of the more traditional Muslim constituents about Ellison's support for Gay rights. Reportedly, Ellison explained to him that just as he was determined to protect this man and his community from prejudice and discrimination because of their race and religion, so he planned to support the protection of Gays from prejudice as well.

This is great stuff!! These are stories that should make us very proud to be Americans. And that's not even touching on the Obama story. But the shadows cast against these gleaming examples is dark indeed. The exhaustion of our medical, financial and social security systems can also be tied in the ideals of personal pursuits before community considerations. The fall of real wages, exponential rise in the prices of homes and education, and the dissolution of over half of U.S. families has led to huge jumps in poverty, drug addiction, and neglect of one another. This has been a high price indeed.

For myself (and because I'm the child of Boomers, I consider this point very important) I hope to integrate the beliefs and values of my grandparent's generation with those of my parent's generation. I hope to find in myself and in my life a middle ground where I feel free to explore and wonder at my experience of being alive, even when this experience varies from what I was taught was "normal," while working diligently in my community to promote social justice and economic stability.

Peace Through True Surrender

2009-01-05T06:30:00.000-08:00

The tide of violence has again crested and is washing over the Gaza Strip with the waves of brutality from both sides rippling through the consciousness of much of the world. The Israeli-Palestinian situation feels hopeless to me when I view the reports. However, I strongly believe there is no impossible human condition, as these conditions are not imposed but agreed upon- a kind of macro decision consolidated from millions and millions of angry minds and hardened hearts.

For what it's worth, I do believe the situation is tractable- an astonishing thesis I'm sure. I believe the answer is one that is deeply psychological and begins with every individual immediately engaged in the situation. Surrender, not to one's "enemies" or injustice, but to oneself. The lamb on the alter for each person can be the ideas and emotions that entwine into a general condition of pain- mental and physical.

This is easy for me to write as my little boys are healthy and happy on this day. I do not fear mortar attacks or gun fire. My concerns for my sons are of flu viruses and whether they are enjoying their lives. I'm a privileged mother, I know.

But as the collective mental positions of Israel and Palestine continue to be expressed in their explicit form, violence, it is clear what is at stake. The health, happiness and hope for their children is the price of conflict. If fighting only causes more violence, then the fighting needs to stop. And in place of the actions of violence, people could learn to tolerate those powerful emotions of fear, hate and dread. For many, doing and receiving violence may be easier than sitting quietly with those powerful emotions. But in a place of inaction and intimacy with one's own feelings, good ideas for real change may arise.

Statue of Responsibility

2008-12-30T14:14:00.000-08:00

It turns out someone has already thought to construct a Statue of Responsibility. Wikipedia has an article about it and the official website is: http://www.sorfoundation.org/. From the Wikipedia article, it looked like the project has been floundering for the last few years. I'm going to investigate this project further and see where it's at.

I suspect most of the culprits in the illegal Bush administration activities will not be brought to justice. This does not mean we, the citizens, cannot learn a few good lessons from the past several years of top-down political and economic irresponsibility. We would benefit from a public art project designed both to remind us of the necessary balance to liberty in our quest for freedom, and to inspire hope.

And it's never a bad idea to put artists to work,it keeps them out of trouble (FDR knew that).

Goodbye Mr. President: Please Just Leave

2008-12-28T08:26:00.000-08:00

In seeking to understand the legacy of George W. Bush during these final weeks of his presidency, it becomes clear to me he and his administration have accurately expressed the imbalance in place in our national psyche and in understanding this we can also better intuit a remedy. To paraphrase once again Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist who survived the concentration camps and went on to found the existential therapeutic approach of Logotherapy: the statue of liberty should be balanced on the opposite shore by the statue of responsibility. I couldn't agree more, but in the remaining sad weeks of this indefensible, truly terrible presidency, it becomes clear we will not enjoy anything like this sentiment from W.

W. and his fellow apologists are now insisting that, though their policy in Iraq has been correct, they were, themselves, misdirected and misinformed by the intelligence community on Iraqi WMD. This appalling shrinking from responsibility through purposeful and aggressive lies is par for the course in a power structure that justifies any and all injustice through a policy of power-over bullying. We can and so we do. We lie to make it seem otherwise when the consequences are terrible.

But this hideous warping of reality is truly the final insult to the world and the U.S. citizens and, in the end, the final act of cowardice by a man desirous of power without an acknowledgment of responsibility. He and his arcane, throw-backs from the middle ages of an administration (and in Cheney's case, this may be literally true)wanted and worked ruthlessly to secure the personal power necessary to enforce upon hundreds of millions of people, arguably billions, their will. It was not the liberty, or freedom to act, of the people they envisioned when they proposed the "spread of freedom," but their own liberty to act upon others without consequence and without brakes. These psychopathic men and a few warped women sought to establish a quasi-dictatorship under Carl Roves "permanent Republican majority."

To my deep relief, there was enough democracy left in tact to depose our stupid dictator and his dubious staff. But it is estimated that the Obama administration will be sifting through the thousands of orders meant to tie down our democracy even after the current administration is finally ousted for many months. There will likely be bills passed in Congress listing hundreds of these orders at a time just to undo the damage quickly enough to begin the real work. And there is so much to be done.

To fathom the damage done to our democracy, economy and social structure is painful To imagine the pain caused worldwide by our policies is almost unbearable. We cannot undo what has been done, no matter how sublime the voter's choice of new leadership. However, we can begin again anew to make our country a better place and our international influence earnest and hopeful.

I argue our government should aggressively pursue criminal charges against all of those responsible for the illegalities of our international and national policies including the president and vice president. In the mean time, our citizenry has collectively turned our faces away from W. and his cronies in a group rejection of their very existence as if to say, "Goodbye Mr. President. Please, just f---ing leave."

And as a reminder to how wrongly our political systems can go, and how fast this can happen, I propose a Statue of Responsibility to be designed and raised in the Pacific Ocean to balance the ideas of our American mindset.

Deserved Wealth Not "Bonus Bonanza"

2008-12-18T06:06:00.000-08:00

This morning I read in the New York Times a front page article "On Wall Street Bonuses Not Profits Were Real." Having recently completed a series about "It's A Wonderful Life" and given a lot of thought to the higher ideals some Americans in the past imagined for our economy, I was particularly struck by the following paragraphs in the article:

A Bonus Bonanza: For Wall Street, much of this decade represented a new Gilded Age. Salaries were merely play money — a pittance compared to bonuses. Bonus season became an annual celebration of the riches to be had in the markets. That was especially so in the New York area, where nearly $1 out of every $4 that companies paid employees last year went to someone in the financial industry. Bankers celebrated with five-figure dinners, vied to outspend each other at charity auctions and spent their new found fortunes on new homes, cars and art.

The bonanza redefined success for an entire generation. Graduates of top universities sought their fortunes in banking, rather than in careers like medicine, engineering or teaching. Wall Street worked its rookies hard, but it held out the promise of rich rewards. In college dorms, tales of 30-year-olds pulling down $5 million a year were legion.

Compare these tales, if you will, with other tales of hardship and sacrifice for one's community and children. Spend a minute recalling the stories from your own family about your ancestors who moved here from other countries and worked tirelessly, often in dangerous situations to make a living and hopefully a future for their families

In my own family, my mother's father was the last child born to his Swedish immigrant parents. Their older children were brought over with them from Sweden. They survived the Great Depression by planting gardens and tending chickens on land they settled along the Puget Sound of Washington State. (I want to acknowledge here their land was likely taken from Native American people who had lived there for thousands of years- not something I'm proud of).

My grandfather worked in the forests as a logger. It was dangerous work and men frequently were killed by falling logs. The owner of one company he worked for was particularly scrupulous and wouldn't allow work to be delayed in order to return these bodies to their families in a timely fashion.

Instead, the bodies would remain until the section of trees was cut. It was often several days before a body was brought home and, without refrigeration, was often in very bad shape. The workers had to organize and demand that when a man died his body was brought home that day. They did not fight, at that point, for improved safety standards to protect their lives, but instead for a basic acknowledgment from their employers that their lives mattered.

This is a dramatic story. Perhaps it is not one immediately recognizable as related to those young people in the NYT article in their dorm rooms fantasizing not about the betterment of mankind but of themselves, but I think there is a parallel in mentality. It is a mentality of deep disconnect with their fellow human beings.

In the last several years the twin national humiliations of the horrendous Hurricane Katrina debacle leaving thousands of Americans, particularly African Americans, stranded in flood waters peopled by the floating dead, and the illegal, immoral and utterly destructive Iraq war, which has taken thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, have brought this nation to its knees and to its feet.

In counterpoint to the wankers, young and old, focusing their neurotic energy on wealth, there were the thousands of Americans, young and old, focusing their hopeful energy on changing their country from an increasingly unjust heartbreak to an example of the possibilities of civilization. There will always be those with a mentality of pure greed and the superficial, incurious thinking processes that mark that cognitive style. But as a culture and a nation, we need to make clear that these mentalities are not the ideal, but an unfortunate human occurrence, like the clap, that needs to be treated as a disease and protected against contagion.

Our highest ideals do not include outrageous personal wealth juxtaposed with the real human suffering brought when this wealth is stripped away from those people who work the jobs, buy the homes, and pay the taxes in our working class and middle class neighborhoods where the largest part of our economy is born and grows. Our highest ideal is when wealth and security is distributed fairly, not in fifty thousand dollar dinners paid for with real money gotten from imagined profits, but by families enjoying well-earned vacations at Disneyland or being able to pay for their child's tuition at the state school. And for those business people with the Midas touch who actually lead their organizations to real growth and the resulting prosperity (i.e. Bill Gates) go ahead, buy that fifty thousand dollar dinner. You actually earned it!

An American Hero Archetype: The Merciful Middleman

2008-12-12T07:56:00.000-08:00

This is the final of my three pieces exploring the American classic film "It's A Wonderful Life" as a kind of projection from the deeper American psyche following the conclusion of World War II. I have maintained that the characters and plot provide us with a kind of dream scape of how Americans felt in 1946 and perhaps even today about the ideals of our economy, our ideas of the Divine Mother as represented by Mary Bailey, and finally, our heroes.

The character George Bailey, played by the ever-crabby Jimmy Stuart, is a unique expression of the age-old human prototype of Hero. Unlike other mythical heroes, he is not a warrior, a millionaire, or a religious figure. He is what I will term the Merciful Middleman. He represents the results of the combination in the American subconscious of the higher ideals of humanity with economics.

Other mythological representations of the hero archetype, explored exhaustively by such great minds as the late Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, include the pantheon of Greek and Norse Gods and typified by Homer in the Odyssey. I would also include the Christian figure of Jesus, and even more recently, Martin Luther King, Jr. in this group of men, historical and imagined, who come to represent the ideals of mankind including courage and intelligence. More recent representations of this ideal also tend to be attributed the qualities of kindness and compassion.

The cinematic dream of the George Bailey character conjured these higher ideals in a distinctly American manner. It took the stories of sacrifice, in Bailey's case his lifelong dreams to leave his small home town and explore the world, and merged them with economics. Bailey chose to respond to the greater economic needs of his community before his personal needs for adventure and personal glory. His community needed an honestly run savings and loan organization that made the collective American dream of home ownership possible for the average worker. For many reasons dictated by fate, he was the chosen one for this job.

This glorification of the middle man, a man of the sub-optimal merchant class, is a novel one historically. As far as I know (and if anyone reading this knows more than I on this matter, I encourage you to respond) this distinctly American melding of higher ideals with an economic system had not before been expressed in a hero myth. Although the intellectual underpinnings and necessary social changes had been evolving around the world for hundreds of years, the dream of this system seems to have crystallized here in the states.

In "It's a Wonderful Life" George Bailey is a kind of personification of a more abstract mental process where hopes and wishes congeal into dreams. In the final scene of the movie, this upholding of the Merciful Merchant above even the warrior hero is demonstrated when his younger brother returns fresh from his battle glories to offer his brother help in a supplicant manner. In fact, George is heralded as the highest form of hero even by free market standards when his self-made millionaire friend, Sam Wainwright, wires an open check to George as an acknowledgment of who the real winner is. So grand was it a thing, as imagined in this film, to be an every-man's economic advocate that the angel, Clarence, who reminded George of the profoundly positive impact his life had had on the world, was awarded the ultimate honor of wings for his efforts.

