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Once upon a time, Americans expected their celebrities to have a modicum of skill for entertaining the masses, and their politicians to have a modicum of skill for serving the public. The former expectation was demolished in the previous decade, with the rise of Paris Hilton and the Kardashians. In this decade, it seems the latter expectation will be demolished. Donald Trump’s recent “potential” presidential campaign run and now the possibility of same from Sarah Palin are signals of this new condition.

Donald Trump has run for president before. He was a potential Reform Party candidate for the 2000 presidential elections. The obscure political party was a tip-off that it was nothing but a sideshow, and Trump delivered with celebrities at every stop and a gold-plated “Trump One” campaign plane. Palin delivered when she ran for Vice President and (thank GOD,) lost!) We all had a good laugh, and both Trump & Palin went home before they had to face any voters but after they got a boost of what they both like best: media attention.

Still, while Trump showed absolutely no inclination of taking any of this more seriously than he did the first time around – he actually was seeking nomination to the Republican party with the intent of running on a platform of “birtherism” and bullying the Arab states into handing over their oil… How was that possible?

What’s truly frightening is that a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll showed that Trump was tied with Mike Huckabee as the top Republican presidential candidate! The Arizona state Senate passed a “birther” bill requiring 2012 candidates to prove they were born in the United States after Trump met with the bill’s author. Serious Republican candidates were actually asked on national television how they felt about being Trump’s vice president! 

Fortunately, Trump will never be president and neither will Sarah Palin.  Neither has any intention of ever standing before the voters – Trump has already left the scene and once Sarah Palin has milked all that she can out of the increased ratings for her reality television show, she’ll ride off into the sunset on a Palin-branded horse…maybe to her new home in Arizona. So the only question worth pondering here is how a nightmarish parody of self-actualization became a contender – or rather, how the American people allowed either of them to be a contender?

Something has happened in this country. The sole genius of Sarah Palin was to recognize the shift in the air. Once she realized that she could earn far more money and attention by pretending to be a serious politician than to actually be one, she left that boring job in the Alaska’s governor’s office and never looked back.

Now she endorses candidates, makes policy proposals, speaks at political engagements – all without having to bother with the messy business of governing (or, for that matter, even knowing what she’s talking about!)  She’s responsible for the rise of all those candidates who never should have been taken seriously and yet somehow manage to suck all of the oxygen, the attention, and the funding out of the room .

I suppose that everyone needs a hustle in our ruthless economy, and Palin and Trump have only given the people what they want. And apparently what people want is endless distraction, even in politics – all the better, perhaps, to pull everyone’s attention away from the desperation of our crumbling infrastructure, terrible schools and bankrupt job market.

But the problem is that this is not a reality show. This is our country. And while we may get the democracy that we deserve, the price we have to pay for our enjoyment of these ridiculous candidates may be much greater than we think.  The Joke is on us!

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Interestingly, it became a problem that he actually practiced this philosophy after being elected because it  failed miserably!  The resulting  legislation was weakened to the point of impotence in the name of “changing the tone in Washington.”  The stimulus bill was loaded with tax-cuts in order to win a few republican votes. (And we all know Obama  never got those votes. ) He then attmpted  to “reach across the aisle” on health care reform, and abandoned the public option. 

Many believed the public option to be the most important part of the health care bill because it was the seed that would completely change the system… Had democrats stood their ground and not voted for it, the bill might have died, but everyone would have understood which party was responsible for its failure and  that health care still needed to be addressed and that if any president wanted to accomplish anything in the arena of reform there would have to be a public option.  

It’s not really a surprise that the sole mission of the Republican party was to see Obama’s presidency fail, is it?  It should be obvious  that it was never the intention of the Republican Party to work with democratic President Obama.  They had a different plan and stuck to it. On the other hand, the Democratic Party, because it is filled with moderates and centrists, never draws a line in the sand and sticks to it!   

