Hillary can't claim she'll continue the good economy because it isn't a good economy

From the macroeconomic point of view of GDP, jobs and homeownership, the economy under Obama has been a bad joke.

Economic growth is lagging, lagging I say, the horrible, awful George W. Bush . . . by $2 trillion. Current dollar GDP under Obama has grown a paltry 28.2%. Under Bush, the worst in the post-war until now, it at least grew by 41.7%. Obama should kill to have George Bush's economic growth, and Hillary probably will, by starting another war. Nothing boosts GDP like war-spending.

Meanwhile job growth as measured by monthly total nonfarm has slowed in 2016 by over 20% compared with 2015, to 181,000 new jobs monthly vs. 229,000 new jobs monthly last year. Is that a hopeful trend?

And if you think 2015 was so great, it wasn't. If the same percentage of the population had been working in 2015 as worked in 2007, there would have been 7 million more employed than there were. There has been a huge contraction in employment, which explains the GDP problem. Without work there is no product.

You can see this vividly in full-time jobs. Compared to October 2007, we have just 2.6 million more full-time jobs in October 2016 than we had in 2007. Think about that. Just 2.6 million more full-time jobs but population has increased by 22 million. After recessions, full-time has always recovered to the previous highs in 2-3 years, but not under Obama. This time it took 8 years, a terrible stain on the economic record.

Next consider housing. There have been 6.4 million completed foreclosures since September 2008 even as the Feds have done everything they can to get housing prices to recover, distorting the economy to the point that today the typical $247,000 existing home is unaffordable for 90% of individual wage earners. No wonder the homeownership rate, at 63.5%, has plunged to a level last seen in 1985.

In the end about all Hillary surrogates have to boast of is the stock market. Larry Kudlow featured one on his radio program this weekend doing just that. But estimates of how many Americans own stocks vary considerably. Gallup recently put it at 52%. Pew in 2013 put it at 45%. Shockingly, the Federal Reserve itself estimates it's more like 13-15%. In the best case only half the country is reaping benefits from stocks, and probably a lot less than half.

Those people who had the foresight to invest in March 2009 have done extremely well. On average the S&P 500 is up over 17% per year since then through September 2016.

But how have long term investors done, people who buy and hold in retirement accounts? Since the last stock market boom peaked in August 2000, they are up only 4.32% per year. That's almost 64% worse than the historical post-war performance of 11.9% with little upside on the horizon as the market has made new all-time highs and is obscenely valued.

Nothing Hillary Clinton is proposing looks remotely likely to improve any of these measures, except maybe by starting a new war.

My boy will be 18 next year. Please don't vote for her.

Hillary present at the debacles: Housing bubble, Great Recession, Iraq War, Surrender to Iran, Doubling of the Debt, puny GDP . . .

Conrad Black, here:

Hillary Clinton, though she would probably be an improvement on the recent past, represents continuity of what has been the most catastrophic 20 years of misgovernment in American history. She was there, as first lady, senator, secretary of state, or candidate, for the housing bubble and Great Recession, the terrible drain of Middle East war that delivered most of Iraq to Iran and produced a colossal humanitarian tragedy, the doubling of the national debt in seven years to produce one per cent annual economic growth while 15 million people dropped out of the work force, and the terrible fiascoes of the abandoned red line in Syria and the cave-in to Iranian nuclear military ambitions with a fig leaf of (unverifiable) deferral. But she is an able person, still carrying the torch of feminism, and she isn’t Trump.

In correcting the fallible bureaucrats Kyle Smith also gets the homeownership rate wrong: It's as low as in 1965

Here:

And 80 percent of [bureaucrats] guessed that the rate of home ownership is lower than it is: 67 percent. With all of this underestimating going on, it’s not surprising that Washington is constantly pushing urgent, potentially disastrous fixes (such as re-inflating the housing bubble by encouraging more and more Americans with sketchy credit ratings to buy homes) for imaginary ills. Renting your home is a perfectly acceptable way to live, and Fannie Mae shouldn’t be in the business of enticing renters of modest income to commit to large amounts of debt by obtaining mortgages.

Michael Savage is an idiot, says for the average American the economy's doing just fine

Wealth insulates this book-selling jibber-jabberer with a microphone from the facts, because he has no incentive to look into them.

