A New American Revolution

The time has come for the emergence of a third party in this country, for no other reason than to save the Republic itself!

Surely there are enough people in this great land of ours who are not a party to the extremism on both sides of the aisle in Congress.  What we have now is a country paralyzed and divided artificially by the arch-conservatives on the right (Republicans and Tea Party imbeciles who are screaming for more and more budget cuts, repealing the health care law, not funding emergency agencies, pulling funding for middle and working class families, running from science and common sense and generally waving a political flag that has little basis in reality.) and some arch-progressives on the left (Democrats who won’t rest until we have the government doing everything but wiping our behinds, and who won’t bridge any chasm between a welfare state and what is really possible.)  Everyone else there is too concerned about their re-election and making sure they get a ‘recess’ every three weeks to focus on solving the staggering problems that need immediate and rational solutions.

There is stasis between these three groups who don’t represent the vast majority of sensible fair-minded Americans who understand that compromise must be found to solve the major problems that hinder our action and planning for a productive future in a changing world.  We are all out here scratching our heads and wondering where is the reality in our government.  Why are the emotional idiots in Congress who only think about their re-election posturing making decisions for all of us?  Watching the pronouncements by Republicans and Democrats about the nefarious motives of their adversaries is sickening.  None of them is thinking about the country---only themselves!

There is only one thing left to do…..we must elect all new congressmen and women who are rational; who don’t have vested interests and are not ‘bought and paid for’ by the various lobbyists and influence peddlers in Washington.  There needs to be a leader to spearhead this new movement—someone with some common sense who is not worried about a second term.  Someone who understands the founding principals of this democracy—that compromise, common sense and fair play are the best assets of a participatory democracy.  Let us reject the sniveling vitriolic, biased and basically stupid people who are power hungry and love to hear themselves speak.

We have a watershed year next year.  There is an election in November, which is the time we must do what many thought unthinkable and impossible.

  We must have an electoral revolution if we are to save ourselves from disaster. 

I urge all thinking people with at least one foot anchored in reality to start looking for people now who can carry the banner of a new party that wants to save America from the idiots.  Talk to your neighbors.  Talk to your friends.  Talk to anyone who will listen to reason and start formulating plans at a local level to seek out people who want to compromise, who understand that ALL citizens must participate and sacrifice.  We must cut wasteful expenses and find ways to increase our revenue by making everyone pay their fair share of the burden.

If you look at the field of potential people who currently hold the reins of power, or think they have the capacity to intelligently govern, there can only be despair in your  hearts. 

Rise up Real Americans!  Put on your thinking caps and actually think!

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

We have waited for this day with eagerness and trepidation, and now it is here.  We turn the car out of the Homewood Suites parking lot at 4:30am and head to the Duke University Hospital.  It is pitch black and there is not a car on the roads.  We want to be there before they take her to surgery at 5:15 to give her one last kiss before she goes into battle for her life.

On Friday my sister Paula was admitted to the hospital to 'embolize' her cancerous left kidney in preparation for its removal this morning.  The idea is to cut off the kidney's blood supply by blocking the renal artery so the tumor gets no blood.  After about 72 hours they will remove it and there will be much less blood loss we are told.  Unfortunately the tumor has grown into her main vein returning blood to the heart and they also must open her chest, put her on a heart lung bypass machine and remove all the tumor from her vena cava as well.  No small task, and we all are aware of the magnitude of the insult to her body that will happen today.

It doesn't seem possible that only 5 short weeks ago we got the phone call from Paula telling us she had this monster growing inside her.  Much has happened since then, with trips to Duke for consults and scheduling the surgery as well as trying to plan for Paula's recovery.

And now as we silently cover the few miles to the hospital in the darkness, I hear Cecily quietly asking for comfort and protection as we 'pass through the valley of the shadow of death'.  I always wondered about that phrase when I would hear the 23rd psalm as a child.  I couldn't imagine what that was like; I just heard the poetry of the words.  Today, I know.

