Ouch. I needed surgery. All I got was Tylenol.

As an attorney, I understand initiative. My best opponents, including those who are fun to negotiate with, always plead aggressively. While they may ultimately be willing to compromise, those who take the initiative, sometimes well before I have even been retained, see to it that I work to win it back. Republicans use it and so should Democrats. The rationale for health care reform, as it was passed, makes perfect sense from a fairness point of view, but not from an initiative-posturing-for-strategic-measures perspective. While single payer health care was, and still is, the only way to fix the problems in our system, public option health care may have felt more fair to all the interests. The same goes for my president's judicial appointments. They have been slow, yes, but thoughtful and fair. As November, with its threat of resurgence, is fast approaching, the slow appointments and moderate health care reform have created just as much vulnerability as progress. Initiative is becoming even more crucial. Appointing in larger numbers, including even marginalized candidates, could have made Republicans work harder and possibly protected the moderates Dems wanted anyway. As for health care reform, an initiative strategy might have been to push single payer, make our opponents destroy it, then attack them for doing so. If that sounds destructive to the billions of Americans who were getting screened out for health insurance, an argument can be made that they are no better off, as long as health care maintains a financing system based on private insurance. This is what Nick Skala meant by "public option is like a doctor prescribing Tylenol, when what you really need is surgery." His point was that the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as well as the public, needs to hear a side by side comparison of public option and single payer health care. I know I need to hear the comparisons. In the distracted, only moderately informed, "I'm so busy" reality I inhabit, my understanding of all subjects is invariably truncated. I'm so hyper focussed on the things I need and want and already have, but need to replace, I'm high. High like some citizen of an Opium Regime occupied third world country, as far as my firm understanding of things like health care reform go. The corporations that provide it all to me, have me so addicted, I don't complain. And when I do complain, I still want my opium.

We can be roused from a narcotic state by anger initiative, because anger is hard wired. Anger initiative is harder for Democrats. It invariably gets monopolized by Republican rhetoric. Republicans, who get more mileage out of glittering generalities than Democrats, know how to work serious anger up to initiative. Democrats should utilize more anger framing, to assist with initiative. Unleashed Rahm Emanuel anger. It's hard to get worked up about things, if you're not angry. It's hard to be too upset with Tylenol, even when you need surgery, if your daddy, or your privatized-corporate-controlled-disabled government keeps you flush with the good stuff.

Here's an excellent 1 hour or less detox from beltway politics, which can lead to health care reform enlightenment (and anger) :

Watch Nick Skala's June 12, 2009 interview. "The Single Payer Action Interview"

Read Nick Skala's testimony to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, for Physicians for a National Health Program.

Visit Single Payer Action's site.

Read "Health Care Reform For Beginners" by Ezra Klein, in the Washington Post.

Watch Single Payer Action interview with Stan Brock.

“Hey, pretty girl, time to wake up.” Mulholland Drive

I woke up this morning so …. Awake!

The American dream is opium-like. When I’m dreaming the American dream, I’m out. It’s intense. I am heady. I am thinking about my daughter’s shoes, my son’s birthday, my Spanish water doggie’s tricks, my clothes, my vacations, my furniture, my car and my tunes. God, I really love my tunes. I’m also thinking about social justice, abuse victims, my responsibilities, my commitments, my politics, my work, my morals and my principals while I’m dreaming the dream. These are lucid American dreams.

But today, Health Care Reform passed, and I'm awake. Climbing out of my coma-like limited comprehension of health care reform began many months ago and ended last night almost simultaneously with the vote. I recommend the following for a good strong happy HCR buzz.

See the video readily available on Paul Hipp's site home page. We're number 37 is short and witty. Hipp's parodies are clever. He draws inspiration from Johnny Cash and the Beatles. He can write some songs about politics, true dat.

Listen to Keith Olbermann's special comment on death panels. He’s pissed about his father’s illness, and you can identify with Olbermann on this issue. His delivery is poignant.

