Biden Says the Transition is Going Well

Joe Biden says that the transition from the Trump administration to his own is going well, and that outreach from the present administration, across the board, has been sincere and not begrudging.

In short, Biden says that the behavior of the Trump administration has been the exact opposite of what the public has seen and heard from President Trump himself.

If you've been reading a lot news from Washington over the past four years, as I have, then surely it has struck you have often members of Trump's administration, as well as Republicans in Congress, have expressed strong opposition, even horror and disgust, to Trump, off the record. 

What a strange approach: to privately oppose a leader whom you publicly slavishly follow and extravagantly praise. Will all of these Republicans ever go on the record and actually tell the truth right out in public about what they have been thinking and doing during the Trump Presidency?

Or, on the contrary, will there been so many Republicans who claim to have been secretly anti-Trump, secretly saving the world from Trump from within the belly of the beast, that it will be damned hard to believe all of them?

There's a problem with believing anyone who says, I was lying all that time, but now I'm telling the truth. Hey, come to think of it, that's sort of the whole point of that story which has been told to so many children, about the boy who lied about wolves being around.

There's a definite advantage to just telling the truth, publicly, privately, on the record, off the record, every which way. Several advantages. Several huge advantages. Several huge obvious advantages.

But if some Trump administration official or Republican Congressperson or Senator wants to try to explain to me why he or she was saying one thing in public and the exact opposite off the record, for four long years, and wants to explain to me how that behavior actually made some sort of sense, I'll listen.

For a little while, anyway.

If I Had a Billion Dollars --

-- the red light on my computer's mute key, f6, wouldn't go from functional to non-functional or vice versa every time my OS updated. And similarly, I wouldn't have to tell my blog software not to count my own pageviews for the blog every time I turned on the computer, because that box unchecked itself every time I turned off the computer. I can't afford to get a new computer every time one malfunctions, or get it repaired or other fancy rich-guy stuff like that.

If I had a billion dollars I'd have an EV and solar panels on my roof, and so would a few nonprofit organizations, courtesy of me.

If I had a billion dollars I'd have an extra-fancy strap on this watch, here, and I'd pay somebody to attach it to the watch because I'm really bad with that sort of fingertip type work.

If I had a billion dollars, I would finally find out what truffles taste like if you just eat one whole, as opposed to eating some food which just has tiny specks of truffles in it which you can barely see but which make the food irresponsibly expensive for you to eat.

If I had a billion dollars, I would finally know once and for all if becoming rich still leaves you unhappy. I strongly doubt that a billion dollars wouldn't make me very, very happy for a very long time, maybe forever. I think that people who say that money lacks such power simply don't have enough experience with poverty to appreciate being rich. And you'll notice that most of the rich people who say money can't make you happy do NOT give all their money away, and that that's not just because they are too kind to make others unhappy with money, but because they're basically full of shit, in addition to being full of money.

I just did an update, and the red light on my f6 key went from working to not working. I really like that red light when it works. That's what set me off into thinking about having enough money to own multiple computers and and an EV and solar power and to be able to give generously to causes I find to be good and to be able to obtain a truly fine watch band without giving it a second thought and eat all the truffles I could eat.

Here's to Fully Automated Luxury Communism bringing all of those things, and much, much more, to everyone on Earth, very soon. Cheers. First step: vote Trump out. I know, I know, Joe is hardly a Fully Automated Luxury Communist dream come true, but beggars can't be choosers and right now the choice is Trump or Joe, and Joe's a lot closer to want we want even though he's very far from what we want. The Communists in Germany should've voted for Hindenburg along with the Social Democrats in 1932...

What Joe Said

Sarah Silverman liked and re-tweeted a tweet by an African-American woman whose name I didn't know, saying that a white guy doesn't get to tell black people they're not black if they support the most racist President since Woodrow Wilson over him. I was about to comment on Silverman's tweet with something like "White woman likes tweet by black woman telling white people that they don't get to tell black people they're not black if they support the world's biggest living racist nightmare," but before I could make the comment, Ms Silverman's tweet had disappeared.

Perhaps because in the meantime, Biden had apologized for his comment to Charlemagne Tha God,

saying "perhaps I was much too cavalier" and "I shouldn't have been such a wise guy."

