President Obama is about to shuffle off the stage next week as his term finally comes to a close. He has been spending the last weeks of his presidency celebrating himself. This has included giving himself some awards and giving a farewell address that no one bothered to watch. He and his old lady have been popping up on every liberal TV chat show, and sitting with even minor reporters, for farewell interviews. All of which is supposed to be a victory lap, but it feels more like last call at a local dive.
All of this is being done while members of his cult rend their garments and cry out to the void where God used to exist, asking for deliverance from what they imagine comes next. Moonbats from around the nation have been doing what they can to draw attention to their grief over the end of the age of Obama. The last week has been a weird celebration of what will be remembered as an unremarkable time in the nation’s history. In the long run, putting an exotic weirdo in the White House will not seem very significant.
Naturally, the press is feverishly working on their hagiographies about the Obama age, but they are finding the material to be resistant. Obama’s signature achievement is a big bureaucratic nightmare that most people see as a mistake. Everyone in Washington understands ObamaCare has to be removed, root and branch, but the debate is how to do it without hurting the feelings of The Cult. The political class knows they have to do something about the spiraling insurance costs set off by ObamaCare, so it will eventually be repealed.
The rest of the Obama record ranges from the narcissistic to the pointlessly petulant. Normalizing relations with Cuba is probably the only thing he can point to that makes any sense. The Cold War has been over for 25 years. No one is putting missiles in Cuba so there’s no point in maintaining the embargo. The Iran deal promises to be a fiasco in the long run, but for now it is just a big giveaway to his coreligionists in order to spite the Jews. US oil companies also got a big giveaway as they are now allowed to do business with the mullahs. Otherwise, it changes nothing.
Modern presidents get too much credit and too much blame for what happens in their time. To be fair to Obama, he inherited a mess from his predecessor. The Bush Klan blew up the Middle East and left the economy a smoking ruin. You can debate the last part, as that seems like a disaster created by the political class in general, rather than the work of just one party. But, Bush started too unwinnable wars and left them for Obama. The best you can say about the Obama foreign policy, though, is he did not start a third unwinnable war.
Even so, Obama will not go down as the worst president in the post-WW2 era as his legacy is mostly nothing. Like the disco era, this will be a time that people describe with, “You really had to be there to understand why it was important.” Once the people who lived through are gone, no one will have any reason to talk about the first black president, other than on whatever day his cult venerates him. That’s the funny thing about being the first to do anything. Most of the time, being the first is the only thing you did worth mentioning.
The reason Obama was a do-nothing President is he was always just a symbol, rather than a man with his own ideas and agenda. The Cult selected him because he ticked all the boxes, with regards to their fantasy of the perfect black guy. He was black, but you know, not really black. Most important, he confirmed all of their opinions about themselves and their ideology. The Cult of Modern Liberalism never cared much about Obama the man, they only cared for as a symbol on their coat of arms.
Obama came to power with an extraordinary opportunity to pass his agenda. He had a huge majority in the House and a 60-seat majority in the Senate. His first big act was to let Nancy Pelosi pass a massive package of freebies for the Democrat Party supporters. Then he sat by and let them turn health care in to a circus of incompetence. His party’s leaders made clear from the onset that his job was to be their pitchman. They had no interest in what he had to say. His job was to sell their plan to the public.
That’s something the liberal media will skip over as they write their re-imagined histories of the Obama years. The other thing they will skip is the very superficial appeal of Obama. He was always just a black guy. Liberal whites and blacks supported him because he was a black guy, not because of anything he said or proposed to do as President. It’s why no one ever quotes an Obama speech. He was always the smiling black guy on the brochure. His efforts to promote Democratic candidates failed because that narrow charm is never transferable.
All of this belies a greater problem with the Left in the technological age. It is mostly just symbolism and ritual. It has nothing concrete to offer in the digital age because it is an ideology crafted in the industrial age. In 2008, the Left promised an anxious public that this gift to the void where God once stood would usher in the glorious future. Instead it was eight years of a stagnant economy, terrorism and droning speeches from a man who, in the end, had only one thing to say that mattered to anyone.
Good riddance.
WORD.
I do believe however that the DRAMACRAP party DID start a new, unwinnable war:
Their War against The Donald.
I do believe that we should give credit to Obama for not attacking Iran.
The essay left in the comments by al from da north (or close to it) on Javanese royalty sent me off into hours of geopolitical exploration. Arrgh.
https://aeon.co/essays/is-obama-the-first-javanese-president-of-the-us
So what looked like ghetto cool was, in fact, something far deeper than that. What he learned as a kid in Indonesia formed him. What any of us learn at that age is formative.
But now we also know why Momma sent him to live with her parents back in Hawaii – almost America. She chose getting nearer to the throne over her kid. Lots of wimmen betray for less. Too bad BHO couldn’t have been honest, though. That real story is far more interesting than the fairy tale he and Bill Ayers made up.
I too have issues with some of what you wrote Z, but others have fleshed out my thoughts to a T. The economic mess what the culmination of Democrat crap initiate in the 90’s by BJ Clinton and the Dems in the House and Senate and their ways with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They were all in on making a huge mess… and left it like a pile for Bush 43. When he attempted to even touch the pile, he was berated and shouted down. So it festered until it blew… just like many predicted it would. The Republicans are not blameless either, and 43 had his own issues with housing targets and muddled policies.
My big issue is…. EVERY President walks in with issues to deal with. These folks get no sympathy from me cause they run for the office, they can pull up their big-boy pants and do the job. Obama ran knowing full well what laid in front to deal with. His Democrat pals explicitly caused the bank run in California in the summer and IMO they did it intentionally ( not knowing how bad it would become) but the intention was to blow stuff up to ensure McCain would not be elected.
The foreign policy stuff is kinda a cheap shot too… Others have said it, but Obama has set the M.E. on fire and had Egypt not had a coup, it would have already engulfed Israel. Obama didn’t count on General Sisi undoing one of his big gains, which was the Muslim Brotherhood running a major country. That whole episode deserves a lot more attention. The Syria and Libya adventures all tie in…. driving mass movements of peoples and destabilizing the M.E. and Europe… and none of that was by mistake.
