Dead Horse Beating Time

My new favorite phrase is "saved or created." From now on, if I do poorly at something I'll just argue things would have been much worse if I'd done nothing at all. The unfalsifiability is bulletproof. Rarely have three words simultaneously been entirely empty of substantive meaning and a political masterstroke. "Whip Inflation Now," "Just Say No," and "vast right-wing conspiracy" are each, at best, second-rate by comparison. If the press wasn't broadly in love with PBO (which, for all our sakes, is starting to turn) this phrase would receive the sneering disdain it deserves.

On the off chance you've wondered how the administration intends to calculate SoC jobs, here's a little hint: the way that generates the highest number. Here's the money quote for non-WSJ subscribers (emphasis mine):

All we're asking them to do is a simple headcount; tell us how many people you hired," said Rob Nabors, the deputy director of the office (OMB), in an interview. Recipients won't be asked to grapple with complicated estimates, he added. Instead, they may use their best guess whether a job would have been created or saved in the absence of a recovery plan, and to not count it if they are uncertain.

You just can't make up this stuff, unless of course you work for OMB, in which case it's your job to make up stuff. I wish I'd seen this coming. Oh, wait. . . .I did.

The Awakening Has Begun

Remember when Americans wishing to ignore the necessity of defending the United States would slither off to Canada and stay? President Barack Hussein Obama, the Great Emancipator of Gitmo and Great Antagonist of Counterterrorism, looked to be dodging another day of ridicule toward the UnStimulus Wealth Distribution Package when he flew north of the border Thursday to visit Ottawa.

But, alas, he came back. And, Friday, he assembled the nation's mayors to repeat his baseless assertions that the $787 billion spend-a-thon will result in jobs and economic growth. As he spoke in Washington, Wall Street traders continued to sell.

When will the smitten mainstream media notice that Wall Street, and by extension investors of all stripes (aka, American citizens), have awakened? When will the Kool-Aid buzz wear off?

In this post-Watergate America, the left wing media will continue to fixate on the Presidency because it either wants to destroy the President (Nixon, Reagan, Bush) or deify him (Clinton, Obama). But the fact is our nation was not created to revolve around the Oval Office exclusively. The conduct of elected officials at all levels matters greatly (did someone say Gov. Blagojevich, or Sen. Roland Burris?), and, as citizens, we have the power -- stimulative power -- to control who those elected individuals are and what decisions they make.

(When we fail at this, politicians move up through the ranks unchallenged and untested and become ... B. Hussein Obama).

Responsible citizens need to turn our ears from the drumbeat of doom, which is the crack cocaine of the Obama generation, and focus on what we can do to effect actual change, reverse the tide of despair and restore the economic strength that the United States is fully capable of possessing again in the near future and for generations to come.

The tide of resistance is swelling. On the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade on Thursday, the baggy eyed traders, in their ill-fitting poly-cotton jackets, cheered as CNBC's floor correspondent Rick Santelli assailed the audacity of foreclosure bailouts for unqualified homeowners.

Bill Clinton, whose bloated 1990s "stimulus package" (Monica) got him into trouble repeatedly, became virtually irrelevant during his second term as President. Obama is just another politician who won the Oval Office lottery due to the perfect alignment of a tanking economy and the success of George W. Bush's efforts to quell the threat of terrorism (which, sadly and dangerously, leaves many doubting that the threat remains real).

Socialism is about wearing people down. The calculated risk Obama takes by declaring calamity at every turn -- and ignoring federal debt -- is that Americans eventually will get tired of being tired. Democracy and Capitalism is about rising up and lifting up. The power of America is not the Presidency. It is you and me.