Most people thought the range of outcomes for an Obama presidency was Jimmy Carter on the one end and Bill Clinton on the other. Bush was Bill Clinton without the vulgarity, but with a disastrous foreign policy. Given Obama’s priggishness, the smart money said he would be some combination of Bush and Clinton. The timid foreign policy of Clinton, the domestic policy of Bush and his own vanity driven moral preening would result in something bad but not disastrous.

By 2010 it was pretty clear the guy was a boob, in way over his head. Worse still, he was surrounded by unqualified flunkies and coat holders. The wave election in the mid-term should have been enough to avoid disaster and maybe lay the groundwork for a one term presidency. Then voters remembered how bad they felt about slavery and  voted him back in for another term. Now we have to hope good fortune keeps him from doing something disastrous, but the odds are not good.

Of the many stunning revelations to emerge out of the wreckage of Mosul on Wednesday — 500,000 fleeing residents, thousands of freed prisoners, unconfirmed reports of “mass beheadings” — the one that may have the most lasting impact as Iraq descends into a possible civil war is that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria just got extremely rich.

As insurgents rolled past Iraq’s second largest city, an oil hub at the vital intersection of Syria, Iraq and Turkey, and into Tikrit, several gunmen stopped at Mosul’s central bank. An incredible amount of cash was reportedly on hand, and the group made off with 500 billion Iraqi dinars — $425 million.

The provincial governor of Nineveh, Atheel al-Nujaifi, confirmed that the ISIS Islamists had lifted additional millions from numerous banks across Mosul, as well as a “large quantity of gold bullion,” according to the International Business Times, which called it the “World’s Richest Terror Force.”

OK, so maybe no one saw this coming? No such luck. It appears they knew about it and did nothing.

As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials.

But Iraq’s appeals for a military response have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011.

The swift capture of Mosul by militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has underscored how the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have converged into one widening regional insurgency with fighters coursing back and forth through the porous border between the two countries. But it has also called attention to the limits the White House has imposed on the use of American power in an increasingly violent and volatile region.

A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, declined to comment on Mr. Maliki’s requests. “We are not going to get into details of our diplomatic discussions,” she said in a statement. “The current focus of our discussions with the government of Iraq and our policy considerations is to build the capacity of the Iraqis to successfully confront” the Islamic extremists.

The war on terror was a terrible idea and a big lie. The people behind it did not care a wit about the security of America or the West. It was all about obliterating the enemies of Israel and the Saudis. That said, isolationism is not a good idea either. Sometimes a little force goes a long way. In this case, bombing the crap out of their camps would cost little and do a lot. How can you not know that?

The trouble with incompetency is the bill for it keeps turning up long into the future, long after the incompetent person is gone. We’re still paying for Clinton era corruption. The Bush years will haunt us for generations. The Obama administration seems to be the zenith of post-Cold War incompetence and Baby Boomer politics, so maybe this is the end of that run. Still, the cost of this clodhopper and his cast of toadies will be with us for a very long time.

In fairness to libertarians, they get most things around with regards to their critique of socialism and central planning. That’s not bad for an ideology, but, that’s the problem with libertarianism. It’s an ideology. Libertarians are ideologues and you can never rely on an ideologue. If the choice is between a child holding a puppy and their precious ideology, the boy and his puppy go to the death chamber.

The ideologue trades his self and therefore his sense of humanity for membership in the ideology. They will sacrifice everything for it, including themselves. They will even throw away their political careers for it. Enter Rand Paul who has picked now to throw in with the open borders fanatics.

Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday waded deeper into an issue that has proved perilous to some of his GOP colleagues, throwing his political weight behind an establishment lobby effort to get Congress to reform the country’s immigration system this year.

Mr. Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky and possible 2016 presidential hopeful, participated in a telephone conference call to conservative and business leaders in favor of immigration reform in an effort brokered by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, The Washington Times has learned.

Politically, there is no sane reason for any pol to touch the land mine that is immigration, unless they are against it. Jumping to the aide of the execrable Grover Norquist and his campaign to flood the nation with peasants is suicidal. Yet, there’s Rand Paul, ideologically consistent right into the grave.

