Now, it's just marriage

As a friend of mine says, he's not for gay marriage ... just like he's not for gay parking, gay grocery shopping or other things made controversial by a prefix.  We're for marriage. Period.

As I've written so often, the argument here is about a simple question. Are all Americans entitled to get married - a contract of monogamy and devotion for life and extending beyond death (inheritance, notice on public records, etc) or not?  If some Americans are deprived of that right -- a natural right -- what is the state's compelling interest in that deprivation?

There is none, of course, and logic has had its way. And the arc of history bends once more. Now, it's just marriage, as it should be.

The Supremes

It seems that Chief Justice John Roberts actually does care about whether or not the Supreme Court considers cases of substance. Lately, it has felt like his court was being used as a bonus bite at the apple for GOP lawsuits that failed in the system. The ACA case prompted Roberts to instruct on the role of the Court. His interpretation is a conservative one: “Our duty, after all, is ‘to construe statutes, not isolated provisions.’”
And thus, health insurance made affordable for millions of Americans will remain so. Unfortunately, this also allows the GOP to continue to demagogue on the topic, crying for the repeal and reform of the law that is saving lives for some and improving its quality for all.
That's right--ALL. When the rise in health care costs and the accountability that comes with the ACA holds down costs, it benefits all Americans. If you're employer provides your coverage, the benefit costs are less, relative to the total cost of employing you. That means more cash is available for that raise you haven't had for years.
The dissent in the King v. Burwell case is what really tells the story. It says that Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito are making up their minds on a political basis, not on the merits of the case or on strict interpretation of the law.  What a shame.

The Scar of American Slavery

I have bad knees. Because of this I've had a lot of knee surgery which has led to scars.
Without a doubt, each time my knees were better after the procedure, but one of the surgeries was to remove scar tissue from the previous procedure.
Sometimes in the healing process, the body overcorrects, creating too much scar tissue and that's a problem in itself.
In healing our uniquely American wound from slavery's assault, our scar tissue of political correctness may be obscuring our view of today's real problem: white supremacy, white privilege and the hardwired sense of entitlement that white citizens seem to possess.
In deflecting this, white conservatives project criticisms of entitlement onto the African-American community with talk of a welfare state and laziness. Centuries-old racist arguments demonstrate clearly the lack of intellectual work on the problem. In fact, an outright rejection of there being a problem. So many believe that if they didn't personally enslave anyone, they're not in this problem.
There's no denying that all Caucasian Americans have benefitted from their accident of birth. We're less likely to be incarcerated. We live longer. We live better. And we're simply more free. All because we were born with this skin color.
And that's wrong.
Until and unless Caucasians reject these structures of unfairness in our justice system, our politics, our schools and our hearts, the poison of white supremacy will continue its attack on America's collective body.

Take a Hike

No, seriously, take a hike ... along the Eno in Hillsborough on the newly completed Riverwalk. Read all about it: http://www.chapelhillnews.com/2014/10/03/4201544/hillsborough-to-open-completed.html?sp=/99/586/885/

Carrboro Honors Music Festival Organizers

Here's my story (and I'm sticking with it) on the Chapel Hill News | News Observer: http://www.chapelhillnews.com/2014/09/22/4173712/carrboro-honors-carrboro-music.html?sp=/99/586/885/

Calling Orange County “Home”

We came to Orange County in the autumn of 1978. Though we lived in Durham for a few years, we moved back to Chapel Hill in the mid-80s and have called it home ever since. We made a choice to live in this community.

This year, I am proud to serve as the 2014 Chair of the Orange County Housing Authority, a relatively new community board appointed by the County Commissioners. We provide citizen oversight of the County’s Housing Choice Voucher program, commonly known as “Section 8.” Just under 600 families in this community are the direct beneficiaries of this rental subsidy, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The program brings about $3.5 million into our community every year.

That support is vital for those families, but did you know that you benefit from it too? The effect on you and your family or your business may be indirect, but it’s right in front of you. Keeping housing affordable leads directly to spending money in the Orange County economy.

Because their housing is affordable, voucher holders can spend their limited income in a more diverse, balanced way. They can shop for back-to-school clothes for the kids, go to a concert or eat in a restaurant occasionally and manage the cost of their healthcare.

If participants cannot locate housing that accepts an HCV voucher and they have to leave the program, they may remain in Orange County, they may live in the same apartment.  If they have to spend 50-60% of their income on their rent, it will not be spent in restaurants, in retail shops or entertainment venues. For elderly and disabled citizens, medicines may have to last longer, putting their health at risk.

Disproportionate rent burden for low income families has a negative ripple effect in the local economy – it hurts all of us in lost tax revenues and sales to local businesses.

Who are these people? They are people who work all over the county and serve you directly every day. They are hospital staff, restaurant workers, entrepreneurs, artists, first responders (police, fire and emergency response), bus drivers, home health aides, daycare workers, public school and University support staff.  Our community needs these people in order to thrive and we are losing our capacity to make housing affordable for them.

The Mayors of Carrboro and Chapel Hill have made clear that they are committed to supporting the stability of affordable housing and the awareness of the Housing Choice Voucher Program. We are grateful for their leadership in this effort.

That said, the local governments are limited in what they can do in holding down pricing in the rental housing market. Mayor Kleinschmidt correctly points to state laws that prohibit measures that would be considered “rent control.”  

