House of Eratosthenes

Unfortunately, GOP awfulness didn’t translate into Democratic goodness, those speeches got dull in a hurry, race relations have gotten worse, and none of that has anything to do with Obama actually being capable of handling the most important job on the planet. Maybe next time, voters will ask the most basic question about the candidates running for President: are they competent to do the job or will we end up with another Obama?

The six reasons are very elegantly stated, good enough for coffee mug slogans. He was unprepared for the job, His goals are overly ideological and not necessarily good for the country, He doesn’t know how to work with Congress, He’s narcissistic, He’s a poor planner who doesn’t think through things all the way and He’s a habitual liar.

He may actually know how to work with Congress. But, it wouldn’t matter if He did, because He doesn’t demonstrate any interest in doing so.

The narcissism is particularly dangerous. I’m reminded of a fellow engineer I knew once who demonstrated this particular weakness, but none of the others. He rose to this highly senior and technical position due to his knowledge of certain aspects of the desktop OS, and some solidly crystallized ideas about how it should work with the enterprise, but not too much else; he was put in charge of deploying a configuration throughout this very large organization, which was really unfair to him, I thought. Evidently, whenever a question arose about how something should be configured, he didn’t ask anyone, he just formed an opinion. Our super made his failure a bit more humiliating by quizzing him about whether he would rate the effort a success. He partially redeemed himself by replying in the negative.

I wonder how Barack Obama would reply. Well, I really don’t…He’d say something that would castigate, probably ridicule, the person asking the question, making it clear that He didn’t think it was a question that should’ve been asked. That’s how He’s handled just about every question that isn’t welcome. In this way, He is a walking, breathing, talking guarantee that poor strategies and poor tactics will never be reformed. But that is one of the most crucial aspects of competent leadership, competent management, in fact any competent implementation of anything that involves any complexity.

We’ve got a lot of people walking around among us, who can’t quite seem to catch on to that. They apparently think humility, like two-wheel drive and cigarette-smoking, is something for the lower altitudes. That’s exactly the opposite of the truth.

There is a somewhat-neglected film made by Will Vinton (the California Raisins dude) called “The Adventures of Mark Twain.” Our current president, sadly, rather reminds me of the segment in the movie that likely sank it at the box office: the Mysterious Stranger. “I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is.”

It’s darned creepy even looking at it now, thirty years later… as a kid this freaked me the hell out. (I am actually fairly surprised HBO aired this part of the film.)
- nightfly | 09/23/2014 @ 09:11
From the P_Ang “Six Degrees of Seperation” file: Will Vinton moved next door to us for a year, year and a half when we were growing up. The owner of the large house was Mormon and only rented out to other Mormons. Kind of creepy now, but at the time my sister and I were duly impressed that someone who created the California Raisins and had met Michael Jackson lived next door. We were sure to become famous. Needless to say, rural life doesn’t pan out for a director who constantly needs to meet people and shake hands and he eventually moved.
And yes, it was creepy. I think you can youtube the creepy portions. Blech. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger
- P_Ang | 09/23/2014 @ 11:00
This is where I start wondering — not for the first time — if maybe I’m the crazy one.

Obama, like all “progressives,” quite clearly feels that He is right in all that He does, because history — make that: Historical Inevitability — has been conspiring all along to produce Him. He is smarter, better, wiser, more tolerant, more caring than you. Every “progressive” believes this about himself.

Which flabbergasts me. History — all of it, from Homo Erectus to now — has been laboring to produce… you? A spineless, chest-less, limp-wristed nancyboy who literally has to retire to a fainting couch if exposed to Incorrect Thought? Who needs “trigger warnings” on tv shows and breakfast cereals? Who believes that all human activity is warming the earth, yet is reduced to a blubbering pile of goo if the local wi-fi temporarily goes offline?

And yet, half of Americans (or more) seem to believe this.
- Severian | 09/23/2014 @ 11:15
What always confuses me Sev, is that the whole principle of liberal study seems to be rebellion against authority, whether it’s parents, teachers, cops, all the way up through politicians to God. Yet, there seems to be some strange line or zone. If you’re an authority figure that doesn’t require anything but blind, fascist servitude to the faith of liberalism, and you’re in “that zone,” not only are you an unquestionable authority but you are a figure to be deified and even worshipped.
Certain figures have reached that questionable “status”…Obama, Clinton(s) and Kennedy(s) are to be worshipped, not questioned. Glorified, not investigated. Praised, not maligned. Others are in the “zone” and are protected, but have not reached “divinity.” Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Biden, Boxer, Schumer, Feinstein, Soros, Holder, Sebelius, Ayers, Gore, Sotomayer, et al…the list is long.
Is it the presidency that bestows “divinity” to liberals? If so, it’s akin to a Kingship or an Emperor, where the family is now a member of the Imperial family and has special rights to authority and kingship that can never be impugned.
- P_Ang | 09/23/2014 @ 11:50
P_Ang,

that’s what makes dealing with them so very, very frustrating. They believe they’re in an existential struggle against The Man ™, when in fact they themselves have been The Man since the late 1960s.

