Bureau Of Labor Statistics ‘Cooked Books’ Subject Of Jon Stewart Rant Last Night

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has emerged as a political battleground this week after slightly rosy employment numbers emerged, and, as the election approaches in less than a month, of course the normally only nominally acknowledged numbers have emerged as a battleground among warring conservatives and liberals.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is an agency which is even less interesting than it sounds, if you can imagine that, but, as JOBS JOBS JOBS becomes the rallying cry of Election 2012, its dull monthly reports have now become a center of political intrigue.

JOBS. JOBS. JOBS!

Fresh off a debate between Romney and Obama that many saw as clearly favoring Romney, conservatives are het up at a jobs report indicating unemployment has fallen farther than ever during Obama’s nearly four years in office, and this can not stand. In an election where positions are less at play than facts and basic math — something in my adult memory we have never disagreed on such a large level before — the Bureau of Labor Statistics report has generated a lot of controversy in the pro- versus anti-arithmetic camps.

Enter Jon Stewart. After confronting Fox talking head Bill O’Reilly during a debate over the weekend and imploring the mayor of “Bull**** Mountain” to descend, Stewart took Fox to task for schooling its audience of low-information voters with insinuations the BLS report was full of BS itself.

Stewart cracked:

“What else would explain why — after unemployment has been steadily declining for the last year — that now suddenly right before the election, it declines a little more? … Please! I think we know what’s going on here … If you’re cooking the books, 7.8% unemployment is a shi*t recipe … It’s the radish stew of jobless numbers.”

J Stew then took aim at GE CEO Jack Welch, who vociferously claimed the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers were falsified before just as vociferously admitting he had no evidence to suggest that such a circumstance was likely or even possible.

Watch the Jon Stewart Bureau of Labor Statistics clip below.