Thursday, September 16, 2004
Scott McClellan Lies About 1 Million Jobs Being Lost Due To 9/11...
The extent to which the Bush Adminstration uses 9/11 as a crutch, shield, excuse, platform, campaign slogan, and rationale is pretty staggering considering it was, after all, a failure on Mr. Bush's part.
From yesterday's daily briefing:
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, let me address a couple of things. We've overcome many challenges in this country over the last three years. A number of them go back to what occurred on September 11th. When it comes to the economy, let's look at the strains that were placed on our economy. We were in an economic downturn and the President inherited a recession when he came into office. Then you had the September 11th attacks. In the aftermath of September 11th, in the three months after September 11th, we lost a million jobs right there."
There's actually TWO lies in there, but who's counting?
1.) The recession began in March of 2001, Bush took office in January of 2001.
2.) According to the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, 125,637 jobs were reported lost as a direct or indirect result of the attacks.
The claim of "1 million jobs lost after 9/11" is clearly becoming the go-to excuse for many GOP talking heads trying to explain away the fact that Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs:
"We had an attack on 9/11 where we lost over a million jobs in just about 3 months."
-Suzy DeFrancis, White House Deputy Assistant for Communications speaking to CNN
I doubt a chief executive of any nation has ever exploited a national tragedy as blatantly and effectively as Bush has exploited 9/11...
UPDATE: There are several other things I'd like to post on, but I want to leave this at the top of my page so some enterprising Republican can come and explain it away for me...
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