Amen. Not everything I wished and hoped for and this is certainly not the end, but as I told my husband, I feel like we’re at least steering away from the iceberg.
I was actually in Italian class (over zoom) and we were about to take our break when I saw the news, so I got to say “Joe Biden ha vinto!!” to the class which is something I never thought I’d get to do. One of my classmates lives closer downtown and we could actually all hear the horns honking and excitement in the moment.
Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day and after my class we drove our kids out to a big park in the suburbs. People were standing on street corners, waving Biden/Harris signs and American flags and cars were honking. There was this very palpable sense of joy and relief in what has been a very dark year.
Today is supposed to be another very beautiful day and we’re talking about a day trip to Gettysburg.
And then Monday, back to work on democracy. On my w. ish list, ending the electoral college. . .
Yes, that was the joy of the week!
Aside from that, warm sunny days, and watching “One Man, Two Guvnors” on PBS, which made me belly laugh.
I live in Canada and we were all on edge of our seats, waiting for the results. I have family in the US and most of them wanted Biden to win (you can’t chose your relatives). My 19 yo son followed the results very closely and we had a number of interesting conversations over the course of the week.
It snowed on Monday and yesterday it was in the low seventies – we spent most of the day working outside in the garden. More of the same today – enjoy it will it lasts.
Same here in Europe. Everyone I know had been very, very tense.
The result is such a relief!!!
For the first time in what seems an eternity there’s a photo of our chancellor A. Merkel laughing. She looks almost young again. I hope the nightmare is over soon.
First woman leader of the free world.
Queen Elizabeth II would disagree. Limiting the list to members and former members of the British Commonwealth yields:
Avril Phaedra Douglas “Kim” Campbell PC CC OBC QC (born March 10, 1947) is a Canadian politician, diplomat, lawyer and writer who served as the 19th prime minister of Canada.
Margaret Thatcher (served 1979–90) Great Britain
Theresa May (served 2016–19) Great Britain
Julia Gillard (27th Prime Minister, 2010–13) is the first female Prime Minister of Australia.
Indira Gandhi. listen); née Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was the first and, to date, only female Prime Minister of India.
Just because the U.S is backwards and chauvinistic and is only just now realizing that women exist,…
Also New Zealand. My daughter lives there, not me so I can’t remember her name! Sorry Kiwis.
Jacinda Ardern. Amazing woman.
For those mentioning Jacinda Ardern as NZ PM, lets pop back to Jenny Shipley, 1997-1999 followed by Helen Clark, 1999-2008.
Also, Benazir Bhutto, PM of Pakistan, 1988-1990 and again, 1993-1996.
For New Zealand Jenny Shipley (first female prime minister but won her paty’s leadership midway through their term) and Helen Clark (first directly elected pm) came before Jacinda.
They’re still much later than other country’s first female leaders but I’m glad we’re 3 prime ministers in (leader of the opposition is also a woman).
Jacinda is our first pm to give birth while in office though and she is absolutely amazing.
What about Angela Merkel?
Great start to the day. Apparently we had a light 4.0 earthquake here in SE Massachusetts about an hour ago. Our grandson was the only one to feel it as he was just waking up and said to himself is it or isn’t it.
It doesn’t get rid of the electoral college, since that’s part of the Constitution, but it grants participating states’ electoral votes to the candidate with the most popular votes.
The compact won’t be activated until enough states to total 270 electoral votes join it. And right now the compact doesn’t have that many.
I apologize if I’m this is something everyone already knows about.
did not know about that, and will share!
Got to advocate with all Democratic state legislatures.
It IS possible to AMEND the Constitution. But I don’t see how it would happen in the current political climate. The alternative you propose is also interesting but I have to think most red states would have no interest since that’s how Republican presidents have been winning recently. Hmmm.
Either option has is challenges, that’s for sure.
I have been thinking that the electoral college may not always be the pain it currently is. The world -post Corvid – is changing . A lot of red states are growing their urban areas plus a lot of their professionals are moving to rural areas and working from home. It may not happen in 8 or 12 years but it could happen that the choke hold that conservatives have on rural areas is going to lessen. There are server farms in the middle of nowhere; many farms are not small family farms but large family corporations, and boutique businesses are growing like mushrooms in the back of beyond. The problem is providing opportunities for people who are not academically inclined, who like working physically, not intellectually, and having a living wage and opportunities for them.
