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I was an early supporter of Obama, mostly by elimination. I didn't think Hillary Clinton could win. I felt the right wing had spent decades campaigning against her, and there just wasn't a way for her to overcome that. Edwards didn't strike me as sincere, and I'm still a little bitter over Kerry's loss. I picked Obama because I thought he could win. I knew he wasn't as liberal as I wanted, but I thought that given 8 years of really inspirational leadership from a man like Obama, the country would come around, and "liberal" wouldn't be a dirty word anymore.
I stopped giving Obama money after his vote for FISA. I never believed that he would fix it once he got elected, and that's turned out to be true - he's been as bad as Bush when it comes to executive power and civil liberties, but okay, we knew after the FISA vote that he might not be reliable on that.
What's really surprised me is how pathetic he's been in handling the health care debate. Electorally, he needs to pass something that actually helps people. As digby pointed out a few days ago - the health care reform needs to not only work, but people need to perceive it as working. If health care fails, the Dems loose in a tidal wave in 2010, and then none of Obama's agenda gets passed. I can't find the link to the post right now, but someone made the point that if the Dems loose in 2010, it'll be the blue dogs that loose, not the safe seat democrats. I don't see how this hasn't factored into the negotiations. Seems to me like, "pass the liberal bill we need, or loose in 2010," would be a strong motivator.
I don't get it. It seems reasonable that Obama could walk into the Senate (or the House) and say, "this is the plan I ran on, this is the plan we're going to pass." The plan he ran on was pretty weak sauce, but it was an actual plan (pdf), and it was only 9 pages long. What's coming out of the negotiations now is a total train wreck.
When it comes to the economy. The second he appointed Larry-fucking-Summers, I knew we were doomed. Somewhere there's a quote about how he shouldn't ever get a job with more responsibility than a fry-cook ever again in his life after what he did during the Clinton era. It's such a travesty. I read the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein last year - and really, never waste a good crisis. The current situation makes me want to bang my head through a wall. He had the chance to totally overahaul the banking industry - reverse the horrible mistakes of the Clinton and Bush years, and now it looks like we'll get nothing.
I don't want to give up on candidate Obama, I want Ax and Plouffe to walk into the Oval Office, and tell Obama he's loosing control of Congress in 2010, and loosing the presidency in 2012 if he keeps up on the path he's on.
I want the Obama I voted for back.
]]>There are lots of things to yell about. Honestly, we've just kind of gotten used to saying "oh, yeah but it's a TV series, I guess they don't have to pay attention to reality."
The thing is, tonight's show was really bad. Way worse than the inaccuracies of the first few episodes.
In case you weren't watching, and I'm assuming you weren't since the ratings for the show have been abysmal, I'll summarize the part that we have issues with. The scene is a Chinese restaurant in China Town. A couple is having lunch, and then the restaurant explodes. After the firefighters clear the scene, they find one guy left in the restaurant, but he's already dead. There's a comment about how it's weird that he's wearing a condom, and then they hear knocking behind a door. The medics knock the door down to find a room full of scantily clad Asian women.
Following this is a street scene with the medics treating the women for smoke inhalation. The thing is, there absolutely no SFPD anywhere. I mean WTF? There would be a whole bunch of Chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese speaking SFPD and social workers there, even before the room full of sex slaves was found, and there for sure afterward. To add insult to injury, the "pimp" is allowed into the scene to frighten the women into not staying and giving testimony to the police that should have been there.
I know the SFPD doesn't get enough credit for fighting human trafficking in this city, but there's no way what happened on Trauma tonight would have been allowed to pass. This was an outrage, and NBC should apologize to the hard working people in our police force and the non profit agencies around the city that work tirelessly to fight against sex trafficking.
