Let's call this for what it is......

Pimp the bonds, then pimp the tax increase.

It's an outrage, and a typical example of the "Business As Usual" disease which plagues Greensboro and Guilford county, and makes our part of the world a less atteactivbe place to live and work.

This unholy combination of corrupt special interest groups needs to be stopped.

Good policy, good politics

Michael Barone@NRO:GOP Battle Cry: Repeal Obamacare, Cut Spending:

"... the macroeconomy is in a very different place than it was during the Gingrich era. Then, we were well launched into an economic recovery, one aided by Republicans’ partial victories on budget and tax issues. Money didn’t seem scarce, and shutting down the government seemed extreme.

Today, we are in, if not an official recession, at least an agonizingly slow recovery. And if Democrats complain that it’s unfair for government and public employees to be limited to what they got in 2008, Republicans can reply that an awful lot of their constituents would be very happy to go back to the income levels and the housing equity and the 401(k) balances they had in 2008.

Everyone has been suffering. Why should government be exempt? Wouldn’t it function better if it went on a diet?"

Most of us are tired of hearing the Democrat whining--

"But the public LOVES health care reform when they are told about the individual provisions!"

"Tax cuts for the rich are eeeeeeeeeeevil!"

"The Stimulus worked, but we need more!"

"Millions of jobs saved or created! Unemployment numbers increase? What unemployment numbers increase?"

.....and on and on and on and on and on.

A Labor Day notice to our American entrepreneurs from your helpful government

"I'd like to make you a business offer.

Seriously. This is a real offer. In fact, you really can't turn me down, as you'll come to understand in a moment...

Here's the deal. You're going to start a business or expand the one you've got now. It doesn't really matter what you do or what you're going to do. I'll partner with you no matter what business you're in - as long as it's legal.

But I can't give you any capital - you have to come up with that on your own. I won't give you any labor - that's definitely up to you. What I will do, however, is demand you follow all sorts of rules about what products and services you can offer, how much (and how often) you pay your employees, and where and when you're allowed to operate your business. That's my role in the affair: to tell you what to do.

Now in return for my rules, I'm going to take roughly half of whatever you make in the business each year. Half seems fair, doesn't it? I think so. Of course, that's half of your profits.

You're also going to have to pay me about 12 percent of whatever you decide to pay your employees because you've got to cover my expenses for promulgating all of the rules about who you can employ, when, where, and how. Come on, you're my partner. It's only "fair."

Now ... after you've put your hard-earned savings at risk to start this business, and after you've worked hard at it for a few decades (paying me my 50 percent or a bit more along the way each year), you might decide you'd like to cash out - to finally live the good life.

Whether or not this is 'fair' - some people never can afford to retire - is a different argument. As your partner, I'm happy for you to sell whenever you'd like ... because our agreement says, if you sell, you have to pay me an additional 20 percent of whatever the capitalized value of the business is at that time.

I know, I know. You put up all the original capital. You took all the risks. You put in all of the labor. That's all true. But I've done my part, too. I've collected 50 percent of the profits each year. And I've always come up with more rules for you to follow each year. Therefore, I deserve another, final 20 percent slice of the business.

Oh ... and one more thing.

Even after you've sold the business and paid all of my fees, I'd recommend buying lots of life insurance. You see, even after you've been retired for years, when you die, you'll have to pay me 50 percent of whatever your estate is worth.

After all, I've got lots of partners and not all of them are as successful as you and your family. We don't think it's 'fair' for your kids to have such a big advantage. But if you buy enough life insurance, you can finance this expense for your children.

All in all, if you're a very if you're one of the rare, lucky, and hard-working people who can create a new company, employ lots of people, and satisfy the public, you'll end up paying me more than 75 percent of your income over your life. Thanks so much.

I'm sure you'll think my offer is reasonable and happily partner with me, but it doesn't really matter how you feel about it because if you ever try to stiff me - or cheat me on any of my fees or rules - I'll break down your door in the middle of the night, threaten you and your family with heavy, automatic weapons, and throw you in jail.

That's how civil society is supposed to work, right? This is America, isn't it?"

That's the offer America gives its entrepreneurs. And the idiots in Washington (and in the "progressive" media and on the "progressive" blogs) wonder why there are no new jobs.

High Speed Rail...High Speed Cost...Low Speed Service...Extremely Low Speed Benefit

Not So High-Speed Rail in North Carolina and Raleigh

Noteworthy:

Most newspaper accounts of this new rail system mislead readers by reporting that the train will go 110 mph. This is the maximum speed possible on some limited routes. The average speed in North Carolina due to track conditions and stops is far from 'high-speed' because it averages only 55 to 75 mph, about the same as auto travel on interstate highways.

