Was Marco Rubio reading my blog?
In April 2011 I wrote (in a post about the long-form birth certificate that Obama finally revealed; I took the position that not releasing the certificate for so long was a “scheme by Obama to make right-wingers appear to be ‘unhinged'”):
No one should underestimate Obama. He’s not “in over his head” as people say. He knows exactly what he’s doing. I now consider him to be an evil anti-American genius.
In the infamous debate before the New Hampshire primary, Marco Rubio repeated over and over again that “Obama knows exactly what he’s doing.”
* * *
“Otis the Sweaty” (not really a great pseudonym, I wish he’d just call himself “Otis”) writes:
Obama was an unusually skilled and brilliant politician. Republicans mocking his supposed stupidity and incompetence while he ran circles around them for 8 years was ridiculous.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
You need to create a tag for “Is X reading my blog?” posts so we can access them all with a single mouse click.
IHTG
November 15, 2016 at 12:06 PM
Obama was an unusually skilled and brilliant politician. Republicans mocking his supposed stupidity and incompetence while he ran circles around them for 8 years was ridiculous.
Otis the Sweaty
November 15, 2016 at 12:06 PM
“Obama was an unusually skilled and brilliant politician”
Hardly. He was an unusually skilled and brilliant campaigner. He was an unusually skilled and brilliant speaker. Politician? Not so much. Otherwise he WOULD have left a legacy. If he had spent any time at all schmoozing Congress he might have been a decent politician. But he didn’t or couldn’t, so he wasn’t.
He was half the total package as a politician, which is why he ultimately failed.
gda
November 15, 2016 at 1:35 PM
If Hillary had won, he would indeed have left a very big legacy. As it stands, Trump and the Republicans will rip apart his legacy, but we have yet to see what will remain of Obamacare.
Lion of the Blogosphere
November 15, 2016 at 1:44 PM
If Hillary had won, he would indeed have left a very big legacy
Had he been a smarter politician he would have realized a major reason he won the 2008 Dem primary was people were sick of Hillary & he would have got behind Bernie instead.
pumpkinperson
November 15, 2016 at 2:45 PM
Obama wanted to stay above the fray and not pick sides, plus like everyone else he didn’t forsee Trump.
Lion of the Blogosphere
November 15, 2016 at 3:11 PM
Maybe its my overseas perspective, but Obama was brilliant. A melting pot black/white with charisma. Few embodied the cathedral like he did. He will still go down as the first black president, although he probably will not like the way history remembers his legacy.
Alfred Woenselaer
November 15, 2016 at 3:08 PM
“If Hillary had won, he would indeed have left a very big legacy.”
Obama and the Clintons built cults of personality. They weren’t good politicians in the sense of benefiting their party, which is a smoking wreck now.
For years after Reagan, Republicans were calling themselves Reagan conservatives. I doubt anyone in the future will call themselves Obama liberals.
David Pinsen
November 15, 2016 at 5:26 PM
Had he been a smarter politician he would have realized a major reason he won the 2008 Dem primary was people were sick of Hillary & he would have got behind Bernie instead.
Or better yet DON’T bring Hillary into the administration as Sec of State in the first place!
It’s not like somebody put a gun to his head………….oh wait………….
Rifleman
November 15, 2016 at 6:07 PM
” major reason he won the 2008 Dem primary was people were sick of Hillary & he would have got behind Bernie instead.”
This is the truth and nothing but the truth. Trump is another change candidate. He won for the same reason Obama won.
I personally think Bernie would’ve made a better president. Had “the Hills” not cheated Bernie, he would’ve won.
lola
November 18, 2016 at 12:25 PM
Republicans are stupider than Obama. But that doesn’t make Obama truly intelligent.
In 2018 the Republican party will probably finish off the last of the rural Democrats. That’s actually a shame. Because the Republican congressmen might very well be the biggest enemies Pres. Trump faces. It’s a miserable party.
gothamette
November 15, 2016 at 1:44 PM
What are the most notable examples of his political brilliance, again? Getting elected and re-elected and what else?
Tarl
November 16, 2016 at 9:27 AM
It’s not so easy getting elected to President. And people thought he was a Lightworker, more than just an ordinary politician. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize right away.
Lion of the Blogosphere
November 16, 2016 at 10:04 AM
It is easy getting elected if you are black, the media loves you, and your opponents don’t even fight you.
“he won the Nobel Peace Prize right away.”
