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denimbex1986 · 3 months

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'Where to start when profiling such a talented and charismatic actor as Andrew Scott? How about the fact that, aside from some youth theater workshop experience, this Dublin-born actor has had no official drama training? At 17, he was cast in a substantial role in an Irish film called Korea and, from there, joined the prestigious Abbey Theatre company in Dublin. His move to England in the late 80s corresponded with small parts in British, Irish, and American films and TV series and paved the way for his career to take off.

Among other projects, Andrew Scott appeared as an extra in Saving Private Ryan's Omaha Beach sequence, as well as several guest starring roles in British TV series like Garrow's Law and Foyle's War. All in all, he spent the first decade or so of his career building a solid body of work that would soon catapult him into pop culture stardom.

Let's take a look at some of Mr. Scott's iconic characters and lesser-known projects.

Sherlock (2010 – 2017)

Who can forget when Sherlock first revealed the character of Jim Moriarty to audiences in "The Great Game" episode? Scott played Mr. Holmes's famous nemesis as a deranged mastermind with a playful sing-song creepiness and a palpable presence of malice. He won the Best Supporting Actor TV BAFTA for that role in 2012.

The Bachelor Weekend aka The Stag (2013)

Some may have missed the delightful indie comedy, The Stag, about a group of friends who set out on a hiking excursion in the Irish countryside. Mr. Scott leads the ensemble as Davin, the groom's best man, in charge of their mild-mannered weekend. Their plans are wholly upended when The Machine (Peter McDonald), the bride's laddish brother, crashes the party. Lest you expect an Irish Hangover clone, emotional confrontations ensue between Davin and our groom, Fionnan (Hugh O'Conor), when unresolved issues from their past rise to the surface.

Pride (2014)

The feel-good, historical dramedy Pride depicts a group of London-based lesbian and gay activists who raised money to help families affected by the Welsh miners' strike in 1984. Scott plays Gethin, owner of a gay bookshop, who lends support to the group but hesitates to get actively involved due to his experiences as a gay youth coming out in Wales. He earned the best supporting actor trophy for his performance from the British Independent Film Awards.

Spectre (2015)

Once an actor is lauded for playing a baddie well, you have to expect the 007 franchise will come calling. In the 24th Bond film Spectre, Scott played Max Denbigh, aka C, Director-General of the Joint Security Service, an organization created by merging MI5 and MI6. While at first his disagreements with M (Ralph Fiennes) seem to be internal power struggles, it turns out C is a danger to democracy worldwide.

This Beautiful Fantastic (2016)

This Beautiful Fantastic is a quirky fairytale for adults and tells the story of Bella (Jessica Brown Findlay), a young woman who aspires to be a children's author but lacks the skills to navigate her out-of-control garden, let alone her nebulous career. Befriended by a kindly chef/housekeeper named Vernon (Scott), Bella begins to conquer her issues and blossom into the person she wishes to become. The film also stars Tom Wilkinson as Bella's gardening mentor.

Denial (2016)

A biographical legal drama, Denial depicts the libel case brought against American professor Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) by Holocaust denier David Irving (Timothy Spall). Mr. Scott plays Anthony Julius, the lead solicitor of Deborah's legal team, who guides her through the UK justice system and their arduous path to obtaining justice.

1917 (2019)

In the innovative war drama 1917 (which starred a who's who of British talent), two English soldiers run a harrowing gauntlet through enemy territory to deliver a message that could save the lives of over 1500 troops. Along the way, the young men meet up with a handful of officers who help them on their journey, all played by respected British actors, including Messrs. Cumberbatch, Firth, Strong, and you guessed it – Scott. His portrayal of Lieutenant Leslie stands out a mile for its humor and hopelessness.

Present Laughing (2019)

Mr. Scott garnered theatrical acclaim for his performance as Garry Essendine in Present Laughing, a semi-autobiographical piece by Noel Coward performed at the Old Vic. Farcical in tone, the play depicts the harried life of a successful and self-obsessed light comedy actor facing an impending mid-life crisis. Andrew won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Play.

Fleabag (2019)

Andrew Scott's name may have been synonymous with Moriarty until the world witnessed his portrayal of a character known only as "Hot Priest" in Fleabag. In the second season of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's award-winning dark comedy, Scott was introduced as the cleric who would be marrying Fleabag's dad and his fiancé. The couple has an immediate connection at the dinner table, and a trinity of friendship, spirituality and physical attraction ignite throughout the six-episode season. Scott's contribution was perfection!