Read about health care reform as proposed by my president. It’s his proposal, and it is not unwise to read his explanation of his proposal. Don’t expect to feel yourself coming out of the dream state yet. We live with so many distractions and deep seated perceptions, we don’t rise above them into clairvoyance without some effort.

And see the film Sicko by Michael Moore. Straight up, I have to say I like his work. But I identify with those who hesitate. He can be hard to watch. He's like Quentin Tarantino that way. Always worth it. What's so excellent about Sicko, is that you don't even have to cover your eyes, like you do in some of Moore's (and Tarantino's) films, if you're a little sensitive. Sicko, you get to watch con los ojos abiertos.

Lastly, listen to Je t’aime moi non plus back to back with Street Fighting Man, or anything else off the Sicko soundtrack, and tell me you don’t feel like you've just had a double espresso!

Grass Roots Think Tank

Facts are essential for refutation, and refutation is the best course for debate. Debate is powerful when used to navigate any narrative directed by the Republican Noise Machine. While republicans send their spin down the talk radio pipelines and the spin gets planted in the narrative when it appears on network channels as news, democrats can address this narrative not just in dialogue but also debate. There are think tanks at work right now driving the GOP attack narrative while simultaneously brainstorming for definition and direction. It was a grass roots movement that brought about our most impressive moment in history. Collectively, we are a grass roots think tank. Building a broad fact basis takes time. I think a good place to start is with the following list. As an exercise in fact building, why not challenge ourselves to know everything we can on each person on this list. As a result, we will undoubtedly be ready to begin mastering refutation.

 people to know well - a primer for refutation

Barack Obama

Michelle Obama

Robert Gates 

Thomas Daschle 

Hillary Clinton

Shaun Donovan

Nancy Pelosi

Tom Vilsak

Judd Gregg

Arne Duncan

Stephen Chu

Ken Salazar

Eric Holder Jr.

Timothy Geithner

Ray Lahood

Eric Shinseki

James Carville

Susan Rice

Ray LaHood

Hilda Solis

Janet Napolitano

David Axelrod

Pete Rouse

Rahm Emanuel

Valerie Jarrett

Caroline Kennedy

Ted Kennedy

Dennis Kucinich

Al Giordano

John Roberts

Samuel Alito

Stephen Breyer

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Anthony Kennedy

Antonin Scalia

David Hackett Souter

John Paul Stevens

Clarence Thomas

Understanding the Auto Bailout

To understand the Auto Bailout start first at the far right, then read from the middle, then read from the left. The mainstream media hugely influences our collective consciousness, and we feel fairly informed while the rest of the world tries to understand our apparent complacency.  There is an established relationship between the mainstream media and the conservative pipeline. I think the right wing pitch is easier to digest than union worker, Gregg Shotwell, or economist Max Keiser's explanations.  We are prevented from fully grasping the facts because they are so complex. What infiltrates instead are the easy bite size non-facts. Now is the time to try and understand the Auto Bailout. As Dennis Kucinich stated during the congressional hearings regarding the Wall Street Bailout...they should have occurred before rather than after.

Rush and Fox
Rush says Stand up on the Auto Bailout GOP! Fox News says: The Auto Bailout, Too Risky An Investment (These are the messages that get planted in our basic understanding. And this is about as informed as most of the middle class gets. But keep reading.)

New York Times and Max Keiser
In Playing Politics With the Auto Bailout Barry Moskowitz posits in a letter to the editor of the New York Times: "The Senate Republicans’ rejection of a bailout for America’s Big Three automakers confirms a suspicion that many working- and middle-class Americans already had — Republicans care little for the majority of citizens who suffer from economic crises." In program 1006 The Truth About Markets December 13 Max Keiser says: "auto represents workers and savers and the banks represent borrowers and speculators."

