The latest pre-election spin from the Obama campaign is that President Obama has slowed spending. Wow. If they get away with that one, they will begin to tell us that the sky is green. Investor’s Business Daily is my favorite source for numbers I don’t easily understand, and they have posted the story explaining the sleight of hand involved in the Obama campaign’s claim.

Ann Coulter wrote the article. She explains how the books are being cooked:

It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama’s entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.That’s not a joke.

That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in … Bush’s column. (And if we attribute all of Bush’s spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and No Child Left Behind to William Howard Taft, Bush didn’t spend much either.)

Nutting’s “analysis” is so dishonest, even The New York Times has ignored it. He includes only the $140 billion of stimulus money spent after Oct. 1, 2009, as Obama’s spending.

And he’s testy about that, grudgingly admitting that Obama “is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill.”

It’s early in the silly season. I am sure there is much more of this to come.

Ms. Coulter further reports:

But Obama didn’t come in and live with the budget Bush had approved. He immediately signed off on enormous spending programs that had been specifically rejected by Bush.

This included a $410 billion spending bill that Bush had refused to sign before he left office. Obama signed it on March 10, 2009.

Bush had been chopping brush in Texas for two months at that point. Marketwatch’s Nutting says that’s Bush’s spending.

One begins to wonder how long it will be before everything is not Bush’s fault.