Out of Order

Thanks to Bixby for this one.

218 Baby

On Saturday night at around 11pm I jumped off my couch cheering - no I wasn't watching Sportscenter, I was watching CSPAN, and the number of "yes" votes had just hit the 218 mark. In a giant step forward, the House passed Obama's health care bill. Way more exciting, and far more important, than any game on TV.*

This article in the Sunday Times points out some really remarkable things that are in the bill that further help us move toward equality, like gays not being taxed on health care for their partners. Also, calorie postings on chain restaurants from McD's to Ruth's Chris are going nationwide.

Cheers to Anh Cao of Louisiana, the only Republican to vote yes on the bill.

Here are the Democrats who voted no.

Now let's talk about why I support this bill and why I think you should too, and the good and bad reasons to oppose it.

I believe we all deserve to get help when we're sick. As it stands now, you could lose your job today and lose your health care. Maybe you couldn't afford COBRA. Maybe you're employed and your employer won't pay for your health care. You could also be dropped from your health insurance for a preexisting condition -- acne has been cited as one of these conditions in recent history. An accident or serious disease, then, could bankrupt you, even if you're employed and have a savings account.

But enough with the fear marketing. Don't you think it's troubling that we're #1 in so many things, but one of the only (if not the only - fact check?) industrialized nations without universal health care?

The primary argument I hear from people opposing or questioning the bill is money. How will we pay for it? It is projected to cost $1.1 trillion over the next ten years. The thing is, these people, especially our Republican elected officials, have had no trouble authorizing infinite dollars for our two wars or bailing out big business. Health care is not a "want," like a new stadium (which we get without eyes blinking every year*), it's a necessity. Like national security. Like education. Plus, how much does it cost us when people are not insured and the state has to foot the bill? How about the poor that use the emergency room for primary care, clogging up the system and making it more expensive for everyone else?

Also, I want to point out that the only people I personally know that oppose universal health care are white men who are at the upper end of middle class or higher. Also, my mom. Hmm, same as the people I knew who voted for McCain. Theories?

Here's how the debate is waging on my Facebook page.

But, friends, here's a good reason to oppose the bill that just passed through the House. Did you know that if a woman was receiving subsidies to pay for health care, but paid for an abortion out of pocket, her subsidies could be taken away? How's that for a moral judgment of something that's perfectly legal? Why aren't we penalizing people who make health care more expensive, like smokers or people who don't exercise?

My point, however, is that the bill is not going to be perfect or please everyone, but we need to pass it now and continue to fix it later. It's just too important.

*I will continue to use sports as my prime comparison for people's attention to and involvement in what's going on politically. It's the best one I can think of. For example, if the people who fought crowds, took off work, and stood for hours to go to the Yankees parade last Friday had put in just a fraction of that effort and showed up at the polls last Tuesday, we'd be in a much better place, don't you think?

In Which the Mayoress Crashes Bloomberg's Victory Party

I wrote this the morning after Election Day in 2005. Seems appropriate to share now...

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The Other Republican Party

No matter what anyone says, it’s fun to be on the winning team. Losing with dignity is a nice idea, but a mirage – even Red Sox fans had to invent The Curse so they could feel like they accomplished something every year they were met with a certain pinstriped team. So when the candidate I’d been volunteering for in a pivotal New York City council district won on Tuesday night, it felt good to party, good to be thanked, good to be part of the team people wanted for the next two years.

I was new to all of it – campaigning, victory parties, and even the Democratic Party. Growing up in homogeneous suburbs and later attending a conservative Christian university, my party affiliation had never been a question – everyone was a Republican. My campus didn’t have a Young Democrats chapter. Come to think of it, I’m not sure my campus even had a young Democrat.

I had been holding out longer than I’d realized, so when I swung left, I swung hard. Call me a Scorpio- my loyalty is off the meter: when I pick a party, a cause, hell, a coffee shop, my allegiance is rock solid. As with most things, when you decide to associate yourself with an idea, it seeps into your skin more than you know.

My experience volunteering had been wonderful – I met all sorts of New Yorkers, learned about the political process, truly saw the importance of the individual in democracy. And even though my hours were nothing compared to the tireless staffers, they remembered my name and thanked me profusely at the humble yet energetic victory party, our new councilmember even taking time to offer advice on my current career path.

And it’s good to be a Democrat in 5-to-1 New York City. We’d won most of the new seats in the council and our incumbents blew away any competition, though the King of New York remained, and remained Republican.

