I haven’t actually looked at state-by-state unemployment data in a while, but was still shocked when the latest report (for August) came out showing my home state of Georgia a big fat number one, edging out the previous “winner,” Mississippi.

It’s obviously not good news for incumbent Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, who’s descended to a claim that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is playing politics with the numbers (you never hear this when pols like the numbers, do you?). Since Deal has fully returned Georgia to the best economic development practices of the 1950s, it would be nice to see him take some heat instead of pretending that every corporate-welfare-enabled ribbon-cutting is a giant leap forward for the state.

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Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.