A useful graphic

Soon after the inauguration, Republicans thought they had a winner in calling the current economic mess "the Obama Recession." A year ago you'd have to be as deluded as Glenn Beck to believe such revisionist nonsense, but Obama seems to have brought out the inner Glenn Beck in millions of people, turning our national political discourse into a freakshow of conspiracy nuts on parade. In most areas, it's almost impossible to penetrate their alternate reality bubble, but it is possible to make some quick rebuttals of the "Obama Recession" lie. Here's one.


Steve Benen made the original chart and I only added the arrow and lower labels. The chart shows job losses over the last ten months. Admittedly, the fact that there have been hundreds of thousands of losses every month for the last year is pretty depressing, but there has been a very clear and easy to understand change in the momentum. Things are crappy and continuing to get crappier, but it's easy to see that things could stop getting crappier pretty soon and even start getting less crappy in the foreseeable future. So, print this out on a notecard (do they still make notecards?) and keep it on hand so that the next time your right-wing neighbor or brother-in-law starts ranting about how Obama is destroying the economy and the stimulus has been a failure, you can whip this out and smack them around with a real fact.

Remember, facts are our friends.