Worse and Worse

by

The trickle of news regarding the Maui wildfires which incinerated an entire town and likely over a thousand of its residents just gets worse and even more distressing with every tidbit reluctantly disgorged by the local authorities. 1,100 are still listed as missing. After a week, it is most likely that they are dead. Many of the missing are presumed to be children, as local schools were closed because of high winds and power outages – and children at home alone because their parents were at work. Others might be senior citizens trapped in a local retirement home, unable to move without assistance, and visiting tourists unfamiliar with the area, whom no one has thought to report missing as yet. That so many are still unaccounted for – especially the children — that is an aspect that is difficult to contemplate. No wonder that local authorities are reluctant to admit the degree of carnage.

The very same national news media who pounded on the failures after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans over and over and over again, with the precision of trip-hammers are relatively silent, since there is not a Republican anywhere in sight to be assigned blame, credibly or otherwise. This brings to mind Iowahawk’s much-quoted quip about covering a story … with a pillow, until it stops moving.

Will the story of the Maui wildfires stop moving soon? It certainly seems to have dropped off the headlines of the major media; although bloggers like Neo are still posting about it, and inviting comments from a handful of people with direct personal knowledge. The whole thing is a farrago of civic fail, from not clearing away flammable brush, to a fire department apparently not equipped with tanker or brush trucks to fight off-road conflagrations, not having access to water to quash the fire after it started, to delayed and/or no warning to residents and holidaymakers, and finally blocking the few exit roads from Lahaina. Perhaps there was a good reason for this, because of downed live electric lines – but it doesn’t speak very well of local emergency services, bottling up people in town, leaving most with no choice but to jump into the turbulent ocean or burn alive in their cars or homes. Some reports compare the Lahaina fire to that which destroyed the hill town of Paradise, California, but it seems to me more like the conflagrations of the Hinckley and Peshtigo fires of the 19th century, which burned out whole districts and towns, to the tune of hundreds of deaths – in the case of Peshtigo, thousands. The only people who emerge with any credit from the disaster are that handful who disregarded official orders, drove around the barricades, removing themselves and families from the danger area, or who found a safe refuge and went back over and over again to help others. There are, apparently, a great many good citizens doing their quiet best to assist their friends and neighbors on Maui – unlike Oprah Winfrey, without a camera crew in tow, or like the FEMA operatives, holing up at a luxury beachside resort as the first order of business.

The bald truth about what happened in this disaster will come trickling out, bit by bit, I expect – as survivors talk to each other and to their friends, as much as the national establishment media and the political powers that be try to keep the pillow pressed down. Discuss as you wish.

27 thoughts on “Worse and Worse”

  1. Several years ago there was a big blackout in Venezuela that got tracked down to a brush fire that downed some electrical lines. Maduro, not surprisingly, blamed US sabotage- cyberattack or some such. The WaPo had a reporter cover the scene who was experienced in Latin America, but not in Venezuela. She reported on Maduro’s claim of sabotage, which was proper, but she lacked the knowledge of Venezuela to point out that poor planning and lack of maintenance had been a long-festering problem in Corpolec, the government-owned electrical utility (just as in PDVSA, the government-owned oil company). (The three Venezuelan English language blogs- Venezuela News and Views-Devil’s Excrement- Caracas Chronicles- had been reporting on electricity mismanagement for years. Ironically, Francisco Toro of Caracas Chronicles was at the time a stringer for the WaPo, but not located in Venezuela.)

    Ironically about Katrina and the Democrat press, a big part of the poor response came from the lack of a timely request for assistance from the Democrat mayor of New Orleans.

  2. I think that a lot of the information that I gleaned about the fire in Lahaina came from amateurs, people who just happened to be there, or who lived close by and had local knowledge. A commenter on Neo’s site, Jim Irvine, had the most knowledgeable insight early on. I think that it’s perhaps significant that some of the reportage on the Daily Mail can’t be found by search now – a woman who escaped on her little motorbike was about the first one to say that the way out of town was blocked, and another woman who lived on a sailboat in the harbor – she reported about how the black smoke came down over Lahaina, and that she and her partner heard screams and explosions.

