1. There's always someone I'm happy for, that I feel was rightly recognized.
2. There's always someone I feel was neglected.
3. There's always someone I feel completely undeserving who did win, causing my mind to be involuntarily filled with disturbing visions of the winner performing unholy sex acts upon the judging committee to secure victory.

With these pre-programmed reactions in place, news of Obama's Nobel peace prize victory moved me only slightly. I was glad his efforts at peace were recognized, as I would be for anyone, but I must confess my formidable eyebrows arched a bit at the idea of something called a "peace prize" being awarded to someone who is waging war. I also haven't forgotten that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize in 1973. Yes, he negotiated a cease-fire, but he also oversaw campaigns of murder in South America.

Back to Obama. I'm glad the win recognizes that he has achieved something simply by not being a flaming asshole like President Cheney and Figurehead Bush. I'm glad the award calls a global B.S. on their macho-swagger cliché: wherein men talk tough but dodge service, lead from the rear, mock those who serve, and whine when other countries won't help their war games.

My personal goal is to do what little I can to move humanity away from war, which is why I voted for Obama. Unfortunately, as much as he has spoken of peace, I haven't seen much action. Dude's barely been in office a year and things can't happen overnight, so I'll give him time, but after nearly a decade of chickenhawks, my patience is thin.

So awards don't affect me much, but what does move me to unrestrained laughter is the predictable-as-the-sunrise rage of the Obama-haters. I especially like when they are so rabid their hate signals get crossed. For example, they claim the award means nothing while simultaneously being outraged that Obama doesn't deserve it.

Here's an experiment. Next time someone rants about what a joke it is that Obama won the Nobel, ask that person who won it last year. Chances are, they'll have no idea. If they do, ask them if that person deserved it. Who knew that all this time, Obama-haters were also experts on Nobel history? Who knew they had such in-depth authoritative opinions on who it is awarded to, why it is awarded and what it means? What a strange coincidence!

Face it haters, you hate Obama. If the dude found a penny on the sidewalk, you'd be pissed. If he stepped on a dog turd, you'd claim it was sent by God to punish him.

Obama-haters, I hear your outcry about Obama's Nobel win. I just wish you had the same rabid reaction when Bush let Osama bin Laden escape and when Cheney handed his mercenary buddies your tax money to kill Iraqi civilians.

As mad as you are about Obama's peace prize, I wish you were at least that mad about war.


===
Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers.

Say what you want about President Obama, but he has done one thing very well. He has altered our national discussion. The big question of his term is: how to improve health care? What a refreshing change from the big question of the Bush years: how can we funnel even more money to the rich? Change has come! Instead of screwing up the entire planet, we've graduated to screwing ourselves.

Apparently change upsets a lot of people. This past summer, the usual round of breaking news (it's hot, it's really hot, it's not that hot) was completely pushed aside by footage from town hall meetings and demonstrations. Americans turned out in large numbers to let their opinions about Obama and his healthcare plan be known. This made for some disturbing video clips. (Like this, this, and this.)

Before you get discouraged by this ugliness, look on the bright side. The mayhem at the town halls proves we have at least a partly-functioning democracy. People are free to stand up in public and present views opposed to our country's leaders, opposed to the nation's majority and even opposed to any possible reality.

It's that last group I want to focus on, that cluster of people who see a national health care program as the sole intermediate step between where America is now and late-1930's Nazi Germany. If how a country makes a seamless transition from free prostate exams to mandatory gas chambers is a mystery to you, chances are you're sane. Or, according to supporters of the thesis, you've been duped.

Human history sadly never lacks stories of genocide, but for some reason the Nazi reign sticks in the American mind. Can a brother get an update? Nazis are so old-school. They've been replaced by Commies, then Russian Commies, then Warlords, then Terrorists. Official enemies come and go, but America's favorite bad guy remains the Nazis.

Maybe it's due to the perplexing question of how Nazi Germany came to exist at all. How did it happen? How did a country famous for something as harmless as beer and ridiculous as lederhosen become the most murderous, destructive force the world has ever seen not counting Wal-Mart?

I think the Obama-is-evil crazies provide the answer. See, everything happens for a reason, even nutty people showing up in public. Whackos have their uses, I guess.

