Which John Hickenlooper so totally did.

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Executive summary: Gov. Hickenlooper bragged in his State of the State address that Colorado had gone from 40th in the nation in job creation to 4th. Which is impressive, yes? – Except that Colorado went from 40th in 2010 to 4th in 2012. Also in 2012 was an election where the Colorado state legislature went fully under Democratic control… which means that 2013 was a year where Democrats ran amok through the legislative process. The result? Colorado slipped from 4th place in 2012 to 10th place in 2013.

Oops.

What impresses me about this lie is how unnecessary it was. True, John Hickenlooper was probably well-advised not to try to use the actual numbers, either: in that case I’d still be writing an article about how the Democrats weren’t mentioning how things have slipped under their tenure. But it’d still be better than pretending that 2013 never happened at all. Particularly when the governor should have known full well that people would be fact-checking him. I am at a loss to understand why John Hickenlooper thought that he could get away with this…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I refuse to believe that a sitting governor would have somehow missed an error of that magnitude in his speech. To suggest that would be to suggest that John Hickenlooper is a pithed frog of a politician who is barely intelligent enough to stand where the tape marks says that he should stand, stare at the spot that the smart man with a clipboard said he should stand, and recite whatever fool thing (no doubt written phonetically) comes on the teleprompter. That is the alternative to the lie; that Hickenlooper has to be reminded periodically to keep breathing.

So you will forgive me if I credit the man with just a little more intelligence than that.