Obama Knew: Obama the Teflon Don

I somewhat left dear reader hanging with the Syria and Israel teaser at the end of part 5 of this series, but I had the itch to do a parody “break in the action” and also wanted to clean up to some degree any impressions of personal bias or vitriol that might have creeped into the first parts of this series. Many have an allergic reaction to a narrative that is non-stop, pounding the negative throughout, while others have a negative reaction to the sparkles and rainbows commentary when it comes to Obama.

He had his chance-he could have done some wonderful things-many people think he did-but from the larger view most of the big things he focused on were just frankly disasters. The proof of success (to many) for his tenure was undone quickly by Trump because Obama did not do the work necessary to instantiate policies into law: they lacked support in congress and of the American people-but he did many of them anyway. Which invites comparisons to Trump, who also suffered the sobering reality that having control of two thirds of government is not a panacea for success: who can forget the shock of the ACA vote, a republican failure some ~10 years in the making, rubbed in your face each year at tax time.

Many have memory holed the Obama administration’s first deliberate plan to enforce the ACAmandate” was to use the normally loathed by the left IRS as a cudgel to enforce a penalty that turned into a “tax” that wasn’t a tax by any legislative intent imaginable (thanks Justice Roberts) against any American taxpayers who did not voluntarily sign up to “keep their doctor, keep their plan, save $2500”-who wouldn’t want that-why weren’t people signing up in droves? Maybe it was the discovery after it was “passed to find out what was in it” that it was mostly Lesko malarky?

Did we not think it was hokey or hinky that an incentive in the form of an IRS penalty was a necessary feature discussed way too early in the movie and going to be enforced for any who did not avail themselves of a better, cheaper plan that would save you an average of $2500 and allow you to keep your doctor-and your plan? Who wouldn’t want that-but I signed up for the Jetpack in Popular Science back in the 1960s, figuring once I did start working, that would be bang’n: but they do exist today! Funny how nobody we knew outside the government provided-supplemented-coverage had an option to keep their plan-most having been legislated into non-compliance with new government mandates-surprise!

So most could no longer keep their doctor, nor afford the deductibles in a plan that turned out was going to cost more and cover less and not save anything: he did that. And the highly anticipated rollout of the Lesko big F’n deal was botched so badly that it proved why American’s did not want or need our government involved in health care.

And yes-I know-it comes across as a drumbeat with an axe to grind relating the items that the Obama administration willingly perpetrated on the American people that would have been “criminal, illegal, dictator-like” if done by a republican. What the scandals I’ve covered thus far-Fast and Furious, the IRS and the Office of Personnel Management-malfeasance have in common is that many Obama fan-people do not acknowledge these as scandals (e.g., Bush did that one first/too, Obama didn’t know about this one, Lerner was out of control, OPM was a total surprise, it wasn’t actually something in the White House, he heard about HRC’s server the same time we did-from the LSMBTG, 1000 points of light, humma, humma, etc.)

Which is why I mention the ACA as somewhat of the “baseline” example where the lies were mostly led by and propagated by Obama in a non-stop, never ending, impossible to believe and never true bullspit story he doused the American people with like one of those tiresome restaurant music tracks (I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden…) only more like the redundancy of the Ginsu Knife commercials (but they work)-pure streams of snake-oil salesman-like lies: uttered directly from his own moving lips-consistently-persistently-monotonously-throughout.

Which begs the question-was he naïve, simple, or was he knowingly lying to the American people? When did he finally figure out it was bullspit-or did he know it all along? Can he be the smartest, bestest politician ever given over five years of top-notch ACA spewing of nonsense, lies and bullspit? Whaddya think, Vern?

He was recently back in the WH to celebrate the anniversary of the ACA passing: so proud to have achieved something that may have displaced President’s Clinton and Bush for the category of “greatest self-own by a president while in office” (the entire Obama reel of ACA lies, “I did not have sex with that woman” and “Read my lips:no new taxes.”)

