I’ve been in the hospital all weekend with my daughter who is very sick with pneumonia. There’s not much to do here. We got hit with a snowstorm on Friday, and today is Super Bowl Sunday. Most of my friends and family are either hunkering down trying to stay warm or prepping for Colts’ parties. So in between my daughter’s breathing treatments and meals, I’ve been reading and surfing the net.

This morning I noticed that the Yahoo! News page had three Associated Press stories in a row on Sarah Palin: “Palin assails Obama at ‘tea party’ gathering,” “Palin says ‘absurd’ not to ponder presidential bid,” and “Palin: Obama could win votes by playing ‘war card’.” I read all three, but it was the last one that just blew my mind.

The article is only four sentences. The first: “Sarah Palin says that if President Barack Obama ‘played the war card,’ he could improve his chances of being re-elected.” So sending troops to risk their lives is akin to a card game? Or even worse, the president should use troops to improve his political chances of re-election? I know many soldiers in our armed forces who have already served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know they were proud to serve their nation and felt they were doing good things for the people in those countries, but I also know they would not appreciate being “played” as pawns in some political game. Such an assertion is disgusting.

The second sentence: “Palin says that declaring war on Iran or showing stronger support for Israel might convince voters that Obama is tougher than they think on national security and doing all he can to protect the U.S..” Obviously, Mrs. Palin subscribes to the George Bush school of foreign policy: do whatever you have to do to other countries, regardless of the impact on their citizens, as long as it gets you votes back home. Again, a disgusting notion. Mrs. Palin claims to be a Christian, but evidently she has forgotten the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Should Vladimir Putin invade the U.S. or show more support for China to improve his chances of re-election? Somehow, I don’t think I or my fellow Americans would appreciate that much.

The third sentence: “Otherwise, according to Palin, Obama won’t be re-elected if he continues on his current path.” Palin seems to have forgotten that one of the main reasons Obama was elected was because Americans were worn out with the Iraq War. Not only that, but she assumes that all voters are hawks who would welcome another politically motivated conflict. I thought voters made it pretty clear to the G.O.P. in ’08 that we did not think much of that behavior. Maybe Palin believes in SSDEC – Same S#!^ Different Election Cycle.

The final sentence of the article: “Palin was interviewed on ‘Fox News Sunday’ — the network where the former GOP vice presidential nominee is a paid commentator.” This final line was really the icing on the cake. So let me get this straight. Palin is a Republican poster girl; she is being interviewed on Fox News, which, despite their protestations, is just a mouthpiece of the Republican party. She is also now employed by this “news” outlet which “interviewed” her about her speech at the tea party convention. Does anyone else see the irony, not to mention the conflict of interest, in this?

It just so happens that this article was the last one of the three listed and the last one I read. But I couldn’t help synthesizing the points Palin made in this article with a line in the “Palin assails Obama at ‘tea party’ gathering” article: “Aside from broad conservative principles like lower taxes and a strong national defense, the speech was short on Palin’s own policy ideas that typically indicate someone is seriously laying the groundwork to run for the White House.” Evidently, she did her usual sweeping-generalization-folksy-jokesy-talking-point speech style during her tea party speech. (That would play well with that audience, which she ironically described as “fresh” and “young” although the average age of the attendees was about 95.) Her “interview” on Fox News Sunday filled in some of the blanks in her policy ideas, though: use the troops for your own political gain, invade whenever it will promote your career, assume that all Americans love war, and use any outlet necessary to forward your ideas, even when it’s unethical. So those are some of the things we can expect from Candidate Palin in a couple years?

Sarah Palin ’12? Excellent.

All my liberal friends are mourning today. All my conservative friends are gloating.

Last night, Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts special election for the Senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy. Pundits on both sides are having a field day. It’s the “Democrats’ Nightmare.” It’s the return of “The Reagan Revolution.” To be honest, I’m just not that fussed about it.

