Shaking!

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

People are really odd sometimes.

Okay, so the preliminary to this, and the reason my substacks have been dead, my books are late, etc. is that I spent the last two weeks working on clearing the rest of our former house. Once more, this would have been much easier with Dan’s help, or over a few months. And — for various reasons — we could have taken a few months, but the months we intended to take weren’t possible through a concatenation of adverse circumstances. So … I could choose to take yet more time, now, or to put myself through two weeks of hell and then finally be able to write again.

Is it all done? Aw, no. But if Dan helps next weekend, it should be, and that’s the plan right now, because frankly I can’t just keep pushing pushing pushing. I’m BEAT. How beat? Well, instead of doing anything vaguely productive today (other than finishing setting up the kitchen which is kind of essential and took about 2 hours) I sat on the sofa careening through youtube, hitting on recommends for talks, podcasts, interviews. But good news, it wasn’t watching videos of a guy watching through cemeteries, so I’m not at that level of depression, nor becoming sick again. I’m just exhausted, a malady for which we know the remedy. The plan for the week, is to do maybe an hour or two mornings, then write in the afternoons. Walks, yes, death marches, no.

Anyway, one of the videos I watched, by a commenter I won’t name because I’m still semi-miffed at him for dismissing my opinion on something for which I presented supporting evidence and don’t want to turn this into a war, (I generally respect his intellect and opinions) left me open-mouthed with shock.

Because he’s not stupid. And he’s been looking at politics, particularly politics in the US longer than I have. But his contention was that Barrack Obama started a revolution and that we’re now in a counter revolution.

He’s right we’re now in a counter revolution. But Barrack Obama? Really? He even names Clinton as being part of the previous, decent equilibrium. You know, Clinton. The man who sneaked through Motor Voter and set the stage for our current voting mess where we don’t actually know if people are voting for socialists, or if it’s all fake votes.

He seems to think of Bush and Clinton as the happy, stable times, and I want to scream and bang my head against the desk (except I’m writing this on the sofa (surrounded by cats) because he who has a nine to five job hasn’t set up my desk (yet. He’s working on it. He promises.)

The truth is that the “democrat socialists” are not something new under the sun, and Obama certainly didn’t usher them in.

Obama was, in many ways, the crowning achievement of what started as an infiltration and subversion movement by the USSR. In many ways, he explicitly — like Putin — wanted to bring about a new flowering of the USSR. He explicitly said he wanted to undo everything that Reagan did. (And those of you who don’t think it’s funny he did this while Rome had a pope who was the antithesis of John Paul II is funny fail to admire the sense of humor of the Author.) Obama, like all the red diaper babies, thought that the wrong people had won the cold war and he stompy foot, stompy foot wanted a recast and re-film of the movie. Without really understanding much of what happened or even what’s possible.

Ruinous, yes. Disastrous, yes. A revolutionary leader? Tickle me and make me laugh. He was in fact — and still is — The Little Man Who Wasn’t There. He was in it for the adoration, the perks of celebrity, but he was — and is — no mastermind. His ascendancy was only possible because our voting systems were already corrupted (am I the only person who remembers OFA bragging of making up 2 million votes for him?) His presidency was horrendous because he hates us. But not because he had a super-master-plan. In fact, most of what he tried to bring about either didn’t work or backfired spectacularly. Despite Fast and Furious iodicy, the 2A advocates went from victory to victory, for instance. He could destroy, yes, but not create anything.

And neither can his cohort. The creepy crawly socialists coming out of their holes are products of indoctrination who are in this because they think if they don’t strike now the time will pass. This is a ghost dance, not a victory dance.

Obama never had the following, the strength, the glazing (including after leaving power) that Clinton had. He’s not revered as Clinton is.

Why? Because while we are in a counter-revolution, it goes far deeper than Trump. It started before him. Heck, it was probably existent as feeling and resentment before the internet gave us voice and a place to meet.

The truth is that the attacks on the US and our constitutional republic from a socialist flange have been going on for 100 years give or take. I’d say 113 years, actually.

Heinlein said, during World War II that communists had already penetrated and substantially controlled the Democrats. I’ve seen nothing to show me he was wrong. They certainly had already penetrated academia and the arts.

But now we’re fighting back. Obama isn’t revered like Clinton was for a good 10 years after his presidency, because the media is no longer our soul form of information.

Trump was elected because people already knew how to find information the media won’t give us.

Before the counter-revolution, there was an earthquake. An earthquake that took place in how people live, how people perceive the world. An earthquake in reality itself.

Now, not wanting to discount what Trump has done, particularly in his second term. But his second term wouldn’t have happened if all this were playing out in the 1990s.

None of which is to say we’re not in grave danger. In fact, I’ve been fighting off the heebies all day, though that might be because I’m so tired and this always makes me anxious and depressed.

Yes, the midterms are dangerous. We could do without the Iran war, but I’m sure Trump’s hand on that was forced. Whether it was forced by a real danger of a nuclear Iran of by lying reports of such, none of us can know.

Our only hope is that the defanging of the Democrat money machine will have a considerable effect. That, and if you’re the praying kind, prayer.

Not that a reverse will stop the earthquake, and the counterrevolution it engendered, but because it will set us back and make us fight from a position of greater ruin. And we’re already in such ruinous mess. (The Biden-puppet was surprisingly effective at destruction.)

