I'm happy that health reform has made it through a maze of Minotaurian convolutions. Given the uproar, though, why not go for broke, for, say for a single payer plan?

Still, we probably would have ended up with a bulky, patchwork bill full of compromises and backtracks that addresses many problems, and leaves others untouched, but still institutes reform that is still badly needed. This is a democracy, and no matter how misguided the opposition may be, everyone gets invited to the table.

Obama promised change, and this bill, it now appears, moves us significantly in that direction. Our country is, I've come to think, much like the Titanic. It takes huge energy to turn the ship of state, and it's not going to happen in a hurry just because that iceberg is looming in the distance.

So a moment for joy and revelry, triumph, success, a modicum of hope. It's deeply satisfying to see kudos being showered on Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House.

And...better to ignore the right, with it's recriminations and sour grapes. Yet moderate David Brooks, the NYT columnist, snagged me. He tosses a red herring of congratulation to the Democrats, acknowleges the bill represents change both welcome and needed. Then, out comes that herring again and we get slapped. Those reform minded Democrats will sap our nation's vitality.

Is it possible, Mr. Brook, you are mistaking the recent bubble for vitality? Or is it the ditzy sex appeal of Sarah Palin? Is this vitality or just viagra for a 24 hour entertainment media flirting with the glee of childish misbehavior?

If you want to see real vitality, check out the Coffee Party, where a quarter of a million people have signed up to a movement which garnered more hits on Facebook in two weeks than the Tea Party mustered in two years.

And who could be more vital than Barack Obama? With his beautiful wife and children. The acceptance speech, the Inauguration, that was pretty powerful stuff, wasn't it? Would a modern Lincoln twittering Gettysburg address snippets in daily soundbites satisfy you? Or would it get boring after, you know, a few weeks?

The slave trade, now there was vigor and vitality. We owe some of our greatest world monuments to it. Something else, however, arises in the gorge when human beings are being ruthlessly exploited, which is why Obama and his family represent an incredible beacon of hope to the world.

Some of us are energized by social responsibility. All over the country inventive and even whimsical spirits are wedding with organic, sustainable solutions and proving that doing right doesn't have to be dull. Surely you've noticed? The green revolution?

Reading poems, making music, dreaming, participating in colorful extravaganzas like Burning Man are ways we celebrate the joyful, lusty, creative forces of life. These are energies are probably not found in anemic museums of conceptual mash ups that you might frequent, nor in the intellectual eye candy of NYC galleries. Everywhere you look, even in tiny towns in otherwise red states, progressive art, music, film is burgeoning.

American productivity, it's true, grew under the Bush administration. But is it really vitality or desperation that has Americans taking on second jobs and working overtime just to make ends meet?

The Republicans, I think, are suffering a big hangover. Beating raw eggs into a morning bloody Mary, and calling it an energy drink.

This nation have tremendous challenges to face up to. We need to energize our economy, rebuild our infrastructure, reduce our carbon emissions and dependence on coal and oil---and, if you want to know what does makes me angry, it's the way the Republicans are dragging their feet and hoping to sabotage the process. Wanted Obama to fail is hoping that America will fail.

With one great success behind him, can Obama harness that good will, and righteous populist anger to reign in the moguls of Wall Street, rally the progressive forces for cap and trade system? Can he create enough jobs to give people hope again and fill the vacuum left by the financial bust? And if he does, will Americans cheer him on?

Have we learned from it what we need for next battle? Because there will be a battle.

It is stunning to learn that Kennedy's seat went Red, and it's ominous for America. But it's not so surprising when you look at trends that have dominated the last few decades. What's most surprising about it, though, is that, after eight years of Bush, and a disastrous decade of Republican policies that Americans' give any credibility to the Right.

Obama's been in office for barely a year. He's stabilized the economy, and, with the stimulus programs, saved jobs and gotten money flowing, keeping us from a worse disaster. Given a financial meltdown, the worst since the Great Depression, a war on two fronts, that no one really believes in, oh-- though we support the troops, of course- given hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes and pilfered pensions, Obama has a massive job ahead of him in turning around Bush's legacy.

Tax cuts, pay outs to conservative friends, causes, and supporters have left us with billions and billions of debt that fiscal conservatives love to descry.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. But you see, no matter how awful the fix the Bush administration left us in, no matter how much worse off American's has been in the last ten years... No matter how complete and visible the failure of their core ideas; free market economics, deficit spending--- the Democrats are left holding the bag. Newly energized neocons still manage to have a lockhold on the American psyche.

