You Might Think You Can't Run But You Probably Can

Today I am going to take a departure from my usual ramblings about news items. The news has been a source of great sadness and ire for me in recent weeks. This, combined with a lack of sunshine outside of my window is a good recipe for crabbiness. Therefore, I am going to talk about something that makes me happy. It has the potential to make you happy too if you aren't already familiar with its many benefits.

About a year ago I decided to start running. I had no reason to think that this time would not be like all of the other times in my life I had tried jogging many times before. I would ambitiously commit to running first thing in the morning, psych myself up with all kinds of positive self-encouragement, and then just start running. The problem was that I would always end up getting completely tired after about sixty seconds of running. I would go through about one week of huffing and puffing before I would decide that I simply could not handle this type of exercise. I tried to do it off and on over the years, convinced that I would not get tired if I could only discover the right way to breathe.

Well, this time really was different. How? I finally scrapped all the advice about breathing techniques, stretching, running shoes, etc. Instead I concentrated on building up to running very slowly. I did this through a program my husband discovered a called Couch-to-5K. We even found a podcast that gives instructions as you run and sets the running to music. At first the program doesn't even involve a whole lot of walking. It encourages you to run for very short bursts interspersed with longer periods or walking. The program does push you. It is set up to have you running a 5K in 9 weeks, but if you aren't ready to move on after a particular week, you can always repeat that week.

The important thing that I discovered was that it was this gradual building-up of the cardiovascular system that was the key to being able to run a much longer distance. Of course I would get out of breath and feel like I was going to keel over because my heart, lungs, and muscles simply were not used to working that hard. As soon as I realized this, I was able to concentrate on conditioning my body slowly and setting goals that allowed me to succeed.

Thanks to this method, I am still running regularly after a year and am able to run 3.1 miles three days a week. The other two days I run part of the 3 miles and walk the rest while slowly building up to running the entire route 5 days. When I reach this goal, I plan to start working up to running a 10K. In addition to running around the creek down the street from my house, I have now run 3 5K races for various charities and am planning on entering more this year. Maybe someday in the not to distant future I will run a marathon.

So why is this so worth doing? Because running is one of the best exercises you can do to keep yourself in shape. There is nothing that gets your heart pumping and improves overall circulation like running. Nothing else strengthens your leg muscles so well. Nothing makes you fill more energized during the other parts of your day.

I fully believe in one's ability to vastly enhance quality of life into old age by running. There used to be a school of thought that running put excessive wear and tear on the joints and muscles. Now we know that it builds strength in your legs that can help to keep you going longer and with less pain. I have seen 80 year olds running in every race I have entered, and these people look great. These are people that are statistically nearing the end of their life cycles, yet they are slim, toned, and look like they would have no trouble hiking up a mountain.

Another wonderful thing about running is that it involves such little expense and preparation You don't need a gym membership or any kind of special outfit or tool. You just slip on some old clothes and go. All of those pricey running shoes you see in the store are complete hogwash. All you need is a cheap pair of running shoes (about $30 or $40) that feels right on your foot and stays on. Professional runners have even been talking lately about the benefits of running barefoot. Also, stretching exercises before running are way overrated. A few quick stretches do the trick, and too much stretching can cause pain during running.

Running is also a great way to get yourself outdoors for some amount of time everyday, especially if you find some scenic place to do it. Things I often see while running include beautiful skies, a lovely pond, dozens of bird species, rabbits, snakes, and beavers as well as plenty of cats and dogs. Running can be done even in inclement weather. I have run in heavy rain, hail, and heat. And when the weather gets too extreme, there is nothing wrong with running in place in front of the television.

Here is the best part of all. There is absolutely no stimulant that matches the runner's high. It makes even a particularly difficult run worth the effort. No matter how I feel during the run, I feel fabulous within minutes of stopping. It is not something you can fully understand until you feel it. I can only describe it as a great burst of energy, strength, and mental clarity that stays with you long after the run is completed. In some ways it is similar to the feeling you get after a great cup of coffee, except you feel a serene, sense of well-being instead of the jittery feeling caffeine can bring on.

Here is something I would like to impart to others. If you want this, you can have it. I am disinclined to believe the vast majority of people who say that they cannot run. Maybe you don't want to run. Maybe you prefer swimming, bicycling, or playing tennis. These are all great exercises. However, if you want to run, but don't because you think you can't, you are probably selling yourself short. Barring a serious injury or health problem that a trusted doctor has specifically said could make running dangerous, there is no reason that someone cannot run. I thought I would never be able to breathe well enough. Now I can. Do you think you cannot run because of Plantar Fasciitis, a painful foot condition? That is also something I have on occasion. My husband has a much more severe case, but he is able to run by regularly wearing inserts in his shoes. Humans are built to do this all day long. As children we run everywhere, and for some reason we stop doing this after puberty.

