Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina sinks confirmation of Thomas Farr to US District Court in this congress, but cocaine Mitch may have another plan

Sen. Tim Scott announces opposition to judicial nominee Thomas Farr, effectively dooming confirmation:

South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott announced Thursday he will oppose embattled judicial nominee Thomas Farr, in a reversal of his position a day earlier that seemingly ends the nominee's chances for now amid fierce criticism by civil rights groups. ...

Farr was first nominated to the federal court in the Eastern District of North Carolina by former President George W. Bush in 2006, but never received a confirmation vote. ...

Prominent Democrats immediately applauded Scott's decision Thursday to oppose Farr, and attacked President Trump for doubling down on Bush's nomination. ...

Top Republicans had also stood behind Farr this week. It remains unclear whether the Senate's GOP leadership will try to reconsider Farr when the new 53-47 Republican majority -- sans Flake -- is seated in January.

“The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary -- a body that's frequently been held up by my Democratic colleagues as the ‘gold standard’ -- has awarded Mr. Farr its highest possible rating: unanimously well qualified,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The "Conservatarians" are as condescending toward Trump voters today as Hillary's voters were yesterday

To Hillary, Trump voters were deplorables.

To conservatarians, Trump voters are the WrestleMania vote, the ignorant gulls who fill Trump's rallies around the country to this day.

Jon Gabriel of Ricochet and Stephen L. Miller count themselves conservatarians, here.

Like Frank Meyer's fusionism which tried to combine libertarianism and traditionalism, conservatarianism also conceives of itself as a libertarian mixture, but with social liberalism not traditionalism.

As such, however, this simply represents the failed status quo, which has been only too happy to use the traditional right at election time since Reagan but otherwise has paid but lip service to it once in power. Its main interest on the one side claims to be fiscal probity, but vainly imagines that its reprobate self even wants smaller deficits. Under Bush 43, debt to the penny soared from $5.7 trillion to $10.7 trillion. In truth, conservatarianism only affects conservatism. Its real interest is in Bacchus. 

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish? -- James 3:11

Nay, nay.

Kooky "Macro Tourist" tells us to put aside our political views, uses crabbed Talking Points Memo graph to warn us about Republican federal spending increases

THINGS HAVE CHANGED...:

Although the Republicans are supposedly the party of fiscal conservatism, we all know that sort of talk is only for when they are not in power. ... There should be little surprise that under Republican stewardship, the greatest fiscal stimulus in the past decade has been instituted. Not saying if it is good or bad because my opinion is completely irrelevant. ... You would be foolish to ignore the dramatic change in the world’s attitude towards economic policy. “Tight fiscal and easy monetary policy” is being replaced with “easy fiscal and (somewhat) tighter monetary policy”. And ironically enough, the Republican Party under Trump’s “leadership” is at the forefront of this change.

Apparently the guy can't figure out the facts for himself, which show that Trump is projected by the center left Tax Policy Center to be in the same league as Obama through fiscal 2020, not in the Reagan league, not in the Nixon league, not in the Bush 41 league, either. Hell, he's not even projected to make the Bush 43 league, which was bad enough. Spending is going up under Trump, too be sure, but it's a world away from previous Republican administrations.

What really matters for spending is who controls the purse strings, which is Congress. Until Clinton, Republican presidents had to bargain with Democrat Congresses to get what they wanted. That often meant agreeing to big spending bills. The Republican resurgence in Congress under Clinton marked a new era in spending, which comparatively speaking is way down on a compound annual growth rate basis, even under spendthrift Bush 43.

Personally I'm less fearful than I had been of a new spending spree under Trump with Republicans in control of Congress. Trump is adversarial with the Republican Establishment in a way that no Republican president of the past has been. Getting what he wants hasn't been at all easy for this very reason. Republicans are obstructing him no less than Democrats are even as Trump folds like a house of cards on taxes and regulation without getting anything in return, like a wall. At some point he's going to veto something, or go down to electoral defeat.

At any rate, talk of a new dramatic change is simply kooky.

Investors Business Daily thinks no one noticed Obama's recent public embrace of Bernie's radical socialism

Here.

We noticed. We just didn't mention it because we've been pointing out Obama's socialism for nine years already. Yawn.

