Steve Liesman tries to be charitable to Trump on 96 million wanting a job, but comes up short 5.9m

From the story here:

Trump said that there "are 96 million wanting a job and they can't get (one). You know that story. The real number. That's the real number."

It is unfortunately very far from the real number. There are in fact 96 million Americans age 16 and older who are not in the labor force. Of this, just 5.4 million, or 91 million fewer than the number cited by Trump, say they want a job. The rest are retired, sick, disabled, running their households or going to school. (This number is 256,000 fewer than last year and 1.7 million fewer than the all-time high for the series in 2013.)

... A more charitable explanation for Trump would expand the number to include those people who are working part time because they can't find full-time work, all the unemployed and those marginally attached to the workforce. This broader measure of slack in the economy, known as the U6, is about 14.7 million. It's the lowest since May 2008, and has come down by nearly 12 million since the worst of the job market effects of the financial crisis in 2010. And remember, many of these folks have work, though it's part time.

This isn't charitable enough because Liesman never adds the 5.4 million to the 14.7 million. He must know you can't do this because that would involve double counting. The monthly Employment Situation Summary always includes the "marginally attached" in the expanded figures, people who are not in the labor force, but they are a subset of the 5.4 million.

But this can easily be remedied, and one wonders why the BLS doesn't do this.

Here's the data, with links.

Not in the labor force, not seasonally adjusted, is 95.8 million.

Not in the labor force, want a job now, not seasonally adjusted, is 5.45 million (peak was 7.2 million in May 2013).

The unemployed represent another 7.5 million from the monthly Employment Situation Summary. Those who work part-time but would rather have full-time represent 5.6 million more in the same report. But both of those groups are in the labor force, a total of 13.1 million.

To those 13.1 million simply add the 5.4 million from not in the labor force above and you get 18.5 million unemployed.

To get that expressed as a percentage you have to add the 5.4 million in to the civilian labor force because they want a job now, here, because the unemployment rate is the unemployed as a percentage of the labor force, which by the addition is now larger, 164.4 million.

So that yields a real unemployment rate of 11.3%. The U6RATE comes up quite short of this, at 9.2%. Meanwhile most people think everything's great because the headline rate is only 4.7% (7.5 million unemployed as a percentage of 159.6 million in the labor force).

There are not 96 million unemployed as Trump laughably says, but neither are there the 12.6 million Liesman ends up with, either.

18.5 million are unemployed in December 2016, at a rate of 11.3%.

The unsavory Robert Creamer was in the front row at lying Obama's farewell speech last night

Creamer had to resign from the DNC after incriminating video surfaced showing he countenanced baiting Trump supporters into violence, planting operatives at his rallies.

Creamer met with Obama 45 times in the White House during his presidency, and was there hundreds of times, but the White House denied they were friends.

The first name in fake news

Trump's first news conference since the election was highly entertaining:

"Your organization is terrible," Trump told CNN’s Jim Acosta when he tried to ask a question.

"You're attacking us, can you give us a question?” Acosta replied.

"Don't be rude. No, I'm not going to give you a question. You are fake news," Trump responded, before calling on a reporter from Breitbart.

A very small John McCain reduced to role of courier for the Trump opposition fake news machine

From the story here:

"Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public. Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue."

Just 9 more days until Mr. All Talk and No Action is out the door

Mr. All Talk and No Action is talking again one last time tonight as president . . .

. . . but as usual I'm not listening.

After all, a fella has to keep in shape not listening, because you know this guy is going to keep on talking, and talking and talking AFTER he's no longer president, and I want to be prepared not to listen whenever I have to. It's worked pretty well for me so far. He's going away, everything he's done is going away, and all I had to do was not listen.

I like to think of it as negative exercise. It's been good for me, and so easy to do.

Why quit when you can feel the burn?

Weapons cache of long guns, pistols and ammo found hidden last week just 6.5 miles from Inauguration site

By an alert citizen, not the police.

Story here.

USA Today story says Obama leaves a complex legacy, completely ignores this complexity

And Piers Morgan reminds the world Meryl Streep once gave a standing ovation to the child rapist Roman Polanski

It's like finding Nazis in the closet.

Here.