Although the climax of the film brought the idealization of America's Merciful Middleman to truly absurd levels, it serves as a useful reminder to us about how Americans once hoped a fair and honest economic system would bring all of us, including the movie's recently arrived immigrants, out of poverty and hopelessness into expressions of life that are joyful and deeply moral. (Remember, in the alternate, no-George world, the community of Bedford Falls was just another town overrun by vice and poverty).

If this movie expresses accurately some of the American subconscious, it would seem we as a people once prized prosperity, morality, and community above extravagant wealth, war, and even intellectual curiosity. All of these things are included in the film and included in American life, but I would argue that the protection of economic fairness should be a cornerstone of our political and economic systems. The higher ideals of justice, joy and equality are best served when our people are well-fed, healthy, and enjoy safe homes in safe communities.

A Dream of Femininity in "It's A Wonderful Life"

2008-12-08T06:17:00.000-08:00

As the astonishing events of WWII were completed and the soldiers who survived returned home, a dream of the feminine surfaced from the collective unconscious of a deeply charged humanity that acted as a kind of salve upon the surface of this burning new knowing. And what was newly known? Just what we, as humans are capable of: not only exceedingly deadly battle fields, but mass annihilation of children, women, pregnant and not, elderly, and disabled by means of bombs more powerful than any idea of satan as well as breathtakingly cruel, government organized genocide.

Who wants to know this about themselves? And though denial can keep our most superficial thinking at ease, nothing is lost to our deeper selves. I believe as Carl Jung did that these deeper selves connect with one another and form what he termed the collective unconscious, like the bottom of billions of wells meeting up in a dark and fruitful place. On our deepest levels, I believe, we know that Terentius was right, "Homo Sum: Humani nil a me alienum puto." This means roughly, "I am a human being, and so nothing human is strange to me."

I see the Mary Bailey character, George Bailey's wife in "It's a Wonderful Life," as a representation of a collective need for feminine salve on our newly burned knowing. So powerful was this need, in fact, the dominant culture created an ideal based on it, which women were supposed to live up to in fifties and sixties. But ideals and representation only cause more suffering when imposed on reality and we saw the women's movement in part become a response to this. Despite the healthy push back against the reduction of women into movie characters, I believe there is useful information in the Mary Bailey character for us today.

Mary was a character representing the softer aspects of the divine mother and wife. In the beginning of the movie, she was the little girl so wise and knowing of her own heart that she told the child George Bailey she would love him her entire life. As a teenager, her continuing love conjured a situation where they both got naked (after dancing into the waters below) without being required to loose their innocence, exciting stuff indeed. Once she became a woman and finally fulfilled her deepest childhood desire to become wife to George Bailey she acted as initiator into the sacred rites of conjugal love on their wedding night. A surprised George tries to take in the candle-lit love nest she creates in their battered old home.

Mary's development reaches its apex as a competent wife, protective mother, clever home decorator and active member of her community. She acts as humble conduit between her husband's needs and the outside world when he is unable or unwilling to do this for himself. She calls for help for him when he is deranged with grief and serves hot drinks to the friends and family when they collect in the nurturing home Mary created to put their money where their gratitude was. Mary was the primordial cauldron: giving and giving and giving.

This image is easily argued against and has been many times, so I will not do it here. What I am mesmerized by in this emergent dream is the depth from which the need for mothering in us all comes from and the power it exerts when it arrives. Our need to be held, understood and defended is vast in this uncertain world. Following WWII, the American psyche worked overtime expressing this need and creating stories about its perfect resolution, as if it can be resolved.

Although our challenges are far different than those faced during and after WWII, there is a profound sense of uncertainty in our age right down to the behavior and future of our good earth. Again we find ourselves in a place of needing profound comfort and protection. This time around, why don't we avoid the folly that follows literalistic thinking and translate our needs intelligently into the functions of the world? Women are not the only ones capable of deep compassion and nurturing. I am reminded of this every day when I see my husband helping care for our children. Men are not the only ones with an interest and talent for business and industry, I know this because of my shrewd and brilliant aunties- pioneers in such matters.

There is now a growing demand to have Wagoner, the CEO of GM, resign as a part of this bailout scenario. As the old vanguard is finally retired, I hope those with input on these matters are ready to recommend fearless innovation in management. This should include people able to integrate the deep, unconscious feminine attributes that promote the stalwart protection of our tender interests such as healthy children and a beautiful world to call home, into our destructive and now destroyed business models of enterprise at all cost.

A New GM: Green Motors

2008-12-04T07:38:00.000-08:00

The top execs from the Big Three are in Congress right now asking to have their companies' lives spared. The growing debate among Americans, at least the press would have us believe this, is a schism between blue and white collar classes. Why bail out the financial corps and not the auto corps? Well, we shouldn't. Our hearts should go out to the auto workers and their families. If there is a way to help them stay in good paying jobs, we Americans should support this. It is for their benefit and ours as well.

But the big problems have flowed like sewer water downhill from the top. The financial guys weren't railing on about the unions a few years ago when the companies were making strong profits off of ridiculously over sized, over-consuming SUVs. The U.S. auto makers are not just hurting right now, like more competitive auto makers, they are crumbling and it's because of extremely bad leadership.

I saw an interview with the CEO of GM earlier this year, Rick Wagoner, telling a reporter, I believe for 60 Minutes, that he does not believe in the theories of global warming. This is an astonishing position and one demonstrating how very uneducated, incurious, and out of touch with reality the executives of these auto makers really are- like dinosaurs: big, ugly, wrinkly and dying out.

But the American citizens have an opportunity here. As GM is within a few weeks of closing their doors without a big money bailout- start with them. (I should disclose here that I bought a small number of GM stocks earlier this year- silly me). If they want to keep their doors open they have to move to all green vehicles immediately. Only hybrids from here on out and only electric within two years. If they need money, give it to them to retrofit their machinery for the new vehicles. General Motors becomes Green Motors. And make a stipulation they need at least one HIGHLY affordable model. Give government rebates to families who purchase these green vehicles.

Currently, hybrids are too expensive for many families and competition in the field could be better. Even that sorry, lost old man, Wagoner, was willing to drive in from Detroit in an American-made hybrid today. Lets make that the norm.

We need to have aggressive goals not to just reduce CO2 emissions in this nation, but to eliminate them. Our enormous economic mess right now may be the greatest opportunity we have had since post-WWII to rebuild, this time along our own shores. Lets take away any need for negotiations with OPEC or on-going debate on tax code for oil companies. Lets move beyond dirty technology and fear-based economic systems.

If the CEOs of the auto Big Three (or more accurately, the Diminishing Three) are an accurate sample, the folks running these mega corporate bodies may not even have the intellectual construct for understanding what is in the greatest good for our nation and for all nations. They may not be able to imagine a better way. But many of us can.

It is time for bold action to turn the course of history. As far as the U.S. auto makers go, we have nearly nothing to loose by pushing them into the 21st century.

The Economic Theory of "It's a Wonderful Life"

2008-11-30T09:52:00.000-08:00

Beyond the oversimplified, dichotomous models of free markets occupying one extreme on a continuum and command markets pulling at the opposite end emerges the idea of economies being basically fair to those who participate. Interjecting cultural mores into the discussion of economics is invaluable, I believe, if it is our intention to elevate human economic systems above the most primitive forms, such as the biological rules that govern bacteria. In those systems, organisms lacking nervous systems consume everything available without consideration of the overall bug population or long term availability of resources. Our public policy has enacted through unimaginably complicated formulations this most basic economic system: eat what's in front of you.

But this utter scarcity of an idea was not always the dominant one as illustrated by the film, "It's a Wonderful Life." Ideas of fairness are culturally prescribed and subscribed, unique to each nation and culture. When I imagine the film as being a kind of American dream sequence bringing to consciousness matters mulled over deep in the unconscious, I feel I have insight into the collective wish American citizens once had for a fair economy. And by fair, I mean one that protects the dignity of working individuals and their families because, after much hard-earned wisdom, the collective mind had determined this to be the most reasonable course.

In the movie, there were two characters used to establish a counterpoint to the protagonist's, George Bailey, position on fair economic systems. His friend from high school, Sam Wainright, went on to find his fortune in the big city. The other wealthy man was, of course, Mr. Potter, the crippled, perpetually geriatric character who haunts generations of the Bailey boys. As imagined as a kind of dream, I interpret these two characters, Mr.'s Potter and Wainright, as expressions of American's feelings about the way in which primal, even sexual energy is expressed through participation in the economy.

Mr. Potter is throughout the film confined to a wheelchair carved and decorated to resemble a throne. Though he is clearly the economic king of the small town, he is paralyzed from the waist down and so one assumes impotent sexually. He is described by other characters as "frustrated" and "sick in the mind and soul." He represents the neurotic psyche of one cut off from primal energy. Interestingly, this character's first and second chakras would also be inoperative. These represent the root chakra associated with connection to one's tribe and groundings in reality. The second chakra is seat to sexuality and individuality. Mr. Potter could be seen as representing the natural disconnect resulting from unchecked greed expressed through an economic system.

Sam Wainright, conversely, represents overly enacted primal energy within an economic system. He is the one who courts Mary, eventually Mrs. Bailey, via phone call from New York City. A heavily made up woman is touching and caressing Wainright while he is on the phone with another woman. One assumes she is a kind of prostitute, as she does not mind her apparent boyfriend is on the phone with another woman. Here capitalism is imagined as being prone to over-expression of primal energy and immoderate appetites. This character was more sympathetic in the end as he came through for George Bailey when he needed money. Wainright acknowledged the value of the modest, middle man, though he had larger dreams himself. Perhaps deep down we, as Americans, feel it is better to be a little loose with one's primal energy than stingy.

It is George Bailey who represents the accumulated dream of a lively but fair capitalistic system where a man of forceful primal energies moderates these appetites by directing them into endeavors of higher ideals. These as represented by Bailey's lifelong dedication to the savings and loan (which he accepted responsibility for only grudgingly), and the abundant fertility of his marriage to the love of his life. This highly idealized symbol can be seen as a representation of the feelings of the dominant American culture following the Great Depression and World War II. These were people who had lived through the crushing effects of a failed economic dream and the necessary sacrifices of protecting the better interests of the world under threat of fascism.

There was an expressed tolerance for the slightly overwrought libido of the capitalist Wainright, understanding that this energy can push development forward. But it was the intelligent understanding of Bailey, a symbol of passion and sacrifice of one's personal interests towards the higher good that brings forward to consciousness the unconscious wisdom gotten through hardship resulting from excesses in our economic system.

I hope we, as a people, return to this respect for moderated consumption and understand there is a kind of wealth enjoyed by those who work for the higher good of our community not measured in the GDP. At this time, we do not need a wild swing from one form of economic system to another. Instead, we need an economic system energized by possibility and grounded by a deep sense of commitment to each other.

A Dream Analysis of "It's a Wonderful Life"

2008-11-28T15:19:00.001-08:00

I was watching "It's A Wonderful Life" yesterday, one of my favorite holiday movies. My mom called while I was watching it and teased me for my undying loyalty to the film. She said it's a good movie the first several times you see it, but she couldn't understand why I would watch it every single year. Annoyed for being called out on my sentimentality, I got off the phone and returned to watching my Jimmy.

With a sharper eye, I observed the movie with my mom's question in mind, "Why do I keep watching this movie?" After a few minutes I understood that this film is, in my estimation, a kind of dream of America. Viewed from the psychoanalytic perspective, the movie is fecund with symbols that emerge from the greatest depths of our cultural collective unconscious and, when analyzed, bring a great deal of clarity to the questions of what it means to be an American, or perhaps more accurately, what we hope it means.

