53percenter's Blog

U.S. consumer prices barely rose in December despite record low unemployment, indicating that inflationary pressures remain very muted.

The Labor Department’s Consumer price index increased 0.2 percent in the last month of 2019, a slowing of the pace of prices from the 0.3 percent rise in November and the 0.4 percent rise in October. The December figure was below the consensus forecast of a 0.3 percent gain.

Core CPI, which excludes the volatile categories of food and energy, rose by just 0.1 percent.

In the 12 months through December, the CPI rose 2.3 percent. There was no change to either the annual figure when food and energy are excluded.

That likely means that inflation as measured by the Federal Reserve’s preferred metric, the personal consumption expenditure index minus food and energy, is running below the Fed’s two percent target. Core PCE inflation tends to run a half a percentage point below CPI.

Last week’s employment report showed that wages had increased by less than three percent on a 12-month basis in December despite unemployment holding at 3.5 percent, a 50-year low. This suggests that the U.S. labor market still has slack and undermines arguments from corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C. that businesses need higher levels of immigration to fill jobs.

Many items that attract a lot of attention from consumers are down in price. Televisions are down more than 20 percent compared with a year ago. Apparel prices have fallen 1.2 percent, with women’s clothing prices down 2.2 percent. Major appliances are down 7 percent. Prices of fresh fruits and vegetables are down 1.8 percent.

The price of cars and trucks are up just one-tenth of a percentage point. Even drug price inflation is low, with prices rising just 3 percent.

 

One notable fact found in the 2020 Oscar nominations is that 19 of the 20 actors nominated are white.

Cynthia Erivo, the star of Harriet, is the only non-white actor to earn a nomination (she’s phenomenal, by the way). Everyone else nominated is considered white. Yes, Antonio Banderas is nominated for Best Actor, but he is Spanish, not Mexican, so he’s considered white, or Caucasian. Hell, I don’t know. If Banderas is considered white, why can he play Zorro but David Caruso can’t? It’s all so stupid.

Charlize Theron was born in Africa. Had she been nominated, would she be considered African-American?

See how lame this all is?

Anyway, what we do know is that Erivo is the only black person nominated.

We also know America is not the problem, racist Hollywood is…

Please take a gander at this…

Look at the disproportionate number of black stories that earned an A+ Cinemascore from everyday American moviegoers.

Out of those 53 movies, you can argue that at least 21 focus on black stories and narratives. This, when black people make up just 12 percent of the American population. Nevertheless, their stories still make up nearly 40% of the movies everyday Americans have given an A+ Cinemascore.

In other words, when it comes to awarding movies with the highest quality award available to them, the very same Americans who elected Trump president are disproportionately rewarding black stories with an A+. Meanwhile, more than a half-century after the Civil Rights movement, oh-so progressive and left-wing Hollywood gives its top award, an Oscar nomination, to just five percent of black actors.

Forty percent win from everyday Americans.

Five percent win from oh-so progressive, left-wing Hollywood.

For 20 years, America has disproportionately rewarded black stories.

For 20 years, the same Hollywood that dares to lecture the rest of us about race, has disproportionately rewarded whitey.

It’s not as though there were no non-white actors to nominate this year. You had Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers. I wasn’t a big fan of the movie itself but there is no question she knocked it out of the park. Everyday Americans also embraced this Hustlers. It made $100 million domestic, which is a whole lot more than some of the movies starring all these white nominees.

What about Eddie Murphy in Dolemite, or Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan in Just Mercy, which received an A+ Cinemascore; or Lupita Nyong’o in Us, which grossed $175 million domestic?

Sam Jackson has never won an Oscar. He’s one of the most popular stars in the country, and has been for decades. Same with Eddie Murphy and Will Smith. The same America Hollywood regularly attacks as racist has made superstars out of countless black actors, made icons of them, while Hollywood, year after year, decade after decade, snubs and ignores them.

No, the problem here is not America or Americans, it is Hollywood — a far-left institution that loves to lecture the rest of us about race as though we are the problem when it is the problem.

President Donald Trump will offer some entertaining counter-programming to the Democrat presidential debate on Tuesday night, during a campaign rally in Wisconsin.

“The timing of the Milwaukee rally is not an accident,” Trump campaign Communications Director Tim Murtaugh told Breitbart News.

Trump’s rally is expected to begin at 8:00 p.m. EST in Milwaukee while Democrats take the stage in Iowa for the debate beginning at 9:00 p.m. EST. Few will be surprised if the rally start time is delayed and extends into the debate kickoff.

