Smokey and I were watching tv on Monday evening when he suddenly announced, “Karofsky won!” He keeps one of his Chromebooks on the little table in front of his recliner* and was checking election results during the commercials.

Even Judge Jill was surprised, apparently. Skip ahead to :40 to see her reaction.

Fun fact: come July when Judge Jill is seated, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will have six women justices and one man.

Personally, I think the Republicans’ actions in the past couple weeks have pi$$ed off enough voters that the election of a non-Republican was inevitable.

Locally, several deplorables were unseated or prevented from attaining their chosen office. A couple other progressives did not get elected, one losing by 15 only votes. (Such are rural elections.) All in all, it was a satisfying election. Democracy rules!

From the Washington Post:

“But heavy mail-in balloting may have upended assumptions about relative advantage; according to statistics issued Monday by the state Elections Commission, nearly 1.1 million Wisconsinites cast ballots that way, nearly as many as total turnout in last year’s Supreme Court race — and more than the total turnout in the court races in each of the previous two years.”

Now to prep for the May 12 special election for the 7th Congressional District seat…

I did my bit for citizenship yesterday by emailing my state senator, assemblyperson, both U.S. senators, and the Democratic candidate in the special election, passing along the links to a paper by researchers at Harvard and to a news article that sums up the researchers’ findings. (Feel free to send the information to your own elected representatives. You will have to be clever to get the links into your senators’ email; the Senate email system does not allow links in incoming emails. I got around that by typing in the words, i.e., “bloomberg dot com”, etc.)

“The study, by economists Sergio Correia, Stephan Luck and Emil Verner looks at the economic impact of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic in the U.S. The authors combined data on mortality and economic variables from the period with evidence on local implementation of so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions like social distancing. They conclude that the earlier, more forcefully and longer cities responded, the better their economic recovery.” (Emphasis added)

I would have sent it to the president, too, but he can’t read ::rim shot::

Oh, yeah, remember that contest I had nearly two weeks ago? Results are in. I have emailed the winners. Here are their winning comments.

Contest 1, one thing about you.
My SIL Kathleen for swimming with the dolphins in Cuba and working on a community project in an Egyptian garbage dump.

Contest 2, the drunk guy at the end of the bar.
Laurie, whose drunk guy/cat was rolling in sunshine.

Contest 3, what are you grateful for.
Kat, who had sunshine in Pittsburgh when she baked banana bread.

Thank you all for playing! What shall we do next?

Some good stuff here.

Parallels between coronavirus and a dead whale.

Steve Irwin redux.

Paint the Bean black.

What we need now.

Just knockin’ little kids down.

Baby dolphin learns to jump.

Whistle a birdy tune.

A zen moment from my friend Ann and her dogs.

* He collects computers the way I collect yarn. The living room Chromebook is tethered to the TV; we often watch things online, like the PBS Newshour and YouTube stuff. We don’t have cable, so online is the way to see things like the various late show monologues and Rachel Maddow. It also means we don’t have to be sitting in front of the TV at 6:00 pm when Newshour is broadcast here.