Saturday, December 3, 2016

Academic Ann Douglas' analysis is a cloister-f*^k: "Even some white men feel they've been left behind"

Here, where her attachment to the ideology of "sexism" blinds her to the real consequences of Obama's intentional inattention to the fate of the white middle class of both sexes, no sex, homosex, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera:

Yes, Hillary was a flawed candidate. Her penchant for privacy—not surprising given what the Republicans and the national press have put her through since 1992—was her Achilles heel, leading to the use of a private email server that came to symbolize her alleged untrustworthiness. It also led her to be not adroit enough with the media. Hillary misread the country: the fury about the wages of neoliberalism—which, yes, she embodied—that was gripping people, young and old, on the Right and the Left. Thus, she didn’t have a galvanizing progressive message that, as the Sanders campaign demonstrated, millions were hungering for, even some white men feeling they’ve been left behind.

Even some white men

How about 4 million whites of both sexes, Ann, in the core of the working population aged 25 to 54 years, who've been left behind in fact and don't just "feel" they have:


Friday, December 2, 2016

America: Where Mark Levin is on the radio discussing Sarah Palin's misgivings about Trump's crony capitalism . . .

. . . and the feed cuts off to a basketball game.

Even fascism has to pay the bills.

Kellogg's is financing the communist Black Lives Matter movement to the tune of almost $1 million

See for yourself, here, at the Foundation website.

To protest, you could send your boxes of Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, Special K, Rice Krispies and Froot Loops to Kellogg Co. headquarters at:

2 Hamblin Avenue
Battle Creek, MI 49017
(269) 961-2000.

And switch to General Mills' Cheerios. Oats are better for you anyway.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Trump's Carrier intervention isn't just chilling, it's a crock of corporate welfare and perhaps explicit fascism

Jimmy Pethokoukis, on whom I have been very hard in the past, is certainly right about this one, calling the implicit intimidation in this affair "chilling", here.

But it's a lot more than chilling, it's at the very least more of the same cooperation between government and industry we have seen for decades but which used to go by the name of fascism, except it's more explicit than we're used to coming as it does from someone like Donald Trump, perhaps veering off now into explicit top-down federal intervention into business decisions.  

"We certainly don't want to take as our guide to creating jobs special tax breaks for a company that earned $7.5 billion in profits last year, got $6 billion in defense contracts, paid its top five executives $50 million, in order to preserve 1,000 out of 2,100 jobs," said [Robert] Shapiro, [former undersecretary of commerce]. "It's essentially a transfer from the taxpayers of Indiana, who are providing these tax breaks, to the shareholders of United Technology plus those 1,000 workers. That's really not a model for creating jobs across America," he added.


If #NeverTrump Bill Kristol endorsed General Mattis for a 3rd party run in April, I'm against him as Trump's pick for Defense

Bill Kristol, here:

Jim Mattis happens to be a social liberal. He's more liberal than I am. He's very concerned about the debt. He's a strong national security hawk. Why wouldn't someone like him... 

Mattis is also a conventional liberal in that he subscribes to a two-state solution for Israel, just like George Bush and John Kerry.

Duncan Lloyd, Assistant city solicitor in Philly, caught on camera with accomplice vandalizing new grocery with "F*ck Trump"

The guy's still on the payroll at $63,207 per year.

No word on how many other incidents he's responsible for.

From the story here:

Since Election Day, pro- and anti-Trump graffiti have been reported throughout the city. In early November, spray-painted swastikas, racist graffiti, and references to President-elect Donald Trump and Nazi Germany appeared in South Philadelphia. Anti-Trump graffiti have been reported on bus shelters and on the exterior wall of City Hall, where "Not My President" was spray-painted and removed Nov. 12.

The deepest cut, from Cenk Uygur: Obama's not shtrong like Trump


I'm sorry, if you're a Democrat, and you like Obama, I hate to break your heart and you want to hate me for it and that's okay, but Obama wouldn't have done that. 

