Ann Coulter repeating stupid: 95 million can't find work

39 million retired, 20 million homemakers, 17 million in college, 8 million in high school, 3 million in grad school . . ..

The Trump cabinet and administration so far as rated by Numbers USA

Jeff Sessions: A+

Mike Pompeo: B+

Ryan Zinke: B-

Rick Perry: C

Tom Price: C

Whew, Cathy McMorris Rodgers passed over for Interior Secretary, Rep. Ryan Zinke appointed instead

Story here.

Numbers USA gives Zinke a B- on immigration issues, which is certainly an improvement over Rodgers, who gets an F.

Democrat Football: Denver actually beat Kansas City because the Broncos had more total yards

Democrats' way of trying to rig Election 2016: 37% of all Detroit precincts showed more ballots as counted by machines than voters as counted by poll workers

The Detroit News reported here:

Of the data available, though, machines tallied at least 388 more ballots, according to a Detroit News analysis of the records. That’s 0.16 percent of the 248,000 ballots cast in the city that voted for Clinton 95 percent to 3 percent over Trump. ... The problems were the worst in Detroit, where discrepancies meant officials couldn’t recount votes in 392 precincts, or nearly 60 percent. And two-thirds of those precincts had too many votes. “There’s always going to be small problems to some degree, but we didn’t expect the degree of problem we saw in Detroit. This isn’t normal,” said Krista Haroutunian, chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers.

Trump's pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was the Boy Scout who paved the way for gay boys to join

Because he thought is was in the best interests of those boys.

From the story here:

Despite increasing pressure from gay rights advocates, Exxon has refused to create a specific policy barring discrimination against gay employees, as many Fortune 500 companies have done. Nonetheless, Tillerson was instrumental in lobbying the Scouts’ board to accept openly gay youths, said John Hamre, president of the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, of which Tillerson is a board member.

“I can’t get into the intimacy of these conversations. But he agonized over this. He prayed on it, and ultimately he came to the conclusion the only thing that can guide him here is what’s best for the young boys,” he said. “I think he became a key leader in helping the group come to a consensus.”

After two decades in the US House Philly's Chaka Fattah to follow it up with one in the Big House

And with his co-conspirators pay over $600,000 in restitution to agencies they defrauded.

Story here.

Rick Perry to head Energy Department, one of three he wanted to eliminate in 2012 bid but couldn't remember the name of

Just remember "two" Rick

Which is just fine, since all he has to remember now is "gas and oil".

Trump shows little imagination floating Carly "That Face" Fiorina for DNI

When this administration comes a cropper in a few years, who will want to serve in it?

Obama populated his administration with Clinton retreads because there was no there there in Barack Obama. The guy didn't have a clue . . .

. . . and neither does Trump.

This looks silly.

Just another day at the office: Mitch McConnell lets Donald Trump know what's what

Don't get into a pissing match with the Senate Majority Leader, if you know what's good for you.

Quoted here:

“I think this level of national debt is dangerous and unacceptable,” McConnell said, adding he hopes Congress doesn’t lose sight of that when it acts next year. “My preference on tax reform is that it be revenue neutral,” he said.

All day on the radio the fake news was Hillary was up 25 votes in the Wisconsin recount

Clinton gains votes in Wisconsin!

Trouble is, Trump gained 844, Hillary 713! Trump net gain 131!

New York Times hires self-described Democrat hack Glenn Thrush to cover White House

Now why would I pay for the New York Times to read Glenn Thrush's work for the Democrat Party when I can get it for free by reading Wikileaks?

Story here.

Personally, I think Rex Nutting's a commie, but he couldn't be more right about the fake news of "not in the labor force"

Rex Nutting is right. Our side has been trafficking in this piece of fake news for years, a factoid originating with Zero Hedge and endlessly repeated by the Goodyear blimp of gasbags Rush Limbaugh, touching all and sundry from Donald Trump on down to little known radio hosts on low power stations in Michigan like Steve Gruber in Lansing. Correct it try though you may, every attempt to stop it fails. It's embarrassing, not in the least because it exposes the endemic inability to think critically and the proclivity to believe in authorities which share your political opinions.

