http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-why-cant-the-us-learn-to-love-its-government-1816868.html

Rupert Cornwell: Why can't the US learn to love its government?

Out of America: Suspicion of rulers dates to the founding of the nation – and even Obama is unlikely to change that

What is it about Americans and government? The tea-party crowd were back in town the other day – more than 5,000 of them, gathered on the West Lawn of the Capitol to rail against the historic healthcare reform bill that the House of Representatives is expected to pass this weekend.

The passions the measure has generated among its Republican opponents have been remarkable. One Republican Congresswoman has declared that health reform was a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden and global terrorism, while John Boehner, the party's leader in the House, urged the protesters to join Republicans in "defending our freedom".

A neutral observer would not know whether to laugh or cry at this so-called "Super Bowl of Freedom", featuring inter alia a giant banner describing the proposals as "National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945". Yes, the tea-party movement, currently touring the country, contains more than its share of cranks and nutters. But the fringes, too, can express political truths. This particular truth is that Americans just can't bring themselves to love government.

When President Barack Obama came to power, the stage seemed set for government activism unmatched in decades. The parallels with the early 1930s were palpable. Talk of a second Great Depression was everywhere, economists were urging a "new New Deal", Franklin Roosevelt was suddenly back in fashion. Nine months on, however, the urgency seems to have vanished. And why this cooling of reformist ardour? True, the economy has improved (though not by much, as evidenced by the news that unemployment last month rose to 10.2 per cent, the highest level in a quarter of a century.) The huge deficits being run up by Washington are also legitimate cause for concern. A more important reason though is America's ancestral suspicion of government.

The governors' elections in New Jersey and Virginia last week, in which Mr Obama's Democrats were soundly defeated, were largely local affairs. But in so far as they sent a message to the party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, the message was plain: slow down, the voters said, don't force change down the people's throats. With a young and charismatic President who won power by promising change, it's easy to forget that the US is a conservative country. Mr Obama triumphed in 2008 not by harnessing a vast tide of liberalism, but by persuading the wavering centre that he was a better bet than another four years of discredited Republican policies. In Virginia and New Jersey, exit polls showed, the centrists (moderates, independents, call them what you will) changed their minds and decided to put on the brakes.

A fascinating Gallup survey last month found that despite the Democrats' victories in 2006 and 2008, fully 40 per cent of Americans, more than ever, describe themselves as conservative, while 36 per cent call themselves moderates. Only 20 per cent are avowed liberals. It's not a question of government having failed the country. It's just that Americans aren't comfortable with the beast when its role, as now, threatens to expand – even when the deficiencies of the unfettered free market have never been more glaring.

Mr Obama secured his record-breaking $787bn stimulus package last February, albeit with virtually no Republican support. But that might be it. Yes, the House will probably pass a version of healthcare reform, but the measure could yet founder in the Senate, where party discipline is weaker, and a 60 per cent majority is required to pass anything of significance. If it does fail, it will basically be for fear that the reform amounts to a "government takeover of healthcare". The most contentious part of the bill is the "public option" – whereby a publicly financed scheme would be set up to provide some competition to rapacious private insurers. But that option now hardly dares speak its name. Leading Democrats prefer to speak of a "consumer option".

And health care is but one of three massive public policy issues on the table, beside a green energy programme to combat climate change, and regulation of the financial markets, aimed at preventing a repeat of last year's crisis. But there's no guarantee any of them will get through. For Europeans, all three would be no-brainers: assured health coverage for all (or rather almost all), steps to reduce both pollution and imports of costly foreign oil, and curbs on the excesses of Wall Street. Not so in the US – because each implies a substantial increase in the role of government.

And it has been ever thus. Suspicion of government is as old as the Republic. The movement that turned up on Capitol Hill again last week takes its name, of course, from the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Americans like to see their War of Independence as a revolution against government – back then the far-away government in London that taxed the colonies without allowing them representation – and the habit has never died.

These days, one thing unites every presidential candidate: a readiness to denounce the federal government in Washington and all its works. That the candidate in question might have made a long and comfortable career in that den of corruption and iniquity makes not a scrap of difference. Usually – as now – the sentiment works to the advantage of Republicans, but not always. Sometimes, the beneficiary can be a genuine outsider like the eccentric Texan businessman Ross Perot, who in 1992 came closer to winning the White House than any independent in 80 years. Sometimes it takes on the hyperbolic aspect of the tea-party crowd, and last summer's raucous town-hall protests against health reform. And on occasion it spills over into tragedy, into the raw hatred of Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

No one is more aware of how distrust of government is part of America's collective political DNA than Mr Obama. Whether he can tame it is another matter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/health/policy/08health.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1257678374-pU9Zt054Kuxyn0nfc813hw

Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House

Finished Gone by Michael Grant.

This is a pretty fitting series to start right after reading Life as We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone (and right before Under the Dome), because there are similar themes.