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In late April, I went searching for a friend's lost dog above the hogback west of Carbondale, Colorado. When I got back home I found a tick crawling on me and flushed it down the toilet. Three days later I developed a perfectly round flat red rash about 3.3 inches across in the back of my left hip. I had been bitten by ticks all my life--but had never seen such a thing--though I had seen pictures of the migrans rash associated with Lyme's many years ago.]]>So, I went to the Colorado Center for Disease Control website and was informed that there was no Lyme's disease in Colorado. Given this information from a source I trusted, I passed off the rash as an allergic reaction and tried to put it out of my mind. But, I was aware that I had less vitality, that my aches and pains seemed to be growing every day, first the small joints, then the large,cognitive issues, I suddenly had problems making a dollar out of coins--it was getting bad. I stayed active--aware that I didn't want to become depressed. Finally, I told myself, yes, I'm 49--but no one can expect to deteriorate quite that suddenly! I went to my doctor, told him about the tick bite and the rash. He ran a Lyme's test on me--it came back positive. My doctor claimed it was a false positive..there is no Lyme's disease in Colorado. Strand 23 of the Western Blot test came back reactive. That clinched it. My doctor--and he is a good doctor--is simply not trained to read the test...because there is no Lyme's disease in Colorado.
I am now three months into Lyme's disease. The chances of regaining energy and a pain free life dwindled with each tiny increment of time lost before I began treatment. I could have fought it from the word go,and early diagnosis has a huge impact on outcome, but because of the misinformation I got from the CCDC, I held off and dismissed the rash. Now what? I don't feel so good but hope for the best.
This weekend my daughter went fishing with her grandfather in the hills west of Carbondale. She came back in the evening and showed me a migrans rash on her inner thigh. She is on antibiotics and we are in contact with the only Lyme Literate doctor in Colorado. He says we both need to be on a dose twice as strong as we are on now, of the doxycycline. So, we are now arranging for a second appointment.
While we were in to our local doctor, getting my daughter examined and medicated--he happened to make a very interesting comment after he noted that he didn't think the rash was Lyme's. I asked him if he had ever seen a rash like it before--yes, he had seen several just like it in the past two days--and he felt sure that they were all spider bites. I am very grateful to the local docs for their willingness to treat the rash with antibiotics--but I want to say to any patient who gets a perfectly round flat, slightly raised rash after being in the wilderness--you need to research Lyme's whether you find that tick or not. We may be in the midst of a Lyme explosion. To get the rash is a sure fire sign that the Lyme's has entered your system. This is the one thing doctors can agree on. You are lucky if you get such a strong indicator,only 33% of Lyme's patients do.
There is an extreme reluctance in Colorado to say Lyme's has arrived. Insurance companies do not want to fork out for costly and difficult cures. Doctors feel helpless in the face of all the questions Lyme's presents. But, it is here. And, after a year where there is a bumper crop of acorns the mouse population explodes, mice carry 40% more ticks--you can imagine what that will mean to the larger mammals,such as deer. Lyme's eventually can attack the heart and central nervous system--we are not talking about a quick fix.
Furthermore, our dear children are in the front line. There are two kinds of doctors out there now: one group thinks Lyme's is easy to get and hard to treat--the other thinks Lyme's is hard to get and easy to treat. Find the doc that works for you. And, keep in the back of your mind this strange factoid: in Colorado last year 527 dogs tested positive for Lyme's. Do you know why? Because pets are not insured and there is no effort to suppress the Lyme's diagnosis. Only one human being made it through the red tape to be placed as a reportable case. If only this information had made it to the CCDC website! All I needed was one case to make it real and to begin strong antibiotics early in the game.
Mally C Strong
Publisher
Mountain Medicine
PO Box 904
Carbondale, CO 81623
http://www.mountainmedicinedirectory.com
970.963.2505
Happy hour in aspen - beautiful day!
]]>I'm going to discuss the current mess first, and then I'm going to go into deeper background later.
Over the past few budget cycles the State of California has basically had a broken budget. Instead of fixing the budget, the legislature has papered over the problem using various accounting gimmicks. This culminated in the budget that was passed last October for the 2008-2009 budget year (that started in July of 2008).