For all the good it will do, Rex Nutting goes once more unto the breach, here, with excellent links and a good graph, too:

There are a lot of “fake statistics” bandied about in service of some ideology or another, but I’d like to focus on just one example in which I have expertise from my work covering the monthly employment report over the past 20 years: The idea that there are 95 million Americans who are out of work but not counted as unemployed.

This statistic pervades the conservative discourse about our economy (or at least until Jan. 20). The implication of this statistic is that the government and media are lying to us. Instead of an economy that’s slowly improving as President Barack Obama has been telling us, our economy is actually a catastrophic failure, unable to provide any work for nearly 100 million people. ...

This is the perfect fake statistic, because it’s absolutely true. And completely meaningless.

Bring back waterboarding, Mad Dog Mattis can go have his beer and a cigarette

James E. Mitchell, here:

It is understandable that Gen. Mattis would say he never found waterboarding useful, because no one in the military has been authorized to waterboard a detainee. Thousands of U.S. military personnel have been waterboarded as part of their training, though the services eventually abandoned the practice after finding it too effective in getting even the most hardened warrior to reveal critical information.

During the war on terror, the CIA alone had been authorized to use the technique. I personally waterboarded the only three terrorists subjected to the tactic by the CIA. I also waterboarded two U.S. government lawyers, at their request, when they were trying to decide for themselves whether the practice was “torture.” They determined it was not.

Math scores under Common Core in 2015 have fallen below the 2012 average

From the story here:

In math American teens rank 20 points lower than the international average—and 12 points lower than their own 2012 average. ... The trouble is that the standards, [Jon] Star [of Harvard] said, were designed with elementary and middle school students in mind: "It's not surprising that some of these interventions have had minimal to no effect in high school—because that's not really who they were intending to effect."

Trump admitted in Grand Rapids Thank You Rally on Friday that low turnout [for Hillary] helped him win

Trump, quoted here:

"The African American community was great to us," Trump said. "They came through bigly." ... "If they had any doubt, they didn't vote," Trump said. "And that was almost as good. Because a bunch of people didn't show up, because they felt good about me." ... But with lower voter turnout in many urban areas, where there are more concentrated populations of African Americans, and high turnout in rural areas, the numbers would tend to support his claim.

The Obamacare failure: 10 million buy plans on exchanges, 9 million buy off-exchange

Sally Pipes, here:

These off-exchange plans were never expected to be popular, especially compared to the government's marketplaces. As recently as 2013, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting that 24 million Americans would buy insurance through ObamaCare's exchanges by 2016. The CBO didn't even bother to predict enrollment figures for off-exchange plans.

Those projections missed the mark. Last year, off-exchange enrollment — 9 million — was within 1 million of that inside the exchanges. Some 2.5 million people have purchased off-exchange coverage even though they would've qualified for income-based subsidies through the exchanges. Almost half this group may also be eligible for additional federal subsidies aimed at reducing out-of-pocket costs for low-income individuals.

Congress has abdicated its spending oversight responsibilities for 20 years, and just did so again

From the story here:

Both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) have repeatedly promised a return to regular order instead of relying on take-it-or-leave-it omnibus bills and short-term CRs to fund the federal government. However, they have not kept that promise. On Thursday, the House passed a $1.1 trillion short-term CR (HR 2028) to keep the federal government operating until April 28, 2017. Lankford said Thursday that he will vote against the CR when it gets to the Senate on Friday. Despite some gains made since 2014, when Republicans took over control of the Senate, Lankford pointed out that Congress has been “missing out on real oversight” by passing supposedly temporary CRs for the past 20 years.

In the two weeks between Trump's appointments of common core DeVos and open-borders Puzder, Jeb Bush figured it was prudent not to lay it on too thick

As Ann Coulter has pointed out, the only difference between a Trump cabinet and a Jeb Bush cabinet is a Jeff Sessions.

