Yikes. I feel like I am living in warped reality after reading a couple of news headlines this morning…
As I type this article, the U.S. stock market is up because of supposedly better than expected weekly jobless claims figure. The financial television news channels I’m watching and the radio station I’m listening to are trumpeting better than expected weekly jobless claims data as a sign that things are not so bad. However, no one in the television or radio media bothers to disclose a dirty little secret: the U.S. government completely made up today’s jobless claims figure out of thin air!
· It was discovered that nine states failed to report jobless claims data because of the Labor Day Holiday. Instead of delaying the release of the jobless claims data so that the non-reporting states can have more time to report their data, the U.S. government (via the Bureau of Labor Statistics) decided to estimate/make up the numbers for these states. This decision to make up the data for the non-reporting states likely had a major impact on the nature of the data because three of the nine states that the data was made up for were: California, Illinois, and Michigan (three states that have above-average unemployment compared to the rest of the country). This compounds another problem with the jobless claim data: the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports overly optimistic numbers and then revises them to reflect an uglier, truer picture of reality a week later 90% of the time.
Update: a breakdown of the data shows that the three of the top five states with the biggest "decline" in number of new jobless claims filed were indeed California, Illinois, and Michigan. No surprise since the U.S. government is trying to paint an overly optimistic picture of the current situation.
It’s getting harder to believe the U.S. government and the media’s portrayal of the U.S. economy with each passing day…
The other headline that has moved me to write again today is an archived report from CNN about how the U.S. military burned Afghani-language Bibles last year. For those unfamiliar with what is going on in the U.S., there is currently a lot of media outrage (and government outrage) in the U.S. over a pastor’s decision to burn the Koran on September 11. While I believe burning the Koran is not a good idea (it’s probably one of the worst ideas in the world given today’s social, media, and religious climate), it is amazing to see the double standard that exists.
· How come the U.S. military can get away with burning Bibles? Also, why do news outlets fail to report about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East?
I guess it is fair to be biased against Christians in the U.S. media’s eyes...