He won that prize for nothing. Please tell me you’re trolling me…
Tarl
November 16, 2016 at 2:42 PM
The fact that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize before having done anything (other than get elected) is evidence that something else besides Obama’s political gifts was contributing to his success (in getting elected). That something was that he appeared to embody White America’s (and, for that matter, White Sweden’s) dream of the fully assimilated, acculturated, educated, integrated black man, well-mannered and non-hostile, keen that we should all just get along. He was even coffee-colored, like in that song (but, cunningly, not so pale as to distance himself from the mass of ordinary black people). Here was proof positive – or so it seemed – that a colorblind America is possible, and will be fully realized real soon now. On inauguration date, to be precise. The optimism of this long-harbored dream (since the generation of Frederick Douglass) was the great trump-card that carried him over the line.
Only later did America discover that his leftist upbringing and education had imbued in him as full a reservoir of ressentiment as any molotov-cocktail-throwing radical ever held. His special political gift was his ability to hide his radicalism from those who didn’t need to know, which is to say, from the majority of voters.
Hobbesian Meliorist
November 17, 2016 at 12:15 AM
I love the Otis the Sweaty pseudonym… Really sticks in your head.
But who am I to judge about taste.
Thin-Skinned Masta-Beta
November 16, 2016 at 3:21 PM
Don’t be stupid. Rubio is a homosexual man. He would have no interest in abstraction.
More likely checking out E! Online.
Anyone see Rubio’s E! Online special by the way? I really liked the lava lamps in his toilet and insta-Foam Party in a can. I didn’t know you could get those things in Miami hotels, a bit like wife beards I suppose.
The Philosopher
November 15, 2016 at 12:21 PM
What the fuck does being a homo have to do with abstraction?
You know Alan Turing existed? Along with a long line of ancient Greeks..
Kaz
November 15, 2016 at 8:03 PM
Yeah, but wait a minute … this is interesting. Wittgenstein devoted himself to de-abstracting philosophy, or rather turning philosophy against itself so that it would disintegrate, allowing bright people to focus on flashy scarves, organic vegetables, and gadgets. And Socrates was really a de-abstractionist too, since his whole thing was to get the pretty boys to ignore cosmic theories and focus on what makes people awesome and adorable (Virtue).
Garr
November 15, 2016 at 9:24 PM
A black sheep does not make all sheep black.
The Philosopher
November 16, 2016 at 5:31 AM
Wittgenstein was severely autistic. Because autists have no theory of mind, he couldn’t be sure thatta wuds cummin outta mah mouthta canna be understand by nuther human being 100% exactly.
Basically Wittgenstein, like most autists can’t understand figurative or metaphorical language in poetry, literature and so on see it as ‘irrational’ and so I’d bet he didn’t ‘get’ what most philosophers with a more arty style were saying.
I’m sure he enjoyed Kant though. Both were ant people.
The Philosopher
November 16, 2016 at 5:34 AM
Surely not SEVERELY autistic, Philosopher! Wittgenstein’s worries are worth examining, if only in order to justify the assumptions about self, consciousness, natural kinds, etc., that our ordinary ways of speaking necessarily generate or that generate those ordinary ways of speaking. It bugs me that we don’t have any direct way of getting at the reality that our metaphysical metaphors are supposed to connect us with … it’s helpful to compare Trump to a lion because you can look at footage of lions and Trump and see the similarities, but is it really helpful to compare, say, a supposedly nonphysical yet infinite Being to the ocean when you can’t look the first item directly? Same with comparing an immaterial soul to a butterfly or a glowing wisp of vapor. Hey, man, are you interested in Nietzsche (I’m guessing so, since you like arty styles)? Because I have some questions about what was going on the guy’s mind, so if you’d care to discuss this ….
Garr
November 16, 2016 at 9:21 AM
Again, the ocean is a figurative metaphor for a concept of God for many.
Now whether, god exists is almost as irrelevant as the point that the concept exists and can be communicated to others to either share or discuss.
Just because 100% of people won’t receive the concept the same way as per speech, doesn’t mean it was pointless writing about it. I speak english. I don’t really care if a Mongolian doesn’t get it. Or someone 500 years ago speaking Latin.
Wittgenstein thought language fails because it isn’t precise and efficient. This is the way an engineer thinks, not an artist. In fact, a brief look at language evolution, as Nietsche has written on, shows that its an evolving myriad of inefficiency, slang, pidgin language amalgamation and so on.
The point is philosophy hasn’t failed because it can’t communicate inner worlds precisely. The point is philosophy will fail if we mistake the engineering of the railroad track of language for logic, and miss the destination or scenery.
