This is entry 1 in our ongoing Book-o-logue project.  For more information look at our main homepage at www.DuctTapePolitics.com .

In chapter 1 of Real Change Newt makes a few solid points. He shows that there are more things America agrees on than disagrees.  And these are overwhelming agreements.  Newt also discusses how the two party system has wrongly divided America into Red & Blue.

One of his critiques of the Republicans is that they’re so focussed on limited government that they’ve failed to make government work period.  The belief in keeping government small has made Republicans fail in using any resources within government to get things done.  Newt calls on Republicans to have limited, but clear goals for goverment.

Newt also critiques both parties because both tend to appeal to their radical bases, while neglecting the middle ground.  According to him, the Democrats listen to their Hollywood elitest base while neglecting the more mainstream Democrats who could help them get things done.

A main message from Newt in chapter one seems to be that there is more that unites us than divides us and that both parties need to appeal to that.

Please come back later for more discussion about our current book, Real Change By Newt Gingrich.

It’s Mothers Day and I notice this day is more of a celebration of women than it is of mothers.  I’m not saying that’s bad or good, it is what it is.

But reflecting on this, I’m wondering if we should just have a generic woman’s day, where we buy any woman in our lives chocolates, flowers, gift cards, gift cards to Starbucks or just something in general.  So many women miss out on the other major holidays for women, ie Valentines Day and Mothers Day.

I think this could help us in the politics of life if we learned to show a little appreciation for all women.  This could be done by random, generic, women days.

How many have read the fine  print on batteries or other electronics? There is usually some warning about disposing them properly so the environment isn’t harmed in any ways.  In Fulton County, New York, residents have been given a new place to safetly dispose of their electronic waste.

This could become a huge concern nationally as all televisions switch to digital.  Where will people dispose their now useless televisions?  The environmental impact may be huge.

Check out the full story below.

 http://www.leaderherald.com/page/content.detail/id/501486.html?nav=5011

http://www.capjournal.com/articles/2008/04/
03/news/doc47f455026bd94126589958.txt

That’s right my friends, within 11 years Medicare could be broken.  All that money you pay in taxes to support this program, it could all be gone, unavailible to you.  What does all this imply?

According to this article the shortfall is due to increasing health care costs.  It’s not because of the baby boom generation retiring.  Costs just continue to go up.  Whether you’re Conservative or Liberal this is an important concern.  What can be done?

Conservatives will call for more privatized programs.  This may or may not be the solution.  For those who can afford this, they should absolutely go for it.  Many in this nation are clearly well off and able to afford their own healthcare.  But for others this is simply not an option.

Either way we approach this problem, something must be done and done soon.  It’s time for all sides to quit wrestling with each other and instead it’s time they wrestle with the issues and find a solution.

I’ve been paying attention to Ron Paul followers for a while now, and many of them are reveling in the thought of the U.S. economy crashing and our nation just ceasing to exist.  It’s like they’re waiting for this moment to happen so they can do a huge, see I told you so.

This is probably why they epically failed and lost this election season.  They had nothing to offer other than this.  But my blog isn’t about them, it’s about the overall spirit of this, doomsday politics.

It seems like some on each side predict the end of America if they are not elected. But what would happen if the end of the world didn’t come?  Then what could these parties run on?  What would happen if politicians replaced fear with real ideas and hope?  Would this be a better America?

 http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/03/31/give-scotland-proper-independence-vote-says-sir-tom-hunter-86908-20368372/

 TYCOON Sir Tom Hunter yesterday branded Alex Salmond’s plans for an independence referendum as an “X Factor voting system”.

Billionaire Sir Tom said it was time for a referendum - but blasted Salmond’s “preference voting” proposals.

Based on a single transferable vote system, like that used in local government elections, it would involve Scots ranking options “1,2,3″, rather than saying “yes” or “no” to independence.

Mathematically, it could see Scotland become independent if just 26 per cent made it their top choice as voters’ second choices would also be taken into account.

Sir Tom said: “It is my firm belief that the Scottish people deserve the right to vote unequivocally on one key issue.

“Other issues may follow but there is only one vote: Do you want Scotland to be independent or not? Yes or no?

