Trump promised to overturn DACA amnesty "immediately": Well, we're waiting . . .

Immediately was yesterday. Thanks for ending TPP yesterday, but . . ..

From the story here:

His campaign website still includes a pledge to "immediately terminate President Obama's two illegal executive amnesties," a reference to DACA and a later executive action — Deferred Action for the Parents of Americans (DAPA) — applying to illegal immigrants with American children.

"That's crazy and confusing," said William Gheen, founder of the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC. "Donald Trump promised to end Obama's unconstitutional executive orders, and that's DAPA and DACA."

Reuters and CNBC call the dollar at 100 "wallowing" when 5 years ago it was a hog in slop below 80

Democrats call your office: Gallup says Obama ended up less popular than Dubya and Nixon

Here.

Feminist actress Pat Arquette obviously never read an Employment Situation Summary from the BLS

Here:

"We have 60% of our families now with female breadwinners".

In December 2016 women who maintained families numbered 9.998 million out of 71.43 million women aged 16 and over employed (not seasonally adjusted), or about 8% of all US households, 14% of the women employed, and 6.5% of the total employed.

Upset about a private Trump vulgarity 470,000 feminists prove they're infinitely worse than him

On-duty DC pussy police: No wonder DisruptJ20 succeeded

Five days before the inaugural it was known DisruptJ20 would try to block Americans from entering

So why didn't police act to prevent them?

WTOP reported here on January 15:

DisruptJ20 said it planned to have protests at each entry point to the Inaugural Day parade. The organization said it was planning blockades, including blocking traffic.

USA Today lies about checkpoints being shut down at inaugural

Here:

Small groups of protesters popped up at various security checkpoints across the spectator zones, attempting to block entry. One group, affiliated with Black Lives Matter, chained themselves to metal barricades. But police said no entrances were completely shutdown.

Protesters blocked entry to the inaugural at C Street, depressing attendance: Police just let it happen

Reported here:

Police, Secret Service officials, and other law enforcement personnel were all seen turning away from the protesters rather than attempting to pass through the human barrier protesters assembled on C Street. Law enforcement officials present at the protests mainly attempted to break up skirmishes that broke out between the protesters and those looking to get to the inauguration and parade.

Protesters shut down 50% of the access to the inaugural two hours before the swearing in, depressing attendance

Reported here:

Hundreds of protesters on Friday shut down multiple entry points to President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. Masses of protesters in support of causes that included climate change, Black Lives Matter, NoDAPL, women's rights, immigrant rights, LGBT rights, and anti-fascism descended upon the nation's capital and formed blockades in front of security checkpoints. ... 

Protesters successfully shut down 6 six of the 12 inauguration access points as of 10am ET on Friday morning. 

Of course the inaugural attendance estimates were lower: Protestors blocked and delayed entry

Reported here:

After almost two hours of delays, the security gates at 7th and Independence Avenue opened to cheers from the restless crowd. ...

At John Marshall Park’s checkpoint, Black Lives Matter protesters - chanting “Shut it down” - did just that. Five men chained themselves together, preventing anyone from passing and forcing police officers to redirect attendees to other entrances. “It feels great that we closed the checkpoint,” said 28-year-old Aaron Goggans, one of the organisers. “But we know this is just the beginning.”

At the 10th and E streets in downtown Washington, protesters blocked the entrance to another checkpoint. A group of women tied themselves together with purple yarn and sat on the ground to prevent people from passing through.

White Privileged Women's March in DC can't face it that Hillary underperformed with women

White privileged women have only themselves to blame for Hillary's loss to Donald Trump. Their candidate didn't appeal to women unlike themselves.

Hillary underperformed Obama 2012 with all women by one point, black women by 2 points, Latino women by 8 points, and unmarried women by 5 points. The only groups of women with which Hillary outperformed Obama 2012 were WHITE WOMEN and MARRIED WOMEN, in other words with the PRIVILEGED class of women which has the luxury of time to knit pink hats and the surplus cash to travel to one of America's most expensive cities to bathe in each other's estrogen. 

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."

In case you didn't get it the first time, Vladimir Putin thinks the CIA behind the Trump smear . . .

. . . is the same CIA which overthrew the democratically elected but pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, president of Ukraine, in 2014.

Not coincidentally, John McCain was the US point man in the overthrow effort: "John McCain backs opposition leaders telling Ukraine protesters: 'America stands with you - Ukraine will make Europe better'".

Democracy is only OK if it's pro-Western, you see.

When Chelsea Bradley Manning gets out in May . . .

. . . who knows, maybe the third time will be a charm?

Obviously, if Snowden had really wanted a pass from President Obama . . .

. . . he should have changed genders.

Too late now bro!