If you want to run, there are three very important things you can do to get yourself going. First and foremost is to start slowly. You don't have to do the same program that I did, but you are going to poop out fast if you try to do too much at once. Even if you are doing nothing but walking at first, you are already part way there.

Also, have realistic expectations. Just because running is healthy, fun, and makes you feel great does not mean that it is easy. Great cardiovascular exercise always involves some degree of effort and hard work for the big payoff at the end. It is one of those things that does get a little easier the more you do it, but there will be days ahead that seem harder than others. Don't let these days ruin your whole routine. Your inner voice will tell you you can't make it all the way. Fight with it as much as possible, but if it sometimes wins and you can't meet your goal for the day, don't feel like a failure because something is better than nothing.

Finally, find a time when running feels right. A lot of experts recommend running first thing in the morning, but you can run any time of day. I find that I do best between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. Sometimes I will run later in the summer to avoid the heat. Other people like to run at 5 a.m. Still others like to run at midnight. You might find that varying the time of day works for you. It doesn't really matter. Just get out there and do it!

Why Television Became Better (and Worse?) in the Last Decade

I am currently reading a book in which one of the main themes is opposites and the paradoxical nature of human beings. We may be the most compassionate of animals, and yet we are the most violent. We are both extremely creative and destructive. There are plenty more examples of this, but you get the picture. Anyway, while watching an episode of The Wire on DVD the other night I was reminded of how our tendency to contradict ourselves has played a role in television over the last decade.

The first thought that occurred to me was of the myriad of wonderful shows I have seen over the last ten years. I have invested far more time in television than ever before because there has just been so much to choose from. Then I remembered all of those times that I have turned away from the television with absolute revulsion , thinking that I never wanted to watch it again. How can this be? The twenty-oughts (or whatever you choose to call the first few years of the new millenium) have simultaneously given us the best and worst television ever produced. What is she blathering on about now, you ask? If you are still with me, I'll explain. In the interest of ending on a positive note, I'd like to first talk about how dreadful television has become in the last ten years.

2000-2010 was indisputably the decade of the reality show. Reality shows have been around since the inception of television, but it wasn't until the early 2000's that we were inundated with everything from snakes crawling over peoples faces to the everyday lives of wealthy, unintelligible former rock stars. Diversity is not a problem when it comes to reality shows, but there is one sure and simple thing that binds nearly every one them together. They are bad.

Have you ever thought about how utterly embarrassing it would be if an alien culture intercepted our television transmissions? I'm sure they would have serious reservations about any kind of first contact. Think about it. How awful would it be if the Real Housewives of Orange County constituted another advanced species' first glimpse into human society? Reality shows represent all of our worst attributes. Pettiness, greed, ostentatiousness, pretentiousness, and vulgarity are just a few of the adjectives that come to mind when I think of the vast majority of reality shows that have popped up over the decade. If the anti-gay marriage activists want to find things that are truly destructive to our culture, they should look to reality television.

Aside from presenting substandard content, the writing and production of most reality shows is pretty poor. It is difficult for me to understand why anyone would want to watch a group of people sitting around in their house talking about their petty differences and their plans to do away with one another. If you want that, than why not simply observe your own dysfunctional family or find one to adopt you? And yet shows like Big Brother do get ratings? Is this another example of our dual nature, that we are compelled to watch shows we know are awful?

Of all of the reality shows on T.V., I can think of exactly two that might have something to offer. American Idol is one of these although I must be one of the ten people in the country who does not watch this show. It just isn't of much interest to me. However, this show has decent production value and I can see why so many people find it entertaining. It features real talent that we might not otherwise see. Another show that I don't usually watch but have found to have some substance is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It may be repetitive, but it is brimming with hope and has a real constructive purpose behind it. I'm aware that I may be exaggerating a bit here and that there are probably other examples of decent shows in the reality show genre. The point is that they are few and far between.

Turn to virtually any news program if you want to see another example of the worst programming ever to hit the airwaves. Television news has been going downhill for a long time, but that thing we once called news finally met its demise in the last decade. A specific example that immediately comes to mind is Fox News. I'm not exactly sure what to make of this mishmash of crazed punditry and half-baked journalism, but it certainly isn't anything I would rely on to tell me what is going on in the world around me. We might blame Fox News for being the proverbial nail in the coffin, but I think that cable television as a whole really deserves that noteworthy distinction. Cable television has shown us yellow journalism at its worst in the last decade. The practice of sensationalizing and exploiting absolutely every topic in a mad grab for ratings seems to have completely overshadowed what we thought was a news show's primary purpose of reporting news. Remember the movie Network? I guess life imitates art.

