Pay increases for the bottom 80% of workers under Trump still lag those under George W. Bush at 2.9% vs. 3.2%

Average increases year over year through November 2019 and all of 2017 and 2018 average just 2.9% vs. Bush 43's 8-year average of 3.2%.

Yet all we hear is how this is the greatest economy ever, the greatest economy in decades, yada yada yada.

It's all BS.

It's the best economy in about eight years for your average worker, but still not as good as it was under Bush 43.

Trump can crow all he wants about new stock market highs: Real return continues to lag the previous era by over 70%

Trump is proud of rewarding his implacable enemies in The Swamp with a pay increase and paid family leave

"Former" Democrat.

Just in time for Christmas, another China slave laborer smuggled note story

Here.

Horsecrap from The Washington Free Beacon: "The economy is gangbusters" when it's actually underperforming the post-war by over 50%

Here.

Through 3Q2019 the US economy over the last ten years as measured by the compound annual growth rate from 3Q2009 and using the government's own gross domestic product measure known as GDPC1 is underperforming the previous 62 year period from 3Q1947 until 3Q2009 by 29.39%.

We're growing at 2.33% now vs. 3.3% then, and that calculation removes the worst of the 2008 debacle from the now column and puts it in the then column.

If we measured as we really ought to from the previous peak in 4Q2007 and included the downturn in the now column, the picture is much much worse.

To keep it simple the full 12 years from 3Q2007 through 3Q2019 (third estimate just reported) comes in at a miserable 1.67% vs. the previous 60 year period at 3.47%. In other words, this so-called gangbusters economy is really underperforming the post-war by 51.87%.

We're not even half as good as we used to be.

The only thing that is going gangbusters right now is Trump cheerleaders from Andy Puzder to Rush Limbaugh and all the usual idiots in between trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Thinking Americans are not fooled.

Stampede into Roth IRAs expected after passage of Secure Act in massive spending bill signed by Trump limits "stretch IRAs"

People who have saved $1 million or more in an IRA and plan to pass it on to someone other than their spouses should consider doing Roth conversions, said Ed Slott, president of Ed Slott & Co., which specializes in IRA education and training. For instance, if their children inherit the IRAs, they would likely receive them and face the tax consequences during their prime earning years. "It's a big tax hit," Mr. Slott said. "Beneficiaries can let the money accumulate tax-free in a Roth." Investment advisers are going to put a premium on Roth conversions. ... 

Roth conversions also would benefit the government, which would get tax revenue more quickly than it would under IRA distributions. But the change in stretch IRA policy under the SECURE Act will upset many estate plans that were written based on children being able to hold onto IRAs for their lifetimes. "I call this section of the SECURE Act the broken promise," Mr. Slott said. "It's like they changed the rules in the ninth inning."

More here.

79 Republicans in the US House voted for this POS hidden in the bill entitled "National Law Enforcement Museum Commemorative Coin Act".

How would you even know?

 

By forcing the hands of millions of older Americans with estate plans in place for their non-spouse beneficiaries, the government obviously hopes to reap a windfall of tax revenue generated by their conversion of tax-protected traditional IRAs and 401k plans into taxable Roths, knowing the temporary umbrella provided by the lower Trump tax rates expiring in ten years will be an added incentive.

These bastards are wily. 

Trump replaces American civilization with trivialization

The saddening thing about Robert De Niro is that his director doesn't get that Trump has already humiliated himself

The script needs a complete rewrite.

Lunch box Joe promises to sacrifice blue collar workers on the altar of a green economy

All Democrats had to do is run sane, normal people for president to beat Trump, and they can't find any.

The most eschewed degree, History: Something about somebody ignorant of something somebody did once resulting in a completely avoidable disaster yet again

Ilhan Omar takes another stab at dethroning stupidest member of the US House Hank Johnson

Your average MAGA cowers before The Judiciary, as does Trump

Thou shalt not humiliate Hillary

Taking a gamble on Donald Trump has turned into a disaster for the taxpayers

We got your money again

Thou shalt not insult the Queens

US troops in Afghanistan for 18 years protecting American drug interests

Donald Trump, the ultimate cuck, signs another spending bill the likes of which he said he would never sign again, after being impeached no less

Donald Trump, the left's pathetic butt boy.

