Matt Cooper Spinning

I'll publish the text of my comment to this risible conjecture here for posterity's sake:

The problem Mr. Cooper alleges for President Obama's economic policies is the problem President Bush encountered vis-a-vis terrorism. Because there were no large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil month after month the threat slipped further from people's minds. Somehow the MSM never credited Mr. Bush on that account.
However, the reasoning w/rt Obama's poll declines cannot hold. First, there has not been a month after month series of good economic news to encourage the notion that Obama's policies are working. The projections of several months ago have only gotten worse on unemployment and capacity utilization. That has happened in spite of the promises the Obama Administration made regarding the efficacy of their plans.
Additionally, the fiscal stimulus set upon by the Democrats has barely taken hold. There are no "shovel-ready" projects of import available due to bureaucratic holdups.
Therefore, the lack of even more negative news (e.g. systemic failure) has been generated by the monetary policies that the politically independent Fed has taken. Since Obama cannot claim those were his policies without admitting the politicization of the Fed, it seems highly dubious to credit Obama with their successes, such as they are.
What is interesting is that the JournoList would test this trial balloon for explaining Obama's dip in the polls when Occam's Razor suggests otherwise. But keep up the good fight. Pravda and Izvestia would be proud.

Associated Press

The following quote from this article is untrue.

The grim assessment was the latest unwelcome surprise for the market since last month and further eroded hopes that the economy was starting to emerge from recession. Investors began driving stocks sharply higher in early March, encouraged by modest improvements in housing, manufacturing and even unemployment.

In fact, the unemployment numbers have gotten worse every month that Obama has been president. Here's the chart that the AP story's writer apparently couldn't find. Funny, but I found it with only one google search.

Let me be completely clear: The AP article is a lie. And the author of the article is a lying liar. And anybody who republishes the article is furthering that lie.

And just to take away the last refuge of the lying liar, there has not been a slowdown in the change in the unemployment rate either. The unemployment numbers got worse by 5, 4, 4 and 5 tenths of one point on a month to month basis. There is no "second derivative of unemployment" that can save the lying liar.

The numbers for housing and capacity utilization tell the same story.