There is direct action available to all of us. If you own a property that you’d like to make available to rent, you may be eligible to do so through the Housing Choice Voucher Program. We need more participation from local landlords, providing a strong portfolio of choices for voucher holders. We need local government incentives and new ideas. Speak up. Demand solutions to this long term problem.

We will be announcing information sessions (sponsored by the housing authority) for prospective landlords sometime in September. Meanwhile, keep your mind and your heart open to the knock on the door that comes from a voucher holder looking for a place for his or her family to live. These families choose to live here. They work here, spend their money here and they vote here. We depend on them for many vital services and they’re counting on us to keep Orange County an affordable place to call home.

Power Politics

A few days of no electricity restores the ability to think in complete sentences ... dare I suggest - even paragraphs?

My street - a mile-long cut-in near Camp New Hope- suffered a downed power line across the road. Very dangerous. Not only was the line down, the pole from whence it came was jutting out at about 45 degrees, as though it wanted to fall but lacked the nerve. It was falling not from ice, but from mud. The ground it sits on just off the road and up a few feet in elevation was giving way. Nerve wracking to drive under and scary to imagine it coming down. From Friday morning until yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, we watched and waited. Though Piedmont trucks were often nearby, we didn't see them in the neighborhood until yesterday afternoon. Not even to evaluate. No cones - nothing.

A couple of our neighbors (I don't know who, but they SHOULDN'T HAVE) freed the lines somewhat by cutting away trees that were laying on them. With the nice weather on Saturday and Sunday, we were outside here and their and encountering many of our neighbors, comparing notes.

Indeed, we had ALL called Piedmont Electric and reported the downed lines. I posted pictures on WTVD's website and then linked to that via Piedmont's Facebook page --- expressing my unhappiness. I can understand that we have to wait out turn and, compared to post-Fran, these were NOT the worst of times. What bothered me was Piedmont's lack of information systems both for managing incoming reports of outages and for updating the public on status. Their "outage viewer" online is a piece of crap on a smart phone - which is all many of us have (with gratitude) for getting information. I called at least twice and it seemed each time that the person I spoke to had no idea there was a pole about to fall onto the street.

And, of course, I saw no sign of good old Governor McNugget during any of this storm. Perhaps he was working on the coal ash problem, but I thought that even if I saw him on TV or heard him on the radio, what would he say that would help me in any way? Nothing. He, like Piedmont Electric at this point, doesn't have much credibility with many of us. That's an enormous problem during an emergency. I need to feel confident that my governor is on top of things on a simple human level -- looking out for us, whether we voted for him or not. Perhaps I'm sentimental, but that's the standard I look to and nearly never like what I see.

Women's History Month

The downside of observing under-appreciated achievements with Black and Women’s History month-long observances is they invariably miss something that was (for someone) very important. That makes something that was under-appreciated seem UNappreciated, which is probably not the case.

Here’s an example of that problem. Last February (at month’s end), there was a documentary called “Makers: Women Who Make America” on PBS, kicking off Women’s History Month. It was about the evolving image of working women and their roles within families. The film was narrated by Meryl Streep, an indisputable giant in film and champion of strong women being portrayed in three dimensions. Imperfect. Struggling. Growing.

The film featured various iconic milestones and talked a fair amount about how the image of women in television and films can help us imagine ourselves differently. We saw Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore as independent professionals on “That Girl” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” We saw “Maude” talk about abortion on television for the first time. Not mentioned on the program was “The West Wing”, where we saw Glenn Close portray a judge being vetted for the Supreme Court disclosing that she’d had an abortion. In that episode (admittedly on a program that is a liberal fantasy) she becomes Chief Justice of the United States.

That omission didn’t bother me. Here’s the one that did – in this program that was narrated by Streep, there was no mention at all of one of her first films, Kramer vs. Kramer. In the movie, thought to be quite a breakthrough at the time, Ted and Joanna Kramer are fighting over custody of their son and the court rules, wrongly, that Joanna Kramer will get full custody. It’s Hollywood, though, so the Kramers work it out in the end (as they never could in the beginning) and they informally arrange to share custody.

Presumably the filmmakers didn’t want to distract from the focus on women – women being great, courageous leaders. I get that. Sometimes, and especially in complicated situations, being a leader is mostly about seeing more than one possible right answer and (in rare occurrences) it’s about letting go of some power to get the best solution for everyone involved.  “Joanna Kramer” was a leader of women, ahead of her time. She taught the hard lesson of humility, the need for partnership and the integrity of objectively seeing and admitting when you’ve been wrong. If America’s investment banks had taken that lesson, our economy would be in much better shape right now.

So, to look at women’s history with some integrity and through today’s perspective, it’s not a good time to take a victory lap. To wit:

• We still have an embarrassing level of representation in the Congress (both houses).
• We are still fighting for reproductive rights.
• We carry most of the load in caring for our aging parents (and in-laws).
• We comprise the bulk of minimum wage workers.
• We are most of the population living in poverty.

For all the attention that an openly gay defensive lineman gets for possible “distractions” to his NFL team, there is almost no possibility that a professional football, basketball or baseball player would be “distracted by” a player raping or beating the shit out of a woman.