Now we all are sitting in Paula's room at 5am.  She is dozing off and on.  The last several days have been difficult.  The embolization has caused her some real discomfort and pain since Friday.  The drugs have helped, but it was more than any of us expected. This is the quiet before the storm, and we are gathered around her watching her in the dark.  I step outside with Scott, her son, and we listen as the 6th floor slowly comes to life--people arriving and activity increasing as we stand there.   We look to the left and there is the orderly coming around the corner to take her down to the third floor.  We all stand in the hall while they disconnect her from the IV and monitors and wheel her out into the hall.  We follow behind the bed like some strange silent parade as we make our way to the elevator bank.  The silence is punctuated by the rhythmic sound of the unevenness of the wheels on the tile floors.  All five of us cram into the elevator with Paula and the orderly and we are smiling and trying to find the right words.  When we arrive on the third floor, the orderly tells us to sign in with the waiting room desk and we will be called into the Pre-op room when they have her situated and the preliminary IV is in.  At the desk, they give us one of those beepers with lights that you get at Carrabbas when you go out to eat and tell us that we will be buzzed when they are ready.  Looking to the right I see a waiting room that is over 100 yards long!  Easily the length of a football field!  Comfortable chairs are everywhere, and about a fourth of them are filled already with sleeping adults and children.  The surgical wing at Duke has 36 operating suites and 8 Cardiovascular suites!  The size of this operation is staggering!

Within 10 minutes our buzzer lights up and Ed, Jamie and Scott go in to see Paula.  Cecily and I stay in the waiting room.  We know our turn will come.  After about 15 minutes, Jamie and Scott emerge and Cecily and I go in.  In a bay about a third of the way down a wide hallway is my sister.  Her anesthesiologist introduces himself.  He is a very energetic young man named Jerricola who has already inserted an arterial monitoring line and is about to insert another IV for her anesthesia.  Paula looks so small in the bed.  In January she weighed close to 160 lbs and went on Weight Watchers.  Now she is 125 lbs.  The tumor has sucked so much of her life force from her already.  We can't wait for this thing to be out of her.

The time has come.....they are ready to take her in and one by one we all lean down and have a private moment with Paula.  I look into her eyes and see the fear that has consumed her for the last four weeks.  I smile, kiss her forehead and say, "Be brave, my sweet sister, God is with you--you will prevail!" (I will fear no  evil for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff will comfort me).  It all makes sense.

So now we are in the waiting room and they are removing the evil from her body.  We are all walking through the valley, and we pray for divine guidance for the surgeon's hands.

We are all Egyptians

So, its a new day in Egypt.  It is at moments like this that we all stop and consider what it means to be free.  There is talk of democracy in the air--what it means, whether we really have it here in America, whether other countries with dictatorships will fall.  Imagine.....in  olden times, and I am talking 100 years ago and before,  news of a revolution would take time to reach us....sometimes weeks, depending where you were on the globe.  Details would be incomplete, it would take days, or even months to fully understand the nature of an event like a revolution and even more time to understand its impact.

But today, literally, the whole world watched in real time as a nation of people rose up, peacefully, and grabbed their own destiny from the hands of a small group of men bent on doing everything they could to keep the people from becoming self aware.  It was miraculous really.  We have often read in history books about movements that changed a society, but somehow I never felt like I was living through it like I did this week.

Our media environment has changed us.  We are now irreversibly a  global community.  All of humanity knew about this event at the same time.... in fact as it happened.  This was really the first time(maybe with the exception of the falling of the Berlin Wall) in the history of mankind that the entire planet bore witness to the emergence of the human spirit simultaneously, and it is an inspiring moment.  It makes one believe that we as a species still have the power to really guide our own destiny.

There are so many times when it seems that events just keep on coming at us and we don't really seem to have control of them.  Sometimes I feel like I am caught in the rapids of the river of time and going so fast that I am only concerned about my immediate surroundings.  But because of our ability to be joined together by the web and instant communication, the entire human race can reach out and keep perspective because we can suddenly see over the mountains in a way we couldn't before.