  3. The Hawaiian Electric Company that spent their funds on “Green technology” and not on power line upkeep is largely owned by Blackrock investment fund, which has a big emphasis on “ESG” investing. I wonder how much pressure was put on the local utility to neglect maintenance ?

    California has seen many wildfires (My son is a CalFire supervisor soon to retire and move to South Carolina) that are the consequences of environmentalist pressure. The pressure has only gotten crazier with the Global Warming death cult. Trump even visited and told them they should be brush clearing. He was laughed at.

  4. One could take the point of view that the lack of attention in the Leftist media is intended to further the process of normalizing mass deaths if Leftists are in charge.

    Subotai Bahadur

  5. On thing that surprised me when coming East was dealing with people who had no conception of what fire season was. Out West, fire season is indeed a thing to organize your activities around; even if you are a city dweller in Arizona, you know not to plan activities in the high country in June

    We really have reached a point where we acknowledge the “Pravdization” of the news where we glean information about a story not by what is explicitly stated but rather by inference. There was story last Friday about a shopkeeper in California who was murdered over an argument concerning her placing a Pride flag outside of her store. What I noticed was that the race of the murderer was not stated which led me to infer that he was not white because if he was not only would we have known immediately but we would have multiple outlets researching every aspect of his life, from his social media posts to the people he lived next door to presumably to draw a connection to MAGA. Sure enough the identity of the killer was released several days later several days after the murder, and it appears he is Japanese (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/20/us/lake-arrowhead-california-pride-flag-shooting.html)

    It is going to be real bad come next Summer as the election hits full swing.

    One of the things I have noted anecdotally over the past 6-7 years was that some journalists and outlerts have made explicit statements that “bothsideism” is an outdated concept in the Age of Trump and should be abandoned. Earlier this year a former executive editor of the Washington Post and now at ASU (sigh) released a report concerning journalistic objectivity and came to the conclusion that it was time to start moving beyond that word. (https://cronkitenewslab.com/digital/2023/01/26/beyond-objectivity/)

    As more succinct description can be found here (https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/philboas/2023/02/04/media-trust-objectivity-problem-restore-with-racial-ideological-diversity/69866618007/) where Downie defines objecivity as “….expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice”but as the article states Downie and Heyward argue that “when misunderstood, journalistic ‘objectivity’ or ‘balance’ can lead to so-called ‘both-sides-ism’ – a dangerous trap when covering issues like climate change or the intensifying assault on democracy.”

    Because objectivity is rooted in the old white people who used to run newsrooms and that the newer generation of journalism see racial and “gender” diversity as important because it allows them to get at “reality” There it is in black and white, that the media must adjust the world so that it can be viewed the prism of post-modern politics

    It doesn’t come any more establishment journalism than Downie and Heyward (former president of CBS News). If we on the Right were smart and knew how to run an information warfare campaign we would take that report and have every journalist pressed to go on the record with their opinion of it. In fact we waste so much donor money on useless conservative foundations and candidates what about diverting some of that to fund a Matt Walsh-style movie in the form of “What is a Woman? ” Just have somebody go around and interview journalists, especially the younger ones, and get tape of them talking about this. Have it come out by May or June next year as the election heats up and then attack in echelon by exposing every week stories that the media has corrupted. Make them the story, they’re begging for it. Better yet have Trump do it.

    Make them pay

  6. I hate when people make all things political. But this…it is all Democrat. The people in charge on up through the president. And the survivors will still vote the same way next election.

    On a human level, I feel for them. On a societal level, they got what they voted for. And I am not now nor have I ever been a Repub. But I left the Dems in 2000/2001 when I realized they hated me. I hope these people wake up and finally understand after this.

  7. “And I am not now nor have I ever been a Repub.” There’s the problem in a nutshell. If even you can’t switch, what hope do we have?