...North Carolina’s state and federal taxpayers are not only on the hook for building the expensive system, they will be stuck with the nearly $25 million in operating subsidies every year. What is the benefit of these high costs? The average North Carolinian will take one round trip on these trains only once in every 27 years

...With all of these negatives, who does support the system? Who benefits from it? Average taxpayers who will be paying the multibillion-dollar bills certainly are not benefiting. Since the rail lines are designed to connect center cities, the beneficiaries are wealthy business and government elites — lawyers, bankers, and bureaucrats — who live or work downtown. They see an advantage to traveling center city to center city, rather than using faster air travel and then renting a car to drive to meetings downtown. And they are not shy about sticking us with the bill for personal convenience."

Not that any such facts will move the political and social "elites" from their steadfast belief that somehow, someway, High Speed Rail is "good for us."

The reality is that it's only good for them, and their special interests.

Regarding mandatory "volunteerism" on campus

I guess the agenda-crats in charge of Big Education think that student slave labor disguised as volunteering" as a requirement for certain tax-favored treatment, is a great way to advance their beloved "social justice" agenda items.

Excerpt:

"Molly Corbett, president of the American Council on Education, in a letter to Treasury written on behalf of the council and 20 other higher-education organizations, pointed out that mandatory community service would harm the very low-income students that the tax credit was designed to help, by forcing them to spend precious spare time that could be used to earn money to help support themselves or their families instead volunteering for no pay.

Corbett wrote: 'Contrary to the popular image of undergraduates, part-time, older and low-income students make up a large portion of today's college students....Working students, particularly those with families, have very little free time. Requiring community service to access student benefits would therefore force some to choose between work and volunteer activities....Given that nearly one out of four college students who drop out do so for financial reasons; it is unlikely that students will sacrifice work for community service hours.' Ironically, Corbett noted, wealthy students who might actually have the free time to spare for volunteering would essentially be able to buy their way out of community service because they wouldn't need or might not qualify financially for the tax credit."

And then we have this distinct possibility:

"The potential for interfering with particular colleges' religious and moral visions is vast. Should a Catholic college be obliged to give community-service credit to a student who volunteers for Planned Parenthood? Conversely, how would the politically liberal professors and deans at secular colleges feel about their students' working for an organization opposed to same-sex marriage? Allowing college adminstrators or federal regulators to draw up lists of which volunteer activities are acceptable and which are not would create serious constitutional and other legal problems."

Is there any doubt that a majority of those projects college administrators (or faculty members) or federal bureaucrats would put on such lists would beone that advances some "social justice" agenda item?

On a related note, I'm compiling information for a story about how one of our local "progressive" institutions of higher education sanctions "progressive' agenda indoctrination of students by way of faculty that design a "research" project with a pre-ordained conclusion supporting a "progressive" social agenda talking point.

The so-called "Net Neutrality" heads south

Rasmussen:

"Just 27% of Americans now believe the Federal Communications Commission should regulate the Internet like it does television and radio. That marks a 22-point drop in support for federal regulation of the Internet since June 2008."

That's bad news for those "progressives", particularly those of the Google GaGa brigade, who think that increased government control of the internet is a "good thing".

Since when does increased government control over ANYTHING that "progressives" want controlled in fulfilment of The Agenda (TM) amount to being a "good thing"?

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The trend in Medicare

This sort of thing will become much more common as time goes by.

Noteworthy:

"Medicare typically pays doctors lower rates than private insurance companies. That makes some docs reluctant to accept Medicare patients, and can sometimes make it hard for Medicare patients to find primary care. Medicare covers about half the cost of a primary care visit at Mayo, while private insurance typically covers the whole cost, according to Yardley."

The situation will get worse for seniors under the Obamanation......MUCH worse.

Remember "if you like your health care now, you can keep it" promise made in support of health care "reform"?

Yeah, right.

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For Greensboro's "business as usual" crowd

Pay attention.



We're watching you.

Closely.

VERY closely.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)

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Here's how Climate Alarmists deal with dissent

As PowerLine says "When you're out of arguments, call in the heat".

And yet there are many lunatics who STILL insist that the "science is settled" about the "scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming". Fortunately, the great majority of the non indoctrinated public knows better than to believe this outrageous abuse of science.

The pertinent question concerns whether and when our political class, the ruling elites, and the media will start to understand the realities about the nonsense.

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Obama's foreign policy failures laid bare

Charles Krauthammer discusses one of the failures: Russia.

"Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they received a proposal from the United States that appeared disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it was a trick.

No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and 'reset' buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels."

