False facts and twisted logic

False facts and twisted logic

by digby

Think Progress tweeted this chart, writing: “FACT: Under Obama, government is shrinking. There are 598K fewer gov’t jobs today than there were in January 2008.”

It’s true, this is fact. And it’s also true that this fact is ignored by the Republicans who say that the Obama administration has massively grown the fedral government.

But I hope that TP isn’t also saying that this is supposed to be a good thing. In fact, it’s pretty tragic that in a time of massive unemployment the federal government shed that many jobs. The government should have created 598,000 new jobs, not eliminated 598,000 existing ones.

But then, considering how deep the Europeans jumped into the austerity hole, I suppose we should count our blessings that it wasn’t worse. The difference between us and them is that they don’t have a right wing noise machine claiming that the government did things that it didn’t do and then blaming those things it didn’t do for the slow recovery when the truth is that the government didn’t do what it should have done and that was the reason for the slow recovery. At least Europe’s plight is a rational disagreement based on real facts and events. I’m not sure which of us will be worse off in the long run.

Update: On the other hand there’s this, which should clear it all up

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