But Obama was only a fair weather friend of socialism for most of that time because most of the Democrat Party remained neoliberal. Nothing points up his lackluster leadership and servile character throughout that time better than his constant fear of a backlash from the neoliberal wing of a party he supposedly led. Actually it led him. Obama was relieved to wash his hands of the economic crisis and delegated fixing it to Bill Clinton's neoliberal retreads. The guy couldn't even take the socialist baton of Pelosi's single payer plan for crying out loud, or embrace a Paul Krugman approved properly sized stimulus spending bill. And making the Bush tax cuts permanent? That was hardly the work of the leader (in his head) of world socialism.

Freed from the strictures of politics, Obama is now free to advance his fanciful sympathies without consequences, as long as the wind is blowing in that direction. My guess is the left wing of his party sees this as nothing more than his feeble attempt to be relevant again when to them he had already become an object of contempt by the end of 2009.

The author of Dreams from My Father is just dreamin', that's all. All he ever did.

John McCain is dead, the so-called conservative politician who relied on independents and liberals to win

From the 2004 story here about the South Carolina primary in 2000 against George W. Bush:

McCain’s overall strategy relied heavily on the state’s 400,000 veterans and military retirees’ siding with the war hero, and on his appealing, as he had in New Hampshire, to independents and liberals. He thought a high turnout in the open primary would favor him.

The turnout on Saturday, February 19, was huge—573,000 voters, more than double the previous high in a primary—but Bush still won by 11 points, 53 to 42. (Alan Keyes got a little less than 5 percent.) The veterans’ vote split evenly; Bush was buoyed by a two-to-one margin among Christian conservatives, a third of total voters. McCain outpolled him only in the more liberal coastal counties. Remarkably, a majority of voters saw Bush as the one who had run the more positive campaign, despite the attacks from pro-Bush groups.

Priceless: Yale historian Timothy Snyder blames Democrats for Hillary's loss

Here, on May 1, 2017, in Historian Timothy Snyder: “It’s pretty much inevitable” that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy:

 '"On Tyranny" is a suggestion of things that everyone can do. ... [T]he other lessons — such as supporting existing political and social institutions, supporting the truth and so on — those things will then come relatively easily if you can follow the first one, which is to get out of the drift, to recognize that this is the moment where you have to not behave as you did in October 2016.' 

Funny how he lets that little slap slip at the end of an interview about his fears. It is the great, unacknowledged truth of Election 2016.

The rest of it reminded me of myself in 2009.

When I saw how leftists started trashing Obama one year in to his presidency it dawned on me that the tyranny I had feared from an Obama presidency had been a misplaced fear. Then the stories of Obama's laziness started to surface, and the personal details about his penchant for watching sports on TV, traveling, fine dining and playing golf. The guy got captured by the trappings of the office. Only then was it clear that there was nothing existential to fear. And then the guy punted on Obamacare, letting the House and Senate duke it out, creating a grotesque. And after reelection, he actually made the Bush tax cuts permanent and fixed the AMT.

Wow. What a revolutionary!

If Snyder breathed into a paper bag for a minute or two, he might realize that Trump's first midterms are upon us and only now is Trump starting to realize what presidential power is all about. The thing is, it's way too late. He has already squandered his political capital in year one, failing at job one, which is to get the order of the agenda correct. This was partly the result of making lousy appointments across the board in the first place, many of whom have gone on to blow up like so many Clinton bimbo eruptions but without the sex. By generally being incompetent like any true outsider would be in Washington Trump was at a huge disadvantage from the start anyway. But the people who could have helped him didn't because Trump got elected in part by insulting them.

This presidency is already much like Obama's, a creation of the House and Senate, not of the president. Recourse to executive orders to get what you want but can't get the ordinary way is a sign of weakness, not strength. It shows that the master is the slave. 

Few presidents get three important things done. Trump has one major accomplishment but it wasn't the one people remember the fearless leader championing at every venue of 2015 and 2016. So far the corporate tax cut is not translating into unequivocal results for the people. As a percentage of civilian population, employment remains over 6 million behind the pre-Great Recession average.

"Hillary isn't president" is something to be truly grateful for, but sooner or later it will dawn on the Trumpists that Trump isn't either.

