Tag: Obama

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After Mosul Failure, Obama Switches Focus to Raqqa as Time Runs Out

In an increasing sign of desperation after the Obama administration’s failure retaking Mosul, Obama has waived legal restrictions outlined in the US Arms Export Control Act, which forbids providing defense-related supplies or services to countries that are not cooperating fully with US anti-terrorism efforts.

“This waiver requested by the Secretary of Defense and signed by the President today enables the provision of equipment to partner forces preparing for the Raqqa campaign as we grow and strengthen numerous relationships with Counter-ISIL [Islamic State] forces,” the official said on Thursday.Raqqa is the ISIS capital and has been under heavy bombardment and attack by Coalition, Russian, and Syrian forces.

With weeks to go until Trump is sworn in, the abrupt change in strategy seems more to do with a last ditch attempt for Obama to save face in regards to ISIS.

For ISIS Obama is a Kafir who Deserves to Lose

In Islamic law Obama is a kafir (apostate) who is worthy of death. This is due to the fact that he was born of a muslim father and yet lives a non-muslim life.  There is nothing that will fit into the echtological vision of ISIS than the apostate Obama not defeating them before he leaves office.  Expect ISIS to recruit heavily from this failure, far more than the election of Trump.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, his foreign policy legacy goes to the trash bin.

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John Kerry Wants to Force Jews Out of their Homes Before Obama Leaves Office

John Kerry has never much liked Israel. His constant attacks on Jews leaving in Judea and Samaria as obstacles to peace have become a broken record. As Obama is set to leave office, Kerry has become one of the proponents of forcing a settlement on Israel and the Arabs before Trump takes office.

If you think this is farfetched, Kerry’s speech at the Saban forum this past week will make you think other wise. He did not rule out not using the veto in upcoming UN Security Council resolutions, which would force a “peace” framework on Israel. This ultimately means displacing hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children in order to create another Arab terror state, this time in Israel’s biblical heartland.

“I cannot accept the notion that [settlements] don’t affect the peace process, that they aren’t a barrier to the ability to create peace,” Kerry contended. “The left in Israel is telling everyone that it is a barrier to peace and the right, which supports it, is openly telling people that they support it because they don’t want peace. They believe in Greater Israel.”

John Kerry blamed the failure of the peace process squarely on Israel and Bibi Netanyahu by slamming him for “lacking leadership.”

Will Obama Go For It?

With the Regulation Law passed, Obama may have moved to Kerry’s side on this. Afterall, the President does not have to sponsor a resolution, just abstain. By holding back the veto he creates a de facto Palestinian State and removes Jewish pioneers from their homes.

With a stroke of a UN pen Israel will find itself locked into a paradigm of being in contravention of basic international law by “occupying” another member state’s land. Obama will have his ultimate revenge on Bibi.  With 45 days left until Trump, the world is about to change, drastically.

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As the Battle for Mosul Turns Sour for Coalition Forces, Obama’s Legacy Lays in Tatters

In the waning days of Obama’s presidency, his grand strategy to wipe out ISIS by taking Mosul has gone from an ingenious weaving of various coalition members fighting under American leadership to a failed slog as the advance of Iraqi forces grinds to a halt.  The battle turned after Iraqi forces entered the Golgali neighborhood.  They have been stuck there fighting a far more ferocious enemy than they imagined. Each day they take to advance mere inches the American backed Iraqi units’ morale lowers, giving ISIS an increasing edge in Mosul. Before Golgali, experts gave ISIS weeks, but now it looks like months if not more.

Compounding the strategy is the fact Abu Bakr Baghdadi, the self appointed caliph of ISIS is no longer there. Despite his absence he continues to inspire all of ISIS through the airwaves. One mission for coalition forces was to take the Nouree Al Kaber mosque early on.  This is the mosque where Baghdadi proclaimed himself the leader of the caliphate 30 months ago.  Coalition forces still have a long way to go in getting close to the mosque, a destination that would crush the morale of ISIS if Iraqi troops succeeded in reaching it.

