Motus Mentis

7 Comments

1. the one eyed man says

   Sure enough, we did hear more about this. This phony meme was discredited within hours of its publication.

   There is nothing aberrant in the drop in the monthly unemployment rate prior to the election. It has been falling steadily since 2010, falling from 8.1% in May to 7.8% in October, or an annual rate of 0.6%. This is also the same rate if fell for the entirety of 2012.

   http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate

   The unemployment rate rose in June and July 2012, as the general election was getting underway. Obviously if the numbers look good, its cause must be because someone is cooking the books. If the numbers look bad, then the BLS is just doing its job and reporting the facts. Funny how that works.

   There are thousands of census takers involved in the process of compiling data, and a single worker could not swing the employment rate, regardless of what he did.

   There is no indication that Buckmon submitted phony data which were tilted to raise or lower the unemployment rate. There is also no indication that he acted out of political motives instead of taking a shortcut to meet a quota. This is what passes for a right wing syllogism: the data looked good for Obama; a worker was found engaged in suspicious activity; therefore, the worker engaged in sabotage because Obama told him to.

   CNBC reports that Buckmon left his job in 2011, so even if he could have done the things which the Post article suggests, he wasn’t around to do them.

   Etc., etc. It’s nonsense.

   However, it is standard operating procedure for the fever swamps of the right wing, where palpably phony memes are put into circulation, so the gullible and excitable audience to right wing media is thrown red meat to confirm the dogma that anything connected with the Obama administration springs from sinister and malign motives. These memes are never critically examined by those who promulgate them, and when others debunk them, their refutations are ignored by the media which spread these obvious falsehoods. I hope not to disillusion anyone, but Fox News, the Post, and other Murdoch media are not journalistic enterprises, but propaganda outlets.

   Posted November 19, 2013 at 5:19 pm | Permalink
2. Malcolm says

   This phony meme was discredited within hours of its publication.

   Was it? Where?

   After all, the opposition, at this point, should feel no need to make things up to discredit this awful administration; it’s already, as they say, a ‘target-rich environment’. There’s an ample supply of real scandals, failures, lies, abuses of power, and general incompetence to draw upon without having to start fabricating stuff.

   Posted November 19, 2013 at 5:26 pm | Permalink
3. the one eyed man says

   It was discredited first here:

   http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2013/11/19/u-s-unemployment-rate-faked-n-y-post-critic-charges/

   Then it was discredited here.

   After that, it was discredited on CNBC in a report by Steve Liesman.

   However, you don’t need the media to find the flaws in an obviously phony meme. A basic knowledge of how economic statistics are compiled is all you need to know that the Post “reporting” is scurrilous nonsense.

   Posted November 19, 2013 at 6:19 pm | Permalink
4. JK says

   Ya know guys?

   I’ve been reading here for awhile and it occurs to me Malcolm that your arguing the obvious with One Eye is becoming oh, less than fruitful might I say?

   What you two ought do, if I may be so bold … seeing how it’s Gettysburg Season an’ all is, rather than suggesting Obama’s faults are limited to everybody but Peter (apparently) saying incompetence does play it’s part – get yourselves each a cannon and post video to YouTube.

   “Now where could we get cannons” I hear from each? Where else, the cannon store!

   http://www.cannonsuperstore.com/

   Posted November 19, 2013 at 6:32 pm | Permalink
5. JK says

   Well. Maybe not cannons yet.

   Then it was discredited here:

   I note One Eye something from your second link leads me to think “discredited” might be a little stretchy.

   So bottom line, there are some issues with the article itself (the meat doesn’t match the explosive headline) and the data also doesn’t quite line up. But we’re still looking into it, and are eager to hear what the Department of Labor and the Census Bureau are saying.

   Posted November 19, 2013 at 6:47 pm | Permalink
6. Malcolm says

   Well, I dunno. I don’t see anything rising to the level of ‘discredited’ in either of those links. No doubt one rogue agent wouldn’t have the power to skew aggregate data in a meaningful way, but then again we’ve heard that ‘one rogue agent’ story before — and the allegation here is that it was more widespread than that.

   But of course I have no way of knowing what the truth is here; as a responsible member of La RÁ©sistance, my job is simply to do what I can to make sure these things get a proper airing-out. (After all, given what we’ve seen so far from this gang of scoundrels, the sensible assumption is that accusations of perfidy are most likely true, unless reliably falsified.) If there’s nothing to this story, it’ll fizzle out.

   So: let’s wait and see what develops.

   Posted November 19, 2013 at 8:05 pm | Permalink
7. JK says

   One Eye?

   Tho it ain’t exactly “cannons time yet” you might wanna check the cannon store link soon. Christmas is coming and there’s a peculiarly California Paint-Schemed example on the top row.

   I figure with Santa making moves, that’ll be flying off the shelf.

   Posted November 19, 2013 at 8:59 pm | Permalink