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.

Ignored for years for preaching catastrophe, CNBC suddenly pays attention to David Stockman

You know, right on schedule, as soon as a Republican takes the helm.

Story here.

Obama is spending his first 2 weeks as ex-president vacationing with gay couple James Costos and Michael Smith

Sure, sure, he wasn't for gay marriage in 2004 and 2008.

Story here.

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.

All living presidents attended Trump's inaugural yesterday except for G.H.W. Bush, who has been hospitalized

Ann Coulter tries out for inaugural poet

After the world's slowest car ride home to the White House, the Trumps finally arrive for the parade at 1722 hours

Hillary and Dubya at Trump's swearing in: One big unhappy family . . . out of power

Melania Trump is America's new Jackie Kennedy

Melania Trump looked fabulous all day, and braved the crowds on the street with her whole family

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.

Senator John McCain must have been hungry, arriving really early for the inaugural lunch

Bye Bye Barack @ 1245 hours and 47 seconds

Exiting the oath taking, President Trump doesn't forget the Republican who had his back, the great patriot Senator Bob Dole

Donald Trump arrives at his inaugural this morning at 11:32

John Boehner at the Trump inaugural, tan as ever: Do you think he wishes he had remained and fought it out?

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.

Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) is an anti-capitalism, Maoist Communist party formed in 1975 within the United States. The RCP states that the only way for people to liberate themselves is through Communist revolution.

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."