Obama will go down in history, I feel, as a complicit agitator in the Middle East and as a active enabler of the destabilization of the post WWII states in the Middle East and the balance(s) of power that was put in place. I do not think history will take Obama’s misadventures lightly and it should not be chalked up to , he walked into a mess. They all do. And they run for the job and they know what they’re getting into…. so.. no slack from me. heh.
“Bush started too unwinnable wars and left them for Obama.”
Neither war was unwinnable. We had in fact won in Iraq. Then he handed it over to Paul Bremer and blew the victory all to hell. Afghanistan was also winnable, but not with the policies under which it was attempted.
As for lazy, stupid, ignorant, incompetent yet mouthy Obama; He is precisely the sort of man for which the “N-Word” was invented.
Yes, Good riddance.
This may be your most insightful, well written piece ever. As they say in Massachusetts, “wicked Pissah”.
So I was at PT today and the therapist said did you watch the president’s farewell address ?
” No, when I’m done I don’t wait to watch the toilet flush ” .
And what was the therapists’ response? Shock? Agreement? The rest of the story please!
‘Fart in Church’ level disapproval.
Followed by “Oh John!” I’m afraid they’re getting used to me. I’m in very blue Massachusetts, I had to change pubs after they banned talking against Barry in the run up to the election.
A relative of mine is dating a guy who works for a big-time Dem who is very likely to lose his position in the next couple of years. She brings him to family get togethers and we try to refrain from talking about politics, but a couple of the guys just can’t help but wear MAGA hats and leave copies of The Art of the Deal laying around. It doesn’t help that I have a shrine to Reagan near the entryway (literally). This guy just keeps looking less and less enthusiastic every time I see him. Reality is setting in slowly. You read this stuff about the people directly involved with the administration and how very few have job prospects. They used to be able to jump onto the conveyor belt that goes by various govt departments, the press, or some lobbying group, but the govt people are worried about freezes, the press is dying, there are fewer state political jobs for Dems, and the lobbying groups are talking to the hand. (The CNN guy today was talking to the finger).
When I sit in traffic now and look at those old Obama/Biden bumper stickers, or even the few Hillary stickers that are out there my blood pressure no longer goes up. I just sit there and sigh and smile.
Life is good.
The war Bambi left to us is the Muslim invasion of Europe and the US. 75% of the so-called refugees are males of military age. That is an army of occupation.
How ’bout a hundredd thimbs up to all. I don’t think I’ve ever been so anxious for January 20 to get here and I’ve been around for a long time, lived through some punky presidents – Carter comes to mind. On a serious note I do fear for Trump and I pray he can survive this. The ‘other side’ is just nuts.
Hundred thumbs up – hmmmm – just had cataract surgery – getting used to being able to see.
I live in a university town. I’ll tell you right now. This is better than Reagan.
That’s a high bar, too. The Reagan freak out on my college campus in 1980 was a sight to behold. The memory warms the cockles of my heart to this day, but it also gives me with a rather low opinion of the “educated elites” of this country.
Via Instapundit, here’s another theory of the malignant mulatto’s course of action in the WH: https://aeon.co/essays/is-obama-the-first-javanese-president-of-the-us?utm_term=0_411a82e59d-ab285810d5-68641869&utm_content=buffer697c6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Makes at least as much sense as many of the other theories and doesn’t contradict the idea that he’s just a frontman. In fact it illustrates why he’d be the perfect front man. Spoiler: A Javanese king expects things to be handled in background without any effort on his part. Why I don’t know.
The biggest weakness in this piece is that for the Javanese King to be serene and appear unruffled at all times means SOMEBODY is handling everything. It seems against human nature that whomever is doing all the heavy lifting is fine with not being the king himself. Maybe that’s just Western bias but I’m skeptical.
That Javanese approach of just serenely reigning above it all sounds like what GWB was doing. Barky Owebwana was just choomed out much of the time.
Ever hear of Valerie Jarrett?
It is my understanding that no one in Washington particularly likes the man (maybe that says something positive abut him) as he had no time to bother listening to anyone because he knew more about everything than anyone. But he did do what he could to welcome to this country as many possible dangerous immigrants (legal and illegal) set back race relations, hamper the economy with a mountain of regulations and wasted nearly 100 million dollars on lavish vacation for himself and his family. And NO major accomplishment. Not even a failed presidency as he was not that effectual. Be gone!!
The saddest part is that the opinion polls indicate that Obama would have won a third term if he had been able to run.
Get ready for the sequel in 2020:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/unprecedented-move-sen-cory-booker-testify-jeff-sessions/story?id=44679221
Your assessment of the Left’s obsession with make-them-feel-good symbols is spot-on.
But I disagree with your idea that Obama has not had much of an impact in the Middle East. The “Arab Spring” was completely his baby — and we will be suffering the repercussions of that for a long time to come. Obama’s friends had a big hand in destabilizing Egypt
(see http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2011/01/29/did-muslim-brotherhood-learn-day-of-rage-egypt-protest-tactics-from-obama-allies-bill-ayers-and-code-pink/)
and in making Gaza even more hateful and violent than it already was
(see http://nation.foxnews.com/gaza-flotilla-raid/2010/06/01/obama-friends-bill-ayers-code-pink-top-activists-behind-gaza-flotilla).
Obama’s recent backstabbing of Israel at the U.N. will have appalling effects; thank God that at least Israel has Netanyahu at the helm, since that’s the only thing that may save them at this point.
And have you forgotten Benghazi? First, Obama knocked out Qaddafi, who at least had been previously brought to heel vis-à-vis the U.S. Then, after totally destabilizing the country, Obama started running weapons out of Benghazi, via Turkey, to groups in Syria, some of which later morphed into ISIS.
I only WISH Obama had been a do-nothing president as you say. In reality, he has done tremendous damage, and brought a potential WW III much closer.
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Back in the 1950s one of the popular daytime television shows was “Queen For a Day”. That may be how Owebwana is remembered.He indulged and promoted the sexually bizarre, and according to rumor may have personified it as well.
With is origin and his actual characteristics as uncertain as his “accomplishments”, he will remain a shadowy villain straight from a horror movie, an object of terror, ultimately to vanish back into the jungle, leaving behind only a sense of dread. He will be recorded as America’s Last Black President.
