Sunday, January 22, 2017
Five days before the inaugural it was known DisruptJ20 would try to block Americans from entering
So why didn't police act to prevent them?
WTOP reported here on January 15:
DisruptJ20 said it planned to have protests at each entry point to the Inaugural Day parade. The organization said it was planning blockades, including blocking traffic.
USA Today lies about checkpoints being shut down at inaugural
Here:
Small groups of protesters popped up at various security checkpoints across the spectator zones, attempting to block entry. One group, affiliated with Black Lives Matter, chained themselves to metal barricades. But police said no entrances were completely shutdown.
Protesters blocked entry to the inaugural at C Street, depressing attendance: Police just let it happen
Reported here:
Police, Secret Service officials, and other law enforcement personnel were all seen turning away from the protesters rather than attempting to pass through the human barrier protesters assembled on C Street. Law enforcement officials present at the protests mainly attempted to break up skirmishes that broke out between the protesters and those looking to get to the inauguration and parade.
Protesters shut down 50% of the access to the inaugural two hours before the swearing in, depressing attendance
Reported here:
Hundreds of protesters on Friday shut down multiple entry points to President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. Masses of protesters in support of causes that included climate change, Black Lives Matter, NoDAPL, women's rights, immigrant rights, LGBT rights, and anti-fascism descended upon the nation's capital and formed blockades in front of security checkpoints. ...
Protesters successfully shut down 6 six of the 12 inauguration access points as of 10am ET on Friday morning.
Of course the inaugural attendance estimates were lower: Protestors blocked and delayed entry
Reported here:
After almost two hours of delays, the security gates at 7th and Independence Avenue opened to cheers from the restless crowd. ...
At John Marshall Park’s checkpoint, Black Lives Matter protesters - chanting “Shut it down” - did just that. Five men chained themselves together, preventing anyone from passing and forcing police officers to redirect attendees to other entrances. “It feels great that we closed the checkpoint,” said 28-year-old Aaron Goggans, one of the organisers. “But we know this is just the beginning.”
At the 10th and E streets in downtown Washington, protesters blocked the entrance to another checkpoint. A group of women tied themselves together with purple yarn and sat on the ground to prevent people from passing through.
White Privileged Women's March in DC can't face it that Hillary underperformed with women
White privileged women have only themselves to blame for Hillary's loss to Donald Trump. Their candidate didn't appeal to women unlike themselves.
Hillary underperformed Obama 2012 with all women by one point, black women by 2 points, Latino women by 8 points, and unmarried women by 5 points. The only groups of women with which Hillary outperformed Obama 2012 were WHITE WOMEN and MARRIED WOMEN, in other words with the PRIVILEGED class of women which has the luxury of time to knit pink hats and the surplus cash to travel to one of America's most expensive cities to bathe in each other's estrogen.
The good little communists of DisruptJ20 justify their violence against private property
Here:
[Lacy] MacAuley is the spokeswoman for DisruptJ20, a collection of anti-capitalist, antifascist and progressive groups rooted in the District and elsewhere that organized the protest. ...
The violence “helps demonize and delegitimize us,” said Payton McDonald, 23, of Ann Arbor, Mich. But, McDonald added, “The violence of the state needs to be met with a level of protest that complements it.” ...
Henry Hughes, 61, dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt and a North Cascades National Park hat, held a jug to collect money for those arrested. A copy editor for a transcription company who lives in Marblemount, Wash., he said that although he was blocking entrances Friday and was nowhere near the torched limousine, he didn’t object to the destruction.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Nasty sore loser Democrats march in Washington DC to protest Trump
From the story here:
Instead of red “Make America Great Again” popular at the inauguration the day before, many marchers wore pink knitted caps with ears evoking a cat and dubbed “pussy hats,” as a symbol of defiance to the new president.
NATO member Turkey on the brink of an elected dictatorship under Erdogan
Crazy. Ataturk set the country on a course of secularization. Erdogan is doing the reverse, in the style and guise of Ataturk.
From the story here:
Bulent Turan, a whip from the Islamist-rooted AK Party, which Erdogan co-founded, rejected opposition claims that the amendments would create an elected dictatorship, saying they sought to allow for greater government oversight and to speed up decision making. ... Turkey’s parliament was founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1920 as part of a secular and Western-oriented revolution that replaced the theocratic Ottoman Empire. Should Erdogan succeed, Turkey is set to a have a president who will basically concentrate as much power as Ataturk.