This is only a brief sampling of Andrew Scott's work and impressive range...'

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mirabilefuturum · 1 year

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I'm watching Garrow's Law further, G-d help you all

#look at him face

#andrew buchan #garrow's law #own #those lashes #those cheemks #courtroom snack indeed #🖐️👁️👁️

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tallmadgeandtea · 1 year

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Samuel x Lady Susan shippers, allow me to convert you to The Gospel 🤲🙏⛪️

#I am CONVINCED the writers watched this show and went YES. YES.#and I don’t even blame them. not for a second.#you want a tv show about a do good lawyer who is a bit impulsive and falls in love with an upperclass woman he cannot have? HERE YA GO #on my knees begging #sanditon #samuel colbourne #lady susan #Lady Susan x Samuel #amanda speaks #garrowposting #Garrow’s Law

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notasapleasure · 6 months

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I had this draft for the 8 shows to get to know me meme that no one tagged me in, but then @batri-jopa tagged me for this other meme, so I'm doiing them as a mash-up.

10 comfort shows -

- that tell you more than you wanted to know about me. reasons below the cut, but the tl;dr is:

The Terror

Garrow's Law

Ripper Street

The X Files

Utopia

Interview with the Vampire

(BBC) Ghosts

Futurama

Avatar: the Last Airbender

Detectorists

Honourable mentions: Andor (will probably make the list once season 2 is out, but my trust of Disney Star Wars is *so* thin, I can't commit until then, no matter how excellent season 1 is); The Great (it's so good. The script is still one of the most astonishing works of art I have ever encountered. But comfort TV? hell no.); see also, Bojack Horseman (objectively great. Not comfort TV); Grease Monkeys (I've got to get hold of season 2, but I'm really fond of its coarseness, wish-fulfilment and sureallism).

Tagging 10 people if they wanna join in, but others feel free to say I tagged you! @stripedroseandsketchpads, @notfromcold, @notabuddhist, @donnaimmaculata, @erinaceina, @boogerwookiesugarcookie, @elwenyere, @kheldara, @bellaroles, @jimtheviking

List 10 comfort shows and then tag 10 people

The Terror: Like Ripper Street below, I feel this show deep in my bones and think I must be actually insane when I try to explain to people what I like about it (watching it literally made my husband's depression worse so I'm not allowed to talk about it. Jk. Sort of. About the last bit anyway). The sheer ridiculousness of that era of exploration has been a firm fave for years and I love how the show weaves horror and hubris together, how it's not a straightforward 'natives get vengeance on colonisers' story, but the colonisers ruin it for everyone, poison life for Silna, too (all without any threat of sexual violence towards her CAN YOU BELIEVE IT). I love all the attempts to impose 'civilisation' on the life the men try to live as they come to realise how doomed they are, how key the trappings of their life become - objects as tethers and talismans. I love how utterly futile it all is. How much they all care, and the audience cares despite that. Self-destruction and salvation all jumbled up together. Two full crews go into the ice and die. The end. They do everything they can not to die and it happens anyway, it's the ultimate 'the love was there and it didn't change anything'. And no one learns anything. Perfect TV.

Garrow's Law: Sometimes I do want my historical drama to be wish fulfillment actually, and this is the actual og fave. No, most of the cases weren't actually Garrow's, yes, it's a fluffy liberal take on things that played out in a more complex way, but the cast is so good, and Garrow is such a likeable guy, but then you see his flaws emerge in such a gentle way through the four series, and it really does case-of-the-week with characterisation so well, and it's got that amazing British TV character actor cast where there's always someone in the background you know, and the building romance between Garrow and Sarah, and the real repercussions of it for her are handled so sensitively, augh the culmination of the series with their own personal legal cases is so good.