December 8th

November 23rd

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Trump's pick for Interior Secretary, is another immigration squish

At some point someone's going to notice that Donald Trump isn't serious about stopping illegal immigration.

Here:

But, the Washington congresswoman said, she won’t rule out a pathway to citizenship, and also stated that she was open to granting a special schedule to the children of immigrants who came to the country illegally.

Rush Limbaugh is ecstatic today about Trump's cabinet picks

The guy never was on our side on illegal immigration, the income tax, Elton John, etc.

The leader of the conservative liberals, as someone once said. 

Hillary knows an awful lot about the epidemic of fake news because she started it . . .

. . . when she blamed a Muhammad video for a supposedly spontaneous attack on Benghazi at the same time Obama was trying to win reelection on "Osama is dead and GM is alive".

Trump betrays his base, picks Andrew Puzder for Labor Secretary, another amnesty advocate

Trump must think we're stupid. You know, just like the defeated elites now packing up and leaving DC.

Puzder had a long op-ed in Politico here three years ago outlining his Marco Rubio Gang of Eight immigration ideas, including 

"a pathway to adjusted status for those here illegally now; and special relief for the children of undocumented immigrants." 

Real news alert: Hillary speaks up for "true" propaganda

There's an epidemic of false propaganda. Bring back the true kind!

Here:

“The epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year — it’s now clear the so-called fake news can have real-world consequences,” Clinton said during a speech on Capitol Hill.

Jennifer Palmieri should think about the over 5 million former Obama voters who rejected Hillary, not about who rejected Trump

Jennifer Palmieri still can't face what lead to the Hillary loss: A Democrat candidate more repugnant to Democrat voters than the Republican candidate was to Republican voters. Hillary was a magnet for words with a negative connotation while Trump was not at all. She was a horrible candidate. End of story. 

Here:

But it’s also important for the winners of this campaign to think long and hard about the voters who rejected them. I haven’t seen much evidence of such introspection from the Trump side. That’s concerning.

That's right, Mickey: Amnesty for dreamers will just produce more dreamers

Salena Zito nails it: Hillary's loss was never about Trump but about Democrats losing touch with their voters

Here:

What Democrats, academics and pundits keep refusing to see is that the loss was never about Trump’s candidacy; it was all about how Democrats have increasingly lost touch with their voters outside of coastal America — until those voters finally hit their breaking point.

When Trump assures the New York Times it will be happy about what he does with the dreamers . . .

. . . rest assured we won't be.

Over 2,000 Americans died horribly in a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago

Our public institutions remember this infamous date faithfully by flying the flag at half staff. My son's high school had the Stars and Stripes just so at oh dark thirty this morning. Good job.

So did the firehouse we passed on the way to the piano lesson this afternoon. You can always count on the fire department.

But the rest of Michigan which I saw today had their flags flying as usual at full staff, and not illuminated at night. Just another patriotic day.

So it goes.

Suddenly the commie Fredrik deBoer is fresh out of ideas

Gee, just a little while ago Fredrik deBoer was certain that all of us white guys were buying guns to off ourselves, which meant there were going to be fewer of us to stand in his way.

Instead we voted for Donald Trump . . . and now the country's a damned armed camp on top of it.

Here's an idea for deBoer, since he asked: Get out now before the border closes and the price of the drugs skyrockets.

Here. 

One month since Election 2016: Trump edges up 0.2 million votes in the last week, Hillary 0.3 million

Trump remains the king of the Republican hill in the popular vote:

Trump 2016: goes from 62.6 million a week ago to 62.8 million now

Romney '12: 60.9 million

McCain '08: 60.0 million

Bush '04: 62.0 million

Bush '00: 50.5 million

Obama remains the king of the Democrat hill in the popular vote, and also the absolute king in the popular vote with no one scoring higher:

Hillary 2016: goes from 65.1 million a week ago to 65.4 million now

Obama '12: 65.9 million

Obama '08: 69.5 million

Kerry '04: 59.0 million

Gore '00: 51.0 million

Peter Wallison points out jettisoning the Electoral College would mean electing presidents without majorities and thus without mandates

Here.