No Taxes! Down with the Government!

Who wants to pay taxes? Not me. Sticker shock arrives on my desk every April, even worse now that I own property. My friend Rick used to say that the only way to get the American people to pay attention is to hit them in their pocketbooks. That's where it hurts. So, even when threatened with storms and severe hurricanes, species extinction, droughts, famines-- you just can't get many working people to care about global warming, he would say, when it doesn't cost them personally.

And Republicans understand that. The recession has hit people's pocketbooks big time, and the populace seeks blood. If you need a red herring to lead them away from, let's say, anger at the banks and Wall Street, or anger at Bush or anger at insurance companies that continue to raise their rates, while denying coverage... Or anger at corporate lobbyists who are getting fistfuls of government handouts while hacking away at the safety net that protects average Americans.

What better than a Tea Party? A new tax rebellion.

There's nothing new about this so called populism. We've been whacking at the Taxman now for thirty years. The very top 5% of Americans are paying much less in, but I'm sure it feels, to the middle class, who are losing ground in other ways, that they pay more.

No matter that, in fact, the Democrats have not raised taxes, nor plan to. Obama has promised he would reduce taxes for the middle class and family, and hasn't, so far, cancelled the Bush tax cuts. In fact, nothing has changed about that since a year or so ago. So why all the anger?

Every day, all day long, Americans are being shouted at from that screen in their living room, and now from their e-mail inbox and social networks, that the Democrats are the enemy, set to fleece Joe Six Pack for whatever they can get.

or thirty years Republicans have successfully branded the Democrats as irresponsible with money, YOUR money. If facts mattered, Ronald Reagan tripled our national debt while in office, while Bill Clinton's policies encouraged prosperity, reduced the deficit, and balanced the budget. Only to have Bush, once again, push us, pedal to the floor, back into the red.

Pedal to the metal. Republicans continue to thrive on the illusion, the wish fulfillment, that you can have it all, without paying for it.
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It is heartening to see, as Americans are pour money into earthquake shattered Haiti, that, despite the recession, we care that we are still moved to such generosity and compassion for people.

Money is power. And Republicans understand that. They spend money like water when they in power, and violently descry spending when they aren't.

Having found that they can rouse Americans anger, and direct it at so-called socialists, supposedly tax happy Democrats- well, facts don't matter. No matter that want to restore a progressive tax that would take some of the burden off the middle class, and stimulate the economy by taking it from those who've cashed in on the Bust. Democrats want to bring down health care costs, which are a large part of that hit on the pocketbook, cost which are partly responsible for our sluggish economy.

No matter that, outside of inchoate rage, the Republicans don't have to have anything, really to offer. The party of Optimism, has become, conveniently, it seems, the party of Pessimism.

Understanding what's really wrong with America, is not so easy to sloganeer. Government, is, for all it's faults, really our only hope of containing corporate power.

Conservatives, and some Democrats, in cahoots with finance and media moguls, are busy ripping the average American off, while, at the same time proclaiming to be Everyman's champion. To have some understanding of what's gone wrong in America, it helps to know something about Chicago School economics, and of the way lobbyists are sitting on the desks of your Congressperson, urging and, in some cases even writing laws in exchange for cash.

It's not that I believe Americans are stupid, I do think that modern life has become so complex, with so much hype and vested interest, that it is hard to tell who is telling the truth. Things are changing so rapidly, our children no longer belong to us, having money to pay your bills or pay your employees-- depends on being on top of unpredictable trends and active competitors.

Precisely when we need a populist uprising, and genuine protest, we have a Faux Tea Party insurrection, which, by massive corporate media amplifying it's tiny rallies, has become a real force.

If Democrats have failed, they have failed to take Change! momentum, atttack Republican ideology, build an equally powerful media empire, and frame what has happened to Americans in different terms.

Is that going to change? I hope Obama will be roused to show a bit more fire. I hope that the grassroots movements, from which real change comes, will get new energy, and the wonderful fresh idealism of young people, who are quietly building community networks, and living heartful lives, will be what constitutes real change.

Paul Krugman has said it. In his latest column, he argues that the U.S. has become "ominously" dysfunctional.

My sentiments, exactly.

He argues that we are becoming a nation "ungovernable". He documents how the filibuster, once rarely used as tool of extreme dissatisfaction, is common practice by Republicans determined to hold up, obstruct and stymie Obama's proposals.

It's not just the Republicans, the Blue Dog Democrats have certainly seized on the right's coattails for their own narrow purposes.