To belabor the belaborable, these incidents are little signposts along the Obama Knew Boulevard and the raison d’etre behind the premise that he deserves an upgrade to the “Teflon-Don’alinsky” moniker. Also how and why it is believable that he formed a Regime Change Band that found its voice and rehearsed in the above scandals and via the ACA, played some sweet collusion and duplicitous cover music during the Iran secret negotiations, presided over the Arab Spring, subsequently made Libya ungovernable, touted Yemen as an exemplar of the Obama doctrine (better than “not doing stupid schift”)-until it wasn’t, reached full voice chasing Yanukovych out of office in Ukraine, continued sharpening their chops in going after Manafort and transitioned right into the Orange Man Bad pursuit.

In this sequence I listed above, what about it marks it as so significant as to constitute condemning and damning evidence that Obama was the puppet-master pulling the strings in a whole of government effort to undermine the Bad Orange Man-one of the most renowned, well known and relentless “birthers”-and to clear the roadblocks and pave the way for an HRC presidency?

The latter efforts were led out of the WH by the National Security Council (NSC) and the State Department: under Susan Rice-the “by the book” girl. I’m getting somewhat ahead of my presentation of the case-but that is where we are heading at all deliberate speed.

In Part 5 to this series, I mentioned that there was a “tell” of sorts from the Obama administration with the secret Iran dialogue, that was suddenly given life and legs by the LSMBTG who began posting little snippets undermining Israel. Its instructive to rewind the tape a bit on how and why that came to be acceptable in the swamp as the issue broke along party lines.

Israel cast as somewhat of a “bad actor” in this drama (secret Iran dialogue) started as the Bush administration was drawing to a close and Middle East peace projects were top dead center going nowhere.

When something happens on the world stage that is a total surprise, it is a big deal for our government-as it should be-but we often do a very poor job of figuring out causality-how it was missed-and dealing with the ultimate fallout that usually labels such problems as “intelligence failures.” And most of them are not surprises at all-to some, or many and sometimes most.…

An infamous case among maybe a dozen or more of the past 15 years or so was 6 September 2007. I normally left for work at 0545 at the latest but I received a call at about 0515 as somewhat of an alert that I might want to get into work ASAP. We normally started the day with a 0530 enterprise systems status (for ~36 connected sites) and an intel issues meeting to transition from the night shift to the day shift, followed by a 0630 emerging issues meeting to discuss potential candidate topics for the 0830, an 0700 business unit leadership briefing, an 0730 analysis and production meeting, an 0800 final issues meeting for directorate leadership-in a daily process that culminated in an 0830 Operations and Intelligence briefing for our Director and some 50 sites or so around the world including Afghanistan, Iraq, other IC elements (DIA, CIA, NSA, etc.) and any other sites executing contingency operations. From 0830-1000 or so was cleanup time to get ready for the classic imaging window (10 and 2) to start the process all over again that would lead to the next day’s cycle: regularity not unlike the tides.

I detail the above only to make the point that there are good people a plenty working these matters-it is a big old bad world out there-but not so big that “somebody” is not at the watch keeping an eye out for American interests. To get a call before the 0530 was unusual-and signaled something that was a disruption event for the day-like a North Korean missile launch type event. I often received a call on the way in every few weeks about system issues or relatively pedestrian, but important events that the bosses would be asking about: this was unusual and likely “big.” 

Many wonder how some of these issues rise to the level of national interest-make the cut for the President’s Daily Briefing. Well many of these issues are like a medical transport with a transplant heart in the HOV lane with a police escort.

In this case Israel had taken out a Syrian nuclear development site that had been the topic of increasing consternation for several years as the construction neared fruition. Israel had reportedly approached the Bush administration numerous times about acting before it went operational and was too late, given the design of the facility based on other well-known sites that had somewhat of a façade of a building on top with the majority of the site deeply buried and protected: a category often referred to in the business as “underground facilities or UGFs.”

