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Biden channels George W. Bush — 67 Comments

1. Whenever the senile buffoon, illegitimately installed at 1600, opens his mouth, he is either mumbling incoherently or spewing stupidity and lies, while his sidekick, the cackling hyena, is so utterly unlikeable (as well as incompetent as “border czar”) that even many members of her own corrupt party care little for her. What must our foremost adversary (the CCP) make of a nation, once a proud republic, yet now reduced to chaos and disunion under the misrule of the Dystopian Duo?

2. Biden* himself called on Cuomo to resign just days ago. So obvi there is SOMETHING wrong.
   They’ve doubtless made a deal with Cuomo in return for resignation.

   I imagine that “helluva job” translates to “Thank you for resigning, the deal is activated, nudge nudge, wink wink.”

3. Too bad Biden was not in a NYC nursing home a year ago.,

4. “Access to voting” and “infrastructure?” Cuomo? He and De Blasio grossly mismanaged COVID in New York, and Cuomo’s order to send still-infectious COVID patients discharged from hospitals into nursing homes without adequate preparation cost thousands of lives. Hell of a job, indeed. Democrats are going to have to stop letting Joe out in public.

5. It looks like that shanda of an “infra-structure” bill will pass the Senate.

   We’re so freaking screwed.

6. I think Obama picked Biden so he (Obama) could “serve” (pull the strings) for at least a third term. Kamala is never meant to actually be president. Even if Joe can finish it his term, Obama will still be the puppet master as Kamala finished out Joe’s term.

7. Agree,

8. Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder were the head of the group that vetted the VP candidates for Obama that chose Biden.

   “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” lasted precisely 0 generations in Caroline’s case.

9. Well, technically speaking “a Hell of a job” accurately describes Cuomo’s tenure.

10. “Demographics”??

    Skin color, rather.

    Many of her “demographic” don’t even consider her THEIR “demographic”.

    Boy (young person?), this racism game can sure get complicated…. It’s kind of like the old saw that it’s better to tell the truth because it’s so hard to keep track of all the lies one tells (and which lies were told to which people…)

    But then I keep forgetting: it doesn’t matter how many lies the Democrats tell (or to which(!) people).

    In any event, the Democratic Party has become the anti-MLK party (among other things).

    This makes it ESSENTIAL that they celebrate the man (and the day) so much the harder.

    Hypercrits.

11. @Barry Meislin:

    Well spotted, Sir!

    “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the demographic is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all (except for when the Wops ran the numbers racket).

    But wait! There’s more! Don’t think Cuomo could argue with any of this:

    For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.”

12. “Ecce Cuomo” indeed…

    File under: What is troot?(?)

13. Harris has agency, too. She needs to move on Biden soon, and linking Biden’s pedophilia to Cuomo’s sexual harassment is the way to go. If there is a second Biden run, she will not be on the ticket, so her only route to the Presidency is the removal of Biden now.

14. “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” lasted precisely 0 generations in Caroline’s case.

    What did she get out of that specifically?

    She endorsed Obama, and was given an ambassadorship. She wasn’t qualified for the position, but this sort of favor-trading is rampant in federal politics and every president does it (much to the annoyance of the Foreign Service). What was thoroughly inappropriate in her case was that she was posted to an important country which has elaborate ceremonial. Not sure that’s all that common.

15. One difference… Michael Brown did do an excellent job. Their efforts were stymied by Democrat Party members in office who refused to plan and cooperate. Then the media supplied boat loads of distortion and misinformation.
    Andrew Cuomo has been an abrasive, abusive bully from the get go. He has exploited his father’s position and power to acquire his own. Mario was one of the politically powerful Catholics to sing the “I’m personally against abortion and wouldn’t get one, but I stop anyone from having one.”
    Anybody interview his ex-wife?

