Boom

elect

This morning I was thinking about people I know/have known working to elect political representatives on the basis of a personal relationship with that person. People I actually know and actually like don't seem to run for office, so perhaps it strikes me as weirder than it should. (And granted, the list of people I actually know and actually like is limited).
But a neighbor would be awful--what if they ended up involved in some crazy scandal and you had to deal with weeks of press knocking over your trash can? (As a side point, I don't know if I've ever had a neighbor I've had any respect for. It's that too-physically-close-no-actual-friendship thing.) And coworkers always have little grudges against each other: the hangover you said was food poisoning; the calling in sick only to mention a "calling in well" day on Facebook; the suspicion that you're the one who gave a bad peer review; the undeserved promotion to that jackass you used to share a cube with. A former boss? Forget it. The only one I really like would never get much of anything done except for making other people like her.

shake your money maker

I just tried an exercise I relied on with our last prez: I didn't listen to/watch the speech, I read the speech (the NY Times posts 'em about halfway through the televised versions). With W, I did it because listening to him got me a new ulcer every 10 seconds. With Hopey, I did it for basically the opposite reason: I get pretty caught up in his charisma and while it's not as damaging as 10-second ulcers, it's not especially useful now that the man's already elected.

All I have to say about health insurance, I've already said, here and ad nauseum (which counts as a pre-existing condition) in person. Health insurance companies aren't going anywhere. As long as they exist, not much in health care is fixable. Hopey says he's going to make refusing coverage because of pre-existing conditions illegal. I expect it'll be more like it is in this state right now, where one condition won't deny you, but a combination of several will. I have several pre-existing conditions. I have state-guaranteed health insurance. At the end of October, when I turn 40, my monthly premium will become $703. Each doctor visit (I've had one this year, clearly I am expensive as a patient) is $97.66 out of my pocket.

So whatever. I'm actually more interested right now in Hopey's writers bitch-slapping the GOP so nicely this evening. I just finished an OK book called City Kid, and buried towards the end, in the space of half a page, are two comments on race I think are worth quoting in light of this evening.
"One of the challenges for any black person is negotiating his or her relationship with white power."
and
"Institutional racism was easy to scream about, but working around a prejudiced gatekeeper took more thought, and was much easier if you had white allies."

I was recently attempting to explain why socialized racism seems so tremendously damaging; I didn't do a very coherent job of it, and that might explain why these lines struck me last night. So much of the anti-Hopey brigade appears to boil down to simple racism. I read a bit just now about some seemingly unknown congressman (perhaps senator?) yelling LIE during the speech. So now I hope someone bangs his shoe on the table during this congressional session.

For those of you feeling unHopeyish or deHopeyful because he's a spineless son of a compromise who won't get a damn thing accomplished, let me remind you that Abraham Lincoln was a thoughtful moderate in a time of hysterical sumbitches. (And hey, he got some good things done, before a kook shot him. Of course, his VP was the first president to ever get impeached, and was loaded at his original inauguration.)
I guess the lesson is that one thoughtful moderate and 620,000 military deaths in four years are all it takes to kick off some change in this here nation of mine. And those who admire the thoughtful moderate might encourage him to not run for reelection.

crashing/burning

Electricians working in the attic today forgot a lightbulb was attached to a temporary fixture and yanked the wires up into the attic. The lightbulb crashed to the floor and exploded on my feet. It was a compact florescent bulb. This must be how tuna feel these days--a little warm, but not at all astonished. (yes, I shouldn't quote the Elephant's Child when I'm writing about tuna, but can you imagine an astonished tuna? I don't count Charlie Tuna as an actual tuna.)

More importantly: I just got a piece of junk mail! And I am angry about it!
It's a piece of junk from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It's a gimmicking fundraising letter, which claims to be a survey and does in fact include a few survey-ish questions and perhaps those questions really do get used in place of other polling data, I really have no idea. I'm not mad about the gimmick, or even really that mad about the waste of money and effort that goes into producing these damn things. I'm mad about something I think is accidentally revealed by the first question of the survey, which asks me to rank my top three big issue priorities (out of 12 options). The issues are in some cases completely dumb, like "improving educational opportunities."
You know what I can't check as a priority, because it's not one of the 12? Anything to do with either DOMA or DODT.
Which tells me that this dad-blamed gov'mint will only bother to do something about either of those once they've completely finished "improving educational opportunities." I was hacked off enough to go email the DCCC about it.

oh no

With Senator Franken being 99.5% official, my political reading has turned to the '10 races. Send help and/or bullets.