Friday, January 20, 2017
The NY Times couldn't help itself and cut away to one last Obama speech before he got on the plane
For eight years "He talked, talked, talked too much, he talked too much" to paraphrase the song.
And did nothing.
Revolutionary Communist Party protests outside pro-Trump DeploraBall, gets pepper-sprayed
Refuse Fascism dot org is a project of the Revolutionary Communist Party, initiated by people like Bill Ayers, Carl Dix, Niles Eldridge and Cornel West.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Middle class brick wall: Obama ends his presidency with new housing starts down 34% overall compared with 1959-2008
Not seasonally adjusted, new housing starts averaged 1.28 million per year from 1959-2008, but under Obama they averaged just 0.84 million per year, according to the December data out today, completing his eight year record down 34% from the post-war average.
The monthly average for 2016 annualized is 1.17 million starts, which will end up being Obama's best year but only just above the post-war average cyclical low of 1.13 million per year.
So under Obama all we have done is climb back to the average cyclical low point for new housing starts.
Housing booms have been marked by an average cyclical high of 1.97 million new starts per year in the post-war, but Obama's best performance in 2016 is over 40% off that average high.
2009 marked the low point since 1959, with just 0.55 million new starts, sliding all the way down from the 2005 cyclical high of 2.07 million, a collapse of over 73% for the new housing industry.
Since September 2008 through November 2016 there have been approximately 6.5 million completed foreclosures according to Corelogic here. That means that over 16 million people have been displaced from their homes during the Obama era based on the average household size of 2.5 people.
The homeownership rate in the second quarter of 2016 fell to its lowest point in five decades at 62.9%, the same rate which prevailed in 1965.
Pew reported in December 2015 that after more than four decades as the economic majority in the United States, the middle class had become out-numbered by the combined number of the rich and the poor. Pew reports that in 1971 middle class adults were 61% of their fellows vs. only 50% in 2015. The underclass has grown by 25% while the richest tranche has grown by 125%.
At least some of the decline in the relative size of the middle class has to do with the enormous number of illegal aliens flooding the country since Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, and with a large number of Baby Boomers moving on up in an era of credentialism while eschewing larger families for themselves than they came from.
Births per 1,000 women fell to their lowest point since 1909 in the first quarter of 2016 at 59.8. The rate was 122.9 in 1957.
You can't have a decent country unless you give birth to it.
Laugh of the Day: Jake Novak at CNBC says Obama helped us emotionally recover from the Great Recession
Sure he did, Jake, sure he did.
Here:
"President Obama's cheerleading for the economy did help people recover emotionally from the Great Recession."
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
In case you didn't get it the first time, Vladimir Putin thinks the CIA behind the Trump smear . . .
. . . is the same CIA which overthrew the democratically elected but pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, president of Ukraine, in 2014.
Not coincidentally, John McCain was the US point man in the overthrow effort: "John McCain backs opposition leaders telling Ukraine protesters: 'America stands with you - Ukraine will make Europe better'".
Democracy is only OK if it's pro-Western, you see.
When Chelsea Bradley Manning gets out in May . . .
. . . who knows, maybe the third time will be a charm?
Obviously, if Snowden had really wanted a pass from President Obama . . .
. . . he should have changed genders.
Too late now bro!
Joe Biden wants to plunge Europe into war if dictator Erdogan's TURKEY is attacked
The dangerous illogic of NATO overreach is completely lost on Joe Biden, here:
At a time when Trump and his advisors are talking about shaking up NATO, Biden said, we must "support our NATO allies. An attack on one is an attack on all, that can never be placed in question." ... "We need to tap into the big heartedness [and raise taxes on the 1%]," Biden said. "This is a moment to lead boldly."
Then why didn't you run, Joe?
Some leader.
Liberal progressives. All talk. No action.
