Rep. Allen West Suspicious About Positive Job Numbers

[bathroommonkey76]

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) struck a suspicious note about today's positive job numbers. He put up the following on his official Facebook wall:

"Can someone tell me how employment in the black community has improved at a rate three times the national average in just a few months?? With numbers like today, urban communities should be well on their way to economic recovery then! There is something suspicious about the job numbers released today and it has me very concerned. Sept/2011 Black unemployment: 15.9 %, Americans overall: 9.0 %. Jan/2012 Black unemployment: 13.6 %, Americans overall: 8.3%. Is this dramatic supposed decrease in black unemployment a result of job creation or is someone playing around with the census numbers?? Americans need truth, not these number games."

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/rep-allen-west-suspicious-about-positive-job-numbers

[JoePhilly]

1. Title should be ... "Whack job demands answers to reality challanged questions!!"

[Scuba]

13. I thought it was pretty good through "Allen West suspicious".

Suspiciously deranged.

[JoePhilly]

16. +1

[Arkana]

2. Translation: "FUCK FUCK FUCK THE ECONOMY'S GETTING BETTER BOYS KILL IT KILL IT"

[Roland99]

3. Labor Force Participation Rate. Look it up, West. Freakin' moron.

BTW, the LFPR has hit a 30-year low with this latest report.

The "job creators" are an EPIC FAIL

[onehandle]

4. I think threads related to Rep. West should automatically be moved to a dungeon.

9/11, I/P. Guns...

Take your pick. West is nuts.

[bathroommonkey76]

5. I agree.

It's just interesting to see the response from the GOP after the release of the unemployment numbers.

[GoCubsGo]

6. I am suspicious about Rep. Allen West's sanity.

And, I strongly suspect that this man is not sane.

[Sanity Claws]

7. Too bad the Republicans weren't this suspicious about Bush's march to war and more war

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

8. Doesn't he have the super duper secret clearance that not even Barack Obama gets? He should

get on that. Find the answer and get back to us as as soon as we start giving a fuck about that sociopath's opinion.

[IDemo]

9. IDemo suspicious about Allen West's relevance

[Johnny2X2X]

10. Latent racism

What West was getting at, "In other words, Obama is pulling some tricks with his black minions."

Pathetic, and don't these people know how awful they look when they can't be happy to hear good news for the Country.

[ThoughtCriminal]

11. Rep West should just Self-Deport

to some place where he won't have to worry about positive numbers.

[The_Counsel]

12. Rep. West Should Just Self-Abort.

That.

Is.

All.

[dmallind]

14. Lemme see....

Inability to distinguish between improvement and perfection......check
Cherry picking to suit his agenda.......check
Innuendo that numbers are faked on an ad-hoc basis rather than derived using consistent, published methodologies.....check
Accusations that the administration is trying to present a rosier picture than is real for political reasons......check


Which one of those don't we see from resident doomers here, and with nary a peep of complaint, every time any metric twitches a millimeter into "slightly better than before" territory? I know Republicans are incorrigible slimy bullshit artists, but they don't have a monopoly.

[DFW]

15. To test his theory, try using the opposite result as an example

Say the figures were miserable, and unemployment was creeping upwards again.

Allen West and the Foxsuckers (no, not a new rock group, but maybe someone will "make it so&quot would
be citing the figures on Fox Noise telling the world how bad Obama was, and here's the proof. If bad
numbers are proof that things are bad, then it stands to reason that good numbers are proof that
things are not so bad. If worsening statistics are a solid indication that the economy is deteriorating,
then encouraging statistics are an indication that the economy is improving.

Sorry, Ranger Rick, you guys are just gonna have to live with this one.

[CAPHAVOC]

27. Not Obamas fault.

It is not Obamas fault and unemployment is getting worse. Wests fallacy is blaming Obama. Sick. Obama seems to be doing as much as he can do given the restraints he is under. It is in his own interest.

[lbfromlv]

17. Who cares???

What intelligent person really cares what this disgraced military veteran thinks????

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

18. Doesn't sound like anything different from what we see here on DU with the ODSers.

Look, no one is suggesting that everything is great! We still have quite a long way to go and still much more work to do. There's no question about that.

However, to ignore the fact that the economy IS improving? Hell, even Mittens admitted that to Laura Ingraham who AGREED that the economy is getting better.

[Zambero]

19. Hopefully West will see himself in the January 2013 job stats

As one of the newly unemployed. Hopefully by then he will have no "suspicions" over why he fits into that category.

[DavidDvorkin]

20. Let's hope so. However, if so,

he'll get a great severance package.

[Zambero]

21. Worth every nickel, just to have him gone!

He can go sock it away like one of Romney's secret Cayman or Swiss accounts.

[gateley]

22. He is such a hateful, suspicious, negative human being. Glad he's not my next door neighbor. nt

[Enrique]

23. TPM should have answered it

it's not obvious to me what's wrong with the question, other than the person who asked it, who is, I agree, a hateful maniac war criminal.

[Enrique]

26. The Hill asks an economist

the normal journalistic thing to do.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/208613-rep-west-responds-to-jobs-report-someone-messing-with-census-numbers

(...)

Economists reached by The Hill for comment couldn't fully explain the unemployment rate change for the black community. William Darity, a professor of public policy at Duke University specializing in African-American studies and economics, wrote in an email to The Hill that the decline could have been due to a smaller labor force. He called the drop an "unbelievably dramatic drop" but didn't rule out the possibility of someone tampering with the numbers; he said there was no evidence one way or the other.

"If a large proportion of the persons exiting from the labor force were black (and the exists [sic] presumably were due to people giving up on looking for work) that could drop the black [unemployment] rate without any significant new employment," Darity wrote. "But a one month drop in the black unemployment rate from 15.8% to 13.6% strikes me as somewhat unprecedented."

(...)

[usrname]

24. Of course Allen West is suspicious

He and his ilk are trying their darnedest to make sure we have as much unemployment as possible. Apparently they failed, and he's suspicious of their failure. Because if there's one thing the GOP succeed brilliantly in, it's failing (the american people).

[elleng]

25. elleng suspicious about allen west brain!!!

[tawadi]

28. Into the Trash Can...

[RBInMaine]

29. And, uh, just what do we expect from a fucking whacko?

[Lochloosa]

30. The scary thing is people voted for this....thing

[christx30]

31. Off topic I know...

But his name reminds me of the Flash. You know... Barry Allen and Wally West?
*ahem* Hello. My name is Chris and I'm a comic book nerd.

[JI7]

32. This guy sounds like Colbert when he is in character

but he is real. no wonder a lot of right wingers think Colbert really is one of them.

[Tiggeroshii]

33. What Americans need most is less unmedicated, clinically insane people holding public office.