Good comparison of the presidents on GDP by Justin Fox at Bloomberg

Guess Which Presidents Really Oversaw Economic Booms

Fox well reminds his readers that GDP is an inadequate measure in many respects, and gives credit where credit is due even when the numbers don't seem to show it.

His second chart is the better chart since it is a political comparison, which is what this is all about, pegging beginning and end of analysis to fourth quarters when presidents are elected or eclipsed.

He has Kennedy and Johnson first and second (5.5% and 5%), followed by Clinton (3.8%), Reagan 3.6%), Carter (3.2%) and Nixon 3.0%), then IKE (2.5%), then Ford and Bush 41 tied (2.2%), with Obama (1.9%) and Bush 43 (1.8%) bringing up the rear. (Trump so far is seventh, ahead of IKE but behind Nixon, at 2.7%).

A few quibbles.

The data is plenty fine for Truman 1948-1952. He should be included. His performance is the best of them all on a full term basis (5.54%), using the same compound annual growth rate Fox uses. The secret to Truman's success? He slashed government spending in the wind-down from World War II. No one seems to get that. By cutting taxes and not slashing spending, Republicans since Truman only defeat themselves and discredit what works.

Secondly, JFK didn't serve out his first term, Nixon his second. Therefore it makes more sense to view JFK coterminous with LBJ (5.19% together), and Ford with Nixon (2.73%), evaluating them together in two eight year periods of Democrat and Republican political administration respectively, which is what it was.

Third, Fox rounds his numbers, which obscures how close Bush and Obama were in their terrible records (1.83% and 1.88% respectively). 

All in all, though, we come up with similar results: Truman is first (5.54), followed by JFK/LBJ (5.19), Clinton (3.81), Reagan (3.55), Carter (3.19), Nixon/Ford (2.73), IKE (2.52), Bush 41 (2.21), Obama (1.88), and Bush 43 (1.83).

Trump's first year through 4Q2017 is 2.47%. Measured 2Q2017 on 2Q2018 just completed he's at 2.85%.

Only by comparison with the previous sixteen years is this anything to cheer about, but thankfully we have that.

In 2011 a judge told us to forgo something is acting, in 2018 a judge insists refusing to help is not the same as impeding

Judge Kessler in 2011, here, a liberal Clinton appointee, in re Obamacare.

Judge Mendez in 2018, here, a liberal Bush 43 appointee, in re immigration enforcement.

Liberals always rule to advance liberal objectives, even if it means that not acting is acting once upon a time but later on in a different situation it is not.

The manifest politicization of the judiciary ought to mean that they all must resign when the guy who appointed them finishes his term. It would be a more honest acknowledgement of the truth that the law is an ass, and that elections have consequences.

Manufactured crisis of child separations: Both Bush and Obama separated families by the hundreds of thousands

And there are lots of photos, here.

The "crisis" is being used to move poor legislation, and the president is its easy mark:

Representative Mark Meadows said Trump told Republican members of the House at a meeting on Capitol Hill that they needed to get something done on immigration "right away."

This is why conservative temperament matters: It isn't manipulated easily or hastily. Unfortunately Trump has no such temperament.

Bush's and Obama's legal immigrants have taken all the jobs, no matter how you measure them

We have 16.1 million total unemployed in May 2018, and 16.8 million new legal immigrants since Bush 43 was elected

That doesn't make any sense!

So-called National People's Congress of China votes 2,959-2 to remove term limits for Xi Jinping, with 3 abstentions

The story is here.

So, our two main rivals in the world are now each ruled by perpetual dictators, as they were in the past.

And to think from 1992 some in the West foolishly accepted the idea of the end of history, "that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government."

Not even Francis Fukuyama believed it for more than three years.

Unfortunately the George W. Bush administration, in its ignorant hubris, did.

But here we now are, having squandered the intervening years, and Trump is just fine with the new dictatorships. He admires them no less than Obama did. They are grandiose, like he is, like Obama is. He wishes he could be one of them, too.

When was the last time you heard a statesman from the West call on these rival powers to throw off their chains and embrace freedom?

I can't remember, either.

Freedom as we have known it in the world is in great peril, and we hardly care.

Therefore we will lose it, sooner rather than later.

