Following is a note I first posted on Facebook. I have followed it up by creating a Facebook cause: I embrace & affirm American religious pluralism and reject the rising tide of anti-Islam bigotry. I would really appreciate folks joining, just to send a message that we have not all gone over the edge. You can find the cause on Facebook. Here's the note:

I read dire predictions that the Democrats will get a shellacking in the November election, lose control of the U.S. House. It seems such a shame to reward them this way for doing the right things over the past two years. Here's a truth for you: The two-year U.S. election cycle does not correspond well with the U.S. economic cycle, especially right now with the mess that the GOP had a big hand in creating two years ago. But you'd think Americans would be smart enough to figure that out. Apparently not.

 

Then there is the Quaran-burning minister and the New York mosque fiasco, the general rising anti-Islam tide, Glenn Beck replacing Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, etc., etc.

 

Obama was exaggerating not an iota when he said the money interests talk about him as though he were "a dog." Though in my dog-centric world that SHOULD be a compliment.

 

Meanwhile, Gov. Pawlenty runs for national office by pauperizing Minnesota. I tried to think the other day of one thing he has done that sought to celebrate and elevate Minnesota. I finally gave up. He has made a career of negativity, and been rewarded for it.

 

It's all very disconcerting, disappointing, disheartening.  I want to live in a nation and state that are forward looking, diversity-embracing, compassionate, inclusive and dedicated to progressive problem solving. I am not really all that liberal, more centerish, and hardly ideological at all. But in this day I appear radically leftist, only because the point of reference has moved so far to the right through successful appeals, it seems to me, to the reactionary reptilian parts of our brains. Heavens, I used to agree with the Republicans on some things. Where have all the common sense Republicans gone? Where are we going? I think of Francis Perkins, one of my heroes from American history, who fought so hard for economic justice in the 1930s and '40s. What must Perkins think of the political and economic scene today?

 

AA strongly embraces the Serenity Prayer, and it is good to remember, apply it now: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. The big problem is understanding: What can I change and what must I accept? Can't head off the disaster awaiting us on election day. But can I at least join in some effort to challenge the anti-Islam tide? If someone is burning Quarans, what is the proper response? Anything I can do? It occurs to me that most of all, I do not want to be totally alone, isolated in my thoughts and beliefs and worries. Some days I wonder: Is this what it was like in Germany of the 1920s, when a highly cultivated, civilized culture seemed to lose its collective mind? 

I live in far northeast Minnesota, on the shore of Lake Superior and close enough to the border that we can hear strains of "Oh, Canada" on a windy day. For scenery, we are to be envied. For communications, we need help, federal help.
Our county is called Cook, but is nothing like that one in Illinois. We have just more than 5,000 hardly, iconoclastic souls, scattered around a large area dominated by rock, spruce and wilderness.
We are communications poor. Most folks in the county still have only dial up or satellite Internet as options, and neither is very good for e-commerce, quality health care, the distance learning we need, remote work via VPN or chatting with grandkids on Skype. Significant areas of the county still have phone service that no one would call "reliable."
We want to wire the entire county, every home and business and government agency, with fiber optic cable, a "triple play project" that would provide truly high-speed broadband (satellite Internet isn't high speed, despite what the ads claim) for telephone, Internet and television service that everyone would be able to afford. To do that, we face difficult hurdles. A state law, for example, requires that before we can put in a publicly owned telephone exchange, it must be approved in referendum by 65 percent of voters. Recall that I said our folks are iconoclastic; getting them to vote 65 percent in favor of motherhood would be difficult.
But our biggest challenge is with the federal government. We have submitted an RUS stimulus grant application to the Department of Agriculture, but it has been neither rejected nor advanced. Which puts us in the awkward position of needing to prepare another application for Round 2 without ever knowing what happened in Round 1 and why. As one person noted, that's a classic Catch 22. I happen to believe we had a very strong Round 1 application, though I know there are many, many deserving communities in situations similar to ours.
On Jan. 26, we lost almost all communications for almost an entire day. The consequences could have been catastrophic. That a break in a single Qwest fiber cable took down our long distance, all Internet except satellite (ironic, that) and all cell phone service surely illustrates why we need that federal grant to build our own public network and the redundancy it would provide. 
Today on Minnesota Public Radio's Web site, I offered a commentary on what happened and its significance. It is reprinted below. Anyone who can help, please do, especially Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Jim Oberstar. Aid from Rep. Colin Peterson, House ag chair, would also be appreciated, though we are  not in his district. And of course, any Ag Dept. folks who might push this on its own merits, we would welcome that especially. 