 

Source: Google Maps
Source: Google Maps

With the multi ethnic coalition collapsing and the Iraqi forces unable to break ISIS, Obama’s waning days in office are a nightmare.  Passing off ISIS to Trump is admitting failure, but with weeks to go it has become clear that Trump and Putin will attempt to work together to destroy ISIS in both Al-Raqqa and Mosul. Then again, ISIS may show to be just resilient to the new administration as they have been with Obama.

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With 46 Days to Go Until Trump, Bibi Netanyahu Bests Obama

With a revamped Regulations Law set to be passed in the Knesset, Bibi Netanyahu will have officially ended the Oslo era. For the first time since Israel liberated its ancestral heartland, Israeli government and military powers will invoke the nation’s sovereignty in areas previously not allowed.

The Regulations Law gives power to the Knesset and government officials to decide what to with private Arab land whose owners fled generations ago. Caroline Glick sums it up:

“The settlement regulation bill empowers the military commander to seize privately owned land and compensate the owners. In other words, it provides a means for willing Palestinian sellers to sell their property to willing Jewish purchasers without risking the lives of the owners.”

The law does not make Israel the sovereign, but it gives the government and military the ability apply sovereignty in select cases where in the past it could never do. This alone alters the status of Judea and Samaria to a point where Oslo becomes null and void.

Obama Was Outplayed

Between Kerry’s attacks on Education Minister Naftali Bennett for being disturbing and the Obama administration attempting to play footsie at the UNSC by potentially abstaining during the vote on “Palestine” the common wisdom was that he government would not go ahead with the vote. Obama thought he had set up Bibi to fail, thus putting his government into free fall in time for Trump to be sworn in.

Bibi did the unthinkable, he and his coalition passed the settlement Regulation Bill and by doing so opened the avenu for a new approach to the Arab’s iving in Judea and Samaria. True, Amona will not be saved, but hundreds of other communities will.

For eight years Obama tried to get the best of Bibi Netanyahu.  At the end, it is Bibi who has out smarted Obama and given his government the ablity to chart a new course in relation to the “Palestinians.” Naftali Bennett is right to say this is a revolution. With one vote Israel has freed itself from answering to Washington in regards to Judea and Samaria and declared itself sovereign over its ancestral homeland.

 

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When it Comes to Amona, What is Bibi Netanyahu Afraid Of?

Amona, a small community of approximately 40 families near the community of Ofra north of Jerusalem is set to be demolished by order of Israel’s activist and ultra left leaning Supreme Court. The technical reason for this, is the community rests on “Palestinian” private property. While it’s true a small portion of the community rests on “Palestinian” land, most of the community does not. The Palestinian who with the help of Peace Now brought the complaint directly to the Supreme Court,  has had nothing to do with the property as his family abandoned it more than a generation ago. In fact, the property was of no interest to the Arab until Peace Now who is funded by the EU unearthed this fact in a document.

Although Amona is slated for destruction on December 25th, there is a law that has been tabled in the Knesset entitled the Regulation Law or Normalization Law. The purpose of this law is to retroactively legalize any Jewish community that the State of Israel knowingly provided support in order to grow even if the community is built on Arab private land.  The absentee land owner in each case would be fully compensated.  In most societies these laws are standard. So why is Bibi Netanyahu so afraid of passing this law?

One word: Obama.

The passage of this law  prevents the precedent that the destruction of Amona brings, which is to destroy the communities of Judea and Samaria through judicial fiat.  The Regulation Law also inadvertently applies Israeli sovereignty to large areas of Judea and Samaria.  True it won’t be called this, but everyone knows that’s what it is. Bibi has already been informed by the US government and EU that there will be severe punitive measures at the Hague with the passage of this law.  Expect Obama to use the passage of the law to abstain from a UNSC vote recognizing the final borders of “Palestine.” These threats are well known and with 50 days to go Bii is just trying to hold out for a new far more amicable President Trump.

