The Daily Dose/November 10, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around our human experience.
USA! USA! It’s common to joke that 70 million people – and counting – saw the ignorance and the incompetence of Donald Trump, the meanness and the idiocy, the blood on his hands from his inept handling of the coronavirus and said sure, sign me up for four more years of this.
Gaylon For US Senate…Vote Early, Vote Often…Or Not: This really wasn’t the case though. We know from having run for the United States Senate this year that by and large Trump’s supporters boiled this election down to two things: freedom vs socialism. We heard it many times, those very words. As big a presidential election as we’ve had boiled down to watchwords and catchphrases.
Dry, Technical Matter: We deserved better than this, but this is what the GOP, rather brilliantly, blathered every hour on the hour, a message as effective as it was insulting to those looking at this election objectively. It appealed to the Republican’s most basic worries: a vote for Biden is a vote for illegals taking your job and a vote to take your guns away. Neither is true, of course, but that doesn’t matter, if it ever did.
Broad, Historical Context: The GOP hasn’t produced a decent elected president since Eisenhower. (Ford, who did well in circumstances God would have found trying, was not elected.) and Trump is the end of a line going straight down, not easy to do when the list includes Nixon and the second President Bush.
The Bottom Line: We get the government we deserve, and as long as we insist on not thinking for ourselves and accepting what others choose to spoon-feed us, our country will continue moving from the influence we once had to the oblivion that awaits us. We took a small step back to respectability with Joe Biden’s election, but collectively more steps will be needed.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has the latest morning coffee service news from the hotel.
The big news is we are all out of spare French vanilla creamers in the back…There are still some out front, but when those are gone that’s it, no more until a new shipment arrives…This has resulted in some adjustments on the Morning Coffee Service (MCS) front lines…Usually, there are three rows of French vanilla creamer next to two rows of hazelnut (with five rows of half and half in front of them) but ol’ Sparrow was obliged to make some changes “in the field” before letting MCS go live…There weren’t enuff French vanilla creamers for three rows – stacked two high – so I made two French creamer rows and added sufficient hazelnut creamers to make three rows.
The Bottom Ten/NCAA Week 11: Every team ranked this week is unvictoried, a Bottom Ten first. Join the race for ESPNCup and one of the funniest Bottom Tens ever. It’s on the house in 2020, too.
2. Vanderbilt (0-4; lost to Mississippi State 24-17)
Mitigating Factors: Offense getting smiley face on playbooks for being accommodating guests, turning ball over four (4) times…Defense taken out back for whoopin’ after only giving up 14 points off these turnovers, as coaching staff knows this will be key down B-10 homestretch…Commodores 0-5 for first time this century and eighth time ever.
FunFact: Commodores still smarting from turn of century decision to merge Athletic, Student Affairs departments as linebackers sent to help out in training room inadvertently tape ankles together instead of individually.
Next Loss: at Kentucky
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On This Date
The long march to today.
In 1969 – The television program Sesame Street debuts on National Educational Television. The show was funded by an $8 million grant (about $56 million in today’s money) from the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation and the US government. Over the years the show has won eleven Grammy Awards and 150 Emmy Awards, the most of any children’s show. Today original episodes air on HBO Max, then later on PBS and the show is taped in New York City.
In 1957 – An NFL-record crowd of 102,368 watches in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the Los Angeles Rams defeat the San Francisco 49ers 37-24. The record would stand until 1977, when 103,438 attended Super Bowl XI at the Rose Bowl and is now 105,121, done at Cowboys Stadium on September 20, 2009. The Rams had moved from Cleveland after the 1945 season and the 49ers had formed in 1946 in the All-America Football Conference and joined the NFL in 1950.
In 1958 – Cozy Cole is at #1 on Billboard’s soul chart – then known as the Hot R&B Sides chart – for the third of six consecutive weeks with Topsy II. The song was Cole’s first chart single and remains his only soul chart appearance. The song also peaked at #3 on the Hot 100 and another version of the song, Topsy I, would hit the chart the next week, marking one of the few times in Hot 100 history one act has had two versions of the same song on the chart simultaneously.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
In Athens, as in other states, cleverness gets all that it can, and mediocrity gets the rest.
Will Durant
The Story of Civilization, Vol II: The Life of Greece
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know.
The NCAA major division football record for most points in a career is held by Keenan Reynolds of Navy, who scored 530 points between 2012-15.
Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar.
What is the record for the largest crowd at any football game in the United States? – Answer next time!