Don’t get me wrong – by November 8, I was more than dismayed at the inept, unfocused campaign Fernando Ferrer had run. Ignoring entire demographics, narrowing his image unjustifiably, press mess-ups… but I still voted for him. Yes, out of party loyalty, but for many other reasons ranging from Bloomberg’s stratospheric Bush campaign contributions to residual bitterness at his ridiculous Olympics bid, instead of practical initiatives like real change in public education and housing affordable for those of us who can’t quite assume the suffix -illionaire.

“Hey – wanna go to the Bloomberg victory party?” The whisper came from Angela, one of the staff members and my new friend from the campaign. We both looked around, a little guilty. “It’s still going on and everything’s free.”

After all, our party had started to dissipate. And my fading energy and staunch Ferrer loyalty melted in light of the word that being a former starving artist had conditioned me to obey Pavlovianly: free. Plus, I reasoned, if I was going to endure four more years of Bloomberg, he could at least buy me a drink.

At the New York Sheraton, a purposeful loop of the crowded, St. John’s and Brooks Brothers-wearing, donor-soaked lobby yielded official Mike ’05 buttons and the names needed to gain entrance to the 45th floor, the site of the staffers-only fete.

One thing that was immediately apparent as we exited the mirrored elevator: no one looked like a staffer. The staffers I worked with were all wasted from too little sleep and too many action lists, with wrinkled clothes and grateful smiles barely masking their complete exhaustion. The Bloomberg staffers were in cocktail attire without exception – apparently their literature handouts were stationed in salons rather than subways.

Our entrance was blocked momentarily by the no-nonsense female bouncer, who insisted she knew nothing about our connections to get in. As I stepped aside to avoid getting shoved back, I noticed a few women waiting in head-to-toe hipster vintage, making me exhale a bit in my less-than-glam jeans and velvet blazer.

Just then, the reason for our wait emerged: Mike himself, with complete security detail, leaving the party, the only one who looked at all drained from the day’s events. I’d only seen him in person once before, on one of his famed subway rides. He was still well-dressed, well-protected, and well-fettered with an intimidating entourage. As he breezed past us to the elevator, barely acknowledging congratulations, we ducked into his penthouse party, which was still going strong.

After promptly visiting the top-shelf open bar (welcome after pacing out our drinks at the previous cash-bar victory party so many floors below), we gravitated toward the back bedroom where Angela’s friends had set up camp. They, after all, weren’t regular Bloombergians, they were part of a fellowship that assigns workers to various campaigns, and several of them had been placed on this one – our key to entry. All of them were Democrats.

Eager to investigate the foreign land I’d just gained passport to, I embarked on a purposeful mingling circle around the penthouse. The large rooms housed glamorous groups of groupies looking me up and down with condescending approval (men) or dismissal (women), and the small rooms revealed twos and threes that I half-expected to snort lines off the pristine gold-and-marble countertops. Okay, call me overdramatic, but my only experience partying with people whose bank accounts had never been in the red included access to all the stuff conservatives were always railing against.

Why didn’t anyone introduce himself? Why didn’t any other girls eat the copious amounts of chocolate cookies still out on every table? Why didn’t anyone stop to admire the amazing top-floor view of the Manhattan skyline, which still moves me after five years in the city? I guess I wasn’t used to being up so high.

Back in the bohemian oasis, tones were more relaxed, conversation less forced. That is, until a well-suited staffer dropped in on our circle of Levi’s and childlike delight that we were drinking bourbon instead of PBR. The conversation with these legitimates was always polite, congenial, but in the way that made me rub my cheeks in sympathy for the forced smiles, and rub my ears in angst of the screechy tones people assume when trying to sound interested, or worse yet, interesting.

That’s when I realized the girls in vintage hadn’t found their outfits rummaging through Williamsburg basement stores, like I had. It was the flavor du jour, a ruse, maybe; like my temporary re-alignment with the Republican Party.

“You were a Republican?” Angela gasped. “You have to explain that.”

“Well, I was, but not like this…” I began, then stopped short, not only by the crowd of Jenna and Paris clones that pushed past us, but by my realization that the Republicans I knew in real life, the ones who were puzzled by my party realignment, were not these people.

