During the Great Depression, a sheet music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent school teacher.

Taxi dancer Charity continues to have faith in the human race despite apparently endless disappointments at its hands, and hope that she will finally meet the nice young man to romance her away from her sleazy life. Maybe, just maybe, handsome Oscar will be the one to do it.

The Bower Family Band petitions the Democratic National Committee to sing a Grover Cleveland rally song at the 1888 convention, but decide instead to move to the Dakota territory on the urging of a suitor to their eldest daughter. There, Grampa Bower causes trouble with his pro-Cleveland ideas, as Dakota residents are overwhelmingly Republican, and hope to get the territory admitted as two states (North and South Dakota) rather than one in order to send four Republican senators to Washington. Cleveland opposed this plan, refusing to refer to Congress the plan to organize the Dakotas this way. When Cleveland wins the popular vote, but Harrison the presidency due to the electoral college votes, the Dakotans (particularly the feuding young couple) resolve to live together in peace, and Cleveland grants statehood to the two Dakotas before he leaves office (along with two Democrat-voting states, evening the gains for both parties).

A gang of outlaw bikers strike a bargain with the Sheriff of a small beach town; let them stay and the town is safe. But a local girl strays into their lair and sets off a full-scale war.

With the help of his girlfriend Cathy and Dr. Fong, a psychiatrist, ambitious journalist Johnny Barrett poses as a madman in order to be admitted to a mental institution where a bloody murder has been committed.

The professional gambler Case Silverthorn wants to quit and retire to a small ranch in Marlpine he bought recently. On the way there he saves the Sheriff's life, who got into an ambush. However another man is dead, Will Donovan, from whom he bought the ranch! Neither the Sheriff nor Donovan's children know about the sale. So Case has to switch back to his former profession, while he tries to clarify the situation. He comes across a group of cattle thieves.