You need a list

I'm going to play a bit with the notion that great (?) minds think alike. That's because last night Rachel Maddow opened her first post-election show by doing the same thing I did in my fist post-election blog post - by making lists.

But seriously, the overall impact of what happened in this election is so big and broad that there's almost no way to get it all summarized without doing so. You really should take a minute to watch that clip from Rachel's show if you haven't seen it already...its just that good. To summarize, here are her lists.

First of all, on what we won't be doing as a result of this election:

• We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe vs Wade
• We're not going to repeal health reform
• Nobody is going to kill Medicare
• We're not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like foodstamps and kids health insurance to cover the costs
• We're not going to redefine rape
• We're not going to make you clear it with your boss to get birth control
• We're not going to amend the constitution to stop gay people from getting married
• We're not going to double Guantanamo
• We're not going to eliminate the Department of Energy or Education or Housing
• We're not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military doesn't want
• We're not going to scale back on student loans
• We're not vetoing The Dream Act
• We're not self-deporting
• We're not letting Detroit go bankrupt
• We're not starting a trade war with China
• We're not going to have as Secretary of State a John Bolton
• We're not bringing Dick Cheney back
• We're not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War

And then she ended the segment with a list of facts the Republicans are going to have to grapple with to dispel their delusions.

• Ohio really did go to the president last night.
• And he really did win.
• And he really was born in Hawaii.
• And he really is -legitimately- President of the United States...Again
• And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make-up a fake unemployment rate last month.
• And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.
• And the polls were not skewed to over-sample Democrats.
• And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad...he was doing math.
• And climate change is real.
• And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.
• And evolution is a thing.
• And Benghazi was an attack on us. It was not a scandal by us.
• And no one is taking away anyone's guns.
• And taxes haven't gone up.
• And the deficit is dropping, actually.
• And Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
• And the moon landing was real.
• And FEMA isn't building concentration camps.
• And UN election observers aren't taking over Texas.
• And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry are not the same thing as communism.

Whew. As Vice-President Biden would say..."That's a big fucking deal!"