The Bush administration reportedly wanted more categoric proof and also knew it would render problematic achieving any progress in Middle East peace efforts (should it be struck with the support and consent of the US.)

Given the many and varied warnings that had been reportedly communicated by Israel to our government over the years as this site was being built-including warnings of the involvement of Pyongyang and Iranian scientist collaboration-not civilian nuclear power for peace experts, but weapons proliferation and uranium enrichment physicists-specialists-the surprise here was not that it had been struck but that it had apparently happened with reportedly zero to scant notice to our government: that is highly unusual and evidence of distrust. But consider what a proliferation threat a Syrian plutonium enrichment facility would have represented in the Middle East at the time.

The events contributing to a smidge of distrust leading up to this included a number of statements and position changes announced by the Bush administration that communicated support for a Palestinian State. This was a dramatic shift in policy from an administration that was reticent to repeat the experience of the Clinton administration that had placed the reputation of the US on the line in what turned out to be a feckless effort to bring peace through dialogue with a disingenuous and uncooperative Palestinian leadership team led by Yasser Arafat, seemingly unable to say “yes.” What was somewhat different and remarkable in these Clinton efforts was the involvement of CIA Director and Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, who must have felt like the proverbial you know what in church during the talks.

The change in Bush policy was not well received by Israel whose support for the so-called “two state” solution was caveated upon the Palestinians disavowing terrorism. What subsequently followed the Bush announcement was the “Mitchell Plan,” which-while representing a plan that received widespread agreement-resulted in several years of unending Palestinian terrorist attacks and responses by Israel that only complicated matters further.

As the election campaign of 2004 came into view, pressure from both sides somewhat abated as the Palestinians seemed unwilling or unable to take the first step outlined in the Mitchell Plan, resulting in widespread condemnation and increasing support of Israel. Upon reelection and several years of no progress that included the death of Arafat and the emergence of a successor who was neutered near immediately when the Bush administration pushed elections that-“surprisingly”-to no one-brought Hamas to power, this article gives frank insight regarding where things stood in 2006 as the Bush administration fecklessly pursued the revival of the peace against all odds (and common sense) in the face of no progress and continued terrorist attacks and killings.

The Israel strike was an unusual event in that it received scant-no coverage for several days afterward. There were somewhat random reports of an accident or a mysterious explosion at the site, or references to the destruction of a military facility, but no formal announcements were made by either of the states involved.

Inside the wire it was an uneasy period of several days where efforts were undertaken to assess damage, but there was somewhat of a mutual “cone of silence” over the topic by the principles. Leaks from the US State Department and from congress were treated as highly suspicious in the absence of some type of announcement by Syria or Israel. This Spiegel article came several years afterward but contains good detail in the absence of an official Syria or Israel announcement and also speaks to other Israeli related “cleanup” actions.

As evidence of the above, this announcement by Israel acknowledging the attack came about some 11 years later. Repeated warnings from Israel as to the maturing construction, involvement of other rogue nations as construction advisors, rumors of surreptitious technology exchanges, all went for naught in a Bush administration totally distracted by the ongoing Afghanistan and Iraq wars that had turned for the worse, while desperate to find some measure of success in the Palestinian situation as an unending quest. Bush officials seemed inclined to wait until plutonium was enriched at the site to take action.

It wasn’t just the administration visiting “la la land,” beginning to somewhat overlook issues as Middle East peace calculations took on the surreal. This was an even bigger deal than your average strike because of the optics of the visit to Syria in April of 2007 by Nancy Peloozi, who in spite of continued evidence of Syrian mischief supplying Iraq militants with means to kill Americans and Assad’s alleged (winky, winky) involvement in the killing of non-cooperative Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a Beirut bombing that had killed 22, wounded 226 and taken out nearly half a block leaving a ten meter wide crater, there was an odd belief emerging within congress that Assad could be important to peace efforts.