Hey Rush, what's undeniable is that Trump's GDP is no better than Obama's pathetic GDP

2% in 3Q2019 reported today, when Trump promised 4%, even 5%. Ain't happening. All we get is more of the same meh, 2.9% tops in 2018.

A191RL1A225NBEA

Perjurer John Brennan should already be sharing a cell with perjurer James Clapper and perjurer James Comey, but the DOJ just investigates some more

McConnell can't do anything relative to impeachment because the House hasn't followed through

Technically there is no impeachment until the House gives the Senate the articles.

So, as far as the Senate is concerned, nothing has happened.

If the Senate acts in any way other than to pretend nothing has happened, it will be muddying the constitutional waters. 

Trump should go golfing with Mitch. Or better yet, to the horse races.

Democrats' prototype Stepford wife robot heads home for modifications after proving unable to complete impeachment

The decade is not over for another year

I feel your self-contempt

FISA Court has no excuse for failing to stop FBI crimes, Devin Nunes warned it in letter June 2018

END THE SECRET FISA COURTS!

Akshully, Trump has not yet been impeached

Nancy has to send managers over to the Senate with the articles of impeachment before Trump can be said to be impeached.

So, keep holdin' 'em, Nancy! You are doing God's work!

It's more complicated than Mark Levin says: Sean Davis points out Senate rules require articles of impeachment to be delivered by House managers to the Senate, and changing those rules is too heavy a lift

Nancy Pelosi is a wily devil. She already knows how to use the rules against the Senate.

Seems like quite a vulnerability in the balance of powers which she is exploiting to grab the power for the House over the Senate and the presidency.

Ask yourself who benefits from the 22nd Amendment? And the 16th?

We have the tyranny of the legislative, despite the founders' many warnings.

McConnell must go nuclear to fix this, but probably will not. The gravity of the situation certainly calls for it, but the political toxicity would be just horrific.

McConnell to Pelosi: You have no power here

Mark Levin views Pelosi's obstruction of the Senate as constitutionally overcomeable by McConnell

Nancy Pelosi was apparently advised by leftwing Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe to delay sending the impeachment to the Senate. So she’s unilaterally sitting on the impeachment. This is another brazen unconstitutional act.

Posted on December 19, 2019

Here’s what Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans must do in response: The Senate has the sole power under the Constitution to adjudicate an impeachment. Therefore, Pelosi is attempting to obstruct the Senate’s power to act on its constitutional authority. McConnell should immediacy [sic] put an end to this and declare the impeachment null and void as the speaker has failed to complete the impeachment process by timely sending it to the Senate for adjudication. McConnell has no less authority to unilaterally make such a decision than Pelosi does to withhold the administrative notification of an impeachment to the Senate either indefinitely or with conditions. Her effort to cripple the presidency and blackmail the Senate must be defeated.

Source.

Democrat Julian Castro: Iowa too white to be first in Democrat nomination process

Here!

Prediction: Nancy Pelosi will hold the articles of impeachment through the November 2020 election in order to get the Senate back in Democrat hands

After which she'll send the articles up to the Senate and get Trump convicted and expelled.

Her justification will be McConnell refusing to give Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a hearing in 2016.

It's a gamble because the articles will have to be reauthorized in the next Congress, and presumes a Democrat sweep of both chambers. But what have they got to lose, except failure now or failure later?

Better to fail later and try to make political hay now while the sun shines. 

The FISA system, invented in 1978, should be dismantled, along with just about every other 20th Century legal and constitutional innovation

Jobless claims through 12/14/19 were higher than year ago levels, in all three categories

Every day Nancy Pelosi fails to distract Mitch McConnell with something else to do, you know, like articles of impeachment, is another day closer to achieving his goal of filling every judicial vacancy with a Trump appointee

When life hands you lemons . . ..

The best way to piss off Democrats this morning is to start ringing their phones off the hook since they all have celebration hangovers

Repeal the 22nd Amendment

If Nancy Pelosi can serve 17 terms, so can Trump.

When I was a kid I was a complete idiot, but then I grew up and became a nuanced idiot

Pelosi rushed into impeachment because it was urgent and grave, now plans to take Laurence Tribe's advice and delay by not sending articles of impeachment to the US Senate

Complete frauds these people are.

Nah, we didn't choose THIS impeachment, we chose the other three

December 2017: NFL protests

January 2018: Shit-hole countries

July 2019: Insulted AOC & Co.

