Gratitude Monday: the start

Today I’m grateful for the spectacular results of last Tuesday’s elections. Republicans lost ground in every state, and often by insultingly large margins.

Here in the Old Dominion, Democrats took the three statewide offices (governor, lieutenant governor & attorney general), as well as a large gain in the legislature. I’m really hoping they can undo a lot of the damage the current (Republican) regime caused in the past four years. County elections, too, saw Republicans unseated, even in places where the incumbent thought his ass was thoroughly planted in office.

You will know about the New York City mayoral race. Despite billionaires contributing $40M to PACs supporting Andrew Cuomo, NY Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani absolutely danced to victory, with more than a million votes. Cuomo and a flock of other wealthy soreheads have sworn they’re going to leave the city (and the state, apparently) because “communism” and “taxes”.

They really know how to threaten people with a good time.

In addition to whatever benefits electing people to office high and low who aren’t ravening ideologues may have, Tuesday pissed off the Kleptocrat royally. The old guy spent so much energy spluttering at the results that he plumb wore himself out and slept through most of his public meetings on Thursday and Friday. I imagine there was a severe ketchup shortage in the White House dining room.

We are not out of the woods. The administration still had time to fight multiple court orders to release SNAP funds that more than 40 million Americans need to provide food for themselves and their families. ICE, Border Patrol and local LEOs are keeping up their Stasi raids on American neighborhoods, violently ripping individuals from their homes, workplaces and autos and stashing them in secret confinement. SECDEF Kegsbreath announced that we’re “facing a 1939 moment” and therefore we are no longer in peace, but on a war footing. (Not clear to me whether they’re going to run a false-flag Gleiwitz incident, maybe in Venezuela; or Greenland; or Canada.) And the Speaker of the House is still keeping members from the Capitol to avoid swearing in the duly elected Adelita Grijalva, who will cast the deciding vote to release the Epstein files. Li’l Moses still knows and sees nothing and the House has been in recess since the end of September. Oh—and the government is shut down because the Republicans crammed provisions to cut Medicaid and ACA subsidies from their “clean” budget bill, and Democrats are not of a mind to make Americans choose between food and healthcare. The shutdown has exacerbated the screwed-up air traffic control system, which was one of the targets of the DOGiEs for force reduction earlier this year, so that the administration announced this week that flights in and out of the 40 busiest airports in the country will be reduced. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy (an “alpha male” absolutely terrified of getting on public transport) added this weekend that the situation is dire and will affect travel for the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.

So—yeah, we have miles to go before we sleep. But the gigantic, neon two fingers up to everything these bastards stand for gives me hope. And it makes me grateful.

 

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