Today's most entertaining line: "It takes a lot of chutzpah for Obama to say he wants to help re­build the Demo­crat­ic Party when he’s busy burn­ing it down"

From Josh Kraushaar here in

"Obama’s Parting Shot Against His Party: By thumbing his nose at Israel as he leaves office, the president shows he didn’t learn anything from this year’s election".

He's burned everything else down, might as well burn his own house.

Remind you of anyone?

Obama's policies were on the ballot and defeated by Trump, but Obama still insists he would have won

Obama in October: "But make no mistake, these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them."

Obama in December: “I’m confident that if I — if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it."

While you were preparing to celebrate Christmas, America's first Muslim president abstained at the UN Security Counsel, effectively condemning Israeli settlements

From the story "Obama faces widespread backlash after abstaining from UN Israel vote" here:

On Friday, the Security Council voted 14-0 on a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory as a “flagrant violation” of international law that have “"no legal validity." It demands a halt to "all Israeli settlement activities," saying this "is essential for salvaging the two-state solution."

The United States has veto power in the Security Council and has used it for similar resolutions in the past. The Obama administration’s decision to abstain represents a break from the longstanding U.S. policy of shielding Israel from U.N. reproaches.

Carl Paladino rips "lazy ass" Obama: Flashback to Dec. 24th, 2011 when Obama admitted as much

Obama in 2011, quoted here:

Asked by [ABC's Barbara] Walters to name "the trait you most deplore in yourself," the president -- who was interviewed alongside his wife Michelle -- responded, "laziness."

"You're lazy?" Walters asked.

"You know it's interesting, there is a deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there's a laziness in me.

"It's probably from, you know, growing up in Hawaii and it's sunny outside, and sitting on the beach," Obama said with a smile.

Carl Paladino in 2016, here:

This is in response to my comments published in Artvoice:

It has nothing to do with race.  That’s the typical stance of the press when they can’t otherwise defend the acts of the person being attacked.

It’s about two progressive elitist ingrates who have hated their country so badly and destroyed its fabric in so many respects in 8 years.

It’s about them diminishing the respect for their country on the world scene, surrendering its status as the protector of human rights, disgracing the memory of its veterans who gave so much.

It’s about demeaning and weakening what was the most powerful military in the world, firing hundreds of good soldier Generals and Admirals who refused Barack’s illegal and irresponsible dictates.

Michelle hated America before her husband won.  She then enjoyed all the attention, the multi -million dollar vacations, the huge staff and other benefits.  Then when Hillary lost, she and Barack realized that without Hillary, there was no one to protect the little, if any, legacy he had.  That’s when Michelle came out and said there is no hope for America.  Good, let her leave and go someplace she will be happy.

As for Barack, he’s a yellow-bellied coward who left thousands to die in Syria and especially Aleppo and he gets on TV and says he feels bad he couldn’t do anything about it.

He supported the mass migration without vetting of people from Muslim countries and the open borders, not for the people, but to expand the democratic base to a permanent majority.

He couldn’t care less about the people.  He just commuted the sentences of another 650 drug pushers responsible for selling poison to our kids.

It’s about the middle class, silent majority, rising up to destroy the Republican and Democrat establishment in America.

It’s about the end of an era when the people took all their information from the main street media, letting them tell us what the issues are and how to resolve those issues. People no longer trust the press.

It’s about that fraudulent, shadow government with a lazy ass president who allowed non-Americans like Valerie Jarret to run the government on a day to day basis and order the Stand down in Benghazi and the later cover-up that does matter.

It’s about Lois Lerner and the head of the IRS and the other criminal officials who haven’t been prosecuted or even investigated because the leaders of the progressive movement are above the law.

It’s about the end of the progressive movement and reset of the direction of America for the next 30 years.

It’s about a president who interfered in a presidential election for his successor so flagrantly that he called Trump unfit for office.

It’s about a president who for eight years did absolutely nothing for black children in our urban centers held prisoner by the cycle of poverty and illegitimate black leadership more interested in power and preserving their voting base by keeping them hungry and uneducated in the inner cities.

And yes, it’s about a little deprecating humor which America lost for a long time.  Merry Christmas and  tough luck if you don’t like my answer.

Why the economy still feels like it sucks as Obama goes out the door

Obama's GDP in current dollars has grown 28.4% through 3Q2016.

Bush's grew 39% overall and 41.7% through 3Q2008.

If Obama's performance simply matched Bush's 41.7%, we'd have an extra $1.9 trillion in current dollar GDP right now.

But we don't.

Sneering at the Electoral College in 2016, Obama leaves office still hating the constitution he promised to preserve, protect and defend in 2008 and 2012

Quoted here:

“The Electoral College is a vestige, it’s a carryover from an earlier vision of how our federal government was going to work that put a lot of premium on states,” President Obama said Friday during a press conference at the White House.