16. The most recent incident concerns a video of the President’s return from Wilmington yesterday. You can see a man (presumably Secret Service) directing emphatically to take a flagstone path perpendicular to the path on which he was walking. He passes by the path and walks on to the grass. The officer jogs ahead of him while another jogs behind. You can see Biden wander off to the left a tad toward some bushes, then turn right toward an obscured grassway which evidently leads to a walkway running along the back of the White House. Not sure what to make of it. He’d been submerged for five days and then they called an early lid.

17. One difference… Michael Brown did do an excellent job.

    He didn’t. You need to review the correspondence between Brown and Marty Bahamonde, who was the FEMA employee on the ground. Brown was a patronage rando who added zip to the efforts of the career employees in FEMA. When the agency had to go off script, he was deadweight. Note, FEMA is a crucial component of Homeland Security and the linchpin of the government’s civil defense efforts, and the Bush personnel operation put in charge a lapsed lawyer whose principal qualification was a lengthy run as staff director of a trade association for Arabian horse breeders.

18. I think Obama picked Biden

    With a magic wand?

    Primary campaigns are often disfigured by idiot preference cascades, and James Clyburn was able to set one in motion by getting opinion leaders among Southern blacks on the Biden bandwagon. Blacks are given to block voting not seen among any other population segment except in some odd microclimates (e.g. South Florida Cubans). See 2016, wherein Bernie Sanders was even with HRC in every population segment but Southern blacks (which he lost 3-to-1).

19. I think Mike K has reached the age where you get to say whatever you damn please. One of the benefits of being male is that you arrive there around 75. Dames have to wait till they’re 90.

20. I hope we never see any ‘Bush” around an RNC Convention – ever! For those who think that Ronald Reagan was infallible I give you Sandra Day O’Connor and George Herbert Walker Bush. The Bush Family are the very essence of Republican mediocrity.

21. The Bush Family are the very essence of Republican mediocrity.

    We’ve learned in the last six years that the Bushes and the Cheneys have contempt for the constituency that voted for them and defended them. Ditto Mitt Romney. Note, this is something that Bob Dole was unwilling to do. (I can forgive the McCains for this as they have understandable personal reasons to be antagonistic to the President-in-exile, but Cindy McCain with her husband’s Twitter feed flipped the bird at Sarah Palin as well). In re George P. Bush, he’s in the position he is because of the family brand; he is otherwise just another pol who brings nothing special to the table. It is proper for Republicans to insist that all of the Bushes, Cheneys, and Romneys get lost. And every sitting member of Congress who co-operated with the shampeachments should have their tuchus primaried. Disagreement is to be expected; co-operating with your opposition’s malicious PR stunts, never.

    While were at it, has the master class gasbag, Prof. Ben Rule-of-Law Sasse, had one blessed thing to say about the mistreatment of the January 6 defendants?

22. Here’s my shocked face: NPR mentioned allegations about Cuomo’s coverup of consignments of the elderly COVID sufferers to nursing homes, and the NY State investigation into it, multiple times this morning. I was sure that was the other shoe they were trying to hide – guess I was wrong!

23. so cable guy nagin, and landrieu, put every obstacle in the way of saving lives, in new orleans, the st joseph’s parish chief had spent levie funds on grift and studies about studies, was michael brown, out of his depth, probably, are these aforementioned figures, as well as the murder governors, from virginia to california, downright evil, without a doubt,

24. and they sent caroline to austria this time around,

25. she was up for replacing hillary, if memory served long ago, was david boies flunky, daughter of an nxim cultist, kirsten gillebrand, any better

26. I see and hear people expressing a belief that Obama is the puppeteer controlling Biden. I have many doubts about this. I am pretty sure that Obama was the puppet, and someone else (Maybe Ayers?) controlled him. Most of the Communists I can remember, from the fifties forward, were so very unattractive, personally, that they had to have front men and women, and even front organizations, or took over more innocuous ones, like most recently, the AMA.

27. 
    Art Deco on August 11, 2021 at 9:05 am said:

    I think Mike K has reached the age where you get to say whatever you damn please. One of the benefits of being male is that you arrive there around 75. Dames have to wait till they’re 90.
    

