3 weeks since Election 2016: Trump has now won more popular votes than any previous Republican

Trump 2016: 62.6 million

Romney '12: 60.9 million

McCain '08: 60.0 million

Bush '04: 62.0 million

Bush '00: 50.5 million

Meanwhile, Hillary still hasn't bested Obama 2012, and three weeks since Election 2016 remains 4.4 million votes behind Obama 2008:

Hillary 2016: 65.1 million

Obama '12: 65.9 million

Obama '08: 69.5 million

Kerry '04: 59.0 million

Gore '00: 51.0 million

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.

Trump interviews Rep. McCaul, who believes in a pathway to citizenship, for DHS

This looks more and more everyday like a marriage with conservatives which will remain unconsummated.

No pussy for you, Mr. Trump.

Story here.

Trump impressed by David Petraeus at meeting, you know, the preferred candidate of defeated liberal Senator Mark Kirk and co-founder of a new gun control advocacy group

Reported here in "David Petraeus, Mark Kelly launch gun control group":

The two announced on Friday that they were launching Veterans Coalition for Common Sense to encourage elected leaders to "do more to prevent gun tragedies." The group will feature veterans from every branch of the military who are urging lawmakers to toughen gun laws, the organization said in a news release.

What Trump moniker rhymes with David Betrayus? 

Thanksgiving weekend's big laugh: Ted Cruz calls Trump's cabinet "a team of all-stars coming together"

Here.

Real courageous there, Ted, waiting for Limbaugh to say so first.

What a miserable cretin.

Trump's not the only one with women in the cabinet

Attorney General

SBA

Agriculture

State

Treasury

Laugh of the Day: Rush Limbaugh says Betsy DeVos is a staunch conservative

The woman supported Kasich for crying out loud. And little Justin Amash is the DeVos' libertarian tool in the US House who thinks the future of the Republican Party is in inclusiveness of LGBTQLSMFT.

Here:

RUSH: "Donald Trump has chosen charter school advocate Betsy DeVos as his secretary of education."  A charter school advocate!  This is gonna cause heads to explode in every teachers union building and bunker that there is.  Holy smokes, this is big! Betsy DeVos! You know the DeVos family.  Staunch conservatives, Rich DeVos, Amway, owns the Orlando Magic.  Great, great, great guy.  This woman becomes the second woman chosen to fill a spot in Trump's cabinet. 

Trump appoints Kasich supporter Betsy DeVos to Education Secretary: She'll promote Common Core, not end it

This appointment is a liberal disaster masquerading as a conservative.

Don't expect this federal department to be closed under Donald Trump, who breaks a campaign promise to end common core with this appointment.

More here.

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.

Why Trump now says he won't prosecute Hillary

He's hoping to make it to January 20th without Obama pardoning her so that it's still an option for him after he becomes president.

He's playing chicken with Obama.

Revulsion Election 2016 update, two weeks out

Turnout

2016: 133.3 million

2012: 129.2 million

2008: 131.5 million

Popular Vote

Trump/Clinton: 62.0m/63.7m

Romney/Obama: 60.9m/65.9m

McCain/Obama: 60.0m/69.5m

-------------------------------------

5.8 million who turned out for Obama in 2008 didn't for Hillary in 2016

Hillary Loses to Trump in 2016 Underperforming Obama 2008 by

424,000 in PA

623,000 in OH

606,000 in MI

294,000 in WI

-----------------

1.947 million votes out of total underperformance of 5.8 million, or 33%; another 1.9 million didn't bother showing up for Hillary in California (800K), New York (700K) and Illinois (400K).

Trump Margin of Victory in

PA: 66,000

OH: 455,000

MI: 13,000

WI: 24,000

From Trump's 306 Electoral College votes peel off MI, he'd have been at 290.

Peel off WI he'd have been at 280.

Peel off PA he'd have lost with 260, despite winning OH handily and also FL.

This election really came down to those 66,000 votes in Pennsylvania, and the hundreds of thousands of people in the Rust Belt who were alienated from the Democrat Party.