  8. RE: “Fire Season.”

    Florida has two seasons: Hurricane Season, and Not-Hurricane Season; each is six months long. The prudent and aware use Not-Hurricane Season to prepare for Hurricane Season, exercising personal responsibility to undertake the necessary preparations.

    I lived in Florida for over two decades and went through a number of hurricanes, but have been in Western Fire Country only sporadically, and never for long enough to have experienced Fire Season. I suspect preparations for both Hurricane Season and Fire Season share some similarities.

    And, while hurricanes are repetitive, but transient, and it is possible to reinforce a structure sufficiently to resist all but the worst of them, such is not the case with widespread fire. Evacuation can be the lastoption with hurricanes, and reserved for the most dire of projected conditions, but with fire it is the first..

    Florida, and places like it, have had decades to study, and practice, evacuation; as example, toll roads in Florida suspend tolls during evacuations, and large portions of high-volume interstate highways in Florida become “both sides open” to double the road capacity for evacuees. Everyone is incessently encouraged to prepare for hurricane season, to maintain adequate supplies of water, food and safe lighting; state and local governments encourage such action and freely admit that “you’re on your own for at least 48-72 hours” after a major storm. When Hurricane Charlie traversed the state diagonally in 2004, the eastern portions of Osceola and Orange counties experienced steady winds of 110-120 mph with higher gusts, knocking power out in some communities for as long as 3 weeks. Charlie struck Orlando Friday night shortly after dark, it was not until Monday that county fire/rescue arrived to survey streets for emergency equipment access. By then, residents had cleared all but the largest fallen trees before sunset on Saturday.

    The big difference between Orlando and Maui was our houses were still standing Saturday morning, the sun was shining, and the greatest calamity was no central air conditioning; if one had a small generator, and a great many did, refrigerators and fans continued to work just fine, and gasoline for them was available, if 8-10 miles away instead of around the corner. Power companies and work crews from as far north as Tennessee arrived to help restore power and clear tree debris the residents hadn’t already taken care of; on an island one has to deal with such events with the resources already at hand. That drives, or at least it should, a program of preventiveness to minimize impacts, rather than a focus on post-event cleanup and correction. It should also drive citizen involvement at all levels; there are conditions that are properly addressed, and coordinated, at the government level, and that should come as a result of involved and committed citizens not just demanding, but requiring, direct and responsible action on the part of bureaucracies.

    The point is, we’ve become complacent in the face of Expansive Organized Government and deferred considerably more of our own responsibility to it than is prudent or reasonable.
    The hierarchy is “Self, Family, Community;” you cannot protect your family if you do not first protect yourself, and it is aware and involved families that mutually support, and protect, communities. A bureaucrat miles away cannot experience the pain, hardship and inconvenience you and your neighbors go through, and their ability to alleviate, or prevent, it is severely constrained, usually by the proverbial; “organizational structure” which dictates what response, and how much of it, gets deployed, when. We have forgotten that under our Constitutional structure citizens hire government to perform functions more efficiently done collectively than individually, that citizens who hire can also fire, and as the employer, set performance requirements for employees.

  9. As to not reporting the death toll – I’m reminded of a guy who, when dressed in the costume, bore a close resemblance to Lenin. He would dress up, go to Lib rallies, and proclaim some of the more bloodthirsty/radical Marxist ideas from the USSR. He reported that several rally organizers and participants would tell him that, while that was their end goal, he needed to keep quiet about it as the crowds were not ready to hear that yet.

  10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03-t4COUrS8

    The verified list has gotten smaller. 388 people that have been reported missing by family and friends. I’m just posting this to keep everyone up to date. I’m sure there are people listed that will now show up because they didn’t know they were reported missing, and those that were incinerated along with anyone who would have missed them, so not listed.

    I wonder about hotel records, and lease records on rental properties. Have those people been named and found?