I don’t like it. I don’t like “Tyranny of the Majority” schemes. Investigate Nebraska and Maine, both of which allocate Electors by Electoral District. What the statewide majority earns is the two At Large Electors.
You could go for electors by percentage, but no state will do it First.
Biden winning made me happy – plus the way I found out about it (between my checks of the Guardian): my iPad gave a strange warble and said I had an iMessage (not come across those before), possibly from my friend Trish in Oakland – it wasn’t sure. I guess she wanted to tell someone she thought wouldn’t know; but it tickled me to be told the news direct like this. And of course we then had a text chat.
Yesterday was a good day, in fact: I went with my friend Pam to photograph a ruined farm, and we egged each other on to be much more daring than we’d have been alone – even venturing upstairs. Then she spotted a permissive path allowing us to go and see a Bronze Age standing stone, which had a vein of quartz running through it, and great energy.
I also took most of Friday for gardening, and now have about ten pelargoniums brightening my windowsills – although the garden’s still in full flood, and they’re forecasting mild nights for the next ten days.
Oh, and because the two of us have formed a bubble for this new lockdown, we then celebrated with an Indian takeaway and watching ‘Moonstruck’.
Moonstruck = best romantic comedy ever
Oh, I love that movie. “And some day you’ll die and I’ll come to funeral in a red dress.” I love that line so much.
Also “Snap out of it!”
So happy about Biden/Harris (dogs in the White House!).
Acquired lots of mad advocacy skills over the past four years and will put them to good use going forward.
Also, it’s a beautifull day in Pennsylvania. And a peaceful one.
SO much happy over the Biden/Harris win (especially the first woman/Black woman VP part of it). I really like her, and I like them together, and while Biden wasn’t my first choice, he may be just what this country needs right now.
While I’m worried about what Trump will do in the next two months, I am trying to stay in this moment of happiness, and also rejoicing that soon I won’t have to tune into the news every single damned day to find out what idiocy he’s done now.
As a bonus, we’re having a ran run of beautiful weather for November, and I’m trying to get out and walk while I can.
It is a happy day. Tears of joy last night when Kamala walked out onto the stage in her suffragette white suit, and more tears throughout her speech, as well as Joe’s. Loved the fireworks/drone show at the end, although probably not as much as Joe. 🙂
Lots of work still to be done, but we’ll celebrate for a day or two before we get back to it.
Very exciting to have a female US vice-president elect. Big step I think in many ways.
But also bonus for us Canadians to have it be Kamala since she went to high school in Montreal, so we on this side of the border have extra reason to cheer her on and wish her well, too. Nice to see her hard work and dedication being recognized:)
This news plus our unseasonably warm weather make for a lovely weekend. Also feeling lucky because I got a new ergonomic chair that’s also a lounger. I hope it will be great for writing so it can replace my previous “magic” writing chair that my physio had me give up in favour of working body parts:)
What a relief, y’all. What a relief.
In other news, rehearsing for the play right now…it’s Tech Day.
I’d say the Biden win made me happy but it’s still got this underlying feeling of unrealness to it. I guess I’ll be happier once my lingering uncertainty has gone.
One political thing that did make me happy: I finally joined the Green Party, after meaning to for many years. I’ve been getting a heap of Greens emails full of hope and enthusiasm and finding them thoroughly inspiring.
And I cleaned a couple of years of grime and dust off our front door yesterday. It looks So. Much. Better. If I’d realised how happy a clean door would make me, I’d have cleaned it earlier!
I’ve got a lot of thoughts but it’s hard to type when your doing the Snoopy Happy Dance so I’ll leave you with this:
Looking through my Amazon/Kindle wish list after yet another dud sample, I just discovered Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ ‘Dance Away With Me’ has dropped dramatically in price, to £1.99 on UK Amazon. So I’m going to bed to curl up with it.