I think he will be remembered, though for not the reasons that the Left wishes. I think his time will be seen eventually as a case study where a man fills the world’s most important job (mostly with himself, though maybe there wasn’t much else to offer) but the press — in the fashion of emperor’s new clothes — wouldn’t see what he was nor did they want to reveal how little he could do. That he was ineffectual is pretty much apparent but he mirrors our shallow time, whereby celebrity pretence was regarded as a glowing achievement by a sycophantic media. So Obama will be remembered as the person who couldn’t do much but who helped drive a simpering, fawning media to the brink of self-destruction.
For the smartest person in the room he was unable to see what was going on both near at hand and further away.
Of course, he won’t go away after this. That would be too much to ask. He will be a regular fixture on the news ‘analysis’ programs desperate to ask what a ‘real president’ would do, give more endless speeches for even more money and I fully expect, prime his wife to be the first black woman president so he can continue to grin while pulling vague levers of power from behind the curtain.
Obama successfully seeded middle America with hundreds of islamic enclaves. Somalis, Syrians, zillions of various moslem “refugees” from the war zones: none of these communities will assimilate into the great American middle-class. All of them will form insular moslem outposts. Religion trumps all other loyalties. Moslems are mandated to spread the virus through stealth and deception when powerless, force and intimidation when they have the power to use them. For the first time in American history we have a permanent islamic faction who will now and always be agitating for greater moslem influence in law and culture. This is treason. We will be paying the dues in blood for generations to come.
JWM
The fiction is that economic opportunists and radical jihadists have been labeled as “war refugees”. What a load of crap.
It also helps explain why we have had eight years of non-stop war. Bush’s strategy was”take it to them on their turf, not ours”, and the “democracy building” trope. Obama’s unspoken strategy has been to keep the wars percolating so the “war refugees”, (almost always young men, not the women, children, and old people, which is the traditional war refugee population), could continue to be infiltrated into the West.
Thank you, JWM, for voicing what so many ignore or deny. We are leaving our children an unstable and dangerous America….
I don’t know a good way to solve this problem, but CLOSING the damn mosques that are provably promoting violent jihad would be a good first step. Something like 80% of American mosques receive Saudi funding and promote Wahhabism. Shut ’em down! Free speech and freedom of religion are one thing, but promoting the violent overthrow of the United States is prosecutable treason. Steven Emerson’s investigation of American mosques came out 13 years ago.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Jihad-Terrorists-Living-Among/dp/0743234359
What’s been done about the problem since then? Nothing that I know of.
Also, there are at least 22 (I’ve seen counts as high as 35) Islamist terrorist training camps scattered around the U.S. Why are these allowed to operate?
http://www.westernjournalism.com/22-islamic-terrorist-camps-us/
jwm, Dutch, Kathy: I agree 100%. I’m praying Trump will stop this influx permanently. In the meantime, it would be nice if the FBI would actually lock up the jihadists it identifies before they commit their murders. (“before” should be in italics, but I don’t see a way to do it).
And then this “clown” will invite them to Canada as refugees, paid for by a bullshit carbon tax:
https://youtu.be/XFahG31aobQ
Trump will have to build a northern border wall as soon as the southern wall is complete.
Good riddance, but the best moment will be when the reality hits the horde of regime sycophants and it discovers not just are they out of a job but they are unemployable. After what their ideology and agenda has done to so much of this country, it will be just desserts. Those lucrative government paychecks are fake employment wages outside the beltway. Maybe they will get a stark first hand look at the consequences their policies have created. $8 dollars an hour, having to choose between gas to get to work in your beater with bald tires and no heat in a February snow storm, or a dozen boxes of mac and cheese, a jug of peanut butter, and the cheapest white bread to get through the week.
If only that was true. Eric Holder should have been disbarred for his disgusting time as Top Cop of the USA. And to see the questions put to Sen. Sessions about upholding the rule of law for “All Americans” is pathetic. Now they, the libtards care about the Constitution? Hardly! It is just a convenient tool to beat people up with. Holder now gets his pay from a CA law firm to fight President Trump. So these clowns don’t really lose. At least the “well connected” ones. But they are still traitorous scum.
“He was always the smiling black guy on the brochure.” Sort of like the light-skinned black late middle-aged couple on the Blue Cross/Blue Shield brochures for Medicare supplemental policies. I have never seen this couple anywhere. Who are they? They must make a fortune doing these ads;-)
WW1 gave us communism, Vietnam gave birth to their heirs radicals on the left and Iraq put them in the Oval office. In all three cases the left (in various incarnations) won the moral argument. Trump must win that argument and everything else like the economy follows naturally .
The rest is just grifters riding a government gravvy train fueled by debt.
Same thing for Europe , it is not enough to identify problems but a moral argument must be made to counter the moustacchio from Austria . Trump might just be the catalyst bcs indigenous european solutions are to put it mildly unpalatable
“President Obama is about to shuffle off the stage next week as his term finally comes to a close. He has been spending the last weeks of his presidency celebrating himself.”
Didn’t he pretty much spend all of his public career celebrating himself?
“All of this is being done while members of his cult rend their garments and cry out to the void where God used to exist, asking for deliverance from what they imagine comes next. ”
Right now it looks like they’ve been completely losing their minds; I remember all the hullabaloo when Bush II was in office and unless my memory is playing tricks on me, it seems to have been much more subdued in comparison with the total meltdown they’re having right now. Maybe it was the lack of social media at the time.
“The last week has been a weird celebration of what will be remembered as an unremarkable time in the nation’s history. In the long run, putting an exotic weirdo in the White House will not seem very significant.”
Obama personally won’t be important in the grand scheme of history but I do think that there will be some significance to his presidency historically speaking. It really feels like it marked a high point in the Cultural Revolution that has been going on the last two generations. I’ll probably have to eat my words sooner or later but it may not be possible for the left to go much farther than they have with Obama; black president, gay marriage, tranny bathrooms, and now Piss Russia.
“No one is putting missiles in Cuba so there’s no point in maintaining the embargo.”
