Supporting Lies With Statistics

This morning, I received the same article from several people via email, but first from my uncle. The article was called "U.S. Loses 533,000 Jobs in Biggest Drop Since 1974." The article cites an unemployment rate of more than 6% and a foreclosure rate approaching 10%.

My uncle wrote:

they're lying.....it's actually more like 12%.....did you know that Greenspan and the fed changed how the cost of living was computed when house prices were going up because homes were worth more and people had more wealth? Didn't they also remove food and clothing or something else from the core inflation rate and all kinds of paper shuffling and shell games?"

I replied, "I suppose so, because I seem to remember when the Government decided to include McDonald's jobs in with "manufacturing" data, since they "make" hamburgers."

I had to dig a little to find that one, but here it is:

Building Blue Collar .. Burgers

The outgoing administration wants to look as good as they can. That's why we've had Rumsfeld writing OpEds at the NY Times and Rove talking about Bush's "legacy."

Times are hard! A friend who goes to the DailyKos "garden blog" each Saturday talks of people losing their gardens because they are losing their houses! Every other "recommended diary" is a sad story about hunger in America (not just Zimbabwe, where people are eating bugs) or job loss or foreclosure. Obama must plan but wait, just as FDR did, and every day of the countdown is excruciating. We have gone from listening to pundits talk about whether we will have a recession, to how long we have actually been in one (now said to be a year) to whether we are heading for a Depression (my Financial Planner thinks there is a 30% chance.)

How are people coping, especially with the holidays approaching? Any ideas for how to be strong and to survive and work toward the future would be appreciated!