At 8:30 this morning, the Department of
Commerce issued a press release announcing that real gross domestic product
shrank by one-tenth of one percent (.1%) in the 4th quarter of 2012.
While the media digested this information, Twitter began lighting up. A snarky
tweet by National Review writer Jim
Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) attempted to frame the message at 8:31 A.M.:
Economy shrank?
Back in recession? Two reactions: "Bqhatevwr" and "What
difference does it make?"
3 minutes later, Joe Pounder
(@Pounderfile), the Republican National Committee’s research director tweeted
this bon mot:
SHOT: Obama on Jan. 21 in inaugural address: "And
economic recovery has begun." CHASER: Q4 GDP drops to -0.1%
But Geraghty and Pounder’s attempt to
spin the number began to be debunked almost as quickly as they had tweeted. Within 12 minutes, Joe Wiesenthal (@thestalwart) had a response:
So military
spending decline. That's a good thing. And there was less of an inventory
build. Also fine.
And within 44 minutes of Geraghty’s
initial tweet, Wiesenthal had a link[1] to a Business Insider article explaining the
modest reduction in GDP was entirely due to a dramatic reduction in federal
spending (something, ironically, Geraghty, Pounder and their ilk claim is
needed to balance our books).
By 11:19, D.C.’s resident “wonk,” Ezra
Klein (@ezraklein), had a full take down of the report[2] and
thus, another skirmish in the never ending battle between truth and spin had
been won. If speed kills, Twitter is the Terminator. On steroids. Dosing with
deer antler extract.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-military-spending-decline-2013-1
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/30/why-defense-spending-dropped-22-last-quarter-and-shrunk-gdp/
That's not the reduction in spending the Right is looking for. They want to increase Military Spending because the $$$ ends up in the hands of the Filthy Rich War Mongers and cut Government spending which puts money into the hands of Moochers (like disabled Vets, grandmothers, and poor children)
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