Sadly, cable television news is dragging regular broadcast news down with it. What is left to do but shake our heads when we turn on the Today show only to find that the top story is about the love affairs of Tiger Woods for three consecutive days? How many disasterous events have you seen turned into media circuses? I'm almost afraid to turn on my television out of fear that stations will treat the horrific and sorrowful events of the last few days as if they are a movie of the week instead of imparting information and ideas that would actually lend help to the people of Haiti. In their attempts to fight with cable T.V. for ratings, I wonder how many viewers the network channels have lost. I now rely on radio or pick and choose from printed stories for nearly all of my news. What kind of crazy time is this in which the Daily Show, a fake news program often does a better job of delivering the news than regular news outlets?

Now that I have had my rant about how television has eroded in the last decade, I am free to discuss how much better it has become. Cable T.V. may have been the death of the news program, but it has done quite the opposite for scripted television. It was cable television that gave birth to a slew of incredibly, high-quality dramas like The Sopranos. Cable television has taken the "cop" show to entirely new levels with such wonderfully crafted shows as The Wire and The Shield. Forget the old dime-a-dozen, cop versus bad guy formula. It's been replaced with gritty, well written, superbly directed, expertly acted scripts that grapple with corruption across the board. Ironically, these shows are so good that they feel more real than the typical reality show. At first it may have had something to do with the fact that cable television was less subject to censorship and, therefore, free to be more creative. However, the tendency toward producing better quality fictional shows has since spilled over to network television.

I'm not arguing that previous decades have not produced some very good shows. What I am saying is that the number of really great shows has increased dramatically. When I think back, shows like MASH, Barney Miller, All in the Family, Homicide (before its untimely cancellation), and X-Files (before it jumped the shark) immediately leap to mind. It is just that the last decade alone has produced more shows of that caliber or better than any time in the past. Shows such as Mad Men, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, 24 (for the first 2 seasons, anyway), Weeds and The West Wing, Dexter, and Battlestar Galactica are only a few.

We have also had an influx of fantastic comedy shows in recent years. I think it is because so many more creators of comic television have chosen to follow the Seinfeld model. What I am talking about are shows like Flight of the Conchords, 30 Rock, and The Office. At their core these shows are nothing more than a modern version of the screwball comedy, but what makes them good is that they are centered around characters and dialogue as opposed to situations. Think about it. We liked I Love Lucy because Lucy was funny. We tuned into Three's Company not because the plot was great but to watch the antics of Jack Tripper. In the last decade there were more choices of shows where all of the characters not only made us laugh but underwent a certain amount of development even though many of them were shallow. Take The Office, for instance. This mockumentary based on the British comedy makes for great television because of its focus on great characters. We laugh at the stupid things they do, but they are also caricatures of real people that we have known.

In almost every genre we can find a larger selection of quality television. Books are still king, but we find television increasingly able to produce the kind of literary thought-provoking or witty material we can often find in the written word and sometimes find in movies. This brings one particular show to mind. You are probably tired of reading this by now, and I am tired of writing it. However, I would be remiss if I did not give a special nod to my favorite television show, especially since it is about to embark on its final season.

This is a show centered on a tropical island features plane crashes, shipwrecks, monsters, time travelers, temporal anomalies, the walking dead, hallucinations, quantum physics, and a host of other weird things. The show references the work of a vast array of authors from Lewis Carroll to Stephen King to Philip K. Dick. It borrows mythology and concepts form practically every major religion and philosophy, including Buddhism, Christianity, empiricism, and existentialism. The show is at once science fiction, mystery, romance, western, and an adventure story. Those of you that have seen it know what I am talking about. For someone who hasn't seen it, it is quite difficult to describe. I realize it probably sounds like Fantasy Island on steroids. Perhaps it sounds like one of those shows that tries to be all things to all people. Actually, that is sort of what the show does. While others might fail in trying to be so comprehensive, though, this one does it exceedingly well.

It is hard to point to one reason why Lost has the makings of such great television. Like many of the great shows I have mentioned in this post, the writing is nothing short of spectacular. The actors, many of them not well-known before the show aired, are a fiercely talented bunch that mesh so well you could swear they had all worked together before.

Production value and format are two other things worth mentioning because they are areas in which Lost is in a class all its own. Visually, Lost feels more like a movie than a television show. It is full of camera work, props, and effects usually reserved for large-scale film production.

Lost's unique format is not quite like anything seen before on television. It is a non-linear story told in the form of flashbacks, flashforwards, and bizarre scenes that make little sense until they are pieced together with another bit of information shown farther down the road. It is almost more like a jigsaw puzzle or a jumbled up detective novel than an television series. Its painfully slow method of revealing its secrets may have driven some viewers away early on. We fans that followed the show for five years still don't know what the show is really about, but we eat it up with relish. Lost has a wonderfully nerdy fan base rivaled by no other except, maybe, Trekkies.