    I don’t know what I said but thanks. Also, I am closer to 90 than to 75.

28. kakistocracy, rule by the worst, is the name of the game, spitzer was capricious in destroying lehman bros and aig, but would he have 15-25,000 people, morgenthau may not have always been in the right, but leagues ahead of a creature like vance the lesser, who coddled epstein and weinstein, the zampolit against trump

29. she was up for replacing hillary, if memory served long ago, was david boies flunky, daughter of an nxim cultist, kirsten gillebrand, any better

    Caroline Kennedy conferred with Gov. Patterson about the seat and was supposedly told she’d have to pay her dues. Gillebrand is a Boies flunky, but at the time she was representing a Hudson Valley district and cultivating a reputation for herself as a Democrat who could go off-script. Downstate Democrats saw through her and called her ‘Tracy Flick’. As soon as she had a statewide constituency, she was back to the reservation. She grew up in the Capital District but made her career in New York and Washington and I’d tend to doubt she ever had more than a notional residency in her district.

    Her father is a lobbyist in Albany. I think the NXIVM cult employed him. Don’t think he was ever a member.

    I rather liked Gov. Patterson, but I think his elevation of Gillebrand was a mistake. If you wanted an Upstate Democrat for the seat, John Hall might have been more appropriate.

30. I am pretty sure that Obama was the puppet, and someone else (Maybe Ayers?) controlled him.

    Not Ayers. There is something hinky about Obama’s career. The man inaugurated in January 2009 had been an ordinary state legislator just five years earlier. Other than cadging a law degree from a demanding school, nothing he did between 1983 and 2005 suggested a man with much in the way of achievement-motivation. Steve Sailer has pointed out that descriptions of him as an adolescent and young adult do not suggest someone who is a natural leader. His surface personality seems to have changed dramatically in law school, but the 13 years succeeding the completion of his law degree reveal no accomplishments of note other than making a living.

31. Ray Van Dune,

    This might mean there’s a worse shoe out there that we, the public, don’t have even a clue about, but NPR does. Or Cuomo is like the fly that has been swatted but is still moving and NPR is putting the foot down to make sure he doesn’t rise up.

32. Art Deco:

    I’ve had it out with you about this before, but I’ll say once again that I completely disagree about Obama’s ambition and trajectory.

    Becoming head of the Law Review at Harvard – by election rather than grades – was very ambitious. And it was mainly political for him, because apparently he didn’t even write an article. He already knew that wouldn’t matter and that being the first black person to head the Law Review would be what would matter. And it did. He was featured in the Times and elsewhere. He parlayed that into a law school post that was offered him despite the fact that he didn’t have the qualifications to go with it. One of things he taught there was Election Law, his specialty. He was in Chicago for the political and activist contacts it would give him. He joined Wright’s church for purely political reasons, apparently, because joining a church was required for political success at that time. He used lawfare to knock out all his Democratic opponents in his first election (state Senate), ensuring he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, which just about guaranteed his election. He entered the state legislature and let it be known to Emil Jones that he was ruthless and going places (Jones already knew that anyway from the lawfare), and if Jones promoted Obama Jones could be the person who “made” a US senator some day, because that would be Obama’s next move. Jones helped him out by handing legislative credit to him on bills he hadn’t worked on.

    There’s more, but I’ll stop there – and merely add that quite a few people said that Obama had been told even when quite young (I believe it started in law school) that he could be president. He seemed to think so, too, even back then. He never lacked for what one might call self-esteem, and certainly had ambition that was well-documented beginning in law school.

33. He used lawfare to knock out all his Democratic opponents in his first election (state Senate), ensuring he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, which just about guaranteed his election.

    Having been involved in local politics in Rochester and other places in New York, I have to disabuse you of the notion that challenging petitions per se is indicative of any kind of ruthlessness. I’ve been the plaintiff and the defendant in such challenges. There are circumstances where it might be deemed discourteous within a certain circle.