In the interim between 11/5/08 and November of 2010, the co-op board game Pandemic is a lot of fun, with or without cheating, and even though the group (which joins forces as the CDC) only wins about half the time. I had a hard time with figuring out who could pass which cards when, but in part this was because Sweetie and I accidentally cheated the first time we played; in following games, I had a hard time passing cards at all, because I kept thinking that several legal card passing methods were also cheating.

And it's just in time for more bird flu. Always nice to have a timely product release.

The game has four diseases, tied to four broad regions: East Asia/Australia, Central Asia, Africa/South America/Miami, and Europe/North America. While diseases can jump regions (say, bird flu to LA), for the most part the game wins when a particular region is covered in its own particular disease. The mechanic the game uses to go from "a whole lot of illness" to an epidemic is equal parts neat and horrifying--much like actual disease. Even neater and more horrifying: Being the person to make the decision between patching up a city's outbreak or working on a long-term cure. Lima? Who cares! Oh no, Istanbul? Go rush in and save people! I would guess that the CDC has a pretty high burnout rate. If being an actual public health worker is about as difficult as the game, we should all be amazed we haven't died from cholera/tb/bird flu/zombie apocalypse.

And speaking of public health (mostly targeted at The Brother Formerly Known As Mr. Phlebotomist): I just read about how in the 90s, a blood bank in Israel made a decision to dump all blood donated by immigrants from Ethiopia. I doubt I would've noticed the topic--it's just a couple paragraphs in a book I finished--but between Citizen Sweetie donating blood many times each year and TBFKAMr.P, the topic of blood banks comes up around here more than you might expect.  Sweetie was recently complaining about new questions that made the donating process more tedious, and I said that it seemed like in public health, there are good reasons to err on the side of inconvenience over convenience when it comes to donors. (Which is easy for me to argue: I'm a fainter, and can't donate.)

In the late 90s in Israel, a choice was made to accept blood from recent African immigrants, but to not use it. A lot of blood was thrown out. When a journalist made this information public, a whole bunch of people got righteously angry, and there was a big investigation. I don't want to link to the guy's online Word doc, so this is an html press release that sums up a lengthy paper about how the blood wasn't much of a risk.

The questions that annoy Citizen Sweetie at the local blood bank are targeted at lowering the risk of HIV.  The dumb thing I see from what happened in Israel is the whole secrecy about it: accept the blood, smile and nod, throw it out. From my perspective, explaining public health concerns shouldn't be a problem. But when you live in a country with a higher percentage of blood donors, and when the donation process is tied more tightly to identifying as part of your new society, and when you don't happen to have a brother who worked in public health, and when racism is a community issue in other ways...well, I can sort of understand the desire to just smile and nod. Seems like public health shouldn't be about that non-confrontational impulse. Anyway, I look forward to hearing TBFKAMr.P's opinion. If I wasn't convinced telephones will be the primary cause of the zombie apocalypse, I would call.

12 Angry Men

Sweetie just sent me a voting-by-precinct map for Capitol Hill that he found on "some Cap Hill blog" which is a totally helpful way to pass along credit where credit is due. Nerds on Queen Anne and in Pioneer Square will have to make their own maps. In our 1846 precinct, 12 people voted for McCain, and eight people voted for a combination of third-party candidates. Hopey got 291 votes. I love my big blue bubble.

View Larger Map

Terrorist Fist Bump

Unless you remember to think of the inaugaration as a lobbyist's dream, having the media natter about how fancy the party should be seems like all other celebrity nattering. But after reading this dumb little thing in the NY Times, I scrolled down to the comments section and found this:

Why shouldn’t America get its freak on this January?

Yes, indeed: America should get its freak on. The big question of the 2000 election was which candidate one would rather have a beer with; I hope in 2012 the big question is which candidate one would prefer to get one's freak on with. (Although yikes, Palin does seem likely to win that contest, doesn't she?)

For one version of what happened with Andrew Jackson's attempt at letting the people get their freak on during an inauguration, read this. And people questioning whether America is likely to get its collective freak on without arresting itself should read this.

 

protest ants

I am so pleased with Seattle right now. First, the party in the streets with patriotic drag queens and actual public drinking after Obama won. Yesterday, it was the World's Happiest Protest against Prop 8. Suddenly, Capitol Hill feels goofy fun, even in the midst of anger.