Obama pardons 78 and shortens sentences of 153 in one day, a record

A total of 148 have been pardoned in his presidency so far, and 1176 have received shortened sentences, including 395 serving life sentences. Expect really bad examples to emerge from among the latter.

Story here.

Obama didn't "decimate" the Democrat Party, Democrats did that all by themselves

David M. Drucker here wants to blame Obama for all the electoral losses experienced by Democrats since 2009. 

Good luck with that.

Like it or not, the Democrat Congress under Pelosi and Reid gets the blame. They have done nothing but lose, lose and lose while Obama has remained the winner, above the fray. He leaves office popular, successfully escaping responsibility for his own administration for eight straight years while Democrats all over the country have paid the price.  

Democrat leadership rammed the awful Obamacare down the nation's throat, making the health insurance industry even worse than it was before. Democrat leadership failed to prosecute anyone for the 2008 banking panic and raked in the campaign cash from its grateful elite instead. Democrat leadership jacked up the federal spending which simply wasted money and ballooned the debt to $20 trillion in the process. Democrat leadership passed the growth-robbing Dodd-Frank legislation which has stalled the growth of credit and slowed the economy to a crawl.

The only thing you can blame Obama for is a lack of vision and leadership in preventing these developments and for not offering better alternatives. He was inexperienced, out of his depth and clueless, contenting himself to lecture everybody day and night in regal fashion while Congress shot themselves and the country in the foot with their stupid ideas. Obama's idea of compromise turned out to be signing awful Democrat legislation.

Except in one instance.

Obama agreed one time to compromise with John Boehner and make the Bush tax cuts permanent and fix the Alternative Minimum Tax. The stock market and the economy began to recover from that moment on at the dawn of 2013.

It was the only smart thing he ever did.

And there he goes into the sunset.

Trump misspells "unprecedented", CNBC goes nuts, Obama on the other hand . . .

. . . routinely slaughtered the English language, math and common sense and all we heard was crickets.

Let's see, there were Obama's "forebearers", "one of the finest secretary of states", "pray on the sick" (probably Politico, not Obama), "corpseman", "the intercontinental railroad", calling George Osborne "Jeffrey" 3x in one episode, saying he could see the Gulf of Mexico from three Atlantic ports he was visiting, saying Afghanistan when he meant Iraq, referring repeatedly to his "sons", calling Nazi camps "Polish concentration camps", saying he'll be turning 50 in a week when it was three weeks, three proud words "made in the USA", claiming "more than 100 million Americans" signed up for Obamacare in its first month, and of course in the 2008 campaign he had visited 57 states "so far" but might not get to them all.   

The Trump misspelled tweet story is here, where the sin apparently was Trump deleting the tweet and replacing it with the spelling corrected.

Did Obama ever correct himself? 

Revulsion Election update: Hillary underperformed Obama 2008 in 39 states by 5.16 million votes

This updates my look at 2016 candidate underperformance relative to 2008 from almost three weeks ago. The total picture for Hillary improved by about 440,000 votes in the interim, or about 11,000 votes per state on average, but doesn't change the conclusion. Hillary was far and away more revolting to the voters in 2016 than was Trump. Hillary still lags Obama 2008 by 3.7 million votes net and Obama 2012 by 74,000 votes. For his part Donald Trump has surpassed George W. Bush 2004 by 940,000 votes with 62.98 million votes, the most for any Republican in any presidential contest.

Hillary 2016 underperformed Obama 2008 in:

MI by 603,000 votes (and lost to Trump by 11,000)

OH by 546,000 (lost by 447,000)

MO by 371,000

PA by 350,000 (lost by 45,000)

IN by 341,000

IL by 328,000

WI by 294,000 (lost by 22,000)

NY by 257,000

TN by 216,000

MN by 205,000 (won by only 45,000)

IA by 175,000 (lost by 147,000)

KY by 123,000 

WV by 115,000

CT by 100,000

*KS by 88,000

*NM by 87,000 (won by only 65,000)

AL by 83,000

*OK by 82,000

*MS by 70,000

*NJ by 67,000

ME by 64,000 (won by only 22,000)

HI by 59,000

MT by 54,000

SD by 54,000

NE by 49,000

ND by 47,000

ID by 46,000

RI by 44,000

AR by 42,000

*VT by 40,000

NH by 36,000 (won by only 3,000)

OR by 35,000

WY by 27,000

DE by 19,000

*UT by 17,000

*WA by 8,000

*AK by 8,000

SC by 7,000

LA by 3,000.

That's 5.16 million former Democrat votes alienated from Hillary Clinton in 2016 in 39 states, 57% of which came from the 8 Great Lakes states (2.924 million), according to the latest numbers this morning, almost six weeks since Election 2016.