But it comes to that, then that’s what we’ll do. I’d just rather we were spared.

Meanwhile, win or lose, expect the left to go crazier and crazier and create crazier and crazier situations.

Clears throat: if you’re in a safe position, stay there. If your position looks unstable, find a stable one, away from potential falling debris. Be alert to the fact that a chasm can suddenly open under your feet and that bridges might have fallen.

It’s going to continue shaking.

And yet, it is preferable to the 1984-nightmare we were getting locked into before the shake-up. Far preferable.

Be not afraid. Work, think, speak, pray.

Build under, build over, build around. Prepare to take the weight when structures come crashing down.

In the end, we win, they lose.

142 thoughts on “Shaking!”

  1. He was in fact — and still is — The Little Man Who Wasn’t There. 

    I acquired much of my reputation as a raaaaacist by posting this Kipling pretty much everywhere. The filk community really hated the reminder:

    Liked by 5 people

  2. I hold onto the following, not because I think it means my Earthsuit will be protected from chips, scratches, dings, and rust, but because God promised to preserve ME.  And my wife believes it too.  YMMV; but the worst the illegitimi can do is send me home.  And only after God allows it.

    Psalm 91:5-10 New American Standard Bible

    You will not be afraid of the terror by night, Or of the arrow that flies by day; Of the plague that stalks in darkness, Or of the destruction that devastates at noon. A thousand may fall at your side And ten thousand at your right hand, But it shall not approach you. You will only look on with your eyes And see the retaliation against the wicked. For you have made the Lord, my refuge, The Most High, your dwelling place. No evil will happen to you, Nor will any plague come near your tent. May we all live to see the Lord “rebuke” the people who would destroy America.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. Absolutely correct, the socialist/ communist/wanna-be totalitarians have been working against our freedom for a long, long time. Obummer was just another in a long line of scum trying to destroy us. They thought they had won it all when they managed to shove him into office. They didn’t, people pushed back harder and they’ve gotten crazier and more dangerous trying to bring about their fantasy future. I believe we are winning but they will inflict as much pain and damage as they can so it won’t be easy.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. My first opinion of the Lightbringer (good grief, nobody got the Lucifer reference when they said that?) was someone willing to be a sock puppet for the gerontocracy/leftists running the Party in exchange for the perks and privileges of office.

      I have modified that opinion a bit in that I think he is brighter than I realized and used his time as a sock puppet to gain real power/wealth/influence. But I also believe he soaked up too much South Asian culture early in life and really believes destroying his enemies through the power of government is “just what strongmen do.”

      Liked by 2 people

  5. In an interview I watched before his first term, O actually stated his intention to bring the US “down” to the rest of the world. We would, “of necessity” have higher prices (he specifically mentioned $5 gas), higher taxes. Somehow people voted for him anyway.

    Liked by 4 people

    2. There was also the bit during one of his debates with McCain in which he was asked a question that specifically stipulated that cutting the capitol gains tax rate would improve the economy. He accepted the stipulation… and said he still wouldn’t cut the rate because it wasn’t “fair”.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. I got notably annoying because 90% of the time when Obama did something that outraged folks, I could point at where Clinton had done it first– he just targeted rural folks, or ag, or some other niche that wasn’t “people living normal job-lives in cities.”

    Liked by 4 people

    1. I listened to the big O’s stump speech and when he started saying, “We must all make sacrifices,” I assumed he meant, “you must all make sacrifices.”

      Liked by 4 people

  7. I really don’t like calling what we have here a revolution because it gives an aura of romance to what is at bottom just corruption. Clinton and the Clintonista made corruption respectable. They were open about it when the spoke of competence being more important than character — they had neither, but anyway — and later with “what difference does it make at this point. Obama’s crew were even more corrupt and Biden ….. sigh.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. “Competence being more important than character” aptly describes what’s been done to education. Until sometime in the 19th Century (so the argument goes), the primary purpose of education in the West was the inculcation of virtue, the transmission of the telos, the production of the citizen: i.e. character. Then (gross oversimplification alert!) the German Idealists, Dewey, and Columbia Teachers College came along and we got education for “skills and workforce development: i.e. (narrow forms of) competence.

      Later the Frankfurt School and their inheritors came along, and we ended up with neither, but that’s a different story.

      Liked by 1 person

  8. This won the Internets today:

    But now we’re fighting back. Obama isn’t revered like Clinton was for a good 10 years after his presidency, because the media is no longer our soul form of information.

    Best pun winner. Intentional … or not. Don’t care.

    Made my morning cuppa that much bett’a.

    Kudos.

    Liked by 5 people

  9. “…Barrack Obama started a revolution and that we’re now in a counter revolution…”

    #Barry was a Company Man, to the core, and still is. He’s an apparatchik who was elevated to the big job in the corner office for political reasons, not because anybody thought he could do it properly. I always thought he looked like Mussolini, with the tilt of his head, staring off into the Bright Future… yeah. Another plastic banana.

    The revolution was the Tea Party. All the “great thinkers” missed it, because the media didn’t cover it. They think the media covers everything important. The Normies of America got together and had a political movement that scared the F- out of The Washington Blob, so their media arm blacked it out.

    But it still happened.

    All the Normies watched them black it out. And then they all watched Trump’s first term, and said “That’s our guy.” Choice of #TheDonald vs. #Shrillary, right? Then they watched The Blob install #LetsGoBrandon and lock us all down for Covid, and the jabs and whatnot. Nobody is really forgetting that, you can’t un-see it.

