Watch PBC author Max Blumenthal discuss his new book, Republican Gomorrah, on Democracy Now with Juan Gonzalez.

As noted in our last post, 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America by Michael Huttner, a guide both practical and inspiring to how you–we–can “make that change.” The book explains what you can do from home, in your community, across our country, and around the world, to fulfill the vision of change that inspired so many of us during the presidential campaign.

Packed with stories from the front-lines, practical information, and tips for action — each one connected to something  President Obama advocated as part of his campaign for change or to something he said or did himself — 50 Ways is a book for everyone who wants to do more to advance the cause of change.

What follows is an excerpt from 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America, reprinted here by permission.

50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America

By Michael Huttner and Jason Salzman

From the Introduction

In many ways, it seemed like a miracle. We elected Barack Obama President of the United States. We volunteered for him and voted for him. Many of us were so overwhelmed and inspired by his victory that we had tears in our eyes on election night.

But what do we do now? How can we help President Obama actually change America?

This book answers that question. Each of the actions it suggests is connected to something President Obama advocated as part of his campaign for change or to something he said or did himself during his life as a community organizer, a politician, and even as a father and husband. Each chapter begins with a quote from the president that touches on the recommended action. So our suggestions on how to support Obama reflect the ways Obama himself has taken action over the course of his life to advance the cause of change. Read More

In his victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park on November 4, 2008, the new president-elect Barack Obama said:

This victory alone is not the change we seek—it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

The quote appears at the beginning of 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America by Michael Huttner, a guide both practical and inspiring to how you–we–can “make that change.” The book explains what you can do from home, in your community, across our country, and around the world, to fulfill the vision of change that inspired so many of us during the presidential campaign.

Packed with stories from the front-lines, practical information, and tips for action — each one connected to something  President Obama advocated as part of his campaign for change or to something he said or did himself — 50 Ways is a book for everyone who wants to do more to advance the cause of change.

The 50 suggestions cover these seven broad themes.

1. Turn Obama’s Vision into Law.
This explains how you can help advance President Obama’s proposals for energy independence, universal health care, campaign finance reform, and more.

2. Become a Community Organizer.
Learn how to do what our community organizer-in-chief did as a young man and during his campaigns-and mobilize your community to support change.

3. Volunteer in Your Community.
Find out how to respond to President Obama’s call for community service in your area and around the world.

4. Be the Change.
Here are ways you can adjust your own life, at home or on a personal level, to reflect President Obama’s vision.

5. Amplify Your Voice for Change.
Agreeing with the folks around your kitchen table is fine, but here you can find out how to communicate to a wider audience to help make change a reality.

6. Harness the New Media.
Use Internet-based tactics on behalf of President Obama’s agenda and change in your community.

7. Act Now to Win Future Elections.
This section includes ideas for how to sustain change in America and nurture the success of Obama-like candidates at all levels.

Learn more about 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America here.

“Mortality is the ultimate democracy,” writes Garrison Keillor in his book Homegrown Democrat. Keillor grew up in St. Paul Minnesota, where the fire department will dispatch a crew to your doorstep in under four minutes. His vision of America as true and decent, a country in which people look out for one another, work hard, and value free thought is a place we should all be so lucky to live in. Here are some thoughts from his book relating to the current health care debate:

“Republicans have perfectly nice manners, normal hair, pleasant smiles, good deodorants, but when it comes down to it, you don’t want them monitoring your oxygen flow.”

“Go to any inner-city emergency room and see suffering people filling out forms about their finances and waiting hour after hour after hour, a primitive caste system of medicine in a Christian country.”

“We are all equal in our dread of the end of this delightful life and our disbelief in our own mortality. It will be a great day in America when we finally see that everybody can come see the doctor as needed, not be shunted to the back door and the charity ward.”

“In this nation where tax-supported research propelled [great] advances, our denial of benefits to so many is downright stone-hearted.”

“You drive out of St. Paul and into the Republican suburbs and you see what the New Deal and Fair Deal and Great Society accomplished: they enabled people of modest means to get a leg up in the world and eventually become right-wing reactionaries and pretend that they sprang fully formed from their own ambitions with no help from anybody. And vote to deny others what they themselves were freely given.”

