Another gem from Lobby Day

We prepared for the trip by watching movies starring our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. This clip had us rolling in the aisles:

What do we want? Healthcare! When do we want it? Now!

Shortly after posting this entry Saturday night, and trying to get a couple hours of sleep, I got up again to catch our 4:30 bus to Sacramento.

Sunday was an all-day training (sessions about health care reform, the life of a bill, framing our arguments, and lobbying) at the UC Davis School of Medicine.

Monday we congregated in our white coats at the Capitol. I think the crowd of students (medical, nursing, pre-med, plus some interns, faculty, and community members) was over 400 people by the time we rallied on the steps of the Capitol. A lot of schools were present, but there were notable absences (Stanford, I’m calling you out — what gives?).

That afternoon was our lobby visit. Charles Calderon is already in favor of SB 840, but noncommital on being a more active supporter by becoming a coauthor, especially if it’s not going to get signed by the Governor. Honest enough. I’ll be in touch.

It was just great to see more and more people interested in this and passionate about reform. Standing on the steps, chanting and cheering, and watching passersby on their lunch break join our crowd — I realized how much this has touched every member of our society, from the well-off to the poor.

If you’re not familiar with the debate or with single-payer plans, you should go to Graham’s Single Payer site and watch the animated summary.

Lobby Day is an annual event until we get single payer health care in California or in the United States.

Auction

Exhausted/exhilarated from Lobby Day — will post more on that later.

I wanted to post about a hilarious caustic review of the Newport Beach bachelor auction:

Most bachelor auctions benefit causes worth spending money on, like fighting AIDS or housing orphans with Tuberculosis. This auction was raising money for the benevolent cause of. . . beauty pageants. Specifically the Miss Teen Newport Fucking Beach Pageant. Talk about funding the epitome of all things wrong with this world. The Haves giving to the Have-Mores.

And what would an Orange County institution be if it weren’t parodied on Arrested Development:

Michael: It’s for a good cause.
Sally Sitwell: I heard it was to reseed the greens.

Watch out, Sacramento!

Last year’s trip. “I’ll be back.”

Many of my classmates and I are heading up to Sacramento for Lobby Day this weekend. We will lobby our state legislature in favor of universal health care in general and the California Universal Healthcare Act (SB 840) specifically.

These are my state legislators:

• Assemblymember Charles Calderon
• Senator Bob Margett

What is SB 840, you ask? It’s a single-payer health insurance system for California, where everyone’s billing is handled by a single system, there is less administrative waste, the state can get bulk pricing on drugs and equipment that is purchased, and there would be $8 billion in savings in the first year.

There’s a lot of resistance to the idea of single-payer because it would put insurance companies out of business. People are also wary of something that sounds like it’s government-run. “Socialized medicine,” they mistakenly call it.

The reality is that medicine will remain a mix of public and private hospitals and physicians’ practices. What is changing is the billing - handled by a single public entity rather than multiple private insurance companies mixed in with some Medicare.

This is not going to be the perfect solution, and sometimes this is not made apparent enough in the press releases supporting the bill. But it’s better than the alternative — having an insurance plan that is at risk if you change jobs or retire, and where insurance companies can rescind your insurance if you use it, or deny you the ability to buy insurance if you have a chronic condition.

Look it up if you are interested — and watch for us on the news on Monday (especially in the Sacramento area)!

No fool like an old fool

I came home this weekend and my dad was recovering from some nausea and diarrhea he had had this past week. He’s always eager to share his ad hoc home “remedies” for all of his illnesses — including dipping a pair of glasses in boiling water because they made him “itchy,” eating a pinch of baking soda to neutralize his upset stomach, rolling from side to side to help “mix the food” in his digestive tract.

This time, he felt he needed to kill germs in his GI tract, so he took some Listerine, mixed it with water, and drank it. Never mind that if he had an infection it would be in his lower GI tract, and the alcohol in the Listerine would probably be absorbed/neutralized by then. (Note: don’t drink Listerine — it’s just stupid)

Earlier this week he also went on about how, if you think about it, there couldn’t possibly be enough ice at the poles to melt and cause sea levels to rise *that* much and cover major cities. He started making guesstimates about the amount of ice there was, and saying that there wasn’t any data, just people making baseless predictions.