Michael Savage gets Trump's Taiwan overture totally wrong, Marc Thiessen gets it right

Savage calls it a blunder, in keeping with his generally negative assessments about Trump's post-election behavior.

Thiessen calls it deliberate, and brilliant, here, which is what it is.

What a hypocritical gasbag Rush Limbaugh is about Trump's spending plans

Why, Donald Trump could be another FDR!, he says today. He could consolidate Republican rule for decades if he spends the money correctly!

Rush doesn't have a clue about the Obama stimulus, let alone have any principles. He thinks the stimulus was $1 trillion or so, when it was actually nearly $5 trillion, so far. I say so far because the damn thing was built into the outlay train. And look what we've gotten for it. A big fat nothing-burger. Crummier economic growth than under Bush, full-time jobs over 6 million behind trend, and a big fat national debt of nearly $20 trillion.

But Trump's version is going to be successful! Sure it is. $1 trillion or $5 trillion or $10 trillion under Trump isn't going to do anything it couldn't do under Obama.

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending, and to every frickin' year thereafter. The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion.

And here are the annual outlays thereafter in excess of that baseline:

2009: $535.2 billion

2010: $474.6 billion

2011: $620.6 billion

2012: $554.5 billion

2013: $472.1 billion

2014: $523.6 billion

2015: $776.1 billion

2016: $1.017 trillion.

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president.

And now that Trump is running the show, an even bigger joke is about to be played on the American people.

Fake news alert: Time Magazine calls CNN's Ana Navarro "a breakout star of the election"

Here:

"I don’t know how people can possibly survive this election without . . . a good liquor store.”

Democrats are still light years away from recognizing Hillary lost because no one wanted to vote for a lying crook

Democrats here blame a litany of things . . .

• Bernie's challenge
• Comey's investigation
• The Russkies
• Clinton's centrism
• Clinton's campaign
• Clinton's failure to defend herself
• Clinton's messaging
• Democrats' inability to connect with the millions they failed

. . . but never the freight train of sooty baggage which defined Hillary Clinton.

The Donald president is thinking about the South China Sea

Oh yes.

Here.

VP-Elect Mike Pence discusses Trump agenda on Meet the Depressed, never mentions illegal immigration

Pence is a squish, as we told you, but if they don't build The Wall, they are toast.

Noted here.

Where's the "orange" setting on this thing?

Hello Beijing: You illegally created new territory in the South China Sea . . .

. . . now the new sheriff Donald Trump treats Taiwan like a country fully independent of China.

Here's an easy solution: You withdraw from those illegal islands you've created, and maybe the new sheriff stops offending your sensibilities over Taiwan.

Your move. 

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.

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"

Here:

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:

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.

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

Here:

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!

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.

Here.

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

Here.

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

What a miserable cretin.

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

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! 

Here:

(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

To get Colin Kaepernick to stand today they played the communist national anthem of Cuba

Ha ha.

Here.

Mein Führer! I can see! I can see!

Even in defeat Hillary lies: "We have to accept the results and look to the future, Donald Trump is going to be our president" . . . after a recount

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.

Here:

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.

Flashback to Mittens in March: 'He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.'

When the "I won't let you down" Trump cabinet is finally filled we're all going to be sopping wet

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

“I don’t want to spend all that money on infrastructure,” [Stephen] Moore said. “I think it’s mostly a waste of money. But if the voters want it, they should get it.”

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

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

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

Here:

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

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

Here:

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 misunderstanding. Common 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

[W]hen you go after the person who is the nominee of your party, who has been duly nominated by the voters and then you're savaging the voters, you're not just savaging Donald Trump. It would be an insult to all those Donald Trump voters who worked really hard . . ..

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?