The Democrats put up a candidate with the personality of a warm rattlesnake, then let her run a half-hearted campaign. At the last minute, when they realized she’d blown it, they tried to throw the president at it. Didn’t work. Now they’re all freaking out, and the Republicans can hardly contain their glee.

The G.O.P. wrested the old Kennedy seat from the Dems, and now they can stop President Obama’s socialist agenda. Well, sort of.

First, the Democrats really gave this one away. They couldn’t imagine that seat in that state going to a Republican. Much less could they imagine going to THAT guy. He has a truck. Did you know that? I don’t even live in Massachusetts, but I know he has a truck. (I have a truck, but I still want healthcare reform.) He also posed naked in Cosmopolitan a while back. Classy. You know, Burt Reynolds posed naked in Cosmo too. Maybe he should run for the Senate. And Mr. Brown is not above using his political platform to marry off his daughters. In case you missed his acceptance speech, they are both “available!” Gentlemen, step up for your chance to play Levi Johnston to Brown’s Sarah Palin!

Second, the G.O.P. is still the minority in both House and Senate, and a Democrat sits in the White House for another 3 years. (Which is also, by the way, how long Brown has in that seat, but more on that in a minute.) So if the Democrats could get their act together, they could still pass some good legislation. The Republicans managed for years without a filibuster-proof majority. Of course, the Dems aren’t ideological and dogmatic, so they don’t move very fast. They actually think about the consequences of their actions. So maybe they will never get anything done. Meh.

Okay, so Brown won the remainder of Kennedy’s term. He will be up for re-election in 2012, and I believe that he will lose. See, I’m pretty sure the independents didn’t even show up for this election. They usually don’t for non-presidential years. And Coakley was rude and out of touch; liberals couldn’t get excited enough to get outta bed for that. But EVERY conservative in the state was ready to pounce on this, even if their candidate was a Cosmo pin-up! In 2012, when all of Massachusetts votes, Mr. Brown and his big…truck will be driving into the sunset.

I wonder if anyone in the Republican party is at all concerned about their recent champions. A full-frontal pinup, two beauty queens, and a loudmouthed drug addict. Brown, Palin, Prejean and Limbaugh - now there’s a team I could get excited about. If they were on a reality TV show. Or maybe a remake of “Boogie Nights.” Brown can take Burt Reynolds’ part. And then Reynolds can take Brown’s Senate seat.

Being a rare liberal in a Republican family in a red state is sometimes discouraging. My conservative friends and family see me as a challenge, a problem, a project they need to work on. So they send me e-mails like the one I received last night:

“An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan.” All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.”

No, it could not be any simpler, but it could be MUCH more complicated. And unfortunately, economics is complicated.
After reading this, I felt some things were just “off.” First, as a college instructor myself, I could not imagine an entire class of college students agreeing that “Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer,” much less all of them agreeing to the professor’s proposition. I can’t even get my 24-member classes to agree on a simple due date. Second, this e-mail assumes a level of naïve idealism that I found offensive. My students have a perfectly reasonable view of reality; none of them would be so silly as to believe ANY system could assure that kind of utopia.

Then there was the issue of chronology. “An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked…” This is all in past tense. If the professor “had once failed an entire class,” it would have to have been in May of this year since that is the only semester completed since Obama was elected. And this discussion ending with the idea that “Obama’s socialism worked” would have to taken place very early in the semester since it occurred before the first test. Since Obama was inaugurated weeks after the spring semester started, something was amiss. So I checked out one of my favorite websites: www.snopes.com.  Sure enough, this is a legend, dating back about 15 years: http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp

It is an interesting illustration, but it contradicts the experience I have had with the over 100 teams I’ve mentored in my professional writing classes. Half of the students’ grades in the course is based on an applied research project that they do in teams. The average grade on those 100 projects is a B. And I have always seen that the stronger students bring up the weaker ones, but not the other way around. My fellow instructors and I actually had a discussion last spring about the fact that the deans keep asking why our grades are so high. Our consensus was that the collaborative group projects bring up the average.

