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The progressive-liberal legacy of President Barack Obama to the American people is nearly $20 trillion in debt, about double what he inherited upon entering office. For comparison sake, he’s added as much debt to America’s balance sheet as all other previous presidents combined.
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 A promising new day for health care is fully explained in this excellent outline in The American Conservative.
Despite assertions to the contrary from the media and the left, Republicans do have a plan for health reform—but it will not be another 2,000-page behemoth attempting to re-engineer our health sector from the top down, with a conservative twist.
Conservatives have seen from the failed experiment with Obamacare the hubris of believing politicians can write enough laws and regulations to control one-sixth of the American economy. It does not work, and they do not plan to repeat the liberals’ blunder.
Instead, they will replace this failed health law through a step-by-step enactment of a market-friendly reform that provides a safety net for those currently on the program, gives states more authority to oversee their health-insurance markets, and provides states with revenues to help those who have difficulty purchasing or affording health insurance. They also will begin the desperately needed process of modernizing the Medicaid program to provide access to care instead of an often-useless insurance card.
Read more here.
Rand Paul Unveils His Brilliant Replacement Plan for Obamacare
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 Donald Trump presented himself not as a Republican, not as a conservative, but rather as a “populist independent.” His inaugural speech was what Peggy Noonan in the WSJ called “remarkable … plain, unfancy and blunt,” marking “yet another break point in the two-party reality that has dominated our politics for many decades.”
The address was bold in its assertion of the distance in America between the leaders and the led: “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered—but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country.”
The essential message: Remember those things I said in the campaign? I meant them. I meant it all.
Meanwhile at National Review, Jonah Goldberg worries about what President Trump said: “Man oh man did he promise a lot. When you run as a man of action and promise a revolution, you’re expected to deliver it.”
“We’ll find out a lot the next few months,” continues Ms. Noonan. “How will Mr. Trump work with Congress, and what are his specific legislative priorities? How important will the cabinet be?”
Newly inaugurated presidents usually have a grace period and plenty of support behind them. As Ms. Noonan reminds readers, Mr. Obama had “the mainstream media—the big broadcast networks, big newspapers, activists and intellectuals, pundits and columnists … a united, passionate party.” Donald Trump has a party that is split or splitting. Mainstream media seems to hate him, and on the right are the NeverTrumpers, who are still reluctant to stand behind him. In the end, Trump has only “those who voted for him.”
Will it be enough?
Peggy Noonan on inaugural addresses
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 Here are three things that I’ve been thinking about over the weekend after Donald Trump’s inauguration speech.
1) It was hard to miss President George W. Bush’s reaction right when the speech was over. His face was a mix of shock and a “good luck with that!” expression. It captured the beauty of Trump’s message which was difficult to deliver: The guys on the stage sitting behind me have been in charge of a system that is broken. It will change.
2) Chuck Schumer’s embarrassing introduction/power grab. It was yet another example of how divided we are as a country. Forget Trump’s speech that some are calling militant. Stage-hog Schumer spoke to those who want more government in their lives.
3) Which brings me to the women’s march on Saturday. The media covered it as if it were the main event of the weekend. Keep tweeting Mr. Trump. The media isn’t going to change. Why should you?
4) Bonus: I love Kellyanne Conway. Since she joined team-Trump, she has been nothing but professional. And yet at every turn the media and the elites skewer her. It should not be offensive to display one’s love of country and patriotism. She bleeds red, white and blue.
For more on Draining the Swamp, read Parts I, II, and III.
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 There were no big surprises.
Donald Trump delivered exactly the content he had been delivering on the campaign trail for months. President Trump, a Republican in name only, will govern as a populist president. Trump is all about you. It’s no longer about the major parties.
In his inauguration speech, the president said he planned to deal with radical Islam. Not once did Americans hear his predecessor promise to meet the challenge of radical Islam. How is the challenge to be met? Well, the previous three presidents proved unconditionally to Americans that each had not a clue. Reflect on the track record of civilian and military deaths, debilitating injuries, mass dislocations, property demolition, disease, broken families and trillions after trillions of American dollars sent down the financial rat hole. All 100% thanks to a neoconservative foreign policy.