In fact, I saw so much powerful symbolism in the movie I was inspired to write about it and realized in considering the topic I would need a few entries to do the subject any justice. And so this will be the introduction to three, maybe four, entries for the holiday season investigating "It's A Wonderful Life" using my skills as a therapist to understand the film as a kind of manufactured, unconscious expression of some of the hopes, dreams and social mores that work to create the American Dream.

The first entry will focus on the symbolism used to communicate normative statements about economics and the highest expression of our free market system. The second entry will look at the division of labor and relationships between the sexes. The final entry will be about the American version of the hero myth as personified by the main character, George Bailey.

The current economic situation we find ourselves addressing this year and perhaps, for years to come, makes this movie and its deep symbolism particularly pertinent. I hope you enjoy the upcoming blogs and respond if you feel like it. I updated my blog so that bloggers can give anonymous input (as long as everyone is well behaved about it). I hope everyone reading this is finding themselves if not abundant this year, then safe and healthy.

A Bizarre Butcher Job

2008-11-21T12:09:00.000-08:00

Broadcast news sources today have been looping the video of turkeys meeting an unpleasant end via an industrial bleeder on camera during a recent Palin interview in Alaska. I feel it necessary to defend the woman on this one. When I tell people in the lower 48 that things are different in Alaska, they don't seem to gather my meaning. This video shot of a farmer shoving the wobbly, broken head and neck of a large turkey into a funnel-like machine while Palin rambled on about something, though I admit I wasn't really paying attention to her statements, may have been a bit jarring to outsiders.

Indeed, vegetarians and vegans probably felt more like witnesses than viewers when that came on the screen. But this was a nice example of the difference between many Alaskan's mentality and the rest of the nation. Perhaps its the harshness of the climate, or the extraction-based economy, or the temperament of those drawn from elsewhere in the world to Alaska, but there is a clear-eyed way about those people (despite what their absurd political dramas indicate). Palin and some other Alaskans would figure that the reality of eating turkey on Thanksgiving is someone somewhere raised then slaughtered the bird. Having footage of reality might not seem like a big deal to many Alaskans, even if that footage happened to have the state's governor giving an interview in the foreground.

In fact, the press reported Palin's office was notified before broadcast about Nightmare On Turkey Street and they didn't mind it being in the shot. Of course, the story was about Palin granting clemency to one turkey perhaps lulling the viewer into wrongly assuming it was a fluff piece. But in an uncharacteristic nod to reality, Palin went ahead and allowed the truth to be demonstrated in the background, the bloody, bloody background. If only she'd been that intimate with reality when campaigning for VP. What kind of footage would they have gotten of McCain in the background I wonder?

A Must See & A Must Read

2008-11-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

I viewed "Taxi to the Dark Side" last week and highly recommend that all voting, adult Americans view this documentary. The piece follows the Bush administration's policy of torture from the White house to the detainees. Any understanding of American image abroad must include this information, as horrific as it really is.

Also, I read "The Forever War" by Dexter Filkins recently. Filkins was a New York Times journalist in the Middle East and Iraq specifically for years. This book tells many stories of his experiences as a journalist there. It gave a very intimate sense of what it was like for him to see what he saw and know what he knows.

The sources have really added a lot to my sense of what the hell has gone on over there. I also found both sources to be balanced and fair to those involved, especially the soldiers implicated in the Abu Ghraib horrors.

I hope very much our new administration holds those responsible under real legal scrutiny. The people of the Middle East and those at home deserve at least this follow up to the illegal, immoral goings on of the past eight years.

Hillary as Madam Secretary: How to Neutralize a Rival

2008-11-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

The announcement of Hillary Clinton as the possible appointment as Secretary of State under the president-elect Obama left me, like many, baffled. In the ensuing days, the backlash of liberal bloggers has made the news. However, I've been sitting back with a wait and see kind of attitude. Obama and his extremely politically nimble team are up to something. Of course, what that is would probably be utterly clear if I'd read "Team of Rivals" by Dorris Goodwin about the political strategy of Abraham Lincoln. Reportedly, Obama and his folks have read this and are taking a lot away from it. I'm number 11 on the wait list for this book at my local library. Damn highly literate Minnesotans, it'll be next year before I see a copy of it, let alone John Updike's latest novel.

So in the meantime, I've had to try to figure out this latest bold move by Obama without the help of an expert. It seems to me this was an ingenious proposal by the team (we assume this was Obama's idea, but many of his greatest ideas are adopted from the good thinkers he is in conversation with). In one move, he put himself in a possible win-win position. Although Hillary is not known for her foreign affairs acumen, she reportedly has been to over 80 countries. Her presence reminds those in countries around the world of a time when U.S. foreign policy followed a discernible logic and when American leaders were willing and able to learn from mistakes.

Further, insiders have always noted how likable she is in person. She is known as being friendly, open and very caring, the kind of friend who remembers to send a card when you're sick or injured. Having a genuinely concerned person in this role might prove really helpful when working to disarm violent enemies and talk other leaders in helping us with said task.

Critics who fear she and/or Bill will go hillbilly rogue haven't been paying much attention to Hillary's way of being a political animal. If anything, she has been too eager to go along with the boy's club. Her vote to authorize a shitty war that stunk before we had a chance to pull up our boot and take a look swayed me away from Hillary support for president before she formally announced. I do not believe the Obama camp would have to worry about Hillary towing the party line. She very good at that, sometimes too good.

Rumors have it that she is reticent to accept a job that puts her under a clear chain of command, she does what Obama asks her to do as Madam Secretary. Instead, so the rumor goes, she is serious about staying on as a senator and accepting as her boss the much broader authority of a voting district. She reports to herself and her people in this scenario. And frankly, this may be where she is able to exercise the greatest power over the longest period of time. This is an arena for her to fight for her favorite causes and part of me hopes she stays put.

Whatever the outcome, the Clinton political machine has been sated. Offered a highly prestigious job, the victor extended a friendly hand and acknowledgment of how important the Clinton's appear to believe they are. If she accepts, Obama's policies get the face of a popular politician that goes a long way in appeasing constituents and folks abroad. If she refuses, the offer was still made and she may be more likely to help out the administration in the halls of congress.

Nice move Obama.

Palin Not Really A Drag Queen

2008-11-13T06:48:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin attending the Republican governors meeting today smacks to me as being something akin to Madonna performing in a drag show. Although there is an obvious communion of ideas around image, there are differences so fundamental as to make the entire endeavor absurd. The sad thing is Madonna would know she is not really a drag queen, just as the drag queens would know this. Considering the respect and support Madonna has shown the gay community in her career, Madonna's drag show would likely be one of ironic humor and friendly acknowledgement. From the echo chamber being formed around the Florida meetings, the real Republican royalty does not appreciate this wanna be.

What Palin doesn't seem to realize is though the traditional Republican party goers may support gun rights, they have no intention of shooting wolves themselves. They may support right to life positions, but their privileged teenage daughters would be making a discreet visit to the family doctor, who would safely take care of the matter-no shot gun weddings for these folks. They may go to church, but they're not looking for an obvious sign from God to direct them to their next career move. Palin is not one of them. The Republican party may purport a whole host of every-day-man positions, but they have been a party that increasingly dedicated itself to the protection of the consolidation of power and resources into the hands of a very few. The rest of the platform was pomp for the masses because in the end, there was enough of a democracy left that the Republicans actually had to convince millions to vote for them.

The future of the party is not radical populism where Jo the Plumber is invited to policy meetings. This is image only. But Palin doesn't seem to be in on that one. When interviewed this week, she continues to espouse concerns that she did on the campaign trail about William Ayers and Obama's fitness to make military decisions. The Republican elite did not really believe any of what they accused Obama of, they were just trying to sell it to the unsophisticated masses, of which Palin is clearly one. You're not part of the show, Palin, those heals and dresses are borrowed!

The Republican party does need to regroup and balance themselves out. The extremes of their philosophies were truly expressed and the damage done is unimaginable. They will go more towards the center and it will not be Palin who becomes the figure head. She was used as a gimmick and has yet to figure out her gimmick role. My bet is on Pawlenty and Jindal.

These guys are centrist right not weirdos hanging out of helicopters with guns for fun. The real threat in 2012 to the Democrats will be the Republicans going back to more moderate traditional forms of representation. These ways cannot lead us where we need to go, but the Republicans may manage to convince many Americans that a conservative, return-to-yesterday approach will be adequate to save our planet, our economy and our standing in the world. They will get out their old Beatles LPs and sing along, "Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away...I believe in yesterday."

We need to see this one coming and do what we can with our current opportunities to get going into the 21st century.

Why Capitalism Can Still Be Good

2008-11-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

As the three big U.S. auto makers are doing the swirling whirly around the big toilet bowl that is our current economic condition, I have taken pause to consider the wisdom of capitalism as a method for creating and distributing resources. Despite the occasional suggestion by a family member that I'm a communist, this is not true.

I do believe there are areas of the economy that should be left to the government to manage. I believe in public education, public works like roads and sewer systems, a national military, and hopefully soon, the development of universal health care. The idea of pure capitalism should be the exclusive domain of eleventh grade boys in the high school philosophy club. But I don't think these beliefs make me a communist, or even a socialist for that matter.

I believe capitalism is an ingenious system for motivating human behavior. Ask a child to make his bed for the good of all then compare this reaction to the one inspired when there's a quarter or half dollar on the line and you'll understand what I'm talking about. There are enormous environmental and domestic challenges facing working age Americans right now. Imagine effectively harnessing that motivation seen in a little kid frantically pulling those blankets straight to get his reward towards the end of green energy. For me, the big tasks facing our nation and world seem more manageable with this in mind.

Of course, that motivation to get the quarter can easily be misused by big kids (otherwise legally known as adults) taking shortcuts in making their figurative bed and in the end entirely failing at the task they set out to do. Back to the American auto makers. We have known for many years carbon emissions are a big problem for the future of our planet and, therefore, the quality of life or likeliness of life for our children and grandchildren. Further, we know most of our oil is pulled out of politically unstable countries that acting on our economic self-interest has further destabilized. These are very big problems.

But in pursuing the extremely restricted guidelines of personal self-interest, our big auto makers have been mass producing monstrosities of vehicles known as SUVs for years. And apparently taking a cue from the auto makers, consumers have been buying them up like madness. Driving into the parking lot of my child's school, I would guess more than 75% of the vehicles are massive gas guzzlers. These vehicles and their production were always going to be unsustainable and we are now seeing the inevitable outcome.

What democracy depends on most in order to harness its power and direct it in more positive directions is leadership. Just as the child has little interest in the big picture of why its good to keep one's living space tidy, apparently millions of fully grown individuals must also be directed to live and produce in responsible ways. I include myself in this point. I enjoy the inspiring effect and momentum-building qualities of good leadership as much as anyone. I need it as much as any other American.

It looks like we may finally have some good leadership nationally. Lets build on it. I have been looking into a program called RePower America, which promotes a goal of all green energy in ten years. If any of you reading this want to check this organization out or let me know about others you have discovered that are looking promising, let me know about it. Share it with everyone you know. Let's use our incredible gifts of technology to spread positive ideas.

Dylan Quote

2008-11-06T06:42:00.001-08:00

This morning I found what looks like a more accurate recall of the Bob Dylan statement from the show Tuesday night. According to journalist Greil Marcus writing on Salon.com, who was reportedly also at the concert, Dylan told the crowd, "I was born in 1941, the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I've been living in darkness ever since, but it looks like things are going to change now."

Even better than how I remembered it.

Tangled Up In Blue and Loving It

2008-11-05T06:49:00.001-08:00

Last night, upon the excellent suggestion of someone who knows how to spend an election night, I attended the Bob Dylan concert at the U of M with two of my fellow progressive Minnesotans. We were among like minds in that hall. There was a kind of assumption between fans of Obama support. I asked a couple people how "he" was doing and these strangers immediately understood me to mean Obama, then gave me whatever new info they had. One man told me "he" got Ohio and I was confident of victory then, though I was feeling pretty good after Pennsylvania went blue for "that one."