That's not who he is, he is not that guy. And in this case, it is an absolutely fact. Because he is president right now. If he wanted, he could have pressured Carrier. But he didn't pressure Carrier. He didn't pressure United Technologies, and he didn't threaten to take away their contracts. Because he's not that strong. And he always thinks, his default mode is there's nothing we can do. You guys don't understand.There are consequences. 

No. I do understand. What I'm asking you to do is to risk those consequences to protect American workers. 

And you didn't do it, and Trump did it, and now he is going to get a world of credit...

Nobody is going to remember the downsides of that deal, no one is going to worry about those tax breaks later. It is going to be a huge political win for Donald Trump, that is by the way, as I just said, somewhat earned. There are so many options that the Democrats never choose to use... They want to outsource the jobs, let them outsource the jobs. 

Threaten their government contracts? Yes, you threaten their government contracts. That's called being strong!

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

3 weeks since Election 2016: Trump has now won more popular votes than any previous Republican

Trump 2016: 62.6 million
Romney '12: 60.9 million
McCain '08: 60.0 million
Bush '04: 62.0 million
Bush '00: 50.5 million

Meanwhile, Hillary still hasn't bested Obama 2012, and three weeks since Election 2016 remains 4.4 million votes behind Obama 2008:

Hillary 2016: 65.1 million
Obama '12: 65.9 million
Obama '08: 69.5 million
Kerry '04: 59.0 million
Gore '00: 51.0 million

ECRI notices what I noticed in September: Whites missed the job boat under Obama, have fewer jobs than nine years ago

My post was about full-time jobs, here in September. Asians, blacks and Hispanics all had net gains in full-time jobs from their respective 2007-2008 peaks through the second quarter of 2016, from 0.2 million to 1.5 million while whites still suffered from huge losses in full-time totaling 4.4 million. On a percentage basis minorities' gains ranged from 2% to 23% while white losses were 7%, the impact of which was so huge because whites represent 64% of the population. 

Mish's comment on the ECRI story here was this:

Minorities fared far better at job gains on a percentage basis than whites. 

While the ECRI story here concluded this:

Whites actually have fewer jobs than nine years ago, while Hispanics, Blacks and Asians together gained all of the net jobs added, and more. 

Did I mention 5.6 million Obama voters in 39 states didn't vote for Hillary?

Yes, yes, I did mention it.

Trump rewards Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for stonewalling Obama's Supreme Court appointment by picking his wife for Transportation

I don't view this as "nepotism" per se as others have who are much too quick to criticize Trump's centrism post-election.

Mitch McConnell withstood Obama's appointment power all through this period since the death of Scalia, enduring severe attacks for it from the left. People on the right who won't recognize what he accomplished are simply malign. They are like those who didn't recognize John Boehner's achievement getting the Bush tax cuts made permanent, and in many cases they are the same people, and unfortunately they are Legion.

McConnell's wife Elaine Chao had eight years' cabinet experience as head of Labor under Bush II and is competent to govern Transportation now under Trump. Not that we want her to have much to administer.

It is not a consequential appointment, except in the broad sense that Trump is not in the least setting about to take a machete to the federal Leviathan. Chao will maintain the status quo, more or less.

Trump interviews Rep. McCaul, who believes in a pathway to citizenship, for DHS

This looks more and more everyday like a marriage with conservatives which will remain unconsummated.

No pussy for you, Mr. Trump.

Story here.

Trump impressed by David Petraeus at meeting, you know, the preferred candidate of defeated liberal Senator Mark Kirk and co-founder of a new gun control advocacy group

Reported here in "David Petraeus, Mark Kelly launch gun control group":

The two announced on Friday that they were launching Veterans Coalition for Common Sense to encourage elected leaders to "do more to prevent gun tragedies." The group will feature veterans from every branch of the military who are urging lawmakers to toughen gun laws, the organization said in a news release.