He even messed this up; all he had to do was avoid giving Castro a victory lap. And what does he do? Drops the embargo a few months short of Castro kicking the bucket.
“The Iran deal promises to be a fiasco in the long run, but for now it is just a big giveaway to his coreligionists in order to spite the Jews. US oil companies also got a big giveaway as they are now allowed to do business with the mullahs. Otherwise, it changes nothing.”
Jeffrey Goldberg and Tom Friedman aside, he’ll probably be hit harder in a way that matters to him by the whole UN vote issue. It might basically have him locked out from the Golf Club he wanted to join. I figure that he’ll spend his post-Presidency as super-Jimmy Carter, probably with the same Middle Eastern funding.
“The best you can say about the Obama foreign policy, though, is he did not start a third unwinnable war.”
Obama seemed to be more of a fan of quiet killing by drone rather than an old fashioned military campaign. On the other hand, his entire life is devoted to waging war politically and domestically. Look at the last couple weeks; sanctions on Russia, UN vote on Israel, etc., he was more than willing to set the stage for something that could blow up the way his red line on Syria did outside of the country mainly to get domestic advantage or personal satisfaction in the country.
“Even so, Obama will not go down as the worst president in the post-WW2 era as his legacy is mostly nothing. ”
I agree that his legacy will amount to basically nothing tangible but somehow I think that when Jimmy Carter turns on the TV and sees what Barry has been up to, he breathes a sigh of relief about his own historical legacy as America’s worst modern President.
Just a big giveaway? How exactly is un-freezing the Iranians own money a giveaway?
I don’t even know why they are sanctions on them in the first place, what did they do?
And no, they don’t have a nuclear weapons program:
The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare with Gareth Porter
I’m afraid they are bad the same way Saddam had WMDs, don’t fall for it.
When a major policy plank of a country’s leadership is “death to America”, and many of the leaders appear to follow an apocalyptic approach to the world, then it is prudent to be very careful about all of it.
You posted the Gareth Porter link before and it bombed. Once, I can understand, twice and I start to think you’re a troll or an Iranian agent.
Definitely a troll, but i do not consider unfreezing assets a gift, not per se.
You mean like Trump is a Russian agent?
Long closely associated with the New Left, a practitioner of activist journalism. A lifetime as an Anti-American.
Fat chance, guest. They won’t have nuke the same way the NoKos don’t have nukes.
They’ve already bought some of the old Soviet nuclear arsenal from Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, years ago.
Not a peep from Clinton or Bush administrations- why not?
Probably. But why didn’t you include the Obama admin (the last 8 years)?
I don’t buy it. The US and Russians developed nukes in record time but the Iranians (and NorKo’s) have had decades “developing” their nuclear capabilities yet don’t have them yet? Give me a break!
I don’t know what game is being played here but when these bad guys have help from the likes of France, the Pakistani’s, Russia, China, etc. on nuclear technology, bombs, delivery systems, just how can these people not have what they say they are seeking. I have been hearing about their programs since the ’70’s. And people want us to believe they don’t have anything YET? BS!
I hope nobody is counting on an end to the lunacy once the malignant mulatto is gone. My take on the situation is that the Cloud was counting on Hillary as another front person to keep the complex Media-DCN-Fed Gov-NGO cyclic grift, however unsustainable in the long run, going in the short run.
Since this continuity looks to be interrupted (articles have already surfaced that displaced Hillary Campaign and Obama WH staffers job prospects are bleak), look for the lunacy to be intensified as the Collective Cloud tries to restore what they see as the proper world order (Ancien R`egime_?) via their magic media machinations (which worked well for the past 9+ years). When those fail, they’ll be trying something else – their ‘Studies Majors’ progeny have to get an upper-middle class income somewhere. THAT’s when it will get really, really interesting.
Obama had one speech, with different phrases from “Things to say in a speech,” and “folks” thrown in now and then so we would know he was really one of us.
Way back when he got his Nobel, I read his acceptance speech. I was amazed at the general incoherence. He had one section where he does the old false dichotomy routine so popular with liberal politicians. They create two straw men and then reject them in favor of their solution, casting themselves as the middle option. In Obama’s speech, he spent a few lines describing two world views, then said he rejected both and then, changed the subject. I found some video of it and it was clear that the point was not to argue in favor of anything, but to let the audience join Obama in shaking his fist at the heavens.
It’s when I started thinking of Obama as a sort of tribal shaman. The words of his speeches were never important. It was the performance. He was the witch doctor doing the crazy dance, making strange sounds, while the audience is driven to a frenzy of emotion. Progressivism is more like kabbalah or the ancient Greek mystery cults.
I would point out that looking at an English translation of any and all of Adolf’s rousing speeches, one is left incredulous at the poverty of content. It is as if someone has substituted a false translation to parody Hitlerism. It’s sort of like opera, I like it better in any language I do not understand.
Obama, as you have pointed out, was a more sophisticated dissembler. Adolf liked to come right through your front door, Barry is a back door guy. But that is characteristic of the left.
Tocqueville–The parent of all illusion is enthusiasm.
Barry is a back door guy. Said Reggie Love.
I would bet money that “reach around” reggie was the top in that relationship.
i guess you had to be there in person at one of hitler’s speeches to “feel” the power, etc. after hearing what a powerful piece of propaganda “Triumph of the Will” was I watched it…meh.
A symbol only. The Dem’s leadership’s lawn jockey.
perfect.
In general I agree with your summary that Obama was a “Dindu Nuffin” president who was only elected because he was a nice looking black man. You know, tall, thin, not too black, trimmed short hair style (nothing threatening), and he wore a suit well. And then all the fawning over his supposed “speaking” ability. I for one, could speak circles around this clown sans teleprompter, extemporaneously and put him to shame. He was a complete put-on and I am disgusted by fellow Americans who are so stupid that they think with their asses rather than their God given brains.
But the disagreement I have with your post is you seem to just glide over his presidency as if it was of little import to this country and the world. We get back to the Bush Derangement Syndrome despite eight (8) years of office. The man was not American and nothing he did was to help America or it’s people. Everything he did was to hurt America, at home and abroad.