Homeland Security swoops in on states at the last minute, designates election systems "critical infrastructure"

These bastards need to be rounded up, locked up and the key thrown away. We run this country, not the political appointees of a failed president. 50 US Secretaries of State, the Electoral College and the US Congress all have certified Election 2016. We don't believe a bunch of Obama hacks' fancy report.

From the story here:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A last-minute decision by the Obama administration to designate election systems as critical infrastructure drew intense criticism from state and federal elections organizations on Monday.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced the move Friday with 30 minutes' notice to the National Association of Secretaries of State and U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent bipartisan federal agency that develops voluntary voting guidelines and certifies voting systems. ...

McCormick said Homeland Security ignored commissioners' requests to delay a decision until there is more discussion. She called the move an example of "federal overreach" and said she will ask President-elect Donald Trump to review the decision. ...

Johnson's announcement came hours after U.S. intelligence agencies released a declassified report that said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election. The report said Russian intelligence services had "obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards," but didn't elaborate.

Yeah, but Meryl Streep was too ugly for a MONKEY

China flummoxed because it doesn't know how to intimidate Donald Trump

Good!

Story here.

Are Obama's intelligence agencies blaming Russia for hacking the election to deflect from their own?

Newsmax won't let the story go, here 10 days ago:

[T]here is a far more ominous sequence of events that’s taken place on our own shores. ...

Over the last 10 months, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attempted to infiltrate the Georgia Secretary of State’s voter database network. It did so without Georgia’s consent and, in fact, over its explicit rejection of DHS’s offer to "help" the state check for vulnerabilities in its firewall.

DHS didn’t just try once; it made 10 attempts.

This wasn’t an accident. It was a pattern.

Who ordered the cyberattacks and who conducted them are unclear. ...

Ten hack attempts made by a federal agency against a state-protected voter network over a 10 month period, and each attempt coinciding with an election or congressional testimony in opposition to DHS "help." ...

[N]obody is asking about verified hack attempts made by a federal government agency against a state-protected voter database network.

Final Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate summary for 2016: Fifth warmest and fifth wettest

2016 was the fifth warmest full year on record by average temperature, at 51.2 degrees F. The warmest full year by average temperature was 2012, at 52.8. The coldest full year by average temperature was 1917, at 44.6. The mean annual monthly mean average temperature is 48.1.

The lowest minimum temperature recorded in 2016 was in February, at 1 degree F. The record lowest temperature occurred in February 1899, at -24. The mean annual monthly lowest minimum is -7.

The coldest winter season on record by heating degree days occurred in 1903-1904 with 7712 HDD. The warmest was 2011-2012 with 5253. The mean annual is 6713. December was just slightly above the December mean for HDD. For the season-to-date ending in December there were 2104 HDD. The mean for the season to date is 2488. By contrast, in 2015, which was part of the third warmest season on record by HDD, there were only 1855 HDD July-December. 

It was the fifth snowiest December on record with 37 inches. The snowiest December ever was in 2000, with 59.2 inches. The December mean snowfall is 16 inches.

The maximum temperature in 2016 occurred in June, with 93 degrees F. The record maximum temperature occurred in July 1936, with 108 degrees F. The mean annual monthly highest maximum temperature is 95.

The warmest summer season on record by cooling degree days occurred in 1921 with 1200 CDD. The coolest summer occurred in 1992, with 316. The mean annual is 696. Summer 2016 ranked 15th warmest by CDD, which totaled 936.

2016 turned out to be the fifth wettest year on record, with 46.29 inches of rain. The wettest year on record was in 2008, with 48.8 inches of rain. The driest year on record was 1930, with 20.92. The mean annual rainfall is 34.48.

Congress sucks: Let's make it bigger!

As we all know, Congress sucks.

About only 17% of Americans approved of the Congress in 2016 according to Gallup, which is indicative of the historical lack of esteem for it. The average is just 31% approval since 1974. Real Clear Politics has its own tracker here, going back only to 2009. It is a composite of various polls, yielding an even lower average of 14.5% approval than Gallup's current 18%.

You get the idea. At best only about a third of the people approve of the job Congress is doing at any given time. And the top reasons given are 1) gridlock, bickering, not compromising and 2) not getting anything done, not making decisions.

So why make Congress bigger?

In a word, to make it more representative, end the gridlock and get something done.

In short, make Congress overwhelmingly Republican . . . because the country is.

Currently, just 435 congressmen and women represent districts unnaturally carved out of America's 3,144 counties, parishes, boroughs, census areas, independent cities and the District of Columbia.

