If you read English naval history, you are sure to run into a reference to The Commissioners for Executing the Office of Lord High Admiral. Your first reaction is likely to be something like, “Huh? WTF? Why couldn’t the Lord High Admiral execute the duties of his own office? Lazy, much?”
The way it worked, as I understand it, was like this:
–Some of the time, there was no Lord High Admiral. Hence, it was the duty of the Commissioners to do what a Lord High Admiral would/should have done if such an individual had existed.
–At other times, there was indeed a Lord High Admiral, but his role was purely ceremonial, and the Commissioners were the ones who actually performed the duties of the office.
–And at still other times, there was indeed a Lord High Admiral who did the admiral-type work. I’m not sure whether in these cases, the Commissioners were still there to serve as assistants, or whether the Commission was temporarily suspended during the tenure of such admirals.
It strikes me that there is a certain parallel with the current situation in the US vis-a-vis Joe Biden. One key difference being that the English people knew who the Commissioners of the Admiralty were. Yet while it is clear that Biden is getting a significant degree of direction and ‘help’ in executing the duties of his office, we in America today don’t have a good understanding of who these helpers/directors might be.
I don’t think there’s anything like a formal “cabal” for telling Joe Biden what to do.” Much more likely, we have a loosely-coupled set of influencers, with power even greater–much greater–than typical of a president’s inner circle. Who are these people? Barack Obama, certainly, and many members of the Obama administration: there is some truth to the statement that the Biden administration has really been the third Obama administration. Doctor Jill Biden, playing the role of Edith Wilson. Ron Klain. Susan Rice. We can only guess who else, because the influencers are not a formal organization from whom transparency can be demanded. It is clear also that Biden is greatly influenced by prominent media figures and academics–clearly, he believes that it is very important to stand in well with the Ivy League:
“Lemme tell you something,” Mr. Biden says, with a clenched jaw. “There’s a river of power that flows through this country. . . . Some people—most people—don’t even know the river is there. But it’s there. Some people know about the river, but they can’t get in . . . they only stand at the edge. And some people, a few, get to swim in the river. All the time. They get to swim their whole lives . . . in the river of power. And that river flows from the Ivy League.”
Like many social climbers, Biden also cares a lot about what ‘Europeans’ think.
Another major difference between our present situation and that of the administration of the Royal Navy: Although the damage that the Commissioners of the Admiralty could do though mistaken decisions was quite substantial–ships sunk, sailors lost, colonial possessions lost, possibly in the worst case an invasion of England itself–there was no danger that a bad decision on their part would destroy the entire world. That is not the case with the potential damage that could be done by bad advice from out present ‘Commissioners’
Last month marked the 60st anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is now pretty clear that…despite the previous claims of some of the involved individuals…JFK stood almost alone against the advice of his advisors–including his brother Bobby–who insisted on air strikes and/or an invasion of Cuba. (See The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory, by Sheldon Stern, which makes extensive use of the now-declassified secret White House recordings) It is also pretty clear that the advisor-recommended reactions would have led to a very bad outcome, quite possibly including general nuclear war.
What are the odds that Biden would stand strongly against the almost-unanimous view of his advisors in a similar situation? I’d say it is pretty low.
Regarding the influence of Obama, @wrtechardthecat wrote at X:
Like the dead hand of an ancient curse, Obama‘s vision, based on a now vanished world, will wreak a path of ruin until it finally collapses on the shambles of all it sought to transform…The once unipolar world is fractured — and is still fracturing — along two lines: the line of Great Powers, Russia, the West and China; and the line of civilizations, Islam and the West. Biden, now over 80, cannot hope to retrieve things in an Obama fourth term…
In less than two years, Biden and his ‘Commissioners’ have done tremendous damage to the United States and the world. It is hard to imagine that any future Democratic administration would not also be heavily subject to the influence of Obama and the other ‘commissioners’ I mentioned above, leaving aside only Doctor Jill Biden. The best hope of minimizing this damage lies in the potential for a Republican House and and Republican Senate. True, many of the candidates are not what we would wish. But ‘the best is the enemy of the good’, and the issue of the moment is not establishing ideal policies but rather avoiding multiple catastrophes.