Peloozi decided to visit Assad-who was somehow emerging as a “reformer” within democrat circles-against the wishes or desires of the Bush administration, during which she among other things misstated Israeli policy toward Syria which had been clearly articulated by the Israel Prime Minister as “unwilling to include Syria in any talks, discussions or negotiations until actions to support terrorists ceased and attacks were disavowed.“ Never mind disregarding the Syrian actions that were killing American military in Iraq, but also the international community-via the feckless United Nations-still united in holding Assad responsible for Lebanon violence-all of which she unthinkingly undermined with her visit.

I mentioned the Iranian IED efforts in previous articles and US efforts to defeat them, there was just as much emphasis if not more applied to the Iraq-Syria border to counter these attacks by tracking down and actioning illegal border crossing sites that Syria was using to supply weaponry for the attacks. Having a US congressional leader visit a primary source of these efforts was unprecedented: unless somebody wants to make the argument she simply did not know about it-which would be worse. The Lebanon bombing was a very big deal when it happened less than two years prior to her visit.

This sequence of events loomed even larger as it became abundantly clear the democrats were going to take back the WH in 2009. Peloozi’s obstinate, ham handed visit in April, coupled with the renewed, seemingly last ditch push by the Bush administration to revive Middle East peace talks-albeit, doomed to failure-followed by the Israel strike on relatively little to no notice, put the prospects for “what next” in the center of the election campaign with increasing calls to appease those looking to punish-to a degree-Israel for what they had done to Syria as well as recognize in some way Palestinian progress (which was apparently only visible to democrats.)

Much like how Trump would later take office with a National Security apparatus in somewhat of a shambles, Obama similarly came into office with no lack of issues to deal with-and it somewhat highlights the reason I continually repeat the dogma that if-as I believe was proven and borne out by his actions throughout his administration-he was just another nickel and dime politician, and not the “wunderkind” he was made out to be, the American people would have been better served to get somebody with experience (and that is not to say it was no-name, but more an indictment of our selection process.)

He took office in the wake of continued Iranian and Syrian IED efforts killing American military in Iraq, doldrums with no future withdrawal prospects on all things Afghanistan where an opposition house was busy coming up with all manner of silly metrics that would in theory build to a withdrawal decision-but faded from public view almost as quickly as casualty counters by the LSMBTG as Bush left office, an emergence of Russia after the invasion of Georgia in September 2008-that we did nothing about-and a sinking economy heading into a recession that suffered a near total collapse of the housing market caused by just plain incompetent malfeasance on the part of both parties for years that loosened and all but eliminated financial requirements on home loans with near giveaways of real estate loans.

Loans were granted to people who could not qualify under any circumstances, while also incentivizing them to just walk away when push came to shove by having little to no down payment or equity in their property. These loans were defaulted on in massive numbers, contributing to tanking the economy.

It didn’t happen overnight. Congress had continuously increased the target percentage of such loans, eventually pushing to achieve some ~55% of all loans under this less restrictive category, with Fanny Mae and Freddy MAC eventually holding some 12 million of 18 million loans underwritten in this manner. The Obama administration eventually federalized or nationalized the two in order to stop foreclosure actions from becoming worse than occurred: putting American taxpayers on the hook for the bad loans. Credit restrictions had similarly been watered down across the board.

I’m not here to make the case that Obama took office in easy times, but rather problematic times that make it ever-so much-moreso strange when you look at the big items he prioritized to work on, given that he controlled two branches of government and had no checks or balances on the things he chose to prioritize during his first two years. And yet he decided on healthcare, which could always use a “tweaking,” but was not broken and didn’t need a government ham-handed ruinous overhaul.

Rightly the economy-which needed help badly after a decade of poor credit policy tanked the housing and credit markets in almost a redo of the savings and loan crash, and the secret negotiations with Iran-which 88% of Americans did not-and would not have supported if they knew about them: as they had already weighed-in with a resounding “no.”

Max Dribbler

19 April 2022

Maxdribbler77@gmail.com

LSMBTG: Lamestream media echo chamber (LMEC-L) social media (SM) big tech tyrants (BT) and government (G)

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