Let me explain. What cracks me up, in a we're-all-doomed-so-laugh-or-you'll-cry kind of way, is that the people who scream Nazi the loudest, who call people Nazis the most, are also the people who act most similar to the Nazis, or are at least the most ready to become American neo-Nazis. Let's call them Americanazis and compare.

The original Nazis believed without question the fact-free ravings of a leader with access to major media, perpetual rage, and dubious sanity. Americanazis do too (Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh). The original Nazis believed the big lie: Jews were taking over, and if you didn't see evidence of it, it's because they were so skilled at hiding their schemes. The Americanazis believe Obama's healthcare plan and his every action (talking to schoolkids, planting a garden, playing basketball, etc.) are secret plans of evil and if it seems to your observation to be otherwise, that's because he is so skilled at hiding his nefariousness. Nazis were told they were under attack and they believed it (as explained by Goering in his famous quote on how to start a war). Americanazis are told they are oppressed and under attack, and they believe it as well. Reference the ludicrous War on Christmas and the perpetual warnings against liberals, education, the media, political correctness, as well as many other dastardly abstract nouns.

So maybe all of that can be overlooked, but what makes Americanazis prime candidates as Nazi re-enactors is their disturbing sexual attraction to firearms. That completes the Nazi package: crazy leaders, gullibility, anger, paranoia and guns.

How did Nazi Germany arise? There were some key angry cult-leaders stoking a bunch of scared and willing-to-put-anger-before-thought believers. Before long, people are committing horrible evil acts because they are convinced they are doing so against horrible evil people.

Nazis always think they're fighting the Nazis. It's the eternal wisdom of "whoever smelt it dealt it" scaled to address the psychoses of the terrified, gullible, angry, armed, hate-prone demographic.

Nazis always think they're fighting the Nazis. Prove me wrong. When you fail, you know what to call me.

UPDATE: Mere seconds before I posted this, I ran across this disturbing story: Right-Wing Conference Tells Activists To Get Their Guns Ready For ‘Bloody Battle’ With Obama The Nazi (link) which neatly proves my point. The Winner of the "Most Likely To Be The Next Nazis" award is... the gang accusing others of being Nazis. 

===
Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers.

Right wingers, justifiably angry at the massive middle-class decline, are protesting health care reform lately. It is a triumph of corporate media that they are opposing their own self-interest, and arguing that the corporate market is a better form of organization than democratically elected government.  

U.S. healthcare is the most expensive in the world, outcomes are only slightly better than Cuba's, a large fraction of the population is not covered. It is a major cause of personal and corporate bankruptcies. It is important for the economy and the well being of everyone. Since few jobs are secure now, no one should have to question the need for change.

The insurance industry runs healthcare with obscene CEO compensation, profligate lobbying, massive political payoffs, and a large expensive bureaucracy. You have no way to know if your coverage is adequate until you make a claim.  They can drop you.

What does the insurance industry do? It rations, but not in a good way. It excludes sick people (with pre-existing conditions), cherrypicks the healthiest, and caps payments.  It is in conflict of interest because its goal is profit, not healthcare efficacy. Other than irrational rationing and bureaucracy, the insurance industry contributes nothing to actual healthcare except high premiums.

If you are an individual or small business, coverage now costs you plenty and is likely to increase rapidly. The wingers would rather pay high premiums to insurers than taxes to a more cost effective public program.

Shut down the health insurers. Retrain the insurance bureaucracy for jobs in actual health care because if everyone is covered there will be a need to expand facilities. Expand Medicare, which works well and is more cost effective, to cover everyone. Urge Congress to direct the CBO to score HR 676 and publish the results. http://www.seconnecticut.com/healthcare_letter.htm

Since people tend to think in labels, most of them are surprised that I, being labeled a liberal (meaning I put caring about others at a high priority) have read and enjoyed books by Ayn Rand, herself being labeled conservative (meaning she puts caring about oneself at a high priority.) This fact often makes my fellow labeled-liberals gag.

Yes, I've read and enjoyed Ms. Rand's books, including Anthem, Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead. I think I may have even tried her book The Virtue of Selfishness, but I bailed before completion. Call me virtuous.