34. Art Deco:

    Oh, and Obama graduated from Harvard Law in 1991, and then was profiled in the NY Times, and on the strength of his presidency of the Law Review he was offered a huge book deal almost immediately, to write a memoir. Some of the details are here. He dragged his heels for a while and finally came through, after fits and starts, with Dreams From My Father, which he either wrote or had ghost-written. It was published four years after his graduation from law school and reissued when he became a senator.

35. Art Deco:

    I’ve written many times about what Obama did in that primary, and I assumed you knew the larger story – which is the Alice Palmer story. Palmer was one of the people he knocked out.

    Lots of politicians are ruthless. I never said that Obama was the most ruthless politician on earth. I was countering what YOU had written, for example this: “Other than cadging a law degree from a demanding school, nothing he did between 1983 and 2005 suggested a man with much in the way of achievement-motivation.”

    He did plenty of things that showed enormous achievement-motivation, and knocking out Alice Palmer et al was one of them. Now, if you mean true achievement, such as creating something that you would consider an achievement, if you define it that way I suppose you could say he didn’t do that. But he certainly showed enormous ambition and also political ruthlessness to further that ambition. It is obvious in his resume. Everything from law school on was geared to obtain that end.

36. I have wondered for a long time who was behind Obama. You, Neo, suggest he did it himself and that may certainly be true but I still wonder. He certainly showed a change in trajectory from Occidental college in Pasadena to Columbia and then on to HLS. I knew about Emil Jones back in 2008, before Obama was elected. Some of his good luck in 2008 was over confidence by Hillary, which she repeated in 2016. She assumed the primaries in 2008 would be “over” by February and ran out of money.

37. Mike K:

    I do not at all mean to suggest that Obama did it himself. But I do completely disagree with theories such as that of Art Deco, that he wasn’t a major player and hugely motivated in the fulfillment of his own political ambitions (for many many years), He clearly was. But that doesn’t mean he did it alone.

38. The famous (infamous?) dinner for Rashid Khaladi, which has been hidden for 13 years, is one indicator perhaps.

    The claim received renewed attention in 2008 when it was raised due to a reported friendship between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Khalidi’s family when Khalidi taught at the University of Chicago. Articles by Aaron Klein and John Bachelor, writers respectively for conservative outlets World Net Daily and Human Events, were referenced by rival political campaigns and reprinted in wider-circulation media.

    The known video has never appeared in public. Why ?

39. He did plenty of things that showed enormous achievement-motivation, and knocking out Alice Palmer et al was one of them. Now, if you mean true achievement, such as creating something that you would consider an achievement, if you define it that way I suppose you could say he didn’t do that. But he certainly showed enormous ambition and also political ruthlessness to further that ambition. It is obvious in his resume. Everything from law school on was geared to obtain that end.

    Disagree. Knocking Alice Palmer off the ballot showed (1) he had his ducks in a row and (2) she didn’t and (3) the precinct captains didn’t mind enough to dissuade him. It was cold, but her behavior was borderline. Getting an opponent knocked off the ballot due to sketchy petitions doesn’t show enormous ambition. I’ve done it, and I’m the echt Gen-X slacker; if Mike K were my father, he’d disown me for sheer embarrassment.

    Now, if you mean true achievement, such as creating something that you would consider an achievement, if you define it that way I suppose you could say he didn’t do that.

    Yep. Let’s have a gander at the scholarly articles he produced during the 12 years University of Chicago Law School was paying him a salary. It won’t take long. There weren’t any. In what state of repair is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge? And let’s talk about what he got done during the 3 years he was practicing law. And let’s talk about the legislation he shepherded through during his time in Springfield, and how he was broadly respected for his understanding of….whatever. He shuffled from one thing to another. Pete Buttigieg has been a much better resume builder.