Trump underperformed John McCain in only 12 states and DC and by just 792,000 votes, 67% of which were in California alone:

In CA by 527,000 votes

*UT by 81,000

*AK by 31,000

*KS by 29,000

*NM by 27,000

*MS by 24,000

MA by 18,000

MD by 17,000

*NJ by 12,000

*OK by 11,000

*WA by 7,000

*VT by 4,000

DC by 4,000.

*nine states where both 2016 candidates underperformed their 2008 counterparts 

You've been had: The 2009 stimulus has been repeated every year, accounting for all GDP increases under Obama and then some

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending because Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate at the time. It was scandalous, but there was nothing Republicans could do about it.

But the same thing happened every year thereafter because the Democrat Congress and then the Republican Congress deliberately passed this prior spending in the form of continuing resolutions instead of through regular order, which meant nothing got debated and the status quo was maintained. That's the evil of CRs.

Both parties did this on purpose instead of debating individual spending bills because . . . THEY ALL LOVE HAVING THE MONEY TO SPEND.

The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion, to which the stimulus got added for fiscal 2009, and just kept getting added and re-added and re-added right through to the present (and then some) through the continuing resolution process:

2009: $535.2 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2010: $474.6 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2011: $620.6 billion ($3.6 trillion)

2012: $554.5 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2013: $472.1 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2014: $523.6 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2015: $776.1 billion ($3.8 trillion)

2016: $1.017 trillion ($4.0 trillion).

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president, even after they got control of both the House and the Senate in 2014. Almost $5 trillion in "stimulus" has already been spent.

And Trump wants to add another $1 trillion?

Meanwhile under Obama current dollar GDP increased . . . $4.1 trillion. All government spending. All totally phony. And overpriced at that: $1.21 spent for every dollar of that fake GDP.

The Obamacare failure: 10 million buy plans on exchanges, 9 million buy off-exchange

Sally Pipes, here:

These off-exchange plans were never expected to be popular, especially compared to the government's marketplaces. As recently as 2013, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting that 24 million Americans would buy insurance through ObamaCare's exchanges by 2016. The CBO didn't even bother to predict enrollment figures for off-exchange plans.

Those projections missed the mark. Last year, off-exchange enrollment — 9 million — was within 1 million of that inside the exchanges. Some 2.5 million people have purchased off-exchange coverage even though they would've qualified for income-based subsidies through the exchanges. Almost half this group may also be eligible for additional federal subsidies aimed at reducing out-of-pocket costs for low-income individuals.

What a hypocritical gasbag Rush Limbaugh is about Trump's spending plans

Why, Donald Trump could be another FDR!, he says today. He could consolidate Republican rule for decades if he spends the money correctly!

Rush doesn't have a clue about the Obama stimulus, let alone have any principles. He thinks the stimulus was $1 trillion or so, when it was actually nearly $5 trillion, so far. I say so far because the damn thing was built into the outlay train. And look what we've gotten for it. A big fat nothing-burger. Crummier economic growth than under Bush, full-time jobs over 6 million behind trend, and a big fat national debt of nearly $20 trillion.

But Trump's version is going to be successful! Sure it is. $1 trillion or $5 trillion or $10 trillion under Trump isn't going to do anything it couldn't do under Obama.

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending, and to every frickin' year thereafter. The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion.

And here are the annual outlays thereafter in excess of that baseline:

2009: $535.2 billion

2010: $474.6 billion

2011: $620.6 billion

2012: $554.5 billion

2013: $472.1 billion

2014: $523.6 billion

2015: $776.1 billion

2016: $1.017 trillion.

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president.

And now that Trump is running the show, an even bigger joke is about to be played on the American people.

Obama can negotiate with Iranian terrorists and visit the communist police state of Cuba . . .

. . . but Trump can't talk to the president of independence-minded Taiwan or invite the pusher-killing president of the Philippines to visit the White House.

Got it.

Academic Ann Douglas' analysis is a cloister-f*^k: "Even some white men feel they've been left behind"

Here, where her attachment to the ideology of "sexism" blinds her to the real consequences of Obama's intentional inattention to the fate of the white middle class of both sexes, no sex, homosex, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera:

Yes, Hillary was a flawed candidate. Her penchant for privacy—not surprising given what the Republicans and the national press have put her through since 1992—was her Achilles heel, leading to the use of a private email server that came to symbolize her alleged untrustworthiness. It also led her to be not adroit enough with the media. Hillary misread the country: the fury about the wages of neoliberalism—which, yes, she embodied—that was gripping people, young and old, on the Right and the Left. Thus, she didn’t have a galvanizing progressive message that, as the Sanders campaign demonstrated, millions were hungering for, even some white men feeling they’ve been left behind.

Even some white men? 