The business group, the Partnership for a New American Economy, immediately blasted an email Wednesday evening to supporters crowing that Mr. Paul had formally joined its pro-reform effort.

The timing of the call only heightened the potential stakes for Mr. Paul just one day after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was shockingly ousted from office in the Virginia Republican primary in favor of a little-known college professor.

Tea party activists who whipped up a get-out-the-vote effort for Mr. Cantor’s opponent said they were motivated by the incumbent’s advocacy for immigration reform, actions on Obamacare and vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

Mr. Cantor was the second high-profile Republican to suffer political damage by stepping forward on the immigration issue. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, another potential presidential contender, lost the support of his tea party base when he advocated a plan for immigration that some argued created a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Mr. Paul, a longtime favorite of the tea party movement, has made it clear that he believes Congress needs the courage to enact immigration reform. But his latest effort pushed him further into the middle of a strident battle between establishment Republicans like Mr. Norquist who see immigration reform as essential to economic growth, and tea party activists who fear the current efforts in Congress will only lead to de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants.

In fairness to Paul, he is in the blob now which means he has lost touch with the English language. Outside the bubble everyone understands that “immigration reform” means amnesty and open borders. We’re not idiots. The same is true of the “path to citizenship” slogan. The phrase “temporary guest worker” means giant loophole for business to hire Hindus to take your job.

Inside the bubble, clones like Paul wrestle with the nuances of these terms as if they have real distinctions. He could also be suffering from Washingtonitis, where the otherwise sensible politicians begins to think the people trust and value his opinion. That’s when they stop representing their constituents to Washington and begin representing Washington to their constituents.

Another reminder that libertarians can never be trusted.

A long time ago a man named Samuel T. Francis was writing for various conservative publications about Middle American Radicals. The essay in which he laid out his ideas can be found here. Sam Francis was a great thinker, who has been flushed down the memory hole by the Conservative Inc.. Even the neo-reactionaries of the Dark Enlightenment seem to have forgotten about him, if they ever heard of him. It is a pity, he was truly a brilliant thinker on the Right.

If Sam were alive today he would be chuckling at the results of last night’s election in Virginia. Official Washington is busy interpreting the results in a self-serving way, but that’s to be expected. The ruling class hate you. Middle America has been their enemy for so long they no longer recall why. They simply know their guy was thrown out of office by the voters in favor of a guy who sounds like Pat Buchanan. There has to be a reason that does not indicate failure on their part.

Our rulers are just as afraid of reality as the rest of us. The managerial class has developed a number of coping strategies to explain away anything the suggests their position is anything other than legitimate. By the weekend, they will be out blaming this on racists, who oppose  immigration and Tea Party bogeymen. Some of the posts in this thread give a clue as to how the Left will respond. We also see some hints of how suicidal libertarians will react.

There’s no escaping the fact that immigration and its impact on the middle-class was the key issue. The middle-class in America, by that I mean outside the coastal hipster enclaves, has endured a long hard slog since the crash. It was not exactly good times in the Bush years. The assault on decency and basic civilization that we see from the Obama administration is looking like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The middle is now ready to throw off their technocratic managers, regardless of party.

What we see in this race is that an articulate and intelligent candidate picked up on the issues that have been out there for over a decade now. The Tea Party tapped into some of it, but it was crushed by the establishment crooks that attached to it. It was also plagued by the problem all insurgent movements face. It attracted fringe nuts and weirdos. Too many of them carried the Tea Party banner to prominence, thus making it easy for the Left to disparage the movement.

The issues remain. Middle class people don’t want to see the nation flooded with South American peasants. They don’t want their jobs sent to Pakistan because Mark Zuckerburg needs a new Ferrari. They don’t want to turn on their TV and see men dressed as girls openly talking about sodomy. What ever their reservations, they don’t want to see their old church bulldozed to make way for an abortion mill. Middle America is not ready to march off to the camps as the managerial class hopes.