See also: Commissioner Doctor Jill Biden
The people running Biden are a mystery. Obama came out of nowhere and changed our policies regarding the world. The reaction to them, by which I refer to the election of 2010, warned him to be a bit more discreet. The present “commissioners” are less discreet because I believe they think they have found the way to discount any opposition to their policies. The 2020 election was the moment they believed that they could not be stopped. The fact that their policies do not reflect reality is not enough to bring them to their senses. The country is being run by people who are living in a fantasy world.
To some degree it is inevitable that a group will “run” the President. He cannot know enough about every system to know the best policy (and the devil is in the details), and will have to rely on others who presumably, like the legislators, in turn rely on _their_ staff.
When we vote for a President we vote for that invisible team as well, blindly trusting that since the President has the right label and says the right things, that his team will be on our side too. Sometimes the President picks his team. I’m not sure Biden did.
A key point is that we are ruled [not governed, which requires a more active form of consent] by an unknown cabal, selected by themselves with only passing reference to the concept of consent of the governed, the Constitution, and the history backing it; and the Social Contract that we built and had as Americans.
With our electoral system lacking apparent integrity and with what claims to be an “opposition” party being more of an accomplice party, and with the rule of law applied to all equally being more a myth than anything else; legitimacy is in short supply. Historically, that tends to eventually involve unpleasant events.
Subotai Bahadur
Remember when the foreign policy debate for the 2020 election was cancelled because the media and their Deep State handlers didn’t want Trump to do a victory lap?
Good times, good times.
I think at this point we should dispense with any notion that the people ruling the United States have any positive interest in its fate or the fate of its people. No nation could be as poorly governed as America by mere accident. Examples are legion.
1) The amazing and easily avoided catastrophe of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump apparently ordered this to happen and at the very least had a plan drawn up. The regime ignored his plan, ignored warning of an imminent suicide bombing, and as a bonus had the departing Americans clean up Bagram airbase before turning it over to the Taliban.
2) The Covid disaster. I recall the bird flu of circa 2009 and for a while it appeared that it would be a pandemic like the 1920 Spanish flu. Then it all went away. Much later I read that hospitals had been swamped enough to use up all the supplies Bush had bought during his presidency. The point is that it was a bad pandemic, but society wasn’t torn to shreds, schools weren’t closed for a year, no one was forced to take experimental medical treatments, small businesses weren’t forcibly closed, etc. At this point I suspect that if there had been a GOP president in 2009 we would have had something similar to the Covid event then, for the same reason- to damage the political prospects of a pro-American president.
3) The border. The US presently has no real idea who is coming across the border, how many, or where they go- even though we are expending vast sums to feed and house them. If you can smuggle people and drugs across the border, you can also smuggle automatic weapons, RPGs, nerve gas, etc, also.
4) The navy. The US has proven itself unable to successfully design and produce functional surface ships for decades, instead somehow producing ridiculous monstrosities that would make Rube Goldberg blush, at enormous expense. Finally the navy is now producing a workable design from Europe- but why exactly can’t the US navy design and build its own ships with the billions of dollars it has received for that purpose?
I submit that no nation ruled by people interested in the success of that country would act in these ways, period.
So who exactly is ruling the United States?
I certainly don’t know, but my current favorite guess is the WEF-aligned Davos billionaires, including the infamous George Soros.
Shrug. Enough rambling.
For those REALLY interested, here’s an article that goes into far too much detail about the governance of the Royal Navy with a maximum of jargon and minimum of context.
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/office-holders/vol4/pp18-31
Where the analogy breaks down is that this was an ever so official part of the government rather then the shadowy penumbra that we have.
