The stakes were upped Thursday when the US military dropped a MOAB on ISIS forces in eastern Afghanistan. Nicknamed the “Mother Of All Bombs,” the MOAB is the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat, weighing 22,000 pounds and filled with 18,700 pounds of H6 explosive.
The MOAB creates explosive shockwaves through overpressure, especially in caves and canyons. Waves of pressure enter the narrow spaces, killing people and collapsing tunnels. This made the bomb ideal to use against the ISIS tunnel complex in the Nangahar province. Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., US commander in Afghanistan, said, “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive.” But what do generals know about military tactics compared to our nation’s journalists?
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 I’m a transgressive artist. I created a billboard with Obama’s glowering face in the middle, mushroom clouds on either side of it, and ISIS flags on the far ends. Really makes you think.
Sure, my art installation might not sound revolutionary, but check this out: I drew clown faces in the mushroom clouds and replaced the Arabic script of the flags with swastika-looking dollar signs. Because money is bad. The design took less than 20 minutes to slap together in Photoshop, but the purpose of art isn’t to demonstrate skill. It’s to provoke a reaction. Angry protesters shouted down an eminent scholarand sent a female professor to the hospital. A crazed gunman entered a D.C. public policy shop and shot an employee before being disarmed. Someone mailed a suspicious white powder to a Scottsdale advocacy group, partially closing the office while a Hazmat team tested employees who had been exposed.
The victims in each case were targeted by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC is a non-profit heralded for its noble history defending civil rights. Founded in 1971, the Montgomery, Ala. legal advocacy organization sued the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups in the South on behalf of victims. Big settlements and harsh sanctions were levied against the racist organizations, successfully shuttering some and scaring off many others.  Donald Trump’s press conference Thursday was the worst political failure in presidential history. And the presser was the most deft performance by a President ever witnessed.
Wait … which of the above sentences is true? Depends who you ask. First, let’s look at the response of Trump’s detractors. It’s been a bit over week since President Donald Trump's inauguration, but it’s still a bit surreal.
Not only did this unorthodox Republican take control of the White House, but the GOP retained the House and the Senate. And considering the vacant seat on the Supreme Court and the advanced age of a few current justices, Republicans will likely take over the judicial branch in the near future. Thus 2017 begins with no ordinary party flip, but a stark about-face from Obama’s progressive era.  On Election Day 2008, many Democrats welcomed a new post-racial America. The hideous blight of slavery and Jim Crow could never be forgotten, but our first African-American President would in some small way help atone for those sins and ultimately transcend them. Even Republicans shared the emotions of Grant Park, where thousands crying elderly blacks finally saw that America could elect a person of color.
Despite these bipartisan hopes, the nation is more racially obsessed than it has been in 25 years. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 63 percent of Americans think race relations are “generally bad.” Shortly after Obama took office, that number was 22 percent. In the same time period, those who think race relations are “generally good” plummeted from 66 percent to 32 percent. Of course, Obama fans assert that this increase in racial division is due to white contempt for a black president. This is illogical since months after he took office, the American people thought racial harmony was higher than it had ever been. So what changed? Flip on your TV and the news is grim. Wall Street soars while small towns shutter Main Street stores. Our government’s computer systems are regularly hacked, the IRS is targeting citizens instead of just (over)taxing them, and the VA is killing the veterans they’re supposed to heal. Racial tensions are through the roof, with another city going up in flames every few months. Our leaders blame the heavy hand of police instead of mobs hurling Molotovs.
Syria, Iraq and Libya are in ruins as ISIS inspires terror around the globe. The Russian bear is on the prowl, and China continues to expand its military influence in Asia and beyond. As our enemies slap each other on the back, our allies weep at our incompetence. The American people had gotten so angry at the record of our so-called elites that they elected outsider Donald Trump to “drain the swamp” and “burn it down.” But close your lying eyes and take a step back. Barack Obama’s eight years in office have actually been fantastic. Don’t believe it? Just ask the president himself.  Between jeremiads decrying “fake news,” the mainstream media has created and advanced the biggest fake news story of 2016: That the presidential election was hacked.
Since Donald Trump scored the political upset of the century, his critics have worked through four of the five stages of grief at breakneck speed.
Denial: As the cable nets showed state after state turning orange, media mavens and seasoned politicos wondered whether they had gone color blind. “If she can get Michigan, Nebraska and Wyoming, she’s still in this!” Election analysts kept reloading the vote tally from American Samoa trying to convince themselves this can’t be happening! And those poor workers at Hillary Clinton’s inaptly named Victory Party broke into tears after not breaking the glass ceiling. Anger: Progressives, many of whom didn’t bother to vote, rampaged through their progressive cities to smash the windows of their progressive neighbors. For some reason. As protesters attacked motorists, left-coasters flooded the website of Yes California, a group demanding that the Golden State secede from the union. Four months after Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama, the Republican National Committee released an autopsy report to prevent a similar blow out in 2016. Their recommendations?
“We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian and gay Americans and demonstrate that we care about them, too.” “We must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.” The party needed to shed its identity as “scary,” “ narrow minded” and filled with “stuffy old men.” Today, most of that report’s authors have endorsed a 70-year-old loudmouth billionaire who has made a mockery of everything they proposed. After labeling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, his entire post-primary Hispanic outreach was a photo of the candidate grinning over a taco salad. |
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