George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 January 2016.  An edited version of it was also published in the 16jan16 Union.]

Listening to President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night was a bit surreal.  The speech was remarkable in that he clearly described the alternate universe that has been home to his administration for the last seven years.  Our smiling president pridefully peeled off his accomplishments one after the other.  At least half the country had no idea what he was talking about.

In spite of the flood of facts to the contrary, he saw his tenure as a long string of domestic and foreign policy successes.  Touting his version of a recovered economy, he pointed to the longest period of job growth since WW2.  Well yes, when we consider that this has been the most drawn out and anemic recovery in US history with accompanying numbers that detail the slowest growth of GDP, jobs, and wages while almost doubling the national debt during what dubiously can be called a recovery that now teeters at the edge of the next recession.  If true, then the millions of workers who have abandoned the workforce will never know when the last recession ended and the new one began.  The unemployment rate is low only because of the hokey way it is calculated.  In reality systemic unemployment is at a record level with the war on poverty lost, and more Americans than ever on government transfer payments.

The President admitted that during his years the country’s political parties have become more polarized.  But what he missed was that instead of becoming the Great Uniter he promised, he has driven mainstreet Americans further apart than they were in the 1960s.  Today communities across the land have a strong ‘us and them’ attitude.  This most divisive of presidents has made it so that conservatives and liberals don’t even feel comfortable socializing.  Each faction has a fortress mentality, withdrawing into their collectivist or conservetarian corners from which they view the other as being some combination of evil and terminally ignorant.

On the domestic front the president’s administration has demonstrably mismanaged and/or corrupted departments of government that affect us all.  The scandals with and within the IRS, Department of Justice, Homeland Security, the EPA, Health and Human Services, Veterans Administration, Department of Commerce, etc continue to make daily headlines as one or another area of malfeasance is uncovered, brought to light, and then quickly buried by the lamestream.  Over the last two terms this president has surrounded himself with more incompetent cabinet members and administrators than any other elected executive in memory.  The result is that, along with curtailing our personal liberties, businesses today face historical headwinds from their regulatory and tax burdens, burdens which Democrats promise to increase even more if they succeed in November and double down with Obama Version 3.0.

In foreign policy this administration has wrought an unmitigated disaster by turning the US into a palpably weak and unreliable partner to our allies, and an object of utter contempt by would be hegemons in Eurasia, the middle east, and east Asia.  In a Göbellian manner Obama crows of victory after victory while our enemies occupy new territories, and radical Islam now regularly carries out successful attacks in the heartlands of Europe and America.  All that while we witness millions of unassimilated colonists and economic migrants illegally cross borders here and in Europe.

In response, all of our allies are busy making and implementing their Plan Bs, after they have seen how toothless America has become when it decided to lead from behind, and announced to the world that it wants to become just another nothing-special good neighbor nation in a new global community.  For those new to history, that has never been our role, as we continue to unveil the fundamental transformation of our formerly exceptional country which increased, defended, and enriched human civilization for almost two hundred years.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum] What I continue to find hard to believe is the manner in which progressive politicians in the west maintain their delusional denial of Islam’s role in the terrorist attacks worldwide.  Anyone with three digits in their IQ should by now know that Islam is not only a strong religion, but also a comprehensive prescription for the world’s social order.  Devout Muslims understand that to their deepest being, and unabashedly declare their support for such future for mankind.  The so-called moderate Muslims living among us will not militate against their radical brethren for the simple reason that, when polled in anonymous privacy, they agree on matters such as the role of Sharia in the west, and the disposition of those who actively resist Islam’s advances.

Yet our progressive betters, here and in Europe, refuse to acknowledge the Islamic provenance of the acts of grisly terror and aggressive rejection of western culture that happens to their own people in their very midst.  After every one of these attacks by Muslims ranging from sexual harassment of women to wholesale murder, these same politicians grab the nearest microphone and declare to the world that Islam had no role in the atrocity.  These ignorant pronouncements are beyond hubris, and do nothing but invite more radicalization and further attacks.

We saw the most recent examples of that in Germany with the mayors of major cities in which women were brutalized on New Year’s Eve.  And also our own mayor of Philadelphia, who declared that he had no evidence that the policeman’s shooter was an Islamic terrorist, was the latest putz in what has become a long line of such harmful idiots.  The shooter shouted praises to Allah during the act, purposely wore Arab clothing, proudly declared later that he acted in the name of and according to the dictates of Allah, and confirmed that he was a loyal follower of ISIS.  And yet the mayor, …, unbelievable.

All this derives from the profoundly destructive leadership of our Islamophilic President who countless times demonstrated that his homage to his heritage knows no bounds.  The same President whose lips cannot utter ‘Islamic terrorist’ invited representatives of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) to attend his farewell State of the Union.  CAIR has long been identified as having aims inimical to America and its culture, and has been identified by the FBI as being in league with Islamic terror organizations.  The Investors Business Daily reports that “in a 2007-2008 terrorism trial against a Muslim charity, FBI agents testified that CAIR was a "Hamas front," and U.S. prosecutors subsequently designated CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. It remains on that Justice Department list today, despite CAIR protests.”

Barack Hussein Obama is not and has never been a leader who would secure the United States against Islamic aggression either overseas or within our own borders.  As I opined early in this president’s tenure, it was clear then and is confirmed now that Obama has always looked at the American presidency as a stepping stone to higher office.