The ME is a mess made worse by him and Clinton and Kerry. Just compare the talent, the qualifications of the people that Trump is picking vs. the career politico’s and academics in the Obozo Administration. The contrast is stark. We have gone from a “contained” adversary to what is now a worldwide scourge conducting terror whenever and wherever it likes.
When you and others talk about the “bad hand” he, Obama, inherited from Bush, well, look at what Trump is inheriting from Obozo! Wildfires everywhere! And the main threats are right in our midst planted by an anti-American organization (the Muslim Brotherhood) given free access a la Barack Hussein Obama a.k.a Barry Soetero.
And while he is leaving, his work is left behind. The thousands of like minded hires that infest our cities, counties, states and national functions passing laws, regulations, and conducting justice with the mind of the Borg hive. You will be assimilated … The Caliphate. So while, it is easy to think of Obama as a “Dindu Nuffin” president, it is false because he did exactly what he was put in to do .. fundamentally transform America. And the antics and tantrums we are witnessing from the Left are the refusal to let go the gains “they” have achieved during the last eight years.
Oh, they were so close to completing the plan with a Hillary win. But thank God there was a bit of a reprieve. The fight continues. I would suggest some posts regarding the actual situation on the ground and the fight as it is happening (as in now during the confirmation heartings) and in the future. Forget Bush. Trump isn’t president yet and already he has done more in two months for Americans than Obama did in eight years! To that, I say “Good Riddance.”
LetsPlay – “The man was not American and nothing he did was to help America or it’s people. Everything he did was to hurt America, at home and abroad.” Amen, you are exactly correct.
And not to pile on here but “Z” states, “The reason Obama was a do-nothing President is he was always just a symbol, rather than a man with his own ideas and agenda.” I have to very respectfully disagree with that. Obama always had an agenda, for the U.S. and the world, and that was (and remains) the islamification of the globe.
Aristotle, I think, “Give me the boy until he is seven, and I will show you the man.” Well where was this boy until he was age 10 or so? Very shortly after birth in Hawaii (maybe, who cares anyway) our 44th was in Indonesia, going to islamic schools, realizing that his mother’s religion was not for him, listening to the islamic call to prayer and falling in love with it, etc. Been pursuing his dream ever since.
There’s a lot of work to be done.
Anyone who works in a corporate environment, where the attributes and faults of the people directly above you and directly reporting to you largely determine your career fate and whether or not you like your work, will easily understand how corrosive an incompetent or angry and destructive person in leadership can be. Politics does not seem to have the “bottom line” financial checks and balances that a business environment does. When the P & L hits the fan, the housecleaning begins. Politicians seem to excel at doubling down on failure without blinking an eye. I am hoping that a business style accountability takes hold quickly in the fever swamp of DC.
obama’s great service was to radicalize the core of American citizenry to act in a wildly unpredictable fashion. this is no small thing. Hillary was the killing phase of the left’s lifecycle…but it was prevented and now the counter reaction will leave an overall stronger country. obama was only a symptom, Trunp is the actual cure for the root “disease”.
“Trump is the actual cure for the root ‘disease’.”
PART of the cure. The real cure has to come from Americans themselves. Self-government takes commitment and dedication. Do enough of us still have that?
But it’s true that at least Trump gives us some breathing room. We’d all better get real serious, real quick, in taking advantage of this time. If We the People don’t turn things around in 4 years, we’re sunk.
Consider the “bad hand” GWB inherited from Billary, political, social, economic, and geopolitical. That includes Somalia and America’s commitment to African stability, and the legacy of “Monica’s War, and other barely addressed episodes of terrorism, and our intervention into ex-Yugoslavia.
GWB’s biggest mistake was his refusal to defend himself from political attacks, or to defend his programs or supporters. Using some hare-brained doctrine about protecting the grandeur of the Presidency, he sacrificed that grandeur. He tried to reign instead of govern, which would have been suitable for a figurehead monarch. Strange, but if we recon Washington as America’s first George, GWB works out as our George III.
Bush may have wimped out faced with hostile press and Congress, but nothing compared to McCain and Romney who pretty much threw their elections.
Don’t forget that bottom dweller Lindsey “panty waist” Graham.
McCain stands up against Republicans and NEVER EVEN TRIED to stand up against 0bama when he was running “against” him.
or maybe he was a dumb ass all along, and got in way over his head?
Adding $10 trillion to the national debt isn’t an insignificant feat.
Actually, it was “par for the course” for our golfer-in-chief.
Who says no one quotes Obama speeches?
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” will be quoted to illustrate why no one believes political promises for years to come.
Agree. This will go right up there with, ” Read my lips. No new taxes.”
Everything seems to forget it was the tax lie:
Doctor
Plan
Decrease price
TAX
He said it WASN’T a tax – the Supreme Court said it IS A TAX.
Question – when you say “Bush started too unwinnable wars and left them for Obama” – did you mean as that as in “extremely” unwinnable or was that a typo for “two”??
In all fairness to President Obama, I would challenge you to argue how any candidate, either Republican or Democrat, could have possibly undone the damage left behind by the Bush administration.
While I would agree President Obama certainly didn’t do himself any favors with his agenda and team he put together – who could have really done a better job? Given the circumstances he faced from a destabilized middle-east to a global financial collapse the same year he took office. Even if the poor man had come up with a good idea (which it seems he never really did) I seriously doubt anyone on the opposition would have ever given him a chance out of spite.
To the point of Obamacare (at least as I understand it) you might argue that is was a complete disaster in its own right, and that President lied to the American public about “if you like your policy, you can keep your policy”. But Obamacare certainly didn’t cause people to loose their jobs or their homes when companies moved to Mexico or China, nor did it contribute to the spread of global terrorism or create the opportunity for the creation of ISIS.
While I never liked President Obama, even the most experienced captain and best trained crew would have had no chance after the Titanic hit the iceberg. In the same way, the US economy and the middle east mess was a Bush iceberg destined to sink anyone who had the misfortune of taking the helm and attempting to navigate those political waters.
You can hang Iraq on Bush. Afghanistan is a tougher call as something had to be done. Symbolism is important. To be accurate, Bush started one foolish war and one justifiable one. His failure in Afghanistan was in not getting out as soon as the point was made. That allowed Obama to turn Afghanistan into a fiasco.