As an aside, how is it that America, of all the former English possessions seems to be the only one that has divested itself of all Dudley’s.
From the beginning, it was assumed that the President would require advisors capable of handling the day to day business of running the government. These were, of course, the various members of the Cabinet. In Amity Shlaes’ biography of Coolidge, I remember a passage about his spending a Sunday, (after church) going over the Post Office budget with the Postmaster General to find something like $50,000. Those days are long gone, Cabinet posts are now exclusively reserved for those who’s political avarice lets them overlook that Cabinet Secretary as become another way to say designated fall guy.
Instead, the actual advisers and deciders are now a legion of councilors and assistants, mostly all but nameless, especially when leaking, that trade obscurity for freedom from public accountability. This goes back at least to Roosevelt.
The present novelty isn’t that the government is being run by these obscure individuals, it’s that the present incumbent lacks the intellectual capacity to pick out matching socks.
I have more rambling stored up now and I’d like to let it out.
The best hope of minimizing this damage lies in the potential for a Republican House and and Republican Senate.
I’m old enough to recall multiple occasions when the gopes had not only control of the House and Senate but the Presidency as well. Did they take action to remove the United States from the glide path to oblivion? No they did not. Not at all.
Hence, I conclude that yet another interval of putative Geee Ohhh Peeeeeeeee control of Congress would accomplish nothing nothing at all to avoid disaster. It would bestow upon us yet more hearings and press releases and nothing would be done. The party would be blamed for every bad thing that occurred and would offer no effective defense- indeed, it simply would not occur to GOP leadership that it needed to offer a defense, because it simply doesn’t imagine itself to be accountable to the public.
Sure, it might offer excuses in private to Wall Street about how sorry it was because it failed to somehow stop events that caused stock prices to fall. But expecting it to save the country from disaster is like expecting the tooth fairy to pay your mortgage.
True, many of the candidates are not what we would wish.
Time and again rank-and-file Republicans have shown up to vote for establishment candidates and have rewarded with a swarm of knife wounds to the back. This goes back decades- remember Bush 41? But when a non-establishment candidate wins a primary the gopes sit on their hands and refuse to support their fellow Republican. Off the top of my head, I note Kari Lake, Sarah Palin, Richard Mourdock, Oliver North- and of course Donald Trump.
On that last, I would like to note that the Republican party controlled the US government from 2017-2019 surely to its stunned amazement and yet failed to make that matter. It spent that entire time conspiring against Donald Trump- the person who gave them that control- instead of working with him to avoid impending disaster- and did nothing to help him win in 2020.
But ‘the best is the enemy of the good’, and the issue of the moment is not establishing ideal policies but rather avoiding multiple catastrophes.
We’re not going to avoid those multiple catastrophes, period. Our rulers often profit from those catastrophes- thus lacking any incentive to stop them- and otherwise they believe we deserve them. The GOP is simply irrelevant, as always.
If by some fluke of good luck the United States manages to escape disintegration, it certainly won’t be because the GOP saves us. It will be because the public tires of the endless incompetence and mendacity of our rulers and removes them from power.
Rambling released.
@Xennady – you are not wrong, but McCain and Romney both lost because not enough conservatives showed up. It is not a “we have always been loyal and helped you” situation.
The old joke was that the economic conservatives contributed the campaign money, the social conservatives licked the envelopes and made the phone calls, and the libertarians helped by complaining how everyone else was doing it wrong.
I suspect that by the time McCain and Romney showed up the conservative voters were fed up by the GOP’s Bait-And-Switch tactics.
AVI: “… McCain and Romney both lost because not enough conservatives showed up. It is not a “we have always been loyal and helped you” situation.”
Very true. There are millions of “Contingent Voters” — people who will come out & vote for a Reagan, a Perot, a Trump … but otherwise sit on their hands. And Contingent Voters have no time for Establishment Republicrats. Don’t believe this? Go and look at what the millions of citizens who voted for Perot did when Perot was not running — they did not vote at all. The media covers this up by always talking about percentage swings, and ignoring the rises & falls in the absolute numbers of votes.