  11. Katrina was very much a Dem caused issue, but they had the “Evil GWB” to blame it on.
    Nagin (scarily enough, one of, if not the best Mayors of NOLA . . . let that sink in, everyone else they’ve had was worse, by far) had endorsed Jindal for Governor over Blanco, who never forgave him for the slight and the two loathed one another and refused to speak. Bush was stuck acting as go-between. TPTB Dems never did like Nagin who ran as an outsider against the Machine, and had the nerve to win, then cleaned out several money making scams run by the city/machine (brake tag/vehicle inspections especially. Had his own nephew arrested. Taxi business permits and what, airport contracting, other changes) so they found the man then found the crimes, because to work there you pretty much have to. With no convenient Republican to fob the blame onto, though a few have blamed Trump already, Maui is getting Dave Burge’s pillow treatment because Hawaii is Deep Dem, Racist, and will show just how rotten the Dem machines are. Plus it looks like they’d like to pull a fast one on the place and it being in the spot light would make that embarrassing.

  12. Saw this from the Daily Wire (https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-lot-of-government-officials-should-be-going-to-prison-for-the-hawaii-fires) via Insty:

    “The footage I’m talking about is an interview with a survivor of the fires in Maui. This interview was conducted not by CNN or NPR but by a real estate agent who moonlights as a citizen journalist. He spoke with a man who goes by “Fish” and survived the blaze in Lahaina. Here’s what that man saw…”

    Perhaps when we talk about the media we should remember our cultural heritage from the Golden Age of Blogging when we realized that we were all citizen journalists (pajama media) A man with the ability to record and publish, basically a man with the phone, can generate information that undermines the narrative.

    How about we take it a step further and in the tradition of ambush journalism start ambushing journalists? Talk about a sanctimonious, corrupt class ripe for mockery.

  13. A problem we have in institutions of all types is that too many leaders have little interest in ***operations***. They focus on ‘strategy’, on press releases, on large acquisitions to catch up with product or market position they would have held themselves if they’d been paying better attention, etc.

    The presidency is an Executive job, but Biden had never before held any kind of executive responsibility, even at the level of running a small business or an infantry squad.

  14. David, Biden has no need to be an executive. He is the front man for who knows how many bureaucrats running things. As long as the money rolls in, he is fine.

    Just have somebody go around and interview journalists, especially the younger ones, and get tape of them talking about this. Have it come out by May or June next year as the election heats up and then attack in echelon by exposing every week stories that the media has corrupted.

    James O’Keefe is doing this but the lefties ran a coup in his own company so he is more on his own now. One of his good recent stories is how Act Blue, the Democrat money raising operation, was laundering huge contributions through the accounts of small donors. He went door to door and asked the reputed donors about their contributions. Many were astonished to learn they had donated hundreds of thousands.

  16. David,

    I hope that within my lifetime somebody would write the authoritative political biography of Joe Biden.. I would buy it because he is the man who captures the age so well. This is a guy who won his first Senate race at 29, he first ran for the presidency 32 years before he won it, when he was selected as Obama’s VP he had spent more than half his life in the Senate, and he was the first guy that I knew who had gotten hair plugs. In a town full of creeps and mediocrities from both parties, he is the creepiest mediocrity of all.

    The chapters I would want to read the most would deal with the period between February and August, 2020. If you remember the whole Democratic nomination campaign was trying to find someone who could prevent Bernie Sanders from winning. Biden came out of Nevada 3rd and in deep trouble and through back-room dealing with Jim Clyburn was able to win South Carolina (hello Justice Ketanji) and from there Super Tuesday.

    It was at that point things got really interesting because the Democrats basically cleared the field for Biden in order to force Bernie out. What was the deal cut? What did Biden promise in order to get the nomination? One term only perhaps? That he would act as a figure head for the various factions from blacks to LGBT to the Deep State (how else can you explain Rachel Levine in that admiral’s uniform)? Oh to be in that room because whoever was doing the actual negotiating for this coup would be the actual powers in Washington today. Then of course there was the selection of Kamala Harris, Ron Klain’s greatest trick, because as a black female she would be an acceptable nominee but as a VP she would ensure that Biden would not be forced out of office.

