Maybe, they don't know when they are lying.

It's possible that some of them simply do not know that the talking point given them by Fox News or by Karl Rove,  or by John Boehner or Eric Cantor or Mitch McConnell (each of whom has told the lie time and time again, is in fact a lie.  

But this morning,  in the Republican response to the Weekly Presidential Address  ( when did they start doing these, anyway?) they told the lie again.  

That lie:  Obama said the stimulus package would prevent unemployment from going over 8% , however, is absolute bullshit.   And the people telling it know it.  The problem is that there are other people, like people in the media who supposedly know better and have a duty to report the truth,  do not bother to call the liars out on the facts.  Also,  the supposed political allies of the president frequently hang him out to dry on this one as well.  if they bother at all to correct on the facts they do so in a timid and unconvincing way.

In the article linked above the point is made that the statistics used are from a pre-presidential report by staff of the future Obama administration.   The report itself indicates  nothing by way of an unemployment rate  and is quite emphatic about the unknown impact of the recovery act except that passing it would prevent the loss of as many as 4 million jobs.

Directly from the article :


"Once again, it is CLEARLY STATED that these are ESTIMATES and LIKELY to be incorrect. So why is the media pretending like the President predicted definitively that the stimulus would keep unemployment under 8% when he NEVER DID?

The unemployment rate in January 2009 was 7.6%, so CLEARLY nobody in there RIGHT MIND thought that the Stimulus package was going to be able to hold it under 8%. The stimulus bill wasn’t signed into law until mid February . . . the unemployment rate then was ALREADY 8.1%."

Why would anyone make a promise to keep unemployment below the point it had already crossed?  They would not-  and Obama did not.