    Now compare him to some other veterans of presidential politics. Mitt Romney built a lucrative business and rescued the Olympics. John Edwards built a lucrative (though skeevy) law practice. Howard Dean and his wife ran their own medical practice. Wesley Clark made it to the flag ranks of the Army. George Bush the Elder built a handsome business. George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter at least ran businesses.

40. challenging signatures is probably more common then noted, but very few politicians actually pretended that he won because of ‘the triumph of idealism’ that’s the story he sold to a whole bunch of people including david remnick’s doorstop, he was the tool of not only rezko, but auchi, al samarrai, et al (the last was the iraqi electricity minister, the second one, a baathist bagman, involved in the oil for food scandals,

41. Gotta go with Art Deco on the Obama Thing.

    It’s understandable that many people would prefer to forget / ignore / bury the Alinskyite cabal that nurtured him and smoothed his path to the top. The idea that a bunch of very shady folk out of the 60s underground and some with multi-generational troublemaking roots stretching much further back could get their self-absorbed sock puppet into the Oval Office for two terms and remain a power in the land long after that *is* rather galling.

    More comforting to imagine that the Half Breed with the sharp pants creases has mastered the extinct WASP knack for working extremely hard offstage whilst giving the impression of effortlessly navigating the cursus honorum. I don’t think so. I don’t see it. And no, that’s not because I *refuse* to see it. It’s just not there.

42. Obama himself is more Cod Castiglione than Machiavelli.

    Sprezzatura … not spade-work.. Ain’t never seen that Spade Work much.

    Apologies to both Dead Wops for the odious comparison.

43. I thought that this was an interesting take on the Cuomo ouster.

    Nolte: Andrew Cuomo Is 7th Powerful New York Democrat Ousted in Disgrace Since 2006

    Let’s not forget the man who may most resemble Boss Tweed, Sheldon Silver.

    #5. Disgraced Former State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-NY)
    In 2015, Silver was forced to resign over credible allegations of kickbacks and bribes. In 2018, he was sentenced to seven years in prison but earned an early release a couple of months ago due to the China Flu pandemic.

44. These creeps come into office from Central Casting. Aaron Sorkin writes their scripts. That’s why Obama loves his celebrities.

45. TommyJay,

    NY has a ways to go to catch IL, where 4 of the last 7 Governors have done time.

46. Art Deco and Zaphod,

    I don’t think you are necessarily disagreeing with Neo. Unless I’ve forgotten something she’s written, she is not claiming Obama was/is overly competent, only that he was/is very ambitious and adroit at interpreting a political landscape.

    I think all three of you can be right; Obama wasn’t particularly diligent or focused on the effort involved to master the posts he had in College and out, but he was focused on rising up the political ladder and was skilled and ruthless in achieving his goals.

47. @Rufus:

    Happily concede his ambition,narcissism and amoral ruthlessness. I don’t sense much innate drive and still think he’s the public face of a cabal.

    Granted could be some degree of distaste and prejudice on my part *and* my perceptions of his lack of drive are filtered through media. None of us actually *know* him.

48. Whether you agree with Neo’s reasoning, or not, Barack Obama’s pre-Presidential resume is the slimmest resume* of anyone who has ever been elected to the office so he must have had some political talent.

    *Maybe his Illinois barrister compatriot Abe Lincoln is a close second?

49. Zaphod,

    See, this is where I think you and Art Deco may be creating disagreement where there isn’t any. I haven’t seen Neo disagree that there weren’t/aren’t powerful people behind Obama mentoring or pulling strings. I certainly lean in that direction. He is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. His mother’s parents’ communist leanings, his High School association with Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers kicking off his political career. Valerie Jarrett and her ties to Iran, his mother’s husbands… A lot of odd, tangential stuff running through his life.

50. *Maybe his Illinois barrister compatriot Abe Lincoln is a close second?

    Huh? Lincoln wasn’t a political office-holder. He was a working lawyer and made himself affluent through his law practice. As far as I am aware, only Andrew Jackson among American presidents had an upbringing as hardscrabble as Lincoln’s and his father was illiterate to boot.

