Sunday, December 4, 2016

It's disturbing that prospective SECDEF Mattis says our hands are tied by the Iran deal when it's not a treaty

Even worse that he wants to predicate US action on prior European action. What is "European" action? And when have they EVER acted without US leadership?

And worse still that the land force part of the nuclear triad is negotiable. He's a M.A.D. dog all right.

Whatever happened to peace through strength?

Mattis, quoted here:

Mattis has voiced deep scepticism about Iran’s motives and warned that the US and its allies would have to remain vigilant for violations. But in April he argued against walking away from the nuclear deal, as Trump has threatened to do. 

“One point I want to make is there’s no going back,” Mattis said at an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Absent a real violation – I mean, a clear and present violation that was enough to stimulate the Europeans to action as well – I don’t think that we can.”

Were the US to renege on its agreement, Mattis said, “I believe we would be alone if we did, and unilateral economic sanctions from us would not have anywhere near the impact of an allied approach to this.”

November 2016 climate summary for Grand Rapids, Michigan

November 2016 climate summary for Grand Rapids, Michigan


Average temperature was 45.4 degrees F. Normal is 39.1. The month ranked 4th warmest November since 1892. The YTD average temperature was 53.4, the 4th warmest YTD average among the previous four warmest full years on record. The normal YTD average temperature is 50. The YTD average temperature in the hottest full year on record in 2012 was 54.4, in 1921 was 54.2, in 1931 was 53.7, in 2016 was 53.4 and in 1998 was 53.2 (the last three were all El Nino episodes).

The lowest temperature recorded this November was 21. The normal lowest temperature is 17. The highest temperature this November was 73. The normal highest temperature is 66.

November 2016 saw 3.24 inches of precipitation. Normal is 2.84. YTD precipitation is 43.33 inches, normal YTD is 31.94. The wettest full year on record was 2008 with 48.80 inches. The driest full year was 1930 with just 20.92.

Snowfall measured 0.8 inches. Normal for November is 6.4 inches. The seasonal total is 0.8 inches, and the normal seasonal total is 6.8. Normal seasonal snowfall is 66.7 inches. The snowiest season on record was in 1951-52 with 132 inches of snow. 1905-06 was the least snowy with 20.

There was no change to Cooling Degree Days in November. YTD there were 936 CDD, the 15th warmest on record so far. Normal CDD is 694.

Heating Degree Days totaled 44 in September, 324 in October and 580 in November for a total of 948 for the season so far. Normal HDD seasonally is as follows: July, 9, August, 19, September, 137, October, 427 and November, 770 for a seasonal normal to date of 1362. Normal for a full season is 6713 HDD. The coldest winter season by HDD was in 1903-04 with 7712. The warmest was in 2011-12 with just 5253.

Actual lower HDD presently have been indicative of the after effects of warmer conditions prevailing since the end of the El Nino this summer. The Very Strong El Nino of 2015-16, averaging 1.43 on the index and 15 months long, was longer but weaker than the 1997-98 episode, which averaged 1.56 on the index and was 13 months long. The 1982-83 VSE averaged 1.3 on the index and was 15 months long.

The Oceanic Nino Index value for the August-September-October measuring period was -0.7, the second consecutive measurement at -0.5 or lower. Five such values consecutively would indicate the onset of a La Nina, which could produce wetter conditions in the US High Plains and Upper Midwest and lots of snow in Canada.

No thanks. Been pretty wet in these parts already, Pilgrim.



Saturday, December 3, 2016

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.

The Chicago Tribune makes the case for Betsy DeVos, only alludes to hot-button "common core"


DeVos "has a lot of influence in the reform community," Peter Cunningham, a former Obama administration education official and now executive director of the reform-minded nonprofit Education Post, tells us. "She is unequivocally a champion for choice. The question is whether she is a champion for quality."

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:


Friday, December 2, 2016

America: Where Mark Levin is on the radio discussing Sarah Palin's misgivings about Trump's crony capitalism . . .

. . . and the feed cuts off to a basketball game.

Even fascism has to pay the bills.

Kellogg's is financing the communist Black Lives Matter movement to the tune of almost $1 million

See for yourself, here, at the Foundation website.

