POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Obama lied about meeting his own brother.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: No, 2.1 million haven’t enrolled in Obamacare plans.

With President Obama’s health care law scheduled to begin in earnest when the new year kicks off, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius claimed on a Tuesday conference call that as of Dec. 28, “2.1 million people have enrolled in a private insurance plan” through the program.

Later in the call, Sebelius emphasized that enrollments wouldn’t be completed until individuals paid their first month’s premiums.

But HHS officials still won’t disclose how many of the 2.1 million they claim enrolled through the federal healthcare.gov website or one of the state-based exchanges actually paid for coverage.

Though Sebelius left the call before the question-and-answer session, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julie Bataille declined several times to provide payment information. . . .

Later in the call, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Bataille if she could at least say with confidence that a “very high percentage” of those 2.1 million had paid.

Instead of answering in the affirmative, Bataille said, “We are confident that those consumers have selected a plan and know what the next steps are for them in terms of securing coverage.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that: “As of Monday, however, only about half of enrollees billed for plans offered by more than 100 insurers in 17 states had paid their first month’s premium, said Mark Waterstraat, chief strategy officer at Benaissance, a third-party billing firm that works for those insurers.”

It isn’t clear whether that figure is indicative of the story nationwide, and it’s true that insurers have opted to give individuals until at least Jan. 10 (in some cases longer) to pay their premiums for coverage beginning on Jan. 1.

But there’s no reason to believe Sebelius’s claims that 2.1 million have enrolled as of Dec. 28, and journalists shouldn’t report that 2.1 million enrolled until HHS releases data showing that 2.1 million paid for their plans.

During the call, Bataille also declined to provide a demographic breakdown of those who have selected a plan so far or say how many of the 2.1 million signing up for insurance were previously uninsured.

Demographic information is important, because it is vital for the exchanges to attract a critical mass of young and healthy enrollees to offset the costs of covering older and sicker participants in the program.

Also, because millions of Americans have received cancellation notices from insurers, analysts want to know whether the law resulted in a net gain of those who have private insurance. Knowing how many of the 2.1 million signing up were previously uninsured could help provide insight into the question.

If the numbers were good, they’d be telling us.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: NPR: Colleges Use Photoshop to Paint Faux Diversity. “Pippert and his researchers looked at more than 10,000 images from college brochures, comparing the racial breakdown of students in the pictures to the colleges’ actual demographics. They found that, overall, the whiter the school, the more diversity depicted in the brochures, especially for certain groups.” My Nigerian sister-in-law appeared a couple of dozen times in her college’s bulletin, though to be fair, she’s uncommonly attractive.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: “The Potemkin village of a CEO meeting — it was really just a photo op — was a Potemkin village for a sales pitch to hide a Potemkin village of a website.”

POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: ‘Fake’ sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela memorial provokes anger.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: ‘Non-partisan’ group paid $1 million to produce positive Obamacare stories.

POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Neighbors: Newark Mayor Cory Booker never lived in Newark. “Multiple residents of Newark told The Daily Caller that the longtime mayor doesn’t live at any of the addresses he has claimed as home. The mayor is believed to live in New York even though he is registered to run for New Jersey’s special senate election.”

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Obamacare Poster Boy Chad Henderson and His Dad Haven’t Signed Up for Obamacare, Says His Father.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Sorry Ladies: Bobby Riggs Threw His Match Against Billie Jean King.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Former Ron Wyden aide challenges Obama’s surveillance claims.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Fake Villages Will Greet President Obama And Other G8 World Leaders. “According to Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE, local councils have hired workers to paint fake shop fronts stocked with attractive but illusory produce. They have also been contracted to cover derelict buildings with colorful billboards, the better to hide the real economic hardship being felt in towns and villages close to the five star golf resort where G8 leaders will meet this month.”

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: IRS Official Lois Lerner Called Lawyer To Plant Targeting Question.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Democratic front group hyped as hunters by media in gun-control fight.

See also this piece by Mark Tapscott.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Elaborate NYT graphic makes me think something quite different from what they want me to think.