Wittgenstein added nothing to philosophy. In the same way another autist, Friedman added nothing to economics that wasn’t conjectured 200 years ago by Adam Smith or autists in political science add by with papers decrying stupid white men or autist psychologists experimenting based on faulty assumptions about human nature like the Blank Slate or women’s mating strategem they don’t have verbal cognition to theorise.
Being autistic is almost like blindness in social science research. Economics, philosophy, pol sci and psychology have been in the dark ages ever since the academy tried to make it more ‘analytical’. It was a basic epistemology error.
The Philosopher
November 16, 2016 at 11:26 AM
Pointless to converse with you, I guess, Phil. Carry on.
Garr
November 16, 2016 at 2:19 PM
Aha!, that’s probably what Wittgenstein would have said to me.
Just judge autist theory by is en reducto argument. Force an autist to say his thesis in one sentence, and you can see its stupidity.
Friedman: The Great Depression was caused by a lack of credit cards.
Wittgenstein: Philosophy is a dead end because the words we use cannot ever be precise enough to convey meaning or talk of un-entities (the aspie probably never got slang either in school).
That’s why most people consider autism/aspergers a form of retardation. Its a lack of common sense.
The Philosopher
November 16, 2016 at 6:57 PM
Obama’s only real talent was smooth talking. For everything else, he had help. Soros had think tanks and armies of consultants advising him. Not to mention the MSM. The MSM was a tailwind for Obama but will be a headwind for Trump.
destructure
November 15, 2016 at 12:26 PM
Otis wouldn’t be Otis without “the Sweaty.”
Horace Pinker
November 15, 2016 at 12:28 PM
Rubio is not reading your blog. He is not darkly enlightened.
Dan
November 15, 2016 at 12:32 PM
Rubio did that because Rubio didn’t know what he was doing.
JayMan
November 15, 2016 at 12:33 PM
Foul language – but this guy gets it.
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs <<<
Johnson
November 15, 2016 at 12:41 PM
That’s a British actor playing a parody newscaster. It is funny but he still doesn’t take Trumpus Maximus seriously. It’s mostly an anti-Hillary rant. I happen to think our Leader had a few things going for him.
gothamette
November 15, 2016 at 1:55 PM
He does a great job of getting across the idea that the constant accusations and feigned outrage shaped our current circumstance. I haven’t heard anyone else do it quite so brilliantly. I applaud him for that!
Johnson
November 15, 2016 at 2:52 PM
Releasing the Billy Bush tape when they did was another example of Democratic cleverness. That caused a lot of Republicans to shoot arrows at Trump and withdraw support, but I think many of those responses were not so much about what was in the tape itself, but rather the thought, “If Hillary’s team is releasing this a month before the election, what kind of horrible stuff must they be holding back for the very last week?” People were scared to death that if they stuck with Trump after Pussygate they’d get linked to whatever else the Democrats had on file for the REAL October surprise, and Dem operatives spread rumors that there were tapes of Trump saying “nigger” and bragging about screwing black girls for variety’s sake which turned out not to exist.
The whole thing was psy-ops, very shrewd, although it left the Clinton campaign with nothing to release as a distraction when Comey relaunched the email investigation.
Richard
November 15, 2016 at 12:43 PM
“People were scared to death that if they stuck with Trump after Pussygate”
Nah, I think Pussygate was bad enough. With it, Trump lost my parents. I had to argue angrily with them to get them back on board the Trump train, and it was a very reluctant vote that they cast.
Dan
November 15, 2016 at 1:57 PM
I said many, not all.
Richard
November 15, 2016 at 3:02 PM
I think the opposite: I think pussygate helped him. Before pussygate, Hillary was going on about how crazy he was that you couldn’t trust him with the nuclear football. After pussygate, people thought he was a player… hardly the beta male type that would go on a mass shooting or blow shit up. It made him less “scary.”
Bilbo Baggins
November 15, 2016 at 7:52 PM
“If Hillary’s team is releasing this a month before the election, what kind of horrible stuff must they be holding back for the very last week?”
Well I thought that too. Not that it mattered to me personally; I was voting for him anyway, but I assumed that there were tons of such tapes. I was really surprised when nothing else followed.
Mike Street Station
November 16, 2016 at 6:00 AM
What is the evidence of Obama’s genius? Obamacare, Iran, Libya? Disasters! Democrat electoral fortunes from top to bottom? Another disaster. Obama had the colleges, the TV shows, Hollywood, all the journalists backing him up, and what did he get accomplished? He sent a mountain of cash to the world’s top sponsor of terrorism and made people’s insurance premiums rise.
Sure, Obama is smarter than most people, but all he used his smarts for was to get elected. After that he just fucked up or slacked. At least he’s not as evil as Hillary.