Dylan and his band played a phenomenal set tearing through his meaty newer blues cuts and popping along the crowd-pleasing oldies. The show itself was deeply inspiring as a man heading into his 70s directed some of the finest rock n' roll musicians I have ever heard through truly great works that keep coming after fifty years of writing music. The set had a cool stylized compass on the floor encircled by a yellow band. Dylan played keyboards, harmonica, and for a few moments, an electric guitar on one side of the stage while his band formed a semi-circle facing him. The only musician facing the crowd directly for the entirety of the set was the drummer.

Dylan and his musicians were in an incredibly beautiful, musical conversation clearly being directed by Bob. I read an interview a couple years ago where Dylan said he knew his musician's abilities better than they knew themselves and he could get outstanding performances out of them. I remember thinking at the time this was an apt description of good leadership. Being able to watch the maestro in action creating a kind of sound vortex of deeply creative measure in the space between himself and the other musicians was a real pleasure for me.

I believe it was deeply kind and utterly appropriate for Dylan, a true genius and leader in his own right, to come home to Minnesota last night and musically mirror what was happening in our nation. Barak Obama saw in his fellow Americans a capacity for fairness, intelligence and democratic competence many of us were afraid to imagine. For myself, my hope was constrained by that looming possibility of disappointment. But last night, I was not disappointed.

Most of us were not disappointed. Our nation's next leader said to us simply and persuasively, "Yes we can." And for a moment we were able to bend our minds around that simple statement. Like the vortex of genius sound between Dylan and his band, the space between Obama and the American citizens became fecund with possibility.

Before the concert, we had a good idea Obama was winning while we filed into the hall and bought our beers. But it was Dylan who told us without telling us, a truly Minnesotan skill. While watching the band return to the stage for the encore, I wondered if Dylan and his band had been listening to the radio backstage. It seems so as Dylan, in a profoundly uncharacteristic move, talked to the audience for an effort other than to introduce his band. I cannot recall his exact words, but essentially he told the crowd that he was born in 1941, the year Pearl Harbor was attacked. He said it has been a dark world ever since but tonight it seemed change had come.

Dylan and his band performed just a few songs for the encore then released us to learn the election results from our personal electronic devises and more convincingly, from the enormous screen displaying CNN outside of the hall in the foyer. There were those who were disappointed, but they were in a stark minority. The vast majority went nuts in joyful expression. I did not cry, but moved my face in all manner of unnatural contortions to avoid it. I saved my tears until I got home and shared them, the hundreds of them, with my happy husband.

There is a genius in our system of government and it is this: a way through to second chances. Ours has been an often ugly country with hateful expressions many times overpowering our loving ones. But in America, at least for now, we have a mechanism by which to redeem our better selves and create an opportunity to make good on our highest ideals. We have that opportunity. Now lets get to work.

Patty's Pet F$@#*ing Peeve From Canvasing

2008-11-03T05:57:00.001-08:00

I completed canvasing yesterday, leaving the remainder of the get-out-the-vote efforts to my fellow committed Dems in suburban Minnesota. Despite popular myth, Democrats are a powerfully motivated bunch when they have a group of candidates and a platform they can stomach promoting.

Hats off to you all: the college-age organizers who have been sleeping in unfurnished apartments in cities hundreds or thousands of miles from home being paid a stipend that pays for food only and no beer. Thank you to the thousands of Boomers who have seen the financial results of their generation's hard push towards individual freedoms come back and bite them only a few years before they are scheduled to retire. Or rather, thank you to those Boomers who have seen this happen and are now fighting hard to correct the problems for their own benefit, and perhaps even for the benefit of others.

Thank you to the racist old Swede who told me two days ago, "I don't like Blacks and for good reason, but I'm voting for Obama." I felt torn in hearing that statement, wrenched between pain at his boldly stated racism and impressed by his willingness to consider the ballot rationally despite his racism. Thank you to the working class, White guys in Minnesota who are abandoning the Republican Macho-Making-Machine-Mentality for measured reason and intelligent choice towards economic self-interest. And thank you to the millions of African American and Hispanic American voters who will be the King Makers in this election while White folks continue our cultural battle between xenophobic yesterday and an emotionally intelligent attitude of a shared world for today.

I'm sure I have more thank yous, but that's where I'll leave it. Now for my Pet F#$@!ing Peeves.

My biggest peeve for this election year is most defiantly the White "Independent" voters. My guess is never in history have we seen so many Independent voters. I'm sure there are those who are and have been Independent voters for many years and to those I have less criticism. But from my experience actually talking with these "Independent" voters, they seem to have few answers, many criticisms, a need to seem responsible as a citizen, and some unexpressed "thing" going on inside. My guess is that this "thing" is a palpable resistance to voting for a man with skin darker than theirs, a man married to a woman who is also, oh shit, African American, as well.

This self-labeling "Independent" seems to give people a sense that they are good, earnest, powerful Americans who can't be pulled by a major party, so fierce is their autonomy. In reality, many of these people seem more like the kids on the playground who have lots of toys, don't want to share, and who run away, tiny arms and fists clutching their stuff, when a grown up tells them to share. In Reality World, we need to work with the problems we face, which are big and scary and not going anywhere. This means intelligent reasoning, compromise and working together.

Now I'm also a fan of multi-party systems. Many democracies other than ours have many parties represented by their governments and this is often a very good thing. I would be in full support of all those so-called "Independents" working hard, and I mean as hard as the Democrat organizers have worked this year, towards getting broader support and representation to the Greens, the libertarians and new parties as well. Even the Alaskan secessionists have a place at the table in my opinion. But unfortunately, from what I've seen, this "independent" vote seems to be mostly disenfranchised Republicans not willing to take responsibility for the horror that is the administration they put into power, and who are DOING nothing to heal this country and this world.

I very much hope that the "Independent" voters jump on the Big Ship Reality with the rest of us in recognizing no person, neighborhood or nation goes it alone and that when mistakes are made we need to do what we can to make them right again. And if those who are calling their racism "independence," then I hope their twisted and fractured thinking leaves them so empty and exhausted they cannot manage to make it to the polls tomorrow.

I hope very much that Obama's likely victory tomorrow will bring in a new culture of responsibility to our country where citizens recognize the necessity of participation in democracy and commit themselves to it. For those who are actually "Independent," I hope very much they commit to doing the work necessary to bring forth new parties, strengthen older ones and deliver to our nation additional representation in our local, state and national governments beyond the narrow agendas of our two party system. Calling oneself an Independent so you don't have to commit to doing anything for either big party is just plain lazy.

A lot of energy has been raised that has renewed our democracy. Lets keep it going beyond tomorrow and remake ourselves into a 21st century democracy.

Last Push to Election

2008-11-02T08:12:00.000-08:00

I was out for several hours canvasing yesterday and will be heading out in a short time to do it again today. Although Minnesota is shown to have moved from an undependable pale blue to a solid blue over the last week, I continue to feel compelled to work on the get-out-to-vote effort. I guess I'm feeling like I need to see it to believe it. I need to talk with my fellow suburban Minnesotans to hear their rationale and gauge their enthusiasm. Also, I need to do something, anything in these final remaining hours before the election.

I admit it, my anxiety is high. As I have written in past blogs, I feel the middle class dreams of America are being stripped away by large organizations with enormous power to wield over our modest financial lives. When describing the current financial burdens of health care, energy, education and housing prices to a young Swedish man during our trip to Argentina last week, his jaw literally dropped. He is married to an American and they are considering their future plans, which include moving back to the states to be closer to her family. Their time line may be altered by my husband and my description of our lives as a young family. Just describing the costs for having our second son, a mercifully healthy process beginning to end, led the young Swede to proclaim repeatedly, "That is outrageous, that is outrageous!"

While changing airports going in and out of Argentina, the drive around Buenos Aires brought home to me the fundamental difference between first and second world country status being one of the health and opportunities for the middle class. Flying into Buenos Aires, there are many mansions peppering the landscape illustrating to me the fact that Argentina has enormous national wealth. This wealth apparently isn't generously shared as driving through Buenos Aires one sees a city of innumerable high rise slums. Despite wealth and a healthy number in their educated class, they are a country who has suffered a "dirty war" in recent decades and only several years ago a complete economic collapse.

Many Americans like to kid themselves that this could not happen to us, that we are somehow protected from the worst of the natural results of corrupt government. This is a silly illusion, but a very painful one when it is stripped away by reality. We have our own high rise slums and the hellacious aftermath of Hurricane Katrina tore back gauzy illusion to expose the gangrenous rot of poverty and social injustice. One place where the people of our nation are already suffering a second and third world nation lifestyle was broadcast worldwide. One of many shameful situations we have as a nation revealed. And of course, the very dirty techniques ordered from the highest levels for treatment of prisoners in the current war where our government has enacted exactly what it says we're fighting against. Thank you John McCain for supporting that Bush/Cheney policy.

As Garrison Keillor wrote recently, anyone not supporting Barak Obama for president at this point cannot be convinced by any use of the English language. There is no point in trying to convince anyone of anything at this point in the game. Undecideds are likely just those who know it is folly to vote for McCain/Palin, but know in their hearts they will not vote for a Black man who supports populist policies.

We, the Obama/Biden supporters, simply need to get out there to vote on Tuesday, or earlier if possible. And additionally, we need to get every single Obama supporter we know out to vote as well. If this requires making phone calls, knocking on doors or even driving someone to the polls, do it. Do this for your country and your countrymen. Washing the polls with Obama/Biden support is our patriotic duty at this time.

An Obama T-shirt In Argentina

2008-10-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

I had an opportunity last week to travel to San Carlos de Bariloche in Argentina. I was in the company of people from several different countries including Argentina, Sweden, the U.S., Portugal and Pakistan. I did not know the social norms for talking politics with people from these different cultures, so I brought my Obama t-shirt featuring Obama's face on the front. When language fails, we always have symbols. My non-verbal attempt to start up dialogue with people from other cultures was successful a couple times. The most notable was a conversation I was able to have with a small group of Argentinian scientists (I was able to have this conversation because of their language acumen, not my own).

Over lunch a middle aged Argentinian man asked me what I thought about the American elections and noted my t-shirt. What unfolded was a conversation where I worked to be open to any questions he had, and to answer them with honesty and veracity (to the best of my ability, anyway). He seemed most interested in how EXACTLY the housing market fell apart. Understanding the love for detail scientists seem to have across cultural and geographic divides, I summoned the most technical explanation I could manage, which was not particularly technical I admit. I explained the use of physicists and mathematicians on Wall Street to conjure algorithms of pay schedules and magical concoctions of diced mortgages that would somehow solve the tediously human problem of loan defaults.

I felt a need to defend most of my fellow Americans and pointed out that 94% of home mortgages were being paid on time. The Argentines seemed particularly impressed by this data. I likened the mess to poisoning an apple, though most of the apple is good, the poison spreads and ruins the whole fruit. My analogy seemed to go over well. I was proud of myself, like a little girl winning a spelling bee where I was able to spell all the words, including the ones I didn't know the meaning of.

I hope my explanations were accurate enough to be truthful. It was clear the Argentinians and others were very interested in how someone inside the country perceives what is going on, even if that person fails to meet expert status. I was also very interested in hearing what other people were hearing in their country about this mess. The same Argentinian man said his government was trying to tell the people the economic implosion of its northern neighbor would not effect them, but he and the other Argentinians at the table shook their heads at this. Not for a moment, it seemed, would they believe that fairy tale.

I went on to caution this is a much larger problem than a banking problem, that our economy has been deteriorating for decades. I pointed out the crushing expenses to the middle class, housing, education and health care, and that we haven't seen any corresponding increase in wages. I told them the poison economic policies began in earnest with Reagan nearly thirty years ago and would take a long time to correct. The seemingly naturally serious Argentinians appeared to become more solemn when they heard my opinion, but nodded their heads if not in agreement then not in disagreement.

I learned later the Argentinian economy was taking some significant hits that week and the people, who quite recently survived a complete economic meltdown, may be vulnerable to another.

We are in a fine mess and it was clear by my interactions abroad that this is not lost on our neighbors. The only politician I've heard tie this odious economic trend to Reagan is Obama. Only he, from what I've heard, is clear on the natural results of letting large corporations decide tax law, government regulations and trade agreements. This has been a long time coming folks. With a good leader we have a lot of hard work in front of us. Without a good leader, we may be at the end of the line with our status as world leader.