It’s a challenge for the left to be fair-minded when the far right appears to have no such compunction In public policy, the key point is the RESULT. Thus  the lesson…Obama’s take-away should be; it isn’t about changing policy, it’s about presenting the logic of solutions.  It’s hard to argue with logic.  Which is why it’s so much easier to focus on quick fixes and ready results, whether in the form of mid-term elections or quarterly earnings reports.

The American people have developed amnesia and President Obama, as he said,  “took a shellacking” in the mid-term election.  Let’s hope  he learned the importance of communication about  what is being done. 

In other words, results must be spun as positively as possible in relationship to the recent past because it’s not actual results that you’ll be evaluated on, rather the appearance of results!   Obama won the presidency just after an apocalypse.  We came close to witnessing the complete destruction of our economic system.  recovery from such an event will take at least another 18 months.  If it happens on schedule, Obama will float to reelection on a cloud of patriotism even though some people will hate him and call him a communist.  If it doesn’t happen, he’ll repeat the single terms of Bush 1 and Jimmy Carter…and some people will hate him and call him a communist.

There is a viscerally, critically important distinction to be made between what people ARE and what people DO.   In politics, not “doing” constitutes being a failure.  Turning around an economic cataclysm that was years, even decades, in the making will  require years of smart, long-term planning and making tough decisions as well.  Meanwhile, until we all take the long view, we’ll all have to settle for the illusion of forward progress.

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Good writing is an art.  Some have the gift and others don’t!  Anyone can become proficient, however.

Those who believe a good writer merely crafts words, however, are off the mark.  A really good writer is one who helps the rest of us see the world differently through their words on paper.  Yes… through what they write we can actually come to see the world from rarified heights.    

That’s the part that can’t be taught.

Good writing requires making choices that require taking risks.  Choices like which thought comes first? Which mode of expression is most likely to succeed? Ultimately, which words, in what configuration, best offer the greatest clarity of expression?  These choices equate to style or “voice.”

A writing course can teach you that these things are necessary and to look at writing in terms of the ideas you want to express, but a writing course won’t show you how to arrange these thoughts and ideas or how to communicate them effectively.  Most people can be taught structure and grammar and how to use these skills. 

What that boils down to is useful mechanics that can be used well enough to communicate concisely, intelligently, effectively, and even gracefully.

Know, too, that there are differences in writing for different media. Vast differences, So, understand who you’re attempting to write for and don’t knock useful mechanics. It’s all that writers — even the best — start out with.

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We live in an age of multi-tasking.  As I’m writing this, I have two email programs open, two monitors on my desktop with several windows open,  the news is  on (though it’s turned down low) in the background so I can occasionally look up and digest a couple of headlines.  This, I believe, is how most of us work nowadays.  There’s simply too much going on to concentrate on only one task at a time, right?

But the question is: Does this multitasking mindset affect the quality of our work?  Though I know plenty of people who boast about being able to compose the perfect email while carrying on a telephone conversation and eating their lunch at the same time,  new research says that multi-tasking may lead us nowhere fast!

The notion that multi-tasking delivers benefits has been triggered and sustained by technology marketers and advertisers, in general, who need people to acquire and make use of more products than could ever deliver real value. In fact, according to research conducted by Stanford University professors, Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass and Anthony Wagner, multitaskers fall short of their non-multitasking peers in three key areas:

1. Filtering out irrelevant details - In an experiment, the researchers asked participants to ignore certain pieces of data.  Then non-jugglers had no problem following this instruction, while the multitaskers couldn’t filter out this information and, as a result, performed poorly.
2. Remembering information – Of an experiment asking people to remember a sequence of letters, Ophir said; “The low multitaskers did great.  The high multitaskers were doing worse the further they went along because they kept seeing more letters and had difficulty keeping them sorted in their brains.”
3. Switching between tasks – Though this is what multitasking is all about, those who do so regularly have trouble focusing on the purpose and information associated with discreet undertaking.  Said Ophir, “They couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing.  The can’t keep things separate in their minds.”

The question that comes to mind is whether “chronic” multi-tasking is a symptom of an innate inability to focus, or if people who multi-task too much simply lose their ability to concentrate?

