Nat Hentoff Says Obama Wasn't Fully Qualified To Teach Constitutional Law At The University of Chicago

Here, but that's just for starters:

Hentoff called this the worst state the country has ever been in, “Even worse than Woodrow Wilson’s regime, when people could be arrested for speaking German.” Compounding the problem he says, is the digital age, which has allowed the president to engage in unprecedented domestic spying with the apparatus of the National Security Agency. WND asked if Obama really posed such a threat, considering he was a professor of constitutional law. “People forget, he taught a course that he was not fully qualified to teach. But nobody seemed to care,” Hentoff observed.

He also pointed out that Obama was the only editor of the Harvard Law Review to never publish an article, something that went virtually unnoticed when voters considered his qualifications. “See, that was a case of affirmative-action and people feeling, ‘Hey we ought to do something important, symbolically, and here’s a black guy, and he’s articulate, so we’re gonna do this.’”

Hentoff mentioned that former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the man Time Magazine once called “the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court,” once personally lectured him that “Affirmative-action on a racial basis is a total violation of the 14th Amendment, no doubt about it.” And, referring to Obama’s presidency, the journalist said, “That’s what that kind of affirmative-action did for us.”

He told WND that he firmly believed the president does not care about due process, the separation of powers, the concept of a self-governing republic or many other basic American ideals. And that’s why, he said, “What Obama is doing now is about as un-American as you can get.” Hentoff wanted to make sure no one thought he was engaging in hyperbole. He said it was literally true that Obama is “the most un-American president we’ve ever had.” And just to make sure everybody heard him, he added, “I hope the FBI got all of that.”

Obama thinks he has achievements, which must mean he is suffering a psychosis

From the long story in The New Yorker, here, by image-accommodating biographer David Remnick:

As Obama ticked off a list of first-term achievements—the economic rescue, the forty-four straight months of job growth, a reduction in carbon emissions, a spike in clean-energy technology—he seemed efficient but contained, running at three-quarters speed, like an athlete playing a midseason road game of modest consequence; he was performing just hard enough to leave a decent impression, get paid, and avoid injury.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's see.

Starting with the economic rescue, Obama said at the time in early 2009 that he had more than enough on his plate without having to worry about the financial crisis.

So who fixed that?

Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. While everyone was fixated on the controversy over TARP and the crony capitalist, fascist character of that bailout in the mere hundreds of billions of dollars as millions of Americans were losing their homes, behind the scenes the Fed was providing multiple trillions of dollars of short-term loans to just about any bank or business in the world which was in trouble, at rock-bottom low interest rates which homeowners could only dream about, right into 2010. They all got fixed while 5.6 million Americans went on to lose their homes through 2013.

And what did Obama do in response to that?

Disgracefully fire Bernanke in public by saying he'd overstayed his time at the Fed, but that came only long after everything looked like it was truly stabilized. And I do mean "looked". The fact of the matter is extraordinary measures remain in place at the Fed because the banks' condition is still not healthy enough to do without them. When those end, the crisis will be truly over, not before. The rescue is still underway, with no end in sight.

Then there's the 44 months of job growth claim. Well, the truth is we are in the 72nd month of the jobs recession as we speak today, the longest jobs recession in the history of the post-war by a long shot. Bush's had been the longest previously, at 47 months. And it is estimated that the current jobs recession will not be over for another 6 months, which means we'll finally have matched the number of payroll jobs which existed at the time the recession began, but only after about 6.5 years have gone by.

But that says nothing about a return to normalcy. Include the shortfall which exists in the numbers because of net population growth over the period and the country will still be in a serious jobs deficit once the jobs recession is over, and for a long time to come without some major driver for jobs appearing on the scene.

Finally, I'm not sure how anyone measures a reduction in carbon emissions when China keeps them billowing into the air at a record rate, burning coal and oil in huge quantities. Obama can point to the closing down of coal power plants in this country if he wants, but all that does is make American electricity more expensive as China's waves of pollution waft ever eastward over the Pacific, polluting our air, water and farmland.

But if anyone's contributing to the reduction in carbon emissions in this country, it's the American worker who isn't working. Travel on the road in this country has been stuck at levels first reached between 2004 and 2005 for five long years because so many people no longer have a job to which to commute. Every month that goes by shows the same statistical result: no progress in miles traveled back to the levels of the 2007 peak. It's an odd thing to be taking credit for.

If it is clear from these facts that Obama is delusional and lives in a separate reality, it is also clear from Remnick's story that Obama has to work hard at crafting it, even about what is probably at the heart of his mental problems in the first place: 

When I asked Obama about another area of shifting public opinion—the legalization of marijuana—he seemed even less eager to evolve with any dispatch and get in front of the issue. “As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

Is it less dangerous? I asked.

