First term senators shouldn't even be running for president: Rand Paul (2010), Marco Rubio (2010) and Ted Cruz (2012)

Elected to the US Senate in 2004

"For six years, Republicans have said the nation made a mistake electing a one term Senator the President of the United States. Why should you, a one term Senator, be the GOP’s nominee?" 

-- Erick Erickson, here

Republican dickhead Rick Wilson calls Trump supporters a bunch of wankers

Takes one to know one.

Story here.

Best line from the comments section:

"If I had a head like his, I'd have it circumcised."

Wilson got his start working for G. H. W. Bush and Lee Atwater.

Trump in first by +19 ahead of Cruz in latest Monmouth poll

Palin endorsing Trump = Graham endorsing Bush

Just sayin'.

As late as six months ago Laura Ingraham was still predicting Jeb Bush would be the nominee

The New York Times is only eight years late to the issue

"It May Be Time to Resolve the Meaning of ‘Natural Born’"

Not-the-face-of-Islam strikes again: Politically-correct Daily Express calls Muslims charged with sexual assault "Asian men"

Not-the-face-of-Islam strikes again:

"Asian men charged over allegations of child rape, trafficking and sex assaults in Rochdale".

How many Japs or Chicoms do you know named Mohammed Sadeer, Ittefaq Yousaf, Arfan Iqbal, or Naheem Akram?

The inflation-adjusted price of the average prime slave from 1860 is $44,100, very close to the 2014 raw average US wage of $44,569

The average price of a prime slave from 1860 was about $1,500. Using the consumer price index, that's the equivalent of about $44,100 in 2014. The raw US average wage in 2014 was $44,569 according to the Social Security Administration.

The annual mean price of the labor of a slave from 1860 brought a return on investment of about 12%, and on a month to month basis about 14%.  In 2014, corporate profits before taxes came to 12.7% of GDP.

Total slave population in 1860 is estimated to be 3.95 million,  14.7% of the total white population.

See The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Robert Evans Jr. of MIT (1962), here.

Marco Rubio still thinks illegal aliens who haven't committed other felonies can stay

This morning, video here.

He won't deport any of them.

Trump in 1999: I am pro-choice . . . but I just hate it

That's not going to kill him, it's going to advance the narrative that Trump "grew" as he got older, grew out of his liberalism.

Video, highly edited, here.

Ted Cruz apologizes to millions of New Yorkers let down by liberals

Here.

Good lawyer.

Another Obama achievement: deliberately bankrupting coal companies, destroying jobs and making electricity more expensive

From the story here at Bloomberg yesterday detailing the coal bankruptcies:

Obama has backed tougher limits on carbon dioxide blamed for climate change.

New mercury standards that took effect last year led utilities to retire 23 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

On Friday, his administration said it will stop leasing public land to coal developers and will weigh raising royalty fees for exploration while it studies the fuel’s environmental impacts.

Both production and demand for coal this year will fall to the lowest level since 1983, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said this week. ...

Arch [Coal Inc.] has followed Alpha Natural Resources Inc., Patriot Coal Corp., Walter Energy Inc. and James River Coal Co., in bankruptcy.

In other news, mining (129,000) and logging jobs (2,000) declined 131,000 in 2015, the biggest decline since 1986 and the third worst year of declines since 1939.

Since 2007 net generation of electricity from coal has declined by almost 30% through October 2015.

While retail sales of electricity in 2014 are almost exactly identical to such sales in 2007, measured in kilowatthours purchased, the cost of that electricity has gone up over 18% over the same period as coal's role is being deliberately curtailed.

Larry Kudlow today on his radio show repeatedly criticized Ted Cruz' attack on New York values

The Larry Kudlow Show is available by podcast at wabcradio.com.

Unlike fellow Jew Mark Levin, Kudlow found Cruz' debate remarks thoroughly reprehensible and repeatedly called on Cruz to apologize to New Yorkers.

Cruz already is doubling down, however, saying Americans don't want the rest of the country to become like liberal Manhattan.

Cruz is making a big mistake about New York. It shows he has a tin ear for politics. Americans everywhere admire New Yorkers' pluck in the face of adversity, their heroism and determination. It is politically senseless to ask such people to choose now between Ted Cruz and New York when they already have spoken their affection for the city that never sleeps.

