Stocks plummet following election

This is today's headline in the business section of the local newspaper, The Oregonian. The sectors that took the biggest hits were finance and managed care. This supports my conviction that Obama will serve big business interests less than Romney would. Suits me, even though my tiny retirement fund is shrinking again.

QotD: Emerson on Success

Success:
To laugh often and much,
to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children,
to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others,
to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition,
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rachel Maddow at her Best: Reality Check

No, Virginia, there is not a Santa Claus, except in marketing and the media and in your imagination.

Earlier this week I attended a training on how to facilitate support groups for people who experience Extreme States, including hearing voices, seeing visions, and other experiences most commonly diagnosed as psychosis. We broke out many times into small groups to practice what we were learning. One time, when I was facilitating a small group, one of the women in the group started freaking a little bit and asking "Is she real?" of another person in the room. I calmly reassured her that yes, indeed, that person was real as far as I could tell.

This clip reminds me of that. This reality check is for the Republicans who thought that their version of reality was going to triumph on Tuesday. For a while I stopped listening to Rachel because I have libertarian sympathies and she was taking unfair potshots from a very partisan position. This time she's not being partisan. This time she's speaking about the basics of reality, of what is our consensual truth, except for a few tone-deaf and science-ignorant Republicans who have poisoned their entire party.