As I watch Wendy Davis running for governor in Texas, I am hopeful that we might be getting to the next level of our struggle, largely because she is providing clear evidence that we are in a struggle. It’s not up to her to carry this burden, though, it is up to each and every one of US.

Happy Women’s History Month. Now, let’s get back to work.

Mission Control

The first visit to the gym went great. The treadmill .. Wow. It's not a workout, it's mission control. Built-in fans and cupholders, constant readout of your heart rate, a chart telling me the sweet spot (target heart rate) to focus on. How appropriate - for a mission that's never really accomplished.

Easy to see how people get into this and overdo it. There's a lot to try and it's not all torture. I wanted to be sure and leave still able to walk and have a desire to come back. So on that, FIRST DOWN!

Football and Fitness

Happy new year.  We all have our resolutions, I suppose. Published or not, there's a cleansing feeling in seeing a blank January. We can try again. We can turn a page. It's more than a new month. It's a new beginning.

I've been watching a LOT of football and you have to admire one genius thing about the game. You go on the field knowing you need to score, but the game is structured to break that big goal into smaller ones. First downs. Take four plays. Get at least ten yards and you can keep the ball. Move the chains. Smart.

I think it's the often welcome disruption of routine that the holidays deliver unto us. By January, we are yearning for the daily grind to come back - resetting the calendar resets the alarm, the promised diet and exercise commitment. I usually go through that "miscellaneous" pile on my desk and discover something I started looking for during the previous Easter weekend.

This year, it's time to deploy stage two of the getting into shape plan. The first stage was fixing a lifetime of bad news in the knees department and boy oh boy did THAT turn out to be more complicated than planned. Bilateral knee replacement (2 knees on same day) is never going to be a picnic but my experience added some ugly setbacks including a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis during my recovery - cause, yeah, I relish challenge.

Ok fine. I have this. I'm living with it. I've beaten it into remission now, so ... What's next?

One thing is, this year must feature regular visits to a gym to work on machines. I told myself I'd get enough physical activity without doing this. I was wrong. Way wrong. So new year, new opportunities. Off to the gym we go, hubby and I.

It sounds like way more fun than cleaning the house. Unfortunately, gotta do that too. But we're joining and doing this stuff together.

First down, ten yards to go.

Affording Care

I completed my enrollment via Healthcare.gov on Sunday afternoon (12/1). On Monday, BCBSNC generated a letter and payment coupon. On Tuesday, They mailed it. Today, (Thursday, Dec 5) I got it. When they process my payment, I should expect my welcome kit and insurance card. I'm guessing that'll take a week.

So, THAT happened.  

No screaming headlines, just the government doing what it promised, the health insurance provider responding efficiently and now I can expect to be insured on New Year's day for LESS than I paid for my previous coverage.

Also, this ... the word "Obama" did not and will not appear anywhere on my  insurance materials, because the government is not providing my insurance, Blue Cross Blue Shield is doing that.

The fact is, though, that without the Affordable Care Act I would have to remain as I am now - without health insurance (my COBRA has expired). So, for all my friends and relatives (and you know who you are) who berate the president and embrace the "repeal Obamacare" chant from the GOP citing nonsense about "the government takeover of healthcare", you can now continue expressing yourself knowing that you are advocating for me to be uninsured and unable to pay for my insulin and the many medicines I take daily to manage other conditions. Not that much of a stretch to call that a death panel, is it? 

If it sounds like I take it personally, I do. A misinformed electorate could cost me my life.

Finally, if you're inclined to tell me about young healthy people getting into the insurance pool, please save your breath. I know that, probably better than most people. I'm an insurance baby, born in Hartford, Connecticut. It's the family business. I'm grateful for the ACA. I mourn for people who have suffered and died due to its lack in the last 30 years. As a nation, we should be ashamed that this has taken so long.

McCrory's Dog Whistle

I call our Governor "McNugget" because he offers only empty, unhealthy calories.

If it's my paranoia, please tell me, but I read Gov. McNugget's outrageous editorial explaining his signature on North Carolina's new "Voter ID" bill and thought this was a cannonball headed for NorthEast Central Neighborhood of Durham, North Carolina. In his third paragraph the Governor writes:

Even if the instances of misidentified people casting votes are low, that shouldn’t prevent us from putting this non-burdensome safeguard in place. Just because you haven’t been robbed doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lock your doors at night or when you’re away from home.

He says that a law to stop/prevent in-person voting fraud didn't have to wait for the actual problem to exist, but I think it's it something else and much more sinister.

I think the governor is not accidental in his language. He's not a lawyer (neither am I), so maybe he doesn't know that if someone breaks into your house when you're not home, it's a burglary, not a robbery. He does know, with certainty, that those most affected by his reduction in access to voting are African American, elderly, disabled and/or poor. Northeast Central Durham, a democratic party stronghold, and it's ground zero for this law. There's a bullseye on the Bull City. The GOP has a storied history of disrupting voting in Durham to win elections. We hear the dog whistle.

In explaining his reasons for reducing access to voting for low income, vulnerable people, McNugget wants to reminds us about scary crime - specifically home invasion.

I find no coincidence in it - just as I didn't think he was tone deaf at all when he brought cookies out to women who were protesting to keep the keys to their own wombs. One should know when one is being arrogantly insulted. He wasn't clueless, he was showing the extreme right that he knows where women belong.