Americans will never love Ted Cruz as much as they already love New York.

Rand Paul pledges to do everything he can to stop Trump, and then support him if he's the nominee

Rand Paul, quoted here:

"He would be a disaster. We’ll be slaughtered in a landslide. That’s why my every waking hour is to try to stop Donald Trump from being our nominee. It sounds terrible, 'Oh you're going to support Donald Trump,' but I expect Donald Trump to support me as well if I win."

Court cases have already been filed against Cruz and Rubio over eligibility

Schwartz v. Cruz, here.

Voeltz v. Cruz et alia, motion to dismiss, here.

Mark Levin opens show discussing birther issue telling us it's not important, opens second half hour discussing it the same way

Like Ted Cruz isn't Mark Levin's preferred candidate, especially as in the middle of the first hour Levin tried to destroy Donald Trump using Trump's own previous statements about the differences between New Yorkers' values and those of the rest of the country.

Levin can't stand it that Trump turned this into a discussion about 911.

Levin finishes the hour claiming birthers have said to Levin that both parents must be born in the US.

I call bullshit on that.

I say prove it, Levin. Show us the evidence, and send it to Ann Coulter, whose arguments and column he hasn't dared touch.

Mark Levin is avoiding Ann Coulter.

Marco Rubio's official biography misrepresents his parents as exiles from Castro's Cuba

Castro took over Cuba in 1959 after a guerrilla insurgency begun in December 1956. Marco Rubio's parents left Cuba in 1956, according to this story in the Tampa Bay Times:

'To press their case, birthers dug up Rubio’s parents' immigration papers. While the eligibility question is unresolved, in some eyes, the file (which the Times independently obtained) confirmed his parents were given citizenship in 1975. Rubio at the time said he did not know why his parents waited, though experts told the Times that it wasn’t uncommon for some immigrants to wait.

'The immigration dossier broke some news: It showed Rubio’s parents came to the United States in 1956, not after Fidel Castro took over, as Rubio’s ... official biography noted and he repeatedly implied when talking about his “exile” parents.'

In yesterday's Republican debate in South Carolina, Rubio similarly misrepresented himself on a number of issues.

Felix Salmon gets Aggressive Homosexual Prick of the Year Award

Rush Limbaugh is so stupid he thinks today's bad sales numbers were deliberately delayed until after the State of the Union address

The data release occurs on a regular schedule, which can be accessed here. There's no conspiracy to make Obama look better, as Limbaugh stated in the show opener today.

New York Values: Osama bin Laden can kiss my royal Irish ass, and I live in Rockaway and this is my face bitch!

FDNY firefighter Mike Moran

Here, The Concert for New York City, October 20, 2001.

Reuters/Ipsos poll indicates 25% to 28% of voters doubt Ted Cruz is eligible to be president

From the story here about the poll taken in the days leading up to last night's debate:

"A quarter of Republicans think White House hopeful Ted Cruz is disqualified to serve as U.S. president . . . Republican voters nearly mirror independents and the broader electorate in their belief that Cruz cannot hold the White House, with 27 percent of all voters and 28 percent of independents responding he should be disqualified."

Cornered like a rat, Ted Cruz last night resorted to a straw man argument to defend his presidential eligibility

From the transcript here:

"At the end of the day, the legal issue is quite straightforward, but I would note that the birther theories that Donald has been relying on -- some of the more extreme ones insist that you must not only be born on U.S. soil, but have two parents born on U.S. soil. Under that theory, not only would I be disqualified, Marco Rubio would be disqualified, Bobby Jindal would be disqualified and, interestingly enough, Donald J. Trump would be disqualified."

No one is arguing that to be eligible both parents must have been born on US soil, only that both parents must be citizens at the time of the candidate's birth in a US jurisdiction.

The extreme non-existent standard propounded by Cruz isn't necessary to exclude him, Rubio and Jindal (and Obama), only the constitutional one which defines natural born citizenship as beyond the reach of statute. Cruz' citizenship is statutory, not constitutional, and that is why he is excluded from eligibility. He acquired citizenship through the law, not through the Constitution: 

'Because Cruz's citizenship comes from the law, not the Constitution, as late as 1934, he would not have had "any conceivable claim to United States citizenship. For more than a century and a half, no statute was of assistance. Maternal citizenship afforded no benefit" -- as the Supreme Court put it in Rogers v. Bellei (1971). 

