That’s “just” as in “social justice” or what Thomas Sowell called “cosmic justice.” I guess the Canadian left just isn’t satisfied with the present status quo, nor is Obama.

He also met with PM Carney, which – according to Newsweek – has MAGA “seething” (rather than pouncing, as is customary).

Carney wrote:

“Welcome back to Canada, President @BarackObama,” Carney wrote. “Thank you for joining us in Toronto for important conversations on how we can build a better and more just future—and empower more people to build with us.”

There’s that “just” business again.

I’m not seething about this; there are plenty of more seethable things around, vying for attention. But I became curious as to whether, if Obama became a Canadian citizen, he could run for PM? The answer is “yes,” because Canada has no “natural born citizen” requirement.

By the way, I’ve never thought Obama was anything but a “natural born citizen” of the US. When he was running for office, there were a lot of discussions here on the subject, so I’m not going to go into it again now. I’ll just add that the whole controversy makes me think of Macbeth – the prophecy that Macbeth couldn’t be defeated by anyone “of woman born,” and then the revelation of the fact that Macduff was “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.”

The post Obama meets with the Canadian PM appeared first on The New Neo.

They typically lie about any number of things, exaggerating their accomplishments and minimizing their flaws. The degree to which they are sexually faithful to a spouse would be a favorite arena for mendacity. They might lie about their financial dealings. You know, the usual.

They also might “flip flop” on issues. You don’t hear that term too much these days, but it used to be a big deal – for example, during Kerry’s presidential run.

But it wasn’t until Obama’s candidacy that I noticed a person running for US high office who didn’t just flip-flop but lied about his basic political orientation. He was and remains a dedicated leftist, but he covered that up to a great extent when he was running for office in 2008. He ran as more of a centrist and as a racial healer, but he was neither. With the help of a fawning and compliant press, hints that he was actually a leftist (Ayers and Wright and Alinsky connections, for example, or what “community organizer” actually meant) were covered up or explained in the most benign terms possible.

I wrote about it at the time: for example, here. There were certainly strong hints; what does “fundamentally transform” mean?

Being on the left doesn’t mean you must lie about who you are and what you intend to do. For example, it seems to me that Bernie Sanders has been fairly upfront about his leftist orientation and intentions. But Sanders became a senator by running in Vermont, where such positions didn’t really hurt him, and by the time he ran for national office he couldn’t have covered his history up if he’d tried. Obama had less of a track record, although it was there for those who really looked.

In this post from 2013 I quoted David Horowitz on the subject:

There is a marked difference between the radicals of the Sixties and the radical movement Obama is part of. In the Sixties, as radicals we said what we thought and blurted out what we wanted. We wanted a revolution, and we wanted it now. It was actually very decent of us to warn others as to what we intended. But because we blurted out our goal, we didn’t get very far. Americans were onto us. Those who remained on the left when the Sixties were over, learned from their experience. They learned to lie. The strategy of the lie is progressives’ new gospel. It is what the progressive bible – Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – is all about. Alinsky is the acknowledged political mentor to Obama and Hillary, to the service and teacher unions, and to the progressive rank and file. Alinsky understood the mistake Sixties’ radicals had made. His message to this generation is easily summed up: Don’t telegraph your goals; infiltrate their institutions and subvert them; moral principles are disposable fictions; the end justifies the means; and never forget that your political goal is always power.

An SDS radical wrote in the Sixties: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” The Alinsky version is this: The issue is never the issue; the issue is always power: How to wring power out of the democratic process, how turn the process into an instrument of progressive control. How to use it to fundamentally transform the United States of America – which is exactly what Barack Obama warned he would do on the eve of his election.

Horowitz knew whereof he spoke, having been a 1960s radical who later turned to the right. But most people in the US didn’t know what Horowitz knew, and they were fooled by Obama – just as they recently were fooled by Abigail Spanberger. The latter phenomenon is what has gotten me to reminisce about the topic:

It works.