I say unnaturally carved out because after every census the gerrymandering fight begins to redraw the congressional district lines to favor incumbents of the party in power whose boundaries transgress all over those counties, parishes, boroughs, census areas, independent cities and DC.

We've already got all these boundaries and units that go back to the beginning of the country in many cases, so we don't need these 435 fake Congressional districts anymore.

My own county with a population of just over 600,000 is carved up by two congressmen who each represent over 700,000 spanning many other counties. That doesn't make any sense.

The constitution never intended this.

It intended representation to grow with population, but in the 1920s Congress saw a loophole and fixed representation at the then current 435. There's nothing magic about 435. Why not 439? 394? 943? Did Moses decree 435? George Washington? The founders never settled the question, but they never intended representation to stop growing with population. If we followed an early formula, we'd have one Congressman for every 50,000 people. That would mean 6,473 in the US House today!

Ever since the 1920s we've been treated to an increase in oligarchy where just 218 votes are needed to ram something down the throats of more and more people.

You know, like Obamacare, which was passed without a single Republican vote.

Meanwhile Republicans just showed that they own the grassroots politically, winning the counties 2623 to 489. Here's the map that shows that, from brilliant maps dot com:

If you want to end the gridlock and get something done, reform the Congress to represent the country for a change. Abolish the Congressional districts, and elect representatives to the US House from every county across this land.

You say you want a revolution . . ..

Nat Hentoff, who called Obama the most un-American president we have ever had, has died at 91

Despite Obamacare, or because of it? The obit here doesn't tell us. WaPo reports it was natural causes.

Neither story tells us how Hentoff really felt about Obama. Neither does his Wikipedia entry. For a sampling, follow my label "Nat Hentoff" below.

He was a true born son of liberty. May he rest in peace.

All Obama gets credit for is the extra 4.483 million jobs since the July 2007 peak: 47,000 jobs a month net increase after 8 years

Secure Fence Act of 2006 may be Trump's vehicle for The Wall

Politico reports here:

Republican leaders, in tandem with Trump’s transition staff, are considering using a 2006 law signed by former President George W. Bush that authorized the construction of 700 miles-plus of “physical barrier” on the southern border. The law was never fully implemented and did not include a sunset provision, allowing Trump to pick up where Bush left off — with the help of new money from Congress. ...

The 2006 Secure Fence Act, included as part of a broader immigration reform package, originally called for 850 miles of double fencing along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border. Lawmakers amended the law in 2008 to reduce the length to a minimum of 700 miles, a change that also gave the secretary of Homeland Security discretion over what kind of “physical barrier” to construct.

Ultimately, only 36 miles of double-layer fencing was erected. U.S. Customs and Border Protection built roughly 350 miles of single-layer pedestrian fences, most which stand about 18 feet, and 300 miles of low-level vehicle barriers that any person could easily walk through, according to sources following the matter.

Liberals believe Russians celebrated Trump's win, but not that US Muslims celebrated 9/11

Hm.

How Obamacare hides federal spending

Seen here:

Obamacare's direct subsidies to insurers are falsely labeled as "tax credits," hiding some $104 billion in federal spending in the process.

Don't miss Chris Plante in the queue at Real Clear Politics talking about all the Democrat hacks still working in "journalism"

Here.

Medicaid enrollment, healthcare for the poor, has exploded by 46% under Obama

In 2009 Medicaid enrollment stood at 50.9 million, but in October 2016 it's 74.4 million.

Generally speaking, you are eligible when your income, if you have any, is up to 133% of the poverty guideline, which came to about $15,650 in 2015. In that year there were only about 52 million individual workers who earned up to that much.

John McCain is the perfect guy to investigate hacking

Laugh of the Day: Democrats haven't been this mad since . . .

Except it's true.

WaPo and White House, but I repeat myself, lie about Obamacare enrollments by 100%

WaPo implies more than 20 million are enrolled in a story out today here:

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that Obama told Democrats that they are well positioned to defend the law, which has extended insurance to more than 20 million Americans.

Extended. As in offered. Here's the reality.

