I’m not psychoanalyzing this one.

I want to make the case that Obama’s freeze on discretionary funding is a brilliant way to save American government. I look to the often maligned (and for good reasons) the Tea Party. Liberty Belle, the darling of the Tea Party chapter in Seattle, posted some chilling quotes by AFSCME and AFL-CIO representatives. Fighting against signature gatherers to stop House Bill 2614 & House Bill 2613. Not willing to wade in the depth of policy, I just want to say anyone taking public service is a public servant and should live humbly for the people. Any representative, any advocate must be soft-spoken, understand, and respect people’s diverse opinions. They are not in the position to witch hunt or call for verbal violence against fellow citizens. They are in the sole business of bettering our nations, states, districts, without forgetting the fact that politicians’ gross incompetences are spun as brilliant strategy. See: The Republican National Party.

I say this knowing all too well that working class families’ wages haven’t adjusted to inflation in over forty years. Corporate America is leeching the middle class of purchasing power and emotional and financial health as they continue to ship jobs overseas. The middle class’ scars run a lot deeper than the our monthly statements. They alter our political structure, and my reverence for America is warmly stoked as things could have been so much worse.

But I think Obama’s plan can save the world. Notwithstanding Rachel Maddow’s image of the last twenty years’ budget-balancing Democratic and immoderate Republican presidents, what conservatives need is trust that government, if not a panacea, is a worthwhile investment in people’s time, money, and blood.

Even if Dems can cobble together a PR strategy–it doesn’t seem like the DNC has in twenty years–no image will really do us much good. Many liberal media bauble heads and political pundits tout that once “Obamacare” passes, Republicans and Tea Party-ers alike will enroll in these new programs with pride. Health care finance reform will transform from a Bolshevik plot into their daily routines, lives, and services.

This cannot happen. People cannot take Democrat’s potential boon for the working American for granted. DNC’s image needs to be branded into our retinas. Every paper needs a stamp, every new person enrolled into health insurance needs to wear a badge.

The only way to reach across party lines is to break it down into daily pragmatism. People need to know the services they receive are by the government.

The point: If government concentrates its resources into a few but effective services for the middle and upper classes and fuckin’ lets them know that state and federal governments planned and financed these services, we won. People will understand in real terms what the government’s good for. Programs will run efficiently, effectively, and considering how many services are under-funded, non-profits and agency under-staffed, finally calling a government-run program a success will shock and awe.

Trim the fat, cook the bacon. Our government won’t be an excessive sugar daddy to unions and welfare moms. Our government will be there in people’s lives, redistributing wealth for all, making public choices with our public resources.

That’s the way to success. This is Obama’s path. Courting the right more earnestly than Republicans, closing the gap between the right and left is the way we roll. It’s what will work. It’s what will ensure the safety of Democrat’s House seats; it’s what will ensure we see another Democratic President for six years.

Don’t forget to tip your waitresses on your way out.

1 large potato

3 medium-sized carrots (I chose one purple, white, and orange carrot.)

1 large parsnip

1/2 onion

2 cups of water

1/2 cup of milk

1 1/2 tablespoons of unsalted butter

2 teaspoons of apple butter

A couple of dashes of vinegar

Dill, garlic, paprika, cumin, bay leaf, and salt to taste

Simply boil the chopped vegetables in water for 15 minutes until they soften. Add the seasoning and vinegar to your taste. I would also consider adding some fresh rosemary or lavender. (I did not have any on hand.) Add milk and butter. After the butter melts, blend with a hand blender until the mash is only a little chunky, and, finally, mix in the apple butter. After heating to a full, hearty temperature, enjoy!

I’ve been really busy helping Cascade AIDS Project get set for AIDS Walk Portland, which is only a month away! The High School Challenge–which gives money fundraised for AIDS Walk Portland back to school to develop HIV prevention programming and health education to come up to the recently passed Oregon legislation that calls for “increase sensitivity to gender roles/gender expressions,” permits only medically accurate information on sexuality to be taught, and requires schools to teach non-abstinence-only education–is under way. But Development is going to be in a tizzy for the next four weeks until the Walk.