Of course, none of that matters now that we have seen Biden* get his 81 Million “votes”. Our “democracy” is dysfunctional; our Political Class is corrupt. We are not going to vote our way out of this mess.
The general outline of the future is clear, although the details remain to be filled in by events: there will be a major economic collapse in the debt-ridden de-industrialized US and the West more generally; then several generations of hard times and hard work will follow. What we can do is try to preserve the lessons we have learned from the failure of the US Constitution and pass them on to future generations so that they do not have to make the same mistakes.
It spent that entire time conspiring against Donald Trump- the person who gave them that control- instead of working with him to avoid impending disaster- and did nothing to help him win in 2020.
I am still astonished at how many appointees of Trump sabotaged his presidency. Rex Tillerson and James Mattis, for example. Both were accepted enthusiastically by Trump voters but turned on him. Mattis’ Judgement may be illustrated by his role in the Theranos scandal.
As for the question of the commissioners who pull Biden’s strings … I wonder if it is anything as organized as all that. My daughter and I have the impression of presidential staffers and intimates who are all pulling strings in accord with their own personal agendas. These are people whose status and privilege are all dependent on their access to POTUS. When he goes down, as he eventually will – they will have to hop to a different perch in Washington, and probably not a higher one.
I do feel a little bit sorry for those who have to guide the doddering old fool through a public appearance – especially the recent overseas events. Organizing the cheat sheets with the pictures, and having to sweat it out when he goes off the rails, and having to count on the tame press to put a good face on it all. Knowing that the Biden dog-n-pony show isn’t convincing other world leaders must be secretly humiliating for them.
And what a humiliating experience for us, knowing that our so-called allies in the west are looking at Biden, and thinking “OMG, what have the Yanks done, to settle for this dementia case as the higest elected official in the nation?”
The situation is confusing. On the one hand, Biden seems barely sentient, and one would think “Presidential” actions are dictated to him by the crypto-“Commissioners”, who are a pack of “tranzi” leftists.
But then Biden “does” things which seem very much at odds with the Left agenda. Support for Ukraine, for instance. And more recently, very explicit support for Israel. (Who decided Biden should visit Israel? The message was clear enough, but was it really prudent for the President to visit a war zone?)
…but McCain and Romney both lost because not enough conservatives showed up.
I suspect vote fraud played a significant part- at least in 2012- but note also that conservatives had the experience of the Bush administrations to chase them away.
When Bush was elected I distinctly recall thinking that finally the Clinton era nonsense would cease and (for example) something would be done to stop illegal immigration. Instead, we got the 9/11 attack, the surveillance state, and a president who turned out to be willing to split the party in an attempt to force yet another amnesty bill through congress.
Successful presidents can make their VP president after they leave because some of the glory rubs off. Ronald Reagan made the first Bush president, for example. George W. Bush was not successful, to put it mildly. However, my teeth have finally stopped reflexively clenching whenever I think of him, so there’s that.
I am still astonished at how many appointees of Trump sabotaged his presidency.
Same here. I thought Tillerson was a great pick, then it turned out he was going around the world telling people to ignore Trump. And watching various Pentagon generals openly ignore orders was both fascinating and infuriating. They’ll obey any order no matter how disastrous or illegal that comes from the left, so I take that as a tell that the military is yet another American institution that been gutted and now has the left dancing around wearing its skin demanding respect.
My daughter and I have the impression of presidential staffers and intimates who are all pulling strings in accord with their own personal agendas.
I’m sure there’s a lot of that going on, but that’s not sufficient to explain the sheer magnitude
of the various catastrophes we’re facing. To pick one example, the wide open border. I simply cannot believe that it’s merely some sort of bad luck that somehow we ended up with organized caravans filing into the country to be greeted with bridge cards and housing vouchers. This can only be deliberate policy, enforced upon the bureaucracy by these unknown commissioners David Foster postulates.
