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.

Obama will be president for only 3 more days, but in the hearts of his countrymen he will always remain . . .

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.

Boo hoo: Prominent Never Trump letter signers surprised to be on Trump's enemies list

What the hell did they expect? Front row seats?

And you thought Trump was arrogant.

Story here.

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.

Legitimate fighter

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.

The CIA chief John Brennan voted Communist in 1976, which is the real reason he takes umbrage with Trump calling him Nazi

"What I do find outrageous is equating intelligence community with Nazi Germany," Brennan said. "I do take great umbrage at that."

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.

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.

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.

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.

Trump fingers intelligence officials he's met with for leaking about those meetings

Prosecutable.

Story here.