Just when all seems lost to see the electoral demise of the Trump atrocity, my hopes have been restored. I refer to the news from the all-important Iowa state that Pete Buttigieg has surged ahead in the polls.

Better still, the utter collapse in support for the previous Democrat frontrunners, Biden, Sanders and Warren, all totally unelectable.

Seven months back on April 15^th I wrote the only blog I’ve done on the Democrat primaries and asserted Buttigieg was the stand-out candidate.

To be President requires intelligence, judgement and common sense, plus a basic decency, all characteristics Buttigieg has in bucket-loads.

I should insert an adjective in that sentence, namely, To be President “ideally” requires, for Trump possesses none of those traits.

Let’s hope this momentum builds.

The above is a Stuff website heading.

If there was a prize for the worst sample of stating of the obvious, that heading surely takes the cake.

What was the story about? Does it matter? When it comes to Trump, the only question is how and why could this abomination end up as President? It’s a horror story inducing a deep pessimism about the contemporary world and its future.

The above is a (British) Telegraph heading. Is it a justifiable news story? Yes; specifically who’s the mug who outlaid the $500 million for this doomed dog?

As I’ve repeatedly written, Uber can only survive as a socially useful co-operative. What it can’t do is make a corporate profit. It’s the easiest walk-in-the park short sell situation out there. Not withstanding the founder being the share seller, always a giveaway signal, you may think someone feels differently about Uber’s prospects.  In fact the probable explanation is that the buyer was a short seller when the share price was much higher.  He’d have sold at that high price level with borrowed stock and is now buying in at a lower level so as to replace the shares he borrowed.

The above is a NZ Herald heading over an American news-item.

It recounts the arrest of a black bloke for breaking the law prohibiting food and drink consumption on the transit system. That’s an excellent law about good manners which in a perfect world, shouldn’t be necessary. Alas it is.

Here’s the point. Regardless of the law’s merits. Why the reference to the offender being black?

If he was short, fat, Chinese, besuited or whatever, would any of those descriptive adjectives have been used? Of course not. However, being black allows the opportunity to create a news-item, namely introduce the currently fashionable quiet news day fall-back of racism.

The man was not arrested for being black as a Martian reading this item might reasonably think, thus the reference to his ethnicity was totally gratuitous. But of course, then there’d have been no story.