In a perfect world Bibi would get his way. The law would be pushed off until after Jan. 20th, but Amona’s destruction sets a precedent that his party the Likud and Jewish Home have vowed not to let happen.  If Amona falls the collapse of the government is almost certain.  December 25th is the date to watch, but with the 1st reading of the Regulation Law already finished with its passing (there are two more readings necessary), the trigger for international measures against the only Jewish state may begin by Hanukkah.

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Break the BDS

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OBAMA PLANS TO RULE AMERICA OUTSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Barack Obama has two faces. After Trump’s victory and Hillary’s defeat, the public Obama has been gracious and diplomatic. His lectures to Trump, directly and indirectly, are couched in praise. He echoed the feeling of millions on both sides when he said, “We are now all rooting for his success”.

That’s a lie. Or rather a disguise.

Obama and his aides had, in one insider narrative, decided to don the “mask of decorum”. The contempt for Trump still seeps through the mask. And the mask hides Obama’s next big move.

President Obama is over. He knows that. There are still some things that he can do before he leaves office, but everything except the most destructive, can be undone by his successor. The next phase of his campaign will not be fought from the White House. It will be fought against the White House .

The other Obama is emerging in conference calls with his supporters. “One of the challenges that I’ve discovered being president is I’d like to be organizer-in-chief, but it’s hard,” he said in one call.

Obama can no longer be commander-in-chief. Instead he’s plotting to become organizer-in-chief.

The infrastructure for the organization was put into place long before anyone thought that Hillary might lose. Organizing for Action gave him his own organizing hub. If Hillary had won, it would have been a pressure group.  Now that Trump won, it’s an axis to build a personal counterrevolution around.

In his post-election conference call with his OFA troops, Obama told them, “I’m giving you like a week and a half to get over it”. Then it would be time to “move forward not only to protect what we’ve accomplished, but also to see this as an opportunity”. What opportunity could there be in Trump’s win?

Obama is now the only major national figure still standing among the Democrats. After Hillary’s defeat, he’s worked hard to attribute the loss to her shortcomings, not his policies and decisions.  That’s not just to soothe his ego. If he’s going to dictate the future of his party, he can’t afford to be blamed for its latest disaster. And Obama is still determined to dictate the future of the party and the country.

In conventional politics, Obama is done. There’s no way back into the White House. And Hillary’s fate won’t leave much enthusiasm for nominating the uncharismatic spouse of a charismatic ex-president.

But Obama is not a conventional politician. He’s an organizer and a campaigner at the vanguard of a radical movement that seeks to control traditional institutions, but doesn’t feel bound by them. Unlike Bill Clinton, his plans don’t begin and end with the White House. As an organizer, Obama is equipped to build bases of power outside traditional institutions. And that is exactly what he is doing.

The demoralization of the Democrats is, as Obama put it, an opportunity. Social chaos is a time for the left to overthrow and undermine traditional institutions. Fear, anger and despair are radicalizing. The left has always operated by throwing bombs and then profiting from the fallout. That’s Obama’s agenda. Having wrecked the country and the Democrats, he sees that not as a setback, but as an opportunity.

“The network that you represent, you’re perfectly poised to do that,” Obama told his OFAers.  “In other words, now is the time for some organizing.”

While the leftist rioters in the streets are garnering the most attention, the real threat comes from the network of staffers dubbed Obama Anonymous which are beginning to organize and coordinate. OFA is Obama’s equivalent of the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons built Clintonworld around staffers, but its goal was harvesting money. Obama Inc. is being built around organizing and activism. Like Clintonworld, it will be a network encompassing a variety of political and non-profit institutions. Unlike them, it will be much less focused on directing money to its bosses in preparation for an election. Instead it will function like a traditional leftist movement, merging influence operations with crowdsourced mobilization.

OFA will be far more dangerous in the wild than the Clinton Foundation ever was. The Clintons hoped to ride back to power on a giant wave of money. Obama is taking a much more radical course.

The staffers exiting government are being wired into Obama Inc. whether or not they take jobs directly working for him. The OFA alumni are building networks across organizations while taking their marching orders from him. They expect Obama to lead them back from the wilderness and into the halls of power.

He’s told them so.