Liberal progressives. All talk. No action.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Vladimir Putin likens Trump opponents to the revolutionaries who deposed Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine in 2014
Quoted here:
'People who order such fakes against the U.S. president-elect, fabricate them and use them in political struggle are worse than prostitutes,' Putin said. 'They have no moral restrictions whatsoever, and it highlights a significant degree of degradation of political elites in the West, including in the United States.' 'He wasn't a politician, we didn't even know about his political ambitions,' Putin said. 'Do they think that our special services are hunting for every U.S. billionaire?' Trump is a 'grown man, and secondly he's someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world,' he said. 'I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world.' He said Trump's foes are ready to go as far as to 'stage a Maidan in Washington to prevent Trump from entering office,' in reference to the alleged U.S. role in organizing protests in the main square of the Ukrainian capital, the Maidan, which forced the nation's Russia-friendly president from power in 2014. 'People who are doing that are inflicting a colossal damage to the interests of the United States,' Putin said.
Trump to whack DC with 10% cut to discretionary spending, 20% cut to personnel
 |
| Obama's most recent discretionary budget estimates |
The hive is buzzing.
A 10% cut to 2018 projected discretionary would come to about $115 billion.
There are 2.824 million federal employees, but the discretionary departments do not by any means exhaust them all. But just a 5% cut to this total would mean 141,200 would be going bye-bye.
Lots of homes would be going up for sale!
Story here.
There's your magic negro, your mediocre negro, and then there's your bottom of the barrel negro like elitist negro Marc Lamont Hill
Mark Lamont Hill, quoted here:
LAMONT HILL: Yeah, it's a bunch of mediocre negroes being dragged in front of TV as a photo-op for Donald Trump's exploitive campaign against black people. And you [Bruce LeVell] are the prime example of that.
Monday, January 16, 2017
John Lewis' boycott of the inaugural isn't unprecedented, nor the reason for it: He also boycotted G. W. Bush
WaPo reported this Sunday, Jan. 21, 2001, here:
Some members of the Black Caucus decided to boycott Inauguration Day; John Lewis, for instance, spent the day in his Atlanta district. He thought it would be hypocritical to attend Bush's swearing-in because he doesn't believe Bush is the true elected president.
MLK Jr. is an illegitimate American who opposed our economics, our middle class and our religion
"I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. ... So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. ... [R]eligion [can?] so easily become a tool of the middle class to keep the proletariant oppressed. ... It is probably true that capitalism is on its death bed, but social systems have a way of developing a long and powerful death bed breathing capacity. Remember it took feudalism more than 500 years to pass out from its death bed. Capitalism will be in America quite a few more years my dear. Yet with his basic thesis I would concur. Our economic system is going through a radical change, and certainly this change is needed. I would certainly welcome the day to come when there will be a nationalization of industry." -- July 1952
Rand Paul: John Lewis isn't immune from criticism just because he's a civil rights icon
No, he's immune because he's BLACK, but Rand Paul won't say that.
Rand Paul, quoted here:
[B]eing a civil rights icon ... I would also say that that doesn't make us immune from criticism or debate. So, John Lewis isn't in a position where there can't be a healthy debate back and forth. Because he's a civil rights icon shouldn't make him immune. ... I should be able to honestly disagree with him, and not have it all come back to, I have no appreciation for a civil rights icon because of this. And I think that's the part that I think is sometimes unfair in this.
Laugh of the Day: WaPo calls MLK Jr. a conservative
Here:
“My friends,” Dr. King said in his Detroit sermon, “all I’m trying to say is that if we are to go forward today, we’ve got to go back and rediscover some mighty precious values that we’ve left behind. That’s the only way that we would be able to make of our world a better world, and to make of this world what God wants it to be. . . .”
Spoken like a true conservative, and a truly great one.
Conservatives think people who think it's possible to make this world what God wants it to be are seriously mistaken.
Complete and utter rubbish from Real Clear Markets on "free market" Martin Luther King Jr. who said "capitalism has outlived its usefulness"
Here in "Martin Luther King's Free-Market Legacy":
Martin Luther King proclaimed that he had a dream that “…my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” His dream was far more powerful than it is given credit for. It is a general call for freedom and free-market prosperity.
The real Martin Luther King Jr. was a self-confessed socialist as early as July 1952:
By the way (to turn to something more intellectual) I have just completed Bellamy’s Looking Backward. It was both stimulating and fascinating. There can be no doubt about it. Bellamy had the insight of a social prophet as well as the fact finding mind of the social scientist. I welcomed the book because much of its content is in line with my basic ideas. I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human system it fail victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. So I think Bellamy is right in seeing the gradual decline of capitalism.