In fact, ambiguity may be the core ingredient that makes many of these new shows so intriguing and entertaining. Lost, for instance, presented its audience with one of the most fascinating television villains ever to appear on television. Here is a dastardly, unlikable person who kills, lies, and manipulates, yet we still aren't completely convinced he isn't somehow working for the greater good. Vic Mackey, the fabulous antihero of The Shield is someone who is rotten to the core, yet possesses a soft spot for women and children. The viewer cannot decide whether to root for his cause or hope that someone swiftly brings him down.

So I seem back to where I started in contemplating the contradictions in human nature. I rest my case.

Image Courtesy of chrisseddon.com

President Obama's First Year in Office and Why Liberals Need to Get Grounded

Are you a progressive that voted for President Barack Obama in last year's presidential election? Like me, you may find yourself full of disappointment when considering the new administration's first year in office. Furthermore, you may be facing trepidation about what the coming year will hold. Many of us on the left side of the political spectrum are in a far different state of mind than we were this time last year. In January of 2009 we were full of hope. Things were going to change, we said. The incompetency of the previous eight years was over. Corporate greed would be stamped out. The wars would end. We would finally focus on the important things like universal health care.

For so many of us 2009 did so little to meet our expectations. Here are just a few of the many things still remain unchanged. Wall street still remains unregulated. More of our young men and women have been sent to die in an idiotic and useless war. The public option, our best chance for sweeping healthcare reform has been abandoned by its most ardent champions. Maybe you feel saddened that the momentum we had during the election campaign seems to have dissipated, and you are often confused about where our President really stands. I, too, have had this underlying feeling or uneasiness during the last few months until I finally realized something. President Obama's base needs to take a reality pill.

We often accuse those on the opposite end of the political spectrum of operating outside the scope of reality. They live with the assumption that supply side economics is the key to health and wealth of our system when history has clearly shown this to be false. They contend that we are actually diminishing the threat of terrorism by waging wars against other countries when we are actually exacerbating that threat. Many of them are in complete denial of the catastrophic state of our healthcare system. You could make quite a long list of assumptions that show a tendency to let emotions obscure rational thinking. However, our friends on the right are not the only ones who fall into this trap. Let's examine our own departure from reality in the past year.

Many of us seem to have fallen for some of the assertions made by extreme conservatives. They have painted President Obama as a liberal and a socialist. Our president is no such thing. He may have been more sympathetic to leftist ideas than his Republican opponent, but he is much closer to the center in both philosophy and policy. There is nothing that defines him as a liberal, and the idea that he is a socialist is, of course, completely ridiculous. Think about it. If we look realistically at the political demographics of our country, it would be impossible to elect a true liberal. We knew this when we elected President Obama. We did not vote for him because he was a liberal but because he was significantly better than they other guy. We put him in office knowing full well that he would govern, for the most part, from a centrist point of view. So while I continue to believe that liberal ideas are the best ideas, I am not sure why we are so disappointed with the results of the last year. Perhaps we were so starry-eyed at the prospect of being relieved of the worst presidential leadership in modern history that we couldn't see straight down the road ahead.

Consider the war in Afghanistan, for instance. For those of us on the left, the war couldn't be over soon enough. For us it is a completely purposeless waist of lives and resources. During his run for the presidency President Obama told us what his policy would be. He would shift the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. Deep down we hoped that he would not send more troops there. We elected him with the full knowledge that this is exactly what he would do, yet when it came to pass, we felt bitter and betrayed.

Could it be that we have also jumped the gun when it comes to our expectations about the healthcare bill? Many of us know that a medicare style, single-payer system would be the ideal way to operate healthcare. However, we were realistic enough to know that politics would not allow it to happen. So what did we do? We latched on to the idea of the public option as the next best thing. President Obama floated the idea, and we drank it up with great relish. Think about its likelihood, though, while trying to set aside the fact that it is an extremely good idea. Think about past defeats of healthcare legislation in the United States. If we are honest with ourselves, we knew that the chances that Republicans would block a public option were extremely high.

Am I arguing that liberals should give up hope and stop being vocal about their ideas? Certainly not. Hope is what keeps us all going, and we should continue to do whatever it takes to further our cause. What I am proposing is that we stop grumbling and forge on. While holding our leadership to high standards, we need to recognize that President Obama is not a bad leader simply because he has not accomplished everything we wanted in a year's time.

In so many ways the Obama style of leadership is exactly what this country needed. Due to the severe beating we received because of the knee-jerk, reactionary policies of the previous administration, we were sorely in need of grounding and pragmatism. We have already seen evidence that the current president thinks before he acts. We may not agree with every decision, but we can clearly see that he takes the right approach by considering every option. We may be left with a bitter taste in our mouths when we hear about some of the political wrangling that goes on behind the scenes, but let's be honest with ourselves. Every president has had to play politics to pass legislation.