NOTE: The Ayatollah Khomenei was not a leftist, but he operated like one in this sense. I wrote this 2016 post on the subject. An excerpt:

Just as an example, in November of 1978 [Khomeini] said, “Personal desire, age, and my health do not allow me to personally have a role in running the country after the fall of the current system.” Then on his return to Iran about a year later: “I will strike with my fists at the mouths of this government. From now on it is I who will name the government.”

Here’s another later quote:

“Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world. . . . Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us?…Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors!”

The post On lying in politics appeared first on The New Neo.

Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees was sentenced on Thursday to 14 years in prison for a case in which he was convicted of illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Michel, 52, declined to address the court before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced him.

In April 2023, a federal jury convicted Michel of 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The trial in Washington, D.C., included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Justice Department prosecutors said federal sentencing guidelines recommended a life sentence for Michel, whom they said “betrayed his country for money” and “lied unapologetically and unrelentingly to carry out his schemes.”

Note he was charged prior to Trump becoming president.

If there were indeed foreign contributions to Obama – and back then I assumed it was probably true that there were such donations – I wouldn’t have imagined that a rapper would be the conduit. I didn’t see many details in the article about how all of this was engineered, but this piece has a bit more information:

US prosecutors said Michel received more than $100m (£80m) from Malaysian billionaire Jho Low that was used in two efforts to influence US politics. He was also convicted of lobbying on behalf of China’s government.

Prosecutors said Michel “betrayed his country for money” and for nearly a decade he “sought to exploit and deceive” various entities in the US government, including the White House and FBI, as well as his own co-conspirators, according to court documents. …

Businessman Mr Low, who funnelled money to Michel, was accused of stealing about $4bn from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund during the infamous 1MDB scandal.

The justice department reached an agreement with the fugitive financier in June 2024 to return more than $100m (£79m) allegedly embezzled from Malaysia’s state-owned wealth fund.

Michel was accused of helping to lobby officials in the first Trump administration to abandon their investigation into Mr Low’s part in it.

His co-defendants got very light sentences or were pardoned, and his lawyer argues that Michel only got such a lengthy sentence because he wanted a trial. I’m inclined to believe that; FARA violations aren’t being prosecuted so harshly anymore unless the behavior of the perps amounts to espionage.

The post Remember way back when it was alleged that Obama was receiving illegal foreign donations? appeared first on The New Neo.

Listen to @barackobama. pic.twitter.com/oPjyWVCqpG

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 14, 2025

I guess it’s okay when Democrats say it.

What a pernicious influence he’s been on this country. And even though his influence has waned, unlike other ex-presidents before him he’s remained very heavily in the game for a long time. Also, he moved the Overton window substantially on many fronts, and for the most part that window is quite resistant to being moved back in the opposite direction.

The post According to Obama … appeared first on The New Neo.

Call it what you will, but here’s a good example.

We have this statement from Obama on Charlie Kirk’s assassination. When I read its beginning, I felt a sense of relief. It seemed appropriate, unequivocal, and reasonable:

Former President Barack Obama insists the nation is at an “inflection point” following Charlie Kirk’s assassination as the Democrat in his first public remarks on the shooting called the conservative commentator’s violent death a “tragedy” regardless of his views.

“Even if you think they’re quote unquote on the other side of the argument, that’s a threat to all of us and we have to be clear and forthright and condemn it,” Obama said during the Jefferson Educational Society’s global summit Tuesday night.

The 44th president said he believes the country is facing a precipitous rise in political violence …

So far, so good. But next we have this:

… – and accused President Trump and members of his administration of fueling some of the sharp political divisions.

“But I’ll say this — those extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind them,” he claimed, according to the Erie Times-News.

“When we have the weight of the United States government behind extremist views, we’ve got a problem. …

“When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents vermin, enemies, who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now and something that we’re going to have to grapple with, all of us,” he said inside the Erie Insurance Arena.