'That would make no sense if Cruz were a "natural born citizen" under the Constitution. But as the Bellei Court said: "Persons not born in the United States acquire citizenship by birth only as provided by Acts of Congress." (There's an exception for the children of ambassadors, but Cruz wasn't that.)' 

  

Trump's support averages 34.5% heading into tonight's debate, ahead by +15.2 points on average

Ann Coulter's Progress: Only constitutional illiterates confuse citizens and natural born citizens

Here:

'A child born to American parents outside of U.S. territory may be a citizen the moment he is born -- but only by "naturalization," i.e., by laws passed by Congress. If Congress has to write a law to make you a citizen, you're not "natural born." ... Mostly, the Cruz partisans confuse being born a citizen with being a "natural born citizen." This is constitutional illiteracy. "Natural born" is a legal term of art. A retired judge who plays a lot of tennis is an active judge, but not an "active judge" in legal terminology.'

She seems, however, unaware that the 1790 Naturalization Act poses less of a problem for interpretation than she thinks, seeing that it was repealed by the Act of 1795, which scuttled the 1790 terminology "natural born".

Clearly the Congress had made an error in 1790, and realizing that making those born abroad natural born conflicted with the original intent of the constitution to restrict the designation to those born to citizens on US soil, Congress fixed it.

And this nugget Coulter pulls out is quite lovely in that regard:

"The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the 'natural born' citizen is eligible to be president." -- Schneider v. Rusk (1964)

Now if only we could get everyone to connect the dots.

You can blame Nikki Haley, who responded to Trump not Obama, on Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell

Reported here:

". . . House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell picked Haley to deliver the GOP response to President Obama’s final State of the Union address."

Laurence Tribe thinks Ted Cruz is ineligible from one perspective, and buries "reputed born in the country" during the founding for a reason

Here in the Boston Globe:

'To his kind of judge, [Ted] Cruz ironically wouldn’t be eligible, because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and ’90s required that someone actually be born on US soil to be a “natural born” citizen. Even having two US parents wouldn’t suffice. And having just an American mother, as Cruz did, would have been insufficient at a time that made patrilineal descent decisive. ... This narrow definition reflected 18th-century fears of a tyrannical takeover of our nation by someone loyal to a foreign power — fears that no longer make sense.'

Oh really? They make more sense now than ever with the diffidently un-American Obama in the Oval, whom the originalist position should also have prevented but didn't precisely because liberal interpreters like Tribe have prevailed by burying truths.

Such as: Children born abroad to US diplomats and soldiers were considered at the time of the American founding "reputed born in the country". For example, Emer de Vattel, paragraphs 216ff., whom the founders used like a textbook:

"... it is not naturally the place of birth that gives rights, but extraction. ... the children born out of the country in the armies of the state, or in the house of its minister at a foreign court, are reputed born in the country."

So it's not just a simple matter of being born on US soil, otherwise every slave child ever born here would have been a natural born citizen, making that whole 14th Amendment thingy kind of beside the point. Tribe is taking only half of the originalist position and using it against Cruz, when there is another half, which should have made Obama ineligible.

Ted Cruz is not a natural born citizen only in part because he was born in Canada without military, diplomatic or some other "official" American cover, but Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen because he was born without citizen cover from both parents. Tribe wants to ignore the latter in the case of Cruz to obscure Obama's ineligibility and argue for the priority of soil against Cruz. It's the way liberals argue, by not telling the whole truth.

But blood was equally important with soil at the founding, and you might say that in the matter of presidential eligibility, the genius of the constitution was singularly expressed in the fusing of jus soli and jus sanguinis in the person elected to embody the executive power in order to protect it, and us.

Presidents should be born in the country, to (married heterosexual) citizens.

But good luck getting that through after what Obama and the Democrats have done to this country. Next stop, a test-tube president whose parents are a Chinese lesbian from Vancouver married to her kitty cat from a pet shelter in Seattle.

Ann Coulter jokes Donald Trump should deport Republican Governor Nikki Haley who stands for open borders

Story here.

Best tweet from Coulter:

"J@s@sF-ingChr@st - even GOP response to Obama's SOTU is a paean to immigrants. And GOP can't figure out why Trump is sweeping the country."