Thanks!
My family had decided to do a group call when Biden’s victory was finally called and I thought it might be anti-climactic.
But my daughter had found this Twitter thread by a reporter about Trump campaign press conference that was about to happen at the Four Seasons in Philly—which turned out to be not the hotel but the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Parking Lot, next to a porn store, across the street from a couple crematoria, near two prisons—my ex-Philadelphia friend said it was the mob part of Philly. Trump tweeted that it was going to be a very important press announcement and it looked like he was planning to speak but it ended up being Giuliani, possibly because they realized they booked the wrong Four Seasons. You can read about it here: https://twitter.com/_richardhall/status/1325512712219222016?s=21
So we giggled through the whole call.
I was also thrilled by Biden’s speech Wednesday night which made it clear that it was going to take time and that was normal and he did it before Trump could claim victory (for non Americans, republicans prefer to vote in person and democrats at least during a pandemic prefer to vote by mail, so Trump knew he would be ahead election night before the mail ballots were counted in the states that had to wait to prepare them for counting until election day. He’s been claiming for months that mail ballots were ripe for fraud and we knew he would claim victory election night and then say the democratic ballots counted later were fraudulent).
I am also really happy about the MI Secretary of State and the WI election commission which kept the ballot counting going through the night so that by the time Trump wanted to claim victory ….Biden was already ahead in those two key swing states that hadn’t been allowed to prepare ballots in advance.
The Trump campaign has opened up a website and phone hotline asking for evidence of voting fraud. The internet is being helpful, https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1247052
Particularly on the website which had no character limit so someone uploaded an entire Seinfeld script.
I read, laughed, and whooped at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference. Shared it with my cousins, and when I got home tonight, my brother informed me that he’d just sent our cousin a link to the story. Saturday Night Live couldn’t keep straight faces during its skit, but the original was as screwball as anything Jenny has ever written . . . I think.
I have just been gladdening my heart reading various takes on the Four Seasons press conference. The photos of Rudi Guiliani in a carpark in front of a roller door plastered with what looks like hastily photocopied posters, next to a sex shop and opposite a crematorium seems like a fitting summary to me. And some of the tweets about it have been hilarious.
By the way, some further good news. South Carolina hasn’t called its race yet, and the person who explained why not (SC law allows mail-in ballots to be received up to nine days after election day, and the 4th Circuit Court ruled that this extension must stand for this election, too) Just Happened to Mention that our beleaguered Judge Sullivan, in his detailed orders to the Post Office, required that in every state with such extensions, the Post Office MUST do a twice-a-day sweep and get ballots in, until the last day of its extensions, whatever that is. Don’t know whether the race is currently close enough that Biden could overtake Trump’s current count, but we’ll see.
Opening Arguments podcast tonight:
OA437: How To Play Hardball If We Don’t Win the Senate
Just want to say, keep your panties secure and clean — Mitch and the Mimicking Republicans are going to string out the election call for as long as possible. They won’t acknowledge that the election has concluded, just as they will play hardball for every item that Joe Biden and the Democrats want to pass in the next 4 years.
Let’s look to the Georgia runoffs.
Then to 2022.
2024 is a long way away. Just my opinion.
One of the neighborhood kids started blowing a stadium horn Saturday a.m., and I thought, “Kids having fun”–and then, “WAIT!” Checked the news and burst into tears of joy.
Word.
And then, keep on going!
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CHTqawQBAlO/?igshid=1l5zdceqmovcs
Amen. Not everything I wished and hoped for and this is certainly not the end, but as I told my husband, I feel like we’re at least steering away from the iceberg.
I was actually in Italian class (over zoom) and we were about to take our break when I saw the news, so I got to say “Joe Biden ha vinto!!” to the class which is something I never thought I’d get to do. One of my classmates lives closer downtown and we could actually all hear the horns honking and excitement in the moment.
Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day and after my class we drove our kids out to a big park in the suburbs. People were standing on street corners, waving Biden/Harris signs and American flags and cars were honking. There was this very palpable sense of joy and relief in what has been a very dark year.
