We talked earlier about the spike in initial unemployment claims, directly attributable to Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed job sites, closed offices, and caused widespread power outages. This shouldn't lend itself to conservative conspiracy theories, but Fox News found a way.
Pat Garofolo flagged these gems:
* FOX NEWS' ERIC BOLLING: "The Department of Labor is getting sketchier and sketchier with each one of these numbers."
* FOX NEWS' GRETCHEN CARLSON: "A lot of people are going to be raising some eyebrows pretty high today that, after the election, we go up to this whopping number of 439,000."
* GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R-WI): "Well, real concerns about the numbers. Certainly, some will question the timing."
In case you're having trouble with the underlying point here, the new conspiracy theory is that jobless claims were already rising, but those rascals in the Obama administration deliberately skewed the data before the election. Now that the election is over, we see the higher, unskewed figures.
In other words, the right has a choice as to what to believe. Either (a) Hurricane Sandy temporarily interfered with the job market on the East Coast; or (b) the Obama White House and the Department of Labor engaged in an elaborate conspiracy to manipulate jobs data from the states immediately before the election, twisting a metric that most of the public has never heard of.
Honestly, if the last several months have taught us anything, it's that the right really needs to put their feet back on the ground, stop believing in unhinged nonsense, and start evaluating objective reality in a sane way.
As of this morning, conservatives appear to be off to a rough start.
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Truth? Facts? A member of the GOP craves not these things...
Sure we love facts. Let me share some.
1. 78,000 increase in unemployment claims
2. Roughly 7,500 unemployment claims attributed to Hurricane Sandy by DOL. (If you subtract the decrease of 2,200 in NY this figure drops to 5,300.)
So, according to the Department of Labor less than 10% of the change in jobless claims were due to hurricane Sandy, so to blame the bad news on the Hurricane is factually incorrect.
(Admittedly, these numbers probably will change because people affected by the hurricane have other concerns but these numbers do not reflect those yet. These numbers reflect a change largely due to reasons other than hurricane Sandy.)
So,
this headline from TRMS is wrong, it would have been at the 18 month high without hurricane Sandy's numbers.
Fact.
Danger Will Robinson! Danger Will Robinson! That Dr. Smith is up to no good yet again!
People like Bolling should be laughed to the curb, if not already kicked there! -Kevo
Like the Blacks in Maine, and 'Teh Urbans' in Ryan's mind, HUGE numbers of voters waited until the last Thursday before the election to pick a candidate.
Sure they did. . .
Stop being the stupid party.
No, really, stahp!
No! No! No! By all means, PLEASE continue to be the "stupid party"! The stupider the
funnierbetter! You're off to a great start!Please remain the stupid party, 'cuz I like The Daily Show.
At first I thought that the real losers in the election were the comedians, who would lack someone like Romney to mock for the next 4 years... and then I remembered: losing brings out the epic crazy in the GOP, which will provide more than enough material to keep the funny people going for a long, long time.
I'll bet not as high as Romney's when he thought he had bagged Obama on Benghazi.
guess most people and always some people will always have their heads so far up their own or someone else 4th point of contact, the only thing they have is fear and hate.
Many thanks for your keeping tabs on FOX. I have been curious as to how they are taking their defeat. Tell me, are they running ALERT banners across the screen? Are they treating every show like some special edition? Are they keeping their viewers up to date on the altitude of the sky? I could go see for myself but I might laugh until I wet my britches.
So, these geniuses said Hurricane Sandy had the power to swing the election to Obama but can't recognize it also put a lot of people out of work?
Morons. Loons. Nutballs. Whankers. Muddle-headed buffoons. Whackjobs. Crazycakes. The GOP.
Don't forget poopy-head...
". . . the right really needs to put their feet back on the ground, stop believing in unhinged nonsense, and start evaluating objective reality in a sane way.
As of this morning, conservatives appear to be off to a rough start."
May they never stop digging. Amen.
There's just no hope for these trolls. They're in the business of making money not sense.
Hurricane Sandy had no effect on the unemployment rate but 9/11 destroyed the entire economy? Is that the Republicans' position? Figures don't lie, but liars figure.
As SWMBO says, "their ignorance is bottomless."
Well, it wasn't like Fox was going anywhere after the election...
It would take a Murdock funeral and a high level change in management for Fox to metamorphose into something resembling Fair and Balanced. They have far too many highly paid ideological employees pumping anti-reality drugs straight into the national viewer feeding tube to be able to slip their political pimps right now.
But perhaps Jindal's strongly expressed opinions are being whispered over in hushed and secretive corners somewhere in News Corpsville.
Hey Friend! I'm fine with Fox news staying, Fox news. I hope they're able to continue to find profits and viewers who are willing to ignore reality no matter how many elections they lose. I definitely would like to see more sound individuals within the Republican Party, to serve the true design of a two-party system, but I'm fine with keeping an isolated percentage of extremists to the benefit of comedy and increased Democratic voters.