The Motley Fool said in November it checked in June and the number actually enrolled and paying was 10.4 million:

The fourth open enrollment period of Obamacare, Officially known as the Affordable Care Act, kicked off this past Tuesday, Nov. 1, and it's slated to run through the end of January. At last check in June 2016, 10.4 million people were enrolled through the various marketplace exchanges, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The Congressional Budget Office has stuck by its forecast that roughly 10 million people will be enrolled and paying by Dec. 31, 2016.

A month earlier the number was 11.1 million, meaning some people who enrolled early in the year subsequently stopped paying and fell out:

As a reminder, 11.1 million people remained enrolled and paying customers as of March 31, 2016 per the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services . . .. 

Since last October it has been widely reported that the Obama Regime, soon to be history, has been predicting just 13.8 million sign-ups by the end of January 2017, which means Josh Earnest is nothing but a Stalinist stooge for the Regime, nothing but a salesman, and WaPo its willing accomplice in continuing to report the highly fanciful figure of 20 million.

Fake news, you see.

Obamacare has failed utterly and will be lucky to hit the 10 million mark this time around before President Trump ends the farce that it is.

So Obama has a phone and a pen, but Trump has Twitter and . . .

. . . an eraser.

Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21 is just a bunch of Democrats who had image of Clinton as their Facebook photo

From the story here:

For her part, Shook said her aim was not to coopt any other movement. It was just an idea that took hold after the victory of a president-elect caught on tape boasting of grabbing women's private parts, and the defeat of a woman who seemed to her much more qualified for the job. She said she had no idea the race of the women she first contacted; in fact, she said, most had an image of Clinton as their Facebook profile photo.

How much does Obamacare suck for my family newly eligible for health insurance from a small business?

New full-time job comes with health insurance for the family!

Except it costs $20,199.24 per year, of which the company pays $3,000. Net = $17,199.24 per year before anyone ever sees a doctor.

Current pre-Obamacare plan, grandfathered in from 2010, costs $4,253.20 per year, before anyone ever sees a doctor. FOUR TIMES LESS.

Congress can't act soon enough to repeal this Obamacare boondoggle.

Tin ear Republicans lead off 2017 with rule changes on ethics

Trump isn't happy. Bloomberg reported the story here.

The congressional job approval rating last measured 18% and hasn't been above 20% since 2012.

Sen. John McCain once again demonstrates the subtlety of a brick thrown through a window, irresponsibly elevating unproven cyberattacks to "an act of war"

Why Arizona keeps inflicting this incompetent gasbag on the rest of the country is difficult to fathom.

You remember John McCain's failed presidential bid, in which he told us we had nothing to fear from a president Obama, and then having lost to him in 2008 and running for reelection to the US Senate in 2010 he told us Obama was all of a sudden on a left wing crusade to bankrupt the country. Well, which is it, Senator?

And now the warmonger in John McCain raises its ugly head, here, in Ukraine of all places, stirring the pot in the Russian Bear's own backyard:

"When you attack a country, it's an act of war," McCain said of the recent hackings on Ukrainian TV, according to a transcript compiled by Reuters. "And so we have to make sure that there is a price to pay so that we can perhaps persuade Russians to stop this kind of attacks on our very fundamentals of democracy."

Hey Senator, what price should Russia pay for an act of war? Usually war is the appropriate response. If you're not really prepared to launch one, SHUT THE HELL UP.

Make teenagers work again: Repeal the minimum wage

3.3 million fewer teens work in 2016 than in 1978 even though

the size of this population in 2016 is the same as in the late '70s

The minimum wage of 30 cents an hour which prevailed throughout World War II is the equivalent of $5.12/hr today using CPI, not the federally mandated $7.25/hr.

The minimum wage today has outpaced CPI by almost 42% since its inception. Meanwhile teenage employment has contracted by almost 40% since the late 1970s peak.

Already by 1978 the minimum wage was wildly out of whack. It should have been only $1.41/hr instead of the federally mandated $2.65/hr, outpacing inflation by a whopping 88%. No wonder employers have sought cheaper labor abroad, wrecking it for everyone, not just teenagers.

Do we believe in free market capitalism, or not?

We have to repeal the Obamacare bill so that you can find out what is in the next bill

h/t Harvey

The best Trump comeback was still the first comeback

Best Ted Cruz meme of 2016

It happened in September 2015 but the dumbest debate question of the 2016 campaign has to be . . .

. . . Jake Tapper of CNN asking each Republican candidate "What would you want your Secret Service code name to be as president?"