The budget that passed was a farce, both because it was based on completely unrealistic estimates of revenue and also because it used more accounting gimmicks to hide the broken budget. Predictably, a few months later, during the mid-year budget review, it was discovered that there was a projected $40 Billion hole in the budget. This hole has since grown to $48 Billion.
To solve this problem, the legislature debated and finally passed a new revised budget that gets us through the end of of the 2009 fiscal year. This budget relies on a lot of cuts to important services, a few temporary tax hikes, and $8 Billion from the ballot initiatives on the May 19th election.
My quick answer on how to vote on these - NO on all of them. Here's my explanation:
1A: The California budget cap.
Prop 1A would cap California's budget based on a trend-line of revenues going back for the past 10 years plus inflation and adjustments for population growth. It would require that any revenue that came in above that trend-line be placed in a "rainy day fund," but it wouldn't let the rainy day fund be used to get us back up to the trend-line. In fact, even in years where we didn't make it to the trend-line, we'd still have to put more money in the rainy-day fund. This might sound like a good idea - force Sacramento to "live within it's means," but over time it would force cuts to every aspect of State government and destroy essential services. It is basically a rehash of Prop 76 that voters rejected in the 2005 special election. It has a bunch of other nastyness in it, but I'm trying to keep this short. If you want a more detailed analysis, go look at the California Budget Project Writeup.
1B: Bribe the Teachers Unions
Prop 1B is nothing but a naked bribe to the teacher's union. It was placed on the ballot because back in 2005, the teacher's union was the most effect opponent of Prop 76. In return for them supporting 1A in this election, they get 1B, which only goes into effect if 1A also passes. 1B sets aside part of the 1A "rainy day fund" to force the state to live up to it's obligations under Prop 98. There's a whole post to be written about how the teacher's union has thrown everyone else under the bus on this one. It's a pure example of how progressive politics are broken in CA and need reform. We have too many special interest groups that only look out for themselves and don't work together for all Californians.
1C: Payday loan from the Lottery
Prop 1C makes up the largest chunk of the $8 Billion the state is trying to raise with this budget - $5 Billion worth. Basically, it borrows against future revenues for the lottery and then tries to make up for it by increasing the future earnings of the lottery. The increased earnings are far from guaranteed, it doesn't solve the structural problems in the deficit, we'll be paying off the loans for years and it will be mostly marketed to poor people.
1D: Steal money from the kids
Prop 1D steals money from children's services and puts that money in the general fund.
1E: Steal money from the Mentally Disabled
Prop 1E steals money from the fund created a few years ago for mental health services.
1F: Stick it to the man!
Prop 1F would prevent pay raises for the legislature and other constitutional officers for years when the budget is in deficit. This is a stupid, vindictive ballot initiative that will do nothing to solve the structural problems, and it won't even save much money. If we don't pay the people in government, only rich people will be able to serve. Do we really want a state government that is only comprised of wealthy people?
Update: Changed "Mentally Handicapped" to "Mentally Disabled" - not sure what the current PC syntax is for this.
I know Network Neutrality isn't high on most people list of priorities, but Di Fi is trying to get this language put in the Stimulus Package during the conference committee.
Obama's stimulus bill sets aside between $6bn and $9bn for expanding American broadband into rural areas, and Senator Feinstein hopes to (PDF) augment this Broadband Technology Opportunities Program so that it "allows for reasonable network management practices such as deterring unlawful activity, including child pornography and copyright infringement."
http://ping.fm/g96EG
This is pretty bad. We've been fighting against this crap for several years now. They're using Child Porn as a straw man argument to allow internet service providers to spy on their customers.
Just call and tell her staff that you don't want the language to be added. Say you don't want ISPs to spy on their customers.
I'm sorry this isn't the best thought out post, but it's critical that people call right away. The conference over this bill is going on right now.
