Roundup
(1) Walz seems to be a real piece of work. As the Stolen Valor scandal builds, will it cause him to be dumped by the Democrats and replaced? There’s a poll on that at Legal Insurrection. In the subtitle to that post by Professor Jacobson, the name “Biden” is used as a verb: Will Democrats ‘Biden’ him before the convention?
(2) The Babylon Bee does it again. The title of the piece: “‘They Got You In Here Too, Huh?’ Says Biden As Dems Lock Kamala In Basement.” Follow the link to see the photo, which is priceless.
(3) Rumor has it that Iran will strike Israel on Tisha B’Av, which is August 12-13. The symbolism would be the point:
Unnamed Western intelligence sources quoted by the UAE-owned Sky News Arabia indicate that Iran and Hezbollah plan to launch their retaliatory strike against Israel on Tisha B’av, the day of mourning for the destruction of the two Jewish temples …
The sources indicate that the choice of the day is due to several psychological and tactical considerations. It may aim to revive historical traumas for Jews of destruction and uprooting, thereby amplifying the psychological impact of the attack on Israeli society.
To Muslim audiences receptive to Iran and Hezbollah’s narrative, an attack on Tisha B’Av would signal that Israel is vulnerable to destruction, the way Jews have historically been, the sources add.
A large-scale attack on a day of religious significance may also exploit Israel’s lowered defenses and “increase the state of chaos,” …
(4) Lee Smith believes that Obama has been in charge all along.
(5) David Dutch, one of the victims shot and badly injured at the Butler PA Trump rally, is out of the hospital and has issued a statement. He and the other surviving victim have retained lawyers, as well you might imagine.
As bad as Walz is, Harris can’t dump him. It would be an admission of bad judgment.
4) He lays out in very good detail what a lot of us have feared: Obama is running the country via proxy. One proxy now replaced by the next one. And yes, when Obama took office in 2008 the US was fundamentally transformed. Trump was an unexpected bump in the road, but now the shadow dictatorship is back in place and set up for another 4 years. I have no idea how to fight it.
Cornhead: following the logic of 4), Harris didn’t pick Walz, Obama did and is consistent with his alignment with Iran and the radical left. Lee Smith does make a very good case.
Holder put him on the list, some Chinese functionary probably recommended him
one example is not to credit mark halperin, to name one particular denebian slime devil
I too think Obama is actually at the helm of the government, but Smith doesn’t outline what the mechanism is. I’ve been in organizations where the people at the top were not fully in charge, and the way it worked there was that the people two or three levels down had unofficial contacts outside the organization that kept them abreast of what they were supposed to be working toward. On some topics, the official leadership could expect to be obeyed, and on some they were just issuing orders into vacuum. The official leaders in these cases did not last long once it became apparent that they weren’t fully in charge, but nothing ever happened to the people two or three layers down in the times I was there.
I don’t think Obama is literally calling up people and telling them what to do. He didn’t even do that as President. I think he meets with people two or three levels down at his home in Washington DC from time to time–he never moved away–and keeps them apprised of what his desired outcomes are, and they go back and tell their people what to do in accordance with that guidance. If they know Obama well they just have to ask themselves what he’d want them to do.
Since the DC journalistic establishment has no curiosity whatever about how Obama spends his time or who goes to see him, I don’t think it would be easy to prove anything. But I’ve seen this kind of thing done, and it works kind of half-ass, because the lack of formal reporting relationships and clear directives muddies everything. The government certainly has not been at full-ass during the “Biden Administration”.
Walz may have been Obama’s pick, but if the blowback becomes too much he’ll have to go. For Obama there’s no downside regardless of how it plays out: he leaves no fingerprints and Harris is forced to own the screwup.
I don’t think Obama is literally calling up people and telling them what to do. He didn’t even do that as President. I think he meets with people two or three levels down at his home in Washington DC from time to time–he never moved away–and keeps them apprised of what his desired outcomes are, and they go back and tell their people what to do in accordance with that guidance. If they know Obama well they just have to ask themselves what he’d want them to do.
==
A thesis worth exploring. Not sure how characters like Blinken and Austin work into that.
