WE DID IT WE DID IT WE DID IT WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ed. to add: And as I type this, the Senate Democratic candidate in Mississippi, Scott Colom, is winning by 28 votes, with provisional ones not counted yet.

If you had to do a provisional ballot, please, follow up on it and make sure it got counted.

I filled out a Missing Mail entry after tracking showed a package sitting in a southern Californian distribution center for a week. It was too important to lose. The sender wanted so badly to connect and to put good into the world while her own was falling apart and I wanted to be able to exclaim over it to her.

The next morning USPS asked me for a description of the contents.

Mentally appealing to whoever might read it I wrote a picture of toddler blouses hand-embroidered on the front and sleeves in Ukraine by the sender, one with bright multicolor daisies, one with red roses for a little girl with Rose in her name.

It was delivered not to my mailbox but directly into my hands the next day.

It turns out, though, that you can’t send out a request like that if they’ve already scanned the item at your local post office and Informed Delivery has claimed it would be delivered that day–but then it didn’t show up. Their site says it can take up to a week and just wait, everything’s cool.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…

Everything is NOT cool. I almost went to the post office today to demand it but decided to wait till the mailman came, so of course he came too late for me to head over there.

Don’t tell us to wait a week for that ballot when the freaking election is next Tuesday.

The one relief in this is that the State itself shows it as not having been delivered. California does voting right.

This border collie puppy being coached by the sheep is adorable. (With thanks to Margo Lynn for the heads-up.)

Meantime, the current administration has announced it will sue Alaska if the wrong candidate wins the midterms: since there were two Dan Sullivans in the primary with different middle initials, they claim that obviously one must be a fraud. Unless their guy wins of course.

If people were as dumb as Trump’s lawyers claim, the two men would have come out even. They didn’t at all. But also: this is the state where Lisa Murkowski once lost to her Tea Party primary challenger, persisted outside the party and ran in the general on a write-in. She held meet-and-greets where she coached people on how to spell her name correctly so that their ballots could not be challenged if they wanted her on it.

And she won. The majority of Alaskans paid attention and spelled out exactly what they wanted.

You think if they wanted to also keep this other Senator in there they wouldn’t have worked just as hard to get it right? Peltola came out #1.

I pay a little more attention to Alaskan politics than I might because my grandchildren are no longer growing up in that gorgeous state because a Republican governor announced he was cutting funding for the University of Alaska by 41% and K-12 substantially as well. They left.

I hope Peltola absolutely trounces the guy.

You guys, I failed.

She was actually doing the work. It took me by surprise. She was at the door. She wanted us to vote for her. She seemed a perfectly nice person.

She was the candidate with surprisingly large amounts of outside money behind her for such a small-potatoes race but won’t say who provided it. She was the one who wants to reward developers over all other considerations. She was the one who was running on what she said was terrible treatment by the city for her own project while the members of the council and planning commission openly told reporters the paperwork was not in order and the rules weren’t followed and they were ignored when they tried to get them to do it right. Forms and rules and inspections are a thing.

I made a carefully conciliatory comment in an anonymous online forum about the logical outcome of a proposal of hers, offering details based on lived experience–because I wanted my fellow voters not to have to go through what we’d gone through re rushed inspections.

She didn’t say anything like, Oh, that’s good to know, or, I’ll have to consider that; she attacked me and justified it on the claim that I was a member of the union.

I was speechless (though she had no way to know). I have no problem with unions, but I myself have never been in one. Clearly there was no point in engaging.

But a member of the city council felt strongly enough about it to say, basically, This is what she does. This is what we’ve been dealing with when she was on one of the committees.

Ohmygosh haven’t we had enough of that…

And here she was in person, smiling sweetly and asking for our vote, and I found myself unable to be my best self back. I wasn’t about to give away who I was re her attack. I wasn’t frowning. I was just waiting for her to be done.

She seemed to know she wasn’t winning us over. I simply said, I’ve already voted.

She looked over to Richard. He gave no response.

Tell her thank you, I thought, she’s canvassing, she’s doing the footwork of democracy even if you disagree with her, at least make her day pleasant.

I gave her a nod of acknowledgment as she turned to go. It wasn’t quite a smile but having not pre-considered what I would do if…, it was the best I could manage on the spur of the unexpected moment.