For those who don't know squat about Ayn Rand, she's the patron saint of free market, zero taxes, individualist philosophy. When I say she's the patron saint, I mean that in its fullest sense. She's just as extreme and just as wrong in many of her assessments of the world as the people that worship her.

There is some intelligence in her endless warnings against too much forced behavior on behalf of society. I know giving her one sliver of credit will make some of my fellow liberals have a stroke, but I've always felt it best to extract wisdom wherever you can.

As an example, her book The Fountainhead is moving to any struggling artist. It's about an architect who is visionary and uncompromising. As a result, he is blacklisted, having to fight his way into the profession with heroic determination. Leaving aside Rand's inaccurate formula that "the masses" are always wrong and the individual always right, I enjoyed this book as simply an underdog story. It's inspiring for an author in search of an agent with the vision to release the genius of his blockbuster novel. That author would be me, by the way, in case that analogy blew past ya.

So that's my analysis of Ayn Rand: as an artistic philosophy, somewhat inspiring. As a social-political-economic philosophy, I'm unmoved.

The Ayn Rand novel I want to talk about most is Atlas Shrugged because I think its misguided views are backing a lot of modern opinion. In the book, the richest, most powerful men in the world have had enough of being taxed so they shut down their companies and thereby shut down the world. The whole planet plunges into chaos until this titans return.

This explains the title. It's a spin on the myth. Atlas gets sick of carrying around the world, of people freeloading off his effort. So he dumps the planet and everyone suffers.

The plot is laughable. Why? Because what would happen today if a worker walked off the job and said "I'm not working for you anymore?" The instant this earth-bound Atlas mentioned he might "shrug," he'd be notified that his services were no longer required and he was being replaced (for one-tenth the price) by a desperate immigrant escaping some war-torn country.

Of course, if the exiting person was a CEO he would probably reap a huge bonus on his way out, but ultimately the world wouldn't stop, it wouldn't even blink.

In short, if Atlas shrugged, his job would get outsourced. He'd be lucky if he could find even an asteroid to carry around afterwards.

Well what if an Atlas-like CEO actually owned the company and decided to take it elsewhere? Sure that would damage a lot of people's financial lives, but that illustrates that the existence of all-powerful individuals makes the world unsafe for other individuals. Ultimately, people have no choice but to band together (via society, or unions, or taxes) to prevent simply living at the whim of the wealthy (reference the at-will employee.)

I never really gave much thought to the magnitude of Ms. Rand's wrongness until I was working at a place that desperately needed a union, which I voted for, and which was enacted. We could all have been the fiercest individuals in the world, but the very existence of those who control everything would have stopped us from pursuing our own individual goals. An individual cannot possibly make a reasonable request against a company that is treating them unfairly.

I'm tempted to call Ms. Rand naïve, but I will refrain because she does not have the benefit (as we do) of several decades of watching her ideas being applied.

The root of the error in Ms. Rand's worldview and its modern descendants is that they rely on a miracle of emergence. The core belief is that by encouraging everyone to grab everything they can with no regard for anyone else, somehow the world will become the best possible place for everyone. It's like the dying (dead?) idea of "trickle-down" economics: give to the rich as much as you possibly can and then somehow, this will result in more money for the poor.

The real tragedy of Ayn Rand is that she doesn't seem to notice that by pursuing a world where the rich are in full control and don't owe the society that enabled them to prosper a darn thing, an individual's rights end up stifled. By advocating boundless individualism, she denies opportunity to other individuals who may be born to poorer families.

So there is an emergent result from her philosophy, just not the kind she wanted.

Okay, this is all getting complex and grey, and that's where Ayn Rand's extreme philosophy (where any extreme philosophy) breaks down: when it leaves the realm of contrived fiction and enters the real world.

===
Larry Nocella's novel Where Did This Come From? is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers. For more info, visit LarryNocella.com.

Note to readers: Progressive Book Club's blog -- new and improved -- has moved here. Please bookmark it and/or subscribe to the feed -- and of course, tell us what you think.

Outside the Window: June 1, 2009. New York, New York. Cloudless and sunny.

