RUSH: This is from Gallup, unemployment numbers. I want you to imagine — this chart starts in January 2010, goes through the calendar year, and it’s a chart, up-and-down green line of unemployment. And the number is tacking up beginning in the middle of July to the present, we’re going up. There’s no downward trend, there’s no straight line. We’re going up. This close to an election, a month out, partisan operatives in State-Controlled Media would be on fire from now until Election Day with this information if there were a Republican in the White House. It would not be ignored as it is being ignored by our brethren and sistren in the partisan-controlled media. It would lead the news if Republicans could be blamed for it. This would be the blockbuster story of the month, Gallup’s US unemployment rate, 30-day averages not seasonally adjusted. They have us now at 10.1%, not seasonally adjusted, 10.1%. It’s an election year. 
‘Jobless Claims Near Three-Month Low,’ Reuters. ‘New claims for unemployment benefits fell to a near three-month low last week, pointing to some improvement in the troubled labor market.’ Yet, if you look here at the Gallup chart, there is no trend downward. ‘Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 445,000.’ So what this means is, almost one half of a million people still can’t find jobs. And we’re still losing them. Where’s the bottom here? How is it possible? How many more jobs are there to be laid off from out there? ‘Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims edging up to 455,000 from the previously reported 453,000. The government revised the prior week’s figure up to 456,000.’ The way this works is, so that they can show good news every week, they lie, and, after everybody forgets the news, then they revise it downward or worse in the next week so the numbers continue to look not quite as bad as they really are.
Now, what Gallup does different, you might be saying, ‘Rush, the unemployment rate, 9.5, 9.6%, and you say Gallup shows it 10.1.’ Yes. You heard correctly. What Gallup does differently in their report to get 10% is they add unemployed part-time workers. They add unemployed part-time workers, and even the 10% figure is low. I mean if you look at the U6 which continues to count people who have given up looking. We’re at 17%. No change. There’s nothing happening in the private sector that is going to lead to any kind of a change in unemployment. And I’m telling you, less than a month away that’s all we’d be hearing about if Obama was a Republican. That’s all we’d be hearing. We wouldn’t have stopped hearing about it for the last year and a half. Instead we’ve got these sycophant stories out here, ‘It’s showing exciting improvement out there, showing we may have bottomed out, oh, goody goody goody, Obama’s policies might actually be working.’ This is what the attempt is.
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RUSH: Now they tell us. (laughing) Folks, what a day. What a day this is. Here’s the headline, it’s from Reuters: ‘Job Losses in 2009 –‘ that’s last year for those of you in Port St. Lucie or Rio Linda ‘Job Losses in 2009 Likely Bigger Than Thought.’ Who knew? Now they tell us. ‘The economy likely shed more jobs last year than previously thought, but analysts say the undercount by the government should prove less severe than it did during depths of the recession. The Labor Department on Friday will give an initial estimate of how far off its count of employment may have been in the 12 months through March.’ Can you imagine if Bush were president and this story were worded this way? ‘The government admitted earlier this year that its count through March 2009 had overstated employment by 902,000 jobs.’
Now, there’s a way, for those of you in Rio Linda and Port St. Lucie to understand this. What this story is saying is that the government is admitting they cooked the books for 12 months. They lied. They knowingly lied, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. And get this. I love the qualifiers in this story. ‘The economy likely shed more jobs last year than previously thought, but analysts say the undercount by the government should prove less severe than it did during depths of the recession. The Labor Department on Friday will give an initial estimate of how far off its count of employment may have been in the 12 months through March. The government admitted earlier this year that its count through March 2009 had overstated employment by 902,000 jobs. … The department blamed its 902,000 miss on faulty estimates of how many companies were created or destroyed –‘ Destroyed! Not went out of business. (laughing) They’re actually honest about this. Destroyed. (laughing) What a day.