Yes, we have a really long road ahead, but let's not forget to look at the strides we have made. The war in Iraq is finally coming to a close. We might not achieve real healthcare reform just yet, but insurance reform is a step in the right direction. Eliminating pre-existing conditions is a positive move toward reigning in the insurance industry. Our economy, while still grim, is also making slow improvements. We are in the midst of a real progress on that front. Leading Chicago school economists are changing their tune about what leads to economic health. Realistically, we know that it is going to take years to recover from a situation that was caused by bad economic policy first put into place some thirty years ago.

It is time for liberals to face the facts. The President we elected is not divine nor does he possess a magic wand. Most change will only come through several years of progressive thinking, hard work, and baby steps.

Compassion and Morality and the Healthcare Debate

I have now written a number of posts about the healthcare debate. It is the news topic that has been foremost on my mind in recent months. I'm not alone. We have all watched with bated breath as liberals and conservatives have fought over this issue. Emotions have run high. We saw the town hall meetings bring out the crazy fear mongerers who are convinced that the country is one step away from facism. We followed President Obama's reaction to this very volatile issue while he touted the public option as such an important piece of this legislation and then appeared to back away from it. Tonight he will deliver the most important speech of his presidency thus far. We will find out whether he will draw a line in the sand and stick to promises he made during his campaign. My sincere hope is that he has been doing what he has done a number of times in the past. Perhaps he has let the debate rage on so that everyone can have their say. Maybe now that all is said and done, he will stand up for a bill that institutes real reform and complete universal health care coverage.

You may already know that I am strongly in favor of the inclusion of a public option in the healthcare bill that comes out of congress. I have already expressed my opinion that a single-payer option would be the best system but that having the option for government subsidized insurance would be the next best thing. In previous posts I have talked a lot about the practicality of universal coverage. If everyone is covered, premiums ultimately go down for everyone in spite of higher taxes. Costs could also be cut through greater efficiency and quality would improve.

What I have not yet discussed much in my posts is something I have not heard anyone discussing very much at all. We have all been so caught up in the intricacies of the health care plan. Is it pragmatic? Will it work or not work? How much will it cost? But there is a broader issue that has only been touched upon when the uninsured and underinsured have come forward to tell there stories. Sometimes these people have been cast aside or even heckled.

Try something with me for just a moment. Try to forget about how much healthcare reform will cost or how much it will save. Put aside thoughts about taxes. Forget about which plan is the most efficient. Forget about the corrupt insurance companies. Let's think about this more philosophically. Isn't the most important reason for healthcare reform that it is the ethical thing to do?

I was reminded of this last Saturday when I first saw the movie "Sicko." This movie came out over two years ago, and I should have seen it back then, especially since Michael Moore is among my favorite directors. Anyway, it is an extremely topical film that deals with the reality of how "sick" the United States healthcare system is.

Several people were profiled and told stories of how people who had gone without care or been driven to financial ruin due to serious health problems. There were two that particularly resonated with me.

One story was about an uninsured man who had cut off two of his fingertips in an accident. He was told that he could have them reattached, but one of the fingers would cost $60, 000 and the other would cost $12,000. Essentially he was faced with the choice of which finger to have reattached if any. He could not afford the $60,000 but was able to manage the $12,000, so he is absent one fingertip to this day.

The other story was of a woman who had insurance through the hospital where she was employed. Her husband was also covered under his wife's insurance. One day they discovered the husband had terminal cancer. They thought he would die until they discovered that a bone marrow transplant was possible and that the man's brother was a match. It had a happy ending because the man survived, right? Wrong! A decision-making panel for the insurance company decided to deny coverage of the procedure even though it had been successful before on the grounds that they deemed it "experimental." At that point in the film my husband turned to me and said, "Now that was a real death panel." Honestly, I am not a big crier, but the irony brought tears to my eyes.

What is my point in retelling these two stories that you may have already heard about two years ago? It is simply to illustrate that this debate is more about ethics and compassion than anything else. What is happening to people is immoral and cruel. How is it that we are telling people to make a choice between body parts or that we have the capability fix you, but we are not going to do it? At times I feel like I am living in a science fiction novel.

I'm not that naive. I realize that the details of how to achieve healthcare reform are not that simple, but isn't that which is at the crux of the debate really that simple? Shouldn't we have universal coverage because we want everyone in this country to thrive and because we care about our fellow citizens? For years I have been trying so hard to wrap my head around the reason that people so often give for not wanting reform. How many times do you hear this? "I work hard. I don't want what is mine taken away. I don't want to pay for someone else's coverage." I still cannot grasp this mind set on so many levels.

