Great Site for Political "Data"

[SamSpade]

Debunking the Obama Stimulus Chart Or “How To Make Numbers Say Anything You Want”

I've been enjoying a lot of his stuff. This article in particular, because I knew that graph looked - wrong. I mean, how could Obama work his magic BEFORE he had actually done anything? How could the economy be doing so much better now when it is very clear that MUCH fewer people are employed than before and the employment picture is getting worse?

And it's easy. The chart we've all seen just shows the rate of job loss without any regard to the total number of jobs. It's still getting worse, but it looks like it's improving, because it's not getting worse as FAST.

(It also obfuscates the fact that the stimulus really could NOT have affected the outcome, which is why you don't see the chart on recovery.gov any more).

It's the same premise as the guy who does the 10000 pennies videos on YouTube - your average person doesn't get what the data means, or has any sense of scale or perspective, and so it's extremely easy to LIE with the "truth".

[hvp05 (Premo)]

As you can see, we’ve taken the default red (for George Bush) and made it darker and richer. This is like drawing a Snidely Whiplash mustache on him so that we know he’s the bad guy. Then, we’ll make the President Obama blue lighter and softer so we know he’s the good guy.

We just want them to look at the chart and say, “Bush bad. Obama good.”

For all the complexity that goes into orchestrating this information, the tactics are remarkably simple. So many people, so easily fooled.