Wednesday To-Do List for Democrats
Step 1: Spend the day with one of these...
Step 2: See Step 1.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...because life goes on.
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Note: Please fill out and send in your absentee ballot for the 2015 elections now so we can count on those banked votes. Together, we can do it! ---Mgt.
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16 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Howard Dean's birthday:
12
Days 'til the
America's Hometown Thanksgiving Celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts:
16
Maine power customers who had no juice on election day because of the weekend snow storm:
92,000
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Minimum number of low-income Americans who would immediately get health insurance if Medicaid was expanded in every state:
3 million
(Source: Think Progress)
Increase in car sales over October of last year:
6%
(Source: Reuters)
Years since the
Iran hostage crisis began as of yesterday:
35
Estimated sales of whiskey in America, which will knock vodka off the top spot for the first time in 7 years:
$17 billion
(Source:
The Week)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 181 (including 4 crime rates and 1 creepy duck call manufacturer). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Proof that time is is a man-made thing.
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CHEERS to a (temporarily) sober glance in the rearview mirror. Just so we can preserve it in pixilated amber for political scientists of the future, here's a nice summary of the impact of last night's elections from People for the American Way:
Learn, damn us!
There are some clear lessons we can learn:
• Democrats who fail to stand up for Democratic and progressive principles fail in elections.
• The Right's lies still work.
• The Far Right strengthened its grip on the Republican Party.
• We have a lot of work to do to educate people, expose right-wing lies and counter the resurgent Right.
Actually, they wrote that five years ago, after the 2009 elections. Much work still left to do. There always is.
JEERS to the predictability of the public. What's a rattled citizenry to do after spending a couple terrifying months setting its hair on fire over MOST HORRIFYING HEALTH SCARE EVER??? Of course…seek a new shiny object to chase:
"Ebola is SO October."
In the past ten days the U.S. has lost interest in the virus that recently dominated headlines and threatened to metastasize across the 2014 midterm election. […]
Google Trends finds the interest in ebola declining beneath the levels preceding the virus’ stateside arrival. […] This is a rapid turnaround from a fortnight ago, when many predicted anxiety over the virus would figure prominently in the final days of the 2014 midterm elections. For a spell any politician calling for a travel ban from west Africa (never actually implemented) could get on television, while GOP candidates cut campaign ads tying ebola to the U.S.-Mexico border and ISIS.
Republicans say the next big fear campaign will happen shortly, when President Obama signs his executive orders on immigration. In the meantime, they say, citizens should temporarily go back to wetting their pants over Benghazi, Sharia law and/or tan suits.
For bucking the trend,
she gets her own buck.
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CHEERS to having a valid bee in your bonnet. On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony (and several other feisty ladies with equality on their minds) made a beeline for her local polling place and
voted for the first time. It was a shining, glorious moment for…well, for a moment, because Anthony was arrested, tried and fined $100. She said up yours, the judge said okay whatever, and she was free to go. Forty-eight years later, women finally secured the right to vote. The winner in 1920: Horrible Harding. It was all uphill from there.
CHEERS to dastardly deeds definitively denied. Happy Guy Fawkes Day! It commemorates the time when some British thug organized a bunch of other thugs to weasel their way into the government and try to blow it up. Or as we call it over here these days: a day ending in "y" in the House of Representatives. (And, as of January, the Senate!)
CHEERS to Billy Time Theatre: a play in one act. Dorothy and Toto are walking down the yellow brick road…oh, and Toto can talk…
Dorothy: Gay marriage? Legal? here? Why, Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
Toto: I gots news for you, dollface…oh yes you is!
Dorothy: Why, when did that happen?
Toto: What, I'm now your personal news service now? Yesterday. Baddaboom baddabing---judge says get outta here and get yourselves gay married. No big whoop, fuggedaboutit. Hey...pass me one 'o them Alpo-flavored cannolis.
Oh, I probably should've mentioned: in my play Toto's from Brooklyn.
That's all I got for today. Have a tolerable Wednesday and remember: revenge is a dish best served cold…and 2016 is just around the corner. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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