THE RACE OF REASON

I have worked for some really stupid men in my life. They were, fortunately, few and far between. I was spared the dire necessity of working for any stupid men in combat but the ones back in the United States made life so unbearable that all of us promptly volunteered for immediate return overseas to duty in a war zone in order to escape the stupidity. Many of us called the Group every month and renewed our request for orders to any ship, any billet in the Persian Gulf.

I noted the various news articles today that threw our President's true graceless stupidity into stark relief at a Paris press conference. I finally bit the bullet and brought up CSPAN and watched his news conference. It was as ugly as I had been warned it would be.

If you are one of the millions and millions of literate Americans out there who have simply tuned this president out the past three or four years, that is certainly understandable. But if you tuned in to the long, rambling, empty press conference, you would have been truly alarmed.

It took the doddering president 47 minutes and over 5,000 words to answer just six questions. And by "answer," I simply mean he unspooled a torrent of disjointed words and broken sentences.

Asked about the "mass shooting" where a nut job shot three people at a Colorado abortion clinic, President Obama once again became exasperated with the American people. "I say this every time we've got one of these mass shootings: This just doesn't happen in other countries." 

He actually said this. In Paris. Not three weeks after gunmen mowed down 129 people enjoying freedom in the French capital. 

Then, of course, there is this business of comparing radical Islamic terrorism to — global warming? He actually insisted that global warming is an even greater threat than terrorism itself. 

Again, he said this. In Paris. Not three weeks after the worst terrorist attacks in a civilized country since 9/11.

I don't really care what other people had to say about George Bush, either of them. They were both men with solid records of accomplishment with open and transparent academic histories who surrounded themselves with some of the smartest people in America. Needless to say, that is not the case with Obama. Can you imagine Obama flying the most advanced military aircraft of the day? Can you see him at the controls of an F-18 making a carrier approach? Yeah, me neither.

I actually witnessed his speech at the Convention that nominated Kerry and thought he was a hack with a teleprompter. I think his vice president nailed his description of the man perfectly. He had and has no record of accomplishment, no distinguished service to the country, no academic or written record and no history.

You can watch him outshine shinola for yourself. On teleprompt he can still read but once he goes freestyle at the Q&A it rapidly goes downhill. Just for contrast, here is another perfect idiot in the give and take of an American press interview freestyle event answering an unscripted question. You know, just as a clean comparison with the President's performance in Paris.

What must it be like to be smart and to work for these two? How painful is that? How do those people get up everyday and go to work where all they can do is dread the certainty that the boss is going to be out-articulated and outsmarted by a five year old?

Throughout the Cold War it was well known that both we and the Russians kept a gimlet eye on the mental health and stability of the leaders of both countries. It had to be done and it had to be done properly. Some people are chilled at the idea that Reagan was gaga in his later term in office but at least he was surrounded by really clever patriots with well known qualities that any Russian leader could gauge with near certainty. Likewise, our national command authority kept on top of the stream of rapidly deteriorating old men that led the Soviet Union to its end with Gorbachev. We knew what we could expect from them all.

What the hell do the poor Russians know about Obama and his national command authority team? Well, they know Obama is an idiot. They know the vice president is an idiot. They know that the current SECDEF is an apparatchik and the man before him was an idiot. They don't even know who the national security advisor is but it is no Kissinger. The SECSTATE is, possibly, even stupider than Hillary Clinton and the Russians see an entire nuclear armed country about to nominate Hillary for the Democratic Party candidate for President in 2016.

Do you suppose they're more afraid now than at any point since 1919? The known leadership is dire and the unknown pullers on the levers, the McFarlanes and the Lieutenant Colonel Norths are probably even more frightening.

We  have a healthy fear of an irrational enemy armed with nuclear weapons. I think the Russians are even more afraid of us now than they ever were before. When they look into the eyes of Obama, Clinton, Biden, Kerry, they don't see the light of reason looking back.