In this one, everyone over the age of 14 disappears, all at once.  (So kids 14 and younger are now responsible for themselves/each other.) 

To make matters more interesting, some of these kids start developing powers.  (Think X-Men style mutations.)

Not surprisingly, they start to break into two camps--Team Sam (good) and Team Caine (awful).

This is an interesting series.  (I'll be starting book 2 tonight or tomorrow; Gone ended with no real sense of resolution.)

We have finished Le Grande Coq and moved onto a Cockfighter's Ghost...is anyone sensing a theme here? Besides drinking and happy dancing in celebration that is. Language is no barrier.

 

 

 

 

 

I had a great moment early yesterday morning, as I sat in the lecturer theatre waiting for the conference to begin and for my scheduled time to present my conference paper. Well, I had a couple actually, but one was earth shattering.

On the very first day of my studies this year, I struggled with flipping the lecturer table up on my seat in the first lecture hall and I had to be shown how to get the damn thing into position. Yesterday morning, in a totally different lecturer theatre, I saw my neighbour struggling with her lecturer table and assisted her to get it up and into place. I laughed and said what a sense of achievement I felt from that one little thing. It seemed to represent in some way the long journey that I have been on this year. Of course the sage in front of me laughed and said 'let's hope that is not all we have learnt this year'. It wouldn't have mattered all that much if it was, as I have changed so much over this year, met some wonderful people, who, while I know they won't stay in my life after this week, have contributed to a very profound expreince for me.

I was reading the conference booklet, looking at all the great papers being presented that day, and feeling my nervousness mounting, when my tutor walked by. I wish such a teacher on every student at some stage in their life, and hopefully at a time when they can gain most from them. She turned and called out to me 'Flamingo Dancer! You are going to be great today, you have written a really fantastic paper and your power point slides are wonderful!' I said that I guessed it was only a half hour of my life, but I was still feeling nervous. And then she stopped and thought a moment and she smiled and said ' Think of it this way, you are presenting for all the people in the world who suffer anxiety because of their difficulties with perfectionism'. And at that moment, I calmed down. She was right, as here I was having a chance to present to a group of educators a problem that I know has severely handicapped the lives of several people I know and more than a few students I saw while prac teaching. If my few simple words made an imprint on one of them, and they could help one person as a result, and even though I will never know that, I will have lived a life well lived.

I was 3rd to present. It was a good position as we were all fresh and not yet uncomforatble from sitting for too long. I was happy with my performance. Well, I am Flamingo Dancer after all! Actually I was more than pleased with my presentation because when I started this degree course I was so frightened at the thought of standing up in front of my peers and speaking that I really worried whether I would be able to complete the course. Now I can stand up in front of a room of strangers and speak. Maybe sometimes it is incoherent, or dribble, but damn I can do it.

Afterwards a couple of people came up to me and said how much they enjoyed my presentation and how they identified many aspects of their own personalities in what I had described. I suspect that most university students suffer from perfectionism to some degree, how else do they stay the course? Of course we all have to write 'attention to detail' on our resume, don't we? So we are expected to be perfectionists, even though it makes our life unhappy  and often derails our learning. I felt please anyway, because I had delivered my message and hopefully the message will be passed on.

At the end of the day, most of my colleagues were going for drinks, but I was exhausted and had arranged for Son to pick me up anyway. I must admit that sitting from 8.30am to 5.30pm with just a lunch break and a couple of toilet breaks really put my back and neck into painful zones, so I really did just want to go home. They didn't need Flamingo Dancer dancing on the tables and telling everyong that she loved them in a slurred tongue. Not that I wouldn't have done it in an original memorable suprior style! 

So all I can say is - take that leap, test yourself, go for the mountain top. AGE DOESN"T MATTER!  It won't be easy and it will be scarey. At times you will be exhausted, and frightened and overwhelmed. There are no guarantees at the end. No promises that you will get a better job, or a pot of gold, but what you gain as a person, the little treasures that come your way on the journey are worth every moment of the journey, pain and all. Join the parade.

Finished The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer.  This is a companion book to Life As We Knew It. 

Alex lives with his parents and two younger sisters in New York City.  When the asteroid hits the moon, his mom is at work (she works in a hospital's OR) and his dad is in Puerto Rico for a funeral. 

Alex has to figure out a way to keep his family safe and together, at least until one or both of his parents comes home.

I think I preferred Life As We Knew It, but this was good, too.

These books (there's going to be a third out in April) are so scary, too.  I don't think I'd do well in a world where I'd have to acquire food someplace that isn't a grocery store (or any of the places where we normally get food) and I certainly don't know how to cook and wash clothes without electricity and running water. 

What are your favorite web or mobile apps? Which ones do you use everyday?

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I'd be lost without my Tweetie.

The terrorist attack on Fort Hood makes me realize how vulnerable we can be. It's a sad tragedy and a reality in our lives today - as united as we have always been in this time we can never become too comfortable in any situation.