Let me read this again: ‘The department blamed its 902,000 miss on faulty estimates of how many companies were created or destroyed –‘ Who destroyed ’em, Reuters, we want to know. ‘– and it has not yet made any changes to the so-called birth-death model that produces this projection. Once a year, it compares payroll data from its monthly surveys of employers with unemployment insurance tax reports, which give it a much more comprehensive view of actual employment. It uses these tax records to produce a ‘benchmark revision’ to adjust for discrepancies. ‘That adjustment is probably overstating the employment gains because we are in a very subdued recovery and the likelihood is that the birth-death factor is making the data look better than it otherwise would be,’ said Neil Dutta, an economist at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York.’
Now, get this next one. ‘Tax records will probably show more businesses closed than initially estimated by the Labor Department, analysts said.’ Imagine, oh, say BP. Imagine Exxon Mobil coming out with a story, ‘You know, ahem, we underestimated our tax obligations for 12 months. We underpaid by two billion. We’re gonna revise this. We understated our taxes.’ Imagine the hoots and hollers there would be. ‘Job Losses in 2009 Likely Bigger Than Thought.’ So government lied; jobs died. Government lied; businesses died. They actually used the term ‘businesses created or destroyed.’ Government lied; jobs died. Government lied; businesses died. Yeah, there’s more to this and I will get to it. (interruption) Who benefited from the government lie that 902,000 jobs were misssed? In other words, job losses likely bigger than thought, who benefitted? That’s a good question. Who would benefit from this lie? Who would benefit from it not being reported to be as bad as it was? Hmm. Hmm.
That, Snerdley, is a brilliant question, one that we’re going to have to examine. We can’t knee-jerk our answer to this one. We need to research this. We need to get the best minds, best experts — (laughing) — the most unchallenged professionals we can find to give us this answer. (laughing) Who benefited? Who benefited from the fact that a million more jobs were lost than we thought? Government lied; jobs died. Government lied, businesses died. Now, the way to look at this, who would benefit from talking up the economy? It’s not just who would benefit from lying about how bad it was. Who would benefit from talking it up? I mean how many times did we hear we’re coming back from the brink, we’re turning the corner, the worst is behind us? The economy is never talked up during a GOP administration.
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RUSH: New Harmony, Utah. Brian, welcome to the EIB Network. Nice to have you here.
CALLER: Greetings from sunny southern Utah, Rush. Great honor to speak to you.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: I would say that they misinterpreted or misdone (sic) these jobless numbers in order to keep them from backing into that magic number of 10% unemployment. I mean they got right up to 9.8, 9.9, and then it suddenly, you know, leveled off and went back down just a tiny bit. I wouldn’t be surprised if these numbers were manipulated to keep that bad, bad news from getting worse.
RUSH: You think?
CALLER: I really do.
RUSH: Hmm. Well, that’s a good thought. Ten percent, that was a threshold they didn’t want to cross.
CALLER: And, Rush, if I might take one more moment of your time. When football season is over and you go back to being exposed to the bachelorette again, Monday night is my favorite night of TV. On the History Channel, two programs, Pawn Stars and American Pickers. Once you watch ’em you’ll be hooked.
RUSH: This is The History Channel, you say?
CALLER: Yes, sir. Pawn Stars, as in pawn shop, p-a-w-n, Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, Nevada, all the stuff they take in, and the other is American Pickers. They’re both on Monday night, and I wouldn’t miss either one of them.
RUSH: Well, can you explain on this show what American Pickers is?
CALLER: It’s a couple of guys that go out in the little farming communities and go through people’s old barns and stuff, finding old cars and bicycles, picking through what some people would say is junk and finding treasure and then reselling it.
RUSH: Really, one of your favorite shows is people going through trash?
CALLER: It’s cool, buddy, you gotta see it one time.
RUSH: All right, I’ll look forward to that. I’ll try to remember to set the TiVo up on Monday nights when football season is over.
CALLER: Okay, Rush.
RUSH: Thanks very much for the suggestion, Brian. Have a wonderful day. (interruption) I wasn’t going to say anything more about American Pickers. The staff is warning me to be very careful because a lot of people love the American Pickers show. Somebody tell me, is there a paint drying channel? Am I missing anything there? I mean, you got 250, 300 channels out there, there’s gotta be stuff I don’t know about. If I didn’t know American Pickers existed, there’s gotta be stuff I don’t know that people are watching.