I disagreed vehemently and said that there *is* a ton of data. And these are people who would know basic math and physics. And that sometimes I know we can think that we’re experts on everything because we have some expertise in a single area, but that doesn’t make it so.

And he said that there wasn’t any basis and that it’s just religious people trying to scare the public. (Jason Bateman, take me now…)

This is why I didn’t bother to tell my dad not to drink Listerine.

A double-take

The headline writers at CNN are either very clueless or very clever. I was led to believe this was a different article, given the headline below:

From now on, it’s “Senator Clinton.”

Colbert’s portrait up at Smithsonian, inspires young people to visit

Stephen Colbert’s portrait is on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Granted, it’s temporary, and on display between the two bathrooms. But it’s near the America’s President’s exhibit, and it’s the one he has on his show, with the three portraits in one.

I love this quote — it captures so many aspects of my generation:

“It’s kind of sad that this is the first time we’ve been here,” Canales said Wednesday as a steady stream of young admirers took their pictures with Colbert’s portrait.

“We might look at the rest of the museum, but we really came for Colbert,” Bexley said. “I needed a new Facebook picture, so it might as well be with Stephen Colbert.”

Sign the Million for Marriage petition!

Million for Marriage is a petition by the Human Rights Campaign to show support for marriage equality. Go there and sign it so we can hit 1,000,000.

As the conservatives are flexing their political muscles to block same-sex marriage across the country, it’s important to show lawmakers that we’ve got just as much influence and power in support of full marriage rights.

If you want to make an even bigger impact, spread the word about the petition, and contact your representatives’ offices personally.

(Hat tips: T Town Tommy for the petition; Angel City’s Devil for the news story)

Slacker!

I’m blog-slacking and I apologize! Classes are going at a fast pace and I’m also trying to juggle lab and student groups and family and friends.

I’ll just talk about some stuff that happened to me this past weekend:

Studied at Jack-in-the-Box, which serves coffee just like Starbucks and doesn’t care if you take up a whole table for four hours. There were some middle school girls, and one of them was on her cell phone talking in Spanish and English.

She said, “No, ma, you’re tripping out!”

And later, “Ok, pues, peace out nigga!”

It was precious.

Had pizza and beers with some friends because we were all back from vacation! Two of them had presents for us (!) and I got an awesome shower gel and shampoo, hip notebooks, and a pair of Family Guy briefs that I may or may not have posed for pictures in.

One of the guys that we hung out with was my friend’s friend, who directed this video. It’s awesome and I have the song stuck in my head. And we were watching TV and it randomly came on, so that was weird exciting:

(EDIT: The director himself has a cameo at 2:14)

On Saturday I got a phone call from my parents asking if I wanted to drive up to the mountains with them. In my mind I was thinking that my parents had had a fight and were upset and wanted to see me (yes I know, we have some f***ed up family dynamics). So I rush home — it turns out nothing was wrong, they were *sincerely* wanting to go on a day trip. And our car had engine problems going up the mountain so we ended up turning the car around and going home. What did I come home for??

Hung out with friends Sunday night and we tried to use the jacuzzi in their apartment complex, but it was broken and couldn’t get hot. The closest we could get was to get out of the water, be freezing cold for a while, then come back to the water and feel warm by contrast. But I feel like that’s pretty good for mid-January. Eat your heart out, Minnesotans!

That’s it for the weekend!

How to think about climate change

Here’s a friendly fellow that breaks down the climate change argument in a fast, entertaining way. This should really be a bigger issue in the national debates than it has been. Then maybe people wouldn’t be as gung-ho for guys like Ron Paul.

And while we’re on the subject of climate change skeptics, what was that other excellent site that indexes and rebuts common skeptics’ arguments? Oh yeah, it was Gristmill’s “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.”

I’m going to try to watch as many of this guy’s videos as I can (I spend enough time on YouTube anyway). They’re certainly short enough.