]]>After the tour of the Capitol Building, we ran into the Right to Life March outside. Ugh. Stupid self-righteous fundies. We took shelter in the American Indian Smithsonian Muesem and had lunch at the restaurant there. If you're looking for food on the Mall, I strongly suggest going there.
That night we had a party for Sara's 25th Birthday. Sara and I were late because we decided to grab dinner at this place called The Grill from Ipinima. Cute name, but the food wasn't very good. Afterwards, we went to the hotel and crashed.
Friday we just luxuriated in sleeping in for most of the morning then we went to the National Portrait Gallery where we were able to see the Shepard Fairey original of the Obama HOPE poster. That night we went to sushi with Maria and her friend Hallie. The sushi was quite excellent, but Sara was confused by the spoon that came with her miso soup.
Saturday Morning we wanted to get up really early so we could see the sunrise from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I asked the hotel to give us a wake-up call at 5:30 AM, and then a follow up at 6:00. They screwed up somehow (or we slept through the first call), so we didn't get up until 6:15. We panicked, got dressed quickly and ran to the nearest Metro stop. It turns out that the Metro doesn't start running until 7 something on Saturdays, and we didn't see a Taxi around so we walked over to the Mall instead. We got there just in time to see the sunrise, but it was overcast, so it was less dramatic than I would have liked. Later, we took the tour of the Washington Monument, which I highly recommend if you're in DC. Saturday night we went to stay with Janet, and she made us an amazing Lamb dinner.
Sunday, before my flight out of Dulles Airport, Janet and I went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Annex at Dulles. It's an amazing collection of planes that they don't have room to show downtown. Included in the collection is a full size prototype of the Space Shuttle, a Concorde and an SR-71 Blackbird. It was truly and amazing exhibit and I'm glad I got to see it. I also got Janet to go in a flight simulator with me which was kinda fun. I was the pilot and she was the gunner so she just had to sit there as I kept turning us upside down and sideways.
To top the whole trip off, I got an Economy Plus seat with nobody sitting next to me on my direct flight home.
The Youth Ball rocked. I hear that some people had trouble getting into the main ballroom, but Sara and I got in fine. They served a decent spread of food before the ball started so we weren't hungry all night. The ballroom was very nicely set up with two stages and a place for Obama to appear. They started out the entertainment with Kid Rock followed by Kanye West, then Obama made a brief appearance and speech followed by Fallout Boy. MTV broadcast live from the ball. After the main entertainment was over, we went into the secondary ballroom and danced to DJs until almost 2 AM.
I got home late after that and I didn't set an alarm clock. I was really wiped out and I ended up waking up at 2:30 in the afternoon. Sara had sent me a couple "are you alive" text messages. I got up, got dressed and headed straight to the Staff Ball. It started earlier and was the most well organized event that put on by the Inaugural Committee that I attended the entire time. We got through the line really quickly even though it was over a block long. They had lots of metal detectors which sped up the process. They also had, surprise!, volunteers directing the line. The ball was held in a huge arena size building called the DC Armory. The event was open bar, and they had a good selection of food from all around the world on the buffet tables. The only hitch there was that the blue cupcake frosting turned your lips blue too.
The best part of the Staff Ball was the speeches given by Biden and Obama. They both gave pretty long speeches that thanked the staff for all their hard work. Pluffe also spoke as well as a campaign surrogate who made fun of all the times staffers almost killed him. This was topped off by a performance by Arcade Fire and Jay-Z. The only bummer about the Staff Ball was that it ended so early. I still think it was my favorite event of the whole trip. I'm glad Sara was able to take me and not some "deserving volunteer".
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I have to start with the fact that I got to spend a lot of time with Sara during the trip. It was the first time since she got back from Albuquerque that we've been able to spend a lot of concentrated time together. It was nice to take a vacation with her. I also got to hang out a lot with my Little Sister, Maria. We haven't really gotten to spend much time together since 2001 when we took a trip to New York City after 9/11. My friend Janet and I also got to hang out as well (Janet and Maria were stuck in the Purple Tunnel too).
