Trump's Tweets Don't Top Obama's Arrogant Speeches

Progressives say Trump is a puffed up know it all.  But Trump doesn't sound anything like President Obama. Surely you remember when Obama said this:
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
http://www.politico.com/.../stories/1012/81895_Page2.html... 

As if that wasn't enough, President Obama sounds like Moses in his one:
"...generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth."
http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/.../this-was-moment-when...

Trump is a businessman. He is used to hiring advisors who have the guts to tell him what they really think. Rince Priebus and Steve Bannon were not hired to agree with Trump, and they certainly don't agree with each other. He is impetuous, but he adapts to conditions and learns from his mistakes. If he did not, Trump wouldn't have recovered from his first bankruptcy. You can succeed in politics as a one man band surrounded by yes men and women. You can't do that in business. You drown in red ink as your competition steals your market.

I voted for Trump because I thought he was my only chance to restore Constitutional government. Trump's appointment of Judge Gorsuch is a strong indicator that Trump wants to do exactly that. I think a lot of the progressive fear of Trump is the realization that he has all of the pen and phone powers usurped by President Obama. The last 8 years have seen Congress reduced to complete impotence while executive orders, regulatory overreach and rogue courts made the necessary changes to laws like Obamacare to keep the poorly drafted law afloat. The fact that much of Obamacare and Dodd-Frank can be undone the same way scares the fecal fertilizer out of progressives.

At this point it's also quite clear that progressives think the Constitution is a hindrance and they want it subverted and overturned. For example, there's an article in Foreign Policy Magazine that discusses ways to get rid of Trump. The final way mentioned is a military coup that overthrows Trump. The author, Rosa Brooks, is a professor of law at Georgetown University. This kind of dream, combined with the last 8 years of shredding the Constitution to serve the fierce urgency of now is what the fight is really all about. 
http://foreignpolicy.com/.../3-ways-to-get-rid-of.../

Trump's style is abrasive and abusive. In normal times, he would not have come close to winning. However, these aren't normal times. Our system of government as a Constitutional Republic is seriously threatened by unchecked power in the executive branch and its regulatory agencies aided and abetted by judges who decide what they would like the law to be, rather than what the law is. Voting for Trump was a Hail Mary pass. So far, the media have been doing the job of watching Trump 24x7 and complaining about every little detail.   There is very little risk that Trump can get out of control.  The alternative, Hillary Clinton, proved during the campaign that there was nothing she could do that was beyond the pale for her supporters and the Pravda press. The choice was between a slim chance and no chance. 

Why Should We Help the Kurds?

Why should we help the Kurds?   Because the Kurds could easily become another democratic island of stability in the Middle East, like Israel.  The Kurds are a group of people united by their own separate language and culture, split between Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The Kurds are definitely not trying to turn the clock back to the 7^th century. The Kurds are mostly secular Sunni Muslims who believe in religious tolerance.  They also include Kurdish speaking Yazidis, Shiites and Christians.  During the ISIS advances, they took in Arab refugees without regard for religion, Christians, Shiites and Sunnis.  They helped organize, train and arm Yazidis and Arab Christian militias.  They have women fighters in their militia units, some trained as snipers.  The Kurds even have regular commercial flights from the Kurdish Regional Capital, Erbil, Iraq, to Tel Aviv, Israel.  The Kurds are as close as you can get to democratic tolerant folks outside of Israel.  Iraqi Kurds are extremely pro American.  They believe the US saved them from annihilation when Saddam Hussein was lashing out after the first Gulf War.  They are trying to get as close to us as they can.  

The Kurds have been the most effective military units fighting ISIS.  In Syria, they are so reliable that it’s an embarrassment.  The Kurds have to recruit and train Sunni Arab defense forces to control the Arab villages they capture from ISIS.  While the villagers are happy ISIS is gone, they will not accept a Kurdish occupation.  To keep the villages free of ISIS, the villagers need weapons and training.   ISIS never captured any Kurdish weapons in working condition during their original advances.  When Kurdish militia retreats it's because they're out of ammo or taking horrendous casualties. 

Original Article (May require subscription):

https://www.wsj.com/articles/syrian-kurds-deserve-a-seat-at-the-negotiating-table-1483914439#lf_comment=181780162:632979006

War Crime: Islamic Terrorists Used Human Shields in Yemen

War is hell because you have to make horrible, lose or lose worse decisions.  Trump took a chance and AQAP set up the combat so civilian shields died, including a very pretty 8 year old girl.

Under Obama we waited a year to start bombing ISIS oil trucks because they had civilian drivers. We didn't bomb ISIS vehicle bomb factories, because they were in civilian neighborhoods. ISIS used the time to make an extra $600 million at least. They also killed at least 50,000 additional people. For a year, ISIS had a sex slave market in Raqaa, Syria, where they sold captured Yazidi and Christian women in auctions. For a year, ISIS beheaded defenseless civilians for minor infractions of Sharia law. For a year, ISIS used armored vehicle suicide bombs to expand their territory. All because we didn't want to kill the civilians who were helping ISIS or were being used as human shields by ISIS.  The result of our decision not to kill human shields was the we gave ISIS more time to kill more people on the ground than the human shields we would have killed stopping them earlier.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is one of the most deadly Islamic terrorist organizations in the world. Under President Obama, the US used drone strikes to kill targets like the one Trump ordered attacked by SEAL Team 6. With a drone strike there is no opportunity to capture computers and memory sticks that yield intelligence information on AQAP's operations. Trump took a chance. The operational security for this operation was poor. AQAP knew we were coming. They were ready for us. I believe AQAP had the 8 year old girl there on purpose, to be killed and give them a propaganda victory. I believe they had a lot of women with guns there also intentionally. Using civilians as human shields is a war crime. Using bombs and strafing to destroy a building used by an enemy as a firing position is not, even if the destruction of the building results in civilian casualties. The people responsible for the civilian casualties are the members of AQAP who located a military firing position in the middle of a civilian neighborhood with no evacuation of the civilians and positioned civilians inside the firing position. AQAP committed a war crime that lead to the death of the 8 year old girl.

Palestinian Resettlement or Inherited Refugee Status?

I have never understood why being a Palestinian refugee is an inheritable condition.  I thought refugees were supposed to find some place to live permanently after being displaced from their former country.  It has been almost 70 years since the original refugees left Israel on the advice of the Mufti of Jerusalem, among others.  The vast majority of Palestinian refugees have never seen the places that they are refugees from.  They are still supported as refugees by a unique UN agency, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which guarantees the descendants of the original 1948 Palestinian refugees welfare payments, free healthcare and education  from the UN forever.  The UN makes no effort to resettle these people anywhere else.  There were 700,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948, and now there are 5 million.  I don't see how essentially locking these people up in Palestine for a cage match with the Israelis helps them. They should be offered resettlement.