“I’m going to be constrained in what I do with all of you until I am again a private citizen.  But that’s not so far off,” he assured them. “I’m still fired up and I’m still ready to go.” His next comments promised that radical political change could and would take place.

Obama isn’t going to retire. He’s not going to spend years puttering around with a presidential library. He’s not even going to set up a Clintonesque slush fund and try to make his wife president. Instead he wants to force radical change from outside the White House by using the network he’s built.

While the public Obama wraps up business at the White House, concludes yet another world tour, alternating between praising Trump and offering him condescending advice, the other Obama is preparing to deploy a network that will dominate the Dems and set the agenda on the left.

If Obama succeeds, then he will get another shot at picking his White House successor. But beyond that, he’s been handed the keys to an organizing machine that will allow him to set even more of the agenda for his party than ever before. And he has a cause that is sending the party reeling back into his arms.

Obama believes that he can rule America from outside the White House. And he might be right.

Political norms and old rules have been falling faster than leaves in an autumn wind. If Obama sets out to move the center of power outside the White House and into an organization that will control national politics through the left, it would be dangerous to assume that he can’t and won’t succeed.

The Democrats didn’t respond to their defeat, one of a sequence, by trying to move to the center. Instead there is every sign that they are moving further to the left. Keith Ellison, a radical leftist with an anti-Semitic past, is tipped to head the DNC. Schumer still has the Senate, but Elizabeth Warren may have it before too long. Combine that with Obama as the president-in-exile and the Dems will be more radical and extremist than they were even when Obama was sitting in the White House.

The Democrats are ceasing to be a national party. Instead they are becoming a nationalizing party. They are losing their presence in much of the country, from state legislature to state legislature, and becoming the party of major cities and the national government. Their agenda is to move power from local areas to central ones, from the villages and the suburbs to the cities, from states to D.C. and from locally elected legislators in D.C. to the satellite bureaucracies of the Federal government.

Obama sees Hillary’s defeat as an opportunity to burn the Dem’s last bridges with the larger country and its “bitter clingers”, to double down on nationalizing power and to define the political narrative around the agendas of urban elites. The left crippled the Democrats. Now it wants to utterly consume them.

Barack Obama is still being vague and coy about his plans. He informs reporters that he will attack Trump when it comes to “core questions about our values and ideals”. But the “faithful” are getting much clearer signals. “You’re going to see me early next year, and we’re going to be in a position where we can start cooking up all kinds of great stuff to do.”

The election was a catastrophic disaster for the Democrats, but it opened all sorts of doors for Obama.

Hillary’s defeat removes the Clintons, his only real internal rivals, off the stage. Trump’s triumph in working class areas cuts more ties with the traditional Dem base and transforms it into a party of left-wing urban elites and their radical agendas. And the popular figures on the left, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Keith Ellison, lack his national stature, speaking skills and organization.

Obama will move to consolidate the left. And then the Democrats. He will function as a president-in-exile heading up the opposition to Trump. When it comes to verbally challenging Trump, Obama will be more likely to be interviewed and heard than Ellison or Schumer. And his people will coordinate responses across the left from street level organizing to think tanks and policy moves.

Some of it is ego.

Obama believes that he can find the key to beating Trump in the traditional tactics of the left. But most is ideology and power. Obama is not done transforming America. And America isn’t done with him yet.

Originally Published in FrontPageMag

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War Drums: The Fire Intifada is Only the Beginning, Hezbollah is Next

As more fires are set around Israel and the nation’s emergency response is stretched to its max, the next phase in what is fast becoming and orchestrated series of events is likely to happen. It has been understood for a while now that Hezbollah and their Iranian sponsors would launch counter measures in Northern Israel.  With Trump set to take over in a matter of weeks and Putin trying to keep balance between Israel and Iran, the window of opportunity for an actual attack is closing.