The whole thing, wise-ass insensitive remark, Twitter uproar and apology, happened within a few hours.

Another way you can tell Biden apart from Trump: he apologized for saying something dumb. Remember? Apologies? That thing we haven't heard from a US President in 3 and a half years?

Will Bernie Help Biden?

I would've much preferred Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden, as the Democratic nominee for President. But still, I would much prefer Biden to Trump as President. Now that it's gonna be Joe, is Bernie going to help out?

It's something which (eww!) politicians do, something known as (ewwwww!!!) politics: give and take. Give something to somebody, even if it's someone you really dislike, in order to get something. To save the situation from being a total loss. To help the possibility that later on, you'll get that something, the something you wanted but couldn't get right now.

I don't know what Bernie will do. I have no idea what goes on in his mind. But right now, he wields a lot of power, and he could use it to help someone he has a lot disagreements with, Biden, in order to help Biden beat someone who is much, much worse: Trump. Remember President Trump?

In 2016, Bernie wielded a lot of power after he had lost the nomination, and in my opinion he didn't do everything he could have done with that power, in order to beat Trump -- but right now 2016 and how well Bernie used his power and my opinion of what he did, none of that matters. Right now, what matters is Trump vs Biden in November. And Bernie can do a lot about that. Many of Bernie's supporters say they don't see any difference between Trump and Biden. Bernie could do a lot to explain the differences to them. If he wants to. If he sees the differences. Like I said, I have no idea how Bernie's mind works. He's a strange case to me: a politician who has spent nearly his entire career not engaging in politics, holding himself disdainfully above all of the compromises and horse-trading.

This would be a particularly bad time for him to keep holding himself above it all, instead of getting his hands dirty, helping something to happen which he no doubt sees as bad -- a Biden Presidency -- in order to prevent something which would be much worse: a 2nd term of Trump. I hope so much that he gets down into the dirt and fights, that he acts like a politician at last. The whole world needs all the help it can get right now, removing Trump from office. And that's not going to be done with idealism. It's going to be done if a whole lot of us hold our noses and vote for someone we despise, in order to stop someone else who is much, much worse. That's politics. There's nothing pure about it, never has been.

The "Heartland" Vote

Democrats have been trying for a long time to take the "heartland" vote away from the GOP. But what exactly is the "heartland" vote? Is it anything more than just code for the racist vote, the xenophobic vote, the Islamophobic vote, the homophobic vote, the sexist vote, in short: the stupid vote? The GOP keeps winning that fight. Why wouldn't they? The stupid vote is their natural constituency. How about if we drop that fight and go hard 180 degrees away from it? Go openly and honestly for the anti-stupid vote: the anti-racist, anti-sexist, gay-friendly, xenophile, one-world, well-educated, eco, vegan, anti-conspiracy-theory vote -- in short: the anti-stupid vote? We could even call it that. Or we could call it something like, for example: Warren/Booker 2020.

Call the deplorables deplorable. Why are we trying to hide? Every single poll for 2 1/2 years, Trump's unfavorable rating has been over 50%. In other words: the anti-stupid vote is most of the people in the US. Go right straight for it. No more BS. And as for the dumb-asses, they'll benefit from rational policy just like everyone else, and some of them might actually learn things.

And how about if we stop making these drastic geographical over-simplifications such as speaking about "the heartland" as if it as if it were entirely Republican and urban America were entirely Democratic? Neither assertion is true. Geography might influence political orientation, but it doesn't determine it. People are free to be who they are. How about some respect for Democrats in places which have been mostly red lately? Oh, that's right: the Electoral College, that proud 18th-century institution. We have to deal with Trump first, then we can deal with other things like modernizing the Constitution, and in the meantime, Democrats in places like Wyoming, where it takes a bit more guts to be a Democrat than it does in NYC or LA, will continue to be unfairly boned in terms of national recognition. It's not fair at all. Oh well. Wyoming Democrats: hang in there. Not all of us have forgotten you!

And as for Joe Biden, the great "heartland vote" candidate: how about if we let him just join the GOP, toward which he's been drifting for over 40 years? He could be the new Joe Lieberman -- or is he already the new Joe Lieberman?