To protest, you could send your boxes of Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, Special K, Rice Krispies and Froot Loops to Kellogg Co. headquarters at:

2 Hamblin Avenue
Battle Creek, MI 49017
(269) 961-2000.

And switch to General Mills' Cheerios. Oats are better for you anyway.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Trump's Carrier intervention isn't just chilling, it's a crock of corporate welfare and perhaps explicit fascism

Jimmy Pethokoukis, on whom I have been very hard in the past, is certainly right about this one, calling the implicit intimidation in this affair "chilling", here.

But it's a lot more than chilling, it's at the very least more of the same cooperation between government and industry we have seen for decades but which used to go by the name of fascism, except it's more explicit than we're used to coming as it does from someone like Donald Trump, perhaps veering off now into explicit top-down federal intervention into business decisions.  

"We certainly don't want to take as our guide to creating jobs special tax breaks for a company that earned $7.5 billion in profits last year, got $6 billion in defense contracts, paid its top five executives $50 million, in order to preserve 1,000 out of 2,100 jobs," said [Robert] Shapiro, [former undersecretary of commerce]. "It's essentially a transfer from the taxpayers of Indiana, who are providing these tax breaks, to the shareholders of United Technology plus those 1,000 workers. That's really not a model for creating jobs across America," he added.


If #NeverTrump Bill Kristol endorsed General Mattis for a 3rd party run in April, I'm against him as Trump's pick for Defense

Bill Kristol, here:

Jim Mattis happens to be a social liberal. He's more liberal than I am. He's very concerned about the debt. He's a strong national security hawk. Why wouldn't someone like him... 

Mattis is also a conventional liberal in that he subscribes to a two-state solution for Israel, just like George Bush and John Kerry.

Duncan Lloyd, Assistant city solicitor in Philly, caught on camera with accomplice vandalizing new grocery with "F*ck Trump"

The guy's still on the payroll at $63,207 per year.

No word on how many other incidents he's responsible for.

From the story here:

Since Election Day, pro- and anti-Trump graffiti have been reported throughout the city. In early November, spray-painted swastikas, racist graffiti, and references to President-elect Donald Trump and Nazi Germany appeared in South Philadelphia. Anti-Trump graffiti have been reported on bus shelters and on the exterior wall of City Hall, where "Not My President" was spray-painted and removed Nov. 12.

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


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!

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

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

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. 

Did I mention 5.6 million Obama voters in 39 states didn't vote for Hillary?

Yes, yes, I did mention it.

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? 

Democrat baseball

Marlins win 2003 World Series 4-2, but Yankees score four more runs overall so they sue to overturn the result.

If the popular vote counted in the World Series, the New York Yankees would have won it in 2003 instead of the Marlins

The Florida Marlins *won the 2003 World Series 4-2, but scored only 17 total runs vs. the 21 scored by the Yankees.

*Game One: Marlins 3-Yankees 2
Game Two: Marlins 1-Yankees 6
Game Three: Marlins 1-Yankees 6
*Game Four: Marlins 4-Yankees 3
*Game Five: Marlins 6-Yankees 4
*Game Six: Marlins 2-Yankees 0

Call it major league baseball's Electoral College at work. What counts is games (states) won, not the most runs (popular votes).

Mika Brzezinski calls Elizabeth Warren's anger shrill, unmeasured and unhinged

Hm. It's almost as if Elizabeth Warren is on the warpath or something. Imagine that.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

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


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

What a miserable cretin.


People found Hillary so revolting in 2016 she underperformed Obama 2008 in 39 states

Count 'em.

Hillary underperformed Obama in:

NY by 655,000 votes
MI by 604,000
OH by 549,000
MO by 387,000
PA by 381,000
IL by 336,000
IN by 335,000
WI by 295,000
TN by 218,000
MN by 206,000
IA by 175,000
KY by 123,000
WV by 115,000
CT by 101,000
KS by 100,000
AL by 87,000
NM by 87,000
OK by 82,000
NJ by 78,000
MS by 71,000
ME by 70,000
HI by 59,000
MT by 54,000
SD by 54,000
NE by 50,000
ND by 47,000
ID by 46,000
RI by 44,000
AR by 42,000
VT by 40,000
NH by 36,000
WY by 27,000
DE by 19,000
UT by 17,000
OR by 11,000
WA by 10,000
AK by 8,000
SC by 7,000
LA by 3,000

That's 5.6 million former Democrat votes alienated from Hillary Clinton in 2016 in 39 states, 60% of which came from the 8 Great Lakes states (3.361 million), according to the latest numbers this morning, three weeks after Election 2016.