What a pivot. One thing I think we can safely say is that Tyler Robinson was not motivated by anything Trump or his aides said on that score; he was not a person on the right murdering someone on the left. However, Obama nicely ignores Biden (“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic”), Harris (“Trump’s a fascist”) – and yes, Barack Obama, who used the word “enemies” to describe his political opposition in 2010.

Perhaps Obama might instead have concentrated on the many many comments from the left and Democrats that Trump, Kirk, and those on the right in general are Nazis or Hitler or Fascists or outside the pale of political discourse in the US. But no. The one good thing is that I doubt Obama has been influencing much of anyone lately.

NOTE: It reminds me of those who said, when JFK was killed by a Communist, that it was the result of a “climate of hate” from the right in Dallas [emphasis mine]:

Immediately after the assassination, leading journalists and political figures insisted that Kennedy was a victim of a “climate of hate” in Dallas and across the nation created by racial bigots, the Ku Klux Klan, and anti-Communist zealots. …

The repetitive commentary about hatred and bigotry circulated rapidly through the media in the days after the assassination, almost as if coordinated or directed from a high level.

James Reston, then chief political correspondent for the New York Times, published a front-page column the day after the assassination titled, “Why America Weeps: Kennedy a Victim of Violent Streak He Sought to Curb in Nation.” He wrote that right-wing groups were behind the assassination. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who would soon head the investigation into the shooting, blamed “bigots” for Kennedy’s death. He never retracted or revised those comments, and he expanded on the theme in an official eulogy to Kennedy that he delivered two days later in the Capitol.

Syndicated newspaper columnist Drew Pearson wrote that JFK was the victim of a “hate drive.” The “eradication of hate,” he wrote, would be the most appropriate monument to his life. Senator Mike Mansfield, in a eulogy, blamed the assassination on “bigotry, hatred, and prejudice.” Chet Huntley, chief newscaster for NBC, told millions of viewers that the assassination had been brought about by “the sickening and ominous popularity of hatred” across the United States and by influential “pockets of hatred” within the country. The president’s death, he said, is “thundering testimonial of what hatred comes to and the revolting excesses it perpetrates.” …

These were the myths that grew up around Kennedy’s death and, curiously enough, remain widely believed. Many who doubted Oswald’s guilt traced the assassination to a “climate of hate” created by right-wing businessmen, religious leaders, and a few media figures. This became the prevailing interpretation of the assassination.

That was written in 2023.

The post Obama does what Obama does best: blame the right appeared first on The New Neo.

I’m not going to be the one writing those books, either.

So this is not a comprehensive post on the subject; it’ll take me some time to digest the information out there. But in the meantime, I’d suggest reading this article, which is more thorough than most.

NOTE: For the new name: “Russiagate 2.0”? I’d wager you can improve on that.

The post Do we still call it “Russiagate”? appeared first on The New Neo.

Justin Levitt, deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division under Obama, expressed concern over Dhillon’s nomination, saying most of her casework has focused on “cultural grievance issues.”

Interesting way to trivialize it. More:

He argued that Dhillon largely hasn’t focused on the traditional mission of the Civil Rights Division, which was established by the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination against all people in the United States, with a focus on vulnerable groups.

See that shift? The Act bars discrimination against all people in the US. But it’s the left that gets to define what “vulnerable groups” are and therefore which ones deserve defending, and by their definition it’s not Christians or white people or women in sports.

Jesse Panuccio, former acting associate attorney general in the DOJ under Trump in his first term, said, “They are starting Day One to implement the agenda he campaigned on, and they expect career officials to faithfully execute those policy decisions.”

I doubt they expected it of all of them because so many were hired in order to implement the agenda of the left and have no intention of following the new administration’s guidelines. Some of those people may stay on as moles and saboteurs, but a great many are resigning.