All that said, I am not a socialist, nor do I believe President Obama is or I would not have voted for him. Unregulated capitalism is, however, a nightmare. I think that is one of the points of “A Christmas Carol,” one of my favorite novels and especially appropriate this time of year. There will always be those Scrooges, Mr. Potters (the miser from “It’s a Wonderful Life”), Bernie Madoffs, and Kenneth Lays who will take, take, take if no one stops them. And since most of the rest of us cannot afford to take them on, the government’s pretty much our last line of defense. Somewhere between communism and capitalism is a system that works.

Even Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan realized in the end that we cannot trust financial companies and businesses to act responsibly. What’s more, this brilliant man recognized that economics is not simple: “…we’re not smart enough as people” (“Greenspan Admits ‘Flaw’ to Congress, Predicts More Economic Problems,” http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec08/crisishearing_10-23.html).

So to come back to the last line of the e-mail, no, it is not simple. It’s complicated. And we just have to keep tweaking until we get it right.

It seems like we all spend a lot of time and energy complaining about our nation, our government, our economy, our countrymen. So I was pleasantly surprised when I suddenly realized today that I had something really positive to say. I discovered something that we are doing well, even beautifully.

Before I explain my epiphany, there are three things you should know about me. First, I’m an efficiency freak. I am always looking for ways to do things faster and easier, or better yet, ways to do multiple things at once. It comes from years of overscheduling myself so badly that I had no choice but to find clever ways of multitasking to get myself out of the mess I’d made. The best example of my efficiency obsession (and the most embarrassing) is my grocery shopping behavior. Not only do I have a thorough shopping list, it is in order according to the setup of the store where I buy my groceries. And heaven forbid I should miss something and have to backtrack! I mutter furiously under my breath any time I have to go back to an aisle I already visited. And when my grocery remodeled and re-ordered their aisles, I actually took pictures of the signs so I could re-organize my list.

The second thing is related to my love of efficiency; I hate waste. Wasted time, wasted energy, wasted food, wasted paper. Anything I can recycle gets sent to Goodwill or friends or the recycling plant.  My refrigerator’s produce bins are checked regularly; anything that is starting to go bad must either be frozen or used somehow.

The final thing you should know is that I am crazy about charities, especially those involving the environment, education or small creatures (children or animals). Yesterday alone, I donated to five separate philanthropy projects. I’m not bragging; I simply cannot say no.

Okay, so given those three things about my personality, you can understand how excited I was yesterday when I realized that I was incidentally involved in an activity that combined all those things. Not only did it satisfy me personally, it also proved to me that Americans are still pretty darned resourceful despite the entitlement and laziness that has crept into our society in the last few decades.

Here’s what happened: I bought a diet Coke.

Yep. Not just any diet Coke – a 50-cent can of diet Coke. But wait, my story gets better! I bought this particular diet Coke from our university’s Anthropology Club. They sell cans of soda for 50 cents as a club fundraiser. Now, I like buying soda from them for two reasons. One, they’re right next door to our Writing Center, and two, they only charge 50 cents, which is 75 cents less than the bottled Cokes in the vending machines down in the basement.

Okay, so follow this. The professor who sponsors the Anthropology Club buys the Cokes in bulk from Costco.  The club sells them and keeps the profits for the club funds. I buy the soda. Then I take the empty can home and put it in a bin in my garage. When the bin is full, I take it to my son’s elementary school. His school has recycle bins for aluminum cans; they use proceeds from the recycling as a fundraiser. Oh my.

It’s just the kind of thing I love: efficient recycling for philanthropy. Coca-Cola gets a profit; Costco gets a profit;  the Anthropology Club makes money for its fundraiser; I save money on my soda; my son’s school makes money for their fundraiser; the recycling company gets raw materials to sell back to Coca-Cola to start the whole process over again.