The one good thing about what the GOP is up to in Raleigh is that they have abandoned all sense of subtlety or appearance of interest in the public good or responsible governance. They are nakedly pursuing the agenda that the national GOP is grasping for with manifest desperation:

Restore Us To Power Because We Should Be In Power. We have money and connections and we'll know what to do. 

ALL of their strategies for accomplishing their return to power are predicated on one thing - NOT THEM (Democrats). NOT THEM because they're non-white. NOT THEM because they're women. NOT THEM because they're gay, poor, disabled. Just NOT THEM.

They have no real platform or cohesion to what they are doing or why (in terms of an actual philosophy or policy). It's almost literally as through the left hand doesn't know that the right hand already robbed that bank.

A moment after state employees demonstrate their displeasure at going yet another year with raises, the Department of Health and Human Services gives raises in excess of $20,000 each to two "leadership team" members who are obviously patronage appointees from the McNugget campaign.

Ricky Diaz and Matthew McKillop, both 24 years old, were bumped up to annual salaries of more than $80,000.  Without an amazing fastball or a .380 batting average, you cannot justify those numbers.

And they have no intention of justifying those numbers, because elderly, disabled, poor African Americans or teachers or families that won't be covered under a passed-up Medicaid expansion are too busy struggling to figure out the political action that's necessary to slow the process of the rich getting richer.

And the governor wants us to equate making it easy for low income, elderly, disabled citizens to vote with the careless practice of leaving your house unlocked when you go out - an invitation to violation and theft.  Governor, you're as subtle as a sticky doorknob, with half the charm.

It's not paranoia when they're really after you.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/12/3102124/gov-pat-mccrory-why-i-signed-the.html#storylink=cpy

To My Representatives: A Call for Action

I attended elementary school at Keeney Street School in Manchester, Connecticut. This school is still operating and if you were to visit, you'd find little difference between it and Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. In my adult life, I've been a North Carolinian. When my children were in school, I volunteered to serve on a Safe Schools task force and as a result, I wrote a winning grant to launch a school violence prevention program in Orange County in the 1990s. This program has produced significant results, but it wasn't without controversy.

I mention this because I know the pressure to stop school shootings and violent incidents had reached a near fever pitch in North Carolina (and elsewhere). We all hoped that taking a community policing approach within the schools would be effective and to an extent, it has been. My point is WE ACTED. Wringing our hands and hoping it would go away was not an option. This was about protecting children.

With that said, our country is suffering from a devastating level of ongoing loss from gun violence on a daily basis. Losing more than 11,000 citizens every year is not a level of violent and preventable deaths that we can allow. We could never tolerate a foreign influence that delivered this kind of damage to our nation. The deaths from one year's gun violence exceeds those from The September 11th attacks and the wars that followed ... Combined. During the years since those attacks, we have lost more than 100,000 citizens to this insidious cause of death. This is a shameful failure of leadership and human compassion. How is it that this is not viewed as a threat to our national security?

I'm writing to you today to ask that you support legislation to regulate the ownership of deadly force - the possession of particular firearms and ammunition. The measures that make sense in our society are universal background checks, restrictions on high capacity magazines and a ban on the sale of military grade assault weapons.

I'm writing to you today to simply say that you represent me and these measures will be before you for a vote. I want you to support them. I will remember if you don't.

Thank you for your service. If I can be of service to you in supporting these legislative initiatives, please let me know.

It's the Policy, Stupid (Party)

The GOP is doing a lot of thinking lately, or at least they're trying to take on that appearance. With conflicting messages coming out of CPAC (We must change, We must not change) the RNC is struggling to get to center stage, throwing sharp elbows and expecting them in return. It's ugly to watch.

Although we Democrats relish the image of the sometimes insufferable Republicans thrashing around, trying to find a message they can agree on, the fact is ... it helps no one for one party to be so completely rudderless. We ached about it when the GOP was disciplined and the Dems were all over the place and now the reverse is true. The left finally remembers what it's FOR and how to fight the good fight, but we can't slug it out with an opponent who doesn't seem able to explain his/her own position beyond "It's how I was raised. It's what my church tells me," as House Speaker John Boehner explained is unwavering opposition to marriage equality.

For the record, Mr. Speaker, Americans reject the notion that a leader in the federal government cannot change a political position because of what his church tells him. (See: Kennedy, Catholic, 50+ years ago)

The only answer to this problem, it seems to me, is for someone to tell these desperate Republicans what the genuinely conservative positions are on the issues of the day. As a one-time Republican (yes, Chapel Hill, it's true) I can offer these broad principles -- for the sake of the nation, I hope somebody reads them and gives this some thought.

It's not the messaging or the wrapper or the lipstick on the GOP pig. It's the policies on the GOP for the last 20 years or so that have brought the party to its knees. Perhaps just a reminder of what the genuinely conservative positions are on these issues will help you think it through.

Here they are -
Top 10 Conservative Arguments for a Modern GOP 

Marriage Equality - Yes
This one is probably the easiest, so let's start off with it. To be conservative is to believe in a minimal role for government. That is, the federal government shouldn't lead social policy or be in the business of inventing "special rights." True! So, strip this down to the country's declaration document - the one that told old King George we are endowed by our creator with INALIENABLE rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. There it is, right there. The pursuit of happiness and liberty. These rights cannot be taken from us without due process and no one can identify a due process of law that denies marriage to any class of people.