Here’s how good old MSNBC, in the person of Ja’han Jones, has decided to cover it:

Rather than execute the Trump administration’s oppressive plans to weaponize the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division against political enemies, dozens of DOJ attorneys have chosen to walk off the job instead.

When MAGA lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, a key figure in Donald Trump’s bogus attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss, was nominated to lead the DOJ’s civil rights efforts, it seemed clear the division was poised to abandon — if not outright attack — the rights it has historically stood to protect.

Much more at the link.

Those of us with a long enough memory, however, recall that Obama had very much changed the focus of the division during his run as president, making it over to fit a leftist vision. Attorneys J. Christian Adams and Hans A. Von Spakovsky wrote about it here, in a series of pieces that much alarmed me at the time (starting in 2011):

In 2011, we produced the Every Single One series for PJ Media about an unprecedented wave of ideological hiring of leftist attorneys into the career ranks of the Justice Department. The series documented the partisan and radical background of every single one of the 113 new Justice Department lawyers hired into the Obama Civil Rights Division from January 2009 to January 2011.

With the help of PJ Media, we will now be updating that revealing report — and sharing details about the background of Justice Department attorneys hired since 2011. Because we have obtained all of the resumes of the attorney hires in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice since then.

And once again, every single one of them has an intensely ideological background…

When we are finished, you will see that the Obama Justice Department has assembled a law firm of hundreds of fringe leftists to enforce a brave new vision of civil rights law.

Why the Civil Rights Division? Simple — it may be one of the most powerful components of the entire federal government. If a president wanted to “fundamentally transform” the nation, he would likely start with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

The tentacles of the Division reach into virtually every crevice of American life.

And that’s exactly what happened. What’s occurring at present is an undoing of that trend. Some of the attorneys walking out were probably hired during the Obama years and some during the Biden years, but as Dhillon says, the resignations are “fine” with her.

The post Resignations at the DOJ appeared first on The New Neo.

“There’s no overstating her feelings about [Trump]. She’s not one to plaster on a pleasant face and pretend for protocol’s sake,” a source close to the former first lady told People Magazine. “Michelle doesn’t do anything because it’s expected or it’s protocol or it’s tradition.”

“She served in the public eye and did all the public good that she could for eight years as first lady,” the source said of Obama fulfilling her duties at Trump’s 2017 inauguration. “You’ll see her when she has a project or cause to promote but she doesn’t feel the need to be a public figure anymore,” they continued.

Longtime allies of Michelle Obama also told The Hill they believed her decision to skip the inauguration was an act of resistance.

I’ve never been one to write much about Michelle Obama, either pro or con. Any interest I retain in her is simply because I realize that a lot of people – a lot, perhaps even a majority – would vote for her were she to run for president. Fortunately, she’s never given any indication of wanting to do that, despite almost constant rumors to that effect.

The explanation for the news about Michelle not attending the inauguration is a good example, however, of her inflated sense of self-righteousness for an act of rudeness. “Resistance”? I guess she’s once again not proud of the US, her default position.

However, I also find the announcement interesting coming on the heels of Michelle’s no-show at the Jimmy Carter funeral. I would have thought that would be an event she might have attended. Was her problem that Trump would be there, too? Her husband didn’t seem to mind. Or is it actually that she is through with public life except when it’s completely on her terms and she’s the star of the occasion? That’s my guess.

Then of course there are divorce rumors. That’s always a possibility, but it wouldn’t be my first bet.

ADDENDUM: In only tangentially related news, Ivanka Trump says she’s “through with politics” and won’t be involved in her father’s new term.

The post What’s up with Michelle Obama, and why care? appeared first on The New Neo.

Former President Barack Obama casually and amiably chats with Adolf Hitler as the latter is set to assume power in 11 days, end American democracy, and impose a white nationalist dictatorship. https://t.co/4tbj46yVk8

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 9, 2025

By the way, Laura Bush still looks fabulous. On the other hand, George W. Bush doesn’t, and he’s the same age as Trump. Is Bush ill?