Obama leaned back and let a moment go by. That’s one of his moves. When he is interviewed, particularly for print, he has the habit of slowing himself down, and the result is a spool of cautious lucidity. He speaks in paragraphs and with moments of revision. Sometimes he will stop in the middle of a sentence and say, “Scratch that,” or, “I think the grammar was all screwed up in that sentence, so let me start again.”

Why does the smartest president ever have to edit everything, all the time, until it makes sense to him?

Who do you call to have the president committed?

Like Obama, It Turns Out Texas' Abortion Champion Wendy Davis Hasn't Told The Whole Truth

The Dallas Morning News here has some of the details she "blurred":

Davis was 21, not 19, when she was divorced. She lived only a few months in the family mobile home while separated from her husband before moving into an apartment with her daughter.

A single mother working two jobs, she met Jeff Davis, a lawyer 13 years older than her, married him and had a second daughter. He paid for her last two years at Texas Christian University and her time at Harvard Law School, and kept their two daughters while she was in Boston. When they divorced in 2005, he was granted parental custody, and the girls stayed with him. Wendy Davis was directed to pay child support.

In an extensive interview last week, Davis acknowledged some chronological errors and incomplete details in what she and her aides have said about her life. ...

Davis defended the accuracy of her overall account as a young single mother who escaped poverty, earned an education and built a successful legal and political career through hard work and determination. ...

“I had a baby. I got divorced by the time I was 19 years old,” she testified in a recent federal lawsuit over redistricting. “After I got divorced, I lived in a mobile home park in southeast Fort Worth.” ...

Jeff Davis said ... around the time the final payment on their Harvard Law School loan was due. “It was ironic,” he said. “I made the last payment, and it was the next day she left.”

Hey Obama! Your Popularity Is Down Because You're A Liar, Not Because You're Black!

Refinery Capacity Utilization Is Down Almost 7% From The 1998 Peak Through 2012

US Gasoline Consumption Is Down 6.5% Through 2012 From The Peak Year In 2007

Obama Exports 2.5 Times More Gasoline Per Day Than Bush, But Consumers Now Pay 1.5 Times More

Over the span of eight years of George Bush finished gasoline exports from the US averaged just 135,000 barrels per day. But over the first four years of Obama the average soared to nearly 345,000 per day, 2.5 times more.

Under Bush gasoline's average annual price for all formulations was just $2.13/gallon, but under Obama it has soared to $3.16/gallon for the five years 2009 through 2013, 1.5 times higher on average.

So who's the bigger friend of Big Oil, George Bush or Barack Obama?

Tom Coburn Is Mistaken: He Thinks Changing The Actors In Washington Will Change It

It won't.

This is the conceit shared by many Republicans, and by many of their supporters in the country, but it is mistaken.

We have the government we deserve, and it sucks because we do, and it will keep on sucking until we stop sucking as much as we do.

And what do you think are the chances of that changing?

Video here.

Both Shiller p/e and Tobin's q warn stocks are seriously overvalued

As reported by Brett Arends, here:

Smithers found that over the past century the Shiller PE had an R-squared to subsequent returns of 0.52, the “Pseudo-Indicator” one of 0.61, and the q an astounding 0.79.

So if the past is any guide, if you want to get a good estimate of the future returns from today’s stock market you should completely ignore the low yields on cash, certificates of deposit, or bonds. You should pay more attention to the Shiller PE, and you should pay the most attention to the Tobin’s q.

And what do these tell you? “As at the 31st December, 2013,” says Smithers, the “q indicated that U.S. non-financial equities were overvalued by 73% and CAPE indicated an overvaluation of 76% for equities, including financials.”

The First Bank Failure Of 2014 Is DuPage National Bank, West Chicago, Illinois

The first bank failure of 2014 is DuPage National Bank, West Chicago, Illinois, costing the FDIC $1.6 million.

Bill Binney, 32-Year Veteran And Critic Of NSA, Says America Is Now A Police State

Too bad he had to say that here, where they believe 9/11 was an inside job:

The main use of the collection from these [NSA spying] programs [is] for law enforcement. ... [N]one of the NSA data is referred to in courts – cause it has been acquired without a warrant. [Law enforcement agencies] have to do a “Parallel Construction” and not tell the courts or prosecution or defense the original data used to arrest people. This I call: a “planned program[m]ed perjury policy” directed by US law enforcement. ... [T]his also applies to “Foreign Counterparts.” This is a total corruption of the justice system not only in our country but around the world. ... This is a totalitarian process – means we are now in a police state.