As a collective mind, we all see that freedom is the right of all human beings.  Universal human aspiration and morality become clear to all.  And we see how our own circumstances and condition relate to what appears to be a spontaneous eruption of the desire to live free.  We measure our condition against that yardstick, and if you live in a county like Syria, or Iran, or China, or Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or Columbia, or Cuba, you are asking yourself why you must suffer, why you can't have that freedom too.

It is a bad time to be a dictator.   I find myself looking at my society and wondering if we appreciate how much democracy we have lost.  The spoils of life seem to be in the hands of the rich and corporate elite and their political lackeys and lobbyists.  Huge numbers of Americans are struggling with everyday life because democracy has gotten off track in America.  Democracy is supposed to obtain from the bottom up, but it seems like our society is organized from the top down.  The needs of the great majority of Americans always seem to come last compared to the intricate web of largesse and economic and political oppression that has been created by those who are only concerned about their own well-being and wealth at the expense of all others.

I look at Egypt and I wonder when the great mass of Americans will become self aware like the great mass of Egyptians that finally leveled the playing field this week in Cairo and Alexandria.  There is a breaking point for all people who find themselves increasingly disenfranchised.  The Tea Party is the canary in the mine here in the United States.  If we don't find a way to make our society more equitable for all, what we saw in Egypt over the last three weeks will suddenly appear in centers of power all over the US.  Seeing the jubilation of a people finally freed is heady stuff.  It reduces patience and encourages activism.  What an incredible time to be alive.

Thanks for Coming, Thaddeus!

Thaddeus is sitting patiently in the refrigerator in the garage waiting for eager hands to deliver him to the oven this afternoon.  He came to us from Amish country.  I guess that makes him Amish, but it doesn't really matter.  After dinner tonight he will be remembered as a tasty symbol of all we have to be thankful for. 

Many of my friends berate me for anthropomorphizing our holiday main courses...I on the other hand like the personalization.  It makes the eating of them somehow closer to the heart.  I always like to name the hogs that my brother-in-law Jeremy or my nephew Richard cooked for family gatherings.  So much effort and care goes into the proper preparation.  When you put morsels of them in your mouth, it helps to think of it as a personal gift from a sentient idealized soul.  We had been blessed with Ted last Thanksgiving.  At family reunions we have been fed with the presence of Horace (the hog) and Beulah (the beast).  My kids used to think it was corny, but they got a chuckle out of it.  It also gives us a mirthful moment when we say the blessing before we eat to especially thank "whomever" for gracing us with his/her presence (albeit posthumously).


Anyway, the family has gathered and it is still quiet in the house while they sleep in their beds that lie in wait for them so infrequently now that they are grown.  My daughters are home, the older one with her fiance and dog; my younger one just brought her dog.  Our empty nest has been descended upon by the boundless energy of young people and their frantic animals, trying to figure out the pecking order between them for the next couple of days.  Before the fray becomes overwhelming, I am just taking a few minutes to savor the anticipation of the experience of today with my family and some close friends.

For me, Thanksgiving is all about family and enjoying the presence of people that I love....and taking a moment to give thanks for all that I have that I don't think about except on days like this.   When we sit around the table tonight with our smiling faces beaming at each other, and our friends sharing our home and our love for each other I am always amazed at my good fortune.

My children are both healthy.  They are basically happy individuals, each with their own 'mishugaas' to be sure, but they are making their way in the world.  They have found love and independence.  What else could make us more grateful as parents than that.  I think about all the people I know who are going through divorce, separation, medical crises, emotional crises, and I look at the people gathered around me and am thankful that these faces have not been ground down by those experiences. To be sure we have had our share of difficult times, but at this moment they are memories and not present in our lives.