Not only that, I note that Europe is getting the same treatment. I strongly suspect that there is an organized and transnational effort to swamp the various countries of the West by foreigners, for reasons surely not to make the lives of the original inhabitants better. It appears to me that the putative leadership of the West hates its people and wants them destroyed.
Stalin and Mao murdered millions, but at least they didn’t scheme to destroy their nations and replace their people with foreigners.
As usual, I hope I’m wrong- and crazy as well, because I’ve just said something not-bad about two mass murdering dictators.
In the medieval and early modern system of government, England had several regional officers designated “admirals” whose duty it was to administer, maintain and call out naval forces in their territories, which of course were mostly of private origin, essentially the naval version of the militia.
There were some King’s Ships at various times, but never permanent. Henry VIII was the first to really try to have a permanent navy, but it didn’t really stick and still was small, with private augments essential. True of Elizabeth’s navy, too.
The Lord High Admiral was, like other “Lord…” titles, an Officer of State in the medieval sense of being at once a normally functional minister of government, a courtier with ceremonial duties, and an honorific usually either bestowed for life or becoming hereditary, like the Lord High Treasurer, the Lord High Chancellor, the Lord Great Chamberlain and Lord Chamberlain [not the same], the Lord High Steward [hereditary early on, and for centuries now only appointed for the day of the Coronation, otherwise duties performed by the Earl Marshal]. The Lord High Admiral was essentially the Minister of the Navy.
Most still exist. Many passed through being Cabinet ministers, some remained just Court officers and increasingly ceremonial as government evolved. The Lord High Chancellor still exists and was until recently the presiding officer of the Lords, head of the judiciary, and a Cabinet member. Blairites corrupted all this, but the title is held by the [blase] Secretary of State for Justice.
The Lord High Treasurer, an office of colossal power, evolved into the most common office held by de facto prime ministers in the late 17th-early 18th century, and then was put into permanent commission. The office is now executed by a Board of Lords Commissioners for Executing the Office of the Lord High Treasurer and its members are Lords Commissioners of HM Treasury. The First Lord of the Treasury has been since the early 18th century with few and brief exceptions, the Prime Minister. Before there was a legally constituted office of Prime Minister. The working head of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is Second Lord. Other Treasury Ministers tend to be sinecures for party whips. The front bench in the Commons on which Cabinet Ministers sit is formally The Treasury Bench.
The Lord High Admiral never really threatened to become a sinecure, though, because he was expected to be a functional commander when the fleet assembled for sea, and to fight. And generally was. [On land, the King of course was his own commander in chief in that era, no matter what other generals he appointed to run things.]
The LHA directed naval policy, appointed officers, and commanded. From roughly Henry’s time, there was also a Navy Board and the Board of Ordnance which handled building, logistics, guns and kit.
The system of a handful of royal ships and the rest private drafted ships [by the regional admirals, special jurisdictions like the Cinque Ports, and so on] was replaced by a permanent Royal Navy only in the time of Charles II after 1660, with some roots in Cromwell’s navy. At this time, or shortly after, it became more and more common for the Lord High Admiral’s office to be in commission. Because of the power a large navy represented, but also because of the increasingly large demands of running one.
Naturally, this was the Board of Lords Commissioners for Executing the Office of the Lord High Admiral, variously shortened to the Board of Lords Commissioners of Admiralty, the Board of Admiralty, the Admiralty Board or just the Admiralty. It had the same roles as the LHA, naturally, and the separate Navy and Ordnance systems continued. [Of note, Pepys in the early days of the Royal Navy had headed the Navy Board.]
The First Lord was invariably a Cabinet member, functioning as Naval Minister. But he was typically also a serving Admiral, though at end of his career, because such men could serve in the Lords or Commons depending on their peerage status, without restriction. Which is why First Lords at least through Nelson’s era were admirals in uniform. As that started to change in the 19th century and civilians were appointed, the convention established of having the senior admiral called the First Sea Lord. Junior civilians filled the other commissioner posts and other admirals became numbered Sea lords for various positions. In practice, the serving officers were a naval staff, and later explicitly acquired secondary titles to that effect.