“Voters have been subjected to an endless series of droning Democrat debates, so what better counter-programming could there be than a Trump Keep America Great rally?” Murtaugh said.

The Democrat presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, will be hosted by CNN, the last debate before the Iowa caucuses on February 3.

The president expressed sympathy for people watching the Democrat debates during a rally in Ohio last week.

“It’s like death, watching,” Trump said. “I should watch. You know, I’m supposed to watch. It’s like my job. Try and watch, watch the competition, but it’s like watching death. Those debates are boring.”

It is not the first time that Trump has interrupted the Democrat debate.

The president also offered counter-programming during the Democrat debate in September, delaying a scheduled speech to Republicans by nearly an hour to start at the same time as the debate.

“It’s too bad I’m going to miss it. I’m gonna have to have it somehow taped,” he told reporters as he left the White House for the speech.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) vowed Tuesday to cancel the bulk of student loan debt on the first day of her presidency via executive action.

Warren made her promise just hours before the Democrat debate in Des Moines, Iowa.

We have a student loan crisis—and we can’t afford to wait for Congress to act. I’ve already proposed a student loan debt cancellation plan, and on day one of my presidency, I’ll use existing laws to start providing that debt cancellation immediately. https://t.co/bvhpuQmHH1

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 14, 2020

“The Department of Education already has broad legal authority to cancel student debt, and we can’t afford to wait for Congress to act,” Warren wrote in a Medium post, promising to use “existing laws” — citing the Higher Education Act — to implement her student loan debt cancellation plan which will bring relief to 42 million Americans, she claims.

Per her plan:

I’ll direct the Secretary of Education to use their authority to begin to compromise and modify federal student loans consistent with my plan to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for 95 percent of student loan borrowers (about 42 million people).

I’ll also direct the Secretary of Education to use every existing authority available to rein in the for-profit college industry, crack down on predatory student lending, and combat the racial disparities in our higher education system.

Warren announced her $640 billion student college debt relief program in April. Under Warren’s proposal, individuals with a household income of less than $100,000 could see $50,0000 in student debt effectively erased. Americans with household incomes of up to $250,000 would see a reduction in student loan debt relief, but less than those who have smaller household incomes.

The presidential hopeful has repeatedly claimed her “Ultra-Wealth Tax” will cover the cost of her proposals, which include universal child care, universal pre-k, and free college tuition.

Warren touted the proposals during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire last year. She said:

We’re going to roll back student loan debt for about 95 percent of students who have debt. That’s part one. And part two is to make sure that we never get in this mess again on student loan debt and that is to make college universally available with free tuition and fees and to put more money into Pell grants so that students of color, so that our poorest students have real access to college and that we put real money into our historically black colleges and universities.

“The future of our economy and the lives of a generation of student loan borrowers are at risk, and I’m committed to seeing this fight through no matter what,” Warren added in her Medium post.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has also issued a plan to address student loan crisis, vowing to “cancel all student debt” and pay for it by “imposing a tax on Wall Street speculation.”

A shocking new poll has discovered that 47 percent of young Democrats believe that other countries are better than the United States. Moreover, many young Americans admit that they wouldn’t mind other countries becoming as militarily powerful as the United States.

Slightly more than one third — 36 percent — of Americans 18 to 29 say that other countries are better than the United States, according to a recent poll released by Pew Research.

Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents under the age of 30, nearly half, 47 percent, say that there are other countries that are better than the U.S. Meanwhile, just 20 percent of Democrats age 50 and over agree with this sentiment.

“Democrats have become more likely to say there are other countries that are better than the U.S.,” says Pew Research. “In telephone surveys, the share of Democrats saying this is higher than at any point since the question was first asked by Pew Research Center in 2011, and there has been a corresponding decline in the share saying the U.S. stands above other nations.” This poll demonstrates the dramatic shift in the Democrat party’s base, and the potential schism between traditional Democrat voters and young and woke progressives.

The study also noted that young Americans are “more likely to say it would be acceptable if another country became as militarily powerful as the U.S.”

According to Pew Research, a majority of adults — 61 percent — say that the United States should maintain its status as a military superpower, but that more than half — 55 percent — of Democrats under the age of 30 admit that they would find it acceptable if other nations became as militarily powerful as the United States.

Among young Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, these numbers are significantly lower, as just 19 percent of adults under the age of 30 agree with their young Democrat counterparts with regards to the idea that other countries are superior to the United States.

Among Republicans ages 50 and older, only 4 percent share agree with this sentiment.

