Sorry Jonathon Trugman, one month does not a full-time story make

Here he is, without data:

"Yes, folks, things really are looking better for full-time employment." 

It's true that the percentage of the population working full-time in May 2018 is up, to 50.1%.

Unfortunately the average for the first five months of 2018 is only 49.3%, the same as for the whole of 2017. Despite the surge in May, the average indicates no progress over 2017, yet.

Full-time peaks every year in July or August, so we'll see what happens. But when all is said and done, I'm expecting the full year to average about 49.8%, up about a half point.

In any event, we're still down in the basement trying to climb back to 52.1%, the pre-Great Recession average. To do it, we'll need another 5.1 million jobs, right quick like. If using the averages, 7 million.

But there is no driver for such jobs in this country, because we threw out the old one: housing. The whole economy was based on housing in the post-war, and once the Baby Boom bankers and politicians got their grubby little hands on it under Clinton and Bush 43, they managed to screw that pooch right along with everything else they've touched. A bunch of spendthrifts and squanderers are we. 

Laugh of the Day: Supremes rule 7-2 on behalf of Christian cake-baker, CNBC calls it "narrow"

I guess they don't want us to get too excited about the Supremes slapping down Colorado's anti-religious hostility, which violated the defendant's religious rights, according to the story.

Try again. I'm so excited, I'm about to lose control and I think I like it.

The gap in full-time employment has closed by 1.8 million in the last year, but we're still 5.1 million behind the pre-Great Recession average

Full-time employment before the Great Recession averaged 52.1% of the civilian noninstitutional population over a 12-year period through 2008.

In 2017, the average was still 49.3%, meaning relative to the period before the Great Recession, 6.9 million fewer full-time jobs existed than could have, assuming a real jobs recovery to pre-recession conditions.

In May 2018, the actual percentage has risen to 50.1%. The difference between that and full-time at 52.1% is still 5.1 million full-time jobs.

Things are looking better, but we still haven't recovered from the appalling conditions which ensued upon the Great Recession, not by a long shot.

We still live in a shrunken economy.

China's pledge to maintain Hong Kong's freedoms and institutions is as worthless as Xi Zedong's promise not to militarize the South China Sea

Bloomberg reports the threat of a crackdown on June 4 vigil participants, here.

Xi Jinping broke his promise in the South China Sea, and will break the one to Hong Kong as well. It's just a matter of time.

Hooah: France and Britain announce freedom of navigation exercises in South China Sea

It's about time.

The story is here.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for May 2018

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for May 2018

Max temp 94, Mean Max temp 86

Min temp 40, Mean Min temp 32

Av temp 64.8, Mean Av temp 57.9

Precip 5.64, Mean precip 3.46

Snowfall 0, Mean snowfall .2

Heating Degree Days 105, Mean HDD 252

Cooling Degree Days 108, Mean CDD 39

The cooling season has started off like a rocket, 240% warmer than mean to date based on CDD. With one month left to go in the heating season, the heating season as a result has now been 3.1% warmer than mean to date based on HDD.  

One man's threat is another man's treat

Weekend help.

Good Lord, Trump is sounding just like that fool David Cameron, now FORMER UK Prime Minister

Cameron, here, in 2014.

More evidence of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Lee Smith says the Democrat narrative that Mifsud was working for the Russians doesn't pass the smell test

Here:

In an official report, Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence asserted that “in their approach to Papadopoulos, the Russians used common tradecraft and employed a cut-out,” a “Kremlin-linked…Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud.” ...

Conversely, if [the FBI] did know Mifsud and thought he was a Russian agent, why did the bureau continue to send agents to teach at Link, with which he had been affiliated for nearly a decade by the time of the Papadopoulos affair?

Both the bureau and the CIA were constant presences at the school; surely they’d run across Mifsud before.

Many others that the FBI worked with knew him — from high-level British intelligence officials to members of the Italian cabinet. If Mifsud was a Kremlin-linked cut-out, why didn’t the FBI warn the U.S.’s European partners, or even U.S. government agencies, about the man who was at the center of Russiagate? ...

So why did the FBI not arrest Mifsud? The State Department declined to comment when RCI emailed to ask why it did not prevent its officials from appearing at an event with a “Kremlin-linked” figure who was key to Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election.

If Mifsud was a Russian spy, it’s unclear why after Papadopoulos’ July 27, 2017 arrest that no U.S. intelligence officials warned their European partners that they were hosting a foreign agent on their territory. ...

When asked if any action was taken to extradite Mifsud or even interview him further in Europe, the office of the special counsel declined to comment on an ongoing investigation.

The office also declined to answer why Mifsud has not been charged. Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies for their involvement in a pro-Russian social media campaign during the 2016 campaign cycle. But the “Kremlin-linked” individual that is alleged to have passed the Trump team information about Russia’s interference in the election is at liberty.

Andy McCarthy is thinking about Joseph Mifsud, too

But not about his connections to Hillary, or how he might have been acting in concert with her campaign to subvert Trump's.

Someone really ought to find out where Joseph Mifsud is hiding.

Here.

Joseph Mifsud, whose meeting with Papadopoulos was the pretext for the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of Trump, admitted he was "With Her"

Here in November 2017:

Joseph Mifsud is the Maltese professor who, according to the rumors and anticipations of the Russiagate investigation, has approached George Papadopoulos, an aide of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, to help him to contact Russian authorities in the Kremlin, even for organizing a meeting between Trump and Putin. Mr. Mifsud is said to have given to the aide “dirty information” on Mrs. Clinton collected by the Russian. ...

“I am a member of the European Council on Foreign relations”, he adds, “and you know which is the only foundation I am member of? The Clinton Foundation. Between you and me, my thinking is left-leaning. But I predicted Trump’s victory as well as Brexit. Everyone of us wants peace. If the governments don’t talk each other, we citizens must keep talking”.

China is so full of crap, says US freedom of navigation patrols constitute "militarization" of South China Sea

Here:

Senior Col. Zhao Xiaozhou, of the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Sciences, suggested in a question to Mr. Mattis that the U.S. Navy’s maneuvers near the islands could also be called militarization.

Like the US, China is free to conduct freedom of navigation patrols same as the US. That isn't good enough for China. It lays claim, illegally, to the whole area, and seeks to prohibit freedom of navigation in the area to everyone else. Building islands out of reefs and occupying them illegally and then militarizing them is proof enough of that.

Military confrontation is inevitable.

Investor's Business Daily drinks the unemployment koolaid

Mish drinks the unemployment koolaid

Just phonin' it in these days.

CNBC drinks the unemployment koolaid

You probably think the economy's great because, well, the stock market

It's a struggling swimmer, treading water.

Hey Rush Limbaugh, 12.4 million black people eating but not working!

Well whoop-de-do: Trump has "cut" federal employment by all of 0.6% since November 2016

It's statistically irrelevant, but Trump's cheering section is sounding it nonetheless.

Meanwhile the big-talkin' man had promised to cut the federal workforce by 20%.

Only 558,900 more federal workers to go there fella.

Like that'll happen, either.

Trump knows his own unemployment rate is fake, but touts it anyway. Sad.

Not-in-labor-force hit a new all-time high in May of almost 96 million.

President Trump used to think 223,000 jobs a month wasn't nearly good enough

Actually, to close the employment gap between today and pre-Great Recession America, we'd need 370,000 jobs a month for the next 50 months straight, four years.

Like that's going to happen.