Blinken was delegated from Bidens staff to work at State, I dubbed him Smithers after obsequious toady on the Simpsonshe is compromised from the Penn Biden center, we saw this clear at the full grovel they did re Xi, at that first meeting in Anchorage, the whole balloon fracas, the dismantling of the counter surveillance program, the whole counter revolutionary bent at DHS and FBI not to mention the
CIA Austin retired to Raytheon, after he left the door open for Islamic State, remember Islamic State, that the gang that Michael Moore had his pomp poms on account,
Lee Smith’s essay is unsettling, and I want to believe it, because I already thought it was true. I just wish that there were some investigative journalist that could find some kind of evidence. Even some simple hazy correlations would help me feel less like a political paranoid.
As I said, it’s unsettling, and there’s no beer in the fridge, and the Olympics are boring. Maybe I’ll just take a nap.
Re: It was Obama all along — mechanics
Maybe it looked like this scene from “Goodfellas,” where Boss Paulie always employs go-betweens and never talks directly to anyone.
__________________________________
Everything was one-on-one. Paulie hated conferences.
–“The Police Department for Wise Guys | Goodfellas (1990)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlsO92Ewxoo
No beer, well that is a crisis, yes they could have let luana alonso, on for a while longer,
so the push to ban fossil fuels, is certainly emblematic of the obama torch,
‘your electricity bill will necessarily skyrocket, then there was that bit about adjusting your thermostats and inflating tires, because thats the only way to save gas, he deemed the islamic state jayvee, until they proved their varsity stance in Palmyra and Raqqua, much like the current London cops , you shall not blaspheme the name of the Prophet, that around 2012 with Benghazi,
LotusEaters, “English Riots: The Great Deception” (29:21):
https://youtu.be/nAHOOSZResc?si=JGq55kgIE8D6crJo
A bit further afield in Bangladesh the Prime Minister has fled to India, rioters are rolling across the land with an appearance of pogroms led by Islamists against Hindu minorities, who are now fleeing for their lives.
To be more precise, the DC journalistic establishment worships the ground Obama walks on, so they likely are always curious about what he’s up to. It’s just that they’ll never actually report anything about what Obama’s up to unless there’s some real benefit to Obama’s cause.
As for who has been truly “in charge” throughout the Biden administration, that depends on how you define that sort of thing. Setting aside the Biden administration, how much is any president in charge and how much is bureaucratic (deep state) inertia and how much can be chalked up to the influence/subversion of advisors, confidants, courtiers, or whomever else? That almost certainly various from president to president.
That said, at minimum I think it’s pretty safe to say that Obama had and continues to have a pretty significant influence on the course of the Biden administration not to mention the current Harris campaign. I imagine the day-to-day stuff was largerly left up to Biden and his inner circle, but regarding big policy items Obama definitely made his presence known, and if he was strongly against something that the Biden team was proposing, I imagine they might defer to Obama’s will in most cases.
But there were almost certainly events that are all on Biden. The Afghanistan withdrawal being one that comes to mind. The sheer stupidity of that screams pure Biden to me. I suspect Obama likely would’ve heeded all the military people who were advising against it.
Then of course Biden stubbornly resisted stepping down until he was (almost certainly IMO anyway) threatened by Obama with Pelosi and Schumer.
@ArtDeco:Not sure how characters like Blinken and Austin work into that.
Both had high positions under Obama and are probably already quite familiar with his thinking and objectives.
@Cornflour:I just wish that there were some investigative journalist that could find some kind of evidence.
Not a case of “can’t”, a case of “won’t”.
@Nonapod:Setting aside the Biden administration, how much is any president in charge and how much is bureaucratic (deep state) inertia and how much can be chalked up to the influence/subversion of advisors, confidants, courtiers, or whomever else?
“Bureaucratic inertia” is another way of saying “basically the same people are in place doing the same things”. A lot of the people in place now were in place back in 2008 too. Some people stay because they’re weathervanes, some people stay because they have friends in high places, some people stay because they are believed to be irreplaceable, some stay because firing them is a bureaucratic nightmare. Personnel is policy.