You are ever more optimistic than I.
Fox News opens mouths while it closes minds and our dear Romney didn't lose by near enough. This bought and paid for nationalist propaganda tool earns its keep just a little too well.
I am definitely threading the needle of optimism in the hopes that we can get as close to perfection as possible. Perfection in this world, would be keeping just enough of Republican crazy to weigh down the rest of the party. Fox news definitely has to drop from the top when it comes to profits and the reach of their propaganda, but I want them to be successful enough to keep the crazy train going.
"Honestly, if the last several months have taught us anything,..."
It is:
1) The level of hatred toward the African-American President is truly all consuming.
2) That the GOTP really are unhinged and need to be medicated severely.
and
3) The GOTP don't mentally inhabit the "real world" and are suffering from a mass psychosis induced by the "brown and black" people conspiring around them.
But imagine if they didn't have these conspiracies, there would be no jokes on late night.
Actually, the nutters didn't go all the way in projecting their conspiracy. What if Obama didn't just hide the numbers until after the election? I mean, how could he have covered up his fakery? He needed a plausible explanation that would hide the real unemployment numbers until we were safely past Election Day. Don't you get it? HE MANUFACTURED A REALLY REALLY BIG STORM!
Already have had right wingers on here claiming that. The night of the election some dude came on here claiming that the Obama Administration purposely created Hurricane Sandy using a powerful machine that manipulates the weather and thus this helped Obama win re-election because he seemed so gosh darn presidential in his handling of the storm.
The obvious problem here is that Republicans are thus saying that the reason why Obama got re-elected is because he is presidential in emergency situations.
The scandal, thus, is just that he created the storms; the rest was just implicit.
Heh Republicans never think their conspiracies through =P
So basically, the President "controls Mother Nature", wow! That's interesting....
Oh great, something else for the nutters to blame on the President!
I don't think "the right really needs to put their feet" anywhere other than right were they have them. As it is, the zealosts of the right are able to satisfy their compunding and desperate needs to believe in a world that works in very different ways than the one in which we live. Their political philosophy and knowledge of history is based on the classic movies of the 1940s and 1950s. Jimmy Stuart, John Wayne, and the stars of file and TV laid out their principles. Paladin and Gun Smoke developed the models they rely on to understand macro economics, abortion rights, voting rights, and social programs. Fron these observations you should understand that America needs to have good guys and bad guys. Remember the Western movies where the good guy says "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Sheep ranchers versus cattle ranchers was an issue and gun toting good guys addressed it. The zealots need to have their buble intact so that they can believe in all their conspiracies and dream worlds. We only need to keep them in their buble.
HEY There's nothing wrong with John Wayne. He was a true patriot. He knew the principles and morals and work ethic that the people of America were made of and the Constitution that laid down the laws of the land. Because of the people our government grew stong, not vice versa. Now the penulum has swung and the people are weak because our government has taken on the role of being everything to everyone. Our government has done what doting parents do to their children when they give them everything. Make them weak and dependent and whiners, unable to take care of themselves. Until we change the direction, our country will continue to decline.
Oh, dear.
It's amazing how you know this and how you're able to assess that people are "weak." I'm not weak and government doesn't do everything for me. There are millions like me so who are these weak people that need government to be everything to them? What does this even mean?
What are you talking about? How is a person who, say needs food stamps, unable to "take care of themselves"? So suddenly you get food stamps and that means you can't work? Or you can't clean up after yourself? Or balance a checkbook?
Heh warning to all you non-NCO military personnel out there who have children. According to Jes you're a weakling who isn't capable of taking care of yourself.
LOL
thanks for the laugh,, but you need to place an /s so people dont think you are serous.
LOL
i see a re-reg has to get its 2 cents of total nonsense in.
John Wayne was a drunk.
Concerned four the country banned, rereg of multiple accounter Jeffery Hart.
The GOP is no longer merely the party of stupid; it is now new and improved stupid.
they have become what they have preached.
Ok, when is someone at Fox going to say it? President Obama caused the hurricane so he could look presidential! Hold your breath it's coming!
@newsblog903 ----- LOL!!! It wouldn't surprise me a bit!
I am betting they are going to say God caused the storm to destroy the wicked.
I blame the gays... ;-)
That Kenyan Muslim President called on his Allah god to bring Sandy up the coast to do her damage because he KNEW his numbers were going to be bad and held up all this information until he got the election he fixed by giving gifts to blacks, Latinos, and all those liberal educated young people. Get your conspiracy theory right. And I mean --------> wacko right.
Wow, reconstruction creates jobs! Who woulda thunk it.
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
The President is a Warlock, he conjured up the hurricane to disrupt the election and to make himself look better as President.
No the President is a wizard who was an exchange student at Hogwarts. Show us your Hogwarts records Mr. President!