The difference between a first and second or third world country is not wealth, but how this wealth is developed, managed and distributed. It is time our childish ideas about perfect freedom leading to perfect economic justice be shed. We need to wise up and get serious about ourselves and our prospects. No more illusions about easy money and no more fantasies of quick fixes. We're in this for the long run and we are all of us, Argentinians included, in this together.

Some Minnesotans Boo McCain's Call To Reason: Angry Racism Afoot

2008-10-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

The weather was beautiful yesterday with a bright blue sky set dramatically against the bold golds and yellows of the Midwest autumn leaves. I was paired by our district organizer with a young dad who brought along a beautiful, little girl and his incisive sense of humor.While driving to our canvasing neighborhood, a new development of town homes (1/4 of which were for auction or sale), we laughed and joked about the absurdity of the television adds being launched by the GOP in our state.

I talked about my apprehension about a possible Bradly effect, where White voters polled say they will vote for Obama, but behind the curtain, will not follow through with voting for an African American. My co-canvaser insisted this will not be a significant phenomenon, and easily overwhelmed by the enthusiastic new voters.

I want to believe this young man. But I have seen first hand that there is angry racism among many white voters here in Minnesota and the Republicans are drill-baby-drillin' into the deep wells of this hatred with their stump speeches and advertisements. I fear they will be successful in bringing this poison to the surface and unexpected outcomes will follow.

Senator McCain did "tone down" the rhetoric here in Minnesota yesterday during a rally, with a few moments of it being picked up by the mainstream media. A young white man told McCain he was afraid for his unborn child if Obama becomes president. Another rally participant, an apparently older, white woman (her back was to the camera) told McCain she was afraid because Obama was an "Arab," by which she apparently also meant terrorist. In both cases, McCain acted like a reasonable human being and told the audience Obama is a decent, family man and there is nothing to fear. The Minnesotan audience booed his call to reason.

Most of the days I canvased for the DFL over the last several weeks, I have run into at least one openly angry, white, male Minnesotan who made an active point of communicating this anger to me and at me for supporting Obama. I have not written about this before in part because I don't want to mischaracterize Minnesotans. Indeed, it is highly likely Obama will win here because of cross socio/cultural/economic support he is enjoying in the twin cities. But here in the suburbs it is different. I have run across several who were only barely able to contain their anger, with huffy voices, tense faces and defensive body postures, they have told me, in no uncertain terms, they did not support my ticket and I was not welcome on their property.

One many even followed me around his neighborhood in a car. When I approached a home across the street from his, he jumped out and yelled at me, "No one is home!"

I said loudly back, "There are some people home."

He then said, "There's no one home at my house!"

I popped back quite annoyed, "I'm not going to your home, sir." I added in the "sir" because it often calms highly agitated people down when someone makes an extra effort to be polite. I felt I was dealing with someone who may be mentally ill and instinctively moved into my therapist mode.

"Good." He got the last word in.

Yesterday, the man I was canvasing with got an address wrong and approached a home not on the list. People identifying themselves as Republican on the state voting records are not on our DFL lists. Only people who are not identified as supporing a particular party or Independents are on our lists. People who tell us they are Republican are noted and the newer lists will drop them. Most of us have no intention of changing people from one political party to another.

At any rate, a man at the house we approached did not answer the door, but watched us through a window. Apparently, he figured out we were DFL supporters as evidenced by the fistfuls of Obama and other DFL candidate pamphlets we carried. He opened his window and shouted out that he did not want us leaving any of our information and was not a supporter of us. We smiled and readily agreed.

The man in the window had that same contorted, angry expression on his face and tense voice I have seen and heard many times in the last few weeks. My fellow canvaser did not seem the least bothered by any of this and continued on his way. I was disturbed as I have been in the past. In my training as a therapist, I have fine tuned my skills at reading people, and it certainly wouldn't take a therapist to read the anger I have seen among some. These people, I'm sure not in any way a majority of Republicans, but a significant popluation nonetheless, seem to have extremely emotional, even aggressive reactions to political discussion. Political strategists on all sides need to take this seriously.

Although McCain himself did not support the angry ignorance of those in his crowd of fans, he has continued to allow his campaign to make hateful, insincere statements designed to inflame the Republican base. Considering how angry and threatened many in their base already are, this tactic of the McCain campaign is extremely irresponsible. They do not understand there is a tremendous distance between the elite and academic Republicans and the Republicans in the rural and suburbans areas.

Many of the every-day-man Republicans of the rural and suburban neighborhoods do not take these hate tactics with a grain of salt. This is not politics as usual for them. McCain's campaign isn't inspiring doubt in the electorate, they are tapping into deep rage and prejudice. And some of these every-day-man Republicans are capable of violence.

When McCain looses this election, and he will, he will have exhausted the capital he built over his political career on this dubious failure of a campaign. I only hope his legacy is the only casualty of this idiocy. I hope very much African Americans, immigrants, and other people in historically vulnerable positions in our country will not become the targets of the tapped hatred McCain's campaign and Palin have been drill baby drillin' for.

Lets Be Reasonable As Well As Moral On The Economy

2008-10-08T06:14:00.000-07:00

I watched expectantly last night the second presidential debate between Obama and McCain. I worked to view the debate as my Minnesotan friends and neighbors might see it. Were their concerns, spoken aloud or privately guarded, addressed last night? I would guess there were words spoken by both candidates that, if true and preceding effective action, would be a great comfort. Obama spoke extensively and thoroughly about the need to change focus from top-down tax policy where very wealthy people and corporations are taxed at disproportionately low rates to a tax policy that promotes economic prosperity in the middle class. McCain had an unexpected moment where he advocated the use of the federal government as watch dog and negotiator with the banks on behalf of Americans in home foreclosure. Both men had some ideas about reforming government and the economy, I would argue Obama had more ideas and was more thorough in communicating them. But I doubt if many of my fellow Minnesotans were comforted much by either candidate. Further, I doubt if it was humanly possible for either candidate to allay their fears in a presidential debate.

Last week I went out canvasing for the DFL the evening after the senate passed the bailout. It seems a long time ago now. My partner in street-pounding was the Obama organizer for my district, a friendly young woman just out of college. We had several minutes to talk when walking the several blocks from where we parked our cars to the addresses on our list. She told me the canvasing the previous night had been a veritable Demo love fest. She told me she personally spoke with four Republicans-turned-Democrats who were happy in their transition and willing to talk, a remarkable thing among many tight-lipped Minnesotans. For some reason, I doubted we would have the same reception this night, though this feeling was vague and not connected to a particular line of reasoning.

What happened, or rather didn't happen, over the next hour and a half was eerie and deeply uncomfortable: no one would talk to us. And by no one, I mean no one. The young woman and I worked our list up one side of the street and down the other. Many people were either not home or refused to answer the door. Most of those who we were able to get to the door refused flatly to talk. One woman who was mowing her lawn seemed to be trying to avoid eye contact with me as I approached her home with a clipboard and donning an Obama sticker on my shirt. Unable to avoid me finally as I stood on her doorstep and stared at her for some time, she turned off the mower and looked at me. No matter my coaxing, which included extensive use of my training as a mental health counselor, I was unable to disarm this woman. With a pained and grim grin pulled across her thin face, she said she could not tell me who she supported.

This encounter was uncomfortable but the one I had shortly afterward was a bit scary. I knocked on the front door of an aging, modest home in adequate repair and could see and hear the TV going in the window immediately beside the door. An older man with pure fury contorting the aging features of his pale face came angrily out of a side door. He spoke to me sharply from behind where I was standing and startled me. I was taken aback as he told me to get off his property. I quickly left and mercifully, had only a few more houses to stop at before the list was complete. Whether my fellow Minnesotans liked it or not, it is completely legal to go door to door and talk about politics in this democracy (for now anyway), and so I proceeded though hesitantly as it is also a right to be rude as long as it's not openly threatening.

The young organizer and I were utterly relieved to be done with our canvasing for the evening. On the walk back I wondered aloud what had happened since the night before when she enjoyed the deeply satisfying experience of having people happy to see her and willing to talk politics. Then it occurred to me, of course, the vote. The senate vote passed for the $700 billion bailout. These Minnesotans were likely furious about the vote. Being Minnesotans, they apparently were too polite to be honest and forthright with their feelings about the matter with us, but the logic flows. The only thing that had changed in politics since the night before was that vote.

And, as I mentioned in my previous blog, Minnesotan's contacting their legislators were mostly of one opinion: do not vote for that damn bill! Knowing this and strongly suspecting this opinion was the motivator behind the behavior of the citizens I approached that night, I am still surprised by how angry people were. Don't they realize our economy is diving to depths unknown? Of course the bailout isn't fair, but what about supporting lesser forms of evil? But that's not how many Minnesotans think about these things, at least apparently not in my neighborhood.

I suspect the reaction to the bailout has to do with the strong belief among many Americans generally, and Minnesotans specifically, in doing the morally right thing, whether it is politically expedient or economically sound thing to do or not. Many seem to look at these issues with moral absolutism,perhaps even religious absolutism, whereas I tend to try to see these things from a more secular idea of "the overall good."

From my perspective, an utterly gutted economy needs a rescue whether it's fair or not. Sociologists and Psychologists have noted for decades the trends of jumping rates of child, spousal and substance abuse during difficult economic times. There are many forms of right and wrong, good and evil. As I noted in a previous blog, certain conditions exacerbate profoundly evil behavior. I strongly believe there were many, executives on down to homeowners, who acted greedily and stupidly and there needs to be natural and very uncomfortable consequences for these behaviors. But we also need to work as a nation to keep things from getting worse for everyone.

I wonder if many of my fellow citizens feel that all of this is very simple, that if people who have done bad to our economy are punished, and what is "right" is reestablished, a more stable economy will naturally follow. Well, I doubt it. One of the criticisms of the Congress acting at the time of the first Great Depression was that they allowed the banking system to fall apart without intervention. When they chose to act it was too late.

Again, I argue for reason and responsibility. I completely agree with Obama on the issue of the executives from AIG being required to give back the $400,000 of tax payer money they spent on spas for themselves last week then fired. But I also believe it was the responsibility of Congress to make an attempt to keep AIG, the largest insurer in this country, from collapsing and leaving millions of Americans potentially without the insurance protection they paid for.

We have seen over the last eight years the utter failure of the "good and bad," or "right and wrong," dichotomous thinking. Because here's the rub folks, human beings are often wrong about things they were certain they were right about. For example, the Bush administration's concrete belief in the justification of the war in Iraq, the efficacy of trickle down economics, even the adherence to abstinence only sex education for youth (the teen pregnancy rate has jumped more than 25% since Bush took office and gave in to the right wing's position on this). It seems that people most likely to believe absolutely that they are absolutely right are so often wrong.

We need flexible leadership and a citizenry able to bend with their leadership. As the Buddhists have noted for thousands of years, the pliable reed bends with the wind and the stiff stick snaps.

We Are Our Brother's Keeper

2008-10-02T14:13:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow the House will vote on the revised economic bailout plan. It is designed to be an emergency lane for our careening semi truck of an economy apparently gaining speed as it roars down the mountainside. Somewhere along its downward trajectory, the semi hit a pig, because there is pork all over the sides of our safety lane. But that's okay. The presence of pork is how we know for certain that the emergency lane was constructed in the United States of America. (Of course the tax breaks to corporations included therein is just total bullshit!).

This bailout plan is not a scenic route and it will not get us going in the right direction, but most economists and I (for what it's worth) agree allowing the economy to tear down the mountainside will take out far too many people, businesses and yes, financial institutions, along the way.

What surprises me is how few Americans seem to agree with me. I saw on the local news that 100 to 1 constituents were faxing in messages to their representatives arguing against the bailout. I heard that phone calls in this area were running at a ratio of 1,000 to 1 against the bailout. Though I understand this reticence of the average American to bailout poorly run financial institutions and the foolish folks who got in over their heads with unreasonably large mortgages and second and third mortgages off the original, this is no time for "I told you so." We're in trouble here, folks.

