Tag Archives: obama for king

RFK Jr.? Michelle Obama?

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There’s talk of a viable RFK Jr. candidacy and even a Trump-RFK Jr. ticket. I first became aware of him many years ago when he was talking about mercury poisoning in Rolling Stone. I am concerned about mercury, and lead, and possibly even floride, but his grasp of science turned out to be bogus. Unless you believe there is a vast conspiracy to cover up the fact that we are all being poisoned. I don’t think so. We are being exposed to a vast variety of chemicals in modern industrialized countries and we should do more to understand and control their effects.

I haven’t looked into his Covid vaccine denialism much. If the point is that no vaccine is risk-free, sure, but this vaccine clearly saved tens of millions of lives worldwide. And the technology holds great promise to cure a wide range of diseases including many types of cancer. It also holds perils from (more?) lab leaks to bioterrorism to biological warfare.

Happy topics. The problem with RFK Jr. even if you read things he has written or things written about him and are tempted to nod your head, is…it is impossible to listen to him talk. Seriously – give it a try. It’s just too awkward to even contemplate. He makes W. Bush or even Trump look like a slick public speaker.

Michelle Obama? I don’t know. People might vote for her but (1) she is not a professional politician and (2) she has said a million times she is not interested. She is basically a celebrity with some name recognition.

In a country of 332 million, there have to be some people with (1) charisma, (2) leadership and public speaking ability, and (3) ideas. These three things do not preclude corruption and evil of course, but they are a starting point. Will the real potential leaders please stand up?

What is Obama up to?

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According to this rambling article, he has houses in Hawaii (Oahu), Hyde Park (I’m assuming Chicago, not New York or London?), Martha’s Vineyard, and the Kalorama development inside Washington D.C. The latter is popular with current and ex-government types, celebrities, diplomats, and captains of industry. Some conspiracists believe he is running a “shadow government” from this location, and for this the offer two points of evidence: (1) He is a retired career politician who still lives in Washington, D.C. at least some times and (2) higher ups in the current administration are sometimes spotted at his house. This seems pretty weak to me. His house seems like a convenient place to have an offsite meeting where you would already have the maximum possible security presence and you might get some free advice from the former leader of the free world in the bargain. Giving take-it-or-leave-it advice would not be “running a shadow government”. Doing some fundraising and persuading at the request of the current party leadership would not be “running a shadow government”. So I don’t know but it seems unlikely.

There’s also some gobbledygook about Ukraine in the article. The only real data points we have on that are that (1) Obama instinctively opposed Hillary Clinton’s push for more or less unprovoked war on Libya (although he gave in), (2) he offered Ukraine only non-lethal aid following the invasion of Crimea, and (3) he supported the Minsk peace accord. We can only speculate now whether Russia would have invaded Ukraine under a Hillary Clinton administration, although I think they were scared enough of her that it may have motivated them to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election (after the U.S. almost certainly interfered in the 2014 Ukraine election, at least in terms of propaganda.) If they had, we can only speculate whether she would have responded with a no-fly zone or some other Cuban Missile Crisis level gamble. I think she might have. Now we need to look ahead and consider whether a second Trump administration will just give up the farm and allow Ukraine to be partitioned or conquered outright.

the “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents”

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Obama left INSTRUCTIONS for dealing with this exact situation. There almost have to be competent people in the federal government who were familiar with these instructions and did their best to implement them, but were stymied by incompetent managers or political cronies. There’s an alphabet soup of acronyms that is a little hard to decipher for the uninitiated, but a couple things stand out to me:

  • Early on in a significant outbreak outside the United States, the plan is to provide significant financial support, material support, expertise, and manpower support to both the World Health Organization and directly to the foreign country. This is a nice humanitarian thing to do, but is also the best defense against the outbreak reaching the U.S. and wreaking havoc.
  • Domestically, the federal government is responsible for figuring out how to screen, and quarantine if necessary, travelers arriving from foreign locations, whether those travelers are U.S. citizens or not (reminder: we are all the same species of semi-hairless virus-prone monkey).
  • The federal stockpile plays a key role, as does research and development on potential diagnostics, treatments and vaccines. These things are supposed to kick into high gear at the first sign of trouble. Again, sending materials and equipment abroad is supposed to be considered early on because that may be the best way to keep the outbreak from getting out of control.
  • The federal government is just generally supposed to provide crystal clear guidelines, communications, funding, materials and equipment and coordination to state and local governments and to the public throughout a crisis like this.

There was a plan, and at least some of these steps must already have been in motion and been shut down.

As you know, I try to avoid political statements on this blog, sticking closely to facts and consideration of potential implications of various policies and lessons learned for the future.

FAIL FAIL FAIL Trump you stupid asshole, you have the blood of 85,000 Americans on your hands as I write this and of course it’s not over. Obama for King 2020!