We’ve all heard complaints about the increasing political polarization of our country: Republicans vs. Democrats with Independents holding the deciding votes.  Glenn Beck vs. Keith Olbermann.  The Drudge Report vs. The Huffington Post.  Fox News vs. everybody else.  The common denominator?  Versus.  It’s us against them.  It’s a contest.  Who’s winning?  That all depends on whom you ask.

But is that how it has to be?  On an individual basis, is that how it really is?  When I’m with my Republican friends (yes, I have a few), do we immediately launch into our differences?  Of course not.  We generally avoid talking politics because it’s not why we come together.  We share a meal or a vacation (seriously) because we like each other, our kids are friends and no one is pro-abortion or wants the government to take over our lives.  In almost every way, we want the same things.

Does that shock you?  It shouldn’t, but the media and the yahoos want to paint everyone as an extremist.  You know what?  I’m sick of it.  I’m having my Howard Beale moment.  I’m mad as hell at how I’m being portrayed as a Democrat and I’m not going to take it anymore.  I won’t pretend to know how my Republican friends view me and my opinions, but I do know how House Republican John Boehner and ex-governor Sarah Palin want to portray me and my fellow liberals.  It’s not pretty.  I’d like to set a few things straight.

I don’t want big government.  I don’t want government creeping into areas of my life in which they have no business being.  I didn’t want the stimulus because I like big government.  I thought TARP was a necessary evil to help individuals and small businesses get back on their feet, or at least back on one foot.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  Private enterprise wasn’t stepping up, but Washington was.  So okay.  The deficit is icky, sure, and I know little of serious money matters, but the theory behind Keynesian economics makes sense to me and to many other VERY SMART individuals who do know about such things.  I’m going with it because I believe it will eventually work.  Does it make me uncomfortable?  Sure, but not nearly as uncomfortable as doing nothing.

Boehner speaks pejoratively about the administration’s efforts to stimulate the economy and lower the unemployment rate by making Democrats sound like we love debt and adore higher taxes.  We don’t.  Not at all.  Rich Democrats don’t want Bush’s tax cuts to be phased out but understand why it should happen.  Middle class Democrats understand that our tax rate will stay the same should Bush’s cuts be allowed to expire, so stop trying to scare us.  We want to keep as much of our money as the next guy because it helps us pay bills which we have just like everyone else, and it helps us buy things occasionally which we need.  Every now and then, we even like to buy things we don’t need because it makes us feel good.  And we wish we didn’t have to pay tax on all of it – goods, services, paychecks – but we understand that the roads we drive on and the police we count on and the street lamps that light our way at night only work if we pay for them.  So no, we don’t want to pay any more taxes than we have to but we also don’t want to pave our own streets.  Also, we know that too much of our money is wasted in the name of bureaucracy and incompetence and it makes us just as mad as Republicans.  We hate waste.

Boehner, let’s talk about joblessness.  If you and your cronies have a magic wand that can *poof* get individuals employed, we would totally be with you.  My Democratic friends and I, many of whom have lost jobs, wring our hands over the unemployment rate.  If Minnie Mouse stepped up with the solution to this problem, she’d get our vote.  We are so completely uncomplicated that way.  We know jobs are the numero uno issue facing this country right now (and many of us speak Spanish) so when the administration offers up an idea that seems to have kept us from falling into the abyss, we support it.  Got something better?  The problem is, John, you offer nothing.

Oh dear.  I can’t write a paper tonight.  I’m just disgusted that, because of November, politicians are trying to create differences where they don’t exist, particularly in the areas of jobs and taxes.  The ideology isn’t big government versus small government.  My Democratic friends and I would be perfectly happy having less government if that could solve our problems right now.  The disagreement stems from the belief that we think government’s deep pockets give us an oddly better chance than that of the private sector alone in getting people back to work.  We understand that the enormity of the situation requires an enormous solution.  It took years for us to get into the mess.  It just may take a few more years to get out of it.  But just like Republicans, we want out, and we so wish it wouldn’t cost us a dime.

It’s late.  There will be a part two.

I know.  It’s Wednesday.  Deal with it.

There are areas of debate certain individuals should avoid, though they rarely do.  Ignorant people everywhere step lively into topical discussion they know almost nothing about.  Thankfully, many defer to experts and then often judges, to dissect a conundrum, hear opposing arguments, and then make a decision hopefully wiser than Joe six-pack would make himself.

And then, there is abortion…and stem cell research.

