All about new jobs, lower unemployment and the like?

Now not so much, even as there’s record-breaking news on that front regularly in 11 months of Trump such as this today in Wall St. Journal:

WASHINGTON—The economy appears to be on its firmest footing in at least a decade, with hiring picking up from earlier this year and the unemployment rate holding at a 17-year low in November.

Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 228,000 in November, the Labor Department said Friday. It was a slight slowdown from October hiring, which was boosted by a rebound from late-summer hurricanes, but was well above the pace recorded earlier this year. Revised figures showed the economy added 3,000 more jobs than previously estimated in October and September.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate remained at 4.1% last month, matching the lowest level since December 2000.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected 195,000 new jobs and a 4.1% unemployment rate last month.

Rather good, eh? What happened?

Besides wholesale deregulation, job-creating free-marketing by the federal government, etc. etc.

via U.S. Employers Hire at Healthy Rate in November – WSJ

Robert Royal ends his review of “The Dictator Pope” with this pungent observation:

Despite a few lapses [by the pseudonymous author Marcantonio Colonna], the most disturbing element [of his treatment of Pope Francis] remains: the abundant evidence – confirmed by many particular instances now over years of this papacy – that the pope has little use for established procedures, precedents, even legal structures within the Church.

These are not mere trivial rules, Pharisaic legalism, resistance to the Holy Spirit, etc. They are the means by which the Church seeks to be clear, fair, and orderly – and to address unjust actions or abuses by those in power.

And finally:

When the head of the Church himself does not much feel bound by the tradition or impartial laws he has inherited, what then? That the question even has to be asked is disturbing. Any answer will have to reckon with the eye-opening material in this compelling book.

Yep.

via “The Dictator Pope” – The Catholic Thing

The Pope of Making Things Happen:

When Francis cares about something – as [pseudonymous author Marcantonio] Colonna shows – he makes it happen, whatever the opposition (at the Synods, it was considerable).

There’s a clear pattern of behavior, whatever uncertainties remain. On the divorced and remarried, the environment, immigrants, “Islamophobia,” the poor, the pope is relentless.

But he was not elected to revolutionize marital doctrine or “discipline.” Nor was he chosen to be a player in international politics.

He was elected to be a “reformer” who would mainly clean up Vatican finances and deal with the gay lobby, two things that played a role in Benedict’s resignation.

This is from author-commentator Robert Royal’s assessment of the newly released in English The Dictator Pope, which Royal encapsulates and praises.

via The Catholic Thing

“Largely convincing” pseudonymous treatment of incumbent pontiff. 

The title above is the name of a book that appeared Monday in English (after earlier publication in Italian) by a writer who has assumed a grand Renaissance pseudonym: Marcantonio Colonna (an admiral at Lepanto).

He evidently could not publish under his real name, for fear of reprisals.

But the case he lays out is largely convincing: that Pope Francis has carefully cultivated an image in public as the apostle of mercy, kindness, and openness; in private, he’s authoritarian, given to profanity-laced outbursts of anger, and manipulative in pursuing his agenda.

Lifetime appointment, yes (or was before Benedict chose not to serve, in a move that had then Archbp Bergoglio dancing for joy, as the book relates.

Amazon has Kindle-ized book at $9.50.

via The Catholic Thing

Four weeks without pay. His zealous anti-Trumpism got the better of him. Not his first fake-news episode.

Looked up suspects in Aurora CO shooting in 2012, found one with Tea Party affiliation, except it was a different guy with same name. He’s a winner, to be sure.

via ABC suspends Brian Ross for erroneous Flynn report

via Instapundit » Blog Archive » WHEN I WENT TO GET MY FLU SHOT, THE INSTA-WIFE PREDICTED THIS: U.S. experts concerned about efficac…

. . . and all but one of whom voted FOR the tax bill! It’s called trying to be something you are not or are not supposed to be.

Go back to the news that’s fit to print, gray lady, and apologies to gray ladies everywhere for disrespectful connotations that drag up an old, discredited stereotype.

Never again, I promise, but this time I had to say it.

via Secret History of the Tax Bill – The New York Sun

. . . Francis  as manipulator, book about his papacy which has been largely ignored by journalists, maybe to protect their access.

Notable exceptions to this conspicuous silence include the stalwart Marco Tosatti — who has already begun unpacking the text at his website, Stilum Curae — and Professor Roberto de Mattei, who writes that the book confirms Cardinal Müller’s recent remarks that there is a “magic circle” around the pope which “prevents an open and balanced debate on the doctrinal problems raised” by objections like the dubia and Filial Correction, and that there is also “a climate of espionage and delusion” in Francis’ Vatican.

Lot to swallow there, to be sure. See Amazon for the book coming out in English on Monday 12/4.

Plus:

Colonna [the pseudonymous author] writes, too, of the “buyer’s remorse” that some of the cardinals who elected Bergoglio are experiencing as his pontificate approaches its fifth anniversary: “Francis is showing,” writes Colonna, “that he is not the democratic, liberal ruler that the cardinals thought they were electing in 2013, but a papal tyrant the like of whom has not been seen for many centuries.”

via “The Dictator Pope”: Mysterious New Book Looks “Behind the Mask” of Francis – OnePeterFive

From the ever-quotable Daniel Henninger:

Jesus Christ could count himself lucky that for the completion of his earthly mission he had the 12 apostles and not the 52 Republican members of the U.S. Senate.

Those 52 munchkins can snatch defeat out of victory any day, the Lord’s Day included.

via Taxes: What Would Jesus Do? – WSJ

Imagine: The Lord tells Lazarus to walk from his tomb, and the apostle Bob, the first fiscal hawk, objects that if Jesus continues raising people from the dead, the unplanned population growth will blow out Judea’s deficit. Apostle Bob says he won’t go along without a hard cap on resurrections.

The Lord reminds the apostles of how he fed the multitudes with the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Forget it, says the apostle Jeff. Unconstrained loaf-and-fish division will create a culture of entitlement. Apostle Jeff says he’s leaving.

Angered, Jesus threatens to drive the money changers from the temple. You’re wasting your energy, says the apostle Ron, an accountant before joining the discipleship. Ron explains to the Lord that the money changers are pass-through entities who are withholding their support until Jesus extracts equal tax treatment for them from King Herod.

Etc. Alas, subscripition required.

Yes, after whiting (?) out the inaccurately designated Indians from the Christopher Columbus murals, white out Columbus while you’re at it. As for upsetting Italian-ancestry people, well . . .

via Offensive murals must go, say Native American Notre Dame students and others | National Catholic Reporter

And the name Fighting Irish, by which immigrants said blank-you to the native Americans designated as nativists, you don’t like it? Hey, it’s on you.