Politics

“Management Agency” is the key here.

In leadership courses we hear the phrase “Either lead, follow or get the fuck out of the way.” There is a strong reason for this, projects fail when leadership is weak.

“A bad decision now is better than a good decision too late,” is another.

What this means is that in a situation where leadership is needed, we need a good leader, and then we need to follow them. If we are not following, then we might be the de facto leader. If we are not following, and we are not leading, we are the problem.

If you want to see a prime example of failed leadership, consider your local PTA. There are reputations at stake, there is money on the table. And there are a dozen voices, all attempting to get their way.

A natural leader has an ability to lead that comes from their nature, and their upbringing. They might have augmented that natural ability with training. They are still few and far between.

Trained leaders are those that have been through training on how to lead. They might be able to lead, but they are likely to be uncomfortable leading. This causes failure in trust and mistakes.

In a disaster, leaders will step up at the time of the event. These will be those that who are natural leaders. The “trained” leaders are likely to be slow to step up, hoping that someone else will take on the mantel of leadership.

This is precisely what we saw in the current disaster. The natural leaders got up and did.

These people heard the call of duty, put their lives on hold, grabbed what they could and went into action. When they arrived at the scene, they self organized. That is to say, leaders stepped forward and did what was needed.

Because they are doers, things got done. The right people were in the right place doing the right thing.

When FEMA arrives, they bring two things with them, a checkbook and “management”.

If the management is good, then they will slide into the existing system, their natural or trained leadership skills will shine through, and they will make it easier for the doers to get things done.

The horrible truth is that the people that FEMA brings to the party are unlikely to be natural leaders. Natural leaders do not find themselves as low-level government employees.

These examples of petty bureaucrats arrive on scene and start following their scripts. Just like they were taught in class.

They start by making an inventory of the goods and capabilities they have on hand. According to the book, this is more important than actually seeing those goods and services being delivered to those in need.

A primary goal is to make sure that those most in need get the help they need. This means holding back on the supplies at hand, to have a reserve for when they find those in desperate need.

Because they are a management team, when they step in, they take over all the prepositioned goods and services.

Being management, they need to make sure that they are rested and prepared for the next day’s work.

As you might guess, this is written from the perspective of the petty bureaucrat. They believe they are doing good. They believe they know better. They believe they are the saviors.

The correct answer is that they should arrive with hat in hand and ask, “how can I help?”. Instead, they know they are supposed to lead, and leaders take control and bark orders.

FEMA is a failure at this point.

That, and they have been used to funnel money to illegal immigrants, makes it all the worse.

“We are from the government, we are here to help.” is a strong indication that it is time for SSS.

“We can’t afford… We can’t afford… four more years of this”

Every so often the masks slip and they tell the truth.

Note, the ellipsis in the quote are him pausing. Not anything being cut out.

Years ago, my lady discovered that one of my co-workers was plagiarizing content. She brought it to my attention. I reported it to the owner of the company. I cc’ed my boss to keep her in the loop.

When I arrived at work that day, my boss was waiting for me, took me to a private location and started to berate me for going over her head. I listened and waited for her to wind down. “Is it my turn to talk?”

“Yes”, and as soon as I started to speak, she would start up again. I’d wait for her to run down, then ask again. At some point, I asked, “You’ve been yelling at me for 10 minutes, do I have permission to yell back?” “YES!”

She finally let me speak, “You gave me permission to yell, I am not going to…” I did my spoke to her softly, without anger, without pushing into her personal space. It broke her.

She was not prepared to deal with somebody not responding and realized she had gone over the line.

People of all types respond to emotional cues in different ways. One of the easiest ways to make people look bad is to be good when they are not.

Arabs are very “honor” driven. They do not deal well with insults. This is why their screeds against Israel and the United States are filled with so many insults. They expect it to cause us pain.

In the same way, they cannot handle being laughed at. That is a grave insult.

Israel pulled off some super serious psychological damage to the psyche of terrorists, everywhere.

Operation “Below the Belt”, which has been reported as the official name of the operation, is an incredible feat of logistics, intelligence, and technological sophistication.

Israel was so embedded in the inner workings of Hezbollah that leadership decided that they needed to ditch the smartphones that were being used. Instead, they would go low technology, using pager technology.