Michigan Ranks Third Worst For Employment But Gov. Rick Snyder Wants More Immigrants

Here's our insane governor last night:

"We need to encourage immigration in our state," said Snyder, who has backed national reform efforts. "That's how we made our country great. We need to focus on legal immigration to make sure Michigan is the most welcoming place."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Too bad Michigan isn't a more welcoming place for the unemployed who already live here.

White Hat Hacker Says Security On Healthcare.gov Is Worse Now Than In November

David Kennedy, quoted here by NBC News:

“The reason we’re concluding that this is so shockingly bad is that the issues across the site are so varied. You don’t even have to hack into the system to see big issues – which means there are [major problems] underneath. Nothing’s really changed since our November 19 testimony. In fact, it’s worse. Some issues still include critical or high-risk findings to personal information."

Corelogic Foreclosure Rate In November 2013 Still 119% Above Normal Pre-Crisis Rate

As reported here on January 9th:

There were 46,000 completed foreclosures in the United States in November 2013, down from 64,000 in November 2012, a year-over-year decrease of 29 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures decreased 8.3 percent, from 50,000 in October 2013. ... Completed foreclosures are an indication of the total number of homes actually lost to foreclosure. As a basis of comparison to the 46,000 completed foreclosures reported for November 2013, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006 before the decline in the housing market in 2007. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 4.7 million completed foreclosures across the country.

5.6 Million American Homes Repossessed 2006-2013

As reported here:

Including the 2013 numbers, over the past eight years 10.9 million U.S. properties have started the foreclosure process and 5.6 million have been repossessed by lenders through foreclosure.

Is It A Coincidence John Roberts' Law Clerk Is A Utopian Progressive?

Birds of a feather flock together.

Joshua D. Hawley, here, clearly a friend of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic":

Christians’ purpose in politics should be to advance the kingdom of God—to make it more real, more tangible, more present. Or should I say, to immanentize the eschaton.

Laura Ingraham and Raymond Arroyo Discuss Spanish Healthcare.gov Slaughtering The Language

After which Raymond Arroyo uses the English phrase "full plethora".

You know, the opposite of which is the empty plethora.

Just now on the radio show.

Estimating Retirements Added To Those "Not In Labor Force" 2009-2013

It is often forgotten that retired people are classified as not in the labor force. The measure of those "Not in labor force" has grown to a staggering all time high of 92.338 million, not-seasonally-adjusted, as of December 2013.

Between 2009 and 2013 alone, the figure has grown by 11.05 million, and people like Rush Limbaugh thump loudly about all these people "not working" because of the bad economy.

The question is, though, how many of these are retirements?

I say it's theoretically possible that all of them are.

Those turning 66 years of age each year from 2009-2013 were born between 1943 and 1947.

And here are births from 1943 to 1947:

3.1 million 1943

2.9 million 1944

2.9 million 1945

3.4 million 1946

3.8 million 1947.

How many of these survived to age 66?

The CDC publishes annually the life tables, the latest of which came out a few days ago for the year 2009. A person aged 63 in 2009 (born in 1946) was among the 86% who survived to 63, according to the tables. In the 2008 tables from a year ago, that same person at age 62 was among the 87% who survived to 62. In the 2007 tables at 61 he was among the 88% who survived to 61. Extrapolating forward to 2012, we will estimate that at 66 he was among the 83% who survived.

So for persons born earlier than 1946 we can estimate their survival rate as follows:

Born in 1943, retiring at 66 in 2009: 80% survive, or 2.48 million

Born in 1944, retiring at 66 in 2010: 81% survive, or 2.35 million

Born in 1945, retiring at 66 in 2011: 82% survive, or 2.38 million

Born in 1946, retiring at 66 in 2012: 83% survive, or 2.82 million

Born in 1947, retiring at 66 in 2013: 84% survive, or 3.19 million.

Total theoretically possible retirees: 13.22 million, 2.17 million more than actually left the labor force.

Obviously, not everyone retires at 66. Some keep working. And especially these days some keep working because they have to. The employment level of the 55 and over set has grown by 4.5 million over the period 2009-2013.

It appears to be the case, however, that an even larger number are deferring both Social Security benefits and work because they can afford to: Social Security reports that retired workers and their dependents receiving benefits grew only 5.6 million from the end of 2008 to the end of 2013.

Of the 11.05 million added to "not in labor force", I'd estimate at least 5.4 million are well off enough to forgo both work and Social Security until they reach age 70, and perhaps more than that if Social Security recipients who continue to work according to the rules are counted instead as part of the labor force.

Manufacturing Jobs In 2014 Are At 1941 Levels

Is The All-Time High In Temporary Help Forecasting A Recession?