Today is supposed to be another very beautiful day and we’re talking about a day trip to Gettysburg.
And then Monday, back to work on democracy. On my w. ish list, ending the electoral college. . .
Yes, that was the joy of the week!
Aside from that, warm sunny days, and watching “One Man, Two Guvnors” on PBS, which made me belly laugh.
I live in Canada and we were all on edge of our seats, waiting for the results. I have family in the US and most of them wanted Biden to win (you can’t chose your relatives). My 19 yo son followed the results very closely and we had a number of interesting conversations over the course of the week.
It snowed on Monday and yesterday it was in the low seventies – we spent most of the day working outside in the garden. More of the same today – enjoy it will it lasts.
Same here in Europe. Everyone I know had been very, very tense.
The result is such a relief!!!
For the first time in what seems an eternity there’s a photo of our chancellor A. Merkel laughing. She looks almost young again. I hope the nightmare is over soon.
First woman leader of the free world.
Queen Elizabeth II would disagree. Limiting the list to members and former members of the British Commonwealth yields:
Avril Phaedra Douglas “Kim” Campbell PC CC OBC QC (born March 10, 1947) is a Canadian politician, diplomat, lawyer and writer who served as the 19th prime minister of Canada.
Margaret Thatcher (served 1979–90) Great Britain
Theresa May (served 2016–19) Great Britain
Julia Gillard (27th Prime Minister, 2010–13) is the first female Prime Minister of Australia.
Indira Gandhi. listen); née Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was the first and, to date, only female Prime Minister of India.
Just because the U.S is backwards and chauvinistic and is only just now realizing that women exist,…
Also New Zealand. My daughter lives there, not me so I can’t remember her name! Sorry Kiwis.
Jacinda Ardern. Amazing woman.
For those mentioning Jacinda Ardern as NZ PM, lets pop back to Jenny Shipley, 1997-1999 followed by Helen Clark, 1999-2008.
Also, Benazir Bhutto, PM of Pakistan, 1988-1990 and again, 1993-1996.
For New Zealand Jenny Shipley (first female prime minister but won her paty’s leadership midway through their term) and Helen Clark (first directly elected pm) came before Jacinda.
They’re still much later than other country’s first female leaders but I’m glad we’re 3 prime ministers in (leader of the opposition is also a woman).
Jacinda is our first pm to give birth while in office though and she is absolutely amazing.
What about Angela Merkel?
Great start to the day. Apparently we had a light 4.0 earthquake here in SE Massachusetts about an hour ago. Our grandson was the only one to feel it as he was just waking up and said to himself is it or isn’t it.
My state voted to join this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
It doesn’t get rid of the electoral college, since that’s part of the Constitution, but it grants participating states’ electoral votes to the candidate with the most popular votes.
The compact won’t be activated until enough states to total 270 electoral votes join it. And right now the compact doesn’t have that many.
I apologize if I’m this is something everyone already knows about.
did not know about that, and will share!
Got to advocate with all Democratic state legislatures.
It IS possible to AMEND the Constitution. But I don’t see how it would happen in the current political climate. The alternative you propose is also interesting but I have to think most red states would have no interest since that’s how Republican presidents have been winning recently. Hmmm.
Either option has is challenges, that’s for sure.
I have been thinking that the electoral college may not always be the pain it currently is. The world -post Corvid – is changing . A lot of red states are growing their urban areas plus a lot of their professionals are moving to rural areas and working from home. It may not happen in 8 or 12 years but it could happen that the choke hold that conservatives have on rural areas is going to lessen. There are server farms in the middle of nowhere; many farms are not small family farms but large family corporations, and boutique businesses are growing like mushrooms in the back of beyond. The problem is providing opportunities for people who are not academically inclined, who like working physically, not intellectually, and having a living wage and opportunities for them.
I don’t like it. I don’t like “Tyranny of the Majority” schemes. Investigate Nebraska and Maine, both of which allocate Electors by Electoral District. What the statewide majority earns is the two At Large Electors.
You could go for electors by percentage, but no state will do it First.