    So now everything that comes out of Hollywood bombs like a B-52, because nobody wants to see it. Streaming shows come out and even though they’re ‘free’, nobody watches them. Newspapers and magazines are going bankrupt all over the place. Socialists are running on ever-more-frantic programs supported by ever-more-obvious vote fraud, because they’re not getting any traction.

    The revolution already happened. They missed it.

    Liked by 6 people

      2. “Obama looked enough like Mussolini that it makes me waver on re-incarnation.”

        Once upon a time I saw a youtube where they put all the pics from a Whitehouse photoshoot together. More than 10 pictures in a row, maybe as many as 20.

        #Barry’s expression was identical in every shot. Like a cardboard cutout. Even the angle of his head was the same. He was doing his ‘photo shoot pose’ the same every time. Evidence of either long experience or something profoundly broken in there. Maybe both.

        Making me strongly think he was doing the Mussolini thing on purpose, and that he practiced in the mirror. Like, a lot. Daily, even.

        A plastic banana. The cheap kind with the little hole in it so it doesn’t collapse from air pressure because the skin is so thin.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I thought he was a fake from the start, great at following the teleprompter and posing to try and look like the “Big Man”. Yeah, I thought he imitated Mussolini a lot, another Il Douche!

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        1. The pre-election hysteria — the Light-Worker stuff, the Obama votive candles — made me nervous, but yah, he was soon shown up as a stuffed shirt.

          Liked by 1 person

  10. Obama stated he was lazy. He also proved it.

    Obama had the towering ego that whispered in his ear he was the bringer of revolution, not the ongoing long-march and certainly not the much-suffering proletariat, the scum. Him, the Lightbringer. -He- would make it all happen! And Right Now! No need for stealth or subterfuge! The Awesome Great One Has Arrived!

    Someday, possibly fairly soon, they will memorialize Obama as the Man Who Blew It. He woke everyone up, teed up Trump, and handed everyone the hammers with which to wreck their 100+ years of “progress” that only leads back to the slavery that is the Marxist endgame. Obama banged on the pot to rub it in: “Stupid Frogs!”, and they all started jumping.

    Liked by 5 people

        1. And the dropping was on the first sleep after entry; took the critters another day or two to stir. Difference between book and movie as medium.

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    3. 0bama’s signature line “You didn’t build that!” was, at least, sincere. He was handed everything just for existing, never accomplished anything, was even given a Nobel Prize for being half black. He literally could not imagine what it would be like to actually build something, and since he was Teh Bestest And Brightest (everybody said so!) then obviously the rest of those peons were even less capable.

      Liked by 2 people

        1. Well, it was a dual qual: Barry was “not the last guy” and also as a Pantone award for best tint.

          I like how, to prove how much he deserved the “Peace” prize, he immediately eased the rules and vastly accelerated the tempo of drone strikes, on pretty much anyone including U.S. citizens, worldwide.

          Liked by 1 person

  11. 0bama is and always was an empty suit. Recited words composed by other people, signed documents written by other people, spent money taken from other people. The Biden-zombie was more of the same, only much less articulate and more confused. As for Kackling Kamela, well…

    This is the top of the heap, folks. Their bestest and brightest. The smartest people in any room full of Democrats. Because to be a Democrat these days, they have to be either stupid enough to Believe their own bullshit, or despicable enough to pretend they do.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. You left out the book under his name he didn’t write which initially brought him to public prominence, written by a communist domestic terrorist.

      Liked by 1 person

  12. Both Obama and Trump are *symptoms* not revelations. Obama was just a prettier and more coherent version of autopen. (Though he probably signed more of his acts.) Trump is no where near far right, he’s just barely right of center, and that only because he was pushed.

    Liked by 1 person

      3. Obama and a whole bunch of the D party absolutely hate us. We refuse to go along with their socialist dream world fantasy and for that alone they want to destroy us all.

        Liked by 1 person

  13. Day job, after significant time being fraught, suddenly turned to unstable about 2 weeks ago. Been frantically job-searching. I handed in my two weeks’ yesterday, I’m in orientation for new job later today.

    (Partly luck – I knew someone who knew a person who desperately needs more people in that position.)

    Even with a cut in pay, the fact that it will have more hours and a more regular schedule means I’ll be doing better than I was. And with luck a regular schedule will let me finally finish the draft of White Cat’s Bluff in progress and get more going!

    Liked by 11 people

      1. I’m going to be professional, fold my tents and slip quietly away.

        But I kind of want to shake someone and say, “you’re driving out all the reliable people because you only want them to work when there’s an emergency, and people can’t live on emergencies!”

        Liked by 4 people

  14. I second the 113 years of attack on America vigorously. 1913 was a very bad year for the Republic, with the adoption of the 16th & 17th amendments to the Constitution. (Direct taxation and popular election of Senators)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Blow up the 16th, but modify the 17th. Each state has 2 senators so why not try direct election for one, and legislative appointment for the other one? That way you’d get the best (and the worst) of both approaches. 😁

      Liked by 1 person

      1. No. Dump 17 entirely.

        The House of Representatives is the body originally intended to be elected by The People, the Senate to guard the interests of the States.

        Also, much simpler, and much less prone to shenanigans, to simply scrap it than to tinker around the edges.