I look at my wife of 30 years and think about all we have shared --in good health and love.  We have raised these children.  We have a commonality of vision for their happiness and our own.  We have shared love and family through all these years.  We have had 30 Thanksgivings together and each one has been a good time--a time to take stock and really be thankful.  We are blessed.

So I think about Thaddeus and how he will add to our pleasure today, and about all those who will gather at bountiful tables tonight.  We are all angry about our politics and all the things that are wrong with our society and our lives, but this night, we need to take a deep breath and be thankful for all that we do have that is so rare in this world.  We have relative peace in a place that is not a locus of war and death like so many other places on this planet.  We don't know what tomorrow will bring, but we can live at this moment and savor the sweet time of family and smiles that this day and souls like Thaddeus bring us once a year.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Can I Uncover My Eyes Now?

So the deed is done and the Republicans have made huge gains as a result of this election.  The adage that the people will receive the government they deserve holds true.  We will see what they will do now that they have the keys to the car.  My guess is that our governmental machinery will grind to a halt.  In the past two years what indications do we have that Republicans have better ideas about how to handle this country's gargantuan problems?  All we have seen is the near uniform lockstep effort to thwart any program or initiative that the Democratic majority has attempted.  For whatever reasons, the opposition party was intent on stopping Obama cold on all fronts from day one.  Mitch McConnell says that the new Republican agenda is to make Obama a one term president.  Why can't these people use the energy to express such petty vitriol in the service of new ideas to solve our problems?

So now we will see if they actually have any innovative ideas.

My guess is that they will continue to do all they can to unravel any progress we have made over the last two years in service of a return to the conditions that led us to an economic precipice.....only this time they won't be happy until we go over it.  In the meantime, I fully expect all progress toward solution of some of the more pressing issues like almost 10% unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, rising health care costs, corporate shenanigans, mortgage foreclosures, the increasing pain of the unemployed to grind to a halt as the Republicans deflect our attention to repealing the new health care legislation and making the Bush tax cuts permanent for all the wealthy people, etc. etc.

All the anger we have seen from the electorate is really so ridiculous.  Most of the angry people don't really know what they are angry about.  Here's an example:  Republicans and Tea Party people have been haranguing us about how the Democrats have raised taxes to unreasonable levels.  Excuse me, our taxes have actually gone down since Obama came to town.  How is it that millions of people just believe this lie?  Obama's appointed budget panel just came out with concrete ideas that show real intelligence albeit at the expense of significant sacrifice.  The metaphor is like weighing 300 pounds and suddenly realizing you need to lose 150 within a year.  Not going to be easy.  What is the response from both sides of the aisle:  Oh no, can't do it, too tough, (preserve our current bureacracy).

I just woke up this morning and realized that with all the sturm and drang of the past two years, my life has not really been impacted by anything that all these blowhards have been saying or doing.  I still struggle to pay all the bills and have to work my ass off to make ends meet.  Thanks to all the vested interests and powerful lobbies (fronted by all the politicians) my economy is in a shambles and no one is trying to work together to solve the problems.

Democrats are wussies and Republicans are insane.  What a combination!  Alfred E Neumann for President!

I promise to write about other things that mean something.

What Happened to Truth and Civility?

I don't know about all of you in other states, but here in Florida, watching television has become really entertaining!  The tube is being flooded with political ads at an increasing rate.  Usually I have enough time to only watch programs that I TIVO, but lately I have been watching TV in real time when I watch the local news programs.  What I am seeing is breathtaking.

About 50% of each break for commercials is now composed of political ads that are all negative.  It's hard to tell in most cases who is financing them because at the end of the spot it simply says, "this ad paid for by (insert some patriotic sounding foundation)".  We don't know who they are, but it couldn't be clearer who they support.  In the rest of the ads, the support message in 90% of the examples is the opponent to the person or issue they are advertising about.

I remember when I was in grammar school and junior high school, and had the opportunity to run for some class office, I would put posters on the wall or give a speech to the voters, and I would say what I planned to do.  I would talk about my qualifications and experience and why I would be the better choice.  Is there one ad on TV or radio that you have seen or heard over the last week that does that?