We are our brother's keeper if not morally, than literally. And he is ours. Though my family and I work to live within our means and have good credit, we may not be able to get a home or car loan. We most certainly wouldn't be able to refinance in the case of an emergency. Though we didn't directly participate in this mess, we, like all Americans and millions abroad, are experiencing the ramifications of this financial situation.

In that we live in a participatory democracy, I do have to take exception to those who say they have no culpability in this situation. As I noted above, my family did not directly contribute to this situation, but I was aware of its presence for years. I predicted several years ago this bubble would pop and millions would be homeless because of it. I didn't once contact my representative during this time. For millions of Americans, they were simply not paying attention at all, and therefore couldn't predict a burst bubble or even an election day, for that matter. I believe most Americans could have done more than we did to protest the abuses of Wall Street and the inept policies of our ELECTED government.

It is easy to say "I told you so." It is easy to call a congressperson and protest a controversial bill. It is a more difficult thing to be a disciplined citizen aware of the political and economic goings on in one's city, county, state and country. I have not been the best citizen I could have been. I'm sure most of us, if we're honest, would say the same. And when we fail to insist that our interests be fairly represented, the policies of a few that serve only the few reign. Once that happens, as we have seen, it is a dear, dear price that has to be paid to get our interests back on the bill in any form other than pork.

Apollo 13 and American Hope

2008-09-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

I have been following the economic news avidly for days, as are most Americans at this point. The president looked old and exhausted this morning in his brief comments to the nation. He was unable to conjure the kind of hopeful demeanor he has before put forth during the many crisis of his administration. This current mess he cannot cover up with a smile and impassioned statement. This disaster isn't hundreds or thousands of miles away, it is alive in the pocket books of millions of Americans.

This is the end of the line for the economic policy promoted by the Reagan administration nearly thirty years ago. The results of the undying faith and deep denial of reality for those promoting the laissez faire form of capitalism has literally brought some of its most powerful supporters to their knees (Paulson literally dropping to the floor in front of Pelosi last weekend).

All of this reminds me of a movie I have seen numerous times because my older son loves it, Apollo 13. This movie dramatizes a truly remarkable historic situation where the Apollo 13 space mission to the moon ran into a life threatening situation when a line blew and ignited one of the oxygen tanks. The crew did not walk on the moon, but they did survive with the help of a deeply dedicated and intelligent crew of mathematicians and scientists. It is also possible the prayers of much of the world helped, as well.

The accident in space during that mission was the result of avoidable mistakes. Some of the challenges faced by the crew and the people at mission control were made more difficult by poor planning. But these men prevailed. They were able to work together using their expertise to negotiate the situation. Further, they were able to flexibly adapt their expertise to address the novelties faced by the space crew. This movie really did highlight what is most unique and impressive about Americans.

We are a people of great ability and training. Though there is a lot of airplay about how uneducated and incurious Americans are, and there is certainly evidence to support this claim, what makes us capable of pulling out of fatal looking circumstances is the knowledge and training we do have and an uncanny ability to use these creatively. The U.S. survived the Great Depression and flourished. There were outside conditions that enabled this recovery, including WWII, but it was because of flexible thinkers that the opportunities in these conditions were realized.

We will, as a nation, pull out of this and turn this current economic downturn into an opportunity. I believe the desperate need for green energy and a green economy will be one of our most powerful motivators to pull our course change in a positive direction. The world was facing a dire threat at the hands of the fascists at a time when Americans were working our way out of the first Great Depression. Our world is facing a dire threat to our environment currently. There is great opportunity here and amazingly, we are the people to take this opportunity on in a new and innovative manner.

There is only reason to hope.

To The Women of Minnesota: Don't Be Silly Women

2008-09-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

While canvasing last week I had the opportunity to speak with an older, white man living in a lovely, white home in the burbs. I told him I was canvasing for the DFL and he responded quickly but politely that he and his wife were lifelong Republicans. I explained this was fine with me, I just wanted to record their affiliations so the DFL wouldn't stop by his door in the future. He appreciated this and launched into one of the most leading questions I've ever been asked in my life.

"So, do you want to know why my wife is voting Republican? One word, do you want to know what it is?"

I bit.

"Palin!!!!" He shrieked in a mad fit of enthusiasm,his long, grey comb-over flapping like a little bird atop his head. Reportedly, his wife started weeping when she saw and heard Palin's running mate acceptance speech in St. Paul.

That was Palin's "I do" moment with national Republican politics. And in the following weeks, it is clear that she was chosen for predictable reasons and is being treated in a predictable way by the GOP. But I must admit, the small minded, superficial and deeply patronizing attitudes apparently harbored by the men in power who made this call takes my breath away.

As journalists have scrambled to unearth and report the professional and academic qualifications of Palin for the Vice Presidency, it has become clear to many she is not prepared- at all- for this role. She is scantly educated compared to her Democratic opponents either formally or otherwise. She has been living in a state whose residents often term everywhere else in the world other than Alaska "outside" and has demonstrated adherence to this cultural mind-set in her astounding lack of knowledge about national and international politics. And she fully embraces the welding together of religion with politics. I doubt if she has read the constitution in thirty years. In fact, she presents as a person who lacks the intellectual curiousity required to read much at all. She is a woeful pick when one, Republican or Democrat, evaluates her for the job in a rational manner.

So what were McCain, Rove and the other Republican politicos thinking when they decided to ask Palin to join the ticket? What would a right wing, conservative party who needs the votes of women, but is run almost entirely by men who regularly vote against the interests of women and children, including SCHIP, minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, and women's health, want in a female running mate? Like a smarmy man who, in reality, has nothing substantial to offer, the Republican party is trying to charm the women in their base with the illusion of respectful acknowledgment. And, if this older man in my voting district is telling the truth, McCain's guys succeeded in doing just that with his wife. Unfortunately, she didn't come to the door herself, though I thought I saw her through the screen sitting just feet away. Perhaps what is most powerful and ultimately impactful, it appears they charmed Palin herself.

It is deeply disturbing to me how the GOP is treating women in this election, particularly Palin. Though there were several responsible choices for the ticket if they were looking for a GOP leader who is a woman to appeal to other women, they chose one with very little in the way of skills, knowledge and judgment. It was as if the people who made this call don't really believe a woman can be a competent, well-informed leader. Palin demonstrated in the one unbiased interview she has done, on ABC, that she is not even familiar with one of the most important policies she is promoting, the Bush Doctrine. But no worries. She is for the McCain people an attractive talking head, a spunky deliverer of teleprompter policy, a pretty newscaster of the party positions. The cynicism this demonstrates about powerful women is mind-boggling.

But it gets even more disturbing from here. Since the RNC, they have allowed two interviews with journalists, one with Fox News (which doesn't really count as journalism). The entire situation with the media dead zone around Palin and building frustration among journalists came to a boil when the McCain campaign wanted the media to bring a video camera to get pictures of Palin talking with world leaders yesterday, but did not want a producer with the cameramen. This would ensure no media questions would be asked of her. Though the producer did ultimately prevail, no questions of any substance were asked or answered. It looks like the GOP is controlling every word that comes out of Palin's mouth and demanding media compliance lest she demonstrate her own mind and accidentally speak against the collective GOP will.

This all smacks of abuse to me. Picking a woman who is utterly unprepared for this position and thus, they ensured she has no thoughts of her own on these big issues and is utterly dependent on her Republican partners to tell her what to say and where to go. Although Palin shows the most naked will to power that I've seen in awhile, even making her running mate look nuanced and charming at times, was it fair to offer her a deal she could not comprehend the terms of? This was the ultimate in ARM loans for the White House.

And now, to make this deal work out to their favor, the GOP is doing everything in their power to keep journalists away from her. They are keeping her in an unnatural bubble meant to protect themselves from the embarrassment of having the nation find out just how ignorant this person really is. The other danger is that Palin herself, through repeatedly being asked specific and important questions, begins to understand how ill prepared she is for this job. What if she comes to understand that the running mate position was not offered out of respect for her but out of cynicism about the electorate and about her? This is not a good deal for the people of the United States or for Palin.

Given more time in her current job and a hell of a good tutor (as the current Bush had in Texas to prepare him for the national stage several years ago)Palin may be somewhere closer to ready for national GOP leadership years from now. But I do not believe the GOP was interested in putting forward a strong, experienced,well-informed woman to help lead the country. They wanted a pretty woman wearing a cross around her neck to woo the other silly women who get to vote. Lets not be silly women!

More Political Notes From the Minnesota Suburbs: Canvasing

2008-09-21T06:40:00.000-07:00

I spent several hours in the last few days canvasing for the DFL in my neighborhood in suburban Minnesota. The first day was the most pleasant. In the warm, autumn evening I pushed along my toddler in his bright red stroller and my kindergartner followed cheerfully behind. We were in the neighborhood adjacent to the high school and ran into several educators. One retired school teacher and football coach offered my little boy a bottle of water and politely listened to me chat about the struggles faced currently by young families. I also had the chance to speak with a life-long Republican criminologist who intends to vote for Obama. He told me about the power of promoting feelings of self-efficacy in deterring at-risk youth from crime. Having spent several years working in the juvenile court system advocating for abused and neglected children, this gentleman couldn't have found a more appreciative audience than me.

Of the people I spoke with this night, one that stands out the most was not an Obama supporter, but he was very willing to talk. In fact, he sought me out. He told me is a veteran who hasn't voted in the national elections for decades because he hasn't liked any of the presidential candidates starting with Reagan. The man had long, thin, greying hair tied back into a small pony tail. Several tattoos expressing his affections for a few different women followed the vertical line of his exposed arms. He was quite friendly approaching me from the home next to the one I was actually canvasing. The warm evening had inspired many people to open their windows, he must have overheard me talking with his neighbors.

When he asked me what I was doing, I explained I was a volunteer for the DFL out canvasing the neighborhood. We chatted for some time, he expressing his reservations about McCain and how they conflicted with his desire to vote for a fellow veteran. A vote for Obama, with his expansive vocabulary and nuanced answers to the big questions seemed a tremendous leap for this man to make at the polls. His reservations about McCain and utter bafflement over the Obama candidacy appeared to have left this man where he started, again, a citizen unwilling to vote.

I worked to impart to him the importance of voting in our district because of the voting power of the suburbs in determining the outcome for Minnesota. This appeared to move him. However, my support of Obama was not convincing him and he told me so. As I labored to come up with arguments that might appeal to this man, my husband drove up having just gotten off of work to help with our kids. He got out of car and walked up to us. We introduced ourselves all around. The man asked my husband which way he was going in the election. My husband responded immediately, "Obama." The man seemed surprised by this, actually jumping backward a bit.

My husband didn't get an opportunity to explain his position as the man started talking again about why he was concerned about McCain. I chided my husband about not voting in his life until recently, and this also seemed to validate my husband's position to this fellow American. The veteran nodded his head in apparent agreement with my husband's past ambivalence about participatory democracy.

I was amazed by how quickly and powerfully men speak to men, at least in this case. Here I was dragging my children up and down the streets at dinner time through the Midwest humidity, and my reasons for supporting Obama were not particularly impactful on this man. My husband pulls up looking comparatively fresh and rested in his air conditioned car, says one word, "Obama," and this friendly but unmoving man seemed to have his resistance to Obama undermined in an instant.

At this point in the election cycle, I really don't mind that my husband's input, as simple and undefended as it was, seemed to have made a difference and my greater efforts were essentially ignored in this interaction. I don't mind as long as this man gets out to vote. And if this election is not the one that gets him out, maybe the next one will be. Perhaps my husband and I managed, in a small way, to affect change on the culture of passive democracy that has taken over so much of our electorate. If we inspired him, at all, to turn off Fox news and actually start talking to other people in his community about what they're thinking and doing politically, this door-knock was a success for me.

Who knows if this man will actually vote. I hope so. His experiences and his values are important to our democracy. The discussion between neighbors about what we think and feel is important. I heard too many times in the last few days "I don't talk about politics!" Why not? Has anything good come from playing our cards close to the vest in a winner take all game? We need to talk about the economy and health care and our political system. Too many of us stopped doing that.