“Most Americans are not willing to let people die in the ditch or go hungry. Democrats aren’t, that’s for sure.”

Part I

Part II

Below is the full text of President Obama’s address on health care to the Joint Session of Congress:

Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, and the American people:

When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse.

As any American who is still looking for work or a way to pay their bills will tell you, we are by no means out of the woods. A full and vibrant recovery is many months away. And I will not let up until those Americans who seek jobs can find them; until those businesses that seek capital and credit can thrive; until all responsible homeowners can stay in their homes. That is our ultimate goal. But thanks to the bold and decisive action we have taken since January, I can stand here with confidence and say that we have pulled this economy back from the brink.

I want to thank the members of this body for your efforts and your support in these last several months, and especially those who have taken the difficult votes that have put us on a path to recovery. I also want to thank the American people for their patience and resolve during this trying time for our nation. Read More

As Congress and President Obama wrestle over what a final health care reform bill might look look, it is worth considering some alternative ideas on how to reform the American system that didn’t make the cut.

In Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, the one-time Senate majority leader proposes the creation of a Federal Health Board - modeled on the Federal Reserve - as an alternative to a sweeping, one-hit reform bill. Such an entity would operate independently and would be staffed by presidentially appointed health professionals, economists and other experts with 10-year terms, so as to outlast any one administration.

With a degree of separation from Congress, a Federal Health Board would be charged with many of the decisions now vexing lawmakers, depoliticizing (at least in theory) some of the reform process. Among the proposed board’s duties would be:

• Create rules for an expansion of the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, which would be made available to all citizens and would include a public health insurance option.
• Serve as a research hub to evaluate what types of treatment are and aren’t effective, helping to weed out costly and unnecessary care (an idea the administration has already embraced in some fashion).
• Restructure incentives for health care professionals by paying providers for documented patient outcomes, not services delivered.
• Increase transparency by publicizing information on doctors’ and hospitals’ performance and records and balance sheets, much of which is currently private.
• Research and map out where certain types of care are most needed so resources can be better distributed.

Wondering how the Republican Party devolved to its current state? Wonder no more.

Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party

By Max Blumenthal

Introduction

Escape from Freedom

“Home run! Home run! Home run! Home run!”

A phalanx of young men in red baseball caps and polo shirts ran up and down the aisles of St. Paul, Minnesota’s Excel Center pumping their fists and chanting boisterously.

“Home run! Home run! Home run!”

The chant quickly spread throughout the crowd. Read More

In a wonderful essay titled “The Reading Cure,” Arthur Blaustein quotes the novelist John Gardner on the power of literature:

In a democratic society, where every individual opinion counts, [literature’s] incomparable ability to instruct, to make alternatives intellectually and emotionally clear, to spotlight falsehood, insincerity, and foolishness—[literature’s] incomparable ability, that is, to make us understand—ought to be a force bringing people together, breaking down the barriers of prejudice and ignorance, and holding up ideals worth pursuing. Literature in America does fulfill these obligations.

In the same essay, Blaustein, who is the Chairman of Progressive Book Club’s editorial board and the author himself of many books, including Make A Difference: America’s Guide to Volunteering and Community Service picks up:

We depend on our fiction for metaphoric news of who we are, or who we think we ought to be. The writers of today’s political and social realism are doing no less than reminding us of our true, traditional American values – the hope, the promises, and the dreams. When we read these novels, we learn about who we are as individuals and as a nation. They inform us, as no other medium does, about the state of our national politics and character—of the difference between what we say we are and how we actually behave. They offer us crucial insights into the moral, social, and emotional conflicts that are taking place in communities across America. We need such exploration today more than ever.

We asked Arthur to recommend, for PBC members and readers, a dozen novels that he considers especially rich explorations of American life — as he says, “the hope, the promises, the dreams.” Here’s what he came back with.

