Personally, I think Rex Nutting's a commie, but he couldn't be more right about the fake news of "not in the labor force"

Rex Nutting is right. Our side has been trafficking in this piece of fake news for years, a factoid originating with Zero Hedge and endlessly repeated by the Goodyear blimp of gasbags Rush Limbaugh, touching all and sundry from Donald Trump on down to little known radio hosts on low power stations in Michigan like Steve Gruber in Lansing. Correct it try though you may, every attempt to stop it fails. It's embarrassing, not in the least because it exposes the endemic inability to think critically and the proclivity to believe in authorities which share your political opinions.

For all the good it will do, Rex Nutting goes once more unto the breach, here, with excellent links and a good graph, too:

There are a lot of “fake statistics” bandied about in service of some ideology or another, but I’d like to focus on just one example in which I have expertise from my work covering the monthly employment report over the past 20 years: The idea that there are 95 million Americans who are out of work but not counted as unemployed.

This statistic pervades the conservative discourse about our economy (or at least until Jan. 20). The implication of this statistic is that the government and media are lying to us. Instead of an economy that’s slowly improving as President Barack Obama has been telling us, our economy is actually a catastrophic failure, unable to provide any work for nearly 100 million people. ...

This is the perfect fake statistic, because it’s absolutely true. And completely meaningless.

Bring back waterboarding, Mad Dog Mattis can go have his beer and a cigarette

James E. Mitchell, here:

It is understandable that Gen. Mattis would say he never found waterboarding useful, because no one in the military has been authorized to waterboard a detainee. Thousands of U.S. military personnel have been waterboarded as part of their training, though the services eventually abandoned the practice after finding it too effective in getting even the most hardened warrior to reveal critical information.

During the war on terror, the CIA alone had been authorized to use the technique. I personally waterboarded the only three terrorists subjected to the tactic by the CIA. I also waterboarded two U.S. government lawyers, at their request, when they were trying to decide for themselves whether the practice was “torture.” They determined it was not.

Math scores under Common Core in 2015 have fallen below the 2012 average

From the story here:

In math American teens rank 20 points lower than the international average—and 12 points lower than their own 2012 average. ... The trouble is that the standards, [Jon] Star [of Harvard] said, were designed with elementary and middle school students in mind: "It's not surprising that some of these interventions have had minimal to no effect in high school—because that's not really who they were intending to effect."

Trump admitted in Grand Rapids Thank You Rally on Friday that low turnout [for Hillary] helped him win

Trump, quoted here:

"The African American community was great to us," Trump said. "They came through bigly." ... "If they had any doubt, they didn't vote," Trump said. "And that was almost as good. Because a bunch of people didn't show up, because they felt good about me." ... But with lower voter turnout in many urban areas, where there are more concentrated populations of African Americans, and high turnout in rural areas, the numbers would tend to support his claim.

The Obamacare failure: 10 million buy plans on exchanges, 9 million buy off-exchange

Sally Pipes, here:

These off-exchange plans were never expected to be popular, especially compared to the government's marketplaces. As recently as 2013, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting that 24 million Americans would buy insurance through ObamaCare's exchanges by 2016. The CBO didn't even bother to predict enrollment figures for off-exchange plans.

Those projections missed the mark. Last year, off-exchange enrollment — 9 million — was within 1 million of that inside the exchanges. Some 2.5 million people have purchased off-exchange coverage even though they would've qualified for income-based subsidies through the exchanges. Almost half this group may also be eligible for additional federal subsidies aimed at reducing out-of-pocket costs for low-income individuals.

Congress has abdicated its spending oversight responsibilities for 20 years, and just did so again

From the story here:

Both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) have repeatedly promised a return to regular order instead of relying on take-it-or-leave-it omnibus bills and short-term CRs to fund the federal government. However, they have not kept that promise. On Thursday, the House passed a $1.1 trillion short-term CR (HR 2028) to keep the federal government operating until April 28, 2017. Lankford said Thursday that he will vote against the CR when it gets to the Senate on Friday. Despite some gains made since 2014, when Republicans took over control of the Senate, Lankford pointed out that Congress has been “missing out on real oversight” by passing supposedly temporary CRs for the past 20 years.