Using the fires to cripple Israeli infrastructure, especially in Haifa where large chemical plants exist is a set up for what Iran and Hezbollah plans to do next.  Expect Hezbollah infiltrators with the help of the same groups that are setting fires to penetrate Israel’s Northern border and carve out an area.  Reaction will be swift from Israel, but it will spark a far wider conflict in the waining days of Obama’s presidency.  Given Putin’s role behind the scenes he maybe forced to play peacemaker.

The goal is not to win, but to bring Israel to its knees.  So far Israel’s enemies are winning.

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You Are Being Lied To

Media schizophrenia.

Every quantum leap in mass communications also made possible a vast improvement in propaganda techniques. Nazi and Soviet propaganda looks as crude to us as a Babbage calculating machine. Virtual reality isn’t something that’s coming. It’s here. It’s been here for a while. The potent combination of media budgets and crowdsourced social media distribution has allowed for a previously unparalleled level of propaganda that creates and inhabits its own virtual reality.

There’s a name for that sort of thing. Schizophrenia.

What happens when the schizophrenic media reality collapses when it comes into too sharp of a conflict with reality is the same behavior that schizophrenics exhibit when their perceptions of the world conflict with the real world.

The people venting and rioting and screaming were living in a cozy reality. Everyone in that progressive reality understood that history was on their side, that the majority was with them and that the right was a decaying mass of racists and corporations soon to be swept away by the tide of change.

But this wasn’t reality. It was a carefully constructed narrative that fooled even the people who were building it. It was a virtual world overlaid over the real world. Its narratives were so integrated with the real world that it seemed as if it were real. There were stories and polls. Everyone in their social media bubble, except a few crazy uncles agreed with them. All the celebrities were on board.

And then the holodeck got switched off.

It wasn’t a unique experience. Most Nazis didn’t understand what was happening when the tanks broke through to Berlin. The average Russian wasn’t prepared for the fall of the USSR.

Propaganda is a very effective tool for managing a population. But the trouble with a lie is that sooner or later it falls apart. A narrative isn’t reality. It’s a story we tell. Reality has no story except one shaped by a far higher power than any mere mortal. No ideological victory is permanent.

The ideological narrative of the right side of history imbibed by the left is a delusion. Ideological victories are temporary. Even cultural dominance is a very slippery thing. It is a subtle tool that isn’t much good for the gross kind of control that it wants. A dictatorship like the USSR only lasts for so long. And then it falls and its ideology that everyone was forced to study once is forgotten.

A society can be transformed and changed. But the results of that change will ultimately be non-ideological. The USSR gave way to a totalitarian regime that is uninterested in Marxism-Leninism, but has duplicated everything else from the cult of personality to the secret police to the bribe economy to the pointless efforts at expansionism that waste resources and feed the hatred of its neighbors. The Communists failed to fundamentally transform Russia into their ideological paradise, but they certainly left a huge crater of a non-ideological stamp on it.

Obama has changed America. But the left will find that these changes will be largely non-ideological. Radical change breaks the system. It leaves scars. It crushes civic institutions. That. more than any of the ideological victories, will be the real impact of the Obama years.

The left’s conviction that demographic change will give them ultimate power was always a foolish delusion. Latin America is not an exclusively left-wing domain, though it can sometimes look that way. Barring an overt tyranny, there would always be a right. Its values might have little in common with those of traditional American conservatism, but it would exist even if the left managed to achieve its demographic transformation.

The left’s efforts at absolute power scar societies. That can be easily seen across Asia, Latin America and the territories of the Warsaw Pact. It can also be increasingly seen in the United States.

The level of political polarization continues to rise. There is increasingly no middle ground. The left blames this on Republicans, but historically it’s the left that has abused its power to force change more than the right. Obama taught a master class in simply doing whatever you want because history is on your side. The reaction to that led directly to President Trump. And too much of the left is incapable of the self-awareness needed to grasp this simple fact.

The rules of a society exist for a reason. If you break them, expect everyone else to break them too. And expect that the result will be a society in which those rules no longer matter.

If you walk into a bar and shoot someone… and then get away with it, then the next step is that everyone else will be doing it too. The left is shocked, baffled and angered at the consequences of the violence it has inflicted on American society. It has inhabited the narrative of victim-hood so thoroughly that it isn’t aware of the fact that its “change” is a form of violence.

