Day 2830: Debatable

It’s debatable whether you can debate someone who

• doesn’t follow previously agreed upon rules,
• interrupts incessantly,
• has no scruples,
• lies constantly,
• attacks,
• is a malignant narcissist,
• enjoys hurting people, and
• will do anything to win.

It’s debatable whether I and the USA could possible survive another four years of the guy who “debated” Joe Biden last night.

It’s debatable whether there’s anything debatable about the images I captured yesterday.

Michael’s meals are never debatable.

It’s debatable

• how many animals are in those photos and
• whether anybody will find the octopus.

If you vote for the person who debated Joe Biden last night, it’s debatable whether you’ve been paying attention to what he’s actually been saying and doing to this country.

It’s debatable how you might fill in the blank:

Jill or the beanstalk?

It’s debatable whether it’s a smooth segue from that to Jack from Sondheim’s Into the Woods singing this …

… to Sondheim’s There Won’t Be Trumpets:

In case those lyrics are debatable, here they are:

Those smug little men with their smug little schemes
They forgot one thing:
The play isn’t over by a long shot yet!
There are heroes in the world,
Princes and heroes in the world,
And one of them will save us.
Wait and see!
Wait and see!

There won’t be trumpets or bolts of fire
To say he’s coming.
No Roman candles, no angels’ choir,
No sound of distant drumming.
He may not be the cavalier,
Tall and graceful, fair and strong.
Doesn’t matter, just as long as he comes along!

But not with trumpets or lightning flashing
Or shining armor.
He may be daring, he may be dashing,
Or maybe he’s a farmer.
We can wait, what’s another day?
He has lots of hills to climb.
And a hero
Doesn’t come till the nick of time!

Don’t look for trumpets or whistles tooting
To guarantee him!
There won’t be trumpets, but sure as shooting
You’ll know him when you see him!
Don’t know when, don’t know where,
And I can’t even say that I care!
All I know is, the minute you turn
And he’s suddenly there,
There won’t be trumpets!
There are no trumpets!
Who needs trumpets?

It’s debatable whether I’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep until enough of those smug little men with their smug little schemes are defeated. There won’t be trumpets but there’ll be celebrating in many houses, including this one, when that finally happens.

If you want to debate anything in this debatable post, please leave a comment below.

My gratitude is not debatable, so thanks to everyone, including YOU.

Day 2829: Fault

Whose fault is it that I can’t abide bullies who refuse to recognize when they are at fault?

Do you see fault in any of my photos from yesterday?

Whose fault is it that I am blogging rather than sleeping at 3 AM? Is it because some idiot is debating a challenger for the USA presidency later today?

Here‘s Manny Walters with “My Own Fault” for the Sofar Sounds Artist Fund.

Whose fault is it that I am so grateful, here and now ?

Day 2828: It’s amazing how …

It’s amazing how …

• I almost forgot to blog this morning,
• adults can act like children,
• greedy some people can be,
• lies can trump the truth,
• amazingly hard I have to work to make the “T” in “trump” lower case in this list,
• difficult it is to trust others,
• birds of a feather flock together,
• people still hold on to hope for the future,
• in Judaism sins against other humans are more important than sins against God,
• when I first published this post, I forgot to include the day number in the title, and
• I have many amazing images to share with you today.

It’s amazing how many cute animal videos there are on YouTube. Do you have a favorite one ?  Here’s “The Best of The 2020 Funny Animal Videos 2020 — Cutest Animals Ever.”

It’s amazing how many great comments I’ve gotten on this blog over the years.

It’s amazing how many ways there are to thank those who help me create these daily blog posts, including YOU!

Day 2827: Where we headed? I don’t know!

Today’s title is brought to you by this greeting card, which I saw after we headed over to Whole Foods Market to get I-don’t-know how many provisions for the week ahead:

Those women look pretty happy and I am trying to adopt their attitude as we head into the final phases of the USA election campaign season. Where is my country headed? I don’t know!