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        1. I’m with tcbobg on this one. The 17th amendment was added to attempt to fix an issue with corrupt appointees being selected by local bosses who controlled large portions of their state legislatures. However, by removing the power from the States it broke part of what the purpose of the Senate was to be a counterpoint to the direct elected house. All the 17th did is make the Senators seek favor with fundraisers at a slightly slower turnover rate than their house peers.

          Mucking with the Senate via Constitutional amendment is tricky due to the last line of Article 5

          and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

          The DSA types that wish to remove or further Houseify the Senate seem to not see this clause, although they seem to feel the Constitution is irrelevant and might argue that if NO one has Senate representation than no one has been deprived. Basically, that clause seems to greatly limit what you can do with the Senate, but the 17th although inadvisable, seemed within the limits.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Agreed. The Senate was supposed to represent the individual States interests, counterbalanced by the House as a representative of voters in aggregate. The founders had the example of the British Parliament and the recent-enough follies of the English Civil War in mind when they consciously chose differently, and explained why in detail. The 17th fix has proven to have been an error.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. If you’re going to knock out the 17th, also undo the “One man one vote” SCOTUS decision that destroyed geographic representation in the state legislatures. It greatly strengthened the ability of population centers to capture state legislatures. In fact, require that any state with more than (say) eight percent of its population in one metro area have such an “upper” house, as most states once did.

              Liked by 3 people

            1. “Even what they propose to keep probably won’t be recognizable.”

              Sure it will. “From each, according to his ability. To each, according to his need. And we decide what your need is, peasants.”

              It isn’t like they’ve had any new ideas since the 1920s.

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            2. Indeed I’m not sure they’d keep any “Constitution” they had anyway. The USSR had what appeared to be a lovely reasonable constitution for the most part. Except NONE of it was ever obeyed in any perceivable fashion.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Some of the structural stuff. Careful legerdemain with the votes. (For instance, instead of claiming a place that vote 70% no voted 99% yes, instead say it voted 70% and be shocked, shocked, at the negligence that switched the values in this case when that place called you on it.)

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  15. He seems to think of Bush and Clinton as the happy, stable times

    Yes. So do most people and this should not surprise you for two reasons.

    Overall Bush Senior and Clinton were happy, stable times for the average American. I’ve even said recently the 90s were the most recent peak in American society (not the only, maybe not the highest, but the most recent). The economy was good. Entertainment was still entertaining. The Cold War was over. People had hope for the future.

    Clinton’s two terms were objectively good times.

    But you are right, things like Motor Voter were enacted during Clinton. The thing is the damage from something like Motor Voter takes time to show. It was probably showing by 2004 and maybe in 2000.

    But none of that changes that the 90s were the last peak of American society.

    So that’s reason one people see them as happy and stable times. They were for the average person.

    Most people correlate what is happening now with who is in power now. That’s why it is Trump’s fault the Navy has issues staying on station and has for a decade. I know it is the fault of Clinton and the 90s Congress who gutted both the fleet (by law limiting a Navy with 15 carrier groups worth of commitments to exactly 11 carriers) and its infrastructure (closing most Navy shipyards and failing to replace aging repair auxiliaries). Doesn’t matter, the 240+ days at sea of the Lincoln, a direct product of doing with 10 (yes, 10 because shipbuilding is behind) the job of 15 carriers.

    Similarly the problems of Motor Voter are not seen as Motor Voter, because that was 30 years ago, but of fake votes now, never connecting the line.

    And I think there is a reason the damage was done in the 90s and not before despite the long infiltration of not just the Democrats (look at liberal Republicans and tell me they weren’t at least fellow travelers…hell, just look at the GOP votes on the Navy): because the 90s were happy, stable times. The “peace dividend” was the post Cold War equivalent of “Bring the boys back home” in the aftermath of WW2 while the Iron Curtain was coming down.

    So, yeah, his statement is the general sentiment and is something we need to work through and with if we’re going to continue to make progress.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. The 90’s were the afterglow of the 80’s. Bush and Clinton coasted on Reagan’s momentum, but did nothing to sustain it so it petered out. Clinton was really bummed by the fall of communism, too.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. I’m not denying any of that. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t good times. Even better than the 80s because the Cold War was over. Most of the population couldn’t remember a world without the Cold War and for most of them that meant remembering WW2 and the Great Depression.

        I don’t think it is possible to underestimate just how much the USSR going out of business make everyday life even outside it better.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. I think Herbn has the issue right. Yes the policies of the 80-88 Reagan Administration were critical in fixing things. But the effect LAGGED by a lot. There were mild economic retractions in ’82 and ’86. The Cold war Mid 1980’s was rather more of a lukewarm proxy war with 3 major events which nearly sent things hot (KAL 007, the Lt Col. Petrov false warning, and the Able Archer NATO Maneuvers combined with the USSR’s ongoing RyAN hunt/assertion of the likelihood a first strike by NATO). Interest rates were ludicrous with mortgages well north of 10% often past 15% well into 1991 (our first mortgage was at 11% and we got a VERY good rate). Inflation was still rampant well into the early ’90’s. 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and into 1991 with the USSR collapse, this accelerated peoples hopefulness that this era was gone. Even the first Iraq War with its US led UN/Arab coalition gave people hope that perhaps rationality had finally broken out. At least in the mid to upper classes times were good, really good probably best since lat 50’s early 60’s with most of the Nuclear nightmare more of a vague warning rather than a looming cloud. You can also tell it was good as there is what I call the Echo Boom. The last of the Boomers/early GenX could FINALLY afford homes and started cranking out babies (albeit not at the WWII boomer rates). Here in the northeast grammar schools that had been put into mothballs as the Boom faded all of a sudden were resurrected as a cheaper alternative to building brand new schools. The transition OUT of this period is of course 9/11 that showed us that, like Fukuyama, we’d had been massively naive about what the USSR collapse meant for world politics. Here 25 years beyond that we SEEM to be headed into a new cycle (deus volent) but we have the Democrats standing around like the dwarfs in the barn in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, claiming that the food at the feast is animal droppings.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Yes, this.