Biden winning made me happy – plus the way I found out about it (between my checks of the Guardian): my iPad gave a strange warble and said I had an iMessage (not come across those before), possibly from my friend Trish in Oakland – it wasn’t sure. I guess she wanted to tell someone she thought wouldn’t know; but it tickled me to be told the news direct like this. And of course we then had a text chat.
Yesterday was a good day, in fact: I went with my friend Pam to photograph a ruined farm, and we egged each other on to be much more daring than we’d have been alone – even venturing upstairs. Then she spotted a permissive path allowing us to go and see a Bronze Age standing stone, which had a vein of quartz running through it, and great energy.
I also took most of Friday for gardening, and now have about ten pelargoniums brightening my windowsills – although the garden’s still in full flood, and they’re forecasting mild nights for the next ten days.
Oh, and because the two of us have formed a bubble for this new lockdown, we then celebrated with an Indian takeaway and watching ‘Moonstruck’.
Moonstruck = best romantic comedy ever
Oh, I love that movie. “And some day you’ll die and I’ll come to funeral in a red dress.” I love that line so much.
Also “Snap out of it!”
So happy about Biden/Harris (dogs in the White House!).
Acquired lots of mad advocacy skills over the past four years and will put them to good use going forward.
Also, it’s a beautifull day in Pennsylvania. And a peaceful one.
SO much happy over the Biden/Harris win (especially the first woman/Black woman VP part of it). I really like her, and I like them together, and while Biden wasn’t my first choice, he may be just what this country needs right now.
While I’m worried about what Trump will do in the next two months, I am trying to stay in this moment of happiness, and also rejoicing that soon I won’t have to tune into the news every single damned day to find out what idiocy he’s done now.
As a bonus, we’re having a ran run of beautiful weather for November, and I’m trying to get out and walk while I can.
It is a happy day. Tears of joy last night when Kamala walked out onto the stage in her suffragette white suit, and more tears throughout her speech, as well as Joe’s. Loved the fireworks/drone show at the end, although probably not as much as Joe. 🙂
Lots of work still to be done, but we’ll celebrate for a day or two before we get back to it.
Very exciting to have a female US vice-president elect. Big step I think in many ways.
But also bonus for us Canadians to have it be Kamala since she went to high school in Montreal, so we on this side of the border have extra reason to cheer her on and wish her well, too. Nice to see her hard work and dedication being recognized:)
This news plus our unseasonably warm weather make for a lovely weekend. Also feeling lucky because I got a new ergonomic chair that’s also a lounger. I hope it will be great for writing so it can replace my previous “magic” writing chair that my physio had me give up in favour of working body parts:)
What a relief, y’all. What a relief.
In other news, rehearsing for the play right now…it’s Tech Day.
I’d say the Biden win made me happy but it’s still got this underlying feeling of unrealness to it. I guess I’ll be happier once my lingering uncertainty has gone.
One political thing that did make me happy: I finally joined the Green Party, after meaning to for many years. I’ve been getting a heap of Greens emails full of hope and enthusiasm and finding them thoroughly inspiring.
And I cleaned a couple of years of grime and dust off our front door yesterday. It looks So. Much. Better. If I’d realised how happy a clean door would make me, I’d have cleaned it earlier!
I’ve got a lot of thoughts but it’s hard to type when your doing the Snoopy Happy Dance so I’ll leave you with this:
https://imgur.com/t/funny/I29uRte?fbclid=IwAR03rnLuwA4yGH0F745XAYdwsR14EKb0Lg-_EuPA-RX6czDrzaDxvMdDvqg
That was hilarious, thank you!
Looking through my Amazon/Kindle wish list after yet another dud sample, I just discovered Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ ‘Dance Away With Me’ has dropped dramatically in price, to £1.99 on UK Amazon. So I’m going to bed to curl up with it.
Thanks!
My family had decided to do a group call when Biden’s victory was finally called and I thought it might be anti-climactic.