The report added that while a majority of Republicans say that the Untied States should try to maintain its status as a military superpower, 38 percent of Republicans under the age of 30 say that it would be acceptable if another country became as militarily powerful as the U.S.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

An undercover video published by Project Veritas on Tuesday shows a field organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign saying Soviet gulags were actually a positive phenomenon, suggesting that some similar program could re-educate Trump supporters and billionaires.

The video begins with a Project Veritas journalist asking an individual identified as Sanders organizer Kyle Jurek if “MAGA people” could be re-educated if Bernie wins the White House. “We gotta try,” Jurek replies. “In Nazi Germany, after the fall of the Nazi Party, there was a shit-ton of the populace that was fucking Nazi-fied.”

BREAKING: @BernieSanders “free education” policies to “teach you how to not be a f**king nazi.”; ‘There is a reason Stalin had Gulags’; ‘Expect violent reaction’ for speech. If Bernie doesn’t get nomination “Milwaukee will burn”

Stay tuned: https://t.co/BFGnoCeJE7#Expose2020 pic.twitter.com/Koh6UTibbe

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 14, 2020

“Germany had to spend billions of dollars re-educating their fucking people to not be Nazis,” he continues. “We’re probably going to have to do the same fucking thing here.”

“That’s kind of what all Bernie’s whole fucking like, ‘hey, free education for everybody’ because we’re going to have to teach you to not be a fucking Nazi,” he added.

In another part of the video, Jurek is seen discussing Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin’s use of gulags, where he claimed that the CIA was overly critical of them. “People were actually paid a living wage in the gulags, they conjugal visits gulags, gulags were meant for re-education,” he says.

This story is developing. Check Breitbart News for updates. 

ZIP | January 14, 2020 8:55 am

Mayor Pete, as he likes to be called, who has led the cry that Iran’s shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner using a Russian missile is somehow the fault of an American president, Donald J. Trump, is among those who say it was “collateral damage” resulting from Trump trashing the flawed and unworkable Iran nuclear deal and his zapping of terrorist Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Knowing that Democrats obey Rahm Emanuel’s famous observation that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, Mayor Pete wasted no time attaching his name to the slander that the 176 innocents aboard the Ukrainian plane would be alive today were it not for Donald Trump’s insistence that Iran not get a nuclear weapon with which to annihilate the Jewish state of Israel:

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg suggested Thursday that the United States bears some of the blame for the Iranian military shooting down a commercial airliner while it was at the same time firing ballistic missiles at an Iraqi military base that houses American troops.

“Innocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat,” Buttigieg tweeted.

“My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of all 176 souls lost aboard this flight.”

Buttigieg may not have noticed, but there was no tit-for-tat that fateful night.  Iran was shooting ballistic missiles at an American base in Iraq.  President Trump withheld returning fire.  Soleimani was already dead, and if Buttigieg thinks the death of the terrorist responsible for the killing and maiming of thousands of American soldiers and other personnel was unwanted and unnecessary, then add that to the list of reasons he is not quailed to be president.

Soleimani was illegally in Iraq to oversee the storming of the American embassy there, and possibly others elsewhere, with the result being another 1979 hostage situation or another Benghazi.

No, Mayor Pete, Trump saved many Americans that night and quite possibly the state of Israel by showing he means business, has thought the consequences through, and is not daunted by the Iranians.  Iran bears sole responsibility for the deaths of those 176 innocents, just as Iran bears sole responsibility for the public hanging of gays, which Mayor Pete and his fellow Democrats seem to have no problem with.  While you obsessed over Trump bringing on World War III by killing the world’s most dangerous terrorist, the Jerusalem Post reported on the evil that is Iran:

The Islamic Republic of Iran publicly hanged a 31-year-old Iranian man after he was found guilty of charges related to violations of Iran’s anti-gay laws, according to the state-controlled Iranian Students’ News Agency.

The unidentified man was hanged on January 10 in the southwestern city of Kazeroon based on criminal violations of “lavat-e be onf” — sexual intercourse between two men, as well as kidnapping charges, according to ISNA. Iran’s radical sharia law system prescribes the death penalty for gay sex[.] …

“The LGBT community in Iran has lived in terror for the last 40 years,” said Alireza Nader, CEO of Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization New Iran. “Next time Foreign Minister Zarif speaks in Washington, the host and audience should ask him why his regime is one of the top executioner of gays in the world.” Iran’s mullah regime executed “between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians” since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Iran can do no wrong even if it goes against Democrats’ core principles, if you can say they have any.  Mayor Pete is openly gay.  The irony here is that if he were running for president of Iran and not the United States he would most likely be hanged before the second presidential debate.  His silence is so remarkable since he is such a fierce advocate for the rights of the LGBTQXYZ community or whatever the politically correct identification is these days.