To avoid taking God's name in vain, observant Jews similarly always spell it G-d.

Trump is in first with 36% in new CBS News poll, 17 points ahead of Cruz

None of our early presidents were natural born citizens, but were grandfathered in by Article II

"Publius Huldah", here, correctly making the proper distinction between citizens, and natural born citizens who are eligible to be president:

In § 214, Vattel states that “fundamental law” may withhold from naturalized citizens some of the rights of citizens, such as holding public office. The Constitution is our “fundamental law”; and, following Vattel, Art. II, §1, cl. 5 withholds from naturalized citizens (except for our Founding Generation which was “grandfathered in”) the right to hold the office of President.

Remember! None of our early Presidents were “natural born Citizens”, even though they were all born here. They were all born as subjects of the British Crown. They became naturalized citizens with the Declaration of Independence. That is why it was necessary to provide a grandfather clause for them ["or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution"]. But after our Founding Generation was gone, their successors were required to be born as citizens of the United States - not merely born here (as were our Founders), but born as citizens.

And do not forget that the children born here of slaves did not become “citizens” by virtue of being born here. Their parents were slaves; hence (succeeding to the condition of their parents) they were born as slaves. Black people born here did not become citizens until 1868 and the ratification of the 14th Amendment.

So! Do you see? If Our Framers understood that merely being born here were sufficient to confer status as a “natural born citizen”; it would not have been necessary to grandfather in our first generation of Presidents; and all the slaves born here would have been “natural born citizens”. But they were born as non-citizen slaves, because their parents were non-citizen slaves.

Hey Levin you dummy! Citizens by statute are NOT natural born citizens!

If they were, they wouldn't need a statute making them citizens, dummkopf.

Donald Trump is a natural born citizen: His mother became a citizen four years before he was born

The Christian Science Monitor reported here last August:

'The couple had a son, Frederick, in New York City, in 1905. This was Donald Trump’s father. His birth in America, and subsequent automatic US citizenship, disproves rumors that The Donald is himself an “anchor baby” born to noncitizen US immigrants. ... In 1930, Fred Trump met a young Scot in New York on holiday, Mary MacLeod. They married in 1936. Born on the Isle of Lewis, Trump’s mother was proud of her Scottish heritage. Nevertheless, she became a US citizen on March 10, 1942.'

Rush Limbaugh continued his fascination with homosexuality today by making sure to open the show marking the death of David Bowie

He even protested that he never really got into Bowie's music.

So why mention him then?

Rush famously paid Elton John to sing for his (latest) wedding, and uses Klaus Nomi's "You don't own me" for his occasional gay update theme. Nomi was once a backup singer for a Bowie performance.

Latent homosexuality much?

Rush Limbaugh, the big boob on the right, sides with those who say Cruz is a natural born citizen

Just now at the end of the half hour.

The caller who challenged Rush did a good job right up to the end of the call when he mistakenly agreed that Cruz was not a citizen.

Of course, what he meant to say was Cruz was a citizen, just not a natural born citizen, and Rush jumped all over the guy and bulled his way through to maintain his position against the caller's.

Too bad, because the caller was right and Rush was . . . 

Some perverts are more equal than others

Trump rises to new high 34% in IBD poll, +16 ahead of Cruz

Congress corrected itself in 1795 dropping "natural born citizens" of children born abroad to citizens

"And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens."

-- Naturalization Act of 1790

"[T]he children of citizens of the United States, born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States."

-- Naturalization Act of 1795

Katyal and Clement are completely disingenuous by ignoring the correction in their discussion last March because they know full well that the Act of 1795 repealed the Act of 1790.

h/t Mario Apuzzo, here:

'The authors cite to the Naturalization Act of 1790 and ignore the fact that the Naturalization Act of 1795, with the lead of then-Rep. James Madison and with the approval of President George Washington, repealed it and specifically changed "shall be considered as natural born citizens" to "shall be considered as citizens of the United States."  This is even more a blatant omission given that they argue that the English naturalization statutes referred to persons born out of the King's dominion to British subject parents as "natural born subjects."  They fail to address this critical change made by our early Congress, critical because Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 provides that a “Citizen” of the United States was eligible to be President only if born before the adoption of the Constitution and that thereafter only a “natural born Citizen” was so eligible.'