Ripper Street: in my head this show was so much more than the sum of its parts. Season 1 was on the surface a fun BBC historical romp. Season 2 I had to watch through gritted teeth because Susan's situation quicked me out too much, among other reasons. Season 3 leaned into the more sinister side of the protagonist and came through as something weirder and darker, a vein which ran through Seasons 4 and 5, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I live for my alternative reading of the migration stories and nightmarish flipsides of people that we get running through the background of seasons [3/]4/5, but uh. the show's tumblr fandom is not a place for me. Reid is actually monstrous, and I like him despite/because of that. Oh man, I have so many feelings about this show, and I'd love to do a rewatch and blog about all my crazy theories but I'd probably have to go into witness protection afterwards. But rest assured, it isn't a show about the Ripper, and it's all the better for that. It does class and trauma so well, it also captures all the optimistic curiosity and the utter hypocrisy and hubris of the Victorian era so well.

The X Files: I mean, it's a formative influence, innit. Seasons 1 and 3 are the best, a lot of the 'classic' favourites are episodes I actually really disliked, even though the early seasons are the best a lot of my favourite episodes are from later...the beauty of TXF is that there's so much of it you can hold contradictory opinions about what makes it good, though, and my theory is that it's at its best when it's early and still being allowed to take its course, where even the mytharc hasn't tied itself in knots yet so every episode is of a higher standard, and then later, when the actors have wrested control of their characters from CC enough to play them like they want, but the good episodes are really just MotW ones because the mytharc has vanished up it's own fundament and I've lost track of whose turn it is to have a near-death season arc. Not technically the TV series, but still, Fight the Future is just so much of its time, watching it is like having a warm bubble bath in childhood nostalgia. Even the later series have things to recommend them - I always enjoy Doggett much more than I'm expecting to, and it's about bloody time Scully got a decent female friend in the form of Reyes...I haven't watched seasons 10 onwards though, I don't feel I'm missing much. Five fave episodes: 1.13 Beyond the Sea, 3.4 Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, 5.4 Detour, 7.17 all things, 6.19 The Unnatural.

Utopia: Tragically incomplete at 2 seasons, but what a pair of seasons they are. Brutal and uncompromising, horrible and compelling, but also frequently hilarious and full of the warmest, most fascinating characters who are all on a journey to Getting Much Worse. It's not something I've been able to watch since the pandemic *weak laugh* but I know when I do go back to it it will remain painfully prescient and uncomfortable. The longing for a 'balancing' and a righting of a historic wrong that drives it, and the desperate failures between people who are really just searching for love and don't know how to give/receive it...ugh so good.

Interview with the Vampire: Just rewatched season 1 and I'm just. No notes, five stars. The way Louis think he's a narrator in control, the way Daniel knows such a thing isn't possible, the way Louis does let himself get drawn on things, the way Armand sees the danger in this but it's not in his control any longer. Memory is a monster. The Odyssey of recollection. Fucking won my heart with those lines alone.

(BBC) Ghosts: Ok, I will say that I think the last season was actually a bit weak. They were in a hurry to finish, and they got away with wringing the feels from the important bits (The Captain's death was perfect and I will say this over and over again), but it felt like it was in a rush to come up with scenarios that would force admissions like The Captain's, whereas the show is at its best meandering around in a buffonish way that suddenly results in a Big Oof moment. Robin's arc in season 4 was a great example of this, as was Mary's. But basically it's still simply perfect comfort TV: silly but not malicious, unfair but kind to its characters. I'm going to miss them all so much, but I'm also going to rewatch so much.

Futurama: bit basic maybe, but I have watched it so often and I can watch any episode (ok, except for Jurassic Bark) again and again and again. I don't think I've binged any TV show so often with so many different people. Not sure how I feel about the immanent revival, but this has always been my favourite Matt Groening product, so fingers crossed.

Avatar: the Last Airbender: without getting into like...fandom discourse, man, this is a really perfect show. No need to say 'ooh it gets good after--!', it's just good from the beginning. A really well fleshed-out world, great characters who grow through the series, enough self awareness that the 'clip-show' episode Ember Island Players actually builds on the characterisation and addresses ambiguities in its own plots. A show that sticks to its principles and doesn't fudge the ending and also consistently looks gorgeous.

Detectorists: I had to put it on because no other show has literally made me fall off my chair laughing. Are the main characters useless? Yes. Is it often perplexing that the women in their lives spend any time with them? Yes. But that's forgiveable, because it's ultimately so kind to its beleagured characters and things work out despite their stupid decisions. Also it just captures rural English eccentricity so well. They're all such freaks (affectionate).

#comfort tv #look of course about half of these are bbc shows #of course that's comfort tv!#*ok not bbc but uk terrestrial tv anyway #memes #tv #ughhh i wanna rewatch so many of these but not until the house move...