Either way, it seemed like a good idea to shut off the television and logout from my email as I finished writing this, though I’m sure I’ll be tempted to multi-task again in the near future.  Multi-tasking with multiple computer screens is the default way of operating for me and many creative types involved in research, writing, analysing, synthesizing and/or designing.

Where do you stand on multi-tasking?  Is it an important skill to have in today’s fast-paced workplace or is it simply a way of ensuring that we don’t perform up to our full potentials?

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Recently, Sarah Palin said that Muslims should ‘refudiate’ a planned mosque near the World Trade Center site. Hmmmm…the problem is that’s not a real word.  So, in her defense, Palin compared herself to William Shakespeare on Twitter when she tweeted: ‘Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Get over it!”  

Except she didn’t “coin” a new word, now did she?  She just doesn’t (maybe now she does) understand the difference between “refute” (the word she initially changed the mistake to) and “repudiate” (the word she was trying to use in the first place.)

English is a living language.  That’s what makes it great.  Shakespeare and other writers have coined new words in order to communicate nuances that the existing vocabulary could not.  That is not the case here since the word Palin was looking for already existed. 

Well, she knew what she meant and probably everyone who either heard her or read the sentence knew what she meant, so isn’t that the point?  Well, yes, we know what she meant, just like we used to know what Bush meant and the same way we know what a five-year-old who says “basghetti” means…But Palin has about as much in common with Shakespeare as one of the Jersey Shore morons has with Meryl Streep!

Of course, it’s important to note that the groups behind the project at which her attack was leveled – a building that will house a mosque, gym & community center, among other things—will not be “refudiating” their plans.

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I’ll keep this brief… I don’t know that it’s possible to be unaware, but just in case some of you are — Haiti‘s capital city, Port Au Prince, disappeared today.  Yes, it’s gone due to the ravages of an earthquake measuring seven or more on the richtor scale.  This is a disaster of mammoth proportions and as members of the human family, I hope that all who read will feel compelled to help.

These people  are without Hospitals, power, water, food, housing… the list goes on. Untold numbers are dead or missing and unaccounted for.  Children have been separated from their parents…

There are many ways to assist.  I’ve listed a few of the easiest below:

1. Text 90999 (the Red Cross) on your cell and enter “Haiti” – a donation of $10.00 will go the relief effort.
2. Text 501501 (Wyclef‘s Jean Wyclef’s Yele Foundation) on your cell – a donation of $5.00 will go to the relief effort
3. Visit:  http://www.theboombox.com/2010/01/12/wyclef-jean-asks-for-in-haiti-after-nation-is-rocked-by-maj/

 These are very real, easily accessible ways to lend immediate assistance.

Please help.

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For those who have not read Moby Dick by Herman Melville, you may not have heard the expression, …”man’s inhumanity to man….”

It is not difficult to understand the concept especially when you see it in action and implemented by those cold, callous, indifferent, indecent, insensitive egomaniacs in Congress whose main goal in life is to feather their own caps, regardless of the consequences.  Those in Congress who are pawns of and are owned by corporations and further all the causes of those corporations in order to share in the undeserved, obscene profits of those corporations, do not deserve to be called men or women.  They are beasts of prey!  They are predators and parasites who feed on the flesh of the innocent and unsuspecting.  They are now engaged in a feeding frenzy to see which one of them can do the best job of protecting the interests of the masters they serve: the financial industry, the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the military industrial complex.

 No decent person with any degree of humaneness would do all he or she can do to obstruct the right of the American citizenry to have access to quality, affordable health care with the ability to select and choose the health care program that best meets the needs of that individual and the family of that individual.  How can those vultures listen to the plight of people who have been victimized by the health care industry and not feel compassion?  It seems that the blood in their veins coagulates which prevents blood from flowing to their brains in the normal fashion.  How else can one explain that they would rather share in the illicit bounty of these corporations than to do what they were sent to Congress to do – to represent the voters who put them in office?