The political party you belong to often defines itself by its stand on both issues.  For some voters, it is the litmus test to decide whether or not a candidate gets your vote.  Pro-life or pro-choice?  Expand stem cell research or stop it dead in its tracks?

On Monday, a federal district judge in D.C. blocked President Obama’s executive order from 2009 that expanded stem cell research (SCR) beyond George W. Bush’s agreement to federally fund SCR but limited to the 21 cell lines already in existence.

I have almost no idea what stem cell research is.  In order to conduct it, embryos are required and stem cells are obtained through the destruction of said embryos.  But that’s all I know and it’s probably equal to what most people understand.

In other words, I’m Joe six-pack (I’m actually Jo no-six pack – not drinking, and the abs don’t resemble one) and I’m about to wade into this armed with nothing more than my feelings and opinions.  Lord help us.

In reference to the sub-prime mortgage debacle and the crazy derivatives created during, I am neither an economist nor a financial analyst.  But while the global economy was tanking, I felt strongly that persons who should have been smarter than I were, in fact, not.  I had no issue ranting about the greed and idiocy of it all, and if someone dared accuse me of not knowing what I was talking about, I would reply, “I know enough.”  Regarding scientists and stem cell research, I can’t say the same is true.  I only know the morass of my emotions, including those that are knee-jerk.  When W took an inordinate amount of time to process his own thoughts about SCR and then decided the moral implications of destroying embryos (those essentially “abandoned” in fertility clinics) was too much to bear, I kind of flipped out.  He was espousing “sanctity of life” reasons.  I wondered about the sanctity of lives lost in Iraq to fight a stupid war of our own making.

It’s complicated.  No one wants to think of embryos being destroyed, even if they are being used to find cures and treatments for diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries.  But what Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled on Monday feels a little like cutting off one’s nose to spite the face.  Scientists already in the throes of their bio-medical research with stem cells will be abruptly cut off when the federal funds they’ve already been allotted run out.  In theory, a Jonas Salk could be moments away from an Alzheimer’s breakthrough and suddenly find himself unable to continue for lack of funds.  Experts would admit, however, in truth this scenario is not imminent and that patience is required for any medical eureka moment, but all indicators point to success down the road.  Why stop now?  And with stem cells that already exist, from embryos already “discarded”?

It’s more than a touchy subject.  I know that.  The two scientists who brought the case before Judge Lamberth feel that the same research can be conducted on adult stem cells and therefore, embryonic SCR is unnecessary.  The actual argument is a splitting hairs one involving the language of previous law, even before W’s decision, and I won’t attempt to explain it.  But again, why stop research already in progress?  When it comes to scientists and bio-medical experts, I defer.  They know A LOT MORE than I do.  And if they believe they can ultimately help children today not have to watch their parents get older and forget who they are, I’m all for it.  Too many of my friends today have either lost or are losing their parents to Alzheimer’s and/or Parkinson’s disease.  A dear friend’s father died due to complications from diabetes.  Lamberth’s decision seems to me erroneous.

The National Institute of Health and the White House will immediately appeal the ruling.

Robert Rizzo. He's cute, no?

If you don’t live in California, you may not have heard about the “Pay Scandal in Bell”.  It’s an unbelievable story, except that it’s true.

Bell is a city in southeast Los Angeles County with a population near 40,000.  No one would refer to it as a high-rent district.  There are no Peet’s Coffee houses in Bell.  Those who live there call it home, so I won’t say more.  If you were asked what the Director of Community Services there made a year, your answer might be somewhere in the vicinity of say $82,000?  Try $273,542.  And that’s nothing compared to Robert Rizzo, the City Manager, who, before he resigned amid the scandal, was making $787,637.  The poor guy.  After those nasty investigative reporters at the Los Angeles Times uncovered that almost all Bell city employees were making more than the President of the United States, Rizzo and his gang quit.  Now, he’s going to have to figure out how to get by on a $650,000 pension for the rest of his life.

Really?  That just doesn’t seem right.

I was out the other night with my friend Jen who questioned why we should all roll over and accept such a ridiculous situation just because it falls under the hallowed heading of “pension”.  I told her we shouldn’t, and the folks in Bell are not.  In fact, the only reason Bell residents allowed Rizzo to get paid his exorbitant salary was because they had no idea.   When they learned of the pay scandal, they spoke up and out and demanded that their tax dollars not be spent supporting these scoundrels.  Now, everyone’s on it: California Attorney General Jerry Brown, L.A. County D.A. Steve Cooley, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and First Lady Michelle Obama.  (Not really Michelle, but I feel bad that she’s getting such a hard time about her Spain trip.)  It looks as if investigations will ultimately prove illegalities leading up to the outrageous salaries of Rizzo and his cronies, including possible voter fraud.  Bell residents did not roll over and play dead and it appears their efforts against injustice will pay off.