Do you prefer white cake, chocolate cake or lemon?

They should have thrown tomatoes at the guy.

Instead they answered.

And the 2016 Woman of the Year award goes to . . .

ENERGIZER!

Kevin Williamson flips out at National Review, compares Trump family to Saddam Hussein's, a reader can't believe it

Here:

​Apparently, N.R. editors didn't read this piece, or worse, they read it and approved it. 

Well, makes perfect sense to me. Kevin Williamson and Co. wants the entire white working class to get out of the way and die, so might as well have the Trump boys fire up the old shredder and start feeding them in.

How come Israel can't be both Jewish and democratic while Miami can?

Ann Coulter wants to know.

Today's most entertaining line: "It takes a lot of chutzpah for Obama to say he wants to help re­build the Demo­crat­ic Party when he’s busy burn­ing it down"

From Josh Kraushaar here in

"Obama’s Parting Shot Against His Party: By thumbing his nose at Israel as he leaves office, the president shows he didn’t learn anything from this year’s election".

He's burned everything else down, might as well burn his own house.

Remind you of anyone?

Obama's policies were on the ballot and defeated by Trump, but Obama still insists he would have won

Obama in October: "But make no mistake, these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them."

Obama in December: “I’m confident that if I — if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it."

In England singer George Michael gets a post mortem as a matter of routine, but in the US not Justice Antonin Scalia

From the story here:

The Thames Valley Police, calling the death "unexplained but not suspicious," sent THR the following statement: "Thames Valley Police were called to a property in Goring-on-Thames shortly before 2pm Christmas Day. Sadly, a 53-year-old man was confirmed deceased at the scene. At this stage the death is being treated as unexplained but not suspicious. A post mortem will be undertaken in due course. There will be no further updates from Thames Valley Police until the post mortem has taken place."

Flashback to February here:

[A]fter Scalia died, it was Texas state law, not any federal framework, that guided officials’ actions—and left a single judge to make the call that an autopsy wasn’t needed.

While you were preparing to celebrate Christmas, America's first Muslim president abstained at the UN Security Counsel, effectively condemning Israeli settlements

From the story "Obama faces widespread backlash after abstaining from UN Israel vote" here:

On Friday, the Security Council voted 14-0 on a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory as a “flagrant violation” of international law that have “"no legal validity." It demands a halt to "all Israeli settlement activities," saying this "is essential for salvaging the two-state solution."

The United States has veto power in the Security Council and has used it for similar resolutions in the past. The Obama administration’s decision to abstain represents a break from the longstanding U.S. policy of shielding Israel from U.N. reproaches.

A Christmas card from Ann Coulter

Carl Paladino rips "lazy ass" Obama: Flashback to Dec. 24th, 2011 when Obama admitted as much

Obama in 2011, quoted here:

Asked by [ABC's Barbara] Walters to name "the trait you most deplore in yourself," the president -- who was interviewed alongside his wife Michelle -- responded, "laziness."

"You're lazy?" Walters asked.

"You know it's interesting, there is a deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there's a laziness in me.

"It's probably from, you know, growing up in Hawaii and it's sunny outside, and sitting on the beach," Obama said with a smile.

Carl Paladino in 2016, here:

This is in response to my comments published in Artvoice:

It has nothing to do with race.  That’s the typical stance of the press when they can’t otherwise defend the acts of the person being attacked.

It’s about two progressive elitist ingrates who have hated their country so badly and destroyed its fabric in so many respects in 8 years.

It’s about them diminishing the respect for their country on the world scene, surrendering its status as the protector of human rights, disgracing the memory of its veterans who gave so much.

It’s about demeaning and weakening what was the most powerful military in the world, firing hundreds of good soldier Generals and Admirals who refused Barack’s illegal and irresponsible dictates.

Michelle hated America before her husband won.  She then enjoyed all the attention, the multi -million dollar vacations, the huge staff and other benefits.  Then when Hillary lost, she and Barack realized that without Hillary, there was no one to protect the little, if any, legacy he had.  That’s when Michelle came out and said there is no hope for America.  Good, let her leave and go someplace she will be happy.

As for Barack, he’s a yellow-bellied coward who left thousands to die in Syria and especially Aleppo and he gets on TV and says he feels bad he couldn’t do anything about it.