 Now in this land of plenty, medical personnel find the necessity to establish free clinics and offer volunteer services to compensate for the failure of Congress to provide for the American citizen what they in Congress have for themselves.  This does not even cause them to blush.  We don’t expect them to feel any shame because they have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have no compassion or empathy.  Where are their parents?  Where are their spouses or significant others or their children to help them to see the crying need in America for affordable health care?  Have these culprits desensitized their families, too?

 It is surreal to see them standing before microphones pontificating illogical rationale for why they don’t support quality, affordable health care for all American citizens.  They hypocritically complain about the costs to provide good health and longevity for American citizens while finding no problem with the enormous costs of killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of those fatalities being our American youth.  They would rather pay for bombs than for prescriptions that help to keep people alive here in America.

 All decent Americans should be outraged and should call these demons out and vote them out of office, never to be a scourge on our society again.

 Both Robert Burns, the Scottish poet and Herman Melville, an American author, talk about man’s inhumanity to man.  I would advise the obstructionists in Congress to read the literature of these two very sage men.

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The fact that a significant number of Americans feel no urgency to revamp a system that leaves millions of our sick without care is symptomatic of the fact that many are suffering from a hardening of more than their arteries. You don’t need a college degree to see that America’s character crisis is not restricted to members of Congress. Our healthcare debate has revealed that far too many Americans suffer from a lack of compassion paired with moral deficiency. Many would prefer that our fellow citizens go without medical care rather than to make even the slightest of sacrifices. How many times have you heard someone say; “I don’t see why I should have to foot someone else’s bills”?

I’ve never heard a decent explanation for why a public healthcare option is bad. Most of the right wing contingent rail against “socialism,” real or imagined; they say we should fear the hand of “big government” upsetting the doctor/patient relationship [I find that ironic, given that private insurers dictate every treatment patients can receive]; they purport that a government-run program would compete unfairly with private insurers. More ironic is that in most states meaningful health insurance competition does not exist and furthermore, since insurance companies have been exempted from anti-trust laws, competition is meaningless — a sham. So our beloved “free market” system continues to line the pockets of insurance executives and shareholders; leaving policyholders defenseless against the prerogatives of insurance company actuaries, attorneys and claims representatives; and keeps healthcare out of reach for millions of people.

I can’t call the bill that the Senate has just voted on reform at all.  I might call it “ill-form” or, to be more blunt; a grand deception on par with the Iraq War, the TARP bailout, the energy bill, and recent finance reform legislation. The fact is there is no reform in this bill. In this bill insurance companies will benefit more than consumers. It is business as usual. Real reform is national health care. And with that said; NO reform is better than “ill-form.”

The stranglehold of drug companies on healthcare providers, the side-effects and symptom-based orientation they promote [rather than treating underlying causes] and their 2,000 to 3,000 percent markup are essential components of the health-care mess that need to be addressed along with the windfall profits of the insurance industry that are, effectively, the cancer of our health care system. Insurance companies demand higher profits every year. A five percent overhead is reasonable for collecting premiums and paying doctors [Medicare's amounts to 3%.] They have overhead rates approaching 40%. 

It is an obscene commentary that the greatest threat to the economic security of our country is the unfunded liability associated with Medicare. In concert, the costs increases to American businesses for providing healthcare coverage to employees is making us non-competitive with other countries and with more and more businesses shedding the burden of providing insurance, a larger group of uninsured Americans is created every year. If we as a country can’t work as a team to fix the greatest threat to our future economic security, then all hope is lost for the future.

The goal of the current bill is to provide 30 million more insurance premiums (that’s 30 million more customers for the insurance corporations) with as few strings as possible. All new costs will be borne by taxpayers. In order to make this as revenue neutral as possible, Medicare services will be gutted. What’s a few million old folks when there are hundreds of billions to be made, right?

The health care bill mandates insurance while increasing the profits of the insurance cabal. The bill provides an exorbitant financial gift for decades to the health care industry and Big PHARMA. There is not one item in the bill that will contain costs to the American consumer. It will, in fact, create an additional burden born on the backs of all middle income Americans…a tax with penalties if you choose not to enroll.

