Political Email Scams Against Obama
Obama hate-mail has been scouring the internet for years. People frequently resend emails that they simply don’t understand. My dad sent me one with the title “After two years of Obama—here’s your change!!!”. Here’s an image of it below:
The first and easiest thing to fact check is to see if this person can do math. The answer is no. Why? Well, look at the last line: If you are driving in the right lane doing 65MPH and a car goes past you at 27 times faster, then how fast is it going? The claim is 7,555 MPH. Man that is fast! But hold on, let’s make sure they are doing their math right. 65 MPH * 27 = 1755 MPH. People with common mathematical sense will quickly spot that claim as being *way* off, and it sure was! If they can’t multiply 27*65, then what the heck makes me want to believe any of the other numbers they gave?
Now, this chart is praying on people who are ignorant and easily forget things. Let’s see, when was the first time crude oil was over $100/gallon? And gas prices fluctuate heavily. If I was to generate a chart like the above, I would want to scam people into believing things are worse than they were before by taking the absolute maximum and minimum values. Let’s consider the first item, gas at $1.83 a gallon. Let’s fact check that. I visit: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_home_page.html and see the chart below:
Yup, it was about $1.83/gallon in January 2009, but they conveniently picked the lowest part in the graph. Heck, 4 months prior it was > $3.70/gallon! Wait a minute, that means it is currently 19% lower than it was before!
Please don’t blindly believe anything circulating on the internet.
Not to pick a fight or anything, but they picked January 2009 for a reason: That was when Obama became president. I’m not sure it was because of “convenience.
Yeah, that’s a good point! But we could pick a day when gas prices were really high when Bush was president and say “look at what X years of Bush has given us”.
–corbin
thanks for this…
i just received this email from a ‘friend’…and i immediately went on a search to DEBUNK it.
first of all…i never forward anything without checking it out first…and secondly…it fires me up when i hear people talk bad about Obama…and what a horrible job he has done…blah blah blah. i certainly would have never signed up for THAT job! ((i hate to say it…but sometimes i think Obama has had a harder time trying to get things done…than any other president…could it be because he is black? oh no…of course not…republicans are such open minded, compassionate people…(*just a bit sarcastic*)
anyway…thanks…i forwarded this post to my friend. ha!
Ok, how about the rest of it?
some things are left as an exercise for the reader :)
I can do math fairly easily, and i am “into” gas-related things since i like EVs, so I looked at those.
Actually, 27 times faster would be 28 times your current speed. That’s your speed PLUS another 27 times your speed.
So the actual answer is 1820.
The fact that the author who wrote the original text went ahead and first assigned the wrong formula and then miscalculated it gives that much more evidence to their lack of credibility with calculations.
Let’s see. You wrote: Now this chart is praying on people. But people who know how to spell and use words accurately realize that you meant “preying.” Therefore, everything you say must be wrong!? That is your reasoning–the original author sloppily miscalculated. But your calculation of 1755 mph solidly makes the basic point.
Nick’s comment: “they picked January 2009 for a reason: That was when Obama became president. I’m not sure it was because of “convenience” makes a point as to your bias. Any of the statistics given by the original author or any statistic cited by anyone may be dated. From my “biased” assessment, the overall picture given by the original author is correct.
Hey George,
No, I really meant praying; they are seriously praying for people to believe stuff like this!
And even so, a typo is no comparison to incorrect math! I’m sorry that you believe stuff like this…
corbin