QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED. OR, TWO NEWSWEEKS IN ONE!

Shot: Why Facebook Can’t Fix Fake News.

—Headline,  Newsweek, Monday.

Chaser:

Acknowledging that many news stories (such as celebrity obituaries) are largely drafted ahead of time with only a few dates and times left to be filled in, Newsweek has compiled stories celebrating Hillary Clinton’s landslide win on Nov. 8. It’s the safest of safe spaces for the Clinton supporters who were literally balled up on the floor and vomiting at the Javits Center that night.*

—Newsweek offers Hillary supporters in mourning dispatches from an alternative reality where she won, Twitchy, yesterday.

* Sounds extremely painful. I hope there weren’t any Korans being flushed down the toilets in the restrooms there that night.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS…

MSM's right to discuss Trump's conflicts of interest. Just wish they'd been this interested in Clinton Foundation when Hillary was SECSTATE.

— John Schindler (@20committee) November 30, 2016

I’M NOT ON TWITTER MUCH ANYMORE, BUT IF YOU SPEAK MY NAME THREE TIMES I MAY JUST SHOW UP:

Well, when you wonder why people aren’t talking about things that you’re really upset about, maybe it’s because they don’t find them upsetting.

I don’t think that any of Trump’s appointments are “disastrous.” Sessions as AG wouldn’t be my first choice (that would probably be Randy Barnett, which is why I’m not the President-Elect) but for Trump he’s an excellent pick and will do what Trump wants — and do it more honestly than Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch, not that that’s setting the bar very high.

Likewise, I’d have preferred John Allison as Treasury Secretary over Steve Mnuchin. But is Mnuchin “disastrous?”

DeVos as Education Secretary, again, not my first choice — I’d prefer someone who was more focused on higher-ed reform, but that’s just my hobbyhorse — but a fine pick with a strong focus on K-12 reform, which to be honest, hobbyhorse aside, probably needs it more. Who else is “disastrous?” Elaine Chao? Please.

As for “Twitter meltdowns,” where have you been for the past two years? This is what Trump does, and it neither hurts him nor forecasts what he’s actually going to do. You’re being trolled and it’s working. Trump has basically lured Democrats (and a few #NeverTrump Republicans) into defending flag-burning, and reminded people of Hillary’s position in 2005. Sure, the idea is dumb and unconstitutional (as I said yesterday), but it’s a tweet, not a piece of legislation. And it also brings attention to the fact that the Dems haven’t been exactly friendly to people’s First Amendment rights on issues they care about. Now they have to publicly argue that you should go to jail for not baking a gay wedding cake, but not for burning a flag. To the surprise of many Democrats, this turns out not to be the popular position.

So who, exactly, is crazy here?

So there you are. And whatever you do, don’t feed me after midnight.

UPDATE: Hi, Ed!

HEAD START: Study finds cash and coins help engage primary maths students.

Primary school students are more likely to understand and engage with maths if classes use real money and real-life projects, according to a Western Sydney University pilot study.

The findings come as Australian students lag behind other countries in maths, with Year 4 students dropping from 18th to 28th out of 49 countries in year 4 maths in the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science study.

The project leader, Associate Professor Catherine Attard from the School of Education, says the pilot study aimed to tackle one of the most common complaints about maths classes- that they lack relevance outside school.

“Students expect to be taught information that is meaningful and makes sense to them,” says Dr Attard.

I can vouch for this, having watched my boys catch on to totaling up their savings far faster than any pencil and paper math lesson.

TURNAROUND ARTIST: Trump taps billionaire investor Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary.

For 24 years as a banker at Rothschild, Ross developed a lucrative specialty in bankruptcy and corporate restructurings. He founded his own firm, W.L. Ross, in 2000 and earned part of his fortune from investing in troubled factories in the industrial Midwest and in some instances generating profits by limiting worker benefits. That region swung hard for Trump in the election on the promise of more manufacturing jobs from renegotiated trade deals and penalties for factories that outsourced their work abroad.

A specialist in corporate turnarounds, Ross buys distressed or bankrupt companies at steep discounts, then seeks to shave costs and generate profits. Some of those cost reductions have come from altering pay and benefits for workers. Since 2000, his firm has invested in more than 178 companies.

Ross most prominently created four companies through mergers and acquisitions that focused on steel, textiles, autos and coal. In some cases, Ross has sold the companies he packaged to even larger globe-spanning companies. In 2005, he sold the International Steel Group, which included the former Bethlehem Steel, to the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal.

I’m still not convinced we even need a Commerce Department.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: “An assembly at a New Jersey high school devolved into name-calling and racially charged drama after the speaker drifted from her topic of ‘digital safety’ into a lecture admonishing students for their white privilege.”