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Steele's pro-choice comments zero in on a long-standing contradiction in the GOP stand on abortion: Being pro-choice is a conservative, libertarian position. Plus, there is no discrepancy between being personally pro-life and corporately pro-choice. It is a quite supportable conservative view that the state should not involve itself in such issues, that they should be left to the individual. Thus, you can have a person who holds a pro-life view also supporting public policies that leave the decision to the individual. Pro-choice, no matter what has happened and been said over the years, does not equate with pro-abortion. It simply means: Leave me alone, and leave others alone as well. Perhaps Steele can help clarify that, because it really needs clarifying, though I sincerely doubt the crowd that wants to ram anti-abortion public policies down everyone's throat will be open to the argument.

Last evening on Lou Dobbs (I know, I know, but at least the woman replacing him at the moment is a little better, and I forgot to switch to Lehrer after Blitzer was done), they had Michael Steele, the new RNC chairman, who was pushing tax cuts as better stimulus. They talked about the Pentagon spending money on hospitals that were "shovel ready" but not the highest priority, and agreed it didn't make much sense.

 

Actually it makes great sense: These are needed projects that have gotten quite of a lot of attention already, which is why they are ready to go, so they produce great bang for the buck in job creation. And the GOP tax-cut argument has been thoroughly discredited (so why does CNN allow them to continue to recycle it without challenge?)

It got me to thinking about my favorite parks in Minneapolis, at Minnehaha Falls and along the Mississippi. Much of the work was done by the WPA in the 30s and endures. Imagine, they actually spent money on parks. And my favorite trout stream in northeast Minnesota, not far from our home, still shows considerable evidence of work done by the CCC boys. Creepers, spending public money on improving habitat for brook trout!

Of course, both the CCC and WPA had conservative critics (Roosevelt had a devil of a time getting the WPA, dubbed "We Piddle Along," through the Senate), but the two programs created tons of jobs and had a very positive impact on a lot of lives, not to mention a lot of communities that benefited from beautiful, enduring projects.

I know that compromise is necessary in the legislative process, but I hope we do not let the critics win too much. Tax cuts don't work very well as stimulus. As President Obama said in his speech to the retreating House Democrats: Spending is the name of the game. Good spending, certainly, but we must spend a great deal of money to stop this economic slide. Long live John Maynard Keynes.  

On CNN just now, Jack Cafferty said Minnesota has no credibility on elections because it elected a wrestler to be governor, Jesse Ventura. Well, Ventura did win, in a three-way race, with about 35 percent of the vote if I recall correctly. And in fact he was a pretty decent governor, despite the occasional silly tantrum; because he owed no one anything, he was free to, and did, appoint the best cabinet we've seen here in decades, and they developed quite good policies overall, certainly better than the mainstream Republican governor we now have.

Cafferty used Ventura as ammunition to pour scorn on the continuing saga of Coleman vs. Franken. I hear this elsewhere, too, and I just don't get it. Sure there is a lot of noise coming from the partisan camps, but the PROCESS is going along just as it should. There was a recount, an automatic recount, and then the candidate who is behind, Coleman, is allowed by law to bring an "election contest," a lawsuit to hear his issues on why he thinks the procedures used in counting the votes were faulty. The three judges appointed to hear the contest are just doing their job in listening to the arguments, however goofy some folks think those arguments are.

I just do not get all the snotty comments about how screwed up this is. I don't think it is screwed up at all. The officials involved, from the secretary of state to the judges appointed to hear this contest, seem to me to be doing their jobs very well. There will be an end when the process has run its course. That may not suit some folks, but it is what the law prescribes.  

The Star Tribune in Minneapolis (my old newspaper) has put together an absolutely fascinating way that users can experience what is happening in the recount between Norm Coleman and Al Franken: They've selected 599 challenged ballots (don't have a clue what their selection requirements were) and give users an opportunity to judge how each ballot should be decided. Whoever had this idea should get a bonus; it is a really slick way to let folks understand what the recount involves firsthand.

One interesting point for me is that no matter one's (or mine, at least) preference in the election, it is relatively easy to set that aside and decide the ballots fairly objectively. Of course, each person, lacking the instructions given the judges, will apply somewhat idiosyncratic criteria. But, still, it is an interesting, informative exercise.

I did the first 100 ballots and came up with: Coleman, 40; Franken, 39; no one/other, 21. Note: if you see no mark, look at the whole ballot before concluding the voter intended to vote for no one. Sometimes there are very clear preferences, but in the wrong place

Also, I was interested that the order of the names never varied; I thought it was SOP to randomly vary the order in which the candidates appeared???

The url is: http://senaterecount.startribune.com/

... for secretary of energy? Is that too outrageous to hope for?