And yet. We were courteous. And I was online, too.

She could learn from that.

My first year of college ended a few days before my close high school friend’s did, and I flew home by way of Greensboro, North Carolina and drove home from there with her.

It’s a gorgeous town and I totally got why Karen had chosen Guilford College for her physics degree.

Google says there are seven colleges in that county, two of them HBCUs, with A&T being the largest of those in the country.

North Carolina removed the polling places from them. The excuse given (by a Republican, of course) was that there wasn’t enough parking there.

Excuse me, sir, have you ever met college students? Most of them walk everywhere. There had been no worrying about parking when those polling places were still there. You’re not fooling anybody.

I remember wanting at 19 to buy someone’s old car and my mom (I found out later) saying to her friend to say to her daughter, Go talk to her.

She did. Shawna the daughter, my sister’s age with her own sister my age, was happy to save me from becoming her. She told me about getting a job to pay for her aging car’s expenses and how it got to where she wasn’t going to university to learn anymore, she was going to work to support her car with her classes shrinking in the background and the further she got pulled down into that cycle the more she regretted it. Don’t do it.

So I kept on walking, just like almost everybody else I knew on campus.

And that’s what these kids did. Forty-five minutes each way to the nearest polling place, making a rally of it, making our future hopeful again by refusing to let their rights be taken away from them or anybody else if they could help it. Here’s how it’s done: you go. You do.

You refuse to let them not hear your voice.

It always surprises me how long it takes to fill out a ballot. All the things I’ve read in order to be informed–I still have to go back to every candidate, every race, at least three sources on every ballot proposition, before I’ve got all my little ovals squiggled in because it is so important to get every one of these right.

(Whoa! That guy’s passing himself off as a Democrat and his biggest backer is the Howard Jarvis folks of Prop. 13 fame? Who never met a single tax of any amount for any purpose that they didn’t want repealed? And he’s running for the Board of Equalization? We have a new subcategory of chutzpah.)

Thank you CalMatters for your summaries.

Eight ballot pages.

It was a privilege.

So a Republican Super Pac bought ads for Susan Collins in Portland that tried to make a villain out of Troy Jackson, her opponent.

And 1.3 million people in Oregon along with some over the river in Washington State did a confused, What the what now?

(NYT link here.)

The local paper has a voter guide whose descriptions include a link to each candidate’s website for more info, and I was going through some of the more obscure ones.

Both of those who want to head the state’s department of education called themselves nonpartisan.

And then I clicked. Wow.

One joyfully described his work for the kids in his school district and the ways and the whys of making a difference, turning things around such that his city became #1 in math and literacy among the top 80 urban districts in the country. Narrowing the gap between the success rates among his constituents was important to him and he was proud to show his work and hoped to do more for the rest of the kids in the state as well.

The other is running on reich-wing fearmongering and bullying using only-I-can-fix-it rhetoric and ohmygoodness haven’t we had enough of all that? She’s got the string of pearls and the little cross necklace both as she appears to be ready to take money from the poor districts and give it to the more deserving rich ones, and her message to gay or trans kids is, Fear me. I will teach your peers to hate you.

I have a gay cousin who, like far too many of them, committed suicide. I know where attitudes like hers lead to and I don’t want any other family ever to go through that if I can do anything about it.

We can. Every single vote matters.

Every single race in the election matters.

So here’s a dilemma, and I’d love to hear others’ take on it. There’s a No Kings rally on Saturday the 17th, aiming to make it the biggest early-voting event ever as a declaration to the world and to each other of what kind of government we want to have: of the people, for the people, to restore the rule of law and the right to due process. To invite others to take heart and vote, too, by showing where public opinion is.

As I think of that one single House Representative left twisting himself in the wind when he realized he was in the history books forever as the single vote in that chamber not to release the Epstein files, because that’s what he thought his party wanted. Won’t his future grandkids be proud.

But. One of the things about living here is there is always, always, the tiny lurking thought that we could have a major earthquake disrupting everything. We did get one already: 47 declaring two of our three biggest cities utterly disposable along with all the lives in them, like, hey, Iran, could you clear out these pesky voters in my way.