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silverfoxstole · 3 months

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Rewatching Garrow’s Law for the first time in years and trying not to grind my teeth down to the gums at the state of the costuming, which looks as though someone went through the eighteenth century section of Angels pulling out bits at random and then shoved them all together. People are wearing a mishmash of styles from different decades, often all at once!

Why is Garrow dressed about thirty years out of date? Why is Lady Sarah (or rather Lady Hill, as she should be addressed since the title is her husband’s) running around town minus her chemise so effectively without underwear (or a footman or maid but that’s another matter)? Why do hardly any women seem to own a cloak or shawl, or wear a hat out of doors? Why do none of them wear a cap indoors? And why are so many men wearing frigging periwigs in the 1790s?!!

Argh!

#this sort of thing drives me mad #oh for the days when costume designers actually did their research #it’s easier than ever now to get this stuff right but no one seems to even want to bother #and this series was made in 2009 #it’s only got worse since then #to add insult to injury the periwigs aren’t even good periwigs #they’re laughably bad #historical costuming

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theculturedmarxist · 9 months

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

This post was motivated by “The Obama Factor“, a long and rambling Q&A between Pulitzer-winning historian and Obama biographer David Garrow, and David Samuels, the Tablet’s Literary Editor. Garrow and Samuels answer the question posed in the headline in the affirmative; basically, “quite possibly, yes.” Spoiler: By Betteridge’s Law, my answer is “No,” but with significant qualifications.

Most of the reactions to “The Obama Factor” — which focuses primarily on the irresistible rise of a fabulist creep who had written not one but two autobiographies by the age of 47, both in election years — have focused on Obama’s sensational fantasy life. In fact, I can only find serious reaction pieces from FOX and the New York Post; nothing from the other side of the aisle at all, and since the piece has been out for two weeks, I assume there won’t be (and if it were easy, the takedowns and the dogpiling would already have happened). Nobody seems to have focused on the most provocative part of “The Obama Factor”: Why Obama remained in Washington, DC, bought a mansion, and what he’s been doing with his time there[1]. In this post, I will take a first cut at explaining that.

I will first look at Obama’s neighborhood: Kalorama. Then I will look at his mansion, and what he is known to have done there. I will then present a great slab of Garrow and Samuels, who present the thesis that Obama is running a shadow government long form. I will conclude by briefly critiquing that thesis.

The Neighborhood: Kalorama

Here is a map[2] of Kalorama:

From Washington Socialist:

As locals will remind you, Kalorama comprises two separate neighborhoods: Kalorama Heights (also known as Sheridan-Kalorama) and, to its northeast, Kalorama Triangle.

The Obamas live to the Northeast, in the Kalorama Triangle. Kalorama has always been full of rich people:

Kalorama emerged relatively late as central DC neighborhoods went and was not extensively developed until the very end of the 19th century. It quickly attracted the wealthy and well-connected who built or purchased lavish mansions or fashionable rowhouses.

But now Kalorama is full of nouveaux riche[3] as well. From Trulia, “The Real Estate Voyeur’s Guide to Kalorama Heights, Washington D.C.’s Most Bipartisan Neighborhood“:

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Kalorama, Washington D.C.—a small and tranquil neighborhood located northwest of Dupont Circle—suddenly transformed into the epicenter of wealthy and political elites in D.C. First former President Barack Obama and wife Michelle announced they were moving into an 8,200 square-foot home in the area (which they’ve confirmed they are buying). Next, Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos purchased a $23 million Kalorama house—the largest private home in the entire city. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson purchased a $5.5 million property. And most recently—and prominently—current First Family members Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner began renting a 6,870 square-foot property in the neighborhood.

(Bezos is the dude with twenty-five bathrooms; Jared and Ivanka are already fighting with the neighbors.)