Trump underperformed John McCain in 13 states and DC by 1.1 million votes, 63% of which were in California:

In CA by 727,000 votes
NY by 113,000
UT by 81,000
KS by 44,000
AK by 31,000
NM by 27,000
MA by 26,000
MS by 25,000
MD by 25,000
NJ by 18,000
OK by 11,000
WA by 9,000
VT by 4,000
DC by 4,000





Monday, November 28, 2016

The New Yorker's Amy Davidson would like to blame Hillary's loss in Michigan on Jill Stein, not on the 604,000 former Obama voters who didn't show up for her

These people cannot face how horrible Hillary Clinton's candidacy seemed to Democrats, horrible enough to keep them away from the polls. But Jill Stein received 51,000 votes in Michigan. Yeah, let's blame her. Democrats ... good! Third parties ... bad! 


(It is worth noting that Jill Stein won enough votes in Michigan and Wisconsin to account for Clinton’s losses there.)

Not-a-conservative Rod Dreher is wrong, wrong, wrong, but also right in the same paragraph

Here, at once unable to appreciate how the Electoral College just saved the Republic, but zeroed in like a laser on the fact that Hillary was such a horrible candidate that she was beaten by a carnival barker:

I find the insistence of many liberals now that Clinton won the popular vote to be annoying. Yeah, she did, and maybe the Electoral College needs scrapping, I dunno. The much more important point is that Hillary Clinton, the very embodiment of Establishment Washington, lost the presidency to Donald Trump. Donald Trump! That’s a message that shakes both the Democratic Party and the establishment of the Republican Party to their cores. Whether you like Trump or not, you have to admit that his was a breathtaking achievement.

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

Attorney General
SBA
Agriculture
State
Treasury

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Hillary joins Green Party recount effort to make sure it's fair


The Great Lakes states found Hillary Clinton revolting: She underperformed Obama 2008 by 3.389 million votes in all eight of them

MN: 206,000
WI: 295,000
IL: 336,000
IN: 337,000
MI: 604,000
OH: 549,000
PA: 407,000
NY: 655,000

Trump outperformed McCain 2008 in every one of them except NY where he underperformed by 113,000 votes. Hillary beat Trump in MN by just 45,000 votes, in IL by 943,000 votes, and in NY by 1.51 million votes.

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.


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.

Fidel Castro is finally dead: In 1987 the low estimate of the number of his own people he butchered was 35,000

You'll have to look elsewhere than The New York Times' fawning obituary for that information. Raul still lives, unfortunately, and then there are the offspring, who probably ought to start thinking about their escape plans.

At this point WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES A RECOUNT MAKE: Hillary already conceded on November 9th

From the transcript here:

"Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans. This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for. And I'm sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country."

Pest Jill Stein is getting a recount in Wisconsin, where she received 31,016 votes out of 2,977,295 cast.

I have a daydream: Trump appoints Romney to . . .

. . . reduce the cabinet from 15 to 5.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Disgusting WaPo story about coverup of Stalin purges runs the most infamous photo involving Soviet censorship but never mentions it

As if it was all Yezhov's fault and not Stalin's.

From the photo caption here:

From left to right: Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov pose at the shore of the the Moscow-Volga Canal in 1937. Yezhov was the senior figure in the Soviet secret police under Stalin during the period of the Great Purge. (AFP/AFP/Getty Images)

Nikolai Yezhov at the far right in the photo was at the center of the purges. He was their intellectual author and the supervisor of the secret police under Stalin, who arrested and executed 700,000 Russians. He was subsequently infamously censored out of this photo by the Soviet propaganda ministry after he himself was purged by Stalin.

But WaPo runs the original photo in a story about the cover up and never tells you that.

Yezhov . . . . baaaaaaaad.

Stalin . . . . . . goooooood.




. . . good and hard

Gasoline prices on Thanksgiving Day 2016 return to what they were this day in 2005


Wednesday, November 23, 2016

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.


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. 

Betsy DeVos saying she's now against Common Core is like Hillary saying she's now against TPP

No one believes them.

Total flippers!

Craig Shirley: Trump considering Romney for ANYTHING can only be bad for conservatism


Trump told supporters over and over he was against Common Core, NYT says he doesn't understand it


COMMON CORE In an interview with Fox News in October last year, Mr. Trump said: “I may cut Department of Education. I believe Common Core is a very bad thing.” The statement, though, may have reflected a bit of a misunderstandingCommon Core standards, an initiative to standardize educational requirements throughout the nation, were adopted by states. Under a recently enacted law, the federal government is prohibited from telling states what educational standards to adopt. So the Department of Education has no authority over Common Core anyway.