Passing just anything will not keep the health care reform issue alive — I believe it will kill it. Given the contentiousness of the debate, neither Democrats nor Republicans will revisit the health care crisis for another 15-20 years, perhaps more.

Too many Americans are acquainted with hardworking people who can’t afford some critical medical treatment. I lived in a small town when I was in high school and every week we held some kind of school raffle, church stew or spaghetti dinner to scrounge together the funds to meet the medical expenses of a family who had a child with with a brain tumor–or to help pay for the open heart surgery of someone’s mom or dad.  We were actually trying to pay for brain and open heart surgeries with our bake sale earnings! 

It is difficult to understand how anyone, unless they are rich, could reach the conclusion that Americans are better served by their doctors than anyone anywhere in Western Europe. The reality is that in life expectancy we rank 42nd and our infant mortality rate ranks 29th. These somber facts attest that our healthcare system is not even a contender for the best. The state of American health care is truly repulsive.

For a country that loves to moralize, we fail to acknowledge that those things we do and do not find repulsive reveal a lot about who we really are. Being anything but reviled by people dying due to lack of medical treatment in the United States is both unfeeling and immoral. The lack of compassion for the un/under-insured is pandemic. We say we don’t like it and we wish that it could be otherwise, but it doesn’t exactly make us sick and we do nothing to change it. Can we not see what is wrong with this picture?

It is incontrovertible that the American health system is the most expensive in the world. Our health care system is an also-ran on virtually all measures of quality– It is discriminatory on the basis of employment (only large companies who pay some portion of exorbitant premium costs offer coverage to employees versus small companies that can’t or the self employed and un/under-employed who can’t), on the basis of health history (coverage is denied for having a health issue or revoked for having to use it), on the basis of marital status (surviving spouses and their families are often dropped if an employed spouse dies or becomes disabled)…the list goes on.

We are in the maelstrom of a concocted fear of change. Some are fearful of losing their current insurance even though their employer could very well drop or change their coverage at any time or increase their payment portion, thereby reducing their pay check. Others have fear of government run systems with expectations of inefficiency and concerns that a third party may make their health care decisions (although insurance companies do so routinely now.) Our medical decisions are made by insurance underwriters, backroom administrators determining which procedures and tests will be paid and which will not, and levying price pressures on brand-name pharmaceuticals without concomitant stipulations on generics. There is much decision making now that is neither in the control of physicians or patients.

A person’s health is not a product that should, be subjected to the machinery of the so-called free market. If one wants to argue that markets are in fact more efficient than regulated government programs, this requires evidence. There is NO evidence at all that the market rationally allocates health resources. It does not. Because, unlike deciding whether to buy an X-box or a big-screen TV, people do not choose when and where to be sick, or when and where to be injured, or to inherit a genetic disease. Their children do not decide to wake up at 3 in the morning screaming with a high fever. When these things happen, patients do not sit down and carefully research information to decide which of many emergency rooms they should go to.  It is an emergency and they go to the one that is closest!

There is too much human suffering and unnecessary death caused by lack of access to health care. Healing the sick and caring for the elderly should not be meted out, to those who aren’t wealthy, based soley on cost-effectiveness. Access to care must be the same for all.

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No, it is not up to the public to pass judgment.  Only God can do that. None of us are perfect and yes, far too many of us, as voyeurs, cleave voraciously to every morsel that is unveiled in the misfortunes of others while basking in apathy over matters of real importance.  All of us, however, must pay the piper.

David Letterman owned his indiscretions — admitted he was wrong and, most importantly, he APOLOGIZED publicly…that ENDED the speculation by the media and the public –perhaps even earned him a bit sympathy.  Joking is what Letterman does, so he continues to do so even making himself the brunt of his own jokes. And other public figures who’ve navigated “difficult” episodes have publicly acknowledged and apologized for their “mistakes.”  That is what Tiger must do too.  And until he does, the public and media, alike, will continue to speculate.  Like it or not, he, as a public figure, is accountable to his public! 