How bad could it be if the leader of your country wasn't natural born to it?

Well, he could be a natural born Austrian, for example.

Wow, Ross Douthat joins PEGIDA, calls for Germany to close its borders, deport refugees and kick out Merkel

In The New York Times, here:

". . . [P]rudence requires . . . closing Germany’s borders to new arrivals for the time being. It means beginning an orderly deportation process for able-bodied young men. It means giving up the fond illusion that Germany’s past sins can be absolved with a reckless humanitarianism in the present. It means that Angela Merkel must go — so that her country, and the continent it bestrides, can avoid paying too high a price for her high-minded folly."

Another achievement for Obama, the worst president ever: Worst ever opening week for stocks

Story here:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average careened into the close on Friday, finishing down 169 points, or 1%, at 16346. That left it off about 6.2% for the first five trading days of the new year. That is the worst opening five days in the index’s history, eclipsing the 5.6% drop the index had in 1978.

The S&P 500 is in the same boat. It dropped 21 points, or 1.1%, on Friday, closing at 1922 and down about 6% for the week. That is the worst opening five-day stretch for the index ever, wider than the 5.3% loss in 2008.

FOX News poll kicks off 2016 with Trump ahead of Cruz by 15

Randy Barnett in WaPo completely ignores the distinction between citizens and natural born citizens in Article II

Randy Barnett here.

Instead he gives us another one of those forays into individualism for which libertarians are infamous for their obscurantism. That he had to correct his post to acknowledge state constitutions used "natural born" shows that he has hardly looked into the matter adequately:

'UPDATE: My post erroneously stated that the phrase “natural born citizen” was devised by the framers of the Constitution, when in fact it had been previously used in state constitutions after the founding of the United States.  See, for example, here. Although this does not affect the substance of my point about how the change from “subject” to “citizen” results from a shift from monarchical to popular sovereignty at the founding, I do regret the error (now corrected), which was based on my misrecollection of an article on the subject.'

Obama has been for gun confiscation since his Univ. of Chicago days

So says John R. Lott, Jr. here:

"I don't believe people should be able to own guns," Obama told Lott one day at the University of Chicago Law School. ... "Barack Obama is the most anti-gun president ever.  That claim is based not on my own interactions with him back in the 1990's but on his own public record over many years."

Republican Congress' first bill to reach the president to roll back ObamaCare and defund Planned Parenthood vetoed

From the story here:

The veto was the eighth of Obama’s presidency and the sixth since last year, when Republicans took over both chambers of Congress. ...

“The idea that Obamacare is the law of the land for good is a myth. This law will collapse under its own weight, or it will be repealed,” [Speaker Ryan] said. “We have now shown that there is a clear path to repealing Obamacare without 60 votes in the Senate. So, next year, if we’re sending this bill to a Republican president, it will get signed into law.”

The votes to attempt overriding the president's veto are expected to take place later this month and potentially coincide with the date of the annual March for Life. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) made a motion on the House floor Friday afternoon to postpone action on the veto until Jan. 26.

Mark Levin is behind the 8-ball on "natural born citizen"

Mark Levin tonight doesn't want to entertain if Ted Cruz is ineligible for the presidency because Ted's not a natural born citizen. To Levin the matter was never in question: "it is a settled constitutional and statutory matter." As far as Levin is concerned, Cruz is a natural born citizen.

Like hell.

Levin must consider that his position must mean that Article II is being superfluous when it makes a distinction between natural born citizen and citizen:

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

As John Marshall, I believe, said, none of the language of the constitution can be considered superfluous. Or as Newt Gingrich once observed, even the commas carry meaning.

The main phrase is "No Person except a natural born Citizen shall be eligible to the Office of President".

Subordinate to this is the clause "or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution". This clause was for the practical reason having to do with the start-up of the new nation. To wit: the founders knew that many of themselves would run for the presidency to guide the young American republic, and would need to, but that none of themselves were "natural born" citizens. They were citizens, as is Ted Cruz, but not "natural born". The language of Article II was specifically designed to permit them to serve as president, but not Ted Cruz or any other not naturally born citizen person for the simple reason that in the case of Ted Cruz he was not a citizen at the time of the constitution's adoption.