(Loving v. Virginia) Chief Justice Warren: Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

GOP, be practical. When the court reverses the Defense of Marriage Act and declares that California PROP 8 is unconstitutional (they will - Republican attorney Ted Olsen has a great case), that's the time to jump ahead and declare victory because it's the law of the land. Conservatives respect the law.

Then, LET IT GO.

Climate Change/Environmental Protection - Yes
Again, this one's easy. Pick up a book if you need to or Google "Teddy Roosevelt." He's one of your own. To be conservative is to seek to minimize to expense of resources, natural and otherwise. Protecting the land, air and water is an obvious expression of these principles. Even Tricky Dick Nixon saw this when he created the EPA in the 70s. Beyond this, your religious right supporters should be happy to accept that you are protecting the land that God made, rather than drilling, strip mining and fracking your way to your next election. Smart, efficient use of natural resources and responsible stewardship of our investments in clean energy is a conservative course. It isn't trendy or the work of any "fringe" group to ask what today's policy decisions will do to Americans born in the next decade, who will die after 2100. Lincoln thought that way about us when it came to slavery. You can do that too.

Reproductive Rights - Yes
This one's a little counter-intuitive, but yes, the GOP loves to talk about the constitution as a near-sacred document. Well, that document clearly states that the rights of Americans convey those BORN in the U.S. or naturalized. This is where the Republican party is going to have to undergo a fundamental shift in posture -- into one that assumes that women don't want abortions. Until you take that fact on board as your operating assumption (you haven't) you simply will not be able to resolve this issue. And until you can speak credibly about the need for responsible women (and men) to have easy access to birth control, NO ONE WILL LISTEN TO YOU. This is the world you're in. Adapt. Accept. Take a position on protecting the right of responsible adults to access safe, effective birth control. That will prevent more abortions than anything you've done to date. But you'll have to accept something - consenting, responsible adults want to have sex outside of marriage. As conservatives, you should be interested in protecting children from predators, and protecting the rights of consenting adults to be left alone. Remember your roots -- LIBERTY, PURSUIT of HAPPINESS. Keep the government off our backs -- especially when we're home alone in our bedrooms.

Public Education Reform - Yes
As a means of providing good stewardship of the taxpayers dollars, Conservatives should stand strong for public schools that are properly and equitably funded. That means throwing OUT the property tax model for funding public schools. Create a commission to reinvent the funding model that will deliver the same quality in Bumpkin, Idaho as it does in Beverly Hills, California. Have students design a pilot program. Experiment, document, learn. Education is the one area that can be expected to reinvent itself. That's the business of education.

Champion Charter Schools. If they can achieve similar results with less regulatory burden (as they have so far) they have proven their worth. Make them dare to explore more unusual approaches. Build in incentives for special education to innovate and attract partners from the high tech sector. Empower exceptional students to drive changes in requirements and curriculum. Find a way to set high achieving students free, allowing gifted students to graduate early and surge forward into higher learning more effectively. Be FOR this. LEAD this. We need a lean, hungry clicking-on-all-cylinders workforce. Its lack is a national competitive disadvantage affecting trade and security.

Single Payer National Healthcare - Yes
Seriously, this is so simple. Follow the money.  If you were inventing the healthcare system today, using all the data and experience from the last 50 years, single payer is what you'd invent. It is by far the most cost effective to the nation (regardless of source). Conservatives want efficiency, fairness, even outcomes and proper stewardship of dollars. With doctors on salaries and outcomes driving the treatment process, prevention can get more resources (because it delivers better results) and the use of data-driven programs to target high-risk patients (for diabetes, hypertension compliance and prevention, for example) will be the easy and obvious path to a healthier, more effective workforce. This could be paired with raising the social security  retirement age to 70 (in 25 years) because it can reasonably be expected to positively affect life expectancy and quality of life.

Gun Control - Yes
We control alcohol, use of automobiles and access to kittens. In many communities, we must be screened for the possibility that we'd be cruel or irresponsible with a kitten, but we can buy a gun and a trunk full of ammo while barely revealing anything personal to the seller. Screening for criminal history of assaulting a former employer or family member doesn't amount to infringing on one's rights. It amounts to living in a society that values law and order. That's a conservative value, isn't it? Law and Order?

More accurately, this should be called "deadly force control."  Protecting police and first responders from being vaporized by a criminal with a military-like arsenal including gasses, biological agents, shoulder-mounted missiles ... we want to protect law enforcement from these kinds of weapons, right? Yeah, see ... we already HAVE some control, we just need to tighten things up. We need to review what criminals are using and we need to adapt, adjust and move forward. That's what intelligent beings do.

A couple of U.S. Senators were having a meltdown recently over four employees of the diplomatic service getting killed in the line of duty. A thousand civilians a MONTH are being killed by gun violence in the United States. There is nothing Conservative about allowing that to go on. So, Senator McCain ... don't you CARE about a thousand civilians getting killed every month?

Review/Restructure/Reduction of Military - Yes
Outgoing President Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex and his caution has proved its worth. If Medicare is the "third rail" of politics, then the military must be the fourth ... somehow. Again, this comes down to facing the facts of America's resources - in blood and treasure. We are already a military power so great that a conventional invasion of our shores is out of the question. Mission Accomplished.