Elections just change a few people at the very top. The ones below them are exceedingly difficult to get rid of. Even in the private sector a large public company has trouble cleaning house.
actually no, there was plenty of evidence he didn’t head their advice, re the Iraq troop withdrawal for one, in so far as there was someone coordinating policy in Iraq and Afghanistan it was Biden with some equal share to Brennan,
its curious because Lee Smith started out at the village voice, before he ended up at the Weekly Standard where he remained till he found the folderall Kristol was ladeling too much for him, not only about Iran but the whole Russian masquerade,
these consensual delusions are deadly to most living things, pretending that khashoggi was some brave dissident, instead of a Qatari agent of influence, is why we have tankers playing hide and go seek near the Bab al Mandel,
(4) – Closest guarded secret in the World is Obama’s High School and College grades. He is not as smart as claimed. He is not and has never been a “Leader”.
Communist Credentials date back to his maternal grandparents > thru mother. Actual Father has always been questionable to me, and may have even been Frank Marshall Davis though I have never done a lot of research on that theory.
Frank Marshall Davis was a Communist’s Communist, and even as a mere mentor would’ve given Obama all the Communist Credentials he’d ever need – opening Communist Strongholds in Chicago (Think – Bill Ayers) all the way to Harvard.
Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, and from what I have heard became the first president there to never write an article in it.
Obama is great at voting “present”. 🙂 🙂 🙂 Seems to be his strong suit – though perhaps tied with his amazing skills at reading a Presidential Teleprompter.
He is a Figurehead, and enjoys being so. America will probably never be the same after Obama’s handlers entrenched themselves into the Federal Government—and any connections to it.
so the fellow who tried to bomb the taylor swift concert is an Austrian of Macedonian background, umkay, you didn’t see that on the dance card, Beran A, is he as the legit as the English sounding Asif Merchant, who seems to have been behind the IRCG plot against Trump who knows, did he have ties to the two foreign agents that masqueraded themselves as secret service,
Communist Credentials date back to his maternal grandparents
==
His grandfather was Willy Loman – a career salesman who’d run out of gas by age 53 and was relying on his wife’s earnings and what he could gin up from over the phone sales of insurance policies out of his home. His grandmother was the manager of escrow accounts for the Bank of Hawaii.
A large-scale attack on a day of religious significance may also exploit Israel’s lowered defenses and “increase the state of chaos,”
One thing we don’t need to worry about is that Israel’s defenses will be lowered. Whether they will be adequate is one question. Apparently both Egypt and Jorden have said they will attempt to shoot down any missiles in their airspace (though I’m not sure why there would be any over Egypt). And the US has said they will aid in intercepting or shooting down missiles, as they did last April.
Iran might actually hold off, in the hopes of getting some kind of sweetheart ceasefire deal that Biden wants to foist on Israel. I’m sure they realize that any deal, even if they and Hamas have no intention of sticking to it, will help Harris’s election prospects.
KanekoaTheGreat:
https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1821592835835228244?t=MBCTa4GYj54V7o_VtK32NA&s=19
“though I’m not sure why there would be any over Egypt”
The Houthis frequently miss their targets in southern Israel wandering into Egypt on the west and Jordan on the east. Moreover, the drone that hit Tel-Aviv apparently entered Israel from the Med, implying it may have overflown Egypt’s Sinai to get there.
Jimmy
One of the last Houthi attacks went thru Egypt:
}}} (4) – Closest guarded secret in the World is Obama’s High School and College grades. He is not as smart as claimed. He is not and has never been a “Leader”.
Here’s another, less obvious support for this (Karmi passes it as an aside, but here are more details):
Stop It Already — He’s Not So Smart
https://web.archive.org/web/20110723224839/http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/stop_it_already_–_hes_not_so_smart.html
Money Quote:
I am reminded daily of the open borders on the road as the traffic is just getting worse and worse here in Texas.
There is a part of my town that was notoriously bad during Christmas shopping just a few years ago.
It is almost that bad year round now.
Jon Baker, we have open borders here in CO. But a lot of our Illegal Immigrants come from CA, and never lived south of the border
NYPOST: New bodycam video from Trump assassination attempt shows cops confronting armed Thomas Crooks on roof: https://nypost.com/2024/08/08/us-news/new-bodycam-video-from-trump-assassination-attempt-shows-cop-confronting-armed-thomas-crooks-on-roof/
Niketas Choniates on August 8, 2024 at 12:27 pm said: ??“I too think Obama is actually at the helm of the government, but Smith doesn’t outline what the mechanism is.”