I know it’s uber-geeky to get this excited over a little process like this, but I have been buying soda from Anthropology for years without thinking twice about any of it. For some reason, it hit me today as I was taking the cans to my son’s school. This is something America is doing well. We are using our ultra-materialistic, capitalist system to do some good things.  We’re supporting education, supporting kids, maintaining the economy and recycling.  It made me proud.

A recent Facebook post from one of my friends shocked me out of my blogging stupor. Here is what he wrote:“President Obama told all of our kids that they need to stay in school. He also told us that every mother needed to go back to school. Now I see an ad that says ‘Obama asks dads to return to school.’ At some point, we are going to be the most over educated poor country that only knows theory and reference material. My Grandfather and your Grandfathers should return from the grave and kick all of our asses.”

Aside from the fact that he is blaming President Obama for an ad posted by a for-profit organization, I was floored by this whole way of thinking.  My friend is a regular Joe. We went to high school together here in the suburbs of Indianapolis. He’s a service technician for a large corporation and what I would consider to be a mainstream Republican. His post worries me: has the GOP so successfully vilified Barack Obama that he cannot even advocate activities widely accepted to be positive without being crucified for it? Yikes!

Facebook being a “social” site, I refrained from posting ALL my objections to my friend’s update. I limited my response to the following: “since so many other countries can do manual labor for so much cheaper (which we American consumers demand so we can buy more stuff at Wal-Mart), don’t you think we need education so we can do something? Believe it or not, many of us “liberal elitists” would really love more of our fellow Americans to be educated right along with us so we won’t have so many people to (according to some folks) “look down our noses at!” Not to mention, if all these people go to college, I’ll get to keep my teaching job!”

I was pleased to see that everyone who responded after me, pretty much agreed that his post was nothing short of ridiculous. I did not feel the need to pursue it any further in that arena. But I was still disturbed. So much so, I found myself tossing and turning in bed last night, coming up with more answers to his gripes. I’m not willing to lose him as a friend over a silly political rant, so I decided to voice them here instead.

First, I understand formal education is not for everyone. My husband is one of them. He dropped out of high school at 16, and I really don’t care. He’s brilliant, and I adore him. He has been fortunate to be able to build a successful career without a college degree, but it has been difficult. He has often bemoaned his youthful decision because it certainly made his life tougher than it might have been.  Do I think EVERYONE should attend college? Nope. Not a chance. But more people should get the chance. More people should consider it. The president’s encouragement can’t hurt.

I’m also surprised that a mainstream Republican could seriously think education is a bad idea. A college education helps a person secure for financing to start a small business; it helps them succeed and stay in business. A mechanic may be able to learn his trade without going to college, but starting his own garage will be much easier if he can show a loan officer a business degree. Handling finances, managing employees, marketing services and staying in business will be easier if he has at least had some classes.

Besides, Americans are not really in any danger of being over-educated. I certainly encounter enough stupid people on a daily basis not to be worried. If you think the U.S. is getting too smart for its own good, just check out some of these sites. They should put you at ease:

http://www.darwinawards.com/

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/1113092mugs1.html?link=rssfeed

www.peopleofwalmart.com

With all their talk about Obama being a “socialist,” “communist,” and/or “fascist,” conservatives ought to be encouraging everyone to become as educated as possible. If they really believe the president is trying to become a dictator, they should recognize the importance of having a highly educated population. After all, one of the first things socialist, communist and fascist dictators do is to exile or kill all the academics and intellectuals. (See Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot.)

Finally, there was my friend’s off-putting comment about our grandfathers returning from the grave to “kick our asses” for getting educations. Well, personally, my grandfathers would probably have supported any kind of education initiative. My maternal grandfather was so bitter about having had to leave school at 13 to help his family through the Depression, he practically forced his own children to go to college. My paternal grandfather was a college graduate himself and a teacher. Both members of the “greatest generation,” my grandpas understood the value of education.

So we return to my initial concern: the GOP is so completely brainwashing its constituents, even the president’s most positive, innocent and helpful initiatives become grist for the hate mill. Now even education is bad just because an advertisement said President Obama said it was a good idea. Argh.