Now, we have to become more agile and prepare for high tech attacks, more terrorism and the ongoing prospect of losing our way on the world stage. We must make the world safer through influence and leadership and our disputes over how to do this must stop at the water's edge.

That's the conservative view -- an American view. One nation. Indivisible. Preserving our country's national identity and respecting that we have one president at a time on the world stage is a position consistent with respectful conservative values. All Americans want a safe, free domestic life -- one with the tranquility promised in our founding documents. Protecting citizens -- including protecting their peaceful way of life -- is a critical American value. With our world domination well-established on the military side, even the Pentagon agrees, the health and better education of America's youth is a new focus needed for the sake of national security. If we promise to listen to commanders on the ground overseas, shouldn't we listen to them from Washington?

Infrastructure Investment - Yes
Previously not controversial, this one's pretty easy.The Acme Construction Company cannot go out in the marketplace and start building roads on speculation, then sell their use to drivers. Building roads, tunnels, bridges, dams -- this is work that government must do, contracting through competitive bidding. Conserving our resources means doing these repairs and upgrades that must be done now, while borrowing money is at its cheapest. Do we have to wait for a relative to sail off a crumbling bridge to get this done? No, we do not. You don't wait for your water heater to stop working before you replace it. You do the needed maintenance. You monitor efficiency. You watch your energy usage. And when you have two pennies to put together or rates are low for borrowing, you replace it. That's the conservative approach. That's what American families DO.

Equal Pay for Equal Work - Yes
The GOP is generally a pretty big cheerleader for the free market. In that market, the best mousetrap usually outsells its competitors and the entrepreneur wins over the bureaucrat, right? Equal pay for equal work is not affording anything special to women. Instead, it says to all workers -- go forth and compete for opportunity and may the best qualified or hardest working win -- on the merits. Period.

Women excel at some areas of business, it turns out. We are good team leaders, effective managers and creative problem solvers. Whether they enter/leave the workforce for child bearing doesn't usually matter for the work that's in front of them TODAY. Besides, equal pay for equal work is the LAW and Conservatives respect the law.

Minimum Wage Increases - Yes
Last, but never least. A higher minimum wage (which costs the government nothing) moves low-skilled workers closer to self-sufficiency and reduces their risk of dependency on government subsidy. Despite the fact that GOP leaders famously point to increases in minimum wage as a job killer for small employers, there is NO evidence of this. None. Like tax cuts for the rich causing economic growth, it's an unsubstantiated theory. The Conservative approach is to take actions that have been PROVEN to work, not stand blindly defending theories proven to fail. That's delusional and extreme. It is NOT Conservative.

Conservatives are going to have to get used to a term that's been in the business world for a while and is now in the mainstream of the political lexicon: data-driven decision-making. That means that you study the facts of what's actually, provably happened and try to base your decisions on a universe of fact, free of emotional speculation or wishful thinking. It produces much more stable, predictable results.  It accepts that failure is the price for trying. It studies failure for its lessons. "Failure," said Henry Ford, "is the opportunity to more intelligently begin again." 

It's based on SCIENCE. When doctors are "conservative" they take a course in treating a patient that involves the least risk, is least invasive, will likely do the least harm. At least, that's what GOOD doctors do. These days, that means that orthopedic surgeons try physical therapy first and GOOD cardiologists send their patients to a nutritionist and recommend medical intervention (if their condition allows) instead of surgery. They take the long view.

THAT is the Conservative view -- the LONG view. Good luck, GOP. May the force be with you.

VETERAN’S DAY

My dad is 84 years old.  He served as a military officer (in National Intelligence in Washington) during the Korean War.  November 11 was Veteran’s Day – the day the nation honors those who have served their country through military service.  This year, it was to be the time when he and my stepmother would depart on a week-long Caribbean cruise. 

They had pre-registered several weeks earlier, including full passport information. Unfortunately, my stepmom accidentally packed two passports that had expired in 2006 instead of their current passports.

Now I know that cruise ships are pretty strict on the passport issue but they are not perfectly uniform about it.

Their old passports clearly showed that they were U.S. citizens.  They had  photocopies of their current passports and the data from current passports was in the ship’s database. They also had current driver’s licenses.  Taken together, it was totally clear who they were – U.S. Citizens and repeat Royal Caribbean customers.

Representatives from Royal Caribbean told Dad and Anna a couple of things of interest.

1)   Too bad this was on a Sunday, they said, not a Monday. Had it been Monday, they could have verified their birth certificates and they’d be on their way.

2)      Royal Caribbean, they said, is subject to the port’s security rules

Rules are rules, right?  The Port Canaveral rules clearly state that to cruise out of that port, one should have proper identification: “U.S. citizens need proof of citizenship in the form of a passport (valid or expired for less than 10 years)”

Royal Caribbean rules? “Royal Caribbean International strongly recommends that all guests travel with a passport that is valid for at least 6 months beyond the end of the cruise.”

I’m not Perry Mason, but I do know that the term “strongly recommends” is less than “must.”

So here is my Dad, on Veterans Day – flags flying at the port. When he sees a soldier (like my nephew, a marine officer) he stands up a little straighter. He’s proud of his service and rightly so.