What has happened to civility?

These ads don't give me time to think.  In a 30 second ad, I see unflattering pictures of a candidate, covered by flying word graphics that zoom out at me calling them liars, liberals, right wingers, thieves, and worse.  They spout 'facts' in rapid fashion that are not supported by any evidence.  In almost all cases it is obvious that most statements and suppositions presented are taken out of context.  After I am assaulted (which is the only apt description of the effect of these things) with the message, I have to chuckle at the brazen effort to misinform....and yet... I wonder if most of the people who see these things are as critical of their impact as I am.  Judging from the poll results, I think not.

What has happened to veracity?

The truth simply holds no value any more.  People running for office, and more precisely their handlers and 'advisors' seem to be advocates of whatever means justify the end of getting them elected.  What does that say about us as a people and a civilized society?  I wonder if campaigns by the founders of our country back in the late 1700s and early 1800s had the same attitudes about truth?

My favorite ads are the ones that make conceptual leaps that are classic examples of bait and switch.  For example, we have several constitutional amendments on the ballot here in Florida this election cycle.  One of them mandates a citizen's right to review and vote on changes to a comprehensive development plan when changes are proposed.  Currently, changes to a comprehensive development plan are made by local politicians who are, in many cases, in the pockets of special interests and developers.  Proposition 4 amends the Florida constitution to mandate a referendum vote by the citizens if there are changes proposed to a comprehensive plan.  The idea is to provide a check and balance against developers who try to 'buy' changes that will benefit them, usually at the expense of local citizens.  There are good arguments pro and con, and there should be a reasoned and thorough debate before a change is made to a state constitution.

However, what opponents to this proposition claim in their ad--in 30 seconds--is that supporters of Proposition 4  are 'the same people who supported Obamacare, raised taxes, plunged the country into debt and voted in lockstep with Obama, Reid and Pelosi'.  The ad doesn't mention anything about the pros and cons of the issue!  What kind of political advertising is this?  Does it attempt to educate the voter?  The ad has unflattering pictures of Obama, Pelosi, Harry Reid, graphics that have downward pointing arrows for the economy and upward accelerating arrows representing skyrocketing taxes. 

The problem is that Joe Citizen, sitting in front of his TV sipping a beer before dinner, is left only with the impression that Amendment 4 is another tax raising, debt increasing measure being forced through by those liberal, socialist Democrats.  That is just patently wrong, but no matter!  The average citizen will not take the time to study this issue and on election day will step into the voting booth and vote 'No' on this issue without understanding the pros and cons.

The question we have to ask as a democracy is what is our obligation to control the spread of rumor, misleading statement, character assassination, half truths and outright lies.  Maybe we should insist that they go back to grammar school and remember and re-learn how to run for office again!
  

The Perfect Storm of Incompetence

I am spending alot of time lately thinking about the state of the union and where we are headed.  There is something afoot in this land of ours that is darkly disturbing and I have been preoccupied with trying to  draw lines around it for months, so I can articulate what it is that is bothering me so.

It seems to me there are two reasons why we are in great danger of foundering as a country.  First, the mass of citizens is undereducated, not very intuitive or bright, and simply can't understand why they can't have what they want immediately.  Basically they are acting like 5 year olds.  Additionally, when it comes time to vote, they usually have no idea what anyone really stands for and have virtually no understanding of the issues that qualifies them to make any decisions concerning those issues.   Second, the people charged with running the county--legislators and industry leaders are preoccupied with making money at all costs, in spite of intelligent arguments to be forward looking and plan for the future.  The people writing and enacting legislation are consumed with making money from special interest groups, getting re-elected, and raising money for re-election.  Despite what they say, they are greedy, self serving, and many of them are just plain stupid.

I used to think that the body politic was intuitively smart and could discern bullshit from truth, but I think that is no longer the case.  What I see all around me are  people who actually believe that all of our ills are caused by the direction we have taken over the last 20 months.  I think that is ridiculous! 