Brat is a normal guy who tapped into these issues and beat a very well-financed establishment guy. Enterprising pols with similar skill should take note. Democrats may be cheering, but there’s an element in their own ranks that shares the same values as the voters who tossed out Cantor. It is why Hillary Clinton plans to run in 2016 as a populist. That’s the source of the “dead broke” comments the other day. She’s working on her shtick. They may be vulgarians, but the Clintons are not stupid.

Way back when Obama started to run for president, it was wise to be skeptical about his chances for a few reasons. The main reason was that he was a weirdo. The number of people you will meet, who are the son of an African immigrant, is small. The number of mixed race people in the country is tiny. The number of mixed race people raised in Indonesia and Hawaii is the set of one. Obama is an extreme outlier when it comes to his personal story. He’s no like anyone you know.

Then there are the odd things he says, like calling Hawaii Asia or not knowing the number of states. During the 2008 primary campaign, he repeatedly displayed an unfamiliarity with America that was striking. That’s not the birther stuff. It’s just that the guy seemed to be a stranger. Pols always put on an act to seem like a regular guy from the neighborhood. Obama works hard to act like a human familiar with our customs, but it is not very convincing, but he won anyway.

That’s what is at the heart of the Bergdahl fiasco. At first it looked like it was a tempest in a teacup, but the furor is quite intense. Because Obama is immunized by the ruling tribe, he’ll suffer no consequences from it, but it will underscore that alien quality and that of the inner party that has put him in the job. Americans respect veterans so when they get pissed, they have our attention.

For all the yellow ribbons strewn across his hometown in Idaho and the gratitude expressed by his parents in an emotional visit to the White House on Saturday, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will receive a hero’s welcome when he returns to the United States after nearly five years in Taliban captivity.

From military forums across the country, a groundswell of anger is rising over the Obama administration’s silence on perhaps the most controversial question surrounding the deal that freed Bergdahl in exchange for five senior Taliban members: Was he a deserter?

Veterans of Afghanistan are livid. Apparently, this story has been percolating in veteran circles for years. Vets have the advantage of knowing how the military works, but also knowing how the politicians make the military work. They are much more cynical about the reality of military life than people who have no m,military service. It appears a lot of vets suspected a deal was coming. Now that the deal is official, the anger has spilled over into the general public.

Given the embarrassing behavior of the American media these days, it is truly shocking to see reports like this from the New York Times. Here’s another critical report from The Hill new site. Then you have this negative portrayal of the creepy parents in the Washington Post. If Obama has managed to shock his most loyal followers, this deal has gone beyond unconventional. The puzzle is why in the world would Obama sign off on this? It does not make a lot of sense.

That’s what brings us back to the weirdo factor. To an American, a soldier who walked away from his post is hard to defend. One that joins the enemy is intolerable. We all know that. Some of us may have sympathy for the guy or blame his defects on larger issues, but even the most liberal American draws the line at helping the enemy. It is why Jane Fonda remains an object of revulsion for most people.

For Obama, none of this registers. Obama has put a lot of time and effort into showing the Muslim world he relates to them and respects them. This has been assumed to be in reaction to the cowboy tactics of Bush. Today it seems like Obama really does relate to the Muslim world more than he relates to America. He seems to have more respect for the Taliban, which he never fails to pronounce with a foreign accent, than he does the US military. That’s rather un-American.

Presidents are usually strange ducks. Reagan had no friends and lived an unconventional life. He was thoroughly American. Clinton was a very strange man, but he was a familiar picaresque figure in southern politics. Even Poppy Bush was a familiar character on the American scene. Obama is a cross between vacuous French intellectual and African despot. He’s nothing like anyone you have ever known. We have a deeply weird man in the White House and the results have followed.

Steve Sailer has a snarky post up about the European elections. Everyone on the authentic Right, as opposed to mainstream Right, is celebrating the results. For lack of a better way of phrasing it, the authentic Right is the national populist types, who reject post-modern cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. The mainstream Right are just libertarian cosmopolitans. They support the cultural project of the Left, but would like to rig the market to achieve it.