As Rush has blurted out, Republicans want Obama to fail. Democrats, as much as they distrusted Bush motives and policies, allowed him to lead the nation. Despite the conservative policies' role in the near financial collapse, the erroneous adventures in the Middle East, the disaster of the Katrina disaster---- in other words, everything that caused the public in the last election to throw them out, it has not humbled them. The culture wars are still going on, fiercer than ever.

Changing the filibuster rules is certainly worth pursuing. But it's the trunk of the elephant.

Congress is stymied, not by filibuster rules or Republicans per se, but by lobbyists, who have completely infiltrated the system, ghost write legislation, draft talking points, and reward their friends.

Joe Lieberman made a few million that way. Follow the money.

And the media, our Third Estate, has turned into a circus. Frank Rich opines this week about the theater of Tiger Woods, and meditates on how many heroes: multicultural golfer icons, trusted bankers, attractive politicians, righteous crusaders, have turned out to be frauds.

Really, how is anyone to know what to believe?

Extremism is happening because it works for the Republicans. In an era of complexity, with dark scenarios on the horizon, the loud squeal of righteous anger penetrates all the other noise. The right flings hyperbole, screams at the President, makes wild claims, the media pretends it's populism, and Democrats try to move forward by the usual compromises, which only encourages the snarling dogs. How do you respond to a rain of falsehoods?

How do you penetrate the noise with calmness? How do you defeat extremism with humility? That's Obama's problem. Having entranced the Democrats with a vision of red/blue reconciliation, and done his best to move in that direction, the right has chosen to counter by throwing out any pretense of moderation. What was his strength, is now Obama's weakness.

Krugman worries that, with big issues on the horizon, this kind of knock down drag em out politics threatens to paralyze the nation precisely when we need to act.

You bet, Krugman, that's the point of it.

Obama won over many undecideds with his quiet confidence, in the heart of the storm. I have some hope, still, that having tried the right door, and found it full of seething dittoheads, he may come up with a different tactic on the next round. What that will be, I'm not sure.

But yes, some kind of intervention is called for.

I'm reading "Small is Beautiful", a book published in 1973. Largely forgotten, though Influential then, and much quoted, it fell off the charts about the time when the technology bubble, and the growing affluence of a few third world nations gave us that first flush of a giddy feeling again that big was not only possible, but righteous, and downright American. Many failed to see the looming shadow, or pondered the fleeting question if a such a spiraling growth rate was sustainable.

The near collapse of Wall Street, a year ago, with it's ironic moniker "too big to fail," brought me back to E.F. Schumacher's pages. I had never read "Small is Beautiful", and suddenly, he seemed germane.

Of course, so many of his ideas have circulated so thoroughly in the culture, by now, to read the book is almost redundant, and yet, dipping into the source, there's a surprising freshness.

Shumacher is an economist. He ought to be the Maynard Keynes of our generation, if the world ever wakes up. His book is subtitled Economics As if People Mattered. He was first to point out that the problem with measuring our success using the GNP is that it values economic activity regardless of whether it actually has human benefits, so, for example, if your population, hooked on corn syrup soft drinks and super sized portions, requires ever more drastic medical intervention and expensive drugs, or, if coffins have to be made bigger and people have to pay more for them, this is all growth, in an economic sense.

One of his many pithy arguments that strikes me freshly today, is when he points out that we have harnessed greed as an engine of economic achievement. In the long run, greed is, and can only be, ultimately corrosive to society. Part of the free market giddiness that has so overtaken our democratic institutions is that, yes, we can turn our swine's ears to purses. Reagan's jovial optimism still appeals to many--if you just unfetter it, the market will make us all rich. Unfortunately, what's happened is that it's made us all poorer, but the country appears to take that as just a slight set back. This kind of thinking, Reagan's laissez faire capitalism, has completely dominated any other economic philosophy over the last few decades. Now the bubble has burst, and the public is deeply sickened about "Wall Street socialism", with the spectacle of government fed banker's doling out ever bigger bonuses and profit, while our personal retirement accounts shrink, it's one of his many themes that seems prophetic.

Greed, while it carries us to dizzying heights of affluence, as a social engine, he argues, will ultimately rend the delicate fabric of relationships, of checks and balances, that society depends on. And looking around, that's what we have, a country in which "rouge" attitudes are championed, a government is evil if it attempts to curb anyone's "freedom", solutions to serious problems are either ignored or viciously rejected, and anxiety and anger rule our public life.