We all know that changing the American economy is like trying to turn a battleship 180 degrees.  You can't do it fast.  Nothing can be done fast.  Somehow, Americans think that once Obama took the oath of office we should have had instant fixing and instant change.  People simply don't understand the nature of legislation... the time it takes to a) get it passed,  b) see it actually start to function, and finally c) see the effects of the legislation. 

Look at Obama's health plan as an example.  It was just passed 6 months ago, we just saw the first pieces become activated, and if you look at the rollout of the rest of the benefits, most of them don't have effect until 2014!  And  yet, all the Republicans and other empty headed braying mules that follow them scream long and hard about, is how it has ruined the economy and caused giant deficits.  In fact, every independent economic board looking at the effects of the plan predict that it will lower costs over the long run.    And yet, there are Republicans telling us that it's going to bankrupt the country and they are going to repeal it.  Excuse me, it passed!!  Give it a chance!  But no, all we hear is how the majority of Americans hate it.  What they hate is what they believe from all the half truths and lies that have been told about it for the last year, and somehow the Democrats are unable to defend it.  The people would rather believe the lies.  What happened to American's ability to perceive truth and reason?   Has our education system been such a consummate failure that the average citizen cannot think for himself and discern facts from lies?  Is it just too complicated for any of us to understand?

The stimulus is another red herring that Republicans keep smacking all of us in the face with.  It kept us from having a depression!  No one seems to want to acknowledge that fact.  Rather, those who claim it has been a failure, only want to return us to the conditions prior to the crisis so we can go through it again.  They refuse to acknowlege that we were headed for desperate straits during the Bush years because of his lies and mismanagement.  It is not part of their consciousness.  All we are told ad nauseum is that Obama is responsible for ruining the country.....and the masses all believe it, along with other drivel like, 'he's a Muslim', he's a socialist, he wasn't born here, blah, blah, blah. 

What is wrong with the average citizen in this country?  The Republicans are howling about all the terrible things that Obama is doing, and no one wants to get in their faces and howl back at them that they were the ones who got us here in the first place.  Change takes time and we must give the battleship a chance to turn into the wind so we can see the course we are finally on.  No one is willing to do that.  Everyone wants instant gratification.  That is the nature of our materialistic society. It is the reason we are in such desperate trouble.  What is clear to me is that we have been heading into this quagmire for over a decade and we can't simply fix all the ills in 15 minutes.  No one wants to acknowledge that fact.  People are not smart enough to see that for themselves.  They want to believe someone who says they can fix it by tomorrow.

Then there are the politicians who will say just about anything to anyone to get elected.  All they do, and I mean ALL they do is predicated on raising the most money for re-election.  They take money from powerful lobbying groups, they make decisions based on who has given them the most financial support, they lie unabashedly.  They are matched by those who run powerful companies and will do anything to keep the stock price up and the bottom line rosy.  I remember having lunch many years ago with a Wall street icon when our company was a public company.  He had been involved with the Milken scandals of Drexel Burnham Lambert, and when I asked him whether he had ever lied about something to his shareholders, his answer was " only when there was no other choice"!  I think that is the modus operandi for most congressmen and business decision makers.  It will ultimately be the downfall of our country.

So the biggest problem as I see it is that everyone has their own set of facts and those facts have nothing to do with what the actual facts are.  The public is left to try to choose which facts are the ones to believe and for the most part they are incapable of analytical thinking of any kind and simply agree with whomever is screaming the loudest.

Then there is Mr Obama and his minions who simply don't understand all of the above and are seemingly powerless to raise this issue with the people, and find a way to make a cogent argument that has enough gravity to be believed.  They don't have the words to make the masses understand what needs to be done and to get them to buy into enough time to see the changes through.   Strange that someone who rallied the country with his promises can't make them understand that he is keeping them.

It's all a perfect storm of incompetence.