Jesse Kelly finally replaced the batteries in his pussy detector

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

One warhead could fix that

Tulsi Gabbard upstages Justin Amash by being the only House member to vote Present on articles of impeachment

Amash voted Yea on both articles of impeachment as the sole independent.

Gabbard was late to favor an impeachment inquiry, supporting it only after Trump's Ukraine phone call in July.

Trump impeached by House, moves on to sponsor important globohomo event tomorrow at UN in historic first

Senator Bernie Unfarts must be in the House

FBI omitted from FISA application from the start that Carter Page helped the CIA for years, but this liberal lefty lying lawyer calls that a process issue

NDAA creating Trump's Space Force and paid family leave for The Swamp will also give immigration amnesty to 4,000 Liberians

Story:

Many Liberians fleeing civil war in the 1990s were given temporary protected status to stay in the U.S. — with no path to citizenship — and became part of the DED program in 2007. They faced the prospect of deportation under administrations of both parties, with continual extensions.

Trump twice moved to end the program, saying Liberians could return to their homeland because conditions in the country had improved: It was no longer experiencing armed conflicts and had recovered from a 2014 outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus. But as Liberians' DED status was set to expire on March 31 this year, the administration approved a one-year reprieve.

FISC order against FBI is just more Swamp CYA: Republican Nunes warned them twice in 2018

When you imagine Republicans did what Joe Biden did

Career civil servant Mark Sandy testified on Nov. 16, 2019 that he was told that military assistance to Ukraine was put on hold by Trump because Trump was concerned other countries were not contributing more to Ukraine:

Mr. Sandy: I recall in early September an email that attributed the hold to the President's concern about other countries not contributing more to Ukraine. ... Mr. Meadows: And, all of a sudden, we get some additional information that's provided in terms of what other countries contribute to Ukraine aid, and then the aid was released. Is that a fair characterization? Mr. Sandy: In terms of the sequencing, yes.

Democrat version of "Promises kept!"

Remember, women make superior leaders, and if you don't believe Obama, well . . .

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issues rare public order rebuking FBI misconduct, acknowledges Americans cannot trust the FBI

This order responds to reports that personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was detrimental to the FBI's case, in connection with four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for authority to conduct electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page. When FBI personnel mislead NSD in the ways described above, they equally mislead the FISC. ... The FBI's handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the OIG report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above. The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.

Read the whole thing here.

Tennessee's Tim Burchett rightly complains about spending the $1.4 trillion, but voted for the massive NDAA anyway which gave paid family leave to The Swamp

Rings hollow in the holler, Tim.

Twas the night before impeachment

Twas the night before impeachment
and all across Twitter
not a conservative was stirring
And Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself

After 3 years of Donald Trump, US Debt to the Penny is up $3.3 trillion

Trump, Republicans and Democrats are spending us blind.

President Trump could easily veto these spending bills and get spending compromises from Congress, but won't because he's a wimp

The narrow majorities of Democrats in the House and Republicans in the Senate mean there would be great difficulty achieving 2/3 majorities to override the veto except for the most necessary spending, which means Trump has the upper hand.

President Trump is in the catbird seat when it comes to spending, but he does NOTHING. All he does is veto the occasional "Joint Resolution", which is meaningless to the taxpayer and in the same class as conservatism in this country, which has again been reduced to this or that irritable mental gesture.

Donald Trump is a complete and utter fool who knows nothing about the power he has.

Ann Coulter was right to say Trump has replaced Bush 41 as biggest wimp ever to serve as president.

 

After passing NDAA whopper funding The Military Industrial Complex and The Swamp, US House passes another $1.4 trillion in spending in two bills to let Trump say he didn't sign another Omnibus spending bill

TRUMP IS WORKING WITH THEM AGAINST US YOU IDIOTS.

The House passed a $1.4 trillion federal spending package that averts a government shutdown and maintains some funding for a southern border wall. The measure passed Tuesday despite the objections of liberal Democrats and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who said they opposed the $1.375 billion allocated for the construction of a southern border wall as well as other border security provisions. The spending bill would provide funding through the rest of fiscal 2020. It passed in two different measures in order to avoid sending President Trump one “omnibus” package, which he had vowed to reject. 

More here.

Sean Hannity must be smoking something if he thinks this is a picture of much improved labor participation

We are stuck in the toilet.