Buttigieg, an Episcopalian whose church ordains gay and lesbian priests, has lectured Christians on their alleged hypocrisy and intolerance for opposing abortion on demand and gay “marriage” and believing homosexuality is a sin.  Some Catholics have been referred to as “cafeteria Catholics” for picking and choosing which doctrines to obey.  Episcopalian Pete must read his Bible through the distortion of a funhouse mirror, at least according to his evangelical brother-in-law’s comments to the Washington Examiner:

The evangelical brother-in-law of Pete Buttigieg called on him to “repent” for using the Bible to justify late-term abortion and claimed the presidential candidate is “weaponizing” Christian teachings to promote a false religion.

Pastor Rhyan Glezman, 34, who serves a church in small-town Michigan, told the Washington Examiner that he was very alarmed by Buttigieg’s claim that the Bible teaches life does not begin until a baby first draws breath.

During a wide-ranging Friday interview on the radio show The Breakfast Club, Buttigieg, 37, scolded Republicans for their views on abortion, saying, “Right now, they hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally.  Then again, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath.  So even that is something we can interpret differently.”

C’mon, Pete — Jesus said, “I am the Truth.”  There are no different interpretations here to justify abortion-on-demand.

When Mary, carrying Jesus, met with Elizabeth, carrying John the Baptist, Elizabeth’s baby, Scripture says, leapt in her womb.

Evangelist and humanitarian Franklin Graham holds the traditional Christian belief that homosexuality is a sin and that Christians are supposed to love the sinner but not the sin.  He also believes that God does not put people into the wrong bodies.  Graham said in a tweet:

Mayor Buttigieg says he’s a gay Christian.  As a Christian I believe the Bible which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man & a woman — not two men, not two women.

Again, Buttigieg’s evangelical brother-in-law has a few words on Pete’s moral origami:

Glezman, who is the elder brother of the South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s husband [sic], Chasten, 30, believes Buttigieg’s continual use of Christian terminology to defend his liberal policies is an attempt “to seem appealing to the evangelical community,” while also falling in line with the dictates of the Democratic Party.  ”I think he’s just going along with the agenda of the Democratic Party: that if you want to be a Democrat, you have to be pro-choice.” …

“What we see is a modern-day Pharisee,” said Glezman, referencing the 1st-century Jewish sect that was notorious for demanding its followers adhere to an exhaustive list of trivial laws to earn God’s favor.  ”Buttigieg is a person who’s making up their own rules and regulations and, basically, if we don’t celebrate and endorse their interpretation of Scripture, our religion is fallible.  And that’s just not true.”

Certainly, Christians do not stage public hangings of gays as Iran did just as it was shooting down the Ukrainian airliner.  Pete condemns one but not another.  Was that hanging also Trump’s fault or merely another sign of the true nature of the regime that kills Americans and wants to nuke Israel?

Yet Buttigieg has no criticisms of Islam, sharia law, or Iran.  For your second honeymoon, Mayor Pete, I would not suggest Tehran.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.

Mayor Pete, as he likes to be called, who has led the cry that Iran’s shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner using a Russian missile is somehow the fault of an American president, Donald J. Trump, is among those who say it was “collateral damage” resulting from Trump trashing the flawed and unworkable Iran nuclear deal and his zapping of terrorist Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Knowing that Democrats obey Rahm Emanuel’s famous observation that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, Mayor Pete wasted no time attaching his name to the slander that the 176 innocents aboard the Ukrainian plane would be alive today were it not for Donald Trump’s insistence that Iran not get a nuclear weapon with which to annihilate the Jewish state of Israel:

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg suggested Thursday that the United States bears some of the blame for the Iranian military shooting down a commercial airliner while it was at the same time firing ballistic missiles at an Iraqi military base that houses American troops.

“Innocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat,” Buttigieg tweeted.

“My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of all 176 souls lost aboard this flight.”

Buttigieg may not have noticed, but there was no tit-for-tat that fateful night.  Iran was shooting ballistic missiles at an American base in Iraq.  President Trump withheld returning fire.  Soleimani was already dead, and if Buttigieg thinks the death of the terrorist responsible for the killing and maiming of thousands of American soldiers and other personnel was unwanted and unnecessary, then add that to the list of reasons he is not quailed to be president.

Soleimani was illegally in Iraq to oversee the storming of the American embassy there, and possibly others elsewhere, with the result being another 1979 hostage situation or another Benghazi.