Incomes are flat since January 2000, housing and other hard assets are sky high and out of reach for 90% of individual wage earners. Full-time jobs are barely 2.75 million higher in number today than they were in 2007. This fool doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

Don't worry, though, tomorrow the economy will be terrible, and he might even notice because all he does is follow the headlines.

GDP revisions come out in the morning at 0830 hours, Eastern. That should give him plenty of time to think about it, being on the Left coast as he is.

But will he?

If the Fed can buy $4 trillion in shitty mortgages and Treasuries, it can buy $1 trillion in student loan debt

Just sayin'.

Bob Dole endorses Trump after previously supporting Jeb Bush and questioning Ted Cruz' loyalty to the Republican Party

Sen. Dole, US Army 10th Mountain Division veteran, wounded since April 1945

Quoted here:

Former senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole on Friday endorsed Donald Trump, becoming the latest GOP leader to back the real estate mogul even as others have distanced themselves from the candidate.

"The voters of our country have turned out in record numbers to support Mr. Trump," Dole said in a statement released by the Trump campaign. "It is important that their votes be honored and it is time that we support the party's presumptive nominee."

Dole had previously endorsed Jeb Bush and slammed Ted Cruz as an extremist liked by nobody in Congress. Interviewed in December here, Dole took particular exception to Ted Cruz calling Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate.  The irony of the campaign is that Donald Trump has made that charge stick to Ted Cruz instead. There are the Ted Cruz principles, and then there are the Bob Dole principles.

Ted Cruz won't build a border wall, and will increase immigration at the expense of American workers

From his speech announcing his candidacy for president on 3/23/2015, noted here, devoting just two lines to these issues which mention neither a wall nor the horrible impact of H-1B immigration on American stem-workers:

Instead of the lawlessness and the president’s unconstitutional executive amnesty, imagine a president that finally, finally, finally secures the borders.

And imagine a legal immigration system that welcomes and celebrates those who come to achieve the American dream.

Ted Cruz is merely a Marco Rubio without the Gang of Eight Bill.

Commenter explains Donald Trump to oblivious Marxist at CBS News MoneyWatch who appeals to Richard Hofstadter's passé paranoid style

Here:

IHATEUSERNAMESLIKETHIS April 21, 2016 6:6AM

It's not class resentment.

First you destroyed the way we funded our homes and communities -- the Savings and Loans.

Then you destroyed the ways we collectively bargained -- the unions.

Then you stole the [principal] of the Social Security Trust fund, some 2.7 trillion dollars so it couldn't earn interest and started to act like it was a handout you were giving us.

Then you shipped all the manufacturing jobs to China.

Then you shipped the service jobs to India.

Then you "commoditized" the mortgages on our homes in violation of the long standing "statute of frauds" and put them on the big roulette wheel you call Wall Street.

Then when that scheme failed you bailed out the banks that came up with the fraud and stuck us with the bill to bail them out.

Then you ran the money printing press so fast, so the big roulette wheel could prosper while the rest of us found our money buying less and less.

That is not called class resentment. That is called waking up.

Erick Erickson's Israel-firster pal Steve Berman thinks everyone who supports Trump should be shunned

Here, where the cultist projects his own cultism onto the real estate magnate:

"Every Trump supporter should be ostracized–especially those in politics, the media, and leadership. Failing to stop the cult of personality is as bad as swearing allegiance to it. Those who play for influence, cater to the Trumpkin crowd to acknowledge their anger, or otherwise make nice with the budding despot must be shunned and called for what they are: cult-enablers. Those who support Trump must be treated as cultists."

Here is an example of the fever from which Steve Berman suffers:

"As Christians, we have a calling to support Israel because it’s God’s desire. As Americans, we have an obligation to support Israel because they represent a free society in a part of the world dominated by oppressive dictatorships. Most importantly, we must support Israel because doing so is walking in the light.  We must walk in the light because we are in Christ."

The opposition finally figures out that Trump will use eminent domain to build The Wall

We told you he would weeks ago.

Randal John Meyer, in "The Great Wall Of Trump Would Be the Ultimate Eminent Domain Horror Show":

The Government Accountability Office reports (PDF) that “federal and tribal lands make up 632 miles, or approximately 33 percent, of the nearly 2,000 total border miles.” What of the remaining 66 percent? “Private and state-owned lands constitute the remaining 67 percent of the border, most of which is located in Texas.”

