Clear skies and a bit of fading sunshine this early-evening Tuesday here in California’s Central Valley — today a respite from the rain and cold, which is reportedly set to return tomorrow and then on-and-off rest of the month.
Weathering nature is maybe somewhat easier than doing weathering on life in America.
Today was primary day in New Hampshire, and beyond the asshole T-Rump winning the day and acting shitty about it, there’s some idiocy in the air:
the writers have brought back one of the more interesting characters from the 2023 season https://t.co/BbEQQiY0SK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2024
Still early yet, maybe just so out here on the West Coast, the results off the primary will be filtering in throughout the this early evening. Tally scores can be found all over the InterWebs. Despite how the T-Rump does, the ballot box in November is what counts.
Beyond the showcase politics of a soulless Republican party, Robert Reich at the Guardian this afternoon notes the T-Rump is a well-qualified loser:
The danger in the mainstream media’s awestruck coverage of Trump right now – making a big deal out of his winning the Iowa caucuses, dominating the polls, pushing out all rivals except Haley, and almost surely winning today’s New Hampshire primary – is that it creates a false impression that Trump is unstoppable, all the way through the general election.
But no one should confuse Trump’s performance in the Republican primaries for success in the presidential election.
When Americans actually focus on the presidential election and the stark reality of choosing between Biden and Trump, I expect they will once again choose Biden.
Even if Trump is not yet criminally convicted, I doubt that a majority of Americans will want for their president a man who has 91 criminal charges against him, who has been impeached twice, who has orchestrated an attempted coup, who has profited financially while president, who has stolen top-secret documents and who has been judged to be a rapist.
And the end results could be this:
If someone knows her, please give her a big hug from me. https://t.co/1QZN59HFen
— Jack E. Smith ?? (@7Veritas4) January 23, 2024
In turn creates pay-back (NPR last week):
When former President Donald Trump has a beef with someone, it’s almost inevitable he will call that person a “loser” or a “stone cold loser.”
Now, President Biden is turning one of his predecessor’s favorite insults against him, using his first two campaign speeches of the year to pointedly label Trump a loser.
“Losers are taught to concede when they lose,” Biden said on Monday, noting that Trump violated a basic principle of American democracy by refusing to concede the 2020 election. “And he’s a loser.”
The South Carolina audience broke out into laughter and applause — just as a Pennsylvania crowd did a few days earlier after Biden discussed Trump’s failed efforts to challenge the election results in court.
“The legal path just took Trump back to the truth — that I had won the election, and he was a loser,” said Biden.
In the Democrat side of the New Hampshire primary today, in context, Biden won bigly as a write-in candidate (NBC): ‘With 3 percent of the expected vote counted, Biden has about 73 percent of the vote. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., is in a distant second with about 17 percent and self-help author Marianne Williamson has 4 percent.‘
A nice, start-up campaign jolt for Jolting Joe.
And it’d be insane to complain:
Losing by a mile, or not, yet here we are once again…
(Illustration out front is of a New York state high-school student exhibit: ‘The piece was displayed during student-driven art show at Shenendehowa High School. It consisted of at least 12 identical black-and-white pictures of Donald Trump. There was also a sign above the pictures that read, “Draw on Me.” Using markers from the art classroom, Isome students opted to scribble critical messages and profanities on the pictures‘ — and found here.)