I’ve wondered about mechanisms, too. Because I want independent confirming evidence that would convince the aware and open minded.
The old “gum shoe” approach of reporters and PI’s would have people on public streets — or CC cameras — positioned to count visitors and ID them and note how long they spend time there. But the SS would inspect and document the watchers. It could be difficult to keep on doing it, even on public streets far away from the Zero’s residence..
A drone to monitor is out of the question, for obvious reasons.
No doubt, two-term ex-Presidents do not have the documentary trail and retention they’re required to perform while in office. Thus, there are too many way’s around piercing the veil of communications.
So. What is the soft link to find out? Possibly a trusted insider who turns away. Or else SS agents……
CALLING DAN BONGINO!
Anyone have some better ideas?
The thing is, I cannot find Barack Obama’s great piece of work, the scholarship one would presume he researched, drafted, crafted, and honed, that earned him the presidency of the Harvard Law Review.
Because the presidency of the law review was an elected position, essentially ceremonial, not based on intellectual merit or scholarly accomplishments. Very different from Editor.
TJ,
No need for physical face to face meetings. BHO has a phone and probably encrypted zoom meetings if needed. As he once said, he would like to run the country from his bedroom in his bath robe.
I don’t buy Smith’s theory and don’t think he proves it either. On policy, the Democratic Party is where Biden and Harris are. Obama isn’t needed. I can believe that he entertains officials in the administration, and if they ask for his advice or he thinks they need it, he gives it, but I doubt he gives orders or sets objectives for the administration or the people in it. While they aren’t very competent, Biden’s appointees and the DC bureaucrats have been around long enough to know what the party and the Deep State want. The people actually implementing policy now are the people who came up with the policies in advocacy groups and think tanks, or they followers of those who did, or they are familar with what the party and the movement want of them.
Obama wasn’t really running things in the later years of his own presidency, so I doubt he’s more hands on now. The Iran policy is now Blinken’s baby. Obama didn’t need to order it. If he gave advice on Afghanistan, it also may have been different from what Biden actually did. The so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” was Schumer and Pelosi’s doing. The administration had input, but Obama? Obama’s economists despised Jared Bernstein, so Obama’s unlikely to be behind Biden’s inflation policy. I also doubt Obama said, “I tried to get college debt relief and couldn’t do it because Congress and the courts wouldn’t let me, but hey, you guys go ahead. Nobody will stop you.” It’s also questionable whether Obama’s fingerprints are on the border catastrophe. Much of what we’ve seen isn’t Obama unleashed to move further left now that he’s the puppet master, it’s Biden and those around him breaking free and making mistakes on their own.
sdferr, Interesting.
Time stamp 6:10:55– 28 seconds before the first shot.
Why is the sound muted on this video until the officer goes to his car and retrieves his rifle?
Why wasn’t Trump removed from the stage before this? Crooks was seen on the roof three minutes before the first shot and they knew about a suspicious person using a rangefinder 20-25 minutes before the shooting.
Someone will do a frame by frame of this video. In one frame you see something that might be Crooks– but an after action report said the officer saw the shooter in position, which would be higher up on the roof.
Chris Martenson has been following the investigation and this is a fairly up to date summary of some of the questions/holes about the official version.
At Best The US Secret Service Is In ‘Damage Control’ Mode – Peak Prosperity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khW11w6tf4c
I can’t help wondering, Brian, what would have happened had the cop who fell back from the edge of the roof (after apparently having Crooks point his AR in his face) immediately pulled his service weapon and fired it into the side of the building just below the eave or some such innocuous but noisy manner, alerting every USSS and LEO on site that bad shit was going down. But alas, we’ll never know.
sdferr, that is a legitimate question– along with a lot more questions that need to be answered.
How about what photographer shoots at 1/8000 of a second when he’s just shooting pictures at a rally? Apparently that’s what the NY Times photographer who got that lucky shot of the bullet had to have done. I wonder how many of Trump’s rallies he had attended previously. That would require setting the ISO of 25 and an f stop of 45.