The fool of a president George W. Bush is as pathetic as Trump in seeking validation at this point in his life

George W. Bush was easily the worst post-war president until Barack Obama came along.

And a lot of water has to go under the bridge before the verdict is in on Trump.

Meanwhile, these presidents who constantly look for validation or constantly assert their egos are a reflection of the decline of America, not its greatness. Comparisons between them amount to nothing more than sorting out the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry.

Are there no real men left?

The face of the declining middle class in 2016 was concealed as 15 million more lived in doubled-up households than in 2005

Zillow reported (here) in December that working age adults in 2016 were living in doubled-up households at a rate of 30% compared with 21% in 2005.

That works out to roughly 32 million in 2005 at the 21% rate vs. 50 million in 2016 at the 30% rate, using the Working Age Population data from FRED.

Had the rate remained 21% in 2016, just 35 million would be living doubled-up instead of 50 million. 

That's 15 million more adults who can't afford to buy, and can't even afford to rent, thanks to the feckless performances of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama.

h/t Jeffrey Snider, Alhambra Investments

Retiring Sen. Bob Corker demands Republicans raise taxes in order to cut them

We had to destroy the village in order to save it.

Bombing is the only way forward.

We had to have a war between the States in order to save them.

Export subsidies are necessary in order to preserve free trade.

I have abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market system.

The London Interbank Overnight Rate system had to be suppressed in order to save the banking system.

We had to bail out the banks so that we could sue them. 

The North Korea problem in a nutshell

George W. Bush cried wolf in Iraq, and now when faced with a genuine threat, Democrats and Republicans alike think Trump is evil for crying like a wolf. They are in denial, shrinking from reality, and incapable of anything save appeasement. There is incontrovertible evidence of a pattern of North Korean use of force, not just threats of it. Do they really want to be responsible for the deaths of many innocents before we are forced to take out North Korea's nuclear capability?

They both agree on abortion, so I guess the answer is yes.

Full-time job growth under Trump so far beats Obama and Bush, but that's about it

Note that employers panicked under Obama and fired people like crazy after his election, so there was a steep decline in full-time.

So far the growth of full-time shows a tentative thumbs-up to Trump, but still nothing like the vote of confidence typical after previous changes at the helm of state.

The puny 2.5% growth under George W. Bush, keep in mind, was still all pre-911 and post-Reagan bull market, which ended in August 2000. Trump is doing better than Bush, but not by much.

The Reagan GDP miracle is a complete myth: It was all government spending (on defense)

And it set a horrible precedent for the dramatic overspending of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which has sent us on a course to oblivion. You can argue it was necessary to defeat the USSR, but you can't argue that baseline spending (in black) has done anything but go up, up, up to dangerous new levels as a result (notice the baseline Jimmy Carter inherited from liberal Republicanism, for which he got the blame from Ronald Reagan, which wasn't very nice of the old man who went on to bequeath a similar giant new baseline to his successor, G.H.W. Bush).

No, the real miracle was the pathetic loser in Iran, Jimmy Carter, who spent the least in the post-war for his additional GDP, followed by Bill Clinton.

Of course, the spending is all the prerogative of the Congress. The president proposes but the Congress disposes, as the saying goes.

Beware libertarian politicians preaching balanced budgets, as well as utopian infrastructure spending enthusiasts promising the moon and liberal Republicans selling government spending as security to senior citizens at the expense of younger Americans in a time of protracted war. They have delivered little beyond $20 trillion in debt.

Ralph Peters becomes irrational about Putin like Bush, under questioning by Tucker Carlson

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him very straightforward and trustworthy – I was able to get a sense of his soul."

Here:

[Vladimir Putin] is malevolent and he is as close to pure evil as I can find. ... [H]e is as bad as Hitler. ... Vladimir Putin hates America, he wants to hurt us. ... Russia is evil, Russia is our enemy.

Last but not least, Trump destroyed Hillary in Wyoming 3.1:1 where she came in dead last since 2004

Donald J. Trump 2016:   174,419 votes
Mitt Romney      2012:   170,962
George W. Bush 2004:   167,629
John S. McCain  2008:   164,958
Barack Obama    2008:     82,868
John Kerry          2004:     70,776
Barack Obama    2012:     69,286
Hillary Clinton    2016:     55,973