"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Sunday Salon -- a wrap up of the week



Weather: Beautiful blue skies. Day time temperatures in the 40s. This morning when we drove out of Eugene it was foggy. Yesterday evening at the football game at Auzten Stadium it was chilly, in the mid 30s. (It matched our team's performance. Sigh.)

Wrapping up this past week: When I sat down at Bible Study on Thursday morning two of my friends thanked me for my blog and my positive predictions about the then upcoming midterm elections. Of course I didn't think up any of my predictions, I just reported information I had found by people who know much more than me about polling and tricks that campaigns do to make people think, for example, a red wave was coming. Well, now we know no red wave arrived at all. It was more like mid-cycle spotting. In fact, Biden fared better than any Democratic president in their first midterms since JFK.  We haven’t done this well in 60 years. Don’t believe me?  Check it out.

  • When Nevada's Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto's race was called for her last night, control of the Senate remained in the Democrats' hands. Right now the count is 50 D - 49 R but there is one more race which is heading toward a run-off in December in Georgia. (FiveThirtyEight)
  • The House of Representatives is still up for grabs. In fact, Dems have a possible path to retain control of that body. For a little fun analysis, check out this post on Daily Kos.
  • The Democratic party's coalition stayed intact dominated by white college-educated folks, Black voters overwhelmingly (about 85 percent) backed Democrats, as did a majority of Asian (about 63 percent) and Latino (60 percent) voters. The party won a big chunk of White voters (40 percent) and even White voters without college degrees (32 percent). Liberal voters (90 percent), of course, preferred Democrats, but so did moderates (55 percent). (WaPo)
  • Six of the seven Republican Governor candidates who denied that Biden won in 2020 lost their races. The last, Kari Lake in Arizona, is behind by 36,000 votes but the race has not been called yet.
  • Democrats make history with state level gains. Democrats quietly won and defended majorities in state legislatures across the country, weakening GOP power on issues at the heart of the national political debate. This is the first time that the party in power hasn't lost a state legislative chamber since 1934. (Axios)

  • Young people helped decide critical races. In Michigan, the early youth vote was up 207 percent from 2018. In Pennsylvania, up 318 percent. In Wisconsin, up 360 percent. Young people were a critical force in holding back a “red wave.” They supported Democratic House candidates by 62 percent to 35 percent. (Robert Reich)


  • Secretary of State GOP election-deniers all lost: (Left to right) Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and Nevada.

  • Every single GOP election denier who ran for Secretary of State promising to mess with their state's 2024 elections has lost. Every single one! — in a telling sign of Donald Trump’s waning influence. (Vice)
  • This is fun. Watching the mash-up on Chris Hayes' show on MSNBC of Fox News and other sources bragging about the upcoming red wave that never materialized. I wonder when it hit them that they were wrong, wrong, wronger than wrong?
     


  • One more thing about politics. This week has caused many to stop and reflect on why the GOP didn't have their predicted red wave. My guess is that it is a combination of a lot of things they support -- abortion bans, climate change denial, guns! guns! guns!, voting restrictions, bad candidates, the threat to democracy. I think it is one more thing, too -- voters looked at the Republican candidates and their supporters and didn't like what they saw. "Hard-core MAGA extremism is a minority position in much of the country. There are more Americans repelled by the hate and conspiracism of MAGAism than drawn to it" (David Corn).

Books: I read very little past week compared to my previous weeks prior preparing for Cybils judging. I guess I was pretty distracted by the election, our trip to Oregon, and family stuff.

  • Books I did finish:
    • Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Butler by Ibi Zoboi. Cybils. 4 stars.
    • Odder by Katherine Applegate. Cybils. 4 stars.
    • Nothing Burns As Bright As You by Ashley Woodfolk. Cybils. 4 stars.
    • Moonwalking by Zetta Elliott. Cybils. 3 stars.
       
  • Books I'm currently reading:
    • The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. A book club selection. 95% complete. Audio.
    • The Ghosts of Rose Hill by R. M. Romero. Cybils. 25% complete. Audio.
    • Pauli Murray: The Life of a Pioneering Feminist and Civil Rights Activist by Terry C. Jennings. Cybils. 33% complete. Print.

For a few laughs today: Snoop Dog narrating Plizzanet Earth Iguanas v Snakes


 

-Anne

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