mallorys_camera | An Accidental President

Timed yesterday’s gym visit perfectly; it started snowing just as I was leaving. So, you know: Go me! 😀

And I must say, it did not snow as much as I expected it to snow. We got—what? Three inches total?

The BIG Meteorological Bad this morning is the temperature, hovering as I type around -10° C. (Centigrade always makes temperatures seem so much more dramatic than Fahrenheit somehow.) It’s bright & sunny this morning, which means there will be some evaporation on the surface of the snow, and that moisture immediately turns into ice.

The ice-covered snow is actually very pretty! A thousand thousand sparkly points of light!

But ice is hazardous.

Shortly, I must go out, de-snow my car before it becomes encased in an icy carapace, & possibly take it for a spin on the (fortunately) well-plowed roads.

Other than that, though, it’s an inside day.

As 45 morphs into 47, I’ve been pondering why outgoing Prez Joe Biden has such abysmally low popularity ratings and seems on track to join James Buchanan as one of the Worst American Presidents E-vah!

I actually thought the Biden administration was pretty effective, given the awful circumstances in place at the time of his election. But note that I distinguish between “Biden” and “the Biden administration.”

Nate Silver calls Biden “an accidental President,” & I think that’s probably true so far as the 2020 election goes. It wouldn’t have been true in 2016, & that’s one more reason to hate Hillary Clinton if you need any more reasons.

Nate Silver cites mishandling of the pandemic, the supply chain backlogs, the bungled Afghanistan withdrawal, the surge of undocumented immigrants at the southern border, inflation, and racial tensions following George Floyd’s death.

But I’m not sure how any of these things could have been done better—with the possible exception of inflation, which does seem to me to have been amplified if not actually instigated by all those economic stimulus packages that the government couldn’t actually afford.

I mean, how do you deal with 1,000 cargo vessels languishing in the Long Beach harbor or massive disruptions in the labor market brought on by public health crises? Who knew the COVID-19 virus had such a talent for mutation that the moment you approved one vaccine, you’d need to approve another?

The George Floyd-related protests did not generate much political traction, particularly after so many of the leaders of the various Black Lives Matter organizations turned out to be grifters who spent donations on tailored suits, parties, and mansions, and people who wanted all lives to matter were widely shamed for their idealism.

I don’t see how the Afghanistan withdrawal could have been handled differently. Retreating armies always leave a shitshow.

And I confidently predict it will prove impossible to slake the tide of immigration. This is a global phenomenon driven by climate change, which is creating droughts & massive food shortages that, in turn, incite massive unrest & civil wars in southernly lying regions. People living there want out—and there are more of them than there are of us, so they will get out. That’s just the way it is. Trump’s second term ain’t gonna change that.

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The main transgressions of the Biden administration, in my insufficiently humble opinion, are two: (1) It deliberately covered up the evidence of Biden’s significant cognitive decline, and (2) It mischaracterized the events of Jan 6, 2021, as an attempted coup.

The Democrats’ Jan 6th messaging just didn’t play well with most Americans who, in retrospect, are inclined to see it as a flash mob that got a bit out of control.

Truthfully? That messaging didn’t play well with me either: Actual sedition requires some level of organization these shitheads did not possess, and much as I loathe Trump, I didn’t think his ranting on that afternoon provided any kind of an organizing principle.

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Anyway, it is what it is; we are where we are.

The Gaza truce is a Good Thing, and if Trump used his influence to push Netanyahu into agreeing to it, then that’s a good thing, too.

Plus, Americans have their TikTok back!

And really, social media is the main thing Americans are interested in.