Every now and then, I wander over to RedState to see what might be up and coming in Conservative Corporate Memespace - that is, what trial balloons and fibs are being tried out to see if they fly. Most of these are simply stupid, but occasionally they fall into burlesque-ish humor, as with this quote from a front page article:
Until the Democrats took back Congress in 2006, the Bush economic expansion saw the lowest unemployment in American history. . . . So why let the Bush tax cuts expire?
Say what? In which country? It certainly wasn't the United States.
How long do you think it would take to rebut this particular... well, it could simply be concentrated essence of "Teh Stoopid", but I lean towards an outright falsehood... so, in the age of Google, how long would rebutting this take?
Try 32 seconds to get the documentation from the US Government in this PDF document This provided me with the excerpted list below:
Unemployment Rate
by Year
- 1994 - 6.1%
- 1995 - 5.6%
- 1996 - 5.4%
- 1997 - 4.9%
- 1998 - 4.5%
- 1999 - 4.2%
- 2000 - 4.0%
- 2001 - 4.7%
- 2002 - 5.8%
- 2003 - 6.0%
- 2004 - 5.5%
- 2005 - 5.1%
- 2006 - 4.6%
- 2007 - 4.6%
- 2008 - 5.8%
That was "the lowest unemployment in American history"? Really? I assume that means "Excluding all other, lower unemployment years, like any time with a Clinton as President (such as the average unemployment rates of 4.0% in 2000, 4.2% in 1999, and 4.5% in 1998).
You now have a quick, easy to remember counter if you run across this one somewhere.
"The last three years of President Clinton's final term all had lower unemployment than any year that Shrub was in office. This is historically low unemployment?"
This will die a quick death in the mainstream media, but commentary about it in the Wingnuttosphere will probably continue for a month or two. Share the truth, and educate a misled conservative.