Inside the Book: 2003. Losano Ridge, Afghanistan. A few miles from the Pakistani border. Late summer. Colder during the day. Freezing at night.

            “The unforgiving minute” of Mullaney’s title has arrived. While they rush to protect a patrol under attack, Mullaney’s soldiers trigger two more ambushes. The first kills a young man named Evan O’Neill.

Outside the Window: May 29, 2009. New York, New York. Cloudy and cool. Maybe some storms tonight.

Inside the Book: 2003. Ghazni and Shkin, Afghanistan. Hot. Tense.

            In a 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs, Milton Bearden (CIA station chief in Pakistan between 1986 and 1989) dubbed Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.” The Soviets had tried and failed to pacify it. A century earlier, the British fought three costly wars on the same terrain before retreating. Two millennia before that, Alexander the Great barely escaped with his life. Only Genghis Kahn had any luck incorporating the tribes into his empire, and according to Bearden, even he had to make “painful accommodations with the Afghans.” The initial invasions sometimes went pretty well, with foreign armies marching into cities and setting up puppet governments. But then, little by little, ambush by ambush…

We're thrilled to announce today that Gov. Howard Dean has joined Progressive Book Club as board chairman! The governor, who has just written a book on health care reform to be published later this summer, needs no introduction, but below he explains why he took the position and why he believes, as we do, that books and ideas are are vitally important to the progressive movement even -- make that especially -- in the digital age.

Dear Progressive,

It’s an honor to join the Board of Directors of the Progressive Book Club. PBC has transformed the traditional book club and created a 21st century platform that enables people who want to learn, connect, debate, support progressive causes and take action. Over the past few years, progressives have worked together to build an infrastructure and a movement that helped to elect President Obama and begin to undo the damage of the last eight years.

PBC has become a critical part of that infrastructure. I believe that as Democrats and Progressives our values are core American values. And just as we must show up and ask for people’s votes everywhere, we must also engage and stand up for our ideas and our values everywhere. In books, in our neighborhoods, or online. In the past, we lacked the infrastructure to provide a broad platform that continuously identifies and cultivates progressive ideas and new voices, while empowering people to debate, connect and mobilize around these ideas. ... Read more.

Outside the Window: May 27, 2009. New York, New York. Clouds and misting rain.

Inside the Book: 2003. Gardez, Afghanistan. Dust and "one hundred twenty-eight in the shade, sir."

        So far, Mullaney's portrayal of the military has been almost uniformly positive. His superior officers especially are, to a man, tough and competent. At West Point, Airborne training, and Ranger School, they provided everything he needed, both the equipment and the know-how. In Afghanistan Mullaney confronts scarcity for the first time and, though he never says so explicitly, shockingly poor planning.

Paper has been getting it's ass kicked lately. The conventional wisdom is that video screens are the death of paper. If you have an electronic device, you just download the info and you're done, there's (supposedly) no need to harm any trees.

As usual here in the offices of LarryNocella.com, I'd like to take a step back and review the "conventional wisdom" from an unusual angle. I find the screen vs. paper debate comparable to the Christmas tree debate.

I'm not referring to the perennial news stories about people spazzing because a Christmas tree isn't allowed on public property, causing them to lament the intolerant, especially at this time of year, since everyone is a Christian. I'm also not referring to the laughably manufactured War On Christmas™.

The Christmas tree debate that I think will shed some funky disco lights on the paper vs. screens discussion is about what kind of Christmas tree is better: a real one or a fake one made of plastic and metal.

Where I live, following Christmastime, you can count on finding defrocked Christmas trees tossed on the side of the road. It's annoying. What a waste to cut down a perfectly healthy tree for a short amount of time and then just chuck on the street where it withers away. Why didn't the person dispose of it properly, or even toss it into the woods?

This led me to be fully in favor of the fake (plastic and metal) Christmas tree. You can reuse it and you don't need to cut down any trees.

My view was changed after reading a letter to the editor in a newspaper. Was paper calling to me? The letter (I can't remember the newspaper or I would note it) rocked my world. It made this point: "Real trees are better than fake ones. Eventually the fake one is going to a landfill. Real trees can be used for firewood or composted."