Obama had a free hand for two years and he squandered it. There’s no excusing it. The claims that he was stymied by the GOP are nonsense. Even after 2010, guys like Boehner and Ryan were begging to cut a deal with the guy. Obama was just too much of a dick and too lazy to make it work.
Pretty much the only argument in favor of Obama is to wildly overestimate the incompetence of his predecessor. That’s not much of a case.
I have to agree with you. He certainly was the worst possible man at the worst possible time and for all the wrong reasons. I hope that for America, and Europe, Mr. Trump can turn things around.
The last three US presidents will be remembered as the post-Cold War presidents. Both parties were built for a bygone era and the result was mismanagement for 25 years. Trump could very well be a disaster, but I suspect he ushers in a great reconfiguration of the political class.
Something similar is going on in Europe. You guys continue to labor under a system and mental framework built for a world that no longer exists.
“ushers in a great reconfiguration” <= this is why they fear him. Trump is making tons of moves simultaneously. he is totally inside their OODA loop. the hive has to take time to react to every individual action and can never get ahead of Trump. in fact most of the time they have no idea of what he is up to, and fall into a passive role of "waiting".
The fascinating thing about Trump so far is his self-awareness. He seems to have a fairly honest view of how these people see him. He is not interested in courting favor with them, but he is not Nixon either. Tricky Dick knew the Washington elite hated him, but he never really understood why and he seemed to think he could address it. That led to very serious errors of judgement. Trump, so far, seems to know why these people hate him and he is using it to his advantage.
It also helps that so many in the media appear to have lost their marbles. They keep falling for these hoaxes and media traps.
If you just witnessed his first post-election press conference, your point about his understanding that these people hating him and using it to his full advantage was on full view.
When was the last time you saw the President (okay, President elect, but he’s already MY President) tell the American people directly that he had a secret meeting with American Intelligence Officials that not even his own closest inner circle was aware of, and the details of that meeting were immediately leaked thereafter? What kind of cajones do you have to have to take on your own CIA and FBI and NSA? Trump cajones, that’s what.
There will be no sacred cows in the Trump administration, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
It’s the old game of feeding different info to different people and seeing what surfaces. The source can then be identified. He is playing whack-a-mole and these guys don’t seem to know it. They think they still have the upper hand.
“…Tricky Dick knew the Washington elite hated him, but he never really understood why and he seemed to think he could address it. That led to very serious errors of judgement. Trump, so far, seems to know why these people hate him and he is using it to his advantage…”
This is really insightful and packages up nicely a lot of history. Pre-history in Trumps case.
Want to take wagers anyone, this era we are entering with the movement of rejection of the status quo, is a kind of a real politicks version of Martin Luther’s reformation and the reformation rolled into one in regards it’s effect on future history? The dirt people against the clouds schism?
Just so it is clear I’m not trying to blow smoke up anyones butt, I believe if you look at the picture from far away, it couldn’t happen another way, and by saying that what is happening is a result of unintended consequences of the clouds elitist and statist intention to shape the western hemisphere in their own vision. That is some awful stuff right there. Because at the end of the day, who with an ounce of dignity and self determination could tolerate the leftists for much longer, never mind have to bend a knee to their self serving insidious cultural and economic fantasies?
I mean really, they suck. Everything they touch turns into a landfill wasteland.
But Obama, you got to hand it to him, whatever he was to the PTB, it may be that he was the best thing that ever happened to this country. He and his ilk woke a lot of people up, it precipitated things such as the rebirth of Nationalism, the Alt-Right, moved people to personally arm themselves on a truly unprecedented scale, created a movement that defied every preconceived notion of the transfer of power from one faction of the status quo to the ones anointed as the next deserving tyrants, as it was their radicalism and cultural marxism that they doubled down on and shoved up the butt of our society was their undoing. It was Trump, or I think it would have been an armed very violent rebellion against the clouds.
They certainly acted, in fact still act, like they own the world and behave as if they are accorded unique privilege to do so. That disenfranchised better than half of the population, talking 150 million souls. To think those souls where going to just submit in totality to this regime of cultural marxism is hubris on a biblical scale if you ask me.
They still behave like the rest of us don’t exist in the equation, that we are a doormat people. It is insanity in action right before our eyes. It is still being fed and backed by the uber rich factions such as George Soros’s kind.
It makes me laugh because of how ridiculously irrelevant all that “power” and influence has become, if for no other reason but us dirt people held the moral high ground, we never fell for the traps they set, even when they couldn’t bait us dirt people into behaving as the bitter clinging racist knuckle dragging domestic terrorists they pejoratively painted us as by creating every false flag crisis as a means their cunning minds and money could buy.
All we had to do was turn our backs on them and they became not just irrelevant to us, they where exposed as illegitimate, politically, culturally, they became everything they projected on us dirt people. It really bit them in the arse. They are like their symbolic mulato cultural diversity savior, a cargo cult without clothes.
Sucks to be them.
God help me! I love this blog! It soothes my heart and soul in ways that I cannot express. Z Man, I cannot thank you enough. Her Horst, you give me faith in my origins. Danke Schon mein Herr. My Grandmother would adore you.
Yes – Afghanistan should never have been anything more than a grand raid in the style of the British Expedition to Abyssinia in 1868. As soon as the Taliban was beaten and Al Quada chased out, they should have issued a stern warning and headed home. Instead, they started unloading heavy equipment – that’s when I realized how lost the Neo-Cons were.
I always thought Obama had everything backwards when he called Afghanistan the “good war”. Nation-building there is absolutely hopeless. Once we had Iraq, we may as well have stayed for a while – more hope of being civilized and a far more strategic space.
I have to enter an objection to the “two wars” meme, popularized by press and politicians.During the turmoil of 1939-1945, we never considered the fighting in North Africa and Italy to be one war, and the fighting in Northern Europe against Germany to be another. Nor against Japan. They were regarded as “different theaters” or “campaigns”, instead of separate wars. We would have been better off, militarily and politically had we recognized that both the Iraq and Afghan theaters were campaigns in the same war against Militant Islam.