What Trump moniker rhymes with David Betrayus? 

Democrat baseball

Marlins win 2003 World Series 4-2, but Yankees score four more runs overall so they sue to overturn the result.

If the popular vote counted in the World Series, the New York Yankees would have won it in 2003 instead of the Marlins

The Florida Marlins *won the 2003 World Series 4-2, but scored only 17 total runs vs. the 21 scored by the Yankees.

*Game One: Marlins 3-Yankees 2
Game Two: Marlins 1-Yankees 6
Game Three: Marlins 1-Yankees 6
*Game Four: Marlins 4-Yankees 3
*Game Five: Marlins 6-Yankees 4
*Game Six: Marlins 2-Yankees 0

Call it major league baseball's Electoral College at work. What counts is games (states) won, not the most runs (popular votes).

Mika Brzezinski calls Elizabeth Warren's anger shrill, unmeasured and unhinged

Hm. It's almost as if Elizabeth Warren is on the warpath or something. Imagine that.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

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


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

What a miserable cretin.


People found Hillary so revolting in 2016 she underperformed Obama 2008 in 39 states

Count 'em.

Hillary underperformed Obama in:

NY by 655,000 votes
MI by 604,000
OH by 549,000
MO by 387,000
PA by 381,000
IL by 336,000
IN by 335,000
WI by 295,000
TN by 218,000
MN by 206,000
IA by 175,000
KY by 123,000
WV by 115,000
CT by 101,000
KS by 100,000
AL by 87,000
NM by 87,000
OK by 82,000
NJ by 78,000
MS by 71,000
ME by 70,000
HI by 59,000
MT by 54,000
SD by 54,000
NE by 50,000
ND by 47,000
ID by 46,000
RI by 44,000
AR by 42,000
VT by 40,000
NH by 36,000
WY by 27,000
DE by 19,000
UT by 17,000
OR by 11,000
WA by 10,000
AK by 8,000
SC by 7,000
LA by 3,000

That's 5.6 million former Democrat votes alienated from Hillary Clinton in 2016 in 39 states, 60% of which came from the 8 Great Lakes states (3.361 million), according to the latest numbers this morning, three weeks after Election 2016.

Trump underperformed John McCain in 13 states and DC by 1.1 million votes, 63% of which were in California:

In CA by 727,000 votes
NY by 113,000
UT by 81,000
KS by 44,000
AK by 31,000
NM by 27,000
MA by 26,000
MS by 25,000
MD by 25,000
NJ by 18,000
OK by 11,000
WA by 9,000
VT by 4,000
DC by 4,000





Monday, November 28, 2016

The New Yorker's Amy Davidson would like to blame Hillary's loss in Michigan on Jill Stein, not on the 604,000 former Obama voters who didn't show up for her

These people cannot face how horrible Hillary Clinton's candidacy seemed to Democrats, horrible enough to keep them away from the polls. But Jill Stein received 51,000 votes in Michigan. Yeah, let's blame her. Democrats ... good! Third parties ... bad! 


(It is worth noting that Jill Stein won enough votes in Michigan and Wisconsin to account for Clinton’s losses there.)

Not-a-conservative Rod Dreher is wrong, wrong, wrong, but also right in the same paragraph

Here, at once unable to appreciate how the Electoral College just saved the Republic, but zeroed in like a laser on the fact that Hillary was such a horrible candidate that she was beaten by a carnival barker:

I find the insistence of many liberals now that Clinton won the popular vote to be annoying. Yeah, she did, and maybe the Electoral College needs scrapping, I dunno. The much more important point is that Hillary Clinton, the very embodiment of Establishment Washington, lost the presidency to Donald Trump. Donald Trump! That’s a message that shakes both the Democratic Party and the establishment of the Republican Party to their cores. Whether you like Trump or not, you have to admit that his was a breathtaking achievement.