Huckabee is right: Romney is a toxic choice unless he publicly apologizes for savaging Trump

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.

Rush Limbaugh just called liberals mentally ill

Hm. Where have I heard that before?

Liberals have finally figured out how close the vote was here in the Great Lakes States, want Hillary to ask for recount

Suddenly Democrats say the election was rigged!

I love the part of the story that claims Hillary won the precincts using paper ballots but not the machine precincts. 

As everyone knows, stuffing ballot boxes with paper ballots is the oldest Democrat trick in the book, from Texas to Illinois.


Three computer scientists are asking the Hillary Clinton campaign to ask for a recount in three states Donald Trump won, which may change the outcome of this year's presidential election.

What 58 days also means

The time Al Sharpton has left to get right with the IRS before the new sheriff takes over.

Fake news alert

Hands Up! Don't Shoot!

Today's funny little countdown to inauguration day poem, from Ann Coulter


Tuesday, November 22, 2016

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.

WaPo's The Daily 202 reports Democrat liberals, just like Kevin Williamson of National Review, think Ohio's working class whites are dinosaurs

I wonder when liberals are going to figure out John McCain in 2008 outperformed Hillary in 2016 by 360,000 votes in Ohio (Trump outperformed her by 455,000).

Here in "Rust Belt Dems broke for Trump because they thought Clinton cared more about bathrooms than jobs":

-- Is the Mahoning Valley ever coming back to the Democratic Party? Will Ohio be a swing state in 2020? These are questions many Democrats in D.C. are pondering. Both before and since the election, scores of liberals have complained about how much attention the 202 has given to the Rust Belt; they argue privately that these blue-collar, non-college-educated, white-working-class Democrats are dinosaurs. The future of the party, they think, lies in the Sunbelt, and they think Trump’s win has only accelerated this realignment.

Two weeks after Election 2016 9% of the vote is still out in the state of Washington

That mail-in process they use is really great, isn't it? Think if the whole country were that slow.

And what's up with Utah? 6% still out there.

And 1% out each in Illinois, New Jersey and Oregon.

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.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

And just a reminder: Wikileaks told us "journalist" Jessica Let's Shame 'em Valenti "worked with" the Hillary Clinton campaign against Bernie Sanders, using her Guardian column so there'd be no "fingerprints"

Because Bernie had the temerity to call Planned Parenthood part of the establishment, an offense against the holy sacrament of abortion.

Wikileaks here and here and Valenti here (the column she was "writing . . . as we speak").

Sha sha sha shame, but it is The Grauniad.

Jessica Valenti, feminazi wife of Talking Points Memo publisher, has her work cut out for her shaming Trump voters

. . . Oh well, goodbye
One down in Mike Pence, only 61,898,583 to go, as of this morning.

Story here.

Weekday newspaper print circulation continues to tank in New York

Seen here:

The New York Daily News: 207,680

The New York Post: 230,634

The New York Times: 551,579.


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

Heh heh here last February.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

I got your climate change right here in Grand Rapids, fella

Yesterday at 1453 hours we hit the high for the day at 70 degrees F.

Today at 1453 hours it was 33, less than half that.

And we had our first snow of the season, high winds and an 18-hr power outage.





1000 libertarians + one room = 499,500 disagreements (I think), aka WAR!

The irony.

The irony.


The Democrats use super-delegates but think the Electoral College is unfair

Seen here.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Trump interviews with the likes of Cruz and Romney are designed to do just one thing

Keep him in the headlines.

You'd think they'd catch on by now.

But no, this is serious, right?

DNI James Clapper the Lying Bastard resigns

This guy paved the way in 2013 for Hillary's lying to Congress with impunity in 2015.

The bastard should be keelhauled on the USS Enterprise, put back into service specially for the purpose.

Story here.