Gozo
November 15, 2016 at 12:49 PM
Obama is a gifted orator and an absolutely brilliant campaigner. What he wasn’t good at was actually managing government affairs, working with Congress, cutting deals, etc. The appellation, “Campaigner-in-Chief” that Republicans uses from around 2010 to 2012 was quite accurate.
Sid
November 15, 2016 at 1:24 PM
He is NOT a gifted orator! He’s practically inarticulate without teleprompters.
CamelCaseRob
November 15, 2016 at 4:02 PM
I don’t care for Obama’s speeches, but when he’s excited about campaigning and has a well-written script, he can get Democrats and many Independents fired up like no one else alive.
You are right, though, that when he feels bogged down by work and doesn’t have a teleprompter, his pauses and “Uhhhs” kill him.
Sid
November 15, 2016 at 6:57 PM
Gifted orator? Gimme a break. He’s a stammering nitwit.
Tarl
November 16, 2016 at 9:29 AM
Underestimating the enemy is a very bad thing to do. It’s why HRC lost the election.
Lion of the Blogosphere
November 16, 2016 at 10:04 AM
“I took the position that not releasing the certificate for so long was a “scheme by Obama to make right-wingers appear to be ‘unhinged’”)”
What! That was my point since 09. The whole thing was as cynical as could be.
If you recall how this all played out Obama was able to release the “unobtainable” information within 24 hours of this becoming a major issue by dispatching one aide. He could have put this all to bed in 2008 if he had wanted to.
Lion o' the Turambar
November 15, 2016 at 12:58 PM
The Obama coalition is dead. It was foolish to think that you could strap together a bunch of weirdos, soft matriarchal tropical types, cowards, excuse makers, sissies, layabouts, fruits and nuts into an effective and sustainable union driven only be the fact that they all possess a vote and a grievance. If these types really had anything on the ball they’d already have an advanced country of their own where they could free of the white man’s oppressive patriarchy.
After Trump vaporizes 90% of Obamacare the Kenyan’s failure will be complete.
Camlost
November 15, 2016 at 1:51 PM
That’s not true. The weirdos are still here and they still vote. I don’t see minority votes shifting greatly to the right anytime soon.
The right is going to have to double down on the Sailer Strategy, appeal to more minorities, preferably both.
Jason Liu
November 15, 2016 at 4:14 PM
Check the exit polls. Trump went down slightly with whites and went up slightly with asians, hispanics and especially blacks. While he may have been using the Sailer Strategy it was actually his appeal to the disaffected working class of ALL races that won the election. If the GOP continues in the populist direction this could be a real problem for the Democrats.
destructure
November 15, 2016 at 7:06 PM
Obama was unusually skilled in knowing that he was untouchable against whitey.
His whole life, SWPLs loved him, advanced him, and projected all their hopes onto him. And any unruly white who might have opposed him, would never dare truly lay a glove on him lest they be called racist.
Obama has known and understood all this for a LONG time.
fakeemail
November 15, 2016 at 2:38 PM
“Obama was unusually skilled in knowing that he was untouchable against whitey.”
This. Axelrod was the genius. He knew they could get away with executive branch aggrandizement so long as the Prez was black.
Marty
November 15, 2016 at 5:27 PM
+++1!
E. Rekshun
November 16, 2016 at 4:03 AM
Obama is made of teflon. Similarly, I’ve found that blacks are untouchable in corporate America as well.
E. Rekshun
November 16, 2016 at 4:11 AM
Blacks are untouchable in the NBA and NFL. There, I fixed the premise for you..
cesqy
November 16, 2016 at 12:44 PM
All the leftists know exactly what they’re doing. Did we believe they were doing the things they did by accident? It’s not a great insight, sorry.
Jason Liu
November 15, 2016 at 4:13 PM
Otis should be honored. I’ve never seen Lion comment on a commenter’s pen name before. Otis is considerable estimable enough to make constructive feedback worthwhile.
Greg Pandatshang
November 15, 2016 at 5:16 PM
He criticized E Rekshuns name once.
Curle
November 19, 2016 at 3:37 PM
doubt marco rubio reads at all, let alone weird obscure blogs like this.
james n.s.w
November 15, 2016 at 5:28 PM
I think Lion is being tongue-in-cheek with all these “is so-and-so reading my blog” posts. One can never tell for sure, because his style is so deadpan. I do think he really feels he deserves credit when he points out these predictions of his that supposedly came to.