What our country does need, and critically, is a real-time, on-going discussion between neighbors, friends and family about our shared challenges and how to work them out. The Obama campaign, because of the nature of the electorate out here, has had to steer clear of discussion about him as a person, as impressive as he is, and focus entirely on issues. And you know, I think political dialogue is more respectful and fruitful without the narrative focus. It is one I am partial to, but see through my experiences in Minnesota much more may get done without them. If we do this as a nation, tearing our gaze away from our hyperfocus on personal narrative, we might actually get somewhere in reevaluating and rebuilding our political and economic infrastructure.

Political Notes From the Minnesotan Suburbs

2008-09-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

I spent my free time this week attending an Obama volunteer meeting and canvasing the neighborhood for the Minnesota Democrat Farm and Labor party. Though rural and suburban Minnesotans are reserved by nature, especially when talking politics with strangers, this election year seems to be bringing cultural change around these social norms. Time will tell if these changes hold, but for now, I had the opportunity to hear a little about how some people here are thinking about this situation. And I was surprised. I'll write about these experiences over the next several days, beginning with the volunteer meeting I attended a few days ago.

The volunteer meeting was held in a very lovely home in a development of these large, new houses. The only national election political sign I saw driving into the cul de sac was one supporting McCain. The woman who opened her home literally to perfect strangers did not have an Obama sign in her yard. She did have a couple supporting well known and well liked local DFLers. Once inside, this quiet support for the Obama/Biden ticket fell away, but outside, it was another matter. People said it felt so good to be able to talk openly about why they support the Obama/Biden ticket.

There were several of us who attended. We pulled up next to each other one after another in a large, slightly late group (which seems to be the norm on how Minnesotans arrive places). None of us knew each other, so none of us were openly friendly when recognizing we were going into the same home for the same reason. This, too, seems to be a Minnesota cultural norm. Once inside, a middle aged woman with a strong, Germanic-looking build and a face like open kindness, introduced herself and welcomed us one by one into her home. As we arrived together, we were quickly seated in a circle of chairs around a laptop computer. The first half hour was spent watching a webcast of Biden and Hillary Clinton talking women's issues, a tremendously strong position for the Dems. Afterwards, the two volunteer leaders began to speak.

These two were the youngest by far in the room. They appeared to have recently graduated from college and more recently landed in Minnesota. A young man and a young woman, they were opposites in build and temperament, he an obvious techy introvert and her a spunky, born-to-be-there kind of girl. Both looked a bit unclean, as if they were living out of their cars. It turns out they have been and for some time. The young man was brought in from Pennsylvania to help organize Minnesotan volunteers after the primary season. She came in from Kansas. They brought in the youthful enthusiasm and freedom that made them able and more amazingly, willing, to live like this for several months. These were devoted citizens and in the end of all of this, if Obama wins, it will be because of this devotion by his volunteers.

The young people seemed to feel they were part of history and an excellent cause. Their interests in getting Obama elected were for the big reasons, love of country and humankind. Enormous student loan debit was also mentioned in passing. Obama wants to reinstate and further develop domestic service programs, like AmeriCorp under Clinton, that gives young people money for school for service. I did two years of this program in my twenties and it was an excellent way to get needed job skills and college money.

I was the next youngest in the room. I have the big reasons for attending, I truly believe Obama and Biden could make this country respectable, even great again. The reasons that get me out the door to meetings and canvasing, however, are economic. I have continually been astonished to find my life and the life of my peers, all now in their thirties and trying to build lives, are significantly more difficult than my parent's lives economically. Real wages have not risen much for three decades and housing prices, health care costs and college tuition are more than double and triple what they were when my parent's generation was raising small children. This situation is ridiculous, in my calculation, and I'm willing to spend my time to make it different.

The rest in the room that night were people in their fifties, most looking comfortably middle class. They were extremely nervous about health care and social security. Within a decade, most would be of retirement age and the state of our economic and political system scared the hell out of these people. One man who works in the health insurance industry became teary when he described how bad the situation in this industry really is. I brought up the independent assessment of McCain's health care plan that came out last week and estimated 20 million more Americans would loose their health care immediately with this plan and eventually it would likely dismantle the entire system, which is what it is designed to do. The room became more animated than any I have seen since moving to Minnesota.

Another person brought up the terrifying idea of what would have happened to social security accounts this week if they had been privatized, a plan supported by McCain and promoted by the Bush administration. People of retirement age could have lost large portions of their savings at a time in life when they need it most. Although this is not my immediate concern, I felt deeply for these people. I saw that they had been working for decades to secure their future and now, as they approach retirement age, we have a group of thieves and morons in power who would gladly hand over the security of our aging Americans to an economic system being run into the ground by incompetent, short sighted, greedy executives. (I'm sure there are a few good executives out there, but read Paul O'Neill's book. He was the first Treasury Secretary under current Bush who was asked to leave when he confronted the administration's incompetence).

Millions of Americans see what's here and they see what's coming down the line and we're organizing. This kind of political activity, door to door, face to face will be how Obama wins. The volunteer coordinators told us a study conducted by the Democrat party bore this out. Phone calls and mailers do not make a difference, only talking with people makes a difference in this kind of political activity. Talk to everyone you know, family and friends, about the Obama/Biden ticket. Explain the economic policies, $1,000 tax refund for all middle class families, the breaking of the chains between K street and Pennsylvania avenue, and the formation of MILLIONS of new jobs rebuilding infrastructure and developing the now very necessary green industry, an industry that could help make this a livable world for my children and grandchildren.

Even if it's uncomfortable, please, if you support Obama, do this for the campaign and for your own future.

I'll write about my canvasing efforts in the following days. I have learned a few things from my neighbors.

Bill, Where Are You?

2008-09-15T16:11:00.000-07:00

The Dow Jones took a 500 point free fall today following a few more disturbing turns in our economy including Lehman Brothers closing up shop after 150 years, and thus reminding us how fragile our economy really is. Alan Greenspan commented yesterday that our economic situation as a nation is "by far" the worst he has ever seen. It seems we are in trouble.

There is a ghost in the machine and it is haunting us from the basement to the penthouse. For the vast majority of us, we cannot escape the haunting effects of high energy prices, job losses, the losses in benefits and wages for the available jobs, and on and on it goes. Even the large corporations are having to meet their greatest fears, except of course for the CEOs. Some of them are loosing their jobs, but reportedly not their money.

As I watched the reports on the Dow today, like taking a pulse to intuit the seriousness of the malady within, I kept hearing Bill Clinton say, "It's the economy, stupid." I found myself wanting to hear him say those words again, this time in front of a sign that says "Obama" instead of "Clinton." At this time, it seems to me, Americans need a reminder that it was a Democratic president who negotiated and promoted the government policies that helped balance the budget and strengthen the economy.

Of course it was also Clinton who pushed through NAFTA and continued conservative economic policies that contributed to the current failure (again) of the hands-entirely-off approach of the government to the economy. The horrific irony is that many of these laissez faire losers are crying out desperately for a good, long pull off the federal government's financial teat.

Clinton's policies were closer to reasonable, however, than his Republican counterparts. And Obama's economic policies are within the realm of our shared reality, unlike McCain's Bush policy ("I think everyone should be rich!").

What's more important, and I shudder to say this, is the perception of many Americans that President Clinton's economic policies were a screaming success. Although history is a more complex story than this, it is possible to utilize many American's fondness for a simplified narrative to the Democratic advantage. He still has huge political capital on this issue. He is one of the very few politicians who do, and none have more than he at this time. If Bill Clinton is truly concerned about the welfare of this country, he will get on the damn bus! The party needs his help, as today's polls illustrate, and the American people need the Democratic party.

I implore President Clinton, get in front of any camera that is shooting tape and yell into every American living room, "It's the economy stupid! Now vote for Barak Obama."

A War Memorial As Antidote To Fear

2008-09-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

I admit it, I've been hugely over-indulging my interest in politics lately. Sometime after I watched the candidate forum on public service and before the Rachel Maddow hour last night, I noticed that familiar mental queasiness. Too many words pointing to too many ideas, and behind it all that driving feeling. I knew then I should turn off my TV. Do you think I did? Of course not. My love of this year's political season, first blush happening that night in Iowa, has now degenerated into compulsion. And what drives any compulsion but fear.

I am afraid it won't happen. I am afraid this fresh moment of possibility, where a candidate is speaking directly to my interests and doing so in a way that is inherently optimistic, will pass unrealized. I fear this avenue of hope will be steered away from by enough voters that all of us will be forced to endure another Bush-like administration. I fear we, as citizens, will be led again by people coming from a place of deep cynicism and the desperate grasping onto personal power that desperation seems to motivate.

I believe I have seen this fear expressed in the demeanor of other Democrats and liberal commentators. The magic of inspired democracy isn't manifesting the poll numbers we were expecting. A shrill church lady whose utter ignorance about the very policies she supports has been found out and broadcast across the nation. And yet her addition to the Republican ticket continues to be seen as a great victory for her party! It doesn't seem to matter how shabby the product, millions of Americans are buying it because they like the advertising campaign.

But in this moment, I am reminded of a memorial to the American soldiers in WWII who fought in France, which I saw a few years ago at a cathedral in Strasbourg. I remember the beauty of the bronze work and the earnestness of the inscription. This earnest gratitude was expressed by a friend's father who lived through WWII as a boy in the Northern part of France, Alsace Lorraine, next to Germany. The American soldiers were unexpected heroes in that war. As a group, they were considered brave and clever. Many were farm boys from the Midwest with an uncanny ability for finding creative solutions to novel problems. Many of those smart, young men died to protect the people of France from the unprovoked brutality of the German army. And this older man I spoke with was, sixty years later, grateful and impressed.

This cleverness is demonstrated in the very tool I use right now. The Internet was developed by the American military as a form of safe communication. It has been adapted for consumer use and has entirely changed the options for human communication. Millions of people around the world are not even literate. But because I was born in this country, I have enjoyed the public school system that taught me to read and write. I am enjoying the use of the Internet as both a place to get information and a place to express my opinions about this information. I am a beneficiary of our innovative political and economic system which was born of the clever, brave mentality shared by those, now legendary, farm boys fighting in France six decades ago.

There is reason to hope. We are people who have evidence, historical and current, that supports the sanity of hope. However, it is important to be honest with ourselves. This is a fragile time in our country. Our political and economic systems have made many, many wrong turns, and we,the citizens, will have to endure the fall-out. Millions of us see the emergence of a political movement that could change the direction of our country in a positive way. But many of us are anxious, keeping the pulse on this campaign, fearful the pulse is growing weaker.

It is clear those of us who support this movement must act in whatever ways we can to strengthen it over the next several weeks. We can blog, canvas, do phone banks, give money, do voter registration, or even talk to anyone and everyone who will listen about this upcoming election. American soldiers from the past and currently serving give their lives for what is believed to be for the good of this country. The rest of us need to at least give our time. "Enough," as Obama keeps saying. We've had enough.It's time to act.

Rove Teaches McCain How To Be A Racist

2008-09-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

From what I understand, it has been confirmed that the evil political master himself, Karl Rove, is working directly with the McCain campaign. It has been known for some time that several of Rove's minions are employed by the McCain campaign. It turns out the evil is undiluted, however, and the man who made President Bush is looking to make a president out of McCain as well.

And millions of Americans are falling for the man's methods again. The most recent tactic is the McCain campaign lying about Obama supporting the teaching of sex education to kindergartners. Obama has called out the lie, terming it "perverse." Of course it is, but the Rovians are not concerned with the veracity of their accusations or, for that matter, whether they are proven wrong. They are working, and polls indicate effectively, to drag the political debate down to its most base impulses by aggressively playing the race card against Obama.

McCain's campaign is seeking to stir the racist feelings in millions of Americans by portraying Obama as being a sexual deviant. This is classic Americana racism that the White dominant culture has used for HUNDREDS of years to dis-empower Black men in the most humiliating manner. And though most Americans would never, never admit they take this kind of erroneous attack seriously, behind the voting curtain, the success of McCain's campaign techniques may become evident.