As for how he and his wife are able to move forward or not… well, that’s a completely private matter to which no one else should be privy.

I find it interesting that, though Tiger has done everything that he can to distance himself from his blackness, including  say he is “Amer-Asian” not “Afro-American,” it is the Black community that rallies to defend and protect him from the fall-out of his own poor choices.  His carefully cultivated reputation of that squeaky clean boy next door is what he has lost along with any product endorsements that capitalized on that reputation.  And that is a cost to be paid.  This doesn’t discredit any adversity that he has overcome, nor does it dispute his athletic prowess.

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Writing has always provided me with an anchor in my life, a means of self-criticism.  Writing in a journal provides a way to view yourself objectively and to express what you feel without fear of judgment.

While many people who journal on a regular basis do so because it makes them feel better, until recently there hasn’t been any scientific evidence to prove it.  Nancy Linnon, who lectures on writing and health at Canyon Ranch Resort and Spa in Tucson, Arizona, says; “I haven’t found one person who said journaling didn’t help them.”

Felice Willat, the founder of Day Runner, Inc., happened upon her idea in the late 1970s. She envisioned a product that would help individuals tap into their inner worlds. When Day Runner emerged, it reflected the tone and needs of that time-crunched era.  It served to organize the many roles, goals and activities that continue to fill our busy lives.  Individual approaches to these challenges vary from drawing circles and highlights on a refrigerator calendar to creating elaborate entries on desktop computers. While organization is beneficial, there is more to life than running errands, keeping lunch dates and brainstorming at the office.  Our inner lives are as big, if not bigger than, our outer lives.

Journaling helps integrate and organize our complicated lives in a variety of ways. It not only resolves traumas that stand in the way of important tasks; it helps in remembering significant events and turning points; it captures our creative stories, poems and ideas; it helps us discover and define our values and purpose; it helps us reap the wisdom of our dreams and discover what is sacred in our lives.

In her book, A Voice of Her Own, Marlene A. Schiwy talks about the healing dimensions of journal writing: “To create wholeness in our lives is to heal ourselves …It is the attainment of wholeness of body, mind, emotions and spirit…. It (the journal) offers one place where literally and symbolically, all of the pieces of one’s life can be brought together.”

Lucia Cappaccione, author of The Well Being Journal, recognizes that physical illness can teach great lessons from within…”The most important message I learned from my disease is that the healing process is activated by a spiritual force that resides within. A journal can be a ‘living textbook’ for learning the lessons that the illness has to teach.

Researchers like James W. Pennebaker, M.D., professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and Joshua M. Smyth, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at North Dakota State University, are proving what journal keepers have always known —  journaling is good not only for the soul, but for the body as well.

Their first studies, documented in the late l980’s, examined healthy people and journaling. Researchers found that people who write about their deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding upsetting events have stronger immunity and visit their doctors half as often as those who write only about trivial events. A study conducted by Joshua M. Smyth at the State University of New York at Stoneybrook and presented in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that writing about a stressful experience reduces physical symptoms in patients with chronic illnesses. The research team monitored 112 patients with arthritis or asthma. The subjects were asked to write in a journal for 20 minutes three days in a row.  They were allowed to choose whether to write about an emotionally stressful incident or their plans for the day. 

Of the group who wrote about their anxiety, 50% showed a large improvement in their disease after four months. Only 25% of patients who wrote on neutral topics showed any relief of symptoms.  ”More importantly,” says Pamela M. Peeke, MD, MPH, ISPA Medical Advisor, “22% of the people who only wrote about their daily plans worsened substantially over the four-month period, while only 4% of those who wrote about their stressful events did so.” She adds, “One of the least studied techniques so commonly taught in spas is journaling. Now, there is intriguing evidence that journaling has a direct impact upon the status of chronic disease.”

Journal writing has no risk factors …neither mental nor financial.  It has the potential to provide the gentlest and safest of therapies. No expertise is required to journalize, no minimum time required, and you don’t lose the benefits if you miss a time period.

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