Karl, this is one eight year occasion where you had to live in the middle of it to truly comprehend the insanity going around. The domestic US media has spun a fantasy world that is utterly insane. They have built this crazy facade from so many of the prejudices and guilts of American culture. That half of our countrymen buy into all of this makes it very difficult to deal with. Think of Trump as a cry from the wilderness from the other half of us.
Just as I find it hard to truly understand how Frau Merkel and the German people are navigating through such a strange and hard-to-comprehend set of circumstances, I just assume that there is a dimension to it that those of us on the outside looking in just can’t see. I think in the case of Obama, it is a similar difficulty for those not living in the middle of it.
@ Dutch – It’s always harder to see things from the inside looking out, than from the outside looking in. For Americans who have had to live under President Obama, we find it hard to understand what was going on or fully appreciate the impact to the average American in his/her daily life. In that same way, it must be confusing for Americans to understand what’s going on over here and why. But at the end of the day, I think we’re all wondering the same thing, just from different sides of the same ocean.
People generally have a subjective view of the world around them, not an objective one. Louts and criminals will indulge those subjective interpretations for their own ends. Powerful forces have been using and exploiting people’s subjective attitudes for a long time now. Meanwhile, those largely false interpretations of human nature and the way the world actually works have been given support and free rein, and taken to ridiculous extremes. Add the “madness of the crowd” and people’s need to belong to something, and a very strange cultural brew is made. Once one understands this, the blinders are peeled away and one can marvel at humanity’s capacity for self deception. Not to go all Godwin and bring up clichés, but one who can see all of this has no doubt how an intelligent and capable German population could fall under the spell of the Nazis.
Just to be clear, this cultural self-deception has been going on for years; BHO and HRC are part of the problem. Trump’s election is a stab at an antidote to all of this. His election is a big move in trying to get back to a “normal” cultural set of circumstances. Extreme times call for extreme measures.
The Left are the ones going all Godwin this time around. They really do feel it to the core of their beings. I have learned that they are the masters at projection. They are afraid of Trump because they know what their side would do, given a strong President that did what he thought was the thing to do, and not giving a rat’s back side about what his enemies thought of him. Obama cultivated the hate of his opponents, but was too weak to act overtly to defy them. Instead it was all of the back-door actions that avoided any direct accountability on Obama’s part. We are probably lucky that things went that way. An unfettered and effective hard Lefty in the Presidency would have been a much worse thing than what we have had.
“Just to be clear, this cultural self-deception has been going on for years”
I think that it had its start when the concept of “political correctness” reared its ugly head.
Why “political”?? Why weren’t we more concerned about moral correctness or ethical correctness? Perhaps because much of the country had lost its concept of right and wrong. If it feels good, do it. My opinion is just as good as anyone’s. I have a right to do as I wish. It’s not fair. Equal rights means equality of outcome. I have a right to not be offended. I have a right to (insert what ever you desire)
On and on and on……
it is surreal in the extreme. they are steadily escalate their displays of grief. it wouldn’t be too difficult (for a master persuader) to tip them into mass action; ideally mass suicide.
It is not just surreal, It is extremely dangerous. Obama still has more than a week to hit the detonator, and the deep state has all their heavily armed minions from the DEA, FDA, DOE, Dept of health, etc all armed to the teeth for some reason – remember Obama’s desire for a Federal militia equal to the regular armed forces? Well they’re there and Trump threatens their paychecks.
Surviving the next week and the Inauguration may be a bit dicey.
Don’t be fooled. It isn’t the government pencil pushers who are going to be the “Fed Militia” it will be the BLM and illegal ME immigrants that Barry has been squirreling away in unknown parts of the USofA. They, once armed with the tools he has purchased through these depts’, will have the hate America/whitey agenda to carry out.
Obamacare is a disaster. You’ve overlooked all those people that were cut to part time, to escape the mandate. You’ve also overlooked all the insurance companies that have bailed on the state exchanges. I work for a small company. We’ve had new insurance every year since Obamacare passed, as companies bail on the Oregon market. They all have deductibles over $5k, so they are a form of catastrophic insurance.
Since you say Obama couldn’t have done anything about companies leaving, please explain why Trump has been able to reverse that before he even takes office. All Obama had to do was say there will be consequences if you relocate. He just didn’t give a damn
The economic mess he “inherited” was accurately politician-inflicted. To say any one man “saved” the economy is precisely what one would expect to hear at the altar of Obama. It must be tiring to lift such heavy gods every four years.
He was driven by resentment and did a lot of idiotic and very harmful things based on his contempt for America, his love of Islam and his foolish redistributive/retributive “ideology.” The one good thing he did was to rouse the populist American giant. He oversaw the transformation of the Democrat Party from the “We’ll give you stuff in exchange for your vote” party to the “Boys can pee in the girls’ bathroom party,” while the Republicans morphed from the “Small government, i.e., we won’t give you anything for your vote” party to the Make America Great Again party.
He thought he was going to bring about a sea change the way Reagan did. He did, but it wasn’t the change he had in mind.
You make a lot of good points but a few I will disagree with. You say Obama did not start any unwinnable wars. How did we win in Libya or Syria? Libya has led to north Africa becoming completely destabilized. Nothing was won by Obama’s bombing campaign that led to the overthrow of Gaddafi. It added to the migrant crisis in Europe.
The same is true of Obama giving material support to moderate rebels in Syria that in all reality led to the rise of ISIS as a well armed and funded power. Syria has not been won in any way by Obama. Instead the Russians walked into that failure and are now beating back radical Islam. That of course embarrasses Obama and has led to more tensions in eastern Europe and today’s “Cold War” atmosphere.
Last you say this is not a historic time. You are right that Obama is a lame duck and doesn’t matter, but are wrong about the times. The Deep State is stepping out of the shadows to take a stand against a coming change they are afraid of. Top leaders in the CIA, FBI, and NSA are making themselves seen in attempt to derail a Trump administration before it starts. It is a last ditch attempt at a coup. They are failing and I call them out on it in http://www.michaelfmartin.com/senate-intel-briefing-a-clown-show-designed-to-blame-russia-for-everything-from-trump-to-pizzagate/
As I said, a lot of good points, a few I disagree with.