Famous last words: "Mr. Trump will not be president"

Heh heh here last February.

Hey Obama! Fake news is you and all your pals in the media calling 61.6 million Trump voters racists, bigots, and fill-in-the-blank-phobes-and-haters

63 days

Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in OH, MI, PA and WI because 1.949 million Obama voters from 2008 didn't vote for her

OH: 623,000

MI: 607,000

PA: 424,000

WI: 295,000

The narrowness of the Trump victory in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania

Trump's narrowest wins:

Michigan: 13,000 votes

Wisconsin: 24,000 

Pennsylvania: 66,000

The next three:

Arizona: 95,000

Florida: 115,000

North Carolina: 177,000

For Donald Trump, 103,000 votes in the three narrowest states meant the difference between winning with 306 Electoral College votes and losing with 260 despite winning Ohio, North Carolina and Florida.

The win in Michigan looks entirely due to lower (Democrat) turnout in 2016. As of this hour turnout is down 220,000 from 2008. In Wisconsin turnout is identical. In Pennsylvania turnout is up only 20,000.

Compare Trump's win in Ohio, which was by 455,000 votes. Turnout there was down by a whopping 340,000 from 2008. Trump's net from that is 115,000 votes. Recall Romney lost Ohio by a similar sum: 167,000 votes.

Democrats in Rust Belt states look like they abandoned the field. Turnout was either down big or stagnant from 8 years ago despite population nationwide increasing 20 million.

It was revulsion for Hillary. 

Here's my big idea for Trump's Supreme Court appointments

Don't appoint a replacement for Scalia . . . appoint three.

Trump laid out 28 policy prescriptions in his Gettysburg address which repudiate Obama, but Obama still says Trump has few hard and fast proposals

Obama always has had trouble with math. And denial.

Here:

"I think he is coming to this office with fewer set hard and fast policy prescriptions than a lot of other presidents might be arriving with. Do I have concerns? Absolutely, of course I've got concerns. He and I differ on a whole bunch of issues," Obama added.

From Gettysburg:

1. Propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.
2. Institute a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health).
3. Require for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.
4. Institute a five year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service.
5. Create a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
6. Institute a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
7. Announce intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.
8. Announce withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
9. Direct Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.
10. Direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately.
11. Lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.
12. Lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward.
13. Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.
14. Cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.
15. Begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.
16. Cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities.
17. Begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.
18. Suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.
19. Work with Congress on a Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.
20. Work with Congress on a End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.
21. Work with Congress on a American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.
22. Work with Congress on a School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to gives parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.
23. Work with Congress on a Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.
24. Work with Congress on a Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-site childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.
25. Work with Congress on an End Illegal Immigration Act. Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.
26. Work with Congress on a Restoring Community Safety Act.Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.
27. Work with Congress on a Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values.
28. Work with Congress on a Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.

Like Trump's a Muslim or something

Ya think? WaPo: "It's possible that Clinton supporters did not show up on Election Day"

The latest tally shows Hillary not getting 8.361 million votes in 2016 which Obama got in 2008. No matter what Trump's coalition was in 2016, its size shows little variation from 2008 and 2012. There was no sea change of support for his candidacy.

The answer for Clinton's loss is in the disarray among Democrats because their candidate was so horrible, which is why the media have portrayed Trump that way. It's liberal projection syndrome all over again. Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate for president in at least a generation. "More sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train" was how Camille Paglia put it 3 years ago. Democrats should have listened to her.

WaPo, recognizing that the proper comparison is with 2008, not 2012:

Absent final turnout numbers, it is still too early to assess whether these shifting vote patterns are the result of differential turnout among Clinton and Trump supporters or the result of genuine voter conversion. It’s possible that a sizable chunk of Latino Clinton supporters, in addition to white women, African Americans, and Asian Americans, did not show up on Election Day. It’s also possible that a significant portion of these voters were willing to overlook Trump’s incendiary remarks and vote for him based on other factors, like the need to shake up “politics as usual.”

#NeverTrump Liberal GOP Sen. Mark Kirk defeated in IL

See ya!