But my daughter had found this Twitter thread by a reporter about Trump campaign press conference that was about to happen at the Four Seasons in Philly—which turned out to be not the hotel but the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Parking Lot, next to a porn store, across the street from a couple crematoria, near two prisons—my ex-Philadelphia friend said it was the mob part of Philly. Trump tweeted that it was going to be a very important press announcement and it looked like he was planning to speak but it ended up being Giuliani, possibly because they realized they booked the wrong Four Seasons. You can read about it here: https://twitter.com/_richardhall/status/1325512712219222016?s=21
So we giggled through the whole call.
I was also thrilled by Biden’s speech Wednesday night which made it clear that it was going to take time and that was normal and he did it before Trump could claim victory (for non Americans, republicans prefer to vote in person and democrats at least during a pandemic prefer to vote by mail, so Trump knew he would be ahead election night before the mail ballots were counted in the states that had to wait to prepare them for counting until election day. He’s been claiming for months that mail ballots were ripe for fraud and we knew he would claim victory election night and then say the democratic ballots counted later were fraudulent).
I am also really happy about the MI Secretary of State and the WI election commission which kept the ballot counting going through the night so that by the time Trump wanted to claim victory ….Biden was already ahead in those two key swing states that hadn’t been allowed to prepare ballots in advance.
I loved Alexandra Petri’s pun. https://twitter.com/petridishes/status/1325113649996902401?s=21
The Trump campaign has opened up a website and phone hotline asking for evidence of voting fraud. The internet is being helpful, https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1247052
Particularly on the website which had no character limit so someone uploaded an entire Seinfeld script.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/culture/2020/11/trump-campaign-fraud-hotline-pranked-hamburglar-gravity-falls-tiktok.amp
And more movingly and seriously, the Irish TV ended its news cast with Biden reading Heaney’s “The Cure at Troy”. https://twitter.com/pruit_igoe/status/1325268180986712064?s=21
That poetry reading was amazing.
I read, laughed, and whooped at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference. Shared it with my cousins, and when I got home tonight, my brother informed me that he’d just sent our cousin a link to the story. Saturday Night Live couldn’t keep straight faces during its skit, but the original was as screwball as anything Jenny has ever written . . . I think.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/i-saw-donald-trump-s-presidency-come-crashing-down-at-four-seasons-total-landscaping-b1699962.html
I have just been gladdening my heart reading various takes on the Four Seasons press conference. The photos of Rudi Guiliani in a carpark in front of a roller door plastered with what looks like hastily photocopied posters, next to a sex shop and opposite a crematorium seems like a fitting summary to me. And some of the tweets about it have been hilarious.
By the way, some further good news. South Carolina hasn’t called its race yet, and the person who explained why not (SC law allows mail-in ballots to be received up to nine days after election day, and the 4th Circuit Court ruled that this extension must stand for this election, too) Just Happened to Mention that our beleaguered Judge Sullivan, in his detailed orders to the Post Office, required that in every state with such extensions, the Post Office MUST do a twice-a-day sweep and get ballots in, until the last day of its extensions, whatever that is. Don’t know whether the race is currently close enough that Biden could overtake Trump’s current count, but we’ll see.
Opening Arguments podcast tonight:
OA437: How To Play Hardball If We Don’t Win the Senate
A skit. https://twitter.com/nanglish/status/1325242917519233024?s=19
Four Seasons… what now?!
MAKE AMERICA RAKE AGAIN! LAWN AND ORDER!
Four Seasons Total Landscaping has merchandise commemorating the occasion:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/09/four-seasons-total-landscaping-trump-gardening-merchandise
No one is saying whether Fantasy Island, the sex shop next door, is doing the same . . . .
Here’s the Four Seasons link:
https://www.fstl1992.com/fstlmerch
Just want to say, keep your panties secure and clean — Mitch and the Mimicking Republicans are going to string out the election call for as long as possible. They won’t acknowledge that the election has concluded, just as they will play hardball for every item that Joe Biden and the Democrats want to pass in the next 4 years.
Let’s look to the Georgia runoffs.
Then to 2022.
2024 is a long way away. Just my opinion.
One of the neighborhood kids started blowing a stadium horn Saturday a.m., and I thought, “Kids having fun”–and then, “WAIT!” Checked the news and burst into tears of joy.
Yoo-hoo! Working Wednesday.