Now I know why Rush Limpballs is so angry all the time! It hurts to be wrong.

Real trees are better, environmentally-speaking. A real tree can be returned to the earth. Ultimately some amount or all of a fake tree goes to a landfill. With minimal effort, a real tree can return to the earth to feed more trees.

Now let's look at paper vs. screens.

At first glance, cell phones and eBook readers like the Amazon Kindle seem like environment-savers: you never have to cut down a single tree to make paper for books, magazines or newspapers ever again. What a blessing! Well, it would be if a combination of plastic, metal and assorted hazardous materials simply appeared out of the air and vanished once obsolete.

In theory you buy one electronic gadget and you're done for life. But that never happens. Microsoft or some other jerk organization that claims they don't have a monopoly but really does makes some upgrades and soon your device is so obsolete it simply won't work. You need to buy a new one. The old one may take a circuitous route through eBay, but ultimately it's landfill stuffing.

The takeaway: don't write paper off just yet. When assessing how good something is for the environment, we have to consider not only what it takes from the earth but how easily it can return. Real trees beat fake trees, paper beats screens easily, super-convenient cell phones are upset by their whipping boys, the phonebook.

So now that I've presented a case for paper, we can all acknowledge there is a lot of paper waste going on. It has been noted that electronic spam isn't just a nuisance, it's wasteful of energy that could go to powering millions of homes. I have to think paper spam is even more destructive. Every week I get a packet of flyers from the same old stores I don't go to.

Spam (paper or electronic) needs to be outlawed, but it will likely never be, because that would put people out of work. Maybe screens and paper should stop fighting and acknowledge they both can be part of the solution. Waste needs to stop all around.

The whole media delivery and receipt world needs to be re-thought. The idea of an electronic device is cool, but not if (as seems to happen) the device goes obsolete every five seconds. The cost of something should figure in how it's going to get back into the earth. You should be able to completely opt-out of spam paper mail, too.

Like that annoying true proverb, it sounds like a lot of challenges, but it's a lot of opportunity to treat our home right.

===
Larry Nocella's novel Where Did This Come From? is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers. For more info, visit LarryNocella.com.

Jane Mayer's The Dark Side is the definitive account of how the Bush administration's "War on Terror" turned into a war on American ideals. Here she tells PBC how this came to pass, and at what cost -- both to America's standing and to those tortured in the name of national security.

Outside the Window: May 20, 2009. New York, New York. Sunny and nearly cloudless.

Inside the Book: 2001-2002. Muscogee and Chattahoochee Counties, Georgia. Unbearable heat. Jefferson County, New York. Knuckle-splitting cold.

            While reading about Mullaney’s final months of training, I thought of George Orwell—not the middle-aged idealist who went to Spain and fought the fascists in Homage to Catalonia but the middle-aged grump who returned to England and wrote “Politics and the English Language.” In the latter, Orwell argues that vague language has a definite political purpose: it makes the indefensible palatable. Instead of calling (oh, let’s pick an example at random) the act of shackling a man’s arms above his head for two or three days until his legs and ankles swell to grotesque and painful size torture, we might call it an “enhanced interrogation technique.”

Outside the Window: May 14, 2009. New York, New York. Cloudy and cool.

Inside the Book: 2000-2001. Oxford, England. Continual rains and mists. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Chiang Mai, Thailand. Giza, Egypt. Jerusalem, Israel. Istanbul, Turkey. Crowded and confusing.

            I’m now halfway through The Unforgiving Minute, and Mullaney still hasn’t left for Afghanistan. As I read, this began to wear on me. Although his travel writing nicely captures the sheer weirdness of globalization (in Bangkok, “…an elephant walked past sporting a blinking taillight suspended from its tail … one woman who had parked her ox-driven cart on the street came back with a bucket of chicken from KFC.”), Mullaney is a soldier, and it’s his growth as a soldier, not as a citizen of the world, that brought me to the book.

Here's our latest video interview -- it's with Rinku Sen, co-author, with Fekkak Mamdouh, of The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization (available for $1 when you join PBC). Click on the HD button for the best quality picture -- and enjoy!