Monday of the trip, while exhausting was a lot of fun. Sara convinced me to go to RFK Stadium and be a volunteer making care packages for the troops overseas. I dragged Maria along with me too. It was a totally crazy project called Operation Gratitude. They set up a tent covering most of a football field and in that tent they built a huge set of assembly lines. As the "Volunteers" we helped "Participants" fill zip-loc baggies with various goodies and then pack the bags into cardboard boxes. It's really hard to describe the controlled chaos going on in the tent, or really just the amazing amount of work that was done. Overall, they made 85,000 care packages and a large number of letters to soldiers. This works out to over 3.37 packages per second for 7 hours. During the day several elected officials and cabinet secretaries-designate stopped by and helped. Michelle Obama also stopped by at one point. It was a lot of fun to be caught up in the Mayhem.
Monday Night, after stopping by for some cocktails with Sara's Emily's List Friends, we went to the Netroots Nation Ball. We were late getting there, so I don't think we really got to see as much of it as I would have liked, but if we hadn't been so wiped out from getting to Operation Gratitude at 8:00 AM, I think we would have had a good time. As it was, the food was good, and the last little bit of Howard Dean's speech was excellent. We went out to drinks after that and met up with some of Sara's friends from New Mexico. It was a fun little packed party at a bar, and I didn't end up getting home until almost 2 AM - in hindsight, I probably should have just gone straight to the Mall and gotten in line.
Overall the line was pretty peaceful, and I'm not really sure there was a huge need for a police presence. This changed however as we got closer to the event and people became worried that they might not get let in. People started challenging other people who were just trying to leave the tunnel and accusing them of trying to cut the line. Also, the crowd started booing and shouting at people trying to leave the line. I think that some people may have been cutting, but I suspect most of the people were just trying to leave. This was the only time where having volunteers and police around would have really calmed things down and made everyone feel better. The other thing that would have helped greatly would have been barricades along the line so that there was a clear delineation as to where the line would be and where people could walk. Signs stating where the purple line was supposed to be would have been good too.
Okay, that's the last I'm going to write about the Purple Tunnel of Doom unless some new news comes up.
]]>I just wanted to expand on what I wrote in my earlier post about what it was like in the tunnel. We got there on time at 6:30 AM. The gates were supposed to open at 8:00 AM, and the tickets told everyone to arrive early and be prepared for long lines. We got there and followed the line into the Purple Tunnel of Doom until we were probably somewhere under the Reflecting Pool.
There were 7 people in our group and we were just amazed at how long the line was. Sara's quote was something along the lines of, "I don't feel so special anymore". We figured there were at least 20k - 45k people in front of us. Janet thought the line resembled the kind of line you'd find at a football stadium and therefore reasoned that the line contained 45,000 people. Sara thought the number was closer to 20,000. I think it was probably somewhere between those two.
The line did move, it wasn't totally static, but it wasn't evident why the line was moving. We didn't know if it was just bunching up and getting wider and shorter, it was actually moving because people were getting in, or if it was getting shorter just because people were giving up and leaving.
At around 10:30 AM, the listed starting time for the festivities, I called my mom and tried to get her to put her phone near her TV so we could hear what was happening. At this point we were going up the ramp leading out of the tunnel and I thought that just maybe we'd get past the security gate in time to see the swearing-in. My mom couldn't get the audio to work well enough for it to be worth listening. Much later, we'd call my dad with my sister's phone and get it to work better.
The line was generally cheerful for most of the morning. The people behind us kept trying to start a wave. It sort of worked but it would die out after about 100 feet or so. We did some Obama chants and Yes We Can/Did chants. The worst part was the police escorts that kept coming through. They would come through with their sirens blasting and just expect this huge line to get out of the way. That and they seemed to alternate which side of the tunnel they came down. One of the motorcades was particularly awful - the third or fourth car back was a police surburban with its siren going full blast. The officer driving the car had a megaphone and was leaning out the window yelling at people to get out of the way or they would be arrested. It was totally stupid because by the time you could hear what he was saying, you were already out of the way. It just created unneeded tension.