Michael Moore
In Senate to the Middle Class: Drop Dead Moore says: "Of course that is heresy to the 31 Republicans who decided to blame the poor, miserable autoworkers for this mess. And our wonderful media complied with their spin on the morning news shows: 'UAW Refuses to Give Concessions Killing Auto Bailout Bill.'"

In Democracy Now! Gregg Shotwell, union activist and writer who worked at GM for thirty years remarks "If they let these auto companies go bankrupt, it's going to turn this recession into a depression. I'm shocked that they're even contemplating this. There's no such thing as an orderly bankruptcy. You know, millions of people would be affected."

"At the beginning of any revolution is media reform" Max Keiser
"We the public are burdened with a poorly informing US media" Al Giordano

Revolucionario

In April, 2000 writer/journalist Al Giordano launched the Narco News Bulletin and posited that "if the American public was poorly informed about the drug war in Central and South America, it was because the public was burdened with a poorly informing US media." In 2002 He founded the School of Authentic Journalism. Authentic journalism, he describes, is unadulterated by money and characterized by "a clear vision, a vision consistent with an authentically democratic society".

Giordano was testifying before congress against Nuclear Power when he was 16. As a young activist he was arrested over 20 times. He brought about the first ever shut down of an operating nuclear power plant in America. I bought Steal This Book, by Abbie Hoffman, this summer and saw that Giordano wrote the forward. The two were friends before Hoffman's death, and Hoffman described him as "the best political organizer of his generation." He writes for Huffington Post and Daily Kos, and Narco News where he has created participatory journalism. Go here and see what I mean. He is a revolutionary and he makes himself readily available to anyone who seeks authenticity as contrasted by corrupted, tired and worn out journalism.

How I Understand Economics

Max Keiser is wildly brilliant. He does these podcasts with Stacy Herbert, who is also wildly brilliant, from Paris, where they currently live and work. If you want to start really getting the bailout, the financial crisis, any of this stuff that's happening with the economy right now, this is the place to go. The more you listen to these two, the more you want to hear. He has a delightfully insane sense of humor, she's got an uber cool vibe.

Max started his career on Wall Street in 1983. He is a financial expert, Prediction Markets inventor, documentary film maker, and the creator of the Hollywood Stock Exchange which is some sort of full scale prediction market. (I am not too savvy economically speaking.) He writes for Huffington Post, appears on programs in London and France, one program is called "Al Jazeera", and he produces and presents lots of films. He will be presenting BBC World's "The Oracle with Max Keiser"on the 19th of this month.

Listen to program 1004 on Max Keiser Radio Titled GD2 Brought to You by Kraft. I promise you it will be an exceptional 25 minutes. If it's your first sampling of this stuff, lucky you! It is not the first post on the page. You should be able to scroll down to find it. If you go later, check for it in the archives. Watch out! They are totally addictive.

"Politik needs votes, politik needs your mind, politik needs human beings, politik needs lies." Manu Chao Politik Kills, La Radiolina.

Politics can overwhelm, consume and confuse. It takes something like a revolution to cut through rhetoric and narrative and see for yourself, as a perfectly competent individual, what's really going on. We've just had the revolution. Cumulatively, we are more organized and more alert than ever before. We can help each other raise the collective consciousness to an unprecedented level. One strategy lies in the donation of time. We are sabotaged by either sensational or at least easily digestible distractions and roadblocks which can prevent us from fully understanding countless issues. Additionally, we are hard pressed to choose from endless sources competing for our time with information that all claims to be the most critical. Many of us just don't have the time to sort through all of this and shake out the relevant stuff. There is plenty of information. The internet, like the encyclopedia, makes knowledge attainable for all of us. We are limited, however, by time and discipline. If you are interested in joining me in an effort to streamline the essentials of information in a collective effort to become informed quickly and efficiently, please email me at tracydulcemia@gmail.com Together we can make politics something that doesn't have to intimidate or overwhelm because 'Politik', when left to only a few, can kill.