            Clinton gets credit for Reagan and now Trump gets blame for Clinton, Bush II, and Obama. That lag is real and you have to deal with it in politics. Hell, just learning to take credit for good things you have nothing to do with is probably the first rule of politics.

            Liked by 2 people

    2. Clinton was the beneficiary of a huge demographic dividend as the baby boom was at peak earnings and the echo boom just getting started. The fall of the Soviet Union added to that era of good feelings along with maturing tech but I strongly believe that demographics drives everything over the longer run.

      Liked by 2 people

        1. Indeed. large scale social things? I suppose ideas enter into it, but I tend to be fairly myopic and reduce things to economics and, thus, demographics. Occupational hazard.

          Like

      2. Again, I’m not contesting that. But combine the quality of life in the 90s and the tendency of people to assign what is happening now with you is in charge now you are going to get people who look back on Clinton fondly and you have to work with that.

        Also, note your contention is not a refutation of “the 90s were a happy, stable time.” They are an explanation and, thus, acknowledging they were.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. You are, however, misapprehending my point.
          This guy thought POLITICS and politicians were great in the 90s, all adhering to American values and trying to preserve the republic, however much they disagreed. AND THAT’S BULLSHIT.

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      3. I think the Boomers (especially the later cohorts and the early GenX folks) were somewhat delayed in entering into the economic and cultural fray. The mid to late 70’s/early 80’s were so fraught with rampant inflation and rolling regionalized recessions that it took both of Reagan’s terms and the changes from there (particularly the 1986 tax changes) to start clear things up. Building starts to ramp up in 1984/85 at least in the Northeast (I had several relations in the trades who were hand to mouth in the late 70’s were now rivaling my young engineers salary). Inflation is still robust, but with the 1986 tax changes the only interest that is deductible is mortgage interest so the housing market gets an additional shot in the arm and starts to heat up further. By 1989/1990 the Housing market in the Northeast goes NUTS as the various parts of the Tech sector continue to grow.

        Is that demographic? I would say not PURELY, but the entry of the tail of the Baby Boom into the system on mass created a bulge like a python that has just dined. Only here some 30+ years later is that bulge fully digested, with the Millennials and Gen Z types seeing the same kind of delay due to the foolishness of the Obama and Biden administrations.

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    3. Fifteen carrier air battle groups is too low. We should have fifteen at sea or ready for deployment in 72 hours, and however many it takes to have that deployed/ready force.

      But until we rip out the last poisonous root hair of the “war on poverty” and its satanic offspring, the war on the productive, we won’t be able to do it.

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      1. IIRC,the usual rule is triple.

        1 deployed, 1 undergoing maintenance and upgrades, 1 working up to be deployment-ready

        45 carrier groups might be a bit much.

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  17. To be honest Clinton and Obama seem personality wise to be similar. They both have major daddy issues, and are severely narcissistic in their personality. Clinton seemed to be slightly brighter and more ambitious; Obama, academically, is a total nothing, not even rising to the gentleman’s C that Bush the Younger and Kerry sported at Yale (now grade inflated to a gentleman’s B+). Clinton, with his more solidly Boomer blue-collar background, at least knew what not to say to annoy the Hoi Polloi. Obama as love child of a scion of wealth had NO clue about average blue-collar folks. Clinton, in general, was better at choosing subordinates, I think possibly because he had less feeling of being inadequate than Obama (justified or not). Obama made sure every person he used to help him was a brown nose par excellence and/or far less competent than Obama. Given the only thing Obama was good at (and honestly only slightly above mediocre) was reading a prepared speech off a teleprompter, his administration was uniquely and epically incompetent. What is surprising is how BAD the follow-on Biden administration was likely because they got the dregs of the Obama administration. Clinton, of course, had as his fatal flaw sexual proclivities unrivaled since Zeus and the Greek pantheon of gods. He also tended to favor subordinates who would not outshine him, his VP Al Gore being a classic example of this. I don’t remember any standouts in his cabinet, good or bad.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Janet Reno, may (and may God forgive me for saying so; with His grace I may yet be led to forgive her) she BIH for, if nothing else, the Waco debacle.

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          1. Indeed I saw that when I was looking up Senor Gonzalez’ name to make sure I remembered it correctly. A warning shot of what can happen when you take a young child and feed it communist nonsense for 20 years. If he’d stayed here he night have been aiding our Secretary of State in trying to scrap communist governments in this Hemisphere.