Take a good look at the evidence of the last eight years displayed in my chart on United States Public Debt. In just eight years, the debt mountain exploded to $20 trillion from $9 trillion. That represents a compounded growth rate of 10% a year. At this rate debt will double in just seven years, such exponential growth would push the debt mountain to a shocking $40 trillion.
Americans by now must understand the grade-school arithmetic involved. The government has no bank account. As such, the government has but three options for debt payback: (1) Rolling over the debt by borrowing more money from foreign governments (China?) or you (much higher interest rates). (2) Raising your taxes (decrease your standard of living). (3) Digitally printing money out of thin air (asset inflation). And your first choice?
So how does President Trump annihilate ISIS without engaging in the nation-building, counter-insurgency folly, ground forces build up, or failed democracy spreading strategies so favored by his predecessors?
President Trump recognizes that hacking off the head of the ISIS beast will leave it lifeless. And he knows that the one-two punch of ISIS infrastructure demolition and leadership expungement can get the job done. Former CIA bin laden unit chief Michael Scheuer, as president Trump knows, is an expert on both targeted strategies. (see here).
 Trump nominee Betsy DeVos’s brother Eric Prince, former Navy SEAL and Blackwater founder, knows more than a little about the “snake head strategy.” ISIS leadership can be judiciously taken out of the game by incineration with the same but updated and refined tactics used by ex-CIA legend Gary Berntsen in the Hindu Kush mountains as this century got under way. Trump has now promised Americans that he will get out of the gates fast. Fortunes of dollars and masses of ground troops will not be required. The American people can have some success in which to cheer early in a populist Trump administration.
As he has promised, President Trump will be all about jobs for Americans. That means you and your family, regardless of your party affiliation, gender or race. All legal Americans are in play here. And as the president has made clear on the campaign trail, illegals will need to get in line on the illegality issue. Any worthwhile economist recognizes, as does the president, that the jobs equation features jobs created in the private sector rather than at the central government trough.
Those jobs are out there in mass and many will explode in leading-edge sectors that most Americans do not even know exist. Young Research has been providing regular input on the extraordinary prospects ahead. (here, here and here.) The Trump administration has the fire power to alert every American to the breathtaking future that is already unfolding at warp speed.
 A populist movement speaks directly to the people and bypasses the entrenched, self-serving elites in Washington and on Wall Street. President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he knows how to communicate with voters, and it most certainly is not through the bought and paid for network media.
Shown here is the roster of disgraced political lightweights who decided to skip President inauguration.
As Hammond B3 organ wizard wrote, we have a “Brand New Day.”
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“What has he done to call attention to Chicago and deal a possible solution?” legendary NFL running back Jim Brown asks about President Obama in an excellent Saturday interview with the WSJ’s Allysia Finley. Mr. Brown was on hand Friday at President Trump’s Inauguration to demonstrate his support for the new president. It was a huge step in the right direction in making America great again. One of the many things that separates celebrity from the average person is the size of their Rolodex. They can make people connect. It’s a most valuable form of social currency:
Consider: Mr. Zoldan—who raised money for Mrs. Clinton and has supported the Amer-I-Can program in Cleveland—connected Mr. Brown with Mr. Scott, a close friend of the president. The Cleveland pastor helped arrange Mr. Brown’s meeting last month with Mr. Trump. While in New York, Mr. Brown also met with Youngstown native Omarosa Manigault, a former contestant on “The Apprentice” who’s leading the White House’s community outreach. Mr. Trump’s celebrity could work in mysterious ways.
Most important, Mr. Brown hopes President Trump will shine a public spotlight on a problem his predecessor neglected. While President Obama was a “great image” and role model for black people, Mr. Brown says, urban violence persists: “What has he done to call attention to Chicago and deal a possible solution?”
He’s also optimistic that the new president could be a democratic force for good: “We were a country that has been snoozing. Now we’re alert. Whether it’s negative or positive, energy has risen. People are engaged. They’re studying. They’re thinking more. And I think that’s good. And you can’t get that without somebody being bold enough to say things people don’t agree with.”