He supported the mass migration without vetting of people from Muslim countries and the open borders, not for the people, but to expand the democratic base to a permanent majority.

He couldn’t care less about the people.  He just commuted the sentences of another 650 drug pushers responsible for selling poison to our kids.

It’s about the middle class, silent majority, rising up to destroy the Republican and Democrat establishment in America.

It’s about the end of an era when the people took all their information from the main street media, letting them tell us what the issues are and how to resolve those issues. People no longer trust the press.

It’s about that fraudulent, shadow government with a lazy ass president who allowed non-Americans like Valerie Jarret to run the government on a day to day basis and order the Stand down in Benghazi and the later cover-up that does matter.

It’s about Lois Lerner and the head of the IRS and the other criminal officials who haven’t been prosecuted or even investigated because the leaders of the progressive movement are above the law.

It’s about the end of the progressive movement and reset of the direction of America for the next 30 years.

It’s about a president who interfered in a presidential election for his successor so flagrantly that he called Trump unfit for office.

It’s about a president who for eight years did absolutely nothing for black children in our urban centers held prisoner by the cycle of poverty and illegitimate black leadership more interested in power and preserving their voting base by keeping them hungry and uneducated in the inner cities.

And yes, it’s about a little deprecating humor which America lost for a long time.  Merry Christmas and  tough luck if you don’t like my answer.

Glenn Greenwald: Democrats screaming "Putin! Russia!" is an implausible tactic, a sign of desperation

Here:

Obama spent eight years saying Russia is not a scary threat, he mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 . . .. Democrats, like a lot of Americans, including myself, are sort of dioriented, still in shock, and are grappling for explanations. Screaming 'Putin!' over and over and accusing critics of being Kremlin stooges, I think that is a byproduct of this desperation more than anything else.

Peggy Noonan's Democrat friends are delicate, fragile creatures

My world is full of Hillary Clinton supporters and intimates. At a Manhattan Christmas party last week a despairing Democrat told me that she had not only wept on election night she had vomited. She was still beside herself.

The rest is here.

Why the economy still feels like it sucks as Obama goes out the door

Obama's GDP in current dollars has grown 28.4% through 3Q2016.

Bush's grew 39% overall and 41.7% through 3Q2008.

If Obama's performance simply matched Bush's 41.7%, we'd have an extra $1.9 trillion in current dollar GDP right now.

But we don't.

Laugh of the Day: Ann Coulter hopes Donald Trump goes on world tour . . .

. . . apologizing for 8 years of Obama.

Here.

Winter begins, and daylight in Grand Rapids Michigan is just 9 hours and 1 minute long

The lowest daylight days of the year, until Dec. 26th when we inch up to 9 hours and 2 minutes.

And you thought there was no hope.

Hillary beats Trump in the shunning department 8-2 as 10 faithless Electoral College electors vote for somebody else

Ugh!

That's the story from ABC tonight here.

It's a stain on our election from both sides that the rules we agree to live by aren't being followed as they should be.

The two defectors from Trump voted for Rand Paul and John Kasich. Five from Hillary voted for Colin Powell, Bernie Sanders and an Injun. Three others were removed and replaced by alternates who ended up voting for Hillary as the people they replaced should have.

On net Trump wins 304-227 instead of 306-232.

Sneering at the Electoral College in 2016, Obama leaves office still hating the constitution he promised to preserve, protect and defend in 2008 and 2012

Quoted here:

“The Electoral College is a vestige, it’s a carryover from an earlier vision of how our federal government was going to work that put a lot of premium on states,” President Obama said Friday during a press conference at the White House.

Obama pardons 78 and shortens sentences of 153 in one day, a record

A total of 148 have been pardoned in his presidency so far, and 1176 have received shortened sentences, including 395 serving life sentences. Expect really bad examples to emerge from among the latter.

Story here.

Revulsion Election update: Electors pledged to Hillary in MN, ME and WA today refused to vote for her

Democrats really did not like Hillary Clinton in 2016. 5.1 million former Obama voters didn't vote for her, and now her electors won "fair and square" are balking.

You can't make this stuff up.

From the MarketWatch story here:

In Washington state, three Democratic electors voted for Colin Powell and one for Faith Spotted Eagle, who has been fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, instead of Clinton. ...

In Minnesota, elector Muhammad Abdurrahman didn’t vote for Clinton and was replaced by an alternate who did. According to the Los Angeles Times, Abdurrahman was a delegate for Bernie Sanders at the Democratic National Convention.