The post Trump and Obama at Carter’s funeral appeared first on The New Neo.

For example, here’s Samuels’ description of what David Axelrod – whom the author sees as absolutely central to Obama’s success both in Illinois and on a national level – did to further Obama’s political career:

Permission structures, a term taken from advertising, was Axelrod’s secret sauce, the organizing concept by which he strategized campaigns for his clients. Where most consultants built their campaigns around sets of positive and negative ads that promoted the positive qualities of their clients and highlighted unfavorable aspects of their opponents’ characters and records, Axelrod’s unique area of specialization required a more specific set of tools. To succeed, Axelrod needed to convince white voters to overcome their existing prejudices and vote for candidates whom they might define as “soft on crime” or “lacking competence.” As an excellent 2008 New Republic profile of Axelrod—surprisingly, the only good profile of Axelrod that appears to exist anywhere—put it: “‘David felt there almost had to be a permission structure set up for certain white voters to consider a black candidate,’ explains Ken Snyder, a Democratic consultant and Axelrod protégé.

I find that somewhat peculiar in terms of what I know of Obama’s political course in Chicago. His success actually depended on a number of other things, which I’ve chronicled in many posts. Chief among them were knocking out all his political rivals in the Democratic primary on petition signature challenge technicalities, and Axelrod’s greatest assistance involved releasing embarrassing court records of his opponents’ marital strife. Very old-fashioned stuff, although Axelrod had great allies in the conventional press to rely on to spread the word. Another aspect of Obama’s early career, this time on the national level, was avoiding challenging black incumbents such as Bobby Rush, and running in districts more white.

So no, I don’t think that Axelrod got people who were racists to change their minds and vote for Obama. Axelrod’s tactics helped the very person – Obama – who was uniquely positioned to exploit white voters’ desire to prove their supposedly post-racism beliefs. There was a host of voters who were eager to virtue-signal how incredibly tolerant and open-minded they were, and Barack Obama was the perfect vehicle for demonstrating that they really had overcome anti-black racism. Obama, the “clean and articulate” black person (one of Biden’s more unfortunate phrases but one of his more revealing), was the candidate who appealed to this impulse the most.

And yes, during the Obama and “Biden” administrations, businesses and social media and the MSM parroted whatever the Obama administration promoted. This certainly amplified the message, but I don’t think it convinced people not already disposed in the direction. If that’s what meant by a “permission structure” than I guess the phenomenon did occur, especially with phenomena such as gay marriage. But I think that the most important element was not giving permission but rather making agreement obligatory lest one be called a bigot and ostracized in various ways. So it wasn’t so much giving permission to agree; it was withdrawing permission to disagree.

But I don’t recall the public being in favor of Obamacare prior to its passage (see the early years in this chart). As for the Iran deal, also discussed at length in Samuels’ article, I don’t think the public ever bought into it. Only the party most faithful accepted any rationale for the Iran deal – and of course the ever-compliant MSM. So Obama didn’t enter into those things by convincing the public, whatever the media said and however the media helped. He accomplished them through Congressional machinations with the help of confederates such as Pelosi, and in the case of the Iran deal by ignoring any requirement that Congress approve it.

Biden was simply not as adept at any of this, even if he’d been in full possession of his faculties (which he was not). And although Obama was pulling strings behind the scenes, it was no longer working. Much of the public had found in Trump a spokesperson who was remarkably plainspoken and in the position of being an adult who functioned much as the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes story: Trump said what he actually saw and for much of the public it was what they saw, too, and felt relief at finally hearing someone say it loud and clear and in a non-mealy-mouthed manner. Plus, by 2024, the public had seen the left in all its manipulative power-mad glory, and increasing numbers of the public didn’t like it.

The American people have gotten mugged by reality, and that’s a pretty powerful experience.

The post Obama’s “permission structures” seem to have gone awry appeared first on The New Neo.