How about 4 million whites of both sexes, Ann, in the core of the working population aged 25 to 54 years, who've been left behind in fact and don't just "feel" they have:

The deepest cut, from Cenk Uygur: Obama's not shtrong like Trump

Here:

I'm sorry, if you're a Democrat, and you like Obama, I hate to break your heart and you want to hate me for it and that's okay, but Obama wouldn't have done that. 

That's not who he is, he is not that guy. And in this case, it is an absolutely fact. Because he is president right now. If he wanted, he could have pressured Carrier. But he didn't pressure Carrier. He didn't pressure United Technologies, and he didn't threaten to take away their contracts. Because he's not that strong. And he always thinks, his default mode is there's nothing we can do. You guys don't understand.There are consequences. 

No. I do understand. What I'm asking you to do is to risk those consequences to protect American workers. 

And you didn't do it, and Trump did it, and now he is going to get a world of credit...

Nobody is going to remember the downsides of that deal, no one is going to worry about those tax breaks later. It is going to be a huge political win for Donald Trump, that is by the way, as I just said, somewhat earned. There are so many options that the Democrats never choose to use... They want to outsource the jobs, let them outsource the jobs. 

Threaten their government contracts? Yes, you threaten their government contracts. That's called being strong!

ECRI notices what I noticed in September: Whites missed the job boat under Obama, have fewer jobs than nine years ago

My post was about full-time jobs, here in September. Asians, blacks and Hispanics all had net gains in full-time jobs from their respective 2007-2008 peaks through the second quarter of 2016, from 0.2 million to 1.5 million while whites still suffered from huge losses in full-time totaling 4.4 million. On a percentage basis minorities' gains ranged from 2% to 23% while white losses were 7%, the impact of which was so huge because whites represent 64% of the population. 

Mish's comment on the ECRI story here was this:

Minorities fared far better at job gains on a percentage basis than whites. 

While the ECRI story here concluded this:

Whites actually have fewer jobs than nine years ago, while Hispanics, Blacks and Asians together gained all of the net jobs added, and more. 

Trump rewards Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for stonewalling Obama's Supreme Court appointment by picking his wife for Transportation

I don't view this as "nepotism" per se as others have who are much too quick to criticize Trump's centrism post-election.

Mitch McConnell withstood Obama's appointment power all through this period since the death of Scalia, enduring severe attacks for it from the left. People on the right who won't recognize what he accomplished are simply malign. They are like those who didn't recognize John Boehner's achievement getting the Bush tax cuts made permanent, and in many cases they are the same people, and unfortunately they are Legion.

McConnell's wife Elaine Chao had eight years' cabinet experience as head of Labor under Bush II and is competent to govern Transportation now under Trump. Not that we want her to have much to administer.

It is not a consequential appointment, except in the broad sense that Trump is not in the least setting about to take a machete to the federal Leviathan. Chao will maintain the status quo, more or less.

Rebecca Traister imagines Hillary supporters got out the vote for her, but they didn't: 5.1 million former Obama voters thought she wasn't worth it

Maybe she should blame Obama's base.

Here:

The peanut-butter gobblers are keen to unleash their righteous rightness, their furious convictions, on the Javits Center crowd — the wealthy donors, sure, but also Mothers of the Movement, the reproductive rights and women’s leaders, the thousands of supporters who had canvassed and phone-banked and gotten out the vote and driven souls to the polls. ... [T]he objects of the vitriol from the left, dirtbag and otherwise, are the hardworking heart of the Democratic Party, now the resistance: the grandmothers who left their houses every morning to get out the vote; the people who took buses and carloads of volunteers to knock on doors and ring buzzers and make endless phone calls; the Black Lives Matter activists who protest the killing of their children and targeting of their communities; the women and men who provide reproductive-health access, even as the government works to roll back that access; the abortion rights and gay rights and criminal justice reform advocates who didn’t write off Hillary Clinton, but instead asked her to be better.

Peter Brimelow: Donald Trump and Steve Bannon are not alt-right people

Quoted here in The New York Times in an article which calls to mind, as usual, nothing so much as a bucket full of eels:

“Trump and Steve Bannon are not alt-right people,” Mr. Brimelow said, adding that they had opportunistically seized on two issues that the alt-right cares most about — stopping immigration and fighting political correctness — and used them to mobilize white voters. 

To The Times racism defines not just the alt-right but conservatism generally, such as believing in Obama's foreign provenance and therefore his illegitimacy to be president, or thinking Black Lives Matter is itself a racist movement, or advocating something more than birth within our borders is necessary to be a citizen, none of which could possibly be legitimate topics of debate because The Times believes they are settled matters and any other view means one must be a racist.

To question what is settled is unacceptable to The Times, and that is best dealt with by slathering on the racism charge.

Never argue the substance.