Lies, Damn Lies, and …

..well I wouldn’t call them statistics, really. Yes, we watched Michelle Bachmann’s response to the SOTU on CNN last night. I really wanted her to bring on the crazy, and she didn’t disappoint. With a little luck her presidential aspirations were sunk by her glassy-eyed stepfordstare, randomly generated background imagery, and imaginary numbers.

Here’s one bit of crazy that went further into the twilight zone than most, her portrayal of the unemployment rate as just the evil doings of the Obama administration. Her bar graph was this:

Which she portrayed as showing the unemployment rate before, and after, the “bailouts” (which she didn’t credit to the Bush administration, as she should have) and the stimulus package. The unemployment rate in August, 2001 was 6.6%. August was chosen very carefully as the baseline month to show; she’s not necessarily stupid, but she thinks you are.

Why is a year-over-year rate pegged to whatever it happened to be in August deceptive? This is why:

Right after August, 2008, we hit the worst period in many decades. All that steep rise that happened prior to February, 2009, when the stimulus bill was actually signed she credits against Obama.

But maybe it’s more clear this way. Imagine you’re in a plane that’s crashing. Most of the way down, marked by the dot, we changed pilots. Is it the new pilot’s fault we almost crashed?