2016- Month to Month, the Year in Review

2016- Month to Month, the Year in Review

In the final few vestiges of the year that was 2016, we pause to review all that occurred, and what developed into becoming, a very consequential year in the course of our national journey.

As the year began in January last, we started to see the potential of damage wrought through the president’s use of executive orders, and took heed in Barack Obama’s clandestine and overt war on the second amendment. Following the president’s divisive and final state of the union speech, our focus was on the Charleston debate and the setting of the table for the GOP nomination.

In February, we unexpectedly said goodbye to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and pondered the ramifications of his passing on the short- and long-term direction of the nation’s highest court. The debates for the GOP nomination continued onward, and during the ensuing debates, we started to see the inexorable dominance of Donald Trump, as evidenced by strong showings in the Iowa caucus and decisive wins in the New Hampshire, Nevada and Virginia primaries. On the Democrat’s side, we started to sense that all was not right with the uneven scales, in the way the Democratic National Committee and the media were managing the insurgence of Bernie Sanders as an alternative to their intended nominee, Hillary Clinton.

In March, Donald Trump’s successful run through the “Super Tuesday” primaries and caucuses sent chills through the mainstream media and the NeverTrump Republicans allayed against his candidacy, both of whom could no longer deny what we knew for the preceding nine months- that the Republican nomination was his to lose. The election campaign itself took an ugly turn in the streets of Chicago as paid protesters, (funded by George Soros and coordinated by Obama’s early mentor, Bill Ayers) bent on wreaking havoc, forced a cancellation of a Trump rally in that city. Anti-Trump Republicans continued to try in vain, to sack the candidacy of their leading candidate with much help from the mainstream media, but the Trump train continued on, despite these efforts to be derailed.

In April, as Trump continued his strategy to eliminate, one by one, his sixteen rivals for the GOP nomination, we saw President Obama in London, arrogantly attempting to “school” British voters on how they should abide by his wishes, and cast their votes accordingly, in the upcoming referendum on their continued membership in the European Union.

In May, Trump continued his path to victory in the quest for the Republican nomination, while the sitting president decided that it was a matter of national urgency to re-direct where its citizens relieve their…ahem…“urgencies”.

In June, we were forced to face the facts of Barack Obama’s failure to defeat or, for that matter, even name Islamic Extremism- both here and around the world. Donald Trump locked up his nomination long before his eventual Democrat rival, revealing the truth that the media had it wrong, all along, regarding what was inevitable and in which party, this inevitability truly existed.  As a harbinger of things to come, British voters defied the “experts” and pollsters (not to mention Obama), voting to leave the European Union, much to the chagrin of globalists in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Bitter warnings of market backlashes, in the wake of this upset, proved to be unfounded, as would the forecasting of similar dire results in the markets, five months later.

In July, the “fix was in” on the investigation of criminal behavior by Hillary Clinton, as Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with former President Bill Clinton just a few days before her FBI Director, James Comey, announced that, despite a litany of wrongdoings by the former Secretary of State, he would not recommend any charges against her. The nominating conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia certified the respective nominations of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but nevertheless revealed continued fracture of both parties, thanks to NeverTrump Republicans attempting to spoil Trump’s win and the revelation of collusion between the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

In August, following these conventions, the mainstream media began pronouncing that Hillary Clinton was certain to win the general election regardless of the number of Trump’s post-convention rallies consistently drawing in the tens of thousands, juxtaposed against Hillary’s extended time off and frequent absences on the campaign trail.

September saw Hillary’s continued part-time approach to the fall campaign, as she preferred lavish fund raisers to campaign rallies being manned by Obama, her running mate, Tim Kaine and other supporters within her party. It was at one of these fund-raisers that she revealed her true feelings about the American people, labeling Trump supporters in what she viewed as a “basket of deplorables.” Later that month, the first debate was held between Donald Trump and the tag team of Hillary Clinton and “moderator” Lester Holt.

October’s release of an eleven-year-old “open-mic” recording of Donald Trump yucking it up with NBC’s Billy Bush, gave anti-Trump Republicans an excuse to bail on their nominee, and gave the Democrats and their allies in the major media much fodder to spread the notion that Donald Trump was just too misogynistic and sexist to ever become president. All the while, they kept pounding it into our heads that there was simply no path for Trump to win the electoral college, despite the fact that it was Trump who continued to improve his performance in the remaining debates- despite adverse “moderation” from Hillary’s supporting cast of supposedly even-handed debate moderators.

November began with continued polling and “expert” commentary that there was no path for Donald Trump to win the election. Then, in the wee small hours of Wednesday morning, November 9th, Donald Trump won the election, garnering 306 electoral votes to Hillary’s 232. The result of this upset sent shock waves throughout the mainstream media and even into the streets, while demands for recounts and allegations of Russian tampering all failed to deny Trump’s election to the presidency. Further attempts to malign and cast aspersions on Trump’s win, in characterizing his cabinet-selection process in “a state of disarray” only served to make all of the pundits and politicos look even more foolish, as Trump filled his cabinet slots faster than any of his ten elected predecessors.

In December, further attempts to deny Trump’s presidency entered into “the theatre of the absurd,” with celebrities trying to convince the Electoral College to overturn the results. These efforts cost Trump only two electoral votes, while costing Hillary Clinton five electoral votes, in the end. As we observed the 75th anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, we were told by President Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, those American survivors of the attack who still bore a grudge towards their Japanese attackers, needed to “get over it.”  Then, just on the eve of Hanukkah’s beginning, and on Christmas eve, itself, President Obama orchestrated a first-time-ever abstention of a United Nations vote to condemn Israel, for settlements in the West Bank and Israeli presence in parts of Jerusalem, effectively proscribing Jewish prayers at the Western Wall- all in an effort to stick it to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli people and further seek to sabotage the foreign policy of the incoming administration. Typically, he left for an extended vacation in Hawaii days before his UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, wielded the knife of his own treachery.

As we usher in the new year, we all must ponder what a year it was, indeed !

 

-Drew Nickell, 27 December 2016

© 2016 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

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