No, Mayor Pete, Trump saved many Americans that night and quite possibly the state of Israel by showing he means business, has thought the consequences through, and is not daunted by the Iranians.  Iran bears sole responsibility for the deaths of those 176 innocents, just as Iran bears sole responsibility for the public hanging of gays, which Mayor Pete and his fellow Democrats seem to have no problem with.  While you obsessed over Trump bringing on World War III by killing the world’s most dangerous terrorist, the Jerusalem Post reported on the evil that is Iran:

The Islamic Republic of Iran publicly hanged a 31-year-old Iranian man after he was found guilty of charges related to violations of Iran’s anti-gay laws, according to the state-controlled Iranian Students’ News Agency.

The unidentified man was hanged on January 10 in the southwestern city of Kazeroon based on criminal violations of “lavat-e be onf” — sexual intercourse between two men, as well as kidnapping charges, according to ISNA. Iran’s radical sharia law system prescribes the death penalty for gay sex[.] …

“The LGBT community in Iran has lived in terror for the last 40 years,” said Alireza Nader, CEO of Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization New Iran. “Next time Foreign Minister Zarif speaks in Washington, the host and audience should ask him why his regime is one of the top executioner of gays in the world.” Iran’s mullah regime executed “between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians” since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Iran can do no wrong even if it goes against Democrats’ core principles, if you can say they have any.  Mayor Pete is openly gay.  The irony here is that if he were running for president of Iran and not the United States he would most likely be hanged before the second presidential debate.  His silence is so remarkable since he is such a fierce advocate for the rights of the LGBTQXYZ community or whatever the politically correct identification is these days.

Buttigieg, an Episcopalian whose church ordains gay and lesbian priests, has lectured Christians on their alleged hypocrisy and intolerance for opposing abortion on demand and gay “marriage” and believing homosexuality is a sin.  Some Catholics have been referred to as “cafeteria Catholics” for picking and choosing which doctrines to obey.  Episcopalian Pete must read his Bible through the distortion of a funhouse mirror, at least according to his evangelical brother-in-law’s comments to the Washington Examiner:

The evangelical brother-in-law of Pete Buttigieg called on him to “repent” for using the Bible to justify late-term abortion and claimed the presidential candidate is “weaponizing” Christian teachings to promote a false religion.

Pastor Rhyan Glezman, 34, who serves a church in small-town Michigan, told the Washington Examiner that he was very alarmed by Buttigieg’s claim that the Bible teaches life does not begin until a baby first draws breath.

During a wide-ranging Friday interview on the radio show The Breakfast Club, Buttigieg, 37, scolded Republicans for their views on abortion, saying, “Right now, they hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally.  Then again, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath.  So even that is something we can interpret differently.”

C’mon, Pete — Jesus said, “I am the Truth.”  There are no different interpretations here to justify abortion-on-demand.

When Mary, carrying Jesus, met with Elizabeth, carrying John the Baptist, Elizabeth’s baby, Scripture says, leapt in her womb.

Evangelist and humanitarian Franklin Graham holds the traditional Christian belief that homosexuality is a sin and that Christians are supposed to love the sinner but not the sin.  He also believes that God does not put people into the wrong bodies.  Graham said in a tweet:

Mayor Buttigieg says he’s a gay Christian.  As a Christian I believe the Bible which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man & a woman — not two men, not two women.

Again, Buttigieg’s evangelical brother-in-law has a few words on Pete’s moral origami:

Glezman, who is the elder brother of the South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s husband [sic], Chasten, 30, believes Buttigieg’s continual use of Christian terminology to defend his liberal policies is an attempt “to seem appealing to the evangelical community,” while also falling in line with the dictates of the Democratic Party.  ”I think he’s just going along with the agenda of the Democratic Party: that if you want to be a Democrat, you have to be pro-choice.” …

“What we see is a modern-day Pharisee,” said Glezman, referencing the 1st-century Jewish sect that was notorious for demanding its followers adhere to an exhaustive list of trivial laws to earn God’s favor.  ”Buttigieg is a person who’s making up their own rules and regulations and, basically, if we don’t celebrate and endorse their interpretation of Scripture, our religion is fallible.  And that’s just not true.”

Certainly, Christians do not stage public hangings of gays as Iran did just as it was shooting down the Ukrainian airliner.  Pete condemns one but not another.  Was that hanging also Trump’s fault or merely another sign of the true nature of the regime that kills Americans and wants to nuke Israel?

Yet Buttigieg has no criticisms of Islam, sharia law, or Iran.  For your second honeymoon, Mayor Pete, I would not suggest Tehran.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.