My family has basic health insurance. At the moment we are happy with that insurance, but we have not had any catastrophic illnesses while under our current plan. (I could tell a far different story about a previous plan, but that is for another discussion) Yet I am still dissatisfied with the state of health care. I do worry about what would happen if we ever lost our health insurance, but I also want every single person to have access to basic healthcare because it is the right thing to do and the compassionate thing to do. We don't send our seniors out into the forest to die. We give them Medicare. People in a number of other industrialized nations would think I was silly for making such a statement. They don't even question this basic principle.

Let me try putting it another way. Let's say a child comes to the door. The child has been injured and needs help. Almost no one would be heartless enough to turn that child away. Few would deny that child help because of what it would cost them in bandages and medicine or even think about this. Why? Because helping that child is the compassionate thing to do. Universal healthcare is nothing more than this on a national scale. We live in a society, and we have the obligation to help one another survive.

The Loss of a Personal Hero

My intention for today's post was to write about the new CIA documents that were released on Monday and President Obama's recent appointment of a special prosecutor. This morning I realized that discussion would have to wait for another time. Instead I would like to join much of the country in making a comment about a hero of mine. Yesterday, in the late hours, he finally lost his battle with brain cancer.

Let me start by saying that there are many different kinds of heroes. Some of them have fought in war valiantly and selflessly, enduring horrors unimaginable to the rest of us. Some have made a career out of saving people, risking or losing their lives in the process of giving someone else the gift of life. Others have been flung into heroic acts on the spur of the moment such as those courageous passengers who overcame terrorists and brought down United Airlines flight 93 on that awful day in 2001. Then there are those unsung heroes who mentor our kids on a daily basis for little pay and frequently little gratitude. There is no doubt that these people can be called great American heroes.

Senator Ted Kennedy was none of these. He is certainly not unsung. We know a great deal about him. There was even a time in his life where he was considered an anti-hero of a sort. Living in the shadow of his assassinated brothers who had fought for civil rights, he was known for leaving the scene of a fatal accident that resulted in a woman's drowning. This almost cost him his career. Fortunately, for all of us, Kennedy moved past this and spent the next decades transforming into a different kind of hero.

During his nine terms as a U.S. Senator, Kennedy sponsored over 2,500 bills. Here are just a few of these: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, The National Cancer Act of 1971, The Voting Rights Amendment Act of 1982, The Employment Opportunities for Disabled Americans Act of 1986, The National Military Childcare Act of 1989, The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, The Family Opportunity Act of 2006. The list of progressive social reforms for which he is responsible for seems endless.

Although he worked throughout his career on a wide variety of issues, Senator Kennedy may be best known for his tireless efforts at accomplishing that task that we have been so passionate about in recent weeks. He served as chairman of the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. He looked upon health care as a "fundamental right" of every American, and he was on a mission to enact healthcare reform until the day he died. Some say that it will be much more difficult to achieve comprehensive reform without his guidance, and I think, sadly, that there is much truth in this.

Perhaps the thing that made Senator Kennedy the most heroic is that he accomplished something that no one else in congress has really managed with such great success. He was often viewed as one of the most, if not the most, liberal person in the Senate. His views sometimes left him in the minority. He was one of only 23 senators who voted against the Iraq War Resolution. And yet, not only was he greatly respected and admired by his most conservative colleagues, he actually managed to compromise with them on countless key pieces of legislation without sacrificing his commitment to his ideals. One can guess, but I don't think anyone will ever really understand how he did this.

To say that Ted Kennedy was heroic is not to say that he was perfect. No hero ever is. He made mistakes and spent some of his life combatting the kind of personal problems to which many of us can relate. There wasn't anything very dramatic about his heroism either, but, for me, Senator Kennedy was the voice of reason in a world that often seemed insane. What he said always made sense. He never resorted to the emotional tactics of persuasion through distortion and lies that we so frequently see in politics. He is a hero because he understood what people needed, and he spent his life giving it to them through his legislation. The United States is a better place because of him, and we have experienced a great loss.

Image Courtesy of chrisseddon.com

No More Compromise! Keep Your Grubby Hands Off My Public Option!

Well, ladies and gents, we may have just lost our best chance we have ever had for healthcare reform. Over this past weekend a combination of statements made from members of the Obama Administration suggested that it is backing away from its push for a public insurance option. President Obama said that the public option is not the "entirety or healthcare reform." Robert Gibbs, a white house spokesperson, commented that the president could be satisfied with a bill that did not include the public option. In an interview Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stated that the public option is not essential. While none of these officials ever said that they were giving up public health insurance, their statements seemed odd for people who have been putting a public option at the forefront of this debate since it began. Adding to the uncertainty about the matter was Senate Finance Committee member Kent Conrad of North Dakota who said that a bill with a public option would never make its way through both houses of Congress.