Kalorama is also full of embassies. From the Washington Diplomat:

[There are] 28 embassies in Washington’s well-heeled Kalorama neighborhood…. Embassies there include Algeria, Belize, Estonia, Greece, Japan, Latvia, Slovenia, Turkey, Madagascar, Mali and Syria. A variety of ambassador residences also call the tony neighborhood home — among them Afghanistan, the Netherlands and Portugal. Mostly, it’s simply a friendly neighborhood, European Union Ambassador David O’Sullivan said. The European Union has had a residence in Kalorama since 1972, and he looks forward to socializing with the new residents…. Maguy Maccario Doyle, Monaco’s ambassador to the U.S., has not run into her high-profile new neighbors yet, but “”I’m thinking of inviting them all over for a glass or two of champagne,”” she said. “”Perhaps they will drop by to watch the Monaco Grand Prix with me in the springtime? I would love to host them. I’m sure we will discover we all have much more in common than just a zip code…” In addition, says Maccario, “”the security is unbeatable, and it’s reasonably close to the best amenities and businesses that D.C. has to offer.””

So, speaking of ambasssadors and “unbeatable security,” what about the spooks? Bien sur! Town and Country once more:

Kalorama has its quirky side. Marie Drissel and I sampled it on a stroll down Leroy Place, a short street that dead ends into Connecticut Avenue north of Dupont Circle. She lives one street over on Bancroft, where Ralph Nader’s family have been longtime residents. “”This was a CIA safe house for years,”” she says of a large house on her corner. She points out an imposing, red brick house across the street.

Of course, the Spence debacle was in 1989; nothing like it could happen today. And I’m sure there aren’t any safe houses in Kalorama now.

And speaking of spooks and “amenities,” see WaPo’s “The Shadow World of Craig Spence“. A taste:

One Washington Times headline on June 30 said everything: “Power broker served drugs, sex at parties bugged for blackmail” The problem is that the prominent people named in the Washington Times — Ted Koppel, Eric Sevareid, Phyllis Schlafly, William Casey, Arnaud de Borchgrave and many others — attended the other parties. The parties where: People sat around in a perimeter after dinner discussing trade policy, where American policy makers were ushered into circles of foreign visitors to make serious talk; parties to which Koppel would sometimes send a stand-in; parties so dull that even Dossier magazine wouldn’t run the photographs. Spence, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found. His lap dog Winston — from whom he is rarely separated — is at a town house in Upper Marlboro with a longtime Spence employee. The imposing stone house on Wyoming Avenue in Kalorama, where Spence once lived and entertained, is attracting gawking news hounds.

The Kalorama Mansion: $8.1 Million

Obama actually has four homes: In Oahu, Hyde Park, Martha’s Vineyard, and the focus of our present interest, Kalorama. From Ghosts of DC, here is the exterior of the 8,200 -square-foot mansion:

And here, from Town and Country, is part of the interior:

These images are from the listing agent; they remind me of the Georgetown safehouse in Spook Country where Milgrim hears the voices of Brown and his handler coming up the stairs, Whispering Gallery style. The decor is certainly very white; Michelle seems to have redecorated it in neutral tones with accent colors.

What Obama Has Done in Kalorama Mansion

Two things that I can track down[4] (given Google and the limited time available to me; I have to attack HICPAC again soon).

First, Obama orchestrated Biden’s selection as the Democratic candidate from his mansion. From WaPo, April 14, 2020:

Former President Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden for president Tuesday, saying in a video, with the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, Biden “”has the character and the experience to guide us through one of our darkest times and heal us through a long recovery.”” Obama said of his vice president and friend, “”Joe gets stuff done.”” Biden has used his eight years serving as Obama’s vice president as a central credential in his White House bid. ….Obama, in his endorsement, reached out to Bernie Sanders supporters with lavish praise for the independent Vermont senator while scorching Republicans. Visibly graying, Obama taped the video at his home in Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood.

The Night of the Long Knives was March 2. April 14 was the coup de grace. Obama clearly didn’t make this video on his iPhone; his office is set up for serious business.

Second, if Roger Stone (2020) is to be believed, Obama orchestrated Stone’s conviction:

For the sake of journalistic clarity and transparency, the woman appointed as the Jury Forewoman for my trial—Ms. Tomeka Hart—is an established Democratic Party activist and a protégé of the Donna Brazile…. I have in my possession a sworn affidavit from a secret service agent that claims that he witnessed Atty. Hart entering and leaving the residence of former President Barak and Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett on Kalorama Avenue in Washington, D.C.—during my trial.