I implore Americans to see what this is, the manipulations of men (and now a woman) to do whatever it takes to achieve power for their own enjoyment and benefit.

It has been well established by the extensive media investigations into his past that Obama is a man of integrity, extraordinary intelligence, and calm determination. His policies are utterly competent and highly responsive to the immediate economic, political, and medical realities present in our country. Further, he has given millions of us hope in our political system and in our fellow citizens. He has reminded us all that we are active members of this establishment, and we can choose to work towards a healthy, happy country where power and wealth are not allowed to consolidate into a few hands without being deeply challenged by the people.

How many new blogs have been born of the enthusiastic fire ignited out of the Obama campaign? How many millions of citizens have been activated since he started this journey? I was there in St. Paul with my five year old son when Obama earned the requisite number of delegates to secure the nomination. There were tens of thousands of people there to see him, most of them having to stand outside the coliseum because it filled up completely. My son and I saw first hand the power of positive campaigning and the inspiring effect a good and intelligent person can have on people. We were there for him because he reminded us we need to be there for ourselves and each other.

We have two clear choices in candidates. We can choose to pick the man and woman who will literally say or do anything to achieve power for their own glory. Or we can choose Obama and Biden, inspired public servants who have made more good calls than bad. We can choose between a campaign that offers cleverly dressed up racial slurs and seeks to bring out the worst in the citizenry in order to keep power and wealth in the same hands. Or we can choose a campaign that offers competent public and international policy that may not solve every problem, but begins again a respectful and earnest attempt to turn things around.

My choice is perfectly clear. I hope the voting majority of us follow what is in the highest good this time.

The Economy Imagined As A Backhoe

2008-09-08T07:13:00.000-07:00

I've was reading up on what the government bailout of Freddie and Fannie will mean to the average American taxpayer today, and getting all worked up. Again, it seems, those who have a great deal have worked out a scheme to get more, and those who would protect the public from this avarice are unwilling to enforce any reasonable law upon them. And then I heard my little baby boy chatting with his backhoe toy as if it were a close confidante and was inspired by his imagination.

An act of imagination led to the invention of the adult-sized backhoe. This machine so inspired the imagination of children that someone thought to fashion toy backhoes. And now my little boy sees in its design an intelligence that he relates to and has begun a kind of conversation with it. Who knows how this early relationship between baby boy and creative object will influence him later on. The act of imagination seems limitless in its possibilities.

And so I will choose not to allow my intellect and emotions to negotiate the minutia of this economic situation right now. Right now, I'll imagine the economy is like a great big backhoe. The genius of the backhoe is that it allows people to get many times more work done than was possible without it. Roads and buildings would take an enormous amount of time to even begin building if not for the quick work of the earth moving backhoe. Our economy is designed to get work done. The size and capacity of our economy and the manner in which its design was adapted by countries worldwide is evidence, I believe, of the intelligence inspiring its design (and I am making no reference to God here- I'm speaking not of faith, but of reality on the ground).

But our backhoe is broken because we've been running it without doing basic maintenance for decades. Although designed to do work, our economy also must have a functioning maintenance crew able to fix repairs as needed. Freddie and Fannie were just two of the enormous work machines that have been needing repairs for some time. People in the government, even from our current White House, have been pointing it out for years. "Stop that machine, its out of oil (otherwise known as equity)!" "For God sake, the shovel is falling off (also known as housing prices."

But machines can be repaired and sometimes they need to be rebuilt. I believe we are at a point where we may need to do extensive repairs and we need a functioning Congress able to do it. I suspect the Democrats may be more likely to ignore the calls of the demands of the special interests people, like foreman working their crew do death, and get some reasonable oversight legislation passed. But maybe not. They haven't impressed anyone so far. Or perhaps this backhoe will break down beyond repair and need to be scrapped and entirely rebuilt.

This happened before. The laissez faire capitalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ran their backhoe right over a cliff (most amazing because they hadn't even invented backhoes yet). Doesn't anyone remember their grandparents talking about the Great Depression? It really didn't sound very fun. But that may be where we're heading at this point. This morning was the first time I heard a journalist bring up the Great Depression in discussing our current economy, a journalist from the L.A. Times. Many of us have been wondering this for months.

It may be that now is a most important time to use our imaginations. Are the backhoes of our personal finances in good repair? Does it need maintenance? What can we do within our powers as citizens to elect a reasonable and responsible governing body? And here's where the imaginations of those of us who are part of the dominant American culture are really stretched: Do we need to ask for or offer help to someone else?

We can't have a work and product only mentality. We must understand a healthy economy includes serious oversight and regulation. A healthy economy looks after the well being of its workforce. A healthy economy doesn't run itself and the people who constitute it off a cliff. We act intelligently on our own and on our neighbor's behalf. We act as employees, voters and family members to ensure we are working in a manner that increases the good of our people. We need to get our backhoe back in working shape and it may take imagination to do it.

Palin: A red herring in a black suit

2008-09-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of women lined the streets of Wisconsin over the weekend with signs waiving in support of Sara Palin. When I saw this on the news I shrank a bit inside. They took the bait. These women, only a sample of the perhaps millions, bit down on a red herring. The motivations of the McCain campaign are ones I can only guess at, but the tremendous turn taken on the issue of the importance of experience leads me to believe they were more concerned about pulling votes than honest policy when they chose her for the VP running mate. And she is, to my eyes, a red herring in a black suit.

She has no apparent policy positions for our nation that require sustained inquiry into the factual world, the world outside of her church. Instead, she seems to have crammed for the test at the last minute and is traveling the nation repeating from rote the policies of the man who invited her to this testing situation. What she can speak to from a place of apparently fervent and long held belief is her opinion about abortion. This again!!

Look at the front of any major newspaper this morning and you will see that the largest mortgage companies in the nation, Freddi and Fannie Mae, holders of 70% of new mortgages and 50% of all mortgages, are getting saved by the most economically conservative government in recent history because their utter failure could literally drowned our economy. We're depending on money from China to pull these corporations out of the apparently inevitable chaos reached when they are allowed to do as they please without any policing.

The weather is also making the front page. Thousands of scientists have supported the global warming model that decades ago predicted increased hurricane activity in the Gulf because of warming waters. One hurricane passed through last week and there are a line coming in from the Atlantic. This is one environmental issue. There are millions more.

A friend who is a special education teacher told me yesterday the rates of autism in the children born in this country to parents who recently immigrated from Somalia are rising quickly. These are children born to families with no history of the kinds of disabilities these children are demonstrating. One may argue they just didn't have professionals to diagnose the disorder in Somalia. I would argue that the chances of seriously disabled children surviving the conditions of Somalia would likely be pretty low. Obviously, this is an area that deserves extensive and serious research. I mean here to just bring up another possible warning sign that our dirty environment is harming our children.

I have mentioned here only a couple issues of serious concern, the environment and the economy. These are issues that our nation is in desperate need of leadership on. We need explicit, well-informed policy and a well articulated plan of action. In this serious time, McCain offers us a woman who clearly has not given a lot of thought to the breadth and depth of the critical issues we, as a nation, are grappling with. She offers us a pretty face, political positions on abortion informed by evangelical Christian doctrine, and the kind of trained-parrot speeches that any University of Idaho trained TV journalist could spout given a TelePrompTer and a camera.

But what upsets me most is the footage of those women lined up along the streets yelling and screaming in support of Palin. These women may be leaving a toxic environment and third-world economy to their children and grandchildren, and they're praising Palin's right-to-life position. What kinds of lives are they intending for these unborn babies, anyway?

McCain and Obama Tell All (or at least something)

2008-09-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

I completed my requisite citizen viewing last night of this election cycle's pep rallies, otherwise known as Democratic and Republican conventions. There were many, many things said and many promised as well. I understand that much of this frenzy of wordplay is a form of sophisticated salesmanship, but my goal in listening is always to decipher statements and comments of weight and meaning. I ask myself, "What, if anything, are these people saying."

I believe there actually were accurate disclosures of personal motivation and worldview made by several of the speakers, most notably the presidential candidates. Both Obama and McCain, in my estimation, communicated their perspectives of the world and the logic from which their actions originate. And the two men could not seem to see things much more differently.

Obama seems to see a world of nuance, commonality and connection. He also seems to be a true believer in the concepts of good and evil, seeing both as pervasive through culture and community. More than black and white thinking, however, Obama communicates a further belief in the existence of a spectrum between the two and the effect of conditions upon the expression of both. His work in the poor and decompensating communities in Chicago where jobs were withdrawn and despair and fear filled that vacuum likely gave him an education in the opportunistic nature of evil.

Where feelings of hope and well being are not, love and respect are under enormous pressure. When a man or woman feels the fear that comes when a knowing of real vulnerability for self and children sets in, life can seem not unlike a POW camp. People are in a place where dignity and purpose of work is absent, violence everywhere, predictability is gone, and a sense of an utter lack of real options persists. Although people outside the community would tell them to just leave, there is no car in the garage if a garage exists, no gas if there is a car, and most critically, a mindset that cannot IMAGINE life can be different than this.

Obama seems to understand that it is the latter affliction that makes the ever-expanding ranks of impoverished communities across the nation an immanent threat to the survival of democracy. For democracy to survive, a growing number of politicians are beginning to realize, the people must have a mentality of freedom. And only through the availability of jobs, health care, and social security for the sick and elderly can a belief in real freedom endure. Obama and many of his supporters seem to get this.

From an utterly different direction came McCain. He seemed to communicate that he is a man of endurance with an unparalleled ability to persist. It may be his most defining characteristic to me. Persistence was the underlying theme in the story he told at the convention of his time in a POW camp. Even a cursory review of his political record sees him persisting through the enormously humiliating "Keating Five" scandal. The man just keeps going and he does so, apparently, by "fighting." He used this word repeatedly in his acceptance speech and I believe it is the key to unlock what is honest in what he said.

He communicates a worldview that strongly promotes the ideas of "other" and fear of this other. He experienced horrendous mental and physical torture at the hands of the Vietcong. He was a warrior in this conflict, not an educated diplomat. The language, habits and mentality of the Vietcong were utterly foreign to him, and he had to fight mentally to survive the horror of what these "different" people were inflicting.

I have often wondered if McCain, while in that camp, experienced a phenomenon common to survivors of abuse called "splitting." When a person mentally "splits" the mind puts the world into two harsh opposites of "all good" and "all bad." In order to stay sane, the person identifies with the "all good" and all else that is threatening is "all bad."

McCain seems to see himself as the true fighter and the only one who understands the innumerable and imminent threats to our nation. In fact, in order to maintain the world view of being a "fighter" for the good, one necessarily must have an enemy. And McCain seems good at finding them, in the case of the Iraq war, where there was no enemy of immanent threat. But a fighter likes to fight, in fact, needs to fight to maintain a feeling of relevance and mastery in his world. My concern with him as president is how effective he may be at finding a fight and then funding a fight.

My caveat to this assessment is that McCain has also demonstrated an ability to tune into another part of himself that is capable of compromise. It may be that the close, grueling nature of this campaigning season has put him back into survival mode where one fights to persist. It is not his physical life he seeks to preserve now, but his political dreams. And it looks as though he will do whatever it takes to keep those alive.

Perhaps if he makes it to the White House, he will be able to shift into his other identity, one where allegiances are a matter of emotional connection other than political expediency. I doubt much would get done, but perhaps he could avoid that most horrendous of the mistakes of the Bush administration and quietly enjoy his golden years sitting in the biggest chair there is. Finally, a perfect mastery of his situation would have been achieved.

We, as Americans, finally have two choices, not one fudged option, as in many past elections. We have a nuance or all-or-nothing. We have fighting or understanding. We have hope at home or fear of the world. We have relationship or "us and them." We have the past revisited or the present reevaluated.

Our nation could pull another one out of the hat and awe many in the world with our unique ability to spontaneously adapt, or we will further constrict as a national mentality and go the way of Rome. We'll still be around as a nation but considered an excellent place to vacation to see history, not a place to look for new inspiration about what's possible.