Instead of stopping, the left is doubling down. It is convinced that it can break through if it pushes hard enough. And it’s probably right. But its victories are temporary. The damage is long-lasting.

The left broke through the Bush years with Obama. But it hadn’t grasped that its unprecedented delegitimization of Bush led directly to the Republican delegitimization of Obama. It wasn’t racism that led Republicans to reject Obama as illegitimate. That was part of the comforting narrative that the left told itself. Republicans were reacting to the new rules created by the left.

Bush was illegitimate. Therefore Obama was illegitimate. Therefore Trump is illegitimate. Therefore whoever succeeds him will be illegitimate. This is a non-ideological change created in the name of ideology. Any future president will be deemed illegitimate by the losing side.

The right is not free of blame in all this. But it’s reacting to what the left does rather than initiating it. It takes the ball and runs with it further down the field. Then the left runs with it down the field for ten times the distance. And the rest is history and crumbling pillars and great wastelands.

The left won’t win. But it can destroy America. And many of its ideologues hate the country enough that they would consider that a victory. If nothing else, America provided a model that served as a counterweight to the ideal leftist society. Wrecking that model is already an ideological win for the left. The right didn’t have to fix Communist societies. That was a bonus. It just had to wreck them. The left doesn’t have to fix America. It just has to wreck it so that it’s seen as unworkable.

The question though is how many Americans to the left of center really want to be part of such a project. Not many. That is why the media bubble really exists. The narratives exist less for the sake of the center, let alone the right, but to manage the constituency of the left. The narrative is already healing after the shock of the Trump win. Activists are being urged to rally around victim allies and continue fighting until the bitter end. The bitter end being the collapse of everything.

The bubble is a lie. Everything inside it is a lie. It’s a virtual space filled with propaganda as pervasive as anything out of the USSR or North Korea which utterly misrepresents everything to those inside it. The USSR could keep the game going longer because it controlled the vertical space of total power as well as the horizontal space of messaging. The left’s grip on power is shaky. Its grip on messaging is total. And that is where media schizophrenia creeps in.

Citizens of totalitarian regimes recognize that they are being lied to. Statistics show a level of recognition of media bias among Americans on par with that of any totalitarian regime.

The media should be panicking over such numbers. But it doesn’t care if 80 or 70 percent of Americans don’t trust them. They are a secondary audience. Its core goal is to manage the beliefs of those who do. They are the revolutionary vanguard. They have to be shaped and directed.

And when they look over the iron curtain and past the media wall, reality no longer fits the narrative. Media schizophrenia kicks in. And they lose their grip on reality and lose their minds.

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Originally Posted on Sultan Knish

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“We Are Coming Nineveh” Obama Must Win in Mosul or Donald Trump Will Do it For Him

Legacies are bitter weapons that plague outgoing presidents time and time again.  Barack Obama thought he had his legacy wrapped up, but then came the blue color workers and placed Donald Trump into office. With one election Obama’s legacy is in tatters and he knows it.  Despite all of that, there is one last battle Obama needs and wants to win to stave off a complete rejection of his so far disastrous foreign policy. This battle is the battle of Mosul, where ISIS is making there last stand as far as nation building is going.

Despite a bitter beginning of infighting between Shiite militias, Turkish troops, Kurdish Peshmerga, and Iraqi National forces, the operation according the Iraqi officials is beginning to move along. “We Are Coming Nineveh”  has a time limit though and that is Jan. 20th.  Right now Obama has kept the Russians out of the bombing campaign and wants to prove he doesn’t need them to finish the job.  If Mosul is not taken by inauguration day, Trump will surely bring the Russians in to crush ISIS once and for all.

Why does this matter?

Obama has staked his foreign policy at least in the waning years of his Presidency on holding off Russian expansion.  Of course Putin has bested him in Eastern Europe as well as Syria.  This means Obama must keep him out of Iraq or risk being seen as a total loser. With Mosul grinding on and 60 days until President-Elect Trump becomes President Trump, the odds are not great that the Iraqi forces will succeed.  Keep in mind ISIS could have been defeated a while ago, but each side fighting in Iraq has used the group as a pawn to offset what they see as a more mortal enemy.

