George Rebane
[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 11 January 2017.]
In a few days we will witness the most tendentious changing of the guard our republic has had since Abe Lincoln was sworn in. Now that’s ‘tendentious’ like in ‘having or showing a definite tendency, bias, or purpose’. President-elect Trump and the Republicans want all to know that their prime purpose is to terminate as many of the Obama policies as they can, and put the country back on a rapid growth pattern under a less regulated and taxed kind of governance. The Democrats, today under an unsettled, dubious, and possibly contentious leadership, are making very public their intentions to disrupt, delay, and hopefully defeat everything that can demonstrate to America that the last eight years have been a slow walking disaster.
We haven’t witnessed a retiring president so aware that he may wind up as one of the most harmful leaders our country has experienced. And that includes his leadership of the Democratic Party which has suffered the worst series of legislative and constitutional defeats since the 1920s. In response President Obama has exercised a most desperate exit strategy in living memory with his recent good-bye tour that terminated in Chicago last night. His clear purpose for the tour was to pick up the abandoned Team Obama banner, brush it off, and once more parade it around the country to remind us of his accomplishments. Why? Because no one else in the predominantly leftwing media or his own political party would do so. After Hillary tested and flunked touting his policies, only Obama was left to go around telling us all how great the last eight years have been.
A cursory glance at his domestic record reminds us –
- of an economy in permanently stunted growth struggling to recover;
- a national healthcare attempt that has failed in the marketplace – of the touted 20M new recipients only 9M ever wanted such healthcare, and 6.5M more paying penalties to avoid Obamacare;
- the doubling of our national debt with little or nothing to show for it;
- and end-running Congress to exercise partisan rule by executive order with added tax and enormous regulatory burdens that has stifled the very spirit of enterprise and punished the middle class;
On the world scene Obama leaves us –
- on the brink of global wars in separate theaters with two threatening nuclear hegemons Russia and China;
- with authoritarians on the rise as not seen since the 1930s on the eve of WW2;
- an existential “tide of war” doing anything but “receding”, with Russia dominant in the Mideast and China expanding in the Far East, and radical Islam’s terror today spread throughout the west;
- with a debilitated military in disarray now challenged daily in international air and waters in ways unthinkable a few years ago;
- with allies forsaken, dejected, and apprehensive about America’s stated objective to relinquish its leadership and withdraw into some undefined global peerage.
To illustrate the desperate attempt to resuscitate his legacy, Mr Obama will remain as his own chief promoter and activist in the nation’s capital while his remaining loyalists do everything in their power to divert national attention from the damage in his wake. Coming into office as the ‘great unifier’, the most destructive gift President Obama leaves us is a country deeply divided. As the WSJ summarized – It “is not that Mr Obama lacked good intentions or political gifts. Few Presidents have entered office with so much goodwill. The lesson is that progressive policies won’t work when they abjure the realities of economic incentives at home and the necessity of American leadership abroad.”
And now we await the tender mercies of the Trump administration, a Republican Congress, and a soon to be right-leaning Supreme Court. They all are sailing into a gale already raging at home and abroad.
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, and where such issues are debated extensively. However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
[Addendum] With unusual vigor and breadth, the Left is mobilizing across the land to oppose Trump and the Republicans. On the day after President Trump’s inauguration we are told that there will be at least a couple of hundred thousand leftwing women on the National Mall demonstrating their opposition to the new president and the Republican Congress. These demonstrations comprised of very disappointed and determined women will be replicated locally in numerous communities.
Here in Nevada County the usually somnambulant Democrat women have awakened and organized themselves to join their sisters in Sacramento on the steps of the capitol. On cue local lackey leftwing blogs have gotten into gear to support the anti-Trump efforts, identifying county Republican women’s organizations as “stodgy” and incentivizing “right-wing bullies in the local blogosphere”.
And lately our own Union has been overwhelmed by trash Trump pieces in its op-ed and letters sections. I don’t see anything in this county coming together other than butted heads during the foreseeable future. But there is hope that the county’s residents will pull off another ‘2016 surprise’ as the self-anointed local Left continues busy patting itself on the back while it makes harder for businesses to locate here and middle class families to make our county their new home.
Finally, the confirmation circus in Washington is in full swing. The Dems struck out on AG-designate Sessions and are now doubling down on ex-Exxon/Mobile CEO as the next SecState. Their claimed leverage to torpedo him is a set of ‘toady friend of Russia’ allegations which did not stick in today’s hearing. Holman Jenkins clears up the fake news surrounding the allegations in his ‘Exxon vs Russia Illusions’. Before hyperventilating, it’s worth a read.
rebanesruminations.com 
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