Thursday, July 9, 2009

Reading Comprehension For The Win

Ahh, Wingnuts. They do love the Village when they play their little games, and go right into screaming Pavlovian hysterics on cue. Today's stimulus in our little stimulus-response experiment is in fact, the stimulus package and where the money is going. First, USA Today plays the gotcha game:
Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college.

The reports show the 872 counties that supported Obama received about $69 per person, on average. The 2,234 that supported McCain received about $34.
And since that's all the evidence that the Wingers need to convict and impeach President Uppity Hussein Black Man as the worst human being in existence, (we're talking Hitler riding in a Death Star powered by the blood of babies) they stop right there.

What they don't do is continue down to the end of the article.
The imbalance didn't start with the stimulus. From 2005 through 2007, the counties that later voted for Obama collected about 50% more government aid than those that supported McCain, according to spending reports from the U.S. Census Bureau. USA TODAY's review did not include Alaska, which does not report its election results by county.
Gosh, now who was in charge of the government in 2005? Hint: It wasn't Barack Obama or the Democrats. The other crucial piece of information is that the reason these traditionally Democratic counties get more money is because they are heavily populated urban counties. There are more people in these counties. Think Dade County in Florida (Miami, 2.5 million plus) or Cook County in Illinois (Chicago, 5 million plus) or the County of Los Angeles (population 10 million). Doesn't it make sense that those counties, with large urban minority populations, would tend to vote Democratic? Doesn't it make sense that some of these counties would have a million people in them and would need more federal money in general than say Flathead County, Montana (population, maybe 90k)?

Good lord, Wingnuts are just silly, silly people. But they couldn't be this silly in the first place without the Village implying that Obama went back in time to manipulate the Bush administration and the Republicans into giving the counties that voted for Obama more money. Doesn't stop them for teaming up to bash on the President in a needlessly stupid manner, however. All it does is point out in sharp relief the few remaining real journalistic outlets we still have in this country.

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