That means that if Trump’s plan to build another 1,000 miles of wall is carried to fruition, thousands more homeowners will see their property destroyed or partially walled-off. ...

The fence built so far goes extends [sic] to Texas, which ... means it mostly covers land that was already federally owned. Trump’s new fencing would be built primarily on state-owned and private lands.

The author never tells you Trump beat Texas home boy Ted Cruz in several of the border counties, and reduced his victory to single digits in others.

The Wall has support in Texas.

Washington Post graphic

Ted Cruz is a "me too" wall builder and is soft on illegal immigration: Trump's central ideas in June 2015 speech predate Cruz' by five months

Noted here:

Cruz unveiled his immigration plan in November, the first plank of which is to "build a wall that works" — a suggestion that his call for more border agents, surveillance and biometric entry-exit tracking is simply a more sophisticated version of Trump's blunt-force proposals. "The unsecured border with Mexico invites illegal immigrants, criminals, and terrorists to tread on American soil. I will complete the wall," the plan says in yet another nod to Trump.

Not only did it take five months for Cruz to copy Trump's ideas, the only wall Ted Cruz ever mentioned in his own speech announcing his run for president in March 2015 was the Berlin Wall.

Securing the border is just a one-liner in the speech among many other one-liners, and unlike Trump Cruz emphasized legal immigration in the speech, a nod to his long-suspected softness on the issue:

(APPLAUSE)

Imagine abolishing the IRS.

(APPLAUSE)

Instead of the lawlessness and the president’s unconstitutional executive amnesty, imagine a president that finally, finally, finally secures the borders.

(APPLAUSE)

And imagine a legal immigration system that welcomes and celebrates those who come to achieve the American dream.

(APPLAUSE)

Instead of a federal government that wages an assault on our religious liberty, that goes after Hobby Lobby, that goes after . . ..

Laugh of the Day: NY Times calls CPAC a "gathering of traditional conservatives"

Here:

As polls showed Mr. Trump likely to capture the Louisiana primary on Saturday, the biggest prize among states holding contests this weekend, the party establishment in Washington seemed seized by anxiety and despair. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, a long-running gathering of traditional conservatives, attendees feared that they were witnessing an event that has not occurred in more than a century: the breaking apart of a major American political party.

CPAC is dominated by a bunch of libertarian wankers who in 2013, 2014 and 2015 picked Rand Paul as their man for president. You remember him. He flew high in the polls until Donald Trump appeared last summer and shot him out of the sky. Before 2013, CPACers picked other well known losers like Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Jack Kemp.

The only "winner" they picked was George W. Bush in 2000, and we all know how that's worked out.

Everyone has nostalgia for the Reagan years, not the Bush years.

Traditional conservatives emphasize traditions like the church, Christmas, English, marriage between a man and a woman, homeownership, babies and law and order, all of which are expendable to libertarians but are essential to conservatives because they are essential to maintaining continuity with the American past which gave us the nation in the first place.

If conservatism is cracking up in America, it's because of the continuing bad influence from libertarian lunatics, but I repeat myself.

The daughter of anti-Trump billionaire Marlene Ricketts is a gay activist and bundler for Barack Obama

Seen here:

Laura M. Ricketts is co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. Ricketts is also a board member of Lambda Legal and the Housing Opportunities for Women organization. Ricketts' ownership stake in the Cubs is uniquely noteworthy because it makes her the first openly gay owner of a major-league sports franchise. ... Laura Ricketts is a former corporate lawyer. She lives with her partner on the North Side of Chicago. Ricketts received her Bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1994, and her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1998. Laura talks of her own struggle to come out; "I came out to my family I would say early to mid 90s. I think for a long time I wasn't really out to myself growing up in Omaha, Neb., to a Catholic conservative family. It took me a while to come out to myself and not long after that I came out to them. I think that it really couldn't have been a better experience. They were all immediately supportive. ... I have been really really fortunate in that regard."

The Washington Post reported in 2012 that Laura Ricketts raised about half a million dollars for Obama, here:

[Joe] Ricketts has an unusual profile for a rising political player, with little in his résumé to suggest that he favors controversial or attention-getting tactics.

A former Democrat who became a Republican, he later renounced all party affiliation to become an independent. His daughter, Laura, is a lesbian activist and prominent bundler for Obama; she raised about half a million dollars for the president.

Joe Ricketts, Pete, Todd, Laura, wife Marlene, and Tom