I’m not about to get into pension reform right now.  It’s late and the subject is complicated and emotional .  But Bell serves as an illustration of the benefits of questioning what some believe to be a done deal or beyond one’s control.  Those of us not trained as lawyers frequently feel as if legal matters, in this case employment contracts, are black and white.  More often than not, they’re grey.

Injustices rear their ugly heads in ways both major and minor.  Take the afternoon a few months ago, when my sisters and I, along with friends, arrived at a seaside restaurant for our reservation to celebrate the impending marriage of my cousin.  They could not have given us a worse table.  The ocean was just beyond the terrace, but we may as well have been in the Inland Empire for all we could see of it.  We complained politely, and then not so politely, and ended up with one of the finer tables overlooking the Pacific.  No one was put out and the celebration actually became one.  Consider this very minor but satisfying all the same.

Kenya has been living under a flawed constitution since the 1960s.  Those who suffered were its people.  It took forty years, but enough Kenyans realized this wasn’t the way it had to be and rose up in 2007 to protest election results they deemed flawed.  The fall out was bloody, no doubt, but political rivals Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga were forced into a power-sharing agreement which eventually led to last week’s election.  Peacefully, this country of nearly 40 million approved a new charter to govern their country going forward.  Consider this major.

Much of life is negotiable (though I won’t tell my children that just yet) and rolling over is something we teach our dogs.  It shouldn’t be a default position when faced with the unacceptable, which is why I’m going to gather a crowd to storm the offices of DirecTV and demand AMC in high-def.  “Mad Men” in low-def is like drinking a really good wine out of a Styrofoam cup.

Do come in.

My sister in Orange County lives in a dark blue house with a red door.  I like the look, so when we decided to paint our house (it’s currently “gun metal” grey), we opted for the effect, too.  I’d like to believe we’re trendsetters, because this morning while out running, I noticed more red doors popping up around the neighborhood, which is good.  In feng shui, the front door is the first point of entry for the energy that will inhabit your home.  A red one says “welcome”.  That’s good, right?  Everyone (almost) is welcome in our home.

My life doesn’t feel terribly peaceful at the moment for reasons not entirely worth noting.  It’s summer.  The stars don’t align so well for me during June, July and August.  Let’s leave it at that.  I was at a friend’s house the other day looking at her daughter’s bedroom, which she’d just painted a peaceful green.  The bed was positioned with the head against the wall but in the middle of the room.  You could crawl under the covers from either side.  I liked the appearance and the perceived ease with which one could change the sheets, rather than the difficulties I face now with all three of the girls’ beds against the wall.  I said as much to my friend who told me this position of the bed was “feng shui”.  I translated that to mean if I went home immediately and rearranged the girls’ rooms, my life would be harmonious.

Have you ever noticed that when circumstances aren’t quite the way we’d like them, we sometimes blame that damn black cat who ran in front of us last night?  I knew I shouldn’t have walked under that ladder. And in order to believe that things will improve shortly, we look for the same kind of sign, and if we don’t find one, we create our own – anything in the physical world that we can translate metaphysically to serve our needs.  For example, my right hand is itchy.  Money must be coming my way soon.  Are those dolphins I see in the ocean?  Good luck will now reign down upon me.

And what about the Zodiac?  I expressed some feelings of frustration to a friend two weeks ago, during an otherwise benign afternoon with kids splashing about in the pool.  When she asked me what sign I was and I told her I was a Scorpio, she said something about Mercury in retrograde.  Actually, I don’t know if she said that specifically, but after she left, I immediately went and Googled “Scorpio” to find the answers and explanations to my current state of mind.  And you know what?  I felt better afterwards believing that those stars up there and the moon, wind, earth and sun bore at least partial responsibility for who I am and how I react.

On my worst days, I search eagerly for pennies abandoned on the ground. Surely, by picking them up, I’ll have good luck.  Rather than waiting for an eyelash to fall out on its own, I’ll pluck one and blow it off my finger, just to make a wish.

Admit it.  Go ahead.  Even the most practical, or cynical, among us allow for a chance of providence should a four-leaf clover present itself.  Isn’t feng shui just another method of superstition to help ease the load we bear for creating our own happiness and peace?  What’s the harm?  Even if it’s simply a case of the placebo effect, I’m thinking seriously about hanging a horseshoe above the red front door.