Speaking of which, he picks the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl. Which raises another celebrity connection—Messrs. Brown and Trump are both friends with Patriots coach Bill Belichick. Even in retirement, Mr. Brown has kept one hand on the pigskin. As a special adviser for his old team, he has taken on another sizable reclamation project—making the Cleveland Browns great again.
Read more here.
Jim Brown’s Top 5 Runs
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 Donald Trump’s mouth and his personal recklessness worry even his staunchest supporters. Will Trump’s intrinsic and immutable flaws, as Victor Davis Hanson puts it, inevitably lead to overweening arrogance and thus catastrophe? “Perhaps,” writes Mr. Hanson at NRO. “But it’s far more likely that Trump’s fate will hinge on his economic reforms.”
One reason that a personally popular, landmark Barack Obama failed as president — aside from doubling the debt, institutionalizing zero interest rates, leaving a mess in the Middle East, and using his un-Midas touch to undermine nearly everything he tapped, from health care to immigration law to race relations — was that he was the first modern president under whose tenure the economy never reached a modest 3 percent economic-growth rate. Had Obama just achieved 4 percent economic growth, Hillary Clinton would be president.
Achieve 4 percent–plus GDP growth rate and then Black Lives Matter, the residuals of Occupy Wall Street, the hysterical House Democrats, and the assorted unhinged fringe of Michael Moore, Lena Dunham, and Madonna will recede into the woodwork.
In truth, we are on the cusp of a great experiment. For decades, conservatives, both traditional and pro-growth supply-siders, have preached that deregulation, reasonable and predictable Federal Reserve interest rates, reduced government, a radically simplified and pruned-back tax code, new incentives for investment, an open energy market, and a can-do psychological landscape that encourages entrepreneurship will make the economy soar at rates of 4 percent GDP and more.
We shall soon see. If Trump unleashes American know-how and strengthens the economy, then his cultural and domestic agendas, as well as his personal demeanor and language, however radical and jarring, will probably be accepted. In contrast, if he blows up the deficit and sees interest rates spike at Carter levels and the cost of debt service soar, if he allows unemployment to grow — while never exceeding Obama’s dismal economic growth rates — then the Trump agenda will stall and the media will be liberated to obsess over the tweets, gaffes, and bombast of every nanosecond of his presidency.
Like it or not, prosperity, rather than character, is what will determine President Trump’s political fate. Read more from Mr. Hanson here.
WATCH: President Trump Meets With US Business Leaders – Bringing Jobs Back To America
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 The Wall Street Journal explains that President Trump, as he had promised often on the campaign trail, plans to go to bat for the American worker.
President Donald Trump ’s formal withdrawal from the 12-nation Pacific trade agreement, announced Monday, creates an American policy vacuum in a fast-growing region that includes China and longtime U.S. allies.
“This abrupt action so early in the Trump administration puts the world on notice that all of America’s traditional economic and political alliances are now open to reassessment, renegotiation and possibly even reversal,” said Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economist and former top China official at the International Monetary Fund.
But Mr. Trump dismissed U.S. alliances in the campaign, and in his inaugural address Friday he made “America first” the theme, vowing to buttress U.S. borders because “protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.”
Burying the TPP doesn’t mean U.S. exporters can’t access markets in the other countries. Washington already has bilateral trade agreements with Australia, Chile, Peru and Singapore, plus preferred access to Canada and Mexico through the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta. The others are members of the World Trade Organization, which mandates specific tariffs and quotas for all members.
Mr. Trump has embraced the idea of bilateral trade agreements with the U.K.
Union officials, including those who campaigned heavily against Mr. Trump last year, praised him on Monday for withdrawing from TPP.
“Today’s action draws a line in the sand that hopefully is just the start of President Trump’s promised pro-worker, pro-income-growth agenda that prioritizes revitalizing manufacturing,” said Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers.
Read more here.
President Trump fulfills campaign promise and kills the TPP
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