More than anything else about the whole gay marriage issue, I don't understand why it's something voters get to decide. Voters have proven themselves to be idiots when it comes to civil rights. Courts, at least in this country, tend to prove themselves idiots but then later go back and correct themselves--so courts are better than voters at admitting they've been wrong. While this page hasn't been updated since October, it's pretty interesting to see the differences between state. 

In the alternate universe where I get to make all the rules, there would be civil unions, issued by the state to any couple who wanted...um, to be unionized. (While I've seen some arguments that say civil unions should be expanded to any group of people, rather than any couple, I can see this turning into a legal nightmare and don't really understand how to fix that.) Separately, there would the existing endless variety of churches available for separate church ceremonies--call them marriage, call them commitment ceremonies, whatever. To some degree, this is what's happening in a few states. And plenty of individuals get church-married without getting state-married today--I understand that senior citizens frequently choose this option to "feel married" without interfering with pension benefits.

Washington is being very Washington-ish about this, in that they add in a few additional rights for gay couples every year or so. At the current rate, I think same-sex  couples will acheive fully equal status by about 2100. That is unacceptable, and there is now a movement to make it happen more quickly (pester the legislature!). We also have what I think is the most embarassing high court decision, in which marriage is defined as existing to promote procreation. I would be tremendously happy to have the governor decide that all senior couples, all infertile couples, and all childless-by-choice couples were no longer legally married.

I suggest signing up with Join the Impact. (For facebook folks, join the cause "repeal prop 8".) Also, buy a Marriage Is So Gay shirt (just in time to wear it for family holidays). And because it's both funny and makes a solid point: At the Seattle rally, there was a sign that said, "If you like my decorating, you'll LOVE my revolution."

Honey, the nice thing about revolution is that it goes with everything.

Doubleplus Good

I have a head full of blue-tinted cocktails. There are helicopters stationed directly over the roof. There is dancing and whooping and joy here in Mudville, the city that doesn't just sleep, it hibernates. We have a new president. We also decided where on the human body the "Dixville Notch" is located.

Día de la esperanza y el miedo

I had a nightmare about voting this morning; it was sort of first-person-shooter video game as I opened up a can of Real America on a bunch of old white men. Welcome to my subconscious.

I got up at 8:15 and made about 80 scones, to add to the caramel brownies and chocolate chip cookies I made yesterday for Obama volunteers.

Around 9:30, I learned that Dixville Notch went in favor of Obama, to the tune of 15-6. Which I think means they had one independent voter go McCain, out of 11.

I walked across the street to vote at 10:30. A lot of people have been reporting a little thrill of adrenaline and/or endorphins when they fill in the oval next to Obama-Biden. Not me: My thrill came from the oval next to Peter Goldmark, Democrat for Public Lands Commissioner. Normally, I vote mid-afternoon and when I check the number of my ballot as it goes into the machine, I've never been higher than #36. This time, I was #341. So I'm feeling good about turnout. I'm feeling even better at who I saw voting at the same time: wee little babies, voting for the first time; more shades of brown skin than in previous years; nobody using the electronic machine, and a whole lot of folks dropping off absentee ballots in person.

A bit after 11, the mountain of cookies and scones were delivered to the north-of-canal Obama HQ. There were around 15 phonebankers, another dozen or so folks handing out posters and buttons, helping people find polling places, and generally organizing the peons, and a few people back in the kitchen. The food-related people were called "comfort captains". Watching people hold tiny cell phones in one hand while eating a caramel brownie with the other was very satisfying. Hits of sugar is what made this country great.

People will start showing up here in another couple of hours, and we'll drink and obsess and stress eat and hit ctrlR one million times before the Pacific time zone polls ever close. I am balancing excitement, fear, pedantry, and, underneath it all, a quiet jaw-clenching intensity that damn it all, this man had better come through for us. And he better stay alive.

The Final Word

A vote for Obama is a vote for style.

Sway: Our next question comes from Eric out of Huntington Beach, California: "There are numerous cultures and subcultures in the United States today. Powers-that-be set statutes with monetary penalty on how people wear their clothes. Do you find it intrusive on civil liberties to create such ordinances?" And you know I got 'locks.
Obama: I wasn't going to pass a law, man. You look tight.
Sway: I know people have piercings, tattoos. Eric, in particular, is talking about a ban on sagging pants. Do feel like people should be penalized?
Obama: Here is my attitude: I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time. We should be focused on creating jobs, improving our schools, health care, dealing with the war in Iraq, and anybody, any public official, that is worrying about sagging pants probably needs to spend some time focusing on real problems out there. Having said that, brothers should pull up their pants.

from MTV, via Electrolicious.