This is why Trump’s approach is to ignore the game on the ground and get together with Putin and flatten ISIS and if need be others.

Jan. 20th is coming.  After that date Iraq and Operation “We Are Coming Nineveh”  are on the chopping block.

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Trump and Obama at the Barbershop

Trump is shaking Obama’s hand on the fuzzy screen of the big television hanging precariously over an empty barbershop chair.

It’s a hot day outside. The limp flag of the barbershop hangs low. Inside a circle of black and Latino men peer up at the television and shake their heads. “Sheeit,” one says, dragging the sound out.

It’s not hostile. It’s as much wonderment as anything else. Like the rest of us, they are seeing the impossible.

“It’s like a miracle,” another says. “I stayed up all night and I couldn’t believe it.”

The noise of three barbers, black men working their trade in the second most hallowed neighborhood institution after the Baptist church, makes it hard to hear what Obama and Trump are saying to each other.

Despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party machine, there’s no hostility toward Trump here. There’s bafflement, amusement and respect. “Sick” is a common term of approbation for him.

The media had sought to depict Trump’s birth certificate comments as racist, but few here buy that.

“He did what he had to do,” one says. “He played the game.”

There’s nothing personal about it. Trump did what he had to do to win. Just like they do what they have to do. The election was a rap battle where you can say anything you want about the other guy, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just machismo and bravado. It’s a game. Trump was a player. And they’re not gonna be playa haters. Even if it’s the biggest game in the world.

Trump and Obama compliment each other in a scene that strikes much of the country as surreal. But not at the barbershop.

“When it’s out there, they fighting. When it’s just the two of them, they good,” one says.

“They gonna smoke a blunt together,” another says and laughs.

There’s a holographic picture of Obama at his first inauguration on the wall. When you tilt your head, he almost seems to be coming out of it. Next to him is an old black and white of Martin Luther King. To reflect the neighborhood’s changing demographics, there’s another one of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, one of Caesar Chavez and an Asian man in a khaki suit that I can’t even begin to identify.

The live Obama on the television looks old and shrunken compared to his holographic doppleganger. Like today’s Bill Clinton, you wonder that he ever seemed so vital a nemesis once upon a time.

Obama is still an icon in the black community. He’s the first black president. But nobody here expected that to last forever. They still like him and his picture will hang on walls for generations.

But they’re also moving on.

Trump is the kind of Republican they can understand and respect. “We need money,” one man chants. “We don’t wanna be on welfare. We want the money.”

A barber takes a call while working on a customer. “Gotta get that money,” he says apologetically.

The Koch Brothers flavor of free market education would fall flat here. But Trump’s kind of capitalism they can get behind.

“He’s got his own plane. He’s got an air force,” a customer observes.

“If I were a billionaire, I’d be an asshole too,” says another.

Trump thanks Obama. The event wraps up. “That’s all,” Obama tells the press.

“You tell ’em to get out,” a barber shouts. “That’s right.”

The media tried to get men like this to hate Trump. But black turnout lagged. At the barbershop they don’t hate Trump. They didn’t vote for him, but they respect him. They want to pull together now.

They want the country fixed and made right again.

The violent freeway protests, the shutdowns and fires, the vandalized police cars, baffle them. “What are they trying to do?” they wonder.

The left has lost nationally. But its grip even in places like this was always shaky. The left excelled at manipulation. It played on grievances and offered freebies. But there’s a hard ambition here and a culture that the left never had a grip on. The barbershop is one of the more conservative outposts of the black community, but it’ll never fly the elephant or vote GOP. But it has much more culturally in common with Trump and his voters than it does with the left that waged war against him.

Black culture has been crippled and twisted, but it’s still about ambition and achievement. The left has seduced the black community, but it doesn’t truly understand it or control it.

israels-heartland

Originally posted on Sultan Knish.

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