The Admiralty absorbed the Navy Board in the 19th century.
This was the classic system that persisted through and after world war 2, and Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty at least twice under it, as an MP and civilian.
During all that era, the title of Lord High Admiral could not be awarded because it already existed, it was just in commission.
When the system was all merged in the unified Ministry of Defence from the 60s, some titular practices remained [the naval subset of the Defence Council is still the Admiralty Board, though notably NOT the “Board of Admiralty” or any of the long titles that body had held, and the First Sea Lord still exists] and many vanished [there is no commission and no minister has the title First Lord of the Admiralty]. With the end of the commission, the office and title of Lord High Admiral returned directly to the Crown and was held by no other person. In effect, the Crown held it in person, had not delegated it to an officer, nor to a commission instead of such an officer, but now exercised the powers through Cabinet and a Secretary of State for Defence.
For a few years, the title of Lord High Admiral was again vested in one man, without effecting substantive command, namely the late Duke of Edinburgh. First one in centuries.
I mean, good heavens. How can one read CS Forester, Dudley Pope, Alexander Kent, or Patrick O’Brien without having all that at one’s command….?
I should add that it’s not so clear how many of “the people” knew or cared who they were until the 20th century, and the board certainly did not hold public meetings any more than the NSC or the JCS would do today, but yes, the commissioners were public officers with commissions who were variously the equivalent of modern ministers, bureaucrats or senior officers. They certainly were not a secret or unofficial cabal or kitchen cabinet.
Not that Britain didn’t also have those, but usually they acted through public office holding front men who had opinions too, and were accountable.
But then Biden “does” things which seem very much at odds with the Left agenda. Support for Ukraine, for instance. And more recently, very explicit support for Israel.
When the Ukraine War started I noticed that the people who put up the Ukraine flag also tended to have BLM placards and other leftist nonsense on the their houses. So I would hypothesize that leftists are merely demonstrating their sheep-like willingness to believe whatever their authority figures tell them to believe. I note that Rachel Maddow raved for years about the illegal Iraq War, demanding an immediate end- then when Trump wanted to remove the US troops illegally in Syria she turned on that proverbial dime to condemn it as the worst thing ever.
The support for Israel is easier to explain. There are a lot of rich Jews who both support the American left and want Israel to continue to exist. I bet Biden’s handlers were told in no uncertain terms that if they failed to back Israel the democrat party would never get another (real) dime from them, let alone the many millions of dollars it needs to pay for election, uhm “fortification.”
But then Biden “does” things which seem very much at odds with the Left agenda. Support for Ukraine, for instance. And more recently, very explicit support for Israel. (Who decided Biden should visit Israel? The message was clear enough, but was it really prudent for the President to visit a war zone?)
First, Ukraine has a lot invested in Biden and in a large number of other US politicians of both parties. I don’t think the Israel support was that explicit. I have read that 50% of Democrat donations come from Jews. I think he did the minimum. A “war zone” might solve a problem for Democrats.
With Biden, it’s not just foreign policy that is being run outside of his control. Take social policy with trangenderism and parental rights, immigration, DEI in the military…. We know Biden is a political hack but really? All of this, including foreign policy goes back to March 2020 when the DNC cleared the field for Biden to get the nomination and in return for Biden realizing his lifelong dream of being POTUS, he agreed to be a figurehead. Biden reigns, but does not rule and much as with Ron Burgundy, he is simply reads what is put in front of him
So I think the whole Biden Administration is (as with turtles) commissioners all the way down and that was by design from day 1.
Even under the best of circumstances., presidential administrations tend to toward entropy given the cross-cutting divisions of political factions, the stasis of the bureaucracy and the relentless pace of events. Even in his prime, Biden would have been a poor manager, he simply doesn’t have the work ethic or temperament to succeed and he is most definitely not in his prime.