Royal Caribbean has nothing to be proud of in this situation. They misrepresented the regulations involved and ignored their own discretion. That’s shameful customer service that caused my 84 year-old father tremendous emotional upset. That’s not the business a cruise line is in.

Uncle Joe

Lots of families have a creepy uncle. You never feel right about him, don't want to be alone with him and wouldn't bring your friends to visit him.

Now, it appears that Penn State has had one for the last 61 years, but didn't know it. Footbal icon, Coach Joe Paterno was rightfully fired last night by Penn State's Board of Trustees because, well, they don't want a Grand Jury to start looking at them and making comparisons with the Catholic Church and its monsterous worldwide criminal pedophilia organized crime family.

Grown men weep on television when discussing this sickening case of serial rape of children, because it's bringing down Uncle Joe. That one coach who everyone thought was above reproach -- he always ran a clean program. Well, now we know that ... no, no he sure didn't. He ran a dirty, disgusting, tainted program that facilitated the rape of children.

Bye-bye Uncle Joe. Good Riddance.

Now, the question turns to why-oh-why did it take a Grand Jury so long to report on this? The Justice Department should get involved here as it appears that a criminal investigation was obstructed. Penn State's season should be over as of right now and they should make no plans for next year. Instead, the numbskull who walked in the rape of a 10 year-old boy, did nothing to intervene immedately and waited a day to report it, will be coaching Saturday against Nebraska. That game should be a default win for the Cornhuskers but it won't be. I hope that whatever network is airing the game will be listing child abuse hotline numbers throughout.

It's a hope I have.

OMG, GOP

What in the WORLD is happening with the Republican party? So askew are you, GOP, that I find myself with progressive columnist Dana Milbank (Washington Post), who said last night on MSNBC, "I never thought these words would pass my lips, but Karl Rove is exactly right."

Seriously. Seriously. If it's so bad that Rove states what is blisteringly obvious, then it can only mean one thing ... the GOP is now officially the Goofy Oddball Party.  Maybe for keeps.

Rove was talking about Rick Perry trying to re-ignite the Birther nonsense for having heard it from His Majesty, the Donald. Desperate, pathetic Donald of Trumply.  Karl Rove is now openly concerned that crazy people are noticeably running the republican party. Raising money off the wing nuts is one thing, but having them drive policy and coming down from the attic to speak to the public -- wow that's a big problem.

So, yeah, I never thought I'd hear myself say it, but Rove is right -- pairing up with these nuts is bad for the country. Of course, it was always bad, but now it's on Main Street, so I reckon it's worse.

Dear Mr. President

Dear President Obama,
I'm writing today to tell you that we did try to buy American when it was time for a new television a couple of years ago. Couldn't do it. Nothing made in America.

But as I wanted a new car, my husband and I talked extensively about features, about brand, about quality. If it doesn't get 30mpg on the highway, it's out of the question, I said.

Months of looking, WANTING to buy American, we held firm. Safety. Quality. Features. Good mileage. Great service. Not negotiable.

Mr. President, we were not going to take second place. And we didn't. We bought a Chevy Equinox. They say it gets 32 mpg on the highway! But I find it's more like 35 mpg.

We bought a car from a great American company whose course you corrected. Good call.

AZ Shooting - The Ultimate Hate Speech

Did you ever hear the expression "to send a message"? He slammed the ball through the hoop - that really sent a message. It's something we often hear in sports and in politics to indicate that someone's actions are emphatically communicating - usually serving to push back and intimidate the opposition.

Jared Loughton, the Tucson shooter, went to Rep. Giffords' "Congress on the Corner" to "send a message." His actions are speech - hate speech - and to suggest that there is no relationship between this speech and the Republican culture of violent political speech is a child's "nu-uh" argument. Specifically, the Alaskan Quitter-in-Chief has made herself such a reputation for provocative rhetoric, she welcomes the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" and gleefully compares herself to a pit bull (with lipstick). She and her running mate, Senator McCain, were only too happy to benefit from their campaign crowds screaming their heads off when Palin referred to candidate Obama as "palling around with terrorists" and claiming that he, a sitting U.S. Senator posed a threat to the security of the United States. I know you've seen this, but watch as an elderly woman confronts McCain and says she's afraid of Obama. McCain is nodding in affirmation. Then she says she thinks he's AN ARAB. McCain's only response is no, no, he's a decent family man (was that supposed to refute his being an Arab?). He retakes the microphone to get back to the stage and away from specifics. His supporters were so extreme (two of them saying they feared Obama) that McCain is in the ridicuous position of spending his campaigning time talking about the fact that a U.S. Senator is not an enemy of the county. And he does so, by the way, rather superficially.

So is it speech? Was a message sent? Recall, painful as it is, when JFK was gunned down. Was that a statement? How about his brother, Robert, then a sitting U.S. Senator? How about Martin Luther King, whose birthday we observe today? How about San Francisco Mayor George Moscone? Harvey Milk? Rep. Leo Ryan, murdered in Guyana while investigating the Jonestown cult?

Do you see a pattern in those names? Do you notice the progressive tilt? This helps to explain the red-faced anger and sentitivity on the part of progressives when it comes to modern day political assasinations. With the notable exception of Ronald Reagan (who very nearly died when he was shot) and the attempts on then- President Gerald Ford, this practice has been one that has pushed back and sent a message mainly to the political left >> sit down, be quiet. Not now, not yet.