The founders adopted the distinction between citizen and natural born citizen because they wanted the future of the country to rest more securely in the hands of leadership which was not divided in its loyalties. The chief loyalty to be wary of at the time was that of Loyalists, those "Americans" who were not in agreement with the break with Great Britain. They were quite numerous, and constituted an ongoing impediment to the success of the revolution. The founders imagined it possible that one of these might secure the presidency, and undo what they with enormous sacrifice had achieved. Hence the language making this less likely, if not impossible. With time, the danger passed, and only individuals born to a pair of citizens could rise to the presidency.

Fast forward to today. The whole argument over citizenship now falsely puts the priority on place of birth when lineage was meant to be paramount. The discussion suffers from amnesia. John McCain was eligible for the presidency in 2008 not because he was born in a US territory but because both his parents were US citizens. That he says otherwise is immaterial. He knows as little about it as the rest. Unfortunately, Barack Obama did not meet the requirement of Article II, but because the priority was falsely placed on his place of origin, a terrible precedent has been set. Frankly, his entire presidency is illegitimate because one of his parents was not a citizen. And after almost seven years in office, he has amply proven that his loyalties lie elsewhere than with the constitution and the American republic as we've known it.

Neither does Ted Cruz meet the requirement of Article II. It is immaterial where he was born. What is material is that one of his parents wasn't a citizen at the time of his birth. He is ineligible to be president, though otherwise well qualified he may be.

Same for Marco Rubio, who was born to Cuban immigrants before they became citizens.

It is assumed that Donald Trump's mother, a Scottish immigrant, was a citizen by the time of Donald's birth in 1946, but maybe The Donald should look into it.

FBI will recommend criminal charges against Hillary et al. to Obama's Justice Dept. before the end of winter

So says R. Emmett Tyrell Jr. here.

The kinder, friendlier boltneck may get another whack at the presidency yet.

Hillary email to Jake Sullivan requested he remove "classified" from document before sending it

From the story by Keith Koffler here:

“This is gigantic,” said [Joseph] diGenova. “She caused to be removed a classified marking and then had it transmitted in an unencrypted manner. That is a felony. The removal of the classified marking is a federal crime. It is the same thing to order someone to do it as if she had done it herself.” On the June 17, 2011, email chain with senior State Department adviser Jake Sullivan, Clinton apparently asked Sullivan to change the marking on classified information so that it is no longer flagged as classified. ... The revelation also appears to put to the lie Clinton’s claim that she never handled classified information on her server.

"Not the face of Islam" strikes again in Philly, attempts to execute cop in his car, liberals call for more gun control instead of Muslim control

John F. Boltneck

From the story here:

"Sources tell Eyewitness News the suspect has given a full confession, saying he did it in the name of Islam."

Kim Jong Unperson of the Year farts H-bombs

Jimmy Kimmel thinks he's Mark Dice, finds Americans to congratulate N. Korea on H-bomb

Here.

Not convincing like Mark Dice, however, who has shown over and over again that street-walking Americans really are, well, brain-dead zombies.

Real Clear Politics' GOP poll average treads water waiting for a new one

The latest as of 1/6/16

As of 1/2/16

Democrats specialize in disarming Americans and giving nukes to our enemies

ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN 1994

EXECUTIVE ORDER LIMITING 2ND AMENDMENT 2016

The only thing Democrats know how to make great

Time to make the Pyongyang Patty Melt for lunch

There's the executive's action, and then there's ours

Despite the hype, the current El Nino hasn't matched 1997-98

AP Obama reports here:

"[I]nitial figures for October-November-December match the same time period in 1997 for the strongest El Nino."

Well, so what?

The current El Nino took 9 consecutive periods to get to a 2.3 in OND whereas the 1997-98 episode took 7 periods. More importantly, the latter averaged 1.6 for the whole series up to that point while the current El Nino is averaging a less strong 1.3 so far.

What really counts is consecutive periods measuring 2.0 or above. There were 5 in 1997-98 but only 2 so far in the current El Nino.

The headline "METEOROLOGISTS: 'DARTH NINO' TIES RECORD FOR STRONGEST SEEN" is total bullshit.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch appears to have gained a lot of weight in the last year

January 2015

January 2016

Donald Trump gets 8,000 after dinner in liberal Massachusetts yesterday, Bill Clinton only 700 in New Hampshire before lunch

USA Today called Bill Clinton's crowd a capacity crowd "of about 700".