I’m old fashioned in that I still think of a war as troops on the ground fighting other troops on the ground. The whole “war on concepts” thing just does not work for me. That said, I guess you can hang North Africa and Syria on Obama, but it’s not an easy case. The Europeans lead the way in Libya. Guys like McCain and Graham were ripping Obama for not invading and letting the Italians get the glory. The neo-cons were also pounding the war drums over Syria, which is a byproduct of the idiotic Iraq invasion.
A better issue is Afghanistan where Obama expanded and extended a pointless war. That was monstrously stupid.
More accurate to say that he was talked into filling Cabinet posts with incompetent political hacks like Hillary – then couldn’t be bothered to supervise their work. I doubt he spent 10 minutes thinking about the pros and cons of taking down Qaddafi. He just signed off on it when Hillary told him what a great idea it was, then headed off to the golf course.
Cabinet appointments were not particularly relevant in ObamaWorld because everything was expected to be run from within the White House.
“run from within the White House” — i.e., by Valerie Jarrett, our de facto president these last 8 years, the Rasputin to Obama’s Tsar Nicholas.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/08/obamas_strange_dependence_on_valerie_jarrett.html
Not only did he act like an ovary he was led by some as well. Wonderful.
Upon setting the conflagration, it is unnecessary to personally supervise each and every burning structure.
Here’s a speculative theory for you: W was really trying to undo the strategic errors of his father in Iraq dating from 1991. That error was to neither crush and eliminate Saddam and his Sunni cadre immediately in 1991 or to conciliate his Sunni cadre successors following his public demise. That would have been the old imperialist way, starting well before the Romans; So just too icky for the Cloud.
As it was, he left Saddam in a very expensive box, costing us something like $2Bil/day, IRRC, consisting of oil sanctions and no-fly zones to prevent the crushing of the Kurds and Shia. In the end all it was doing was creating inflated prices for French and Russian armaments and corrupt UN oil-program bureaucrats. By coincidence, it also guaranteed higher oil prices for our friends the Saudis while giving Al Quaida et.al. a grievance* that resonated via having the necessary US forces stationed on ‘Sacred Arab Lands’54455455.
A conciliated Sunni-dominated Iraq would have provided a useful, if barbarically murderous, counterweight to Iran. But a crushed Iraq could have become a puppet of Iran** once its Shia minority asserted itself, as we have now seen. So GHW Bush adopted the fatal middle course, likely at the urging of the Arabists in the State Dept. and our friends the Saudis.
*As demonstrated in 2003, this was a grievance of convenience because that year our forces left Saudi lands yet the intifada continued. Our very existence is a grievance to Wahabbi Salafism.
** Iran at that time was very weak due to the 8 year war with Iraq, just finished 2 years prior, so a Shia dominated yet independent Iraq would have been a more promising bet then it was in 2003.
The fact is, in August 1990, Kuwait was not America’s ally but a neutralist nation. It was also hte single largest financial supporter of the PLO. We had no military treaty obligations to defend Kuwait. Iraq’s swallowing Kuwait may have been an affront to the international status quo and to the United Nations bureaucracy, but it is unclear how that was a threat to our national interests. We should have expressed our armed neutrality and allowed we would “respect the solution” arrived at by the United Nations Organization so long as we remained a member. And then sent out for popcorn. That would have opened up a few parking spaces at Turtle Bay.
Ah but you forget that with Kuwait in Saddam’s hands our friends the Saudis were then under threat from Saddam’s recently battle hardened and not inconsiderable Russian trained and equipped army.
Now, IIRRC, the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) rational for our intervention in 1991 was that then a terrible ME tyrant would be able to control far too much of the world’s oil supply (of course this was already true – Saudis). This was nonsense of course because oil has always found its way to the market and if we were willing to pay the world price we could get what we needed. And the Gulf Arabs, whatever their form of government, have always had two choices: Eat their sand or sell their oil.
I’ve often thought that the role of elite bribery in international affairs has been an unfairly neglected area of study.
In August 1994 while in Moscow on a military history tour, I spoke with a Colonel from the Malinovsky Tank Academy, and observed that while the Iraqis were using Soviet Equipment, they did not seem to be using Soviet operational doctrine according to Marshal Ogarkov. The Colonel told me I was correct, adding “If ‘someone else’ had been commanding, the outcome would have been somewhat different.” The textbook solution would have been for Saddam to push his tanks forward at GHWB’s first threat, capturing the potential landing fields before our first airborne brigade could have deployed. At that time an early setback would have reawakened our “Vietnam Syndrome” and considerably hampered or blocked our deployment. But hey, why should we be the only ones to miss golden opportunities?
Schwartzkopf’s plan was designed to face Saddam and his military and was executed accordingly. If he was planning on facing a Russian led military, I am sure, damn sure, the plan would have been different. Sun Tsu “Know your enemy.” We, the US had eight years of war doctrine, strategy and tactics of what the Iraqi Army would most likely do from their recent experience in Iran.
You are also correct in pointing out that having gone to war against Saddam, it was an even worse mistake to commit “victory interruptus”. This was the mistake which guaranteed that Clinton, or GW Bush, or someone else eventually would be forced to complete the third act of the drama. Muslims hold grudges across the ages. But that was a mistake shared with St. Colon Powell, our First Black Chairman of JCS, who enjoyed wearing the uniform more than making war. A Perfumed Prince and another Historic First. I think I see a pattern here.
Rurik, you have nailed it. Politicians going to war with half-hearted intent and stupid ROE’s. We send our troops to war to WIN. Period. People will debate the definition of “win” but when you invade another country, that definition should be pretty damn clear.
The butcher’s bill will> be paid, the longer you delay, the more the compound interest will increase. In November 1965 The JCS recommended the measure which Nixon ordered in late 1972, mining the harbors, destroying the air defense system, and major military bases, and bombing factories and Hanoi. In 1965 DRVN air defense had only a few old jets and no SAMs, what worked in 1972 would have worked in 1965 but quicker and at far less cost to both ourselves and our enemies. And Lyin’ Lyndon could have gotten on with his precious WOP (War On Poverty).