Many observers of American politics still do not quite grasp that Obama will end his presidency by seeking to get his opponents’ goat — and that his resentment will lead to some strange things said and done.

Insidiously and inadvertently, Barack Obama is alienating the people and moving the country to the right. But, counterintuitive as it seems, that is fine with Obama: Après moi le déluge.

By sheer force of his personality, Obama has managed to lose the Democrat Senate and House. State legislatures and governorships are now predominantly Republican. Obama’s own favorable ratings rarely top 45 percent.

In his mind, great men, whether Socrates or Jesus, were never appreciated in their time. So it is not surprising that he is not, as he presses full speed ahead.

Obama certainly has doubled down going into his last year, most recently insisting on letting in more refugees from the Middle East, at a time when the children of Middle Eastern immigrants and contemporary migrants are terrorizing Europe.

What remaining unpopular executive acts might anger his opponents the most?

Now that Cruz has overtaken Carson to run neck-and-neck with Trump in the Iowa Quinnipiac University poll, Cruz is looking a lot like a winner. Here are my top 10 reasons to back him.

10. He really knows economics -- not the ideologically driven pablum dished out at universities, but the real battlefield of entrenched monopolies against entrepreneurial upstarts.

As Asheesh Agarwal and John Delacourt report, he did a brilliant job at the Federal Trade Commission. Anyone can propose tax cuts. It takes real know-how to cut through the regulatory kudzu that is strangling America enterprise.

9. He really knows foreign policy. He is a hardline defender of American interests, but is not beholden to the bunglers of the Bush administration, unlike the hapless Marco Rubio – who, as the Establishment's last hope after Jeb Bush's belly-flop, is instantly recognizable as the tough-guy hero's cute younger brother.

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The truth is, Obama has no plan for containing ISIS, much less defeating it. Nor is he planning to get one any time soon. That’s because Obama doesn’t win wars. He lies about them.

Obama and his political allies believe that crime can’t be fought with cops and wars can’t be won with soldiers. The only answer lies in addressing the root causes, which means blaming Islamic terrorism on everything from colonialism to global warming. It doesn’t mean defeating it, but finding new ways to blame it on the West.

The unspoken idea that informs his strategy is that American power is the root cause of the problems in the region. Destroying ISIS would solve nothing. Containing American power is the real answer.

Obama does not have a strategy for defeating ISIS. He has a strategy for defeating America.

One by one, the giant investment funds are quietly switching out of government bonds, the most overpriced assets on the planet.

Nobody wants to be caught flat-footed if the latest surge in the global money supply finally catches fire and ignites reflation, closing the chapter on our strange Lost Decade of secular stagnation.

As of now (late November), roughly $6 trillion of government debt was trading at negative interest rates, led by the Swiss two-year bond at -1.046%. The German two-year Bund is at -0.4%.

The Germans and Czechs are negative all the way out to six years, the Dutch to five, the French to four and the Irish to three. Bank of America says $17 trillion of bonds are trading at yields below 1%, including most of the Japanese sovereign debt market.

This is a remarkable phenomenon given that global core inflation - as measured by Henderson Global Investor's G7 and E7 composite - has been rising since late 2014 and is now at a seven-year high of 2.7%.

Inflationistas in the West have been arguing for six years that the QE-fuelled monetary base is about to break out and take us straight to Weimar or Zimbabwe. They failed to do their homework on liquidity traps.

Yet their moment may soon be nigh. Catalysts are coming into place. Globalization is mutating in crucial ways.

"He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist." Koran 61:9

Islamic violence is a religious problem.

Islam derives meaning from physical supremacy, so war becomes an act of faith. To believe in Islam, is to have faith that it will conquer the entire world. And to be a true Moslem, is to feel called to aid in that global conquest, whether by providing money to the Jihadists or to become a Jihadist.

The fulfillment of Islam depends on the subjugation of non-Moslems so that violence against non-Moslems become the essence of religion.

Anything that suggests Islam is not absolutely superior becomes blasphemy. When Moslems explode into outbursts of violent rage over seemingly petty things like a cartoon or a video, it is because to them, any loss of face for Islam is the worst kind of blasphemy because it challenges its supremacy.

Truth and power in Islam are identical. It is not a religion of the oppressed, but of the oppressors. Jihad is the force that gives Islam meaning. It is the deepest expression of faith.

As the cleaning crews were mopping up the dried blood from the stage and the seats of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, a depressing act appeared on stage in distant Iowa.

Saturday night (11/14) the three contenders for the Democrat Party’s presidential nomination took to the stage in Iowa for a debate. The moderator asked them whether they would be willing to use the term “radical Islam” to describe the ideology motivating Islamic terrorists to massacre innocents. All refused.

Like her former boss, President Barack Obama, former secretary of state and Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton not only refused to accept the relevance of the term. Clinton refused to acknowledge what radical Islam stands for.

But of course, it is easy to understand what motivates Islamic terrorists. They tell us all the time. They want the world to be run by an Islamic empire. When they are in charge, they will kill, subjugate, convert or enslave all non-Muslims, except Jews. The Jews will be obliterated.

The operational consequences of America and the West’s refusal to acknowledge the nature of the forces waging war against it have been disastrous.