1. Shadow Play, by Charles Baxter (Norton)
   The  city manager of a small, depressed town in Michigan sees the human costs when the chemical plant he lured to town turns out to be an environmental disaster.
2. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, by Michael Dorris (Warner)
   Compassionate and psychologically complex, this novel spans three generations of Native American women in the Pacific Northwest – on and off the reservation – who share a fierce independence and a love of family.
3. Heart Mountain, by Gretel Ehrlich (Penguin)
   Explores the experience of Japanese Americans exiled to a World War II relocation camp in Wyoming and their relationship with local ranchers.
4. The Dogs of March, by Ernest Hebert (New England Press)
   Brilliant, sensitive, and funny. Captures what it is like for blue collar workersto be unemployed. Set in New England, it’s the American dream gone belly-up.
5. Ironweed, William Kennedy (Penguin)
   A Pulitzer Prize winner’s shrewd study of the diceyness of fate. This modern Dante’s Inferno about life on skid row is especially poignant as homelessness continues to cast a shadow across our land.
6. The Secret Life of Bees, by Susan Kidd (Penguin)
   A stunning and lush story of race and gender set in South Carolina. In the struggle between bigotry and love, the latter wins out.
7. Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper Perennial)
   A wonderful tale of the Mexican-American experience in the Southwest.  Explores themes of authenticity, community, integrity, and truth.
8. The Diagnosis, by Alan Lightman (Vintage).
   A Kafkaesque tale that questions America’s compulsive love affair with modern technology, efficiency, speed, money and “making it.”
9. The Milagro Beanfield War, by John Nichols (Ballantine)
   Reveals how the economic and political “shell game” is being run on ordinary Americans. Part of the author’s New Mexico trilogy, it explores the underside of rampant development.
10. My Year of Meats, by Ruth Ozeki (Penguin)
    A feisty American filmmaker takes on the beef industry, chemical corporations, and commercial advertising. Muckraking, witty and provocative.A panoramic view of America.
11. Postcards, by E. Annie Proulx, (Collier)
    Winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award. A remarkable story of the struggle of New England farmers to confront the loss of home and place in economic hard times.
12. Moo, by Jane Smiley (Random House)
    The financial, academic, sexual, and political scandals of a Midwest university are laid bare in this insightful satire of higher education.

Arthur I. Blaustein is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches community development, public policy, and politics. His most recent books are Make a Difference: America’s Guide to Volunteering and Community Service, and The American Promise: Justice and Opportunity. He is the chairman of the editorial board of Progressive Book Club.

Obama’s Healthcare Speech

“[T]he public is also very concerned about some aspects of the health care system, including the cost, including the security of their coverage. So depending on how this plays politically, I think there is the foundation for building support for broader legislation.”

- Mark McClellan, who ran the Food and Drug Administration and later Medicare under President George W. Bush, quoted in an article arguing that the prospects for healthcare reform are better than most reports would suggest. (NYT)

* Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform by Howard Dean, MD with Igor Volsky, Faiz Shakir

War in Afghanistan

“We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We’ve lost today.”

Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, a US Marine on active duty in eastern Kunar province in Afghanistan, speaking through his translator to an Afghan counterpart. Four U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday, the most U.S. service members assigned as trainers to the Afghan National Army to be lost in a single incident since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Eight Afghan troops and an interpreter also died. (McClatchy)

* Related Title: The Inheritance by David E. Sanger

Economic Recovery?

“The prospects of a robust recovery are very, very weak.”

- Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University professor and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, speaking to reporters at a roundtable held at Columbia. Some of the more recent U.S. economic data has been upbeat, but Stiglitz said the U.S. economy faces the possibility of a “double-dip” recession whereby a recovery is not sustained. (Reuters)

* Related Title: Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz

New Israeli Settlement Activity

“If you could not convince the Israelis to stop settlement activity, will anybody in the Arab and Islamic world believe you can make Israel return to the ‘67 borders or withdraw from settlements?”

- Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, commenting on Israel’s renewed push to build almost 500 more homes for Jewish settlers in Jerusalem. The US has urged Israel to stop all settlement of occupied Palestinian land as part of efforts to re-start peace talks in the Middle East. Erekat said the Obama administration’s whole diplomatic drive was now in doubt. (BBC)

* Related Title: Sowing Crisis by Rashid Khalidi

Support for Obama Slipping?

“I am one of the millions of frustrated Americans who want to see Washington do more than it’s doing right now,”

- Steve Hildebrand, the deputy campaign manager for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

* Related Title: Change We Can Believe In by Barack Obama