“There can be no vote roll-up - you simply cannot utilise an STV system to determine Scotland’s fundamental future. Mao Tse Tung would be turning in his grave.”

Sir Tom, who is Scotland’s richest man, described the system as “Simon Cowell’s X Factor voting system”.

Salmond revealed plans for an STV referendum last week.

He said the system would be necessary if Scots were to have a choice of three options - independence, more powers for Holyrood or no change.

Sir Tom said: “We need a majority of Scots to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to independence, end of story.

“A referendum is compelling because we Scots want an answer to our collective future so we can invest in it, whatever we choose, over the long term.”

Labour and Tory MSPs slammed the plans.

But the First Minister believes it is his only hope of winning support for a referendum.

That is because a three-way ballot would include the option of granting more powers to Holyrood - favoured by Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories.

Scots Labour leader Wendy Alexander said: “Sir Tom Hunter is certainly right that Alex Salmond’s notion that he can gerrymander the break-up of the UK through STV is an absurd idea.

“There is no majority for independence.”

But Salmond said: “I welcome Sir Tom’s intervention. The SNP’s first choice is to have a ‘yes or no’ referendum on independence and 2010 is the right timescale.

“But the government has signalled we’re perfectly willing to include the option of enhanced devolution on the ballot paper, if the London-based parties can agree on a specific scheme.

“Labour will struggle to explain their opposition to allowing the people to choose their own future.”

Recent opinion polls have put support for independence at between 23 and 35 per cent.

http://www.bahraintribune.com/ArticleDetail.asp

Christopher Lane
Chicago

The United States has reached a point where almost half its population is described as being in some way mentally ill, and nearly a quarter of its citizens  67.5 million  have taken antidepressants.
These eye-popping statistics have sparked a widespread, sometimes rancorous debate about whether people are taking far more medication than is needed for problems that may not even be mental disorders.
Studies indicate that 40% of all patients fall short of the diagnoses that doctors and psychiatrists give them, yet 200 million prescriptions are still written annually in the US to treat depression and anxiety.
Those who defend such widespread use of prescription drugs insist that a significant part of the population is under-treated and, by inference, under-medicated. Those opposed to such rampant use of drugs note that diagnostic rates for bipolar disorder, in particular, have skyrocketed by 4,000% and that overmedication is impossible without over-diagnosis.
To help settle this long-standing dispute, I studied why the number of recognized psychiatric disorders has ballooned so dramatically in recent decades. In 1980, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders added 112 new mental disorders to its third edition ( DSM-III ). Fifty-eight more disorders appeared in the revised third (1987) and fourth (1994) editions.
With over a million copies in print, the manual is known as the bible of American psychiatry; certainly it is an invoked chapter and verse in schools, prisons, courts, and by mental-health professionals around the world. The addition of even one new diagnostic code has serious practical consequences. What, then, was the rationale for adding so many in 1980?
After several requests to the American Psychiatric Association, I was granted complete access to the hundreds of unpublished memos, letters, and even votes from the period between 1973 and 1979, when the DSM-III task force debated each new and existing disorder. Some of the work was meticulous and commendable. But the overall approval process was more capricious than scientific.
DSM-III grew out of meetings that many participants described as chaotic. One observer later remarked that the small amount of research drawn upon was really a hodgepodge scattered, inconsistent, and ambiguous. The interest and expertise of the task force was limited to one branch of psychiatry: neuropsychiatry. That group met for four years before it occurred to members that such one-sidedness might result in bias.
Incredibly, the lists of symptoms for some disorders were knocked out in minutes. The field studies used to justify their inclusion sometimes involved a single patient evaluated by the person advocating the new disease. Experts pressed for the inclusion of illnesses as questionable as chronic undifferentiated unhappiness disorder and chronic complaint disorder, whose traits included moaning about taxes, the weather, and even sports results.
Social phobia (later dubbed social anxiety disorder) was one of seven new anxiety disorders created in 1980. At first it struck me as a serious condition. By the 1990’s experts were calling it the disorder of the decade, insisting that as many as one in five Americans suffers from it.
Yet the complete story turned out to be rather more complicated. For starters, the specialist who in the 1960’s originally recognized social anxiety (London-based Isaac Marks, a renowned expert on fear and panic) strongly resisted its inclusion in DSM-III as a separate disease category. The list of common behaviors associated with the disorder gave him pause: fear of eating alone in restaurants, avoidance of public toilets, and concern about trembling hands. By the time a revised task force added dislike of public speaking in 1987, the disorder seemed sufficiently elastic to include virtually everyone on the planet.
To counter the impression that it was turning common fears into treatable conditions, DSM-IV added a clause stipulating that social anxiety behaviors had to be impairing before a diagnosis was possible. But who was holding the prescribers to such standards? Doubtless, their understanding of impairment was looser than that of the task force. After all, despite the impairment clause, the anxiety disorder mushroomed; by 2000, it was the third most common psychiatric disorder in America, behind only depression and alcoholism.
Over-medication would affect fewer Americans if we could rein in such clear examples of over-diagnosis. We would have to set the thresholds for psychiatric diagnosis a lot higher, resurrecting the distinction between chronic illness and mild suffering. But there is fierce resistance to this by those who say they are fighting grave mental disorders, for which medication is the only viable treatment.
Failure to reform psychiatry will be disastrous for public health. Consider that apathy, excessive shopping, and overuse of the Internet are all serious contenders for inclusion in the next edition of the DSM, due to appear in 2012. If the history of psychiatry is any guide, a new class of medication will soon be touted to treat them. Sanity must prevail: if everyone is mentally ill, then no one is.
Christopher Lane, Professor of English at Northwestern University, is the author of Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness.