I’ve also been receiving some heavy shaming for the current state of squalor. My roommate walked into my room and laughed, saying “you’re room’s so hetero.” My life’s been…busy. More or less. I’m living out of two suitcases and a box. I desperately need a bookshelf (I have books littering my floor) and someplace to put my clothes, which currently live in one great pile outside my closet.

My plans to turn one of my (two!) closets into a reading room were revived this weekend when I found out about Scrap. It sells awkward and old pieces of fabric for peanuts. Who needs wallpaper?

Lastly, I want to share some love to Barney Frank. He interviewed with James Surowiecki, an editor at the New Yorker explaining the current state of the economy, the history of government regulation, consumer protection, and the foreclosure crisis.

Alice Dreger, a professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, told The New York Times, “There isn’t really one simple way to sort out males and females… At the end of the day, they are going to have to make a social decision on what counts as male and female, and they will wrap it up as if it is simply a scientific decision.” Exactly, Mrs. Dreger. Wrap it up in some scientific explanation because science fails to determine sex and gender.

I want to echo what Courtney writes on Feministing because the diversity of human sex and gender expression is hardly understood widely:

The ambiguity of sex may not even be at play with Caster Semenya, but the public’s reaction to her performance and body are flash points for our continued discomfort with admitting that the world does not come in such simple dichotomies as we safely like to think it does. My heart goes out to Semenya, who meanwhile has to deal with this shit instead of celebrating her victory and reveling in the moment.

Excellent article on under-reporting about Pakistani hijras in the U.S. media.

Could Project Runway Season 6–the greatest show of all time–air sometime soon?

Have we been looking at health care reform all wrong this whole time? Rethinking the means of reform is embedded in this critique–the same reform Obama “guarantees” will become legislation.

To see the Streisand Effect in full force, check out this Reddit thread about Sears demanding Reddit remove content. I think this summarizes it nicely.

And…robots learning human emotions. Advances in AI technology mean robots can experience fear and anger.

Now that MySpace’s use is on the decline, could it become the new choice medium of politics?

Remember my post on the history of the paranoid style in American politics? It seems like the Washington Post had a similar idea, drawing on various period of “American craziness.” I read it for its historical examples. I recommend the piece for that reason.

Finally, someone’s willing to say it: “Allowing People To Keep Their Existing Health Care Plan Is Good Politics–But Bad Policy.”

Monica Lewinsky, happy anniversary!

A slew of articles are being published in local newspapers and online news production sites ringing of similar tones: Give the protesters a break, leftists are turning their backs on grassroots power, not all is clear now but will be soon, the 60s, the 60s, the 60s!

Except there is very little similarity between 60s radicalism and what we are seeing now. Activists fighting for civil liberties were known for their peaceful demonstration. It was a hallmark of pride. The march Dr. Martlin Luther King rallied in Washington D.C. set the pace of activists for the decade. There is nothing that resembles that solidarity today. As Melissa Harris Lacewell writes in her blog on The Notion, one of the most enduring images of the Civil Rights Movement was Elizabeth Eckford, who was harassed and taunted by a group of white students, parents, and police on her way to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, which eventually got President Eisenhower’s and the National Guard’s attention. Elizabeth Eckford the strength of dignity, will, and justice in light of “the stunning counterpoint to the contorted, hate-filled faces of those following her.”

If the current town hall mob meetings resemble anything from the 1960s, it is the race riots, the race riots, which resulted in five deaths and 950 injuries and do not, by a long shot, represent liberal or other left leaning political frameworks. The two largest riots occured less than two weeks apart in July in 1967: Newark, N.J., had a six-day riot that left 26 dead and over 1,000 injured, and Detroit had a five-day riot that killed more than 40 people and injured hundreds. Similar to today, the famous LA Riots happened in the summer and when unemployment was high.