Obama The Ignominious releases a tranny traitor and FALN and Taliban terrorists

There are still 53 hours left. Who knows what other parting shots Obama has in store?

Who is dumber, Sheila Jackson Lee of flag on Mars fame, or the people of Texas who keep reelecting her since 1995?

The flag on Mars story from 1997 was reported here.

For Lee's more recent embarrassments of Yale University, the US Congress and Texas, see here.

A caller to Steve Gruber this morning incorrectly attributed the flag on Mars remark to Maxine Waters.

Joe Biden wants to plunge Europe into war if dictator Erdogan's TURKEY is attacked

The dangerous illogic of NATO overreach is completely lost on Joe Biden, here:

At a time when Trump and his advisors are talking about shaking up NATO, Biden said, we must "support our NATO allies. An attack on one is an attack on all, that can never be placed in question." ... "We need to tap into the big heartedness [and raise taxes on the 1%]," Biden said. "This is a moment to lead boldly."

Then why didn't you run, Joe?

Some leader.

Liberal progressives. All talk. No action.

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.

Glenn Greenwald writes that the CIA was trying to defeat Trump and elect Hillary Clinton

Here:

FOR MONTHS, the CIA, with unprecedented clarity, overtly threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump. In August, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell announced his endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed that “Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” The CIA and NSA director under George W. Bush, Gen. Michael Hayden, also endorsed Clinton, and went to the Washington Post to warn, in the week before the election, that “Donald Trump really does sound a lot like Vladimir Putin,” adding that Trump is “the useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.”

It is not hard to understand why the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for restraining the CIA’s proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war, while Trump denounced it. Clinton clearly wanted a harder line than Obama took against the CIA’s long-standing foes in Moscow, while Trump wanted improved relations and greater cooperation. In general, Clinton defended and intended to extend the decadeslong international military order on which the CIA and Pentagon’s preeminence depends, while Trump — through a still-uncertain mix of instability and extremist conviction — posed a threat to it.

Steve Liesman tries to be charitable to Trump on 96 million wanting a job, but comes up short 5.9m

From the story here:

Trump said that there "are 96 million wanting a job and they can't get (one). You know that story. The real number. That's the real number."

It is unfortunately very far from the real number. There are in fact 96 million Americans age 16 and older who are not in the labor force. Of this, just 5.4 million, or 91 million fewer than the number cited by Trump, say they want a job. The rest are retired, sick, disabled, running their households or going to school. (This number is 256,000 fewer than last year and 1.7 million fewer than the all-time high for the series in 2013.)

... A more charitable explanation for Trump would expand the number to include those people who are working part time because they can't find full-time work, all the unemployed and those marginally attached to the workforce. This broader measure of slack in the economy, known as the U6, is about 14.7 million. It's the lowest since May 2008, and has come down by nearly 12 million since the worst of the job market effects of the financial crisis in 2010. And remember, many of these folks have work, though it's part time.

This isn't charitable enough because Liesman never adds the 5.4 million to the 14.7 million. He must know you can't do this because that would involve double counting. The monthly Employment Situation Summary always includes the "marginally attached" in the expanded figures, people who are not in the labor force, but they are a subset of the 5.4 million.

But this can easily be remedied, and one wonders why the BLS doesn't do this.

Here's the data, with links.

Not in the labor force, not seasonally adjusted, is 95.8 million.

Not in the labor force, want a job now, not seasonally adjusted, is 5.45 million (peak was 7.2 million in May 2013).

The unemployed represent another 7.5 million from the monthly Employment Situation Summary. Those who work part-time but would rather have full-time represent 5.6 million more in the same report. But both of those groups are in the labor force, a total of 13.1 million.

To those 13.1 million simply add the 5.4 million from not in the labor force above and you get 18.5 million unemployed.

To get that expressed as a percentage you have to add the 5.4 million in to the civilian labor force because they want a job now, here, because the unemployment rate is the unemployed as a percentage of the labor force, which by the addition is now larger, 164.4 million.

So that yields a real unemployment rate of 11.3%. The U6RATE comes up quite short of this, at 9.2%. Meanwhile most people think everything's great because the headline rate is only 4.7% (7.5 million unemployed as a percentage of 159.6 million in the labor force).

There are not 96 million unemployed as Trump laughably says, but neither are there the 12.6 million Liesman ends up with, either.

18.5 million are unemployed in December 2016, at a rate of 11.3%.

The unsavory Robert Creamer was in the front row at lying Obama's farewell speech last night

Creamer had to resign from the DNC after incriminating video surfaced showing he countenanced baiting Trump supporters into violence, planting operatives at his rallies.

Creamer met with Obama 45 times in the White House during his presidency, and was there hundreds of times, but the White House denied they were friends.