USS Enterprise: longest ship in the US Navy

Once again Rush Limbaugh is full of it about the late, great recession

Here's Rush on November 15th:

In the first place, this so-called recession, the worst since the Great Depression 2008, I don't care, folks, it wasn't! ... Democrats have lived off of this economic collapse narrative for eight years now, and it's horse hockey. The truth of it is that there hasn't been a recovery from it. ... Hell, the recession that Reagan inherited in 1980 dwarfs this one. I mean the thing that Reagan inherited when he became president in 1980, this doesn't even get close to touching it, how bad it was. ... This has really been a sore spot for me for all these eight years, is how supposedly bad that was and how Obama single-handedly rescued us from it, and it was all the Republicans' doing, and it all happened because of the Iraq war. ... We haven't replaced these jobs that were lost. They keep talking about the employment rate being way down, record lows, what a crock.

Rush doesn't remember the 1980s very well, when he was in his 30s. Without a college education and a long enough personal history to compare things to while experiencing the hard knocks of life trying to get his radio career going, those years understandably seemed worse to him than they really were. Honest people everywhere recognize it was that way for them, too. Unfortunately Rush still doesn't seem to be able to measure the 1980s properly let alone put them in their proper perspective economically.

Take first time claims for unemployment. Reagan's weekly average 1981-1988 was 406,000. Obama's  weekly average 2009-2016 (still unfinished) is 373,000, 8% less severe overall. But the averages around each recession peak are much closer in severity. First time claims 1981-1983 averaged 491,000 weekly, while claims 2009-2011 averaged 477,000 weekly, the latter only 2.85% less severe overall. Peak claims in 1982 averaged 30.1 million, in 2009 only 2% lower at 29.46 million.

While the Obama jobs recession was not quite as severe in terms of the persistence of high first time claims for unemployment, full-time jobs took forever to recover under Obama. Under Reagan they had bounced back almost immediately. In 1981 the pre-recession peak in full-time averaged 83.243 million. By 1984 that level had been recovered with 86.544 million full-time jobs on average. Three years, that's it. In 2007, by contrast, the pre-recession peak in full-time averaged 121.091 million, but it took EIGHT YEARS to recover that level. Full-time finally averaged 121.492 million in 2015. That's why it hasn't felt like things are looking up until this year, in 2016.

If you were an adult in the 1980s, you probably remember the Savings and Loan crisis from 1986-1995, but you probably don't think of the Reagan era as a period of widespread bank failures comparable with what we recently experienced in the Great Recession, and you would be right. Losses from such failures as estimated by the FDIC for the period 1981-1988 total $8.9 billion. But for the period 2009-2016 estimated losses from bank failures soared to $57.3 billion, 544% higher. Even adjusted for inflation the recent losses were well in excess of 200% higher than in the 1980s. 

Or take housing. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index fell at most about 14% from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s through the Reagan recessions. I remember my dad was pretty unhappy about it because he retired in 1980 and was sitting in a house he hoped to sell for more money one day, but the value kept declining. But that was nothing compared to what happened between 2006 and 2012 when the index tanked over 36%. The foreclosure rate averaged just 0.5% in 1980-81, but soared to 3.8% in 2008-09, an increase of over 600% in the rate. Many millions of people lost homes in the Great Recession, but they are nameless and faceless to Rush Limbaugh because to him things were much worse in the 1980s. But not in reality. I saw homes in foreclosure in my own middle class neighborhood in 2007 that I never saw back in 1980 in my dad's hometown.

Perhaps the best way to visualize how much worse the most recent recession was compared with the early 1980s is to examine quarterly current dollar GDP. You had one tiny blip in quarterly current dollar GDP between December 1981 and March 1982 when it declined all of $0.01 trillion, 0.3% that's it. The truth is GDP recovered the next quarter ending June 1982 and never looked back.

Fast forward to 2007-09. There were four quarterly declines: A decline of $0.02 trillion between 12/31/07 and 3/31/08; a decline of $0.29 trillion from 9/30/08 to 12/31/08; a decline of $0.17 trillion from 12/31/08 to 3/31/09; and a decline of $0.04 trillion from 3/31/09 to 6/30/09. The previous peak level in quarterly current dollar GDP wasn't recovered until a year later, in June 2010. It took almost two years, not one quarter as in 1982. All told GDP fell from peak to trough by $0.5 trillion or 3.37%. 

The recession of 1982 was child's play compared with 2007-2009. Rush just can't see it because he was already rich during the Great Recession.

Your guiding light in this time of tumult he is not.   

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

You'll know we're in trouble when . . .

. . . everyone suddenly starts speaking well of Donald Trump.