I would venture that if the town hall riots can compared to any point in recent American history is when US passed federal laws mandating fluoridation of drinking water to prevent tooth decay.

Starting in the late 1940s and 1950s, Americans became embroiled in battles over whether fluorides—ionic compounds containing the element fluorine—should be added to their water systems. On one side was a broad coalition of scientists from government and industry who argued that adding fluoride to drinking water would protect teeth against decay; on the other side were activists who contended that the risks of fluoridation were inadequately studied and that the practice amounted to compulsory medication and thus was a violation of civil liberties.

According to Wikipedia,

Opposition campaigns involve newspaper articles, talk radio, and public forums. Media reporters are often poorly equipped to explain the scientific issues, and are motivated to present controversy regardless of the underlying scientific merits… Antifluoridationist literature links fluoride exposure to a wide variety of effects, including AIDS, allergy, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, cancer, and low IQ, along with diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, kidney, pineal gland, and thyroid.

Thomas Frank writes in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” that the people who objected to fluoridation “thought the world was ending.” He continues: “And their anger was endless, implacable, spectacular.”

New deadline for health care reform.

Drug companies set to run $150 million worth of advertising to work FOR White House!

Homosexuality the cause of swine flu in Malaysia.

Will Arnett doing a dramatic reading of Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret.

On This Day: Gandhi’s Arrest Sparks “Quit India” Movement

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hopes to strengthen ties between the U.S. and Angola, a major oil producer that has become China’s largest trading partner in Africa.

In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wind.

Richard Hofstadter, professor of American history at Columbia University, a leading public intellectual in American politics, and conservative political analyst, wrote the quote above. He is often quoted by strands of neoconservative most popularized by Allan Bloom. He lost two appoints to major universities because “he was too Jewish.” I think he know receives lukewarm welcome in the academic community, even though he is now recognized as one of the most insightful political commentators of the twentieth century. He may be best known for his books, Anti-Intellectualism in America and The Age of Reform.

He wrote an essay that I highly recommend to everyone, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. He tracks what he sees is central to American political history–”the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy”–to foundation of America. He takes liberal literary flourishes, and could be tamed more, but the historical resources of the essay should reveal that health care protesters are not the extreme fringes of our society but apart of a greater tradition, a tradition that we forget about.

One infamous personae is John McCarthy a man who, according to Richard Rovere,

held two presidents captive–or as nearly captive as any Presidents of the United States have ever been held; in their conduct of the nation’s affairs, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, from early 150 trhough late 1954, could never act without weighing the effect of their plans upon McCarthy and the forces he led, and in consequence there were times when the could not act at all.

McCarthy, having ushered in a new fear of radicals, is known for forging an alliance between traditional conservativism and radical agrarians. Michael Rogin shows in his book The Intellectuals and McCarthy that there is no empirical evidence to suggest radical agrarians supported McCarthy–the same radical agrarians that are supporting the current mob violence and agonistic hate wishes.

I’d ask could it be that their own radicalism in not necessarily in line with corporate interests and these radicals are using this an opportunity to build political capital for their own interests?

Regardless whether anyone has an answer for this question, I recommend Hofstadter’s essay as well as Thomas Frank’s books, What’s The Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God.

P.S. I won’t be linking back to any Amazon Web sites in protest of their censorship. For more on their censorship practices, check out my previous posts here and here.

Boy, was I right. The GOP and its constituency does have a killer criticism: politicians now find themselves the target of lynching and death threats. Congressman Brad Miller from North Carolina received a death threat. According to Rachel Maddow, the message sounded “Miller could lose his life over this.”

At a town hall meeting August 4th, Todd Akin mentioned that some of his Democratic colleagues in Congress “almost got lynched” when talking to constituents. The idea seems to have been a big hit with the friendly audience. Watch and listen. The Huffington Post is also reporting Akin’s, he-he, joke!