    His mother’s parents’ communist leanings, his High School association with Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers kicking off his political career. Valerie Jarrett and her ties to Iran, his mother’s husbands… A lot of odd, tangential stuff running through his life.

    There is no evidence Stanley or Madelyn Dunham had ‘communist leanings’. There’s a passable hypothesis that Ayers was the ghostwriter who produced Screams at My Father. Ayers has never had the juice to ‘kick off’ anyone’s political career. His mother was an unattractive, unscrupulous, and self-centered woman who took advantage of her parents and her second husband. The riddle about Obama is how he landed in the president’s chair when there’s so little there there.

51. Art Deco:

    We are talking apples and oranges. You mean something quite different by the term ” achievement-motivation” than I do.

52. I’ll tell my only Obama anecdote:

    During his second term, my husband and I were having a burrito at the Chipotle in Woodley Park. Suddenly, there was a great deal of Secret Service activity — which isn’t unusual for DC: absurd legions of police cars and motorcycles, road blocks, etc., which means that a bigwig or lackey thereof is passing by. However, once the Secret Service guys came in with dogs to sweep the rest rooms, we realized that perhaps it wasn’t just Malia going to a soccer game. We were told we couldn’t leave, and soon thereafter came Obama himself and a “focus group” of “ordinary working Americans” with whom Obama was to have a plebeian chat.

    Obama worked the room, and, after debating, was after all awed by the fact that he was “my president” like him or not, and shook his hand. Unlike the time I saw (but didn’t meet) Clinton, where I got chilling killer vibes, I wasn’t repulsed. He was quite tall, but I was surprised at how light his frame was. He wasn’t a big guy. Up until then, I had at least entertained the notion that he was Frank Marshall Davis’s son, or even Malcolm X’s, but meeting him gave me pause.

    He sat down with his lunch (which he didn’t touch) and began his chat.

    You would think that it was quite an opportunity — to listen in the the table talk of the “ruler of the free world.”

    Well, the “discussion” was so obviously phony that everyone in the place wanted out. Apparently no one expected to hear the man say something off the cuff, or insightful, to go off script in any way, to react with insight to anything one of these “ordinary working Americans” might say. Eventually, the Secret Service relented, the doors were unlocked, and everyone hurried out.

53. We were told we couldn’t leave,

    Our judiciary is worthless. The Secret Service should long ago have been hit with an injunction for that sort of behavior.

    The President might conceivably be in danger because his every move is telegraphed beforehand, first by flacks, then by the massive security detail. The President hasn’t much spontaneous contact with ordinary people, so all the travel is pointless.

54. The vaccine flattened the earth, which used to have curves.

55. Art Deco and Nancy B.,

    Our Secret Service’s behavior with heads of state disgusts me. Mark Steyn has written some brilliant and funny commentary on this. If the real goal were the President’s safety a more effective approach would be an inconspicuous profile in most circumstances. The G7 is one thing, but a Chipotle?!

    The emphasis is obviously much more on theater than safety and that is what disgusts me. We are a free people who elect a citizen to serve as Chief Executive every four years; not Emperor of the Sun.

56. Art Deco,

    Once again you circumvented my actual words to rush to a statistic or historical point you could pull from your quiver to be contradictory.

    I wrote, “Barack Obama’s pre-Presidential resume is the slimmest resume…”

    Andrew Jackson was a legitimate war hero and accomplished leader on the battlefield. Call me crazy, but some might think that’s more qualifying when applying to be Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces than serving as the Editor of a law review, but what do I know?

57. Obama is not very bright. He has been led and promoted by Ayers and Dorhn ever since he got to Chicago. Ayers wrote his book, got him the Annenberg gig, hosted his first fundraiser, and Dohrn’s law firm hired Michelle (who is dumb as a rock).