Two of our three ballots are here. Should we wait. Should we go.

So last night as we sat down to our second attempt at dinner, I mentioned President Alzheimer’s speech that had just been reported. The one where he thought it would be peachy-fine if Los Angelos and San Diego were to be taken out by the country he’s been bombing.

The crowd that cheered.

How? How could even an addled demented terrible person like that say such a thing?

Richard: Because he doesn’t own any golf courses here.

I sat there kind of stunned a moment: that was exactly it. Well, that plus our status as a blue state, of course, but California turned blue in rejection of then-Governor Pete Wilson’s trying to become the next Republican President on anti-immigrant bigotry: don’t let immigrants get licenses. (Thus no insurance when they hit someone.) Don’t let hospitals pay for their emergency care. (Right, we all want to watch people just die in front of us who could be saved.* No Good Samaritans for you!) Don’t let their kids attend school. (Right, we want angry teenagers surrounded by greater wealth but with no possible chance at upward mobility to feel hated by society and with nothing to do all day but act out their anger or envy while people aren’t home.)

The voters saw the logical endpoint of Wilson’s bigotry and didn’t like what it might say about them. That was the end of his career and of the political chances of a whole lot of Republicans here.

So.

I have the antidote.

We can help make 47 care about this state–we can even offer him a bargain, and you know he loves to think he has negotiated a good deal. Prime southern Californian real estate, beachfront, undeveloped, it could be his for a song. It’s fronted by a highway, but no matter, there are already signs along it telling people not to get out and climb the dune that rises the whole length between the road and the ocean, so they won’t be bothering him or his buddies, they’ll always have the best view. In a historic place. Heck, he can even build his arch there if he wants.

It was built up during WWII as a training area for young soldiers, and the possibility of live ammunition or mines in the dunes is why those signs are there.

But then, we all know he doesn’t read if he doesn’t have to.

—

*During this time, there was a church get-together and I met a young couple with a newborn and a toddler. The wife was enjoying the evening out but the husband, an immigrant, had gone from being tired that morning to just barely holding up and should have stayed home. Turned out they didn’t have insurance and delayed seeking care. Two days later he was dead and his children were fatherless. I’ve never quite gotten over it. Nor should I.

A political flyer. It was from a guy who’d wanted to set up a daycare but found himself jumping through hoops with the city such that he was paying rent for “nearly three years” waiting to get the permits to open.

So he’s running for city council. If you can’t fight city hall, get inside it and change it. It’s the American way. Good for him, was my first thought.

I looked a little more closely. His cropped photo suggests that the rent he was paying may have been on his house, but never mind.

His proposal (good luck, sir) is that it take 30 days for small projects and 90 for big ones if we elect him, and if it takes longer than that your fees are waived.

Given that the large projects can take several years to get approved after environmental reports, road studies, sewer updates–and especially given the 32-story monstrosity a Russian oligarch wants to plunk in the middle of ranch-house suburbia in the next town with no roads nor schools that can possibly accommodate that, they should–I can see why he’s frustrated. But.

There’s so much to his story he didn’t tell. Was his daycare alongside a major road where you wouldn’t want a toddler dashing into the street when someone opens the front door?

As Richard pointed out, with all the 1950s tract houses in this city turning over and new owners wanting to remodel them to match the idea of the outrageous amounts they’ve paid for them, if you’re going to knock the permit timeline down that far you’re saying you’re going to vet and hire a whole lot of new inspectors. How are you paying for that if you’re ditching lots of fees? And if you don’t, you’re essentially throwing out the idea of inspectors altogether because people can only work so many hours in a day.

And let me tell you, having remodeled years ago, you really really need good inspectors. We had to replumb the entire house for water and gas a second time when ours was done because the pipes used were substandard and oh did you know your water heater was releasing carbon monoxide the way they set this up, lady?

We didn’t know, and the inspector should have refused to sign off.

So yeah, I get where this guy’s coming from.

But I would far rather that inspections be done and be done right and pay the city those fees than fork out $40,000 in 1999 dollars again to remedy what was left behind so our house could be safe and in good working order the way we’d paid for it to be the first time.

“Lower cost home improvements,” he says.

Oh you sweet summer child.