A sayings snack from Stephen Bannon that makes sense

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

Figures one week on show almost 300,000 Wisconsinites in 2016 withheld their vote from Hillary, allowing Trump to eek out a victory by 25,000

Clinton polled 1.382 million in 2016 vs. 1.677 million for Obama in 2008, a deficit of 295,000 votes. The Hillary deficit from Obama 2012 was 238,000 votes.

Overall turnout in 2016 was flat at 2.98 million, the same as in 2008. Turnout had climbed in 2012 to 3.07 million.

Turnout for Trump 2016 is currently 1.40703 million vs. 1.40797 million for Romney in 2012, indicating no surge in support for Republicans.

Democrats elected Trump in Wisconsin in 2016.

Election 2016 turnout update in the 14 largest states by population compared to 2008, one week later: Hillary underperforms Obama by 1.654 million votes in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania

CA: -2.9 million
TX: +0.8m (Hillary outperformed Obama 2008 by 340,000 votes but still lost to Trump)
FL: +1.1m (Hillary outperformed Obama 2008 by 219,000 votes but still lost to Trump)
NY: -0.5m
IL: flat
PA: +0.02m/flat (Hillary fails to get 424,000 Obama voters from 2008)
OH: -0.34m (Hillary fails to get 623,000 Obama voters from 2008)
GA: +0.2m Hillary outperformed Obama 2008 by 33,000 votes but still lost to Trump)
NC: +0.4m (Hillary outperformed Obama 2008 by 21,000 votes but still lost to Trump)
MI: -0.22m (Hillary fails to get 607,000 Obama voters from 2008)
NJ: -0.1m
VA: +0.3m
WA: -0.1m
AZ: +0.2m (Hillary outperformed Obama 2008 by 89,000 votes but still lost to Trump)

Total turnout down in six states: 4.16 million
Total turnout up in seven states: 3.02 million
Turnout net down: 1.14 million

Hillary states: turnout down 3.3 million
Trump states: turnout up 2.16 million

Total Hillary outperform Obama, still loses in five states:   702,000 votes
Total Hillary underperform Obama, loses in three states: 1,654,000 votes 
   

7 years later IRS tells Albuquerque Tea Party FU after federal judge orders action

The story is here.

Friday, January 20, 2017 can't come soon enough.

With a 2-seat margin in the US Senate, Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions should stay where they are and not join the Trump administration

There'll be time to promote them later.

Trump needs Sessions to carry the water on immigration, and Cruz needs to prove himself to us on the issue.

Trump also needs Cruz to keep the Freedom Caucus in line in Congress to get the agenda passed.

If Cruz loses in Texas in 2018, he can always be rewarded with a post as a consolation prize. 

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. 

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

George W Bush kept his yap shut during the entire Obama regime, but feels free to open it now . . .

. . . to criticize Trump.

He said anger shouldn't drive policy, or something, whatever that's supposed to mean.

When there's government of the people, by the people and for the people, you get anger once in a while.

Otherwise you just get failed presidents like George Bush and Barack Obama.

STFU, George.

I'm so old, everytime I see "BLM" I have to remind myself it stands for Black Lives Matter . . .

. . . not Bureau of Land Management.


Revulsion Election update, one week after the election: Hillary missing 7.6 million Obama voters from 2008, Trump on the verge of outperforming Romney

Turnout

2016: 130.0 million
2012: 129.2 million
2008: 131.5 million

Population has increased about 20 million over the period.



Popular Vote

Democrat

2016: 61.9 million
2012: 65.9 million
2008: 69.5 million

Republican

2016: 60.9 million
2012: 60.9 million
2008: 60.0 million

Trump has now matched Romney's popular vote in 2012 and bested McCain by about 1 million votes.

Hillary now undershoots Obama 2008 by 7.6 million votes and Obama 2012 by 4.0 million votes.

Vote totals remain significantly incomplete in Washington state (12% out) and Utah (11% out).

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

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

Self-hating liberal elitist appalled how little rural America travels to experience other cultures . . . on America's coasts

The guy's a boob . . . from Ohio:

"When you are in the white bubble, you just don’t know it."

The guy's so ignorant he doesn't even know that Americans are the second most traveled people IN THE WORLD, right behind #1 Finland. And they actually do most of their traveling within the country, contrary to the thesis.

Besides, if Americans want to visit a third world hellhole, they already know they don't have to travel abroad. They can just head over to Chicago's Chatham neighborhood, or West Englewood.

Just bring a gun.