The Republicans that populate the red states, and more pivotally, the red half of the swing states, are not oil tycoons and CEOs bathing in stock options and corporate bonuses. The Republicans who vote Republican – my mother, my grandmother, my best friends from childhood – are hard-working, tax-paying believers in the old American dream, and don’t need big government to protect or even help them – yet. They trust that if the president says we need to go to war, well then, he must know, because after all, he’s the president. These are the values of their peers – or parents or grandparents- that fought the good fight against Nazi Germany and Communism – and won. I know because this is how I felt until I lived through September 11, when things started to seem more relative than black-and-white; when I found myself a resident of a city of immigrants, of every world culture, and of the widest gap between rich and poor, and it became all too clear that everyone in the land of dreams doesn’t wake up on the same pillow. The party I was presently party to has little in common with them other than US citizenship, yet they are the ruling class that the common people repeatedly vote into office.

The difference between the Bloomberg festivities and the councilmember’s was like going to a Hollywood movie premiere from an Off-Broadway play opening: glassy, evaluating, “Should I know who you are?” eyes versus rolled-up sleeves, “We’ve only just begun!” energy.

“Parties aren’t what you’re beholden to once you are in office,” a former city council speaker had said in a symposium I’d attended a month earlier. “You’re responsible to your constituents. Parties are the vehicle to get you into office.” Now I understand what he meant.

If there’s one thing Ferrer was right about in his push for mayor, it was his concept of Two New Yorks: the rich and poor, the white and non-white, the represented and ignored.

Only this was the first time I felt solidly in the second category.

Election Results

Guys, I am too upset to even write a coherent blog post.

Bloomberg re-elected after cheating. Every cheating incumbent City Councilmember getting another term. Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey. I mean, for serious, WHO is voting for Republicans after all we've seen over the past few years???

I just... I can't... ARGH. It's nothing short of disgusting to me that more New Yorkers know -- and care -- about what's going on with the World Series than who's running our city and why. I give up.

Think of the Children!

Hurrah! That racist judge in Louisiana who refused to marry an interracial couple resigned today. What, you didn't hear about this last month?! Apparently this older white gentleman just looooves black people (he lets them use his bathroom!) but refuses to issue interracial couples marriage licenses out of his concern for their future mixed-race children.

I could go on and on about the many things wrong with this guy's unapologetic racism (why does he assume they're even having kids? why is that his business? what empirical evidence is the presumed hardship of biracial children based on? how did this guy get voted into office in the first place? why was this the first couple to take legal action against him?), but I'll just be chilling over here in the Biracial Underachievers Corner with Barack, Mariah, Halle, and the gang.

The Mayoress Finishes Her 7th Marathon

What an amazing day. After an inconsistent training schedule, I was surprised by my strongest run yet - a combination of incredible support from friends, confidence of running this race for the 6th consecutive year, can-do attitude, and the "It's My Birthday" shirt that got tons of shout-outs along the course.

Thanks to Erica & Kirk for this amazing video at mile 7: http://onedayinnovembermarathon.blogspot.com/2009/11/highlights-from-new-york-city-marathon.html

And thanks to everyone who came out to support me & the 40,000 other runners: Alison, Flora, Anthony, Sydney, Marne, Pam, Angie, David, Chris, and my six-time Marathon Maid of Honor, Nicolle. And of course, everyone who blew up my Facebook page with marathon & birthday wishes.

Very special thanks to Lindsey from Toronto, who I met at the start and ran with for the first 16 miles, and Michael "The Power", who I met at mile 18 and ran with for 2. Congrats to fellow finishers Traci, Aida, Andy, Bixby, Chana, and Toby & the Shoe4Africa team.

As the "barefoot runner" Christopher McDougall wrote in my copy of his book "Born to Run": Running is pure magic.

Finally, Someone Designed an Ecard Just for Me

On Despair

I'm not going to lie, it's been a tough month. The mental, emotional, and physical energy it's taken to train for the marathon, work on my business, evaluate some relationships, go back to Oregon for a week, and get rid of all my vices for the pre-marathon taper (read: my most loony week of the year) kicked my ass, and it's taken a daily diet of writing, meditation, affirmation, and inspired action to maintain some semblance of sanity.

And I'm not the only one. It seems everyone in my circle is a little off, from colds that won't go away to continued unemployment to just feeling out of it. So I'm not surprised that this article hit #1 on the Times most-emailed list. Give it a read.

“A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.” Despair occurs when there is an imbalance in this synthesis. From there Kierkegaard goes on to present a veritable portrait gallery of the forms that despair can take. Too much of the expansive factor, of infinitude, and you have the dreamer who cannot make anything concrete. Too much of the limiting element, and you have the narrow minded individual who cannot imagine anything more serious in life than bottom lines and spread sheets.