            Liked by 1 person

    2. And Obama, useless puppet that he was – did manage one thing in his whole miserable two terms in office – to completely trash black-white racial relations, and to completely reverse those gains made after the 1960s civil rights. Now we have a degree of racial resentment and suspicion and a level of fear unseen since the 19th century, or at least, the 1930s.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Indeed he broke that up in an epic fashion. His response to the Trayvon Williams affair among other issues totally divided the nation and gave us young black teens with a chip on the shoulder assuming they have the right to meet any perceived slight with extreme violence, giving us such issues as the murder of Austin Metcalf, among many other such events. Would they exist without Obama’s (intentional) shove? Possibly but how they are perceived in the black community might be very different without Obama’s Trayvon could have been my son Bovine Excrement (apologies to our local Minotaur). This result seems VERY intentional, as if he was trying to get the Race war boog that the Manson family was trying for in the Tate LaBianca murders.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. He was absolutely trying for a race war.

          He got mad at the blacks for not going along, and that seems to be the why of the breadth of 2020’s arsons.

          Which basically definitely proved that academics do not represent normal people, and that black academics can not give white students a valid license to torch what poor blacks have.

          People should have already understood that academic sourced licenses are not valid for committing felonies against people.

          Like

    3. Clinton was more politically savvy than Obama. When the Republicans took the House, Clinton immediately acted as if he was pivoting toward more moderate politics.

      Can you imagine Obama doing that?

      Liked by 3 people

  18. With the collapse of the USSR and China still playing at managed capitalism, in the 1990s the U.S. could and did coast, and under Billy Jeff’s foreign policy of ignoring everything and shooting a couple cruise missiles randomly every year or so, the news was quiet enough for the masses to ignore everything as well. Clinton did preside over ignoring the vast offshoring of U.S. jobs, ignoring the onshoring of vast numbers of H1B visa engineers displacing US-born tech workers, and ignoring the AQ network building up towards 9/11, with only the whole “why are we landing troops in Mog again?” “Blackhawk Down” thing as a black eye, driven directly by the restrictions on what equipment the Army was allowed. But that movie didn’t come out until 2001, so no skin of his nose.

    To be fair the backlash to Billy Jeff’s initial excesses gave us a GOP house for the first time in forever to constrain him a bit, and as a result of the triangulation he pursued as his answer, some stuff on the positive side did accrue. Do not err thinking he did not want to go full commie.

    But it’s a confluence of ignoring everything important and being constrained on domestic insanity by Newt’s GOP House that made it calm and not so remarkable.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Clinton also handed the communist Chinese tons — literally tons — of our Top Secret military documentation. They hauled it away by the truckload. All of our latest weapons, vehicles, aircraft, radar and communications tech…everything. It’s how the communist Chinese finally managed to make their MIRV missiles work.

      Liked by 2 people

  19. I was in Santa Fe, NM and saw an oversized version of the famous (infamous) “HOPE” poster done as a mural on a wall on Cerillos Road. My first thought was, “That’s Mao or Lenin.” The Mussolini-style pose is also how almost all posters and paintings of Lenin show him, and a goodly number of Mao depictions as well. Everyone copies every other dictator, there’s no real originality in poster art or official images [aside from the Obama official portraits, of which the less said, the better].

    Since Obama’s handlers also borrowed heavily from Mussolini and Herr Mini-‘stache for stage settings for speeches (because the style works, no matter the philosophy), the poster design and official photo poses didn’t surprise me much.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. And the same people tried the Leni Riefenstahl stage setting with a stimmed up lecture-pounding Autopen at his “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” speech in Philadelphia, but that particular John Gill episode did not land very well.

      They probably would have had him try taking off his shoe and pounding the lectern if they didn’t think he’d fall over hough that would have been referencing Kruschev, who de-cannonized Stalin, their hero.

      The Autopen-muppeteers also kept trying to co-opt the resistance with “Dark Brandon” stuff, but with such an empty vessel their efforts were pretty much futile.

      It just proves that lazy empty suit Barry beats dead eyed empty head Autopen when saying the lines.

      Like

  21. As deranged as William and especially Hillary were, they stole money to have it and use it.

    Many of their minions were not showing beyond the usual selfish thought patterns.

    Obama’s crowd was when the effects of Clinton party hollowing allowed so obvious and so concentrated a bunch of people with inverted understanding of cause and effect.

    Obama would destroy what you had because you hurting must, in his eyes, have a good effect somewhere.

    And of course the academic side of this has been festering to a boil for a long time.

    CRazy academcis, a long time. Long marching commies, elsewhere, a long time.

    The access to get Obama the nobel prize in advance? There were a lot of people, in a lot of places, who thought that was a good idea.

    Liked by 2 people

  22. “We could do without the Iran war, but I’m sure Trump’s hand on that was forced. Whether it was forced by a real danger of a nuclear Iran of by lying reports of such, none of us can know.”

    As I understand it, Iran was stockpiling enough missiles to overwhelm Israel’s defenses, so they’d effectively be untouchable if we waited much longer. Then they could finish the nukes uninterrupted and go on the offensive as China invaded Taiwan.

    If that was true, it would force us to strike preemptively, regardless of how close Iran was to nukes. Given how tricky that would be to explain to the public*, I can see condensing it to “Iran will never get nukes” for simplicity, even if that’s not the immediate threat.