The joy is understandable to some degree. On the one hand, it is clearly a rejection of the open borders, white replacement strategy of the elites. In France, a vote for National Front is a vote against immigration. No Frenchman voted for National Front thinking they were anything other than hostile to immigration. They are also hostile to non-French people, as in those not biologically French. The National Front rejects paper citizenship, as does all authentically right-wing parties.

Then there is a strong anti-elite element too. Farage and UKIP are old school populists as much as they are anti-immigrant. The Tories have wandered off into some weird ideological place in search of a constituency. Their old voters have no other place to go so they are voting for Farage. UKIP is probably just the old Tory party bursting forth from the dying husk of the new Tory party. Still, it says that old populist instinct is still alive in the heart of the average Englishman.

It is easy to think the tide may be turning, but that is probably not true. UKIP is the real deal, but the leadership lacks the sort of professionalism needed to make them a legitimate mainstream party. They are building a party from the ground up and will have the boots on the ground to make noise in subsequent elections, but they have a lot of weirdos and kooks as well. Those kooks and weirdos can easily topple over the whole thing before the next election.

The Continent is a similar story. These elections were low-turnout symbolic actions by the most highly motivated part of the anti-elite electorate. There’s little evidence FN can build on to this and become a player in French politics. Syriza is the real deal in Greece, but let’s not kid ourselves about the importance of Greece. In Germany, the only country that matters in Europe right now, anti-EU forces have not made much noise at all. In short, one election does not mean much.

There’s something else. The march of human history is toward larger and larger organizational units. For about 35,000 years, modern humans were in groups no larger than about 150. That was the practical limit for a hunter-gatherer people. Once the group got too big, it split up. We can’t know for sure, of course, but the current science suggests trust beyond kin was not well developed at this stage. Once you get beyond 150 people, you start having unrelated males thrown in together, which is going to be trouble for obvious reasons.

Once humans began to settle, the organizational groups got bigger. Farming naturally brings trading and property ownership. That requires more complex relationships. It also requires trust between unrelated males. The traits and customs allowing for unrelated males to trust one another and adjudicate breeches in trust probably developed in tandem as human settlements grew larger.

Hierarchical relationships also had to develop as someone had to be in charge to enforce the rules. If you look at early British history, for example, ruling families were the dominant hierarchical relationship. The descendants of Ida ruled parts of Britain for generations. This was not an ideal solution, but it was a solution that was workable for the people at the time. Extended family rule was a solution to getting distantly related people to cooperate and keep the peace.

Over time city-states developed and they were replaced by combinations of cities that eventually became principalities. Most of the European history we learn in school is the battle over the consolidation of lands into nations. From the 100 Years War through World War Two, the people of Europe battled to figure out the boundaries and relationships of the nations of the continent. The end point of this was the nation-state as we came to understand it in the 20th century.

Post-War Europe has been an extended debate over how to build a Europe-wide organizational unit. Eliminating trade barriers eliminates a key role of national government. The free flow of people eliminates a reason for national borders and even national governments. Combining currencies further erodes the rationale for national governments and the very idea of a secular nation.

It is not just Europe. Relationships between countries over trade and property are now managed through supranational organizations. When the US has a dispute with China over trade, it goes to some international body for adjudication. Congress has no say and the people are not consulted. Treaty agreements are being crafted to get around pesky legal problems like the US Constitution. The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty is an attempt to junk the Second Amendment through international agreement.

Then we have the interlocking central banks and shadowy financial institutions that control the world’s financial system. The high level of coordination between the main banks and the IMF very well may be the main peace keeping organization now. Look at how they have been able to keep Ukraine from turning hot. Russia is so tied into the financial system, they cannot afford to get in a fight with the West.

If you’re wondering where the “right side of history” lies, history seems to be saying it is bigger and bigger government. The argument against all of this is language, culture and genetics. That’s a good argument and we may have reached a natural limit of human organization. But that’s not the way to bet. A Paleolithic Steve Sailer probably thought human settlement or agriculture was a loser, too. The right side of history has always been bigger and bigger organizational units. The rise of nationalist parties in Europe could very well be a last gasp effort to resist the inevitable.