To paraphrase Robert Frost via capital letters: Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ICE… I got a tiny taste today of how it must be like right now.

The motion sensor set off a chime to alert that someone was at the door.

I saw someone’s rear end bent over right in front of its side window and waited for the person to move far enough away that I could move faster than they could to shut and lock it again if I needed to. As women do.

He’d placed a political flier. The candidate had a Chinese name and I’m guessing the, it turned out, tiny elderly man was a relative.

I am greatly shamed by the fact that the majority of white women, it has been reported, voted for the adjudicated racist rapist and I saw the result of their choice in that man’s face as my door opened and he saw mine: he was suddenly terrified.

Then he saw the welcoming smile on my face.

I picked up the flier and he took a step closer. He told me a little about the candidate. He clearly did not begin this life as a speaker of English and I thanked him for participating in the democratic process.

Such a mixture of pride and relief in his countenance as we waved each other warmly on in our day.

My heart broke for him. And I’m so glad he was willing to risk it all to help his fellow Americans learn about the candidate he was so proud of.

If you live in California, you can now demand that Big Data about you be deleted. It won’t be instant, it takes several months, but it will happen.

Here’s the Mercury News article about it but it may be behind a paywall, so here’s the state’s site for doing so. You have to be a resident of California. To quote the first bit from the Merc:

“More than 300,000 Californians have demanded that hundreds of data brokers erase information about their locations, finances, health and personal lives as the state’s first-in-the-nation Delete Act”

You can register every device, your car, entering every name anyone might have info on you by, the works. Some things by law must be retained–those will be retained. The rest–poof! AI may not use it. Selling, say, your location or social security number will be outlawed if you say so.

Gavin Newsom signed that law and has been lobbying Congress to pass it nationwide.

But there is the information to take to your own representatives in Congress. Let them show who they really think they work for. Many of them have a particular incentive right now to pay attention to their voters.

Platner did the right thing and he’s out in time for Maine voters to choose someone else–Monday was the deadline for a special election to be called. May the best future Senator win.

Mitch McConnell, per the reporter who had been listening to the police scanner, had paramedics arriving seven minutes after they were called for an unconscious man in cardiac arrest, with McConnell taken to the hospital from that address.

The Republicans in Kentucky changed the law two years ago to where the governor could no longer appoint a successor to a Senator from his own party as previously required but rather that there would be a special election called. Let the voters decide. Honor democracy. Sounds good.

Except that that special election could not be held closer than 56 days to the general election, and short of that, Kentucky would just have to go with only one Senator till the next general election.

Their party spent big bucks defeating Rep. Thomas Massie in his run for Senate because he’d thwarted Trump and championed the cause of opening the Epstein files, pushing the bill to do so till he won. He lost his primary–but they want to make sure he stays out and is not the incumbent, however briefly. Voters do tend to love their incumbents. Just ask Mitch.

Oh wait you can’t.

So they’re pretending they’re talking to McConnell from his hospital bed and that he’s recovering nicely and that deadline against calling the special election is coming right up. You know that he’s suddenly going to take a turn for the worse, no, worst, but only when it’s convenient for what they want.

The video of a CNN reporter demanding one of them call McConnell right now, live on the air, and let the audience hear his voice to prove he’s alive–and the immediate backtracking and squirming and blustering and flustering and refusing to do so–said it all.

If Mitch McConnell is indeed brain dead–and seven minutes of cardiac arrest in a sick, old man before medical help arrived means he is–then every one of those men lying about it is committing outright election fraud.

We have this 14th Amendment for them (among other things.) We just have to use it.

Governor Beshear sent a letter to McConnell at his hospital room asking for an official response from him on his condition, as fellow representatives of the good people of Kentucky. Well played.

And another repeat.

I got a note from both the Australian post office and the sender to let me know my new Rios was in the US now so that I can finish the Big Sur afghan.

Meantime, 15″ on this one in one week is fast but our post office would really have to mess up for me to finish it before that gets here.

I know, don’t tempt them.

I woke up this morning with visions of how I was going to knit my rocks. I’m almost to the right place to start them.

I have no idea which one I’ll finish first. I’ll just have to wait to see that new yarn, put it together with this to have a good look at everything, and then let them be the boss of me.