This franchising out of policy to various factions does have the benefit for the Democrats of allowing the various incompatible parts of the party to co-exist. One of the (many) problems is that there is no one who can speak for the whole and as we approach Election 2024, the Democrats are stuck with an untidy mess and must instead rely on fear and fraud to win.
To add to what David said about what would happen in a crisis if Biden came to odds with the Commissioners, an additional problem is that the factions by definition lack both the statutory legitimacy and competence to execute policy when they come into conflict with one another. You see this with Ukraine as Nuland (as part of the Obama faction) has run our policy there exclusively out of State excluding Treasury and Defense thereby leading to the military disaster there and the ineffectiveness of sanctions.
It depends which side of the bet you take? Are the commissioners throughout the Biden Administration something that meet in a volcano lair or are they simply practioners of a form of comedic drift and buffoonery?
Failure scales more easily than does success.
Failure scales if you’re lucky, otherwise failure explodes, but the trend is always more failure.
The problem I have with Biden as an imposition by some sort of shadowy cable is that surely if they were that powerful, they could have come up with someone that can tie his own shoes for a puppet.
Strangely, I find the idea that we are being controlled by a bunch of clowns, so inept that they chose Biden for their public face, not comforting at all.
It seems the Democrats you’re going to have at best a condensed primary season and at worst and most likely a brokered convention. I’m just assuming that Biden not be the nominee it’s just a matter when he withdraws
If it is a brokered convention then we are going to get something very close to what we have seen for the past 4 years. There is no clear alternative to Biden and without a primary season none of the perspective candidates have much of an independent base of power
That means whether it is new Newsom or Whitmer or somebody else they will have to garner support while being in a very weak position.. that means turning over policy en bloc to various party factions
Call it Commissioners 2.0
The problem I have with Biden as an imposition by some sort of shadowy cable is that surely if they were that powerful, they could have come up with someone that can tie his own shoes for a puppet.
Why would you think this shadowy cabal would want someone competent as a puppet?
Strangely, I find the idea that we are being controlled by a bunch of clowns, so inept that they chose Biden for their public face, not comforting at all.
I wouldn’t call them inept at all. Their goal appears to appears to be the end of the United States as a significant player in world affairs. I’d say they’re doing pretty well on that front, even if events haven’t all gone their way.
Feel better?
That means whether it is new Newsom or Whitmer or somebody else they will have to garner support while being in a very weak position.
I note Newsom just had a meeting with Chaiman Xi, so I’d guess he’ll be parachuted in to be the nominee once the plug gets pulled on Biden, either by his handlers or God.
And it is in the nature of the regime to not be concerned about public support or actual public opinion, because of the control it has achieved over the media, the voting booths, the CIA/FBI, and enough of the judiciary. I would also assume that Newsom would be the beneficiary of all the influence China can muster to make him president, which will no doubt make him quite beholden to them as well as giving them an obvious political hold over him, a la Bill Clinton.
Remember all the millions the Clinton campaign had to spend attacking Bob Dole even before Dole was the nominee? I do.
That money came from China. I believe events have shown that that money was a very wise investment for them- and they will expect the same results from Newsom.
Bye Bye Taiwan.
the Ukraine operates along Social Credit lines, this came from a piece I found on Gates of Vienna,
“The GOP: weak men north of Richmond.”
(h/T Don Surber)
As for when the PTB move to replace Biden. I’ll bet it would be after the primary season but just before the Democrat convention. This way, they avoid having the embarrassment of the People weighing in during the primaries and choosing someone other than who the Democrat machine wants. It would be a shame if, for example, RFK jr. won the primaries, when the Machine wants Newsom.
I’m late to the party, but my opinion is that there are multiple groups with differing agendas and areas of “expertise” (read: positions of authority) who all act independently and rarely have to resolve any disagreements and never have to provide consistency.