Michael Steele's TJMS interview: fact-checked!

[Mr. Jinx]

(thanks to Bertha Vernation for the suggestion to post here)

When Lt. Governor Steele appeared on the Tom Joyner Morning Show Monday morning, he kept saying that Tom & company needed to check their facts before criticizing what he said. The facts are now up (along with a link to the interview) on the web- check them out:

http://www.tomjoyner.com/site.aspx/bawnews/steele91

[Bertha Venation]

1. Some choice excerpts

Steele: "Black unemployment has gone down from 10.3 percent to 10 percent and is trending downward over the last 18 months."

Fact: According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, black unemployment during the month of July was 12 percent. Eighteen months ago it stood at 10.6 percent. Last month's black unemployment rate represents a nearly 50-percent increase in black joblessness since January 2001 - the month George W. Bush entered the White House. At that time the black unemployment rate was just 8.4 percent.

Steele: "You guys need to deal with the facts and the reality here . . . . Do you know what the Democrat-run election committees in Florida did . . . with the new voting machines that they got? . . . The breakdown in Florida had a lot less to do with someone stealing an election than the committees and commissions and election boards basically gerrymandering with the machines," Steele said when asked about voting irregularities in Florida's 2000 presidential voting.

Fact: In a 2001 analysis of that election, The Miami Herald concluded if every vote that was cast had been counted, Al Gore would have defeated Bush by 23,000 votes, instead of losing to him by 537 votes. That victory would have made Gore president.

Also in 2001, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded that many eligible voters in Florida "were, in fact, denied their right to vote, with the disenfranchisement disproportionately affecting African-Americans."

[many a good man]

2. Iron MikeTyson's former brother-in-law

This guy's the top ranking Black elected Republican in the US? He has the Republican shtick down pat, though: lie, lie, lie. This country's in worse shape than I thought...