It's a visual. Commonsensetimes.com

After 9/11, Bushie and his friends came up with the USA PATRIOT Act which drastically eased restrictions on surveillance techniques that could be used to catch those bad guy terrorists.  I was incensed because I hate cute acronyms; absolutely despise them.  Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.  Liberals were outraged over the breach in individual rights to privacy.  For the most part, it became yet another Dem vs. GOP situation, except if you were against it, you were assumed to be a Democrat AND unpatriotic.  (This is somewhat ridiculous, since a GOP credo is “less government” and there they were listening in on our phone calls and reading our emails. I digress.)  But here’s the thing: I thought the Patriot Act sounded awfully fishy, too.  Government eavesdropping?  I’ve seen “The Way We Were” several times and read “The Crucible”.  Had I been alive at the time, Joe McCarthy would not have been my hero.  I know all about how wrong things can get if you’re accused of something that either isn’t true or isn’t illegal to begin with.  However, not once during the Patriot Act kerfuffle did I think my personal liberties would be breeched.  I had nothing to hide and therefore nothing to fear, right?  I never stood upon a soapbox and ranted about the injustice of it all.  It was a weird few years after the Twin Towers went down.

What I despised almost more than the contrived acronym was the fact that it was yet another situation we Democrats didn’t know how to handle.  Our PR was and continues to be abominable.  And I understand why.  I really do.  When Sarah Palin conjures up images of a bunch of Democrats sitting around a table deciding whether Granny lives or dies and tags it a “death panel”, we find it so absurd we don’t even want to humor her with a response.  What a lot of Americans hear is “death panel” and not the smug, disgusted silence from the other side.

I ranted when I saw Dems suffering scorn over their opposition to the Patriot Act, not because I was on their side but because they weren’t parading in front of the American people all of the innocents who’d had their lives turned upside down by false accusations.  People want examples!  They can’t conjure up unfairness in their limited imaginations.  Spell it out for them!  But nooooooo, that’s awkward and clunky and distasteful.  We’d rather lose elections than knock voters over the head with the obvious, with the painful truth, with facts shoved right in front of their faces.

November is around the corner.  It is, trust me.  Democrats and left-leaning independents, even those working in the White House (and I mean you, Robert Gibbs), are afraid of being disliked and so they appease and apologize and prepare for the worst rather than dig in proactively to prepare for the fight.  What do the Republicans do?  And brilliantly, I might add?  They go for the jugular.  When they believed Americans were scared, they assured us that they would keep us safe and the Democrats were a bunch of pantywaists who would not.  What’s predominantly on the minds of Americans today?  Unemployment and the economy.  The GOP hammers home that it’s Obama’s fault.  Why?  Because he’s the president.  They talk about how his policies have nearly led to Armageddon.  Why?  Because he’s the president.  What do we do?  We keep telling people it’s the president’s fault, too, except not Obama, but the last guy, what’s-his-name, Bushie.  Problem is, ole George isn’t around right now to throw stones at.  He’s busy clearing brush in Crawford.  We need visuals, people!

Remember when Ronald Reagan stood in front of his charts and explained to us why it was so important to raise military spending astronomically?  We loved that!  Please show us more, Ronnie!  Don’t blather on about statistics and taxes and percentages.  We want pictures!  We want faces!  We want Joe six-pack!  That’s not true.  The Dems don’t want him, exactly, but we wouldn’t mind being hit over the head with examples we can see and really hear and maybe even touch.  Surely, somewhere in this great country of ours you can find individuals whose lives have already improved with the health care reform bill.  And shortly, let’s find someone who can tell us that the extended unemployment benefits saved his family from living out of their car because he snagged the right job with the right pay just weeks after Obama signed the extension.  It’ll help if his story is as good as the stories they find on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”.  The stimulus package really has done much good but you’d never know it unless you can read those innocuous orange signs on the highway stating as much.  And doggone it, let’s get some graphs.  Find some big poster boards in the West Wing and start drawing charts that show, plain as day, where the economy has been, where it would’ve gone without the stimulus and the bailouts, where it’s going now and what we can expect down the road.  Make a mix-tape of all those economists who keep saying that reducing the deficit is not what we should be focusing on right now.  And sure, let’s go ahead and blame the GOP if we must, but let’s do it quickly and move on because after hauling out all of our visuals and audios, we need to turn around and ask them what they’ve got to show us.

It’s okay to knock voters over the head.  Sometimes that’s all they need… and all they want.