Though it will make the Bill Mahers of the world wince, despair according to Kierkegaard is a lack of awareness of being a self or spirit. A Freud with religious categories up his sleeves, the lyrical philosopher emphasized that the self is a slice of eternity. While depression involves heavy burdensome feelings, despair is not correlated with any particular set of emotions but is instead marked by a desire to get rid of the self, or put another way, by an unwillingness to become who you fundamentally are...

He goes on to discuss the American Dream, or in my interpretation, the way our national ambition can be a source of anxiety as much as accomplishment. If all the Kiyosaki-ans weren't so determined to BUY HOUSES NOW!, would the mortgage crisis have been so bad? Why do we all deserve whatever we can dream up? Have the American Idols and Biggest Losers made uber-success closer, or just dangled it in front of people who might be better off being content with what they've already got?

I like that the Times has the Happy Times blog to discuss the cultural climate and offer some wisdom.

Do Atheists Need to Market?

After church on Sunday, Flora brought up the subway posters up lately that essentially advertise atheism. She thought they were pretty unnecessary - what's the point in advertising an opt-out? I somewhat disagreed, bringing up how much religion, primarily Christianity, influences our laws and elections, and so atheists need a seat at the table. Ironically, Flora is an atheist and I grew up very Christian. And we went to service at a Unitarian church.

This blog post by Randy Cohen, aka The Ethicist, on discussing religion touches on what I was trying to get at:

My political beliefs, my ideas about social justice, are as deeply held as my critics’ religious beliefs, but I don’t ask them to treat me with reverence, only civility. They should not expect me to walk on tiptoe. It is not as if religious institutions occupy a precarious perch in American life. It is not the proclaimed Christian but the nonbeliever who is unelectable to high office in this era when politicians of every party and denomination make a public display of their faith.

What do you think? Should religion be sacred? How about when it crosses over into politics? When it affects you, your children's education, your community?

Person of the Day: Judy Lobo

Thanks to Erica for bringing this blog to my attention. I'll be emailing the full text of this to all my NYC peeps.

‘I know, I know — but’ - is the response I have been getting from all of my friends when I tell them that I am not voting for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Some friends look away with a momentary guilty look. Some hang their heads down and say ‘but I don’t like the other guy (Bill Thompson).’ Some just say ‘ well, he cannot be bought.’ To all of them, I say, as Rachel Maddow always says, ‘Bull Hockey.’

Here is why I am not voting for Mayor Mike.

Read Judy's seven dead-on reasons.

Cory, We Are So Over.

Oh. Hm. I have always been of fan of Cory Booker, Newark's mayor, not just because he is hot and as a single mayor provides one of the few opportunities for me to become an actual mayoress without running for office, but like so many men in the tri-state, I severely overestimated him.

On April 17, Mr. Booker, a Democrat, crossed party and state lines by endorsing Mr. Bloomberg, an independent running as a Republican, in Harlem. About a month later, Mr. Bloomberg’s longtime accountant contributed $26,000 — the maximum allowable — to Mr. Booker’s re-election committee next year, according to campaign finance records.

Full article.

LiveBlogging the Mayoral Debate

(refresh to see latest thoughts)

Watch it here.

Didn't tune in until 7:40 so I missed the bulk of it, but gotta say I'm quite impressed by Thompson, he's super prepared and holding his own; he's in it to win it.

I love how they're both pulling out their NY dialects even though Mike is from Boston.

Mike claims he's in touch with the average New Yorker because he once had a small business. Thompson rebuts by pointing out that his policies are pushing the middle class out of their neighborhoods. (Bloomberg's development incentives in my neighborhood are the very reason why I no longer have the lovely cityscape view I once had.)

Mike says immigrants will pull us out of the recession. WHAT?! Cheap labor is the answer? How about jobs for those of us who are already here?? Still waiting on that help for the economy Mike, or are you too loyal to your paying customers, aka the investment banks?

Thompson really is rocking it. I have to admit, I underestimated him. Probably because it's hard to drown out the $83 billion + in Bloomberg marketing cacophony.

"I think I'll be kind and give him a D-," Thompson on grading how the mayor has done.

Remember, I think it was the '05 election, when Bloomberg didn't even show up to the debates? Like he even has to. SIGH.