When the Quitter-in-Chief invokes the term Blood Libel, it is no accident due her ignorance. No, indeed. Her accusation stated plainly is that the Jewish-owned and run media is taking the shooting of a Jewish Representative and the killing of a young child and others and using the blood of that crime to "feed" the media beast, directing its hungry attention to chewing on her, America's most successful quitter. Hence, the stain of that ugly lie is continued in the modern age, via Facebook. Like dropping leaflets from an airplane, there's no talking back. It's a one-way message.

When she claims innocence in the AZ shootings, I am reminded of another group that uses inflammatory language and the anonymity of numbers to do the work of spreading their ugliness, then claiming that they didn't light the match that burned the cross on your lawn. That's right, the Klan is great at this stuff -- spreading malicious, racist lies in ways that tend to be protected by the first amendment and are attributable to the "atmosphere" rather than recognized for being expressly incendiary. You know the problem with these things usually is that you can't demonstrate that the speech that was made was clearly a threat, was construed as a threat and was specific enough to act on as a threat.

And certainly we would not typically find a television interview featuring the victim (who was being interview because her office was vandalized) talking about how this "hit list" being posted for all the world to see HAS CONSEQUENCES.

My good friends in the mainstream media are quick to say there's "no connection" between Palin's crosshairs graphic and this shooting. They likely mean on the most literal level that nobody thinks she ordered a hit on a Congresswoman.

If Loughton were at large and you found that list in his apartment -- just a list of names of 20 members of Congress -- after one of them had been shot ... I think the other 19 would be on lockdown. But that's just me.

Still ... is that the standard now? We cannot prove she personally tried to KILL a member of Congress, so leave her alone? You know what? I don't think we will.

About John & Elizabeth and John & Elizabeth and Being a Hero

Such an unlikely collision of similarity and diversity – all at once.
I’m tired of hearing the standard caveat when John McCain is introduced … that he’s some indisputable hero. He’s not. He may have behaved heroically once, while being psychotically tortured as a prisoner of war, but that’s all. Has he conducted himself in a manner since then that even approaches a description of “hero”? No. His modern political life and description of his personal conduct reverts back to another word – bully. Watch video of him as he’s confronted with the irrefutable fact that the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy has caused hundreds of fine officers to be tossed out of the military on account of their status (not for conduct, for status) and you’ll see a belligerent, repetitive, stubborn son-of-a-bitch insisting that “it's not the policy,it's not the policy,it's not the policy,.” No matter. The policy doesthat and he knows it.

Contrast this with Elizabeth Smart, who (like McCain) was a kidnapping victim. She, too, was psychotically tortured; abuse of her body and her mind is now public record. There may be, in fact, much more similarity in her time of captivity and that of Sen. McCain than has ever been publically acknowledged. But Elizabeth has shown nothing but courage since her rescue, bravely facing her abuser in court and addressing the public after the trial to tell other victims that they are not alone. You can go on, she said. You can live your life – it belongs to you, not your attacker. She has demonstrated the mature presence of mind that is credited for her survival and eventual escape from captivity and torture.
As a Senator, McCain has failed to stand up for veterans (yes, those closeted gay solders), insulted the intelligence of every military leader on the topic of DADT, looking much like he is on the brink of a tantrum or threatening to hold his breath until he gets his way … his homophobic way. What a shame and what an incredibly lucky thing that we kept this guy away from the Situation Room.

Then we have John & Elizabeth Edwards – a collision of human weakness and exceptional strength. Let’s be gentle … John simply lost his way. He may have behaved heroically once or twice – fighting like a pit bull for his clients and winning them millions – but when temptation came knocking, he rolled over, then lied and lied about it. He’s human. People lie to cover their mistakes in judgment. It’s not fair to call it natural, but it’s fair to call in understandable. Unfortunately, he forged ahead in denying his paternity of an out-of-wedlock child, likely because he wanted to preserve the possibility of being a candidate for the Obama administration’s VP or attorney general slot. What a shame. That was an opportunity to step forward and own his mistake. Instead, he looked around himself and said “Who, me? Naw, that’s tabloid trash …”

For Elizabeth Edwards, there were some bad decisions, too. Let’s be real (she’d insist). She, too, concealed her husband’s failings in nudging him to continue his campaign after learning her cancer had returned. She knew he’d been unfaithful and thought they could control (keep quiet) that information. But the campaign decisions aside, her story is all about what she did when confronted with irrefutable facts – another woman’s baby, paternity results, a continuing deception and oh, yes, the cancer. She took charge, made real-world assessments and bold choices. She spoke of the other woman’s child and said that her children needed to have a relationship with her … they were family, she said, they have the same father. The child, after all, was innocent in all this. They’d work it all out, she told a stunned Oprah.

And that’s the other part – telling Oprah. She not only had to face all this, she did it under an amount of public scrutiny that’s pretty rare for a private citizen. She understood the meaning of this outreach and not being overtaken by the grief of losing something dear – your son, you husband, your health, your privacy. She, like Elizabeth Smart, owned her survival and would tell her own story. She lived inside its organic value – to her. She knew that this pain and the scar tissue that would form from these injuries are what made her Elizabeth and that choosing to give up any part of it would make her less than what she was – a fully realized human being – the genuine article.

That is heroic.