In Maine, elector David Bright tried to vote for Sanders but was rebuffed and ended up voting for Clinton, according to the Associated Press.

Bill Cunningham repeating stupid: "95 million Americans can't find work"

Last night in the first hour of the show.

"Not in the labor force" explained.

They aren't LOOKING for work. They are your retired parents. They are your kids in high school, college and graduate school. They are your stay at home mothers and fathers. They are the sick and the disabled.

Obama didn't "decimate" the Democrat Party, Democrats did that all by themselves

David M. Drucker here wants to blame Obama for all the electoral losses experienced by Democrats since 2009. 

Good luck with that.

Like it or not, the Democrat Congress under Pelosi and Reid gets the blame. They have done nothing but lose, lose and lose while Obama has remained the winner, above the fray. He leaves office popular, successfully escaping responsibility for his own administration for eight straight years while Democrats all over the country have paid the price.  

Democrat leadership rammed the awful Obamacare down the nation's throat, making the health insurance industry even worse than it was before. Democrat leadership failed to prosecute anyone for the 2008 banking panic and raked in the campaign cash from its grateful elite instead. Democrat leadership jacked up the federal spending which simply wasted money and ballooned the debt to $20 trillion in the process. Democrat leadership passed the growth-robbing Dodd-Frank legislation which has stalled the growth of credit and slowed the economy to a crawl.

The only thing you can blame Obama for is a lack of vision and leadership in preventing these developments and for not offering better alternatives. He was inexperienced, out of his depth and clueless, contenting himself to lecture everybody day and night in regal fashion while Congress shot themselves and the country in the foot with their stupid ideas. Obama's idea of compromise turned out to be signing awful Democrat legislation.

Except in one instance.

Obama agreed one time to compromise with John Boehner and make the Bush tax cuts permanent and fix the Alternative Minimum Tax. The stock market and the economy began to recover from that moment on at the dawn of 2013.

It was the only smart thing he ever did.

And there he goes into the sunset.

Trump misspells "unprecedented", CNBC goes nuts, Obama on the other hand . . .

. . . routinely slaughtered the English language, math and common sense and all we heard was crickets.

Let's see, there were Obama's "forebearers", "one of the finest secretary of states", "pray on the sick" (probably Politico, not Obama), "corpseman", "the intercontinental railroad", calling George Osborne "Jeffrey" 3x in one episode, saying he could see the Gulf of Mexico from three Atlantic ports he was visiting, saying Afghanistan when he meant Iraq, referring repeatedly to his "sons", calling Nazi camps "Polish concentration camps", saying he'll be turning 50 in a week when it was three weeks, three proud words "made in the USA", claiming "more than 100 million Americans" signed up for Obamacare in its first month, and of course in the 2008 campaign he had visited 57 states "so far" but might not get to them all.   

The Trump misspelled tweet story is here, where the sin apparently was Trump deleting the tweet and replacing it with the spelling corrected.

Did Obama ever correct himself? 

Revulsion Election update: Hillary underperformed Obama 2008 in 39 states by 5.16 million votes

This updates my look at 2016 candidate underperformance relative to 2008 from almost three weeks ago. The total picture for Hillary improved by about 440,000 votes in the interim, or about 11,000 votes per state on average, but doesn't change the conclusion. Hillary was far and away more revolting to the voters in 2016 than was Trump. Hillary still lags Obama 2008 by 3.7 million votes net and Obama 2012 by 74,000 votes. For his part Donald Trump has surpassed George W. Bush 2004 by 940,000 votes with 62.98 million votes, the most for any Republican in any presidential contest.

Hillary 2016 underperformed Obama 2008 in:

MI by 603,000 votes (and lost to Trump by 11,000)

OH by 546,000 (lost by 447,000)

MO by 371,000

PA by 350,000 (lost by 45,000)

IN by 341,000

IL by 328,000

WI by 294,000 (lost by 22,000)

NY by 257,000

TN by 216,000

MN by 205,000 (won by only 45,000)

IA by 175,000 (lost by 147,000)

KY by 123,000 

WV by 115,000

CT by 100,000

*KS by 88,000

*NM by 87,000 (won by only 65,000)

AL by 83,000

*OK by 82,000

*MS by 70,000

*NJ by 67,000

ME by 64,000 (won by only 22,000)

HI by 59,000

MT by 54,000

SD by 54,000

NE by 49,000

ND by 47,000

ID by 46,000

RI by 44,000

AR by 42,000

*VT by 40,000

NH by 36,000 (won by only 3,000)

OR by 35,000

WY by 27,000

DE by 19,000

*UT by 17,000

*WA by 8,000

*AK by 8,000

SC by 7,000

LA by 3,000.