WaPo said Trump's venue was "filled to capacity or beyond".

It's cold, it's Monday night, it's just after New Year, and it's in liberal Massachusetts but Trump fills a stadium

Megyn Kelly pretends she would be on the cover of Vanity Fair, and on camera at FOX, if she looked like this

 “But every so often, as all [women] know, you have to stop and slap somebody around a little bit who doesn’t understand that we are actually equals and not second-class citizens.”

Sure Megyn.

Story here. 

Pittsburgh's Salena Zito thinks shouting "Enough" is a right-wing racist mob phenomenon only because Hillary's not good at it

Inciting her own racist mob to little effect

In "Let Us Not Be Consumed by the Mob" under a nice big picture of Donald Trump:

'Every political movement has a tipping point. It goes too far, or it loses its original purpose — or it becomes so self-enamored, under the influence of anger and mob rule, that ugliness shades all the good of its original intent. Such is true of the populism that peaked this summer in America. Years of incompetency and a tin ear at the White House, along with a Republican-controlled Congress accused of not accomplishing much, drove people to figuratively or literally shout, “Enough is enough!” ... With Donald Trump's emergence, and with a chorus of talk-radio hosts suddenly behind him, the mob-rule crowd deems everyone who was ever elected to office (with the exception of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas) to be a Republican-in-name-only or part of a dark establishment cult intent on crushing the souls of average white voters. ... The mob-rule crowd gnaws on any piece of political red meat thrown out as truth, never checking to see what kind of flesh it just consumed. None of this represents true conservatism. All of it is pure populism, and it is radically contaminating conservatism's values.'

Larry Kudlow eyes Donald Trump's coattails

From the story here:

'Economist and political pundit Larry Kudlow says he is strongly considering challenging Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) for his Senate seat in 2016. ... Kudlow says he disagrees with Blumenthal on a variety of issues, ranging from the Iran nuclear agreement to the corporate tax rate. “Mr. Blumenthal was wrong on signing the Iran deal. He was wrong on pushing for the U.N. to bring Syrian hostages into the United States,” he said. “And . . . he’s a tax-and-spender. He was in Connecticut, and he’s a tax-and-spender in Washington at a time, frankly, with the economy at two percent [growth] or less, we ought to have a 15 percent corporate tax, not a 40 percent.”'

Kudlow has previously allied himself with Trump without saying so in so many words by coming out against the Iran deal and against letting in the refugee surge, but explicitly has come out in support of Trump's plan to slash the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent. Trump has repeatedly emphasized all three issues mentioned by Kudlow this weekend.

Kudlow clearly sees these as coattail issues on which he could succeed in a Connecticut US Senate run, emphasizing US and Israeli security after a period of increased terrorism as well as a pro-growth supply-side tax policy reminiscent of the era of Ronald Reagan as an answer to the moribund economy's ills.

It works both ways, Larry. Trump as president will need support within the Congress if he hopes to get passed anything he stands for as a candidate.

Tom Rogan on McLaughlin group illustrates how an English accent and three degrees from London can't mask basic ignorance

"Obsession with minutae" at 8:30 and "him in solidarity with I" at 12:50.

Here.

Grand Rapids MI December 2015 temperature anomaly was a staggering +9.9 degrees F

The December 2015 temperature anomaly for Grand Rapids, Michigan, was a staggering +9.9 degrees F, almost twice the size of the November anomaly of +5.4 degrees F.

Heading into December, the cumulative anomaly for 2015 through November stood at -11.7 degrees F, so thanks to El Nino the massive negative anomaly for 2015 is all but wiped out, erasing 92% of the 22.6 degrees of negative temperature anomaly in just four months.

The year 2015 thus finishes with a total anomaly of -1.8 degrees F. That's basically an undetectable .0049315 degrees F below normal on your average day in 2015.

Precipitation in December, unsurprisingly, was 33% above normal while snowfall was just 2.5 inches, 84% below normal. Mean snowfall for December going back to the beginning of the record is 15.7 inches. 

Hillary Clinton admits to one vodka drinking competition

"I haven't been in many of them, but . . .."

Video here.

Yeah, sure.