The thought that the White House could even be considering dropping the one thing that will make any real difference for healthcare reform is a deeply disappointing one. I doubt that the bill would even be worth passing without the public option. While it might serve to reform some of the corrupt practices that private insurers use, we would not get the sweeping changes in our infrastructure that we so desperately need. I am in complete agreement with what Howard Dean said on the "Today Show" on Monday. Other parts of the bill might be about enacting "insurance reform." This could lower costs and improve terms for some people who are already insured. However, real healthcare reform will not be likely to happen without the public option because it is the only way to expand coverage to everyone.

As I stated in a previous post, public healthcare clearly makes the most sense. Statistics show that Canadian and European single-payer systems are cheaper, more efficient, and result in higher quality healthcare than the system we now have. They are not perfect. People in these countries have a complaint from time to time, but by and large, they are satisfied with their healthcare. They have far fewer worries because they know they are guaranteed basic care. These are simple facts. What I find so frustrating is that in the United States so many of our decisions are not based on reason and pragmatism. Pragmatism means looking at what has worked someplace else and trying it for ourselves.

So what is keeping us from using logic and common sense to make these important healthcare decisions? These two things: fear and profit.

The greatest fear is of the great, evil socialist machine. Some how any government involvement in our daily lives is going to take us on the path toward totalitarianism. If you think about this in any kind of rational way, this is the worst of slippery slopes. All my life I have lived in a country with public schools, a public post office, public emergency systems, medicare, and social security. I have yet to see a representative from the government wearing a swastika and beating down anyone's door. That isn't to say that we haven't witnessed some things that are reminiscent of this type of behavior. Let's see. I don't know...How about our government's invasion of a foreign country for reasons that were completely fabricated? How about the torturing war prisoners in a complete violation of the Geneva Convention? How about the government spying on it's own citizens? These things do not have the mark of totalitarianism, but try saving lives by giving everyone more affordable health care and people are suddenly terrified of becoming victims of the next Third Reich?

The other fear I hear time and again is the fear of being taxed. We are already so burdened with taxes, and the government wants us to pay more? How is it going to pay for this high priced healthcare option? The Administration can't explain this. The truth is that President Obama has explained this over and over again. The tax revenue will come from those making over $250 thousand dollars per year. Remember them? That's right. They are the ones who have been getting all the tax breaks for the last eight years or so. The rest will be paid for through streamlining and by eliminating inefficiency and waste. It couldn't be that simple, could it? How do we know when we haven't ever tried it? Even if the average person's taxes were expanded, healthcare would likely still end up being cheaper than it is under the current system.

Now we come to what is, perhaps, the most motivating fear of all. The private insurance companies are terrified of losing their precious profits. Who wouldn't feel sorry for those poor little corporations that won't be able to compete with such a brutal, totalitarian government? Numerous commentators have predicted that a public option will result in a death spiral for the private insurers. Well, in the first place I don't know if this would be such a bad thing. I am someone who has had the experience of having a very large medical expense, and who spent years trying to iron it out while insurance companies tried to screw me over. Secondly, this isn't necessarily the truth at all. Insurance companies could compete easily if they made the necessary adjustments in cost and services. If they are not willing to do so, then I say the same thing they would say to their competitors. C'est la vie. Survival of the fittest. Finally, we have recently seen what corporate greediness did to the world's economy. Why would we want to leave decisions that could determine whether we live or die solely in the hands of those who want to make a buck off of us?

There is another option that the Senate Finance committee has been kicking around in order to make the bill more palatable to the House. This is the idea of government subsidized co-ops. Using government seed money, consumers get together and produce their own companies. Because they are non-profit, this takes out the big, fat CEO paycheck as the primary motivation. This sounds like a great compromise, right? This has been tried before on a limited basis, so it does give us some real facts to look at unlike the emotional arguments the people have been screaming about in the recent town hall debates. Well, here is the problem. A 2000 study conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office has already evaluated the effectiveness of such programs. The study found that the co-ops were not able to substantially lower costs. Thus far there is no evidence to indicate that expanding co-ops would make any real change in the current health insurance market. So this is not really a viable compromise. Besides, as one citizen so succinctly put it on NPR this week, we have already compromised. Many of us would prefer a fully government-funded, single-payer healthcare system. Having a public option that competes as one among many is already a compromise.

Linda Douglass, a different White House aide recently said that Obama still very much favors a public option. I hope this is true, or real healthcare reform will die and the president will be complicit in its death even if spineless Democrats in the House accept some kind of bill without the public option.

I am one angry liberal, and I know I am not alone. We are as pissed off as Howard Beale. (If you are too young to remember Network, look it up.) We could try screaming out of the window, but I don't know that it would accomplish anything. Then again....maybe it would. Maybe we should disrupt town hall meetings and scream ourselves hoarse. Isn't that the tactic being used by the squeaky wheels who object to the public option?

It would still make a lot more sense to me if such decision could be based on proven results, statistics, and sound reasoning instead of the unsubstantiated fears of the uninformed.