The only way to square that circle is to pretend that their leaders — but only theirs; never anyone else’s — are somehow “above politics.” Obama’s not just some jonny-come-lately race hustler from Chicago; he’s a Lightworker. Bill Clinton wasn’t just a standard-issue center-left governor of a hick state, he was JFK’s heir (remember that nauseating picture of him as a little kid at Kennedy’s funeral? We saw that, what, fifteen times a day back in 1992?). And now they’re “Ready for Hillary,” because… well, because. She’s not a really shitty bureaucrat who slept her way to the top, she’s Madam President.

You can actually watch it happen during primary season. Remember how viciously Clinton and Obama went after each other in 2008? Each tried to paint the other as just some hustling, opportunistic politician. But once a clear winner emerged, the same people who just yesterday were going on about Obama’s cheap cynical maneuvering were singing his praises as the Great Racial Healer.
- Severian | 09/23/2014 @ 12:44
The religious impulse will always have its vengeance, P_Ang. If it isn’t directed to something external, then it will become internalized, and that’s how you get “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” That’s how it becomes, by definition, good if the right people are doing it. That’s how it must be reality’s fault when it doesn’t obey one’s own pet theories… and how other people must be destroyed for the temerity of their own personhood. They don’t know enough to be props on the Master’s stage! The gall!

And that’s why those who are suspected of secular apostasy are punished far worse than us mere unwashed infidels. We were never people to begin with, so eh, whatever. For one of the elect to betray the Messiah du Jour? Unforgivable. And the apostasy may be anything any of them are doing right now, innocently and openly, never dreaming that it will soon be exhibit A of their treachery, for which they must be pilloried and castigated, unless they tearfully recant.

Shorter Leftists: “It’s horrible that the Inquisition burned heretics; they should have left it to us.”

The whole dog-and-pony show is pathetic, but also dangerous. It’s meant to be. Seeing the ruination of others’ lives keeps the rank-and-file’s noses to the grindstone, and their consciences quiet.
- nightfly | 09/23/2014 @ 12:59
“…the same people who just yesterday were going on about Obama’s cheap cynical maneuvering were singing his praises as the Great Racial Healer.” -Severian

And yet, having lived my life among the heathen liberals, this is the one…and ONLY aspect that immediately comes to mind…that I can find value in. If Conservatives and Libertarians could simply “switch off” that nagging impulse to denigrate the negative aspects we find in the opposition during our primary and unite behind the selected candidate we would win more.

Then again, is supporting a RINO truly winning? I would say no…and so we continue to win the moral high ground, and lose the political.
- P_Ang | 09/23/2014 @ 14:02
P_Ang,

I would be ok uniting behind a RINO for political purposes, provided I was convinced the alternative would be soooo much worse that…. well, whatever — just stick a whole bunch of asterisks behind that statement. Still, in theory: I have no problem holding my nose and voting for the RINO out of naked partisanship. Hell, I did it with McCain in 2008, and again with Romney in 2012, and will do it again with Chris Christie or whomever in 2016*.

But the thing is, we acknowledge it. I don’t think anyone outside the bought-and-paid-for media whorehouse actually claimed Romney was a great, or even particularly conservative, candidate (looking in your direction, National Review). If the vote were between Romney and an atomic wedgie with a habanero-infused jockstrap, most folks I know would’ve had to ponder it for a while.

Liberals, on the other hand, have what I’ll call the Messiah Switch. Whoever wins the primary becomes the repository of All Good Things. They’ll pretend they were never against the candidate, and will get furious — really, truly, authentically furious — if you so much as suggest today that the candidate does in fact have all the flaws they themselves were ripping him for yesterday. It’s the same mental shortcut that gets them over Molotov-Ribbentrop Dissonance. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

TL;DR — if liberals had any principles, they’d be conservatives.
- Severian | 09/23/2014 @ 14:51
*except for Jeb Bush. If that jackalope is the candidate in 2016, I’m straight up voting communist. I’m not even kidding. This is not a fucking monarchy, no matter how hard the left is trying to make it one.
- Severian | 09/23/2014 @ 14:52
Yes, I’ve tried bringing up my dream team in occasional posts now and then as 3C…Cruz, Carson, and Constitution for 2016. It will never happen, but you are correct. Jeb and Christie both have about as much pull with me as a five-year old playing tug of war with an elephant or perhaps Rosie O’Donnell, yet the “kingship” that RINOs and the left seem to love is there with ol’ Jeb.
- P_Ang | 09/24/2014 @ 12:56

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Six Reasons Obama is a Failed PresidentTuesday, September 23rd, 2014

Six Reasons Obama is a Failed President
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014