Hermes
November 15, 2016 at 6:59 PM
While I doubt any politicians are reading this blog, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of their staffers lurk at this blog and others. Steve Sailer definitely has readers in DC.
Richard
November 15, 2016 at 9:24 PM
Obama’s strategic move was to damage white middle class men as much as possible, which is the GOP’s infantry.
Whether he did that effectively will take some time to tell.
It might take years before Pol Pothead Millennials are ready to impose a reeducation curriculum on graying whiteys. The best the kids might be up for is to confiscate social security.
KnoMad
November 15, 2016 at 5:41 PM
Obama was elected President because he was “…the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
Well, that and the fact that most of America was absolutely sick of GWB, including myself but I still didn’t vote for Obama.
E. Rekshun
November 15, 2016 at 5:42 PM
“Otis the Sweaty” (not really a great pseudonym, I wish he’d just call himself “Otis”) writes:
Otis the Index.
The Undiscovered Jew
November 15, 2016 at 8:25 PM
TUJ loves to italicize the comments of others when he makes a reply. Let’s call him the Italicized J-w.
JS
November 15, 2016 at 11:06 PM
Italicizing is prole.
OldTimer
November 16, 2016 at 3:20 AM
Obama was a good president.
Stop looking at cuck neoliberal media. They are always talking their book (i.e. asset stripping the country)
Look at the actual policy detail:
Net neutrality kept, obamacare benefits mostly lower/middle class at the expense of rich, removed troops from Iraq/Afghan, nuclear missile deal with Russia, stimulus prevented deeper recession, wall street can’t prop trade anymore + more capital reqs = less ROE, more antitrust than before, Iran deal prevented war #7, deficit down 80% since Bush, I could go on for ages…..I won’t. He got an amazing amount done with no congress.
The Philosopher
November 16, 2016 at 5:40 AM
“more antitrust than before”
LOL, wut? Monopolies in this age is gigantic tech companies dominating their spaces. It is Facebook and Twitter censoring at will. It is companies like Google with total market dominance and a huge lobbying presence in Washington. These tech mega-companies get nothing but fawning love from government due to ideological agreement.
What example of antitrust?
“deficit down 80% since Bush”
Rule #1 is that SJWs Always Lie, but at least make the lies plausible.
Deficits in billions
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
$161 $458 $1,413 $1,294 $1,295 $1,087 $679 $485 $438 $587
Debt has soared to extreme levels as non-liars will readily acknowledge.
“nuclear missile deal with Russia”
Nothing Earth shattering, a continuation of nuclear deals that had been going on for years.
“removed troops from Iraq”
About that… How is that working out?
Dan
November 16, 2016 at 8:10 AM
Its working out well because no American troops are dying at the hands of Saudi Arabia’s ISIS goons. And as we know, most fighting in the Middle East is a war on theatre terrorism.
The 2009 budget is Bush’s legacy spending – mainly arms/millitary and other automatic eco stabilisers like bailouts, welfare, medicaid and other locked in spending as a result of the crash.
Now, antitrust I’ll accept he could do a lot more. Tech is a very new area and complicated. A lot of tech services are based on network effects that lead to natural monopolies…
But he’s intervened in Comcast Time Warner, the Bayer-Monsanto and various other large deals that were nipped in the pipeline. Much more than a Republican will.
If anti-trust isn’t enforced as per law, the US will become a banana republic. Teddy Roosevelt is right – antitrust breaks the plutocrat power. Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt and so on were greatly weakened.
The estate tax is useful too – which Obama reintroduced and strengthened after a lapse under Cuck King Bush. The rise of tax havens in the 1980s and Reaganomics stopped the rich paying it…
hence NAFTA, Wall Street deregulation, outsourcing, tax inversions, Citizens United, open borders and other anti-people policies that the plutocracy is bribing politicians with.
The Philosopher
November 16, 2016 at 11:38 AM
Also those figures should be GDP deflated. Absolute numbers mean almost nothing in economics.
The Philosopher
November 16, 2016 at 11:39 AM
Obama was a good president.
He wasn’t worse than GWB.
E. Rekshun
November 16, 2016 at 10:49 AM
I thought Bush’s preemptive war was bad until preemptive surrender, cultural rot, and economic rot was implemented.
cesqy
November 16, 2016 at 12:51 PM
Obama has about 10 – 15 points in IQ on Bush.
Also Bush, wasn’t president – Cheney was.
The Philosopher
November 16, 2016 at 6:59 PM
Obama has about 10 – 15 points in IQ on Bush.
Everyone reading this blog has 10 – 15 IQ point on Bush.
E. Rekshun
November 17, 2016 at 3:55 AM