Why We Should Listen to FDR and Larry Flynt

"So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

We have heard this statement from Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural address so many times it might seem like cliche. That does not stop it from being one of the most profound statements ever made. In fact I cannot think of a sentiment expressed in any political speech that has ever been more true.

Fear is by far the most complicated of emotions. We need it like we need lungs. Without it we would jump into the fire and burn ourselves up. I personally would have jumped off a tall building a long time ago just to see if the tree would catch me. Yes, logic and reason certainly play a part in these types of decisions, but fear is what stamps out that first impulse to do something really insane.

Unfortunately fear is also the thing that so frequently kills the human spirit and keeps us from doing things that might really help us. A little fear can seriously impede our progress. A lot of fear paralyzes us. It makes us do stupid things and then try to rationalize our cowardice as thoughtfulness. Being careful is a good thing. Refusing to move forward or try new ways to accomplish our goals out of fear is not only ridiculous but can be incredibly damaging to ourselves and those around us. Let me cite a couple of examples of what I mean.

Why did we elect George Bush for a second term? (When I use the term "we" I mean the American people. I never voted for him.) The first time he was not even elected by popular vote, but if he had been, it would have been at least somewhat understandable because we couldn't see into the future to observe the train wreck that would ensue. By 2004 most people knew that he was a terrible president, and anyone who did not must have been living under some kind of delusion. The awful decisions he made are too numerous to list, but we are painfully aware of the the very worst of them. He brought us into the most idiotic war in our history. The war is largely responsible for our enormous deficit and something that, in itself, serves as an example of irrational fear.

There was nothing at all wrong with John Kerry. Senator Kerry was a qualified person with a distinguished career in both the military and the senate. Maybe he wasn't all that exciting as a candidate, but if we had elected him in 2004, we would likely be in a much better place. So why in the world did we re-elect someone we already knew was doing an awful job? I don't know how it happened. Perhaps it really was the whole swift boat fiasco, but somewhere along the line, people developed an irrational fear of John Kerry. It was a crazy fear. He simply was and is not a scary person, but what do people do when they are afraid? They choose not to act, and to stay with the status quo no matter how distasteful. This must be how George Bush was elected to a second term.

Here is another example of a fear campaign that I think was a little more orchestrated. In November of 2008, California voters passed Proposition 8 which removed the right for same-sex couples to get married. I have written about this in earlier blog posts, so I will not go into great detail about it here. I will just say that it is another instance in which people feared something that was completely fabricated or imagined. Choose your fear. Jesus will hate you. Your kids will be corrupted. Roaming bands of homosexuals will take over the world. The institution of marriage will die. This was total insanity, but Prop 8 still became law.

I, of course, am not immune to the irrational fear that plagues us all. I am cringing as I write this paragraph even though I like to write. I wanted to become a writer way back in high school, but I believed that I couldn't do it. I was afraid of what? I don't know. Perhaps, it was failure. I have finally reached the point where I have realized I should try to write a book. However, I still am deathly afraid of letting anyone read what I have to say. Why? Maybe someone will hate what I write so much that they will take out a big sledge hammer and beat me over the head until I die, but that is pretty unlikely. This blog is part of my attempt to conquer that fear.

So what is all my blather about fear about? It is about my fear of......well, fear itself. I am concerned that this pervasive fear we live with will once again overcome every shred of common sense we might have had. Most of us clearly want healthcare reform AND a public option, for instance, but will fear choke the life out of it in its early days? Our president seems wishy-washy (although I haven't given up on him because I suspect that if we are a little more patient, we will find that he has his own subtle way of getting the job done.) Those Republicans of the blue dog/Lieberman variety that like to call themselves Democrats are trying to water down the bill so heavily as to prevent any real change. The "real" Democrats are, perhaps, the worst of all for allowing the bill to be railroaded. I believe in compromise up to a point, but this is too important. The system is broken, and they all know it. We tried it the other way, and now it is time to plunge in and try something different. Instead the whole debate is all centered around fear. There is the fear that the new system will not work, fear that we will somehow lose our choices, and fear of stepping on anyone's toes. I am confident we could do this if only we were not so afraid.

Here is where Larry Flynt, the producer of Hustler magazine comes in. Mr. Flynt is an irascible individual. He frequently acts inappropriately, expresses himself in a rude and shocking manner. He's not someone most people would hold up as being of the highest moral character. He is not someone with whom I would choose to be friends. Basically, he is a disgusting ass. In some ways he is reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh, but here is how he is different. He is frequently right, and he does not use fearmongering to get his point across. We can count on Larry to say what needs to be said.

Recently, he told the president and congress to "grow a pair" of gonads. It isn't the way I would have phrased it, but it needs saying. Perhaps I should put it this way. We should take to heart what FDR told us so many years ago. We should start being afraid of fear.