    Yes I would buy that book.

    Biden never did have either the intelligence or energy for executive work and as you mention he has zero experience. It takes a lot to ride herd on the various factions within not only the party but one’s own administration and the problem with a figurehead is that there is no one with the institutional power to crack heads and take responsibility for the whole. You need that formal power, A delegate in the form of your chief of staff or your wife cannot do it. Obama in his Kalorama mansion cannot do it. It’s not so much that Biden reigns and not rules its that no one else is capable of actually ruling. So entropy reigns. I think in reality, the Democrats are happy to have a man like Biden there, it’s more profitable for everyone

    There was a story from a few years ago when Manchin was holding up the Reconciliation bill in the Senate and the White House, desperate for a victory, wanted to split the transportation part of it off into a separate piece. The progressives in the House of course balked at splitting the bill, reasoning that remvong the popular transportation part would doom the social spending part. So to resolve the situation Pelosi invited Biden to the Hill to address the House Democrats; this after all was supposed to be his wheelhouse from those 36 years in the Senate, legislative deal-making, and of course he was the President and the leader of the party. What happened? . He didn’t ask for the sale and left not only his agenda out to dry but his key ally Pelosi humiliated. I find that episode jaw-dropping, but that’s the man. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-biden-reconciliation-infrastructure/2021/11/14/f9e59026-3e42-11ec-bfad-8283439871ec_story.html)

    I’m 95% sure Biden won’t be on the ticket next year, he just cannot make it physically, The reason I’m not 100% is that they need to get rid of Kamala first and why would she agree to go? Whoever is on the ticket for 2024 will have to promise to abide by the same rules Biden agreed to, to act as a figurehead for the various factions.

  17. The evil of the Left is starting to be noticed. But, they have 14 months to try and tenure it.

    On a separate note, Peshtigo is perhaps subliminally why we have so many fire truck manufacturers here in Wisconsin. Pierce, Seagrave, Darley, Snorkel, OSHKOSH, Monroe, etc.

  18. @Mike,

    That’s very interesting deep background. I agree that no way can Biden really run again next year — no way, even if the Democrats don’t care that he’s incapable right now (which is horrible and deeply disturbing) they won’t risk some awful public event the next 14 months.

    K. Harris seems to have realized that she has no business actually holding executive office, she seems to be running away from the possibility of succeeding Biden. Honestly, I kind of admire it. If that’s really what’s happening, I have more respect for her than almost the entire rest of the party combined. Even if she’s just trying to not be exposed and publically fail, maybe fail badly, at least she has some humility and self-awareness. If even 1% of her calculus about what might be better for the US and its citizens, she’s almost a hero.

    So what happens to clear out both Biden and Harris? I can’t think of any scenario, but I am not a vile partisan lizard who cares only for keeping my party’s grip on Power and $$$$.

    I think what is happening with Joe Biden is a disgrace. In a better era, that call across the aisle, “We need to talk about Joe” would have been made long ago, and a deal would have quickly been reached that allowed him to step aside with dignity, and get somebody in Office who could actually Execute, policy being secondary to competence.

    I remember my mother setting up the ironing board in the living room with the TV tuned to the start of the Watergate hearings. I asked some annoying question and she just barked, “Shut up!”, ironing, riveted to the TV, cigarrette and scotch in hand. I wasn’t scared or hurt — having known my mother for a few years at that point, I was pretty tough — but I also understood somehow that this was REALLY IMPORTANT.

    I think of the terrible gravity of Barbara Jordan that day, and I think of what is going on right now, and although my mother has been gone some thirty years, although I can’t *know* what she would say about all of this — I can jolly well see the look on her face. …

    BRetty

  20. Obama in his Kalorama mansion cannot do it. It’s not so much that Biden reigns and not rules its that no one else is capable of actually ruling. So entropy reigns.