Well, maybe. I can’t imagine this was ever proved in court. What Stone’s story does show is that Obama’s Kalorama mansion has been a focus on the right for some time.[4]

Obama’s Shadow Government

With that very long setup, we undertstand Obama’s Kalorama milieu and his, well, operational capability within his mansion. We can now turn to the great slab of material I promised from Garrow and Samuels session (bold is Samuels, of The Tablet, roman is Garrow). I have added notes and highlighted comments. A Literary Editor, Samuels, makes the running, but these are strange times:

[SAMUELS] What interests you most about Obama today? [GARROW] The number one thing about Barack this past five years is how completely he’s vanished. Why is he living in the center of Washington, D.C., then? Well, how much time is he spending there as opposed to Martha’s Vineyard? I have no idea. Between July Fourth and Labor Day, sure. The rest of the year, he lives in a large brick mansion in Kalorama. Doesn’t it strike you as weird that he’s an ex-president, he’s comparatively young, and he’s living in the center of Washington, D.C.? The original excuse was that Sasha had to finish school. Then you could say, “”Well, the opposition to Trump needs a figure to rally around.”” But now Sasha has graduated from USC, Trump is gone, Joe Biden was elected present, but he’s still there. I never see any mentions of him. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean, I have heard from more than one source that there are regular meetings at Obama’s house in Kalorama involving top figures in the current White House, with Secret Service and cars outside.[1] I don’t write about it because it’s not my lane. There are over a thousand reporters in Washington, and yet there are zero stakeouts of Obama’s mansion, if only to tell us who is coming and going. But he clearly has his oar in….. It’s turtles all the way down. There are obviously large parts of White House policymaking that belong to Barack Obama because they’re staffed by his people[2], who worked for him and no doubt report back to him. Personnel is policy, as they say in Washington. Which to me is a very odd and kind of spooky arrangement. Spooky, because it is happening outside the constitutional framework of the U.S. government[3], and yet somehow it’s been placed off the list of permitted subjects to report on. Which is a pretty good indicator of the extent to which the information we get, and public reactions to that information, is being successfully controlled. How and by whom remain open questions, the quick answer to which is that the American press has become a subset of partisan comms. I’m going back to something you said 20 minutes ago. From the get-go, I know enough intelligence community stuff that from the first time I saw it, I realized that Christopher Steele’s shit was just complete crap. It was bad corporate intelligence, even. It was nonsensical. What scared me back then was coming to understand that a new milieu had been created consisting of party operatives, the people in the FBI and the CIA who are carrying out White House policy, and the press[4]. It is all one world now. And that’s something people still seem loathe to admit, even to themselves, in part because it puts them in a state of dissonance with this new kind of controlled consensus that the press maintains, which is obviously garbage. But if you question it, you’re some kind of nut.

Readers will understand why I find this thesis attractive. It conforms to my priors!

[1] We have a falsifiable theory. Do a stakeout. [2] A Flex Net, a familiar data structure. [3] Yes, a change in the constitutional order that I’ve been yammering about for some time, and also the central, unspoken theme of election 2024. [4] The Twitter Files show this “milieu” clearly, though I’m not sure the command structure is as Samuels understands it. Also, tech is involved through the content moderaion process, and maybe in other ways. (“Milieu” is a weak word’, I think, but we’re looking at a hard, unprecedented problem.

Samuels summarizes in his introduction:

To an extent that has never been meaningfully reported on, the Obamas served as both the symbolic and practical heads of the Democratic Party shadow government that ‘resisted’ Trump—another phenomenon that defied prior norms. The fact that these were not normal times could be adduced by even a passing glance at the front pages of the country’s daily newspapers, which were filled with claims that the 2016 election had been “”stolen”” by Russia and that Trump was a Russian agent.

Now to conclude with a critique.

Conclusion

Take “The Obama Factor” as read, as Samuels explains it. Is it correct to conceptualize the operation Obama is running from his Kalorama mansion as a government? (Remember that the scope of a shadow government is “whole of government,” not just parts.) Having read the article, and turning the question over in my mind, I posed the following question to the readership:

Query for the readership: Would Obama have invaded Ukraine, if he had been elected for a third term?