That said, what I really want to talk about is that pile of Monopoly houses, far, far outnumbering the hotels. There are 120 million households, and 158 spend half of what is spent, and amount that’s only $176 million. If all of the households gave just $5, that would be $600 million, vastly overwhelming those supposedly fearsome, overspending, rich, white men. That money could be given directly to that candidate (since it comes, obviously, nowhere near the limit).

Instead of complaining about 158 families spending $176 million (which strikes me as a fairly paltry amount, especially since only $2,700 can be given to a candidate), the clamor should be about the need for everyone to give just a little money to someone. Skip one cup of coffee, one cheeseburger, one movie, and give the money to the candidate you like best. It could be so easy.

And yet bitching about those terrible rich people — those terrible male white people — serves other political interests… interests that the rich white males who own The New York Times have a constitutional right to push with all the powerful rhetoric and lovely graphics they can muster.

It’s Potemkin villages all the way down.

IT TAKES A POTEMKIN VILLAGE TO PROP UP HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN: What Was a Member of Clinton’s ‘Secret Spy Network’ Doing While Working for CBS News?

According to WEEKLY STANDARD sources, Drumheller was active in shaping the network’s Benghazi coverage. His role at the network raises questions about what went wrong with the retracted 60 Minutes report on Benghazi that aired in October 2013. Despite his former life as a high ranking CIA official, Drumheller was laden with political baggage, making him a curious choice to be consulting with a major news operation—especially so given that he was working directly with Sidney Blumenthal, whose primary occupation appears to be manipulating media coverage on behalf of the Clintons.

And note that “David Rhoades, the current president of CBS News, is the brother of Ben Rhoades, a White House national security advisor. If Ben’s name sounds familiar, that is likely due to his reported role in the editing of the now infamous Benghazi talking points.”

Meanwhile, on a lighter ghost note: Hillary’s ‘Spontaneous’ Pumpkin Spice Latte Question Came From Former Staffer.

It’s Potemkin Villages all the way down, to coin a phrase. Or as Iowahawk quips, “DC media: more incest than Appalachia’s trashiest hillbilly trailer park.”

FRONTIERS IN MEDIA MANIPULATION: Immigration group planned girl’s pope encounter for a year. “Sophie Cruz’s brief encounter with Pope Francis during his parade in Washington this week appeared to be the kind of spontaneous moment that is so endearing about this pope: an initially hesitant young child wrapping an arm around his neck as he offers a kiss and a blessing. But for 5-year-old Sophie, the moment unfolded as perfectly as it was scripted by members of a coalition of Los Angeles-based immigration rights groups. They had been preparing for nearly a year for the young girl from suburban Los Angeles to make a dash for the popemobile to deliver a message about the plight of immigrant parents living in the country illegally. They had even pulled off a similar public-relations coup a year ago in Rome using a 10-year-old girl with the pope.”

It’s Potemkin villages all the way down.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: The damage Rachel Dolezal has done. “Dolezal is a laughingstock and has made a mockery of the work she said she cared about.” Well, yes. But that’s because she’s exposed the absurdity of race-fetishization, and undercut the notion of “white privilege.” Much as Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner has done with gender. If it’s so great to be a white male, how come there’s so much transitioning away?

Related: Dolezal in 2010: I’d Be ‘Nervous’ to Go to a Tea Party Rally Because of the All-White Crowd. It’s racist Potemkin villages all the way down.

IT’S HARD TO PICK A “FAVORITE,” SINCE THERE ARE SO MANY: Jonah Goldberg on “The Clintons’ favorite way to lie.”

There are no “new” Hillarys. There are, on occasion, new strategies to dupe people into thinking there is a new Hillary. But these Potemkin do-overs are usually as pale, thin, and see-through as the skin of an agoraphobic Goth computer programmer. The simple fact is: This is her. There is no other her. There is no other Bill, either, by the way. They are Clintons and they are eternal, Aesopian, unchanging. The tackiness and the lying, the parsing and corner-cutting, the entitlement and fakery: This is what they do. Scandals swirl around the Clintons like the cloud of dirt surrounding Pigpen not because the Clintons are the victims of their enemies, but because the Clintons are their own worst enemies. They do this to themselves. They create these problems. They are the authors of their own torment because this is who they are.

Yep–the Clintons are Potemkin villages all the way down.  Hard to believe anyone falls for their populist facades.