    I think Obama is running things in an incompetent way. Hence the entropy. The staffers are mostly Obama holdovers. The most dangerous Obama alumnus is Eric Holder who is doing enormous damage with his ESG campaign among corporate CEOs.

  21. I really hadn’t thought much about Obama and his Kaolrama residence for several years. It re-emerged in my conscious thought earlier this month with David Samuels’ interview of David Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize winning who wrote the biography “Rising Star” chronicling the early career of Barack Obama (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama)

    Samuels’ interview of Garrow brings back into our consciousness that in a profession full of narcissistic opportunists that Obama may be its exemplar. A man who sold himself as the authentic redeemer of the American Dream from a path of slavery and racial discrimination was in fact a composite character that he created in order to exploit the opportunities offered by American traditions and the pretensions of its elites. We remember David Brooks ‘ comment about Obama’s “perfectly creased pant” because it epitomizes what Obama offered. Obama was a man on the make and he didn’t allow tradition a or norms stand in his way’ that’s why he went in less than 4 years from a state senator to the president-elect.

    Part of the American tradition was that presidents didn’t stay in DC after the expiration of their terms. The folklore was that they went straight from the inauguration of the their successor, down Capitol Hill to Union Station, and took the train out of town. Now of course they get one last ride on the presidential 747 home. The point being they didn’t stay in the capital city, not only because to do so would impede the transition of power but because the mythos that began with one of the greatest Americans, Washington , acting as a modern Cincinnatus and retiring to his farm. It’s what you did. When Eisenhower retired to a farm outside of Gettysburg it may have been morning’s drive from DC, but it might have as well been on the other side of the moon.

    Obama stayed in town, officially because one of his daughters needed to finish up her at her high school. I did find it interesting at the time that nobody remarked that hundreds of years of tradition should not bend because of a child’s education; also plenty of Americans have had experiences of moving from one school to another in order to meet the needs of family let alone country. However Obama was different. Obama was always “different”

    Knowing what we do now that decision to stay in DC seems ominous given what happened to his successor. We now know that the subversion of Trump, his very successor, was begun under Obama and it would be foolish to think that with his being in DC that he (Obama) didn’t play a key role in its direction. Given that the subversion of Trump was begun by the security services while Obama was president and given the esteem Obama was held by official Washington, it would be naive to think that Obama did not maintain contacts with those services after 2016. Leave aside the outrage of the Biden Administration using the judicial system against a political opponent, we have the outrageous behavior of a former president staying in Washington and working to undermine his successor.

    This is of course all speculation, but the pieces fit and given what we know about the Russian Collusion hoax and the security services involvement in politics it is not tin foil hat conspiracy. In fact as Samuels’ points out in his interview, what would have seen as tin foil hat conspiracy not so long ago, a former president running a successor’s administration, is now not just possible but likely

    Yet as with Sherlock Holmes’ quip in The Adventure of Silver Blaze, the dog didn’t bark. Nobody raised an objection when Obama stayed in DC, continued to stay in DC even after his daughter graduated, or wonder if he was pulling strings not just with Biden but with the assault on Trump. Michele Obama recently quipped that “It was no accident Obama White House was ‘scandal-free” (https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/03/14/michelle-obama-white-house-parenting-no-scandals-contd-ctn-vpx.cnn) Yet I would argue that he is directly involved in the 3 greatest scandals of American history: the subversion of Trump, his VP and SoS both neck deep in criminal behavior, and his being the puppetmaster of the Biden Administration

  23. Yet I would argue that he is directly involved in the 3 greatest scandals of American history: the subversion of Trump, his VP and SoS both neck deep in criminal behavior, and his being the puppetmaster of the Biden Administration

    I still don ‘t understand Obama and his role. I was not impressed with Obama in the beginning.

    The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James “Pate” Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor.

    Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama’s. He became Obama’s ­kingmaker.

    Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city’s most popular black call-in radio ­program.

