A lie about a graph

I was browsing the Tea Party Nation site, and ran across a fabricated graph that was attributed falsely to President Obama. You can see the article and the graph here:

http://www.teapartynation.com/profiles/blogs/is-it-november-yet

This is what the graph looks like:

The author of that post claimed, "This chart by the way is not a joke, it was actually circulated by the Obama Campaign yesterday. There are seriously no words."

It seemed odd to me that the Obama campaign would be very stupid to put out a graph entitled "Unemployment Rate With and Without Better Stories." I decided to do a little checking, but while reading the comments to the post, I discovered that somebody beat me to it.

Here is a post by one of the tea party members who fell for this. Because corrections to lies at the Tea Party Nation web site often disappear mysteriously, I quickly copied the member's reply, and I'm putting it here.

That person's reply is this:

LOL! At least I can laugh about what happened to me, so I guess that's a good sign.

I sent this story and graph to a friend, and she wrote back after a while. She pointed out that where this article said "This chart by the way is not a joke, it was actually circulated by the Obama Campaign yesterday" is not true.

She pointed out that this chart was not on the Obama site, but was on Mitt Romney's site, at this page.

http://mittromneycentral.com/2012/07/13/graph-of-the-day-obama-bett...

She said to notice that there is a link for the source of the graph on that page. That link is 

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/330924.php

She told me to go to that page and read what is right before the graph, and then read what is right after the graph.

Before the graph is this:

"The Obama campaign released a new chart showing what unemployment will be like in a second Obama term (if God forbid, there is one)."

Right after the graph is this:

"I may have lied and that chart is from the great @slublog (who you should be following on Twitter if you're not already) and not the Obama campaign. Who is to say? Dave in Texas reminds me to remind you that as often as you see that chart around, it was invented by a former commenter/co-blogger here at the HQ named Geoff."

By the time I read that, I was so embarrassed! To make things worse, about an hour later, she sent me another link to this document:

http://www.ampo.org/assets/library/184_obama.pdf

The original graph is on page 4 of that document, and it is over 3 years old. Then it became obvious that this graph was altered by somebody later, so it could be claimed that Obama released it "yesterday."

I feel really bad that I fell for this. My friend has told me not to believe everything I read, and I had always told her I knew what was true and what wasn't. Now I've learned my lesson. Thank God my friend is understanding, but she did say she would rather not be bothered with any more stuff like this, as she doesn't have time to separate the truth from all the untruths. I won't repeat what she said about the tea party, but I'll just say that she really made me feel like a fool for even being a member.

Be careful, people. I don't want you feeling like I did when she ripped me a new one. LOL!