Anybody know?



I am starting to panic. I NEED Jen Psaki.

It’s only been 8 days, but I had no clue how addicting it would be to receive regular, sane briefings on the daily activity of the Biden Administration delivered by one of the most articulate, competent, sophisticated, emotionally-stable, (not to mention attractive) press secretaries with which we have ever been blessed.

I NEED IT ... bad!

Where’s Jen?



-Laelth

The McDonald’s franchise closest to the White House, for regularly (and at a moment’s notice) supplying the President with bountiful orders of quality hamberders and fries—comfort food that mercifully kept the President’s tiny, twitchy, index finger OFF of the nuclear button for four years. It has been reported that the franchise in question hired and retained dedicated 24-7 delivery staff solely for the purpose of making prompt deliveries to the White House.

For extraordinary service to the United States, I hereby nominate said franchise.

-Laelth

For those of us on the American left, there’s a deeply-embedded truth in this meme.

Like Bernie, we’re masked and somewhat silenced. We feel separated and alone in the cold, even though the truth is that we’re EVERYWHERE. We are, in fact, the majority. We are patiently, hopefully present and watching ... just like Bernie.

It’s an historic meme.

-Laelth

It’s just a customary formality, but formalities can mean a lot in a democracy. What we just saw was this:

1) The highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, the odious and perpetually-malignant Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, publicly acknowledged the fact that Joe Biden is the duly-elected 46th President of the United States.

2) The highest-ranking Republican in the House, the obnoxious and perpetually-vile Representative from California, Kevin McCarthy, also publicly acknowledged the fact that Joe Biden is the duly-elected President of the United States.

That’s it. The peaceful transition of power has occurred, once again, in this great republic. The poor, deluded souls who hoped to overthrow our government have failed. There will be no violent revolution today. Instead, there was a peaceful revolution, as our founders imagined and intended.

Here’s to the USA!



-Laelth

It is done. Benjamin Franklin, upon the creation of the Constitution, advised our founders that they had birthed a republic ... “if you can keep it.”

Well, here we are, 233 years later, and our republic continues to survive. Under the 46th President of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., I look forward to seeing it thrive.



-Laelth

This thought just occurred to me recently. Traditionally, we say an optimist sees the glass as half-full while a pessimist sees the glass as half-empty. I think we’ve got it backwards.

A pessimist sees the glass as half-full. The pessimist thinks, “Well, it could be WORSE” because that’s what a pessimist naturally expects. A half-full glass is better than nothing, and a pessimist, who naturally expects the worst, can be satisfied with a half-full glass.

The optimist, on the other hand, sees the glass as half-empty because the optimist thinks, “Well, it could be BETTER.” The optimist is filled with hope—as opposed to being resigned to its miserable fate. The optimist expects better and strives to make things better because the optimist believes that “better” is possible whereas the pessimist has little faith that things can be better and comforts itself with the knowledge that things could be worse.

Just an aside.

-Laelth

This is what my ex-wife told my children. This is what she believed. This is how she lives, and the same can be said of Donald Trump who also suffers from a Cluster B personality disorder. They’re self-interested nihilists—seeking only temporary pleasure and power to ward off their perpetual feelings of emptiness and worthlessness.

A parallel DU thread speculates about how long Trump will last after Biden becomes President. Some say suicide is likely. I think not. People with Cluster B disorders are too competitive and too selfish to commit suicide, for the most part. Some say his eating habits and general health will soon bring him down. This I also doubt. Persons with Cluster B personality disorders tend to be remarkably resilient. Trump’s father, Fred, continued to torture all those around him well into his eighties, despite otherwise-debilitating dementia. No, I don’t see Trump dying soon, but his life will suck more in the future than it does now. Naturally, his life has always sucked. He is incapable of experiencing love. He can not empathize. He sees himself as a perpetual victim. In his own, highly-limited mind, he doesn’t believe that anyone has had a harder life than he has had. He is utterly empty. He can barely sleep.

If I know anything about my ex-wife of 19 years, I feel certain that the same dynamic applies to her, just as it does to Trump and to all others who suffer from Cluster B personality disorders (narcissism-NPD, sociopathy/psycopathy-APD, borderline personality disorder-BPD, and histrionic personality disorder-HPD). To them, life sucks, and then you die. Your only satisfaction comes from beating everyone else in any way you can—whether in Court, or through shady business deals, or cheating at games, or just outright outliving them.

It seriously pained me to know that my ex-wife promulgated this life philosophy to our children. What I told them was very different. No. Life is beautiful. It is miraculous, and all life has value. In the end, life is all we have, and it’s all that is worth valuing. Yes, we will all die, physically, but think about these people—Lou Tzu, Kung Fu Tse (Confucious), Siddhartha Guatama (the Buddha), Moses, Jesus of Nazareth, Mohammad, Augustine, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Franklin, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln, Douglas, Einstein, Elanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. (and many, many others). Life is your brief chance to create something beautiful and give it back to the world. All the people I listed are more alive now than when they actually walked the Earth.

No, my children. Ignore the voice of nihilism. Life is BEAUTIFUL. Do what you can to make the world more just, more beautiful, and more loving in the time you have been granted. That is the only path to immortality.

-Laelth

“Do you want $2,000 in COVID stimulus money? If you do, you better vote for the Democrats.”

This key message is leading Ossoff and Warnock to victory. I could never have predicted that our recent debates and political struggles over economic relief to the American people would play out this way, but, here we are.



-Laelth

The almost-MIGHTY NY Jets managed a solid loss yesterday (28-14 against the Patriots), but, in the end, they LOST the Trevor Bowl to the seriously-MIGHTY Jacksonville Jaguars who finished the season 1-15 with an equally-impressive 28-14 loss to the Colts.

Enormous credit is due to the Jets for doing their absolute best to lose each and every game they played. Throughout the entire season, the Jets achieved only 243 points on offense (lowest in the league). In the end, that wasn’t enough. The Trevor Bowl-winning Jags put up 306 points on offense but won the contest due to the efforts of their amazingly pathetic defense which allowed 492 points compared to the Jets’ 457.

Congratulations to the Jaguars! Big money says that they will pick Lawrence.



Sorry, Jets fans.

-Laelth

Season Notes:

Best defense over the regular season: LA Rams with only 296 points allowed. The Ravens came in second with 303 points allowed.

Best offense over the regular season: GB Packers with 509 points scored. The Bills came in second with 501 points scored.

Pisses me off: My ATL Falcons scored 396 points on offense and allowed 414 points. That’s a difference of 18 points, yet the Falcons finish the season with a 4-12 record. We had several, close, heartbreaking losses this year. The team is obviously better than its record demonstrates.

Easy answer—Georgia law. In Georgia, you must assume that any phone conversation you have is being recorded by the person to whom you are speaking. A third party can not legally record a conversation between two people who are unaware that they are being recorded, but the actual parties to the conversation have every right to record (and subsequently publish) their own conversations (with or without the permission of the person to whom they are speaking).

In this case, it is almost certain that Raffensberger recorded the conversation (without Trump’s permission) and then published it via The Washington Post. This is entirely legal under Georgia law, and, while I expect that Trump’s knickers are in a twist about it, there’s nothing that he can do.

Note that the laws on recording phone conversations vary widely by state.



-Laelth