    Ayers was also included in the very small contingent that was given the honor of being with Obama when he went to vote in Nov. 2008.

    Someone shady got Obama into law school at Harvard and paid his way. There was a video of an old black Dem congressman where he accidentally spilled the beans in making a reference to who it was. Something about a Muslim in the middle east (IIRC). I am sure that clip is probably as buried as Obama’s glowing tribute to his terrorist fundraiser friend (the video was supposedly given to the LA Times).

    Obama is a puppet. Always has been. Nothing in his life shows us a man capable of orchestrating anything. And, even if he actually had some such talent, he sold his soul to the dark side a long, long time ago. The dark side has no interest in letting him anywhere off their reservation/plantation.

    Note — I’m convinced that the dark side decided to flush Cuomo. IMO that’s the only reason he went down. I would guess that they decided he was a potential threat to their 2024 plans (either they have someone specific in mind or they’re not confident he would take orders if they got him elected).

58. stan:

    The operative word is “and.” It’s not either/or. Obama is no puppet, but he is allied with other people – many other people – on the left who found him to be an excellent public front for their program, as well as a willing ally. He is smart, not a genius, not exceptionally smart, but definitely smart, and his utterances (well thought out to seem much more moderate than they are, and yet signal to leftists where he’s at) are quite careful and show intelligence that’s wedded to leftist goals. He is smart about how to present himself and how to make people perceive him a certain way.

    I’ve seen many people claim – like you- that he is not smart. I evaluate him very differently, and I have studied him very closely for a long time.

    Biden, on the other hand, was never smart. He is much much closer to being a puppet now, although not entirely.

59. I’ve seen many people claim – like you- that he is not smart. I evaluate him very differently, and I have studied him very closely for a long time.

    He’s generically intelligent, but it isn’t put to any notable use.

60. Dohrn’s law firm hired Michelle (who is dumb as a rock).

    There is no evidence that Mooch is ‘dumb as a rock’. She had a law license but no particular interest in practicing law, much less practicing in a BigLaw firm making severe demands on one’s time. (Most associates in BigLaw downshift after a run of years; she’d have received mulligans in the hiring process, so would have been less equipped than most to handle the demands). Mooch discovered over the period running from 1991 to 2008 that institutional managers were willing to pay her escalatingly handsome salaries to do no one knows quite what, so she wasn’t motivated to develop a real trade. Her actual interests and dispositions are a good deal closer to Nancy Reagan’s than they are to Hellary’s.

61. Andrew Jackson was a legitimate war hero and accomplished leader on the battlefield. Call me crazy, but some might think that’s more qualifying when applying to be Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces than serving as the Editor of a law review, but what do I know?

    I made a passing mention of Jackson as being the one President whose upbringing might have been as hardscrabble as Lincoln’s. I never compared him to Obama at all. You’re having reading comprehension issues today.

62. Art Deco:

    You don’t seem to think it’s “notable” to become the first black president of the US and to “fundamentally transform” the country into a leftist establishment where the right is demonized and suppressed? A lot of people – including me – would differ with you on that.

    And if your accent is on the word USE in the phrase “notable use,” and you define “use” as something that you yourself value and find useful, then you’ve defined it so narrowly that it lacks meaning for most people. I think it is crystal clear that Obama has put it to very notable use, which is the furthering of his own personal fame, fortune, and ambition, as well as the transforming of America politically and philosophically.

    And no, of course he didn’t do it alone. But he was very much involved in it both as a performer and as a planner. He used to teach Alinsky methods, remember? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

63. You don’t seem to think it’s “notable” to become the first black president of the US and to “fundamentally transform” the country into a leftist establishment where the right is demonized and suppressed? A lot of people – including me – would differ with you on that.

