Politics is at best a sleight-of-hand affair pretending to be reasonably straight ahead.  We all know it's nothing of the sort.

Rogue One, the latest prequel to sequel in the perdurable Star Wars saga, is all sound and fury, but it leaves you less $20 for the added nullity of 3D, which is all but invisible in the watching.

The point of this meditation of politics under the departing fecklessness of the child-wuss President Barack H. Obama is that we have just experienced the flop CGI effects of his scheming against both his prime enemy since 2009, Bibi cum Israel, and his newer pretend friend, his successor, Donald J. Trump.

In fabricating excuses for how and why and what the confounding U.S. abstention from the maximally damaging Resolution 3224 in the United Nations cafeteria of condemnations against ally-shy Israel – if there were scores for the most constant resolutions condemning this tiny democracy in an ocean of vitriolic demagoguery, misogyny, bias, and cruelty under a sharia banner against non-Muslims, and general varmintry, Israel would win, 5 to 1, hands down – outgoing Obama repeatedly fails the smell test.

Add John Kerry to the mix of mendacity and Machiavellian stir fry, and you have a losing poker hand that not only scathes our erstwhile best ally, but endlessly complicates the a-borning presidency of President Trump.

Moreover, the U.S. long ago lost the credibility buffet by former allies and friends, under a hostile and quixotically puerile chief executive.  A man who seems to plump forever for all and any bad guys over the good.  Who believes the rhetoric and diplo-speak, all devised in service of pancake makeup over the knife attack against Israel?

Viewing the endless hectoring hash of Obama's long-wussing if dunce-cap sacrificial secretary of state, the hangdog powder-puff Cerberus of John Kerry – as ineffective as Ms. Clinton, if at least sparing us her pantsuit wardrobe – one was stopped over and over by his (a) ropy lies or (b) massive self-serving ignorance or (c) deliberate mastication of facts.

The recent amplification of a so far wholly unsubstantiated attack against Russia, aka Putin, as "interfering in the legal elections of the United States," into expulsion of 35 Russian operatives and personnel inside a three-day peremptory putsch, plus the dumbest and least effective "sanctions" seen since your kindergarten teacher threatened to take away your gloves if you didn't immediately don them, makes the imminent ascension of President Trump doubly complicated.  This might indeed be the real ingredient behind the yucky porridge Obama has cooked up: make Trump's life as miserable as possible.  (They'll really miss me, once DJT wades into the presidency with all the rich chaos I've deeded him...)

What bothers one most is that assigning sanctions that are laughably inadequate, even if merited, and tossing out ambassadorial and embassy staffers from their D.C. perches without visible proof of misbehavior, the endgame is that future punishments for real offenses will have to be stepped up, first, and there is no way there will not be payback from Russia in the immediate or near future, making even a heretofore friendly interaction between the two national principals more treacherous and slippery.

Trump and Putin need not begin their official interaction sloughing through the detritus of the Obama childish peeve and muck.  But Obama is guaranteeing a rough early month or two before this unconscionable manufactured scenario is resolved.  The word unprecedented has been raised again and again with regard to the wrongful, dubious, damaging, and frankly nightmarish plots of this escalated community disorganizer.

The roguish designs of Mr. Lame Duck do not advance the safety of the U.S. – quite the contrary.  Though they do complicate and muddy the forward movement of the next president, they don't do anything easily unfixable.

But the harm done to Israel is long-term and Stage 3in terms of ramifications.  And the harms done to U.S. prestige and believability, annexed to the jokey lack of response to Obama's vaunted and failed "red lines," cannot easily be repaired.

How do initiatives that make the U.S. a laughingstock help boost the sagging value of the worst stock on the open market?

And how, exactly, did Russia's involvement in disclosing Hillary's and Podesta's corrupt emails help Trump in the actual election?

Again, of course, deflecting the decided rejection of Obama's and Hillary's values and policies.  Deflecting, of course, the failures of eight limping years of attacks, unacceptable "recovery," vulnerability to enemies near and far, unrepaired scandals and undisclosed secrets and records to which we have a right...

How does one ward off other enemies or potential threats from screwing around with the U.S. if everything is aimed at the wrong party or the sanctions lobbed are fancifully edentulous?

His legacy, such as it was, in tatters, how does Obama burnish his barnacled memory with all the Hesperus of these latter-day desperate measures of disrespect and scorn?  How does hobbling Trump make Obama a hero, when any observant citizen sees the Sargasso soup he is fomenting, to the detriment of his country, of Israel, of all former allies?

Suggestion for Mr. Obama's next ghostwritten paean to his failed tenures: Nightmares From My Eight-Year Social Calendar.

Rogue One?  Nah, Obama is Rogues One through Ten.  And even less watchable than the film.