Pagers do not indicate where they are located. They are simple radio receivers. There is no way to know where an unmodified pager is located. This is the type of security that Hezbollah leadership wanted, and needed.

Israel managed to intercept the shipment(s) of pagers and modify them. At what point in the supply chain this took place is unknown. They were able to modify or replace thousands of pagers. The pagers that were sent on had two known modifications. A couple of ounces of explosive with a thermal trigger, and some modifications to the code to increase the power draw to heat the battery enough to trigger the explosion.

Pagers are carried in pockets or on belts. When leadership handed out pagers to Hezbollah assholes, those assholes put the pagers on their belts or in their pockets.

In the afternoon of the 18th, the devices were triggered. They sounded a beep for an incoming message. Many terrorists assholes were able to take their pagers off their belts or out of their pockets to look at them before the boom.

If they were just holding the pager, there was significant damage done to the hand. If they had brought the pager close to their face, then there was serious eye damage. If they left the pager in their pocket, well, they are looking for their balls now.

This is one of the greatest psychological victories in modern history. These assholes were not martyred. They did not die in battle. They weren’t even in battle.

If they lost their dicks, the 72 raisins they are supposed to get aren’t going to do them any good.

And with no hands and no eyes and no dicks, they are never going to be a threat to people again.

Moreover, the stress this puts on the medical infrastructure is immense.

Well done Israel.

This was a good win and a good place to take a victory lap.

We were doing that lap for Israel, laughing at those dickless, less than wonders.

Israel, was busy lapping the track, again.

On Thursday, they initiated another round of devices exploding. This time on two-way handheld radios. This was not as successful as the original attack, but it still added to the toll.

Again, well done Israel.

So Israel was doing that Victory lap. Well, no. They were busy.

You see, Hezbollah leadership really needed to discuss this new turn of events. They couldn’t use the phone system, they knew that was hacked, they were unable to use pagers to call a central number. And the radios were out too.

So they did the sneaky-sneaky thing. They sent out the word to meet in the super secret place, known only by the trusted leadership.

Well, it just so happened that an Israeli fighter jet was doing that victory lap when this meeting took place. And since they really, really, really, felt the need to celebrate, they decided to set off some fireworks. Mostly sound.

So they dropped some noisemakers. These big ass noisemakers just happened to land right on top of that super secret meeting location. And they were so big, that it disrupted the party.

20 top commanders are dead. The snake’s head has been cut off. The arms and legs (and sausage plus dingle berries) are missing as well. Everybody is scared, or should be scared of coming close to a communications device.

I look forward to learning what new surprises Israel has in store for us. This story can get better, but I have a huge smile on my face tonight.

My social feeds are full of people claiming that Trump’s campaign is imploding. That Kamala’s got the biggest crowds ever. That Vance has weird interactions with people.

But the one thing that I keep seeing over and over again is crowd size claims.

I’ve been aware of crowd size estimates since Glenn Beck held his tea-party rally back in the 00s. People were showing overhead shots and then doing counts.

The numbers reported by the right were much larger than the number reported by the left. Taking them from the same images.

Then there were the images from Watt’s Mommy’s Demand group. For years, it looked like they had massive crowds outside the NRA annual meeting.

Then we were able to see photos from gun owners. The crowds were staged to look very dense, but there were barely a 100 people there.

Before Kamala was installed, the media was constantly going on about how Trump’s crowds weren’t really that big.

We would see photos seeming to show a rally half full. Then we would find out that the images were taken before Trump got there or after he left.

Once Kamala was installed, suddenly the left was much more concerned with crowd sizes. They started to post images of the Kamala crowds with all their joy and excitement of getting to vote for a person who has received zero votes.

Then I started to notice something, the images, and videos posted by Kamala’s people didn’t have the numbers that her team was claiming.

“Look at this massive line of people to greet the annotated one!”. And there is maybe a block of people, barely 2 people deep.

As a child, I watched Nixon’s inauguration parade. It was January in D.C. It was cold. My brother and I were bundled up in our winter coats. There were people lining both sides of the street, shoved up on one another 4 or 5 people deep. All to get a glimpse of our new President.

That isn’t what I am seeing in the Kamala videos, posted by her people.

Here is my point, the right is poking fun at Kamala’s crowd sizes based on her videos and images. The left has to take their videos and images that are of questionable integrity to attempt to show small crowds at Trump events.