    He was Spam in a can for David Plouffe. Joseph Biden was elected President. That’s where we are as a culture. Obama himself did not ‘fundamentally transform’ anything. Democrats have been taking advantage of extant currents in the culture of the professional managerial class. What Obama and Holder added was an unscrupulous willingness to make use of the tax collectors, the security state, and the federal prosecutocracy as political weapons. Keep in mind that those institutions all but volunteered to be used. Note, nothing Obama did accounts for the systematic dishonesty of the law professoriate, the federal judiciary, or the media. These people are also volunteers.

    A minor point: Obama’s connection to the domestic black population is that he married into it. To date, the only vigorous presidential candidates from the domestic black population have been Jesse Jackson (in 1988 and 1984) and Alan Keyes (in 2000). The only one yet from the West Indian population has been Shirley Chisolm (in 1972).

64. Art Deco:

    You really haven’t addressed what I’ve said, which has to do with your saying that Obama didn’t put his intelligence to “notable use.” For starters, just being elected senator and president are certainly “notable uses.”

    You write, ” Obama himself did not ‘fundamentally transform’ anything.” Who said he did it himself? Or by himself? Those would be ridiculous assertions, but they’re not assertions I have made, so that’s a strawman argument.

    But my point – which I’ve made many times now – is that Obama was a major player in that transformation. He was far far from the only player, but he was the telegenic front and seemingly-genial (although I never perceived him as genial, many others did) head of state, and his history was that he was highly involved in making his own myth and in carrying it out, although he had plenty of help and there were many others who had been working longer and harder to fundamentally transform America.

65. For starters, just being elected senator and president are certainly “notable uses.”

    Who is sitting in the Canadian prime minister’s chair? Justin Trudeau. Idiocracy is now.

    The Democrats had in Illinois moles in the court system who could provide confidential paperwork on his opponents’ divorce suits and the media were willing to use it. If they had any integrity, that paperwork would have been put through the shredder and any media outlet which made use of it would have been denounced by all other outlets. And if we had a healthy culture, the imbroglio would have wrecked his campaign. Idiocracy is now.

    As for 2008, you’re assuming he was something other than On-Air talent. That aside he had absolutely optimal circumstances – a financial crisis coming to a head right in the middle of the campaign, a public too ignorant of the subject matter to have a clue as to whom the responsible parties were, his opponents’ unforced errors (putting Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt in charge of his campaign) and the media greasing the skids for him.

66. I shouldn’t have emphasized in my anecdote that the discussion was phony — politicians being phony is hardly a news flash (I do recommend _The Gilded Age_ by Twain and Charles Dudley Warner). What I meant to convey was that Obama had a kind of anti-charisma: everyone wanted to flee the room. Obama didn’t connect with people even on a phony level. He never struck me as thinking in the least bit like a lawyer, either.

    I think that’s because he really was a creature of the non-profit sector. His actual biggest early accomplishment (from a careerist pov, it was a failure as education reform) was his huge Annenberg grant with Ayers. The Obama admin was notable for containing few people with “real world” experience: they were almost always from the foundations or academia. I called them “A Students.” And I think Obama was more of an “A Student” (in his case, perhaps not literally) than a man with his own vision. I tend to think this mess is the 60s radicals trying to get their revolution before they die, coupled with the business/thought leader upper middle classes, who looked at China and said “We can keep our money? Okay, then! A nice cozy relationship with the government means we can’t even lose money. I’m in.” Add to that the social control possibilites of social media…

67. Art Deco:

    Once again, you misunderstand what I’m saying, although I think I made myself quite clear. It seems you are defining words and phrases such as “notable uses” in some narrow and personal way. In other words, it is my opinion that Justin Trudeau has put whatever personal resources are at his command to extremely “notable uses.” Becoming the head of a huge nation at a young age most certainly qualifies. It is very notable. And it is very useful, to Trudeau and to his party. Whether he is competent to run a country or not is a totally different issue.

    Obama was, as I already wrote, both a front man and a strong participant in setting the course, although he was hardly alone in the latter endeavor. I spent many years studying him closely and that is my firm conclusion. Obviously, you differ. But nothing whatsoever that you have said convinces me that your point of view is correct.

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