While his arguments are ever more perspicacious, some may consider his solutions too fuzzy. Would Americans, the ultimate Dreamers, ever settle for thinking small?

Hollywood, the Grand Canyon, Beyonce, the Whopper, J. Gatsby; those are our talismans.

I've still got half the book ahead of me, but instinctively, at this point in our history, the possibility and beauty of small actions, the butterfly wing that fans a revolution, is comforting. Buy local, create community in your neighborhood, tutor a child. In the face of overwhelming obstacles to our commonwealth, with media trumpeting nastiness that masquerades as news, and climate deniers still holding half the population in sway, with lobbyists assuming the roles of Congressional staffers, insurance companies squandering profits on ads to derail any real health reform, his advice encourages us not to be overwhelmed. Small actions matter.

I only wish he had used Christianity instead of Buddhism as his example of an alternative economy. Clearly he's deeply influence by Buddhist thought, and Buddhism does give some fairly straightforward prescriptions for happiness, the good that economics fails to consider. If you substituted Christianity for Buddhism every time it's used in Small is Beautiful, I think a lot more people would be taking him seriously in this country today.

Thirty years later we've seen vast societal changes via grassroots efforts; the pollution he is so concerned about almost, in this country anyway, barely an issue. Now we have a growing whole food movement, green consciousness, multiculturalism, micro-finance, and the empowerment of women, all these movements all started small.

Plant a tree, he would say. See where that takes you.

Somehow we need to convince the majority Americans that an Army of One is not an answer to our postmodern anxiety. I believe Schumacher is right, that our society's security really depends on doing more with less, in growing confidence, in a world of sufficient affluence, that every human being's basic needs can be met.

Given that, it's interesting to note that the Sarah Palin's of the right reserve most of their hatred for those who eat granola, drink lattes and drive Volvo's-- educated middle class Americans. Particularly, those who, this seems to be the crux of the matter, are able to make enlightened choices about what they consume.

There is an addictive quality to the race after money, status and celebrity that so much of mainstream America is driven to pursue. Maybe that's why the opposition is so desperate and ruthless.

Maybe we can't save the world by small actions, but we can save our individual lives. We can bring down the anxieties by being thankful for what we have, and saying to ourselves, every once in a while "Enough."

Somebody has to say it. It's more and more clear that the Republican party is in a dysfunctional state. Mind you, I'm a live and let live person, but things have gone too far.

This is full blown Sore Loser Syndrome.

People who stood passively by while a American President lied to us about weapons of mass destruction, ignored global warming, failed to respond to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, fired scientists who contributed unwanted facts, outed a CIA agent; one who set up a system of secret prisons and condoned torture, and, in so doing, revived Al Queda in the few Arab states that had previously resisted it, as well as gaining the censure of the world, they are already mad at Barack Obama.

And what has Obama done? Well, in the first nine months, he's tackled reforming a massive health care system that everyone agrees is a burden on both individuals and our economy, done much to restore some credibility and honor to our country abroad, belatedly steered the ship of state toward energy independence and serious consideration of climate change. In other words, he's boldly faced up to some of the real problems and threats of the twenty-first century.

And won a Nobel Prize.

And for this, the right wants to kill him.

Do you remember the ancient story of Hercules, shoveling out the Aegean stables? That's pretty much Obama's job these days.

Does he deserve it? The prize, I mean. A peacemaker, in my mind, is someone who, in the midst of a "culture war" inside his own country, tells those who have screamed at him in sessions of Congress, that his door is "still open".

When you've come to hate success, when you hope your own country will fail... seriously, Republicans, where is your head at?

Peace in this country would be a prize. And by peace I don't mean complacency, but respectful disagreement, willingness to work together to solve common problems, and the maturity to pay one's share toward those larger goals. Maturity to face the reality that the threats we face aren't partisan, and to accept the moral and ethical imperatives of being a citizen of this country, and of the world, at this time in history are great.

Kudos to the NYT moderate Republican David Brooks who recently called down the shock jocks, and Tim Pawlenty who, guardedly, chose to publicly congratulate Obama. "I think the appropriate response, or an appropriate response, is when anybody wins a Nobel Prize, you know, that is a very noteworthy development and designation and award, and I think the proper response is to say congratulations.”

There was a culture war that preceded civil rights, a culture war when women wanted the vote, a culture war over establishing the National Parks, (thanks, Ken Burns for remembering that), over ending the war in Vietnam.

God help U.S.

Yes, peace could be a prize for America, indeed.