http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_8714722

Recently Comcast had stopped their users from doing certain kinds of Internet file sharing.  On top of that Comcast was stifling use of online video use, because it was competition for their cable services.  Amazingly the pro-business FCC sided with Internet freedom and scolded Comcast for their practices.

In defense of Comcast, they were limiting these services because they took up much bandwidth.  Even if this is the case, it’s a very slippery slope to other kinds of censorship.

Check out this story about a candidate for judge in Wisconsin.
http://www.chippewa.com/articles/2008/03/26/news/742o.txt

I love her attitude about public service as an elected public official.  A few quotes from the article.

“The judges go out into the schools and talk to the kids,” she said, inspired by the thought of what is possible. “I just think there’s all kinds of exciting things we can do.” 
“Let’s see what we can create. Let’s see what we can do to benefit the community,” Anderl said, her enthusiasm overflowing.

What an amazing perspective to have about holding elected office.  It’s not only a job to her, it’s a platform for uplifting her community.  She realizes she can be a role model to kids and others about reaching your potential in life.

Imagine what good our elected officials could do if they went out and did more things like this.  Instead of constantly throwing rocks at their opponents, they could go talk to kids or others about moving forward in life and serving their communities.

Someone should mail this story to every member of Congress.  Maybe it would remind them what public service is all about.

gen·o·cide /ˈdʒɛnəˌsaɪd/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunci–noun the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

Our American government has its hand in too many situations globally. We’re trying to police the world and influence things for the good. I believe our intentions are good regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum. I think many of us may disagree on the methods to finding solutions, but most of us agree we want this world to be a better place.

Let’s face it, our government is over extended and can’t fix every situation in the world. If we tried as a nation we’d go broke and quick. But this doesn’t deny the fact that our government can still do some part. Also there is one amazing fact, even though our government can’t address every situation globally, the citizens within America can stand-up on their own to speak and act to make this world a better place. One way we can make this world a better place is to fight against genocide.

Genocide is not something that has been made extinct by human advancement. Hitler and Stalin may be dead, but the practice of genocide is alive and well in the world.

We saw it in the 90’s in Rwanda and the Balkins and we see it today in places like Tibet and the Middle East. Darfur and Tibet are almost household words in the fight against genocide.

As citizens of this nation and of this world we must do our part to fight this ghastly blemish on the human race. We must petition our national government to do what it can do. We know we can’t afford to intervene in everything as a nation, but we also know there are many things we can do through our government. Citizens should also take initiative on their own to fight genocide. If your government won’t stand up and speak, then organize and speak on your own. Raise awareness, raise money do what you can do.

Ultimately the only solution to this problem is people. People standing up and demanding a better world. The arm of government is strong, but the arms of a world united is much more stronger.