Where we headed in this blog post? You might know that lots of other photos are coming your way. How many? I don’t know!

I don’t know where that photo montage is heading, here and now, because WordPress seems stuck in a loop uploading so many photos. The last photo uploaded is a Halloween picture, so maybe WordPress is scared! I don’t know, but I can relate.

In the meantime, I’m heading over to YouTube to look for I-don’t-know-what video to insert in this post.

Here‘s Snarky Puppy featuring Jacob Collier and sousaphone player Big Ed Lee from the Soul Rebels performing “Don’t You Know.”

Don’t you know that I was looking forward to seeing Jacob Collier live in May, 2020? When will I be able to see him? I don’t know! I’m just glad I can share his music with you here.

Where we headed? I do know! We’re heading toward gratitude to all who help me head over to WordPress every day with my head, heart, and soul to create this blog, including YOU.

Day 2826: Running from problems

There’s an overwhelming amount of problems these days, so I understand the wish to be running from them.

The problem is that there is no place to run from problems. No matter where you go, there you — and the problems — are.

If you do run, make sure you wear a mask. Otherwise, you’ll be making problems for everyone.

Let’s see if there’s any running from problems in my latest photos.

Before you run, here is “What if we stopped running away from problems” — a Ted talk by Bekhruz Abdurakhmonov, a young world-class fencer from Uzbekistan, about his experience with adolescent depression.

Consider running to the comments section below for a running commentary about this “Running from Problems” post.

Running toward gratitude is never a problem for me, so thanks to Bekhruz Abdurakhmonov, the Daily Bitch Calendar, Michael for the delicious Mexican lasagna, Harley for not running away, solution-oriented groups, and everyone else who helps me face my problems by writing this blog, including YOU!

Day 2825: I’m not smiling

I’m not smiling today because

• the news sucks,
• I’m overwhelmed at work,
• difficult people are being difficult (surprise!),
• the coronavirus epidemic is raging,
• the U.S. President is raging,
• disenfranchised people are raging, apparently to little avail,
• I’m raging,
• injustice seems out of control,
• chaos seems to be winning,
• bureaucracies, including the IRS, are even more impossible to negotiate, and
• many people I love are not smiling, either.

What does the smiling Daily Bitch have to offer us today?

I’m also not smiling because I had NO TIME to walk yesterday, so here are the only other photos I have to offer:

Even watching the Match Game last night with Michael, Aaron, and Harley couldn’t make me smile.

I am now going to search YouTube for something that will make me smile.

I’m still not smiling. Here’s “Making Strangers Happy (Guaranteed to Make You Smile):

Are you smiling? How about this:

Sometimes, you have to move through the tears to get to the smiles.

It makes me smile to express my gratitude to Stephen Colbert, Mustafa Hussain, Herb Alpert, and everyone else who helps me create these daily posts, including YOU.

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Day 2824: Hell

What are your ideas about hell? To me, hell is a place with no

• justice,
• kindness,
• awareness,
• wisdom,
• equality,
• truth,
• closure,
• respite,
• accountability,
• shared responsibility,
• honor,
• freedom,
• fun,
• structure,
• relief from pain,
• control,
• joy,
• peace,
• hope, and
• love.

There are 40 days and 40 nights until the USA election day, and I’m bracing myself for hell, with no end in sight, because of Donald Trump’s hellish words and behaviors

Some of my readers may disagree with what I write, but hell is also a place where no disagreement is allowed. Hell, let’s just agree to disagree, okay? But do I want to hear defenses of Donald Trump these days? Hell, no.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, said a man, and I’m hoping that many scorned women will vote on November 3.

Do you see hell in my latest photos?

Hell is where the adults act like children and the children have to act like adults, and Hell is living near the ocean when climate change deniers are in power.

Here‘s Billie Eilish and her brother FINNEAS performing “All the Good Girls Go to Hell.”

Do I want comments from you, below? Hell, yes.

Hell is a place with no gratitude, so thanks to all who help me create these posts every damn day, including YOU!

