And having discussed Valerie Jarrett the other day, I find her mentioned at The American Thinker in an article on Valerie Jarrett was our First Female President. I will only add here to what I have already discussed, and begin with this, weakly put though this is:

She arguably has more influence over Obama than anyone with the possible exception of Michelle Obama herself.

This is followed up by the following quote which comes closer:

Her influence is shown by an account in Richard Miniter’s book “Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him.”

It relates that at the urging of Jarrett, Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011, Navy SEAL mission. Seems she was concerned about the possible political harm to Obama if the mission failed.

Miniter writes that the president canceled the kill mission in January 2011, again in February and a third time in March, in each instance at the urging of Jarrett.

Miniter cites a source within the Joint Special Operations Command who had direct knowledge of the operation and its planning.

Edward Klein, author of the best-selling book about Obama, “The Amateur,” once asked Obama if he ran every decision by Jarrett, and the president responded, “Absolutely.” A former foreign editor of Newsweek and editor of the New York Times Magazine, Klein describes Jarrett as “ground zero in the Obama operation, the first couple’s friend and consigliere.”

Another quote:

Obama has said he consults Jarrett on every major decision, something current and former aides corroborate. “Her role since she has been at the White House is one of the broadest and most expansive roles that I think has ever existed in the West Wing,” says Anita Dunn, Obama’s former communications director. Broader, even, than the role of running the West Wing. This summer, the call to send Attorney General Eric Holder on a risky visit to Ferguson, Missouri, was made by exactly three people: Holder himself, the president, and Jarrett, who were vacationing together on Martha’s Vineyard. When I asked Holder if Denis McDonough, the chief of staff, was part of the conversation, he thought for a moment and said, “He was not there.” (Holder hastened to add that “someone had spoken to him.”

Jarrett holds a key vote on Cabinet picks (she opposed Larry Summers at Treasury and was among the first Obama aides to come around on Hillary Clinton at State) and has an outsize say on ambassadorships and judgeships. She helps determine who gets invited to the First Lady’s Box for the State of the Union, who attends state dinners and bill-signing ceremonies, and who sits where at any of the above. She has placed friends and former employees in important positions across the administration — “you can be my person over there,” is a common refrain.

And Jarrett has been known to enjoy the perks of high office herself. When administration aides plan “bilats,” the term of art for meetings of two countries’ top officials, they realize that whatever size meeting they negotiate — nine by nine, eight by eight, etc. — our side will typically include one less foreign policy hand, because Jarrett has a standing seat at any table that includes the president.

Obama is a cypher of no account other than he can be elected. If you wish to understand what has mattered, following Jarrett and her circle will give you a far better understanding of who the Americans have been governed by and the principles, as such, that have guided what they have done.

It is one thing to recognise that no political vehicle is perfect, it is quite another to reject someone who goes most of the way with you because he doesn’t have everything you want. Donald Trump has no political history, no past set of political judgements to assess him against, and there is no certainty how he will act in any particular set of circumstances. But I don’t worry about renegotiating trade arrangements, I am not worried that he will start some war by accident and it never crosses my mind that me will renege on his stated aim to close the American border and restrict immigration. He is also more likely than anyone to take on the most dangerous issue of our time which is the jihadist rampage across the West.

Meanwhile, we have Niall Ferguson in a particularly vacuous article titled, Paranoid Republidents for Trump. You would think that given his previous concerns about immigration, he might at least lean towards Trump for President. If he believes any of what he has written here, he is instead among the shallowest of our current commentators on Trump’s run for the president who has no idea how to achieve anything he says he wishes to see achieved. He is, by the way, Mr Aayan Hirsi Ali and this is what he has to say:

Trump’s acceptance speech was a ghastly masterclass in what Richard Hofstadter more than 50 years ago called “The paranoid style in American politics.” As Hofstadter summarized it, the paranoid view was that “the old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; [and] the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots.”

The paranoid worldview verged on the religious: “The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms. . . . He is always manning the barricades of civilization. . . . Like religious millennialists, he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days.” Yet even as he denounces the corrupt, cosmopolitan elite, the political paranoiac is implicitly expressing a kind of attraction. He hates intellectuals, yet he provides extensive footnotes.

This — including the footnotes, 282 of which the Trump campaign supplied on Friday — is about all you need to know about Trump’s acceptance speech. It was all here, beginning with the conspiracy theory. “America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers,” yelled Trump, “that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics. . . . No longer can we rely on those elites in media, and politics, who will say anything to keep a rigged system in place.”

“Big business, elite media, and major donors” were backing Hillary Clinton, Trump declared, “because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.” As a result, “corruption has reached a level like never before.”

For me, adjusting for the typical rhetorical flourishes that are the basics of political discourse, there is nothing there that seems exaggerated. But if you cannot see how dangerous a Clinton presidency would be, even if you think of her as the lesser of two evils, then your ability to make sound political judgements is running on empty.

Found at Five Feet of Fury which even has a link to this.

Just follow Trump’s twitter feed. Devastating criticisms of Hillary at every turn. Her supporters must have protective shields of the toughest steel and as impervious to logic and reality as a March hare.