In the two weeks between Trump's appointments of common core DeVos and open-borders Puzder, Jeb Bush figured it was prudent not to lay it on too thick

As Ann Coulter has pointed out, the only difference between a Trump cabinet and a Jeb Bush cabinet is a Jeff Sessions.

December 8th

November 23rd

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Trump's pick for Interior Secretary, is another immigration squish

At some point someone's going to notice that Donald Trump isn't serious about stopping illegal immigration.

Here:

But, the Washington congresswoman said, she won’t rule out a pathway to citizenship, and also stated that she was open to granting a special schedule to the children of immigrants who came to the country illegally.

Rush Limbaugh is ecstatic today about Trump's cabinet picks

The guy never was on our side on illegal immigration, the income tax, Elton John, etc.

The leader of the conservative liberals, as someone once said. 

Hillary knows an awful lot about the epidemic of fake news because she started it . . .

. . . when she blamed a Muhammad video for a supposedly spontaneous attack on Benghazi at the same time Obama was trying to win reelection on "Osama is dead and GM is alive".

Trump betrays his base, picks Andrew Puzder for Labor Secretary, another amnesty advocate

Trump must think we're stupid. You know, just like the defeated elites now packing up and leaving DC.

Puzder had a long op-ed in Politico here three years ago outlining his Marco Rubio Gang of Eight immigration ideas, including 

"a pathway to adjusted status for those here illegally now; and special relief for the children of undocumented immigrants." 

Real news alert: Hillary speaks up for "true" propaganda

There's an epidemic of false propaganda. Bring back the true kind!

Here:

“The epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year — it’s now clear the so-called fake news can have real-world consequences,” Clinton said during a speech on Capitol Hill.

Jennifer Palmieri should think about the over 5 million former Obama voters who rejected Hillary, not about who rejected Trump

Jennifer Palmieri still can't face what lead to the Hillary loss: A Democrat candidate more repugnant to Democrat voters than the Republican candidate was to Republican voters. Hillary was a magnet for words with a negative connotation while Trump was not at all. She was a horrible candidate. End of story. 

Here:

But it’s also important for the winners of this campaign to think long and hard about the voters who rejected them. I haven’t seen much evidence of such introspection from the Trump side. That’s concerning.

That's right, Mickey: Amnesty for dreamers will just produce more dreamers

Salena Zito nails it: Hillary's loss was never about Trump but about Democrats losing touch with their voters

Here:

What Democrats, academics and pundits keep refusing to see is that the loss was never about Trump’s candidacy; it was all about how Democrats have increasingly lost touch with their voters outside of coastal America — until those voters finally hit their breaking point.

When Trump assures the New York Times it will be happy about what he does with the dreamers . . .

. . . rest assured we won't be.

Over 2,000 Americans died horribly in a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago

Our public institutions remember this infamous date faithfully by flying the flag at half staff. My son's high school had the Stars and Stripes just so at oh dark thirty this morning. Good job.

So did the firehouse we passed on the way to the piano lesson this afternoon. You can always count on the fire department.

But the rest of Michigan which I saw today had their flags flying as usual at full staff, and not illuminated at night. Just another patriotic day.

So it goes.

Suddenly the commie Fredrik deBoer is fresh out of ideas

Gee, just a little while ago Fredrik deBoer was certain that all of us white guys were buying guns to off ourselves, which meant there were going to be fewer of us to stand in his way.

Instead we voted for Donald Trump . . . and now the country's a damned armed camp on top of it.

Here's an idea for deBoer, since he asked: Get out now before the border closes and the price of the drugs skyrockets.

Here. 

One month since Election 2016: Trump edges up 0.2 million votes in the last week, Hillary 0.3 million

Trump remains the king of the Republican hill in the popular vote:

Trump 2016: goes from 62.6 million a week ago to 62.8 million now

Romney '12: 60.9 million

McCain '08: 60.0 million

Bush '04: 62.0 million

Bush '00: 50.5 million

Obama remains the king of the Democrat hill in the popular vote, and also the absolute king in the popular vote with no one scoring higher:

Hillary 2016: goes from 65.1 million a week ago to 65.4 million now

Obama '12: 65.9 million

Obama '08: 69.5 million

Kerry '04: 59.0 million

Gore '00: 51.0 million

Peter Wallison points out jettisoning the Electoral College would mean electing presidents without majorities and thus without mandates

Here.