Day 2823: Use my words against me

“Use my words against me” is something that wordy U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said in 2016 when he opposed giving a hearing to President Obama’s pick for Supreme Court Justice, the honorable Merrick Garland.

Here are more of Lindsey Graham’s words, which I would like to use against him:

“I want you to use my words against me,” Graham said during a 2016 Senate meeting. “If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.”

Not only is the vacancy occurring — because of the death of the honorable Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — in the last year of a Republican President’s first term, it is occurring mere weeks before the Presidential election. Therefore, many people are using Lindsey Graham’s words against him. But that’s not stopping Lindsey Graham from using more words to declare that he will vote to confirm Donald Trump’s conservative pick to replace liberal icon RBG, even before he’s heard any words about who that person would be.

So I would love to use Lindsey Graham’s words against him, but I don’t know how, since his new words indicate that he is against many words I am for, including honor, honesty, and justice.

Yesterday, when the former words of many other wordy Republican Senators were being used against them to no avail, I decided to go for a walk looking for other words to use against them. Specifically, I was looking for these words:

“Don’t let them win.”

I couldn’t find those words, but I found other words instead.

I am doing my best to use words against many U.S Republican senators , including their own from 2016:

Feel free to use my words against me, including these words of gratitude:

Day 2822: Great things

If you’re like me, you’ve been having trouble finding great things in the news lately.

Together, let’s look for great things in my photos from yesterday.

Did you find great things?  What great things did you find?

Did you notice great things here?

Sometimes we have to look close and hard for great things in order to find them. Sometimes those great things seem broken, but we need to keep looking, feeling, thinking, and acting.

The late great Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said many great things, including these:

“When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”
— From Ginsburg’s 2016 book “My Own Words”

“I went to law school when women were less than 3% of lawyers in the country; today, they are 50%. I never had a woman teacher in college or in law school. The changes have been enormous. And they’ve gone much too far (to be) going back.”
— From a 2019 NPR interview

“I pray that I may be all that (my mother) would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”
— From her 1993 Supreme Court acceptance speech, about her mother

“I see my advocacy as part of an effort to make the equality principle everything the founders would have wanted it to be if they weren’t held back by the society in which they lived and particularly the shame of slavery. I don’t think my efforts would have succeeded had it not been for the women’s movement that was reviving in the United States and more or less all over the world at the time.”
— From a 2013 WNYC interview

“Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.”
— From a 2001 interview with the New York City Bar Association

“One thing that I did feel in law school was that if I flubbed, that I would be bringing down my entire sex. That you weren’t just failing for yourself, but people would say, ‘Well, I did expect it of a woman.’ … I was determined not to leave that impression.”
— From a 2020 Slate interview

“Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say my colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way, but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.”
— From a 2002 NPR interview, on her Supreme Court dissents

“The number of women who have come forward as a result of the #MeToo movement has been astonishing. My hope is not just that it is here to stay, but that it is as effective for the woman who works as a maid in a hotel as it is for Hollywood stars.”
— From a 2018 interview at the National Constitution Center, on the impact of the #MeToo movement

“If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.”
— From a 2014 New Republic interview, on Citizens United v. FEC, which ruled that corporations could fund political speech under the First Amendment

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
— From a 2015 luncheon at Harvard

Who wants to join me in the fight for the things I care about, like the great legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Here‘s a great 2017 interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

Here‘s a great appearance by RBG on the Stephen Colbert show:

Here‘s Stephen Colbert last night about the great loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

I look forward to great things in the comments section, below.

As always, I have great gratitude for all the great things in my life, including YOU.

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Day 2821: Fall

As we approach the fall of 2020, I’m wondering what is going to fall apart and what is going to fall together.

Do you see fall in these recent images?

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Those who forget history are doomed, period, so VOTE this fall.

Here‘s a tribute to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg which falls beautifully into place:

I look forward to reading whatever thoughts and feelings fall into the comments section, below.

Gratitude prevents me from falling every day, so thanks to all who help me create these fall, winter, spring, and summer posts, including YOU.