    I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:

    “He said, ‘Cliff, I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.’”

    “Oh, you are? Who might that be?”

    “Barack Obama.”

    What was that about ? Why did Jones do this? I don’t know of anybody who ever asked him. Obama is the real Manchurian Candidate. We know more about Joe the Plumber than we know about Obama.

  24. Most probably the reason they are pressing the pillow is (a) no Republicans to blame and (b) much of the money the utility could have used for power line maintenance was diverted to green programs.

    And they certainly don’t want to discuss that.

    I like the pillow analogy.

  25. Mike K.,

    As far as Obama and his role, my take comes from a different frame of reference. One frame of reference is to treat these matters as if they were a criminal trial where you have to show beyond a reasonable doubt. This is how the Democrats are trying to spin the Biden bribery issue. Over the past 8 months Biden and the Democrats have re-enacted the political equivalent of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow as they have had to abandon one defense after another from Biden knew nothing about Hunter’s business dealings to yeah he was on the phone with his business associates but they just discussed the weather to now sure there were millions of dollars in suspicious bank transfers to Biden family members but you can’t prove that any of the money ended up with Joe.

    Rules of evidence and proof of guilt in general aren’t commensurate with those of a criminal trial, given that those trials deal with loss of liberty and property if not life itself. The proper frame of reference, for say political matters and domestic disputes, isn’t just “it looks bad” but is there any other plausible explanation,

    The cases of Hillary and Biden cover a very large imprint of corruption with the two most senior members of the Obama Administration. With Hillary you had conducting official business to the tune of thousands of e-mails over a private e-mails server in her basement. Of course we focus on the server and the e-mail but the real scandal is what was in those e-mails that she worked so hard (and illegally) to conceal. With Biden of course it was his son making major money in a country where his father was the lead point person for the Obama Administration. These are matters that cannot be hidden in terms of not having someone in the Federal bureaucracy alert to this, with Clinton alone basic traffic analysis would sound alarms. The issue with Obama is not whether they ever came to his attention as criminal matter, which they might not have given the bureaucracy involved, but as a political matter. There are people in the West Wing, most prominent being the Chief of Staff, who are attuned to political risk and have their ear to the ground. What Biden and Hillary were doing would constitute the biggest political risks imaginable and I cannot believe that Obama did not know about their illegal activity. Of course he did nothing about it, sweeping it under the rug, which makes him complicit

    In regard to Trump, I’m following Andy McCarthy’s book Ball of Collusion (https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/new-disclosures-confirm-trump-was-the-target-of-obama-administrations-russia-probe/_) The Obama Administration was actively involved in pushing Russia Collusion activities in regard to Trump. Given that he was at first the nominee from the other party and then the president-elect, it is inconceivable that this wasn’t green-lighted by Obama himself though it seems it was coordinated through several cut-outs. Keep in mind that the collusion campaign went on for 2 ½ years after Trump took office across both political and media institutions, that takes at least some degree of coordination (hive mentality) or not. To think that Obama was not involved in this is to assume that after taking the unprecedented step of trying to subvert his successor, of taking the unprecedented step of staying in DC after his term ended, that he just decided on 1/20/2017 to get religion regarding political norms and traditions.

    In adopting these frames I’m not trying to assign guilt as much as trying to develop a model to predict future behavior given what Obama is doing in the current Biden Administration. Right now Biden is fighting for his political life as various factions within the Democratic Party want him not just off the ticket but perhaps even out-of-office. The problem for Obama is that once Biden leaves office, his (Obama’s) power goes with it; given the rise of the progressives, Obama’s base is really the DC establishment. Given both that Obama being a combination of Jay Gatsby and Lyle Lanley, is as unscrupulous as they come, and has been involved in some of the greatest scandals in American history through his control of the DC establishment what is his most logical play? What won’t he do?

  26. I call: K. Harris suddenly resigns and is replaced (by Hillary Clinton?) then Joe Biden dies, officially of “coronavirus”. This will happen in the next six months.

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