Because if Obama’s running the government, then he’s also running our proxy war in Ukraine? I should not have written “invaded”; I am always pressed temporally. Alert reader Nippersdad understood this, and answered what I meant to ask:

IIRC, Burns’ Nyet means Nyet cable was written during the Obama Administration when he was the Ambassador to Russia, a time in which Obama was saying that Russia had the advantage of proximity to any potential conflict with nearly unlimited ability to escalate (escalatory dominance, I think he called it). He was still saying that he was trying to implement the Minsk Accords as late as Feb. 2016. “”We are pressing hard to see Minsk fully implemented by the time the president leaves office,”” said a senior administration official, referring to the pact brokered by France and Germany and signed by Ukraine and Russia. “”We’re aiming for implementation during the second half of 2016.”” So, no, in spite of the obvious pressure on him it did not look like he would have gone to war with Ukraine in a third term. That was Hillary’s bailiwick.

Alert reader Carolinian wrote:

And while I don’t like Obama I don’t think he would have invaded Ukraine or provoked a war the way Blinken/Biden did. After all Hillary tried to get him to attack Syria and he didn’t.

Alert reader IACyclone wrote:

Re: Would Obama have invaded Ukraine given a third term. One of the few good things you can say about Obama is that he possesses a far more realistic understanding of foreign policy than most every other American politician. He’s still on board with the American imperial project and he constantly got rolled by opposing factions within the Deep State, but he at least he wasn’t totally high on his own supply. Case in point, he explicitly told Jeffrey Goldberg in an interview that Ukraine is a critical interest to Russia, and that it isn’t one for the U.S. Thus Obama’s reticence to provide weapons to Ukraine, which Republicans excoriated him over, in order to avoid a cycle of escalation that the U.S. would have no desire or will to match. For all the liberals chanting Slava Ukraine, it would be fun to see the looks on their faces when you remind them that the U.S. started sending actual weapons to Ukraine under the Trump Administration, unlike the Obama Administrations commitment to sending only non-lethal aid.

Alert reader Michael Fiorillo wrote:

I am far from an Obama fan, to put it mildly, but I think he’d have been reluctant to go into Ukraine. His refusal to send missiles there and his negotiating with Iran suggests some sense of limits to US power on his part.

And alert reader Pat:

I despise Obama, but I have always given him credit for recognizing what a disaster Hilary’s Libyan invasion was and realizing that the advice from that faction was almost consistently wrong.

(I understand Rev Kev’s point on Obama closing embassies, but I see that as posturing.)

So, I am with these readers. If Obama would not have fought the Ukraine proxy war that Biden is fighting, then Obama is not “governing.” QED. This was my first thought as soon as I cooled down — it’s nice to have one’s priors supported — after reading “The Obama Factor,” which is why I reached out for confirmation. (In essence, Obama never goes near anything that will make him look out of control, or like a failure, or dirty in some way. He moves away from situations like that like a cat backing away from a dish of spilt milk. A war in Ukraine, even a proxy one, would be more than capable of doing all three. So he wouldn’t go near it.) * * *

So what is Obama doing? What is “The Obama Factor”? Perhaps we should reframe government to that horrid neologism governance. It’s clear that Obama is maintaining his FlexNet and using it to….. do….. What, exactly? Control the Party so many of whose members have an Obama-shaped hole in their heads? Control the regulatory state through the Democrat Party? Consolidate the class power of the PMC? Whatever he’s doing, we can be sure it will be ice-cold, manipulative, and leave Obama with “clean hands.” Many have quoted Obama’s 2015 interview with quondam comic Stephen Colbert:

youtube

The transcript, in relevant part:

[OBAMA:] “”I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front-man or front-woman and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony, I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating,”” Obama quipped.

As it turns out, Biden is not that front-man; otherwise, Obama would be governing, which is not. But if the entire Democrat Party were Obama’s stand-in… Well, that would be pretty neat, wouldn’t it?

Some “quip.” When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time….

NOTES

[1] Interestingly, “conservative” venues like PJ Media say nothing about this topic at all.

[2] Thank you, Google, for cluttering the map with hotel icons that I have no interest in.

[3] I love it that Jim Bell, “a Kalorama resident and executive vice president of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty,” is also known as “the King of Kalorama.” Also: “Besides political heavy-hitters and diplomats, about a third of Kalorama’s residents are technology executives and hedge fund workers, Bell said. But no one is blinking an eye over the fame of the newest neighbors.” Quite a mix!

[4] Another example is the apparent myth that Obama gave Valerie Jarrett an office in his mansion.

#barack obama #us politics #washington dc #bourgeoisie #Youtube

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