    *”The US military is invincible unless you aim a lot of rockets at our allies” is not a winning message, before you even get to the openings it leaves for the Dems. (“Those are defensive missiles!”, “Then why is Israel allowed to have missiles?”, etc.)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Technically it is shockingly easy to build a gun-type device given enough sufficiently enriched uranium. I have no insights into classified weapons stuff, but from open source I understand a gun-type design can compensate for any lack of sophisticated design tricks to some extent with additional fissile mass.

      If the Iranians are building a more technically challenging implosion device, the fissile core mass required is apparently smaller, and tricksy stiff like fusion boosted fission makes things like “how much is enough for a deliverable device” even trickier to estimate.

      Note both the Pakistani and Indian programs produced implosion devices right next door, and the NORK program also produced working implosion devices evidenced by their weapons program production of plutonium, while under worldwide sanctions to try and stop them. And Pyongyang has had documented tech transfers with Tehran.

      That was the obvious reason why the initial strike was the B-2 raids to blow up and bury the centrifuges and interrupt their enrichment chain. The later campaign in coordination with the IAF was classic punitive expedition stuff – degrade the military capabilities, especially massed strike ballistic missile capability, blow up any surviving nuclear research facilities, and degrade command and control.

      But all of that is just acceptance of what the Mullahs javelin been saying since 1979 – they are at war with us. We finally just said “fine.”

      Liked by 3 people

      1. ”javelin”? Really, autocorrect? I assume I typed “jave” vice “have”. But I can certainly tell there ain’t no intelligence, artificial or otherwise, in autocorrupt so far…

        Liked by 3 people

        1. My phone: Rotto Rooter became Cotton Rooster. Now Rotto Rooter will be Cotton Rooster for the Hoyts till the end of time.
          Also, dan who was utterly bewildered by my text is getting a cotton rooster-doll for Christmas. I’m making it. Small enough to sit on his desk and make him smile.

          Liked by 3 people

      2. Although the Mk-1 (Little Boy) gun type weapon is easier to create in 1944/45 it is NOT by any stretch of the imagination easy. The Mk-1 used existing 5″ naval gun barrel(s) and a fairly advanced propellant. There is also the issue of timing a neutron pulse to initiate the fission (the Mk-3 Fat Man implosion design also has this issue). It also tends to create a long, thin warhead (10′ for Mk-1) that is inordinately heavy (9000 lbs), making it unsuitable for mounting on a missile (Iran or any other government’s first choice of delivery system).

        The implosion device is FAR more difficult in 1945. Shaped charges and their manufacture are new having come out of HESH/HEAP tank shells development and various anti-tank (Bazooka, Panzershreck) weapons during WWII. Calculating the blast waves is beyond the capabilities of large teams of computors (i.e. women with mechanical calculators) so requires at least a crude computer.

        But here 70 years later the process for making shaped charges is well understood. Iran is one of the world’s premier makers of Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFP) as we learned to our chagrin in Gulf War II. The hydrocode calculations that once took days on a tube based computer now can be easily run on a programmable calculator or at most a very modest personal computer in seconds to a minute or two. Those calculations are mostly in public domain material that went out for other purposes.

        I think of all the known/likely nuclear nations (US, USSR/Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, South African, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) use implosion primarily (the Soviets and we had some weird special-case weapons that used linear assembly early in the process). Today, manufacturing the tube and propellants for the linear assembly is as hard, if not harder, than creating an implosion weapon. And the Implosion works (with minor changes) for ANY fuel, whereas the gun/linear weapon has to be high purity (85% + ?) U235 enriched Uranium and the implosion is easier to reduce in weight and size than the linear design.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. As noted I am read in to nothing, so I take your points.

          I was going by reporting on that postgrad student doctoral thesis project where his design was judged to be good enough to freak .gov right out. As I recall his was a functional compact gun-type design, lacking only HE and fissile material, solving sll the other problems, and after it bubbled up to official notice they said “congratulations, your thesis is now classified, and as you have no clearance we’re taking all your notes and such.” I do believe they also offered him a job.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Nor was I read into anything CNWDI (Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information) nor would I ever want to be. I just have a real fascination with the stuff and am well read on what is publicly available( Rhodes’ Making of the Atomic bomb and Dark Sun, Los Alamos Primer, there are also some excellent websites).

            And Yes Nuclear stuff is unusual in that some of it is what is referred to as “born secret”. Normal classified stuff is looked at and declared secret by the body that created the material, and if it was found intially in the public domain it is left alone. CNWDI info can be declared secret and taken away as noted. Legally, this policy might be pushing prior-restraint rules, but I don’t think anyone has ever tried to fight things legally. Although John Coster-Mullen (Industrial Photographer and Truck Driver as well as bomb historian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coster-Mullen ) puzzled out the Mk-1 and Mark-3 designs in such detail (from public sources) that his 431 page description of the weapons probably skated on the edge of being withdrawn.

            Liked by 1 person

    2. All I know is that for a foreign policy situation of complex interlocking priorities, I distrust a lot of the established analysis bureaucracies. I think the bureaucracies are too friendly.

      A policy option would be concerning if they were lining up to support it.

      However, if it is Trump, and if people are saying that Trump is making a mistake, a valid minimalist analysis would be for me to stop right there.

      It also survived some additional levels of scrutiny from me, but I have not even been able to really give it my full attention. Not that my full attention is necessarily up to it. I definitely am not the most informed man in the room.