Sunday, January 15, 2017
Nebraska's Republican Senator Ben Sasse crawls out from underneath his rock to support John Lewis over Trump
First!
Liberal preening.
Here:
Sasse appears to be the only Republican publicly critical of the president-elect's attack so far.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Open borders Republicans join hands with Democrats to extend Obama's Orwellian DACA overreach
 |
| Coffman |
Remember, they're not "illegal immigrants", they're "childhood arrivals".
The Republicans named in the story here, where it is claimed there are up to 60 supporters in the US House Republican Caucus, are:
Senator Lindsey Grahamnesty Graham of South Carolina
Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado
Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen of Florida
Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida.
The House would need 290 votes to override a Trump veto of a bill exempting "Dreamers" from deportation for three years. In the Senate 67 votes would be required. A coalition of 194 House Democrats and 60 Republicans yields just 254 votes, not enough. In the Senate 19 Republicans would have to join 48 Democrats to override a Trump veto.
So Coffman wants to ram the bill through now, before Obama no longer has his pen and telephone.
Friday, January 13, 2017
Nine Republicans in the US House voted against the Obamacare repeal framework today, the usual malcontents
The roll call vote is here, the framework passing 227-198, 10 not voting (five from each party).
Republicans Amash, Dent, Fitzpatrick, Jones, Katko, Labrador, MacArthur, Massie, and McClintock voted against the measure from the Senate.
Upset by Jeh Johnson election overreach, Mark Levin proposes yet another constitutional amendment
"There outta be a law", we used to say.
As if the other eleven he's already proposed stand a chance of being passed, or followed any more than are the current twenty-seven or the constitution itself.
President Obama, unfortunately, is correct. The constitution is a mere parchment barrier. That's why he keeps burning it right up to the last minute.
In a decent country, Obama would never have been elected in the first place.
Rand Paul prefers histrionics to repeal of Obamacare, Diane Feinstein absent from vote for pacemaker surgery
The roll call vote, narrowly successful 51-48, is here.
Sen. Paul, making the good the enemy of the perfect as usual for the libertarians, views the repeal framework as a debt disaster:
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was the sole Republican to vote against the measure, citing the budget measure’s failure to meet the requirements set forth in the balanced budget amendment.
“As a physician, I cannot wait to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a health care system that relies on freedom to provide quality, comprehensive, and affordable care,” he said in a statement. “But putting nearly $10 trillion more in debt on the American people’s backs through a budget that never balances is not the way to get there. It is the exact opposite of the change Republicans promised, and I cannot support it, even as a placeholder.”
Laugh of the Day: Elizabeth Talking Bull Warren isn't qualified to grill Ben Carson's chicken
Seen here in the comments section.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson throws down the gauntlet in South China Sea
Hooah Rex!
From the story here:
In comments expected to enrage Beijing, Rex Tillerson told his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China's building of islands and putting military assets on those islands was "akin to Russia's taking Crimea" from Ukraine.
Asked whether he supported a more aggressive posture toward China, he said: "We're going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed." ...
Tillerson called China's South China Sea island-building and declaration of an air defense zone in waters of the East China Sea it contests with Japan "illegal actions."
"They're taking territory or control, or declaring control of territories that are not rightfully China's," he said.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Glenn Greenwald writes that the CIA was trying to defeat Trump and elect Hillary Clinton
Here:
FOR MONTHS, the CIA, with unprecedented clarity, overtly threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump. In August, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell announced his endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed that “Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” The CIA and NSA director under George W. Bush, Gen. Michael Hayden, also endorsed Clinton, and went to the Washington Post to warn, in the week before the election, that “Donald Trump really does sound a lot like Vladimir Putin,” adding that Trump is “the useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.”
It is not hard to understand why the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for restraining the CIA’s proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war, while Trump denounced it. Clinton clearly wanted a harder line than Obama took against the CIA’s long-standing foes in Moscow, while Trump wanted improved relations and greater cooperation. In general, Clinton defended and intended to extend the decadeslong international military order on which the CIA and Pentagon’s preeminence depends, while Trump — through a still-uncertain mix of instability and extremist conviction — posed a threat to it.
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%.
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
"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."
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
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?
Monday, January 9, 2017
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.
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.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
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.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Friday, January 6, 2017
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.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
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.
Medicaid enrollment, healthcare for the poor, has exploded by 46% under Obama
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.
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