I didn't see any police or volunteers in the tunnel. This was probably the biggest problem. If there had been baracades, signage, and volunteers keeping the line working like a real line, I think this whole mess could have been avoided (or at least it wouldn't have felt so bad). It's stupid that there was so little organization because I know of many people who would have volunteered to work the inauguration.
One last point: The people who got stuck in the Purple Tunnel of Doom ended up far worse off than people who didn't get a ticket. Not only did they have to wait in a tunnel in freezing temperatures for hours, but a lot of them didn't even get to see any of the inauguration. If they hadn't had tickets at all, they probably would have gone onto the mall with the general crowds or stayed in a cafe, bar, or hotel room to watch on TV. This was an epic fail on the part of the PIC and the Police. The fact that all of the Obama staff, the ones who put in 16 hour days, didn't get to see the inauguration turned a sad day into a tragedy.
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These are pictures and video from the Purple Tunnel of Doom from my earlier post.
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I've been planning to come to the inauguration since November when Obama won. Sara heard a rumor that she might get tickets to one of the Official Inaugural Balls, which sounded exciting, and I just wanted to be here to see Obama sworn in. It seemed like it would be an experience to remember - just to be able to say to my grandchildren, "I was there". It didn't turn out so well.
When Sara got her tickets to the Inauguration, she only got two tickets to the swearing-in ceremony, and two tickets to the Youth Ball. Since her Mom also came to DC, she decided to take her Mom to the swearing-in, and me to the ball. I planned on watching the swearing in from the mall with my sister, or with my friend Janet.
After I arrived in DC, I decided to call around to the Senators and Congressperson who represent me and ask them if they had any extra tickets. Fienstien's office said that yes, she had some tickets and they were on a first-come, first-served basis. I dropped what I was doing, and I dragged Maria to the Senate office building to try and get tickets for us. It took us awhile to find the correct building, but once we did, we found a line outside the senator's office. The line was pretty short, but it wasn't moving at all. It turns out that the senator had given her last "extra" ticket to someone about 12 people in front of me. Now we had to wait until 5pm to get any unclaimed tickets. I waited there until 5:45pm (about 3 hours) or so and they finally gave out tickets. I was really excited because, not only did I get a ticket, but I got one in the same purple section that Sara was in, so we would be able to watch the event together. Sara, in the meantime had acquired a ticket for me also, so this meant that we a ticket for my sister, Maria too. Altogether we had 7 people in our party and 8 tickets.
Our plan was to meet up at 6:30am at 3rd and D st and go the security checkpoint from there as a group. There was chaos at 3rd and D, so we met at 3rd and E, but we met up and went to the security checkpoint. There was a crazy line stretching back that we followed into what would be eventually known as the Purple Tunnel of Doom.
We ended up stuck there until about 11:10 when the line suddenly surged forward and we moved all the way to First st. For whatever reason, security closed the gate and started turning people away, but the Yellow Gate was letting Purple Ticket holders in. It was generally just chaos and confusion. Nobody knew what was going on or why. There was lots of misinformation being passed around. In the end, we never did get in. We listened to the inaugural address on Maria's cell phone set to speakerphone. She had called my Dad and had him put his phone next to a TV.
Overall, it was just a horrible experience. The thing is, the situation had just enough control to it that we were lulled into thinking they knew what they were doing. I think if it had been more chaotic, we might have just left and gone back to a hotel room or something. I should note that a lot of Obama's staff was stuck in that Purple line too. It's really a tragedy that the people who put in 18 hour days to get Obama elected didn't get to watch him get sworn in.
The day was redemed however later, but I'll save that story for another post.