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REVOLTING: From a parade of foreign leaders, a glowing farewell to Fidel Castro.

Predictable, too.

IT’S COME TO THIS: OSU Diversity Officer Urges Compassion for Somali Terrorist Who Attacked Students. “Stephanie Clemons Thompson urged her followers to have compassion for Artan after he expressed a desire ‘to kill a billion infidels’ and then tried to kill as many as he could at OSU. She also urged people to ‘think of the pain he must have been in,’ and used the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHisName (which BLM uses to denote victims of police brutality).”

Hey, it’s not like he wore a Trump hat to class or something unforgivable like that.

LIKE THE FICTIONAL WAVE OF SUPER-BOWL-BASED WIFE BEATING, THIS IS MOSTLY ABOUT LEFTY FUNDRAISING: Are There Really More Hate Crimes At Schools Following Donald Trump’s Election? “In fact, it’s much easier to find examples of violence against students who have openly backed Trump; there are more than a few stories of kids being pummeled for disagreeing with the losing side (detailed below.) We did see anti-Trump protests by college and high school students around the country turn violent in cities such as Portland, Ore., as agitators joined the groups. Who didn’t hear angry students clearly shouting ‘F*#% Trump’ in news footage from post-election rallies? . . . After reading through myriad stories since Election Day, what’s clear is that the widely reported episodes of violence and intimidation are usually vague, involve roaming gangs of indistinguishable white males, and produce no witnesses. Often the police aren’t even called, but when they are, the stories tend to fall apart.”

OIL WARS: Brent Crude Oil Climbs Above $50 as OPEC Said Very Close to Deal.

OPEC is very close to a deal that would remove 1.4 million barrels a day of collective production, a delegate to a ministerial meeting underway in Vienna said. An agreement would include an additional 600,000 barrels a day of cuts from non-OPEC suppliers, the delegate said. Russia, the biggest producer outside the bloc, has said that if OPEC agrees individual country quotas, it is ready to participate, including possibly by reducing its output, a person familiar with Russian thinking said.

Ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are meeting in the Austrian capital to weigh a deal first floated in September to collectively reduce output. Following days of discord, OPEC ministers on Wednesday showed optimism for a deal as United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei said he expects “some good news” later in the day.

“The market is biting at every comment from OPEC and now it seems like a deal is possible,” said Jens Pedersen, an analyst at Danske Bank A/S. “It is imperative they show that they are able to agree on something following previous failed attempts.”

Oil traders aren’t the only ones biting. $50 is the breakeven point for a whole lot of idle frackers waiting to get their fields back into production.

CHANGE: The Left’s Miraculous Change of Heart on Accepting Election Results: Democrats were completely against questioning results when they assumed Clinton would win.

CHANGE: Will Italy Be Next To Quit The EU?

THE TRUTH CAN HURT: Mainstream Scream: Media can’t take Kellyanne Conway’s charge of bias.

They were obviously in the tank for Hillary. They even bragged about jettisoning their objectivity — or at least, any pretense thereof — in order to stop Trump. Now they’re complaining that charges that they’re biased are “not the fact?”

It’s not good for the country that we’re in the place that we’re in. But the press has played a huge part in getting us here, and shows no sign of taking any responsibility for it.

UPDATE: Flashback: Trump Defeated Hillary and the Seemingly Dominant Media (SDM).

JAYVEE: ISIS Claims Responsibility for Ohio State Attack.

There isn’t much to back up the claim.

SHOCKER: North Park University student fabricated anti-gay ‘Trump’ notes, school says.

An openly bisexual Chicago student who claimed she received anti-gay, pro-Donald Trump notes and emails after the election is found to have fabricated the entire story, North Park University said.

Taylor Volk told a local NBC News affiliate that she found one of the notes taped to her door at her off-campus residence, which read “Back to hell” and “#Trump” along with homophobic slurs.

“This is a countrywide epidemic all of a sudden,” she said on Nov. 14. “I just want them to stop.”

She had also posted pictures of notes with homophobic slurs to her Facebook account, NBC reported.

The university investigated the alleged harassment and determined this week that Ms. Volk had fabricated the story.

It’s not fair! We just know those haters are out there. But if they won’t come forward with their hate, we’ll just have to, er, . . . help things along a bit.

UPDATE: Navy Veteran’s Home Torched and Vandalized with Anti-Trump Graffiti. “Police are investigating to determine if there is a link between the attack on the Smiths’ home and similar incidents in nearby Mango, Fla., where two mobile homes were recently defaced with anti-Trump graffiti. One of the attacks reportedly involved at an attempt to set the home on fire.”

Will this turn out to be fake? I know how I’d bet.

THE FOUR-YEAR TANTRUM: The Media, Still Throwing a Fit Over Trump.