In the video I linked to Dr. Martenson showed a headline to about John Kerry saying farmers need to quick producing crops to reach net zero. That’s not correct.
Kerry did say the world can’t meet net zero without farmers significantly reducing emissions. You can extrapolate that we aren’t going to met the net zero goal without a significant reduction in the amount of food grown. All of this should be very concerning to common sense people.
I still appreciate what Dr. Martenson is doing.
By the way, when watching the video as the officer is running to the roof, he signals to the other officer to give him a boost up. That signal was high enough to be picked up by the body cam–almost like he knew there was no audio– so why did the audio magically appear a minute or so later.
Also there was speculation that this officer cut his hand when trying to climb up– but the part he was boosted up to didn’t have a metal exposed edge. So whose blood was found in the bathroom of this building, building 6. I haven’t heard an explanation for that at this point.
Re: Obama / Harvard Law Review
I recall a Letter to the Editor Obama wrote upon being voted in as the President of HLR that year. It had been fisked for grammar errors, such as:
__________________________________
In the very first sentence Obama leads with his signature failing, one on full display in his earlier published work: his inability to make subject and predicate agree.
“Since the merits of the Law Review’s selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues,” wrote Obama, “I’d like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works.”
https://thegrungefactor.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/early-obama-letter-confirms-inability-to-write/
__________________________________
Interestingly. that error has been fixed at the Harvard Law Record site:
https://hlrecord.org/record-retrospective-obama-on-affirmative-action/
A similar error. Obama can’t decide whether to treat “half” as singular or plural.
_________________________________
Approximately half of this first batch is chosen solely on their performance on the writing competition; the other half are selected on a weighted formula of 70 percent grades and 30 percent writing competition.
_________________________________
Here is an incomplete sentence:
_______________________________________
Another distinctive Obama flaw is to allow a string of words to float in space. Please note the unanchored phrase in italics at the end of this sentence:
“No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind.”
https://thegrungefactor.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/early-obama-letter-confirms-inability-to-write/
_______________________________________
There is an extraneous “who” in the bolded section, a syntax error which causes the sentence not to end properly and leaves the reader hanging.
I have a lawyer friend who had been on the Pepperdine Law Review. He said that members of Law Review are expected to publish articles and that is perhaps the biggest reason to be on Law Review for the publishing credit and subsequent attention, hopefully, to be gained.
That Obama had not published in his Law Review was a huge red flag in my friend’s opinion.
Likewise he noted that Obama had received no offers for a Supreme Court clerkship which was also unusual for the President of the Harvard Law Review.
Forget it huxley, it’s Harvard.
https://notthebee.com/article/very-smart-activist-david-hogg-calls-jd-vance-stocker-laughed-at-comment-section
(Hogg began studying at Harvard University in the fall of 2019 and graduated in May 2023.- Wikipedia)
Obama also “graduated from Columbia University in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science” – Wikipedia
Well there’s your problem, right there!
https://notthebee.com/article/this-columbia-student-group-is-saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud
“… fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”
At least Obama hasn’t been caught plagiarizing his college papers — yet?
1) I’m surprised by how physically off-putting Walz is, which matters a good deal in politics. He does not look “Presidential.” His demeanor is abrasive. He looks odd standing next to Harris.
RTF, if one is going to judge on “optics,” which many people do, both Trump and Vance will tower over their opponents in debates. Harris claims to be 5’4″, and 5’7″ in heels; Walz is therefore maybe 5’10”, just looking at the photos of them together. Trump is over 6′, and Vance is 6′ as well. Silly to judge on physical stature, but some people do.
I think Walz has embraced and intentionally tries to project the physical appearance of the midwest lovable grandpa. Then he opens his mouth and out comes some of the nastiest, vile statements.
I wish the GOP/conservatives would move away from this new obsession with Walz. VP candidates do not generally affect the overall vote except maybe in their home state, and MN is going to be blue no matter what. The campaign should be focused on Harris and her avoidance of the press.
For details on the specific administration officials who act as go-betweens and surrogates for Obama, read more Lee Smith. He has written a lot about Obama’s role in this administration and in reshaping the Democrat machine, including two books (The Permanent Coup and The Plot Against the President).
Here’s a link to his essays at Tablet:
https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/lee-smith