      I think possible states of the problem-space can admit multiple correct answers. I figure Iran could be a possible correct answer.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The thing I like is the contrast – prior interventionist administrations would likely have stayed out because the only action they could see would be an occupation of the Persian side of the Straight of Hormuz to keep the Europeans (and Middle Kingdom) happy.

        Being able to stand off, blockade, and basically ignore the squeaking of the EU and Beijing thanks to US domestic oil abundance is a happy third way.

        Liked by 2 people

    3. Seems to me the proliferation of drones would have a lot to do with it as well, maybe more than missiles. Drones are slow and easy to knock down, but they can also be really sneaky, making themselves harder to detect and hit by flying low to the ground. Quantity is a quality of its own, and Iran was at a breakout point there, from what I’ve heard. Even if each individual missile and drone is merely a target for the US and Israel, put them together en masse, and they had the potential to overwhelm most defensive measures with sheer numbers. It wouldn’t have given them a winning hand, but it would’ve hardened their defenses with another layer and enabled them to cause immense destruction with or without nukes.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Not actually complaining as people shockingly have lives beyond the intertubes, but one of mine has been in mod for seven and a half hours and counting. It’s WP that uses double seekrit rules to kick things into mod, and Sarah or her mods have to fish them out manually, and Sarah and her mods have real lives and grass to touch, so… WPDE.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. You’d think they would whitelist semi-regular posters who are logged in as long as they aren’t spamming weird links, but apparently not.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Yeah, if we got white listed we’d just start posting Sydney Sweeney pics all day, with nothing to stop our wild excesses of Sweeneyness. That’s the Huns for you – give us one whitelist and we’d run amok.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. It’s a lovely idea, except that there is NO ability to do that on WordPress. I can block posters or put them in permanent moderation but NOT, repeated NOT, whitelist.
            And periodically WP for its own reasons just starts dumping regulars in Spam.
            I’m sorry to take so long. I wish I could tell you I was out having a blast, but I spent the last two days in ER. No, not for me. And the person is okay. Seems to be a transient ischemic attack, but hospitals are slow. And I’m exhausted.
            THIS IS NOT HOW I PLANNED TO SPEND HALF THE WEEK.

            Liked by 1 person

            2. I can block posters or put them in permanent moderation but NOT, repeated NOT, whitelist.

              But can you point the “moderation folder” for those certain posters to the main inbox? That way, WPDE can moderate to it’s little black heart’s content while the certain posters don’t notice.

              Like

            3. In case I wasn’t clear, “they” = WordPress. They’ve got a very nice blog platform…except for all the bugs and moderation hassle. Personally, I don’t mind if my comments are freed late or never. It happens.

              Hope the person mends fully and you get some rest.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. On the subject of TIAs/strokes, Midwestern Doctor has an article on DMSO, a drug that supposedly helps with treatment and recovery. I’m passing on the link in case anyone finds it useful: https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dmso-heals-blood-vessels-and-could

                (Note: I am not a medical professional, I have no personal experience with DMSO, and I have not done a deep dive on its effects/side effects. This is just a pointer to a topic I found interesting.)

                Like

        2. I’m basically unsure that their techies’ conclusion that WP is the desirable available option will continue after Minx 2.0 comes out. OTOH, Pixy Misa is cooking up his own programming language and database for that, and it would be reasonable to doubt Pixy’s judgement, or to want to see how the items survive security inspections when handled by third parties.

          WordPress is an interesting software situation.

          Liked by 1 person

  24. I’m hoping, seriously, that this is the death rattle of the Democratic Party and the DSA is the necromancer’s trick to try and hide just how much the corpse smells.

    Not hopeful that California will recover any time soon, too much imbedded idiots in the system.

    The more I see, the more I think that our enemies know this.

    So, we need to keep them unable to rest and recover. Keep hitting, keep striking, keep attacking.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. The DSA is communists in the German government funding Nazis in the US.

      The EU is a crock of shit by the EU’s own standards.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. To paraphrase the Bard, “A cow patty by any other name will smell just as foul”. The EU design took all the bad ideas of our Articles of Confederation and stirred in a mess of bureaucratic nightmare primarily for France and Germany to constrain each other. To compare the EU to a cow patty is unfair, the cow patty if properly mellowed is a useful adjunct to agriculture. The EU government serves no “useful purpose” except to tell the Europeans how stupid and selfish they are.

        Like

    2. The Formerly Golden State’s surface level problems all stem from single party capture, but the underlying kill-off-the-state issue is the overhanging massive financial obligations to things like public employee union pensions.

      Liked by 1 person

  25. I don’t know that they’ll succeed, but I know they’ll do damage trying. And his last point in my quote is key:

    https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2026/09/14/the-ai-pause-might-not-be-what-you-think-it-is-n4957217

    That isn’t to say there aren’t dangers inherent in AI, or that some regulation isn’t called for. What I am saying is that you don’t want it under the control of unelected bureaucrats working hand-in-hand with the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (CPUSA-Vt. Oblast) or up-and-comers like Abdul El-Sayed.

    Think of it as the difference between police bodycams and Flock cameras. Bodycams only put police interactions in government hands, but Flock records, recognizes, and collates everything for government dissemination.

    Thank you, no. 

    Like

  26. A dictatorial takeover is not a revolution, it’s an oppression with an intent of destruction. We do not have to yield to that which has no authority, and we should not –

    Never Surrender. 🔥

    Like

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