That's 5.16 million former Democrat votes alienated from Hillary Clinton in 2016 in 39 states, 57% of which came from the 8 Great Lakes states (2.924 million), according to the latest numbers this morning, almost six weeks since Election 2016.

Trump underperformed John McCain in only 12 states and DC and by just 792,000 votes, 67% of which were in California alone:

In CA by 527,000 votes

*UT by 81,000

*AK by 31,000

*KS by 29,000

*NM by 27,000

*MS by 24,000

MA by 18,000

MD by 17,000

*NJ by 12,000

*OK by 11,000

*WA by 7,000

*VT by 4,000

DC by 4,000.

*nine states where both 2016 candidates underperformed their 2008 counterparts 

Hillary called us deplorable and irredeemable . . .

. . . and today Obama built on that low view of the American people, saying we're so hapless that we inevitably fall victim to "propaganda":

[I]t's not surprising that that foreign propaganda will have a greater effect. It doesn't seem that far-fetched compared to some of the other stuff folks are hearing from domestic propagandists. ... [V]oters who have been listening to that stuff for years, who have been getting that stuff every day from talk radio or other venues, they're going to believe it.

You've been had: The 2009 stimulus has been repeated every year, accounting for all GDP increases under Obama and then some

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending because Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate at the time. It was scandalous, but there was nothing Republicans could do about it.

But the same thing happened every year thereafter because the Democrat Congress and then the Republican Congress deliberately passed this prior spending in the form of continuing resolutions instead of through regular order, which meant nothing got debated and the status quo was maintained. That's the evil of CRs.

Both parties did this on purpose instead of debating individual spending bills because . . . THEY ALL LOVE HAVING THE MONEY TO SPEND.

The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion, to which the stimulus got added for fiscal 2009, and just kept getting added and re-added and re-added right through to the present (and then some) through the continuing resolution process:

2009: $535.2 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2010: $474.6 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2011: $620.6 billion ($3.6 trillion)

2012: $554.5 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2013: $472.1 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2014: $523.6 billion ($3.5 trillion)

2015: $776.1 billion ($3.8 trillion)

2016: $1.017 trillion ($4.0 trillion).

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president, even after they got control of both the House and the Senate in 2014. Almost $5 trillion in "stimulus" has already been spent.

And Trump wants to add another $1 trillion?

Meanwhile under Obama current dollar GDP increased . . . $4.1 trillion. All government spending. All totally phony. And overpriced at that: $1.21 spent for every dollar of that fake GDP.

Why Democrats hate Russia so much

"They've never forgiven Russia for giving up communism."

Laugh of the Day: Communists leaked Democrat e-mails to Wikileaks, not former communists

Here.

The Nation Magazine's James Carden wonders why liberals fawn over anonymous CIA claims when John Brennan is a known liar

Here:

The recent raft of unverified, anonymously sourced and circumstantial stories alleging that the Russian government interfered in the US presidential election with the aim of electing Republican Donald J. Trump shows that today too much of the media is all too happy to do overtly what the CIA had ... once paid it to do covertly: regurgitate the claims of the spy agency and attack the credibility of those who question it. ... CIA Director John Brennan made false statements before Congress over the CIA’s hacking into the computers of Congressional staffers.

China's Xi Jinping is a liar, militarizes illegal possessions created on reefs in South China Sea

From the story here:                                                   ↑

A U.S. think tank says recent satellite images appear to show that China has installed anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapons on its man-made islands in the strategically vital South China Sea, upping the stakes in what many see as a potential Asian powder keg.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a report late Wednesday that the anti-aircraft guns and close-in weapons systems designed to guard against missile attack have been placed on all seven of China's newly created islands. ...

Chinese President Xi Jinping said on a visit to the U.S. last year that "China does not intend to pursue militarization" of the area, prompting some foreign experts to accuse China of going back on its word with its new deployments.