It's also pretty obvious that Obama can't even understand the lessons history teaches about the United States in world affairs, let alone domestic matters:

"These mistakes are important because they point to a serious underlying problem: no historical memory. This president does not have a clue about recent history let alone ancient history. He has no grounding on what works and what does not. His only guide is his philosophy or the ideology of his 'advisors.'

When a president has a philosophy, he must know that there will be a price for implementing it. Ronald Reagan knew that winning the Cold War meant budget deficits and all the problems that they bring. He also knew that implementing Reaganomics would bring long-term gains but also some very strong short-term pain. By knowing history he could craft effective long-term policy and gird his administration against the slings and arrows from his opponents for the downside that those policies bring.

This president has no idea what will work in either the domestic or international sphere. He does not realize that the country can ill afford expensive new social programs while we run a budget deficit that amounts to 10% of GDP. Obama does not understand that if you commit yourself to win a war in Afghanistan, you have to make a reasonable effort to do so and not be hemmed in by left-wing captives of ideology.

Furthermore, the lesson of Herbert Hoover is that a president does not raise taxes when the economy is in the tank. It is not smart economics. Full stop."

What has this increasingly failed President done right to this point in his presidency?

Someone?

ANYONE?

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"Most tranparent Administration ever"?

Yeah, right.

Noteworthy:

"White House Counsel Greg Craig has indicated that he will refuse to allow any of the 18 new 'czar' positions created by President Obama to testify before Congress, according to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Collins revealed during a committee hearing Thursday that she had spoken with Craig, who had earlier sent a letter on behalf of the president, and that Craig told her personally that Congress would not get a chance to ask fundamental questions of the czars about their roles and responsibilities.

'Indeed, yesterday when I was talking to Greg Craig, the president’s legal counsel, he made it very clear that the White House would prohibit any of these officials with significant policy responsibility from coming to testify before us if they are located within the Executive Office of the President,' Collins said in her written opening statement."

I can hear the Usual Suspect babble on this issue now: "B-b-b-b-b-b-but what about Tom Ridge?", in a feeble attempt to equate the MANY "czars" of Obamanation to the ONE Homeland Security post Ridge held before it was elevated to Cabinet level.

I wonder when the NEXT 'official revision' on the 'Stimulus' will be forthcoming?

Perhaps just as we get ready for "Stimulus" II?

Also, can we make sure Slow Joe STAYS asleep?

Obama releases terrorists who murdered HUNDREDS of American troops

And yet the Iranian regime who spawned these murdering thugs continues to facilitate terrorist operations in Iraq:

"....Obama’s decision to release the five terror-masters comes while the Iranian regime (a) is still conducting operations against Americans in Iraq, even as we are in the process of withdrawing, and (b) is clearly working to replicate its Lebanon model in Iraq: establishing a Shiite terror network, loyal to Iran, as added pressure on the pliant Maliki to understand who is boss once the Americans leave. As the New York Times reports, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, put it this way less than two weeks ago:

'Iran is still supporting, funding, training surrogates who operate inside of Iraq — flat out. . . . They have not stopped. And I don’t think they will stop. I think they will continue to do that because they are also concerned, in my opinion, [about] where Iraq is headed. They want to try to gain influence here, and they will continue to do that. I think many of the attacks in Baghdad are from individuals that have been, in fact, funded or trained by the Iranians.' "

Conclusion:

"So Obama is pouring it on while his trusty media idles. When they are not looking the other way from the carnage in Iran’s streets, they are dutifully reporting — as the AP did — that the Irbil Five are mere 'diplomats.'

Obama frees a terrorist with the blood of American troops on his hands, and the press yawns. Senators Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl press for answers about the release of the terrorist and Obama’s abandonment of a decades-old American policy against trading terrorists for hostages, and the silence is deafening

Except in Tehran, where the mullahs are hearing exactly what they’ve banked on hearing."

Just business as usual, just another day in the Obamanation.

WHEN will we put a stop to this?

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Protecting Pelosi

So now the partisan Dem House hacks have circled the wagons around their fearless leader, Palooka Pelosi, and have proclaimed that the CIA "lied" to Congress about it's activities after 9-11.

It is, of course, an attempt to cover Pelosi's lies regarding the fact she was briefed on the aggressive interrogation methods being used to gather information. And now, these jerks want to limit future accountability by preventing the executive branch's ability to protect sensitive information.

Noteworthy:

"House Democrats have set out to hobble the CIA and further handcuff the executive branch. Republicans, naturally, were frozen out. At Speaker Pelosi's insistence, gone would be the right of the President to limit disclosure of sensitive information to the so-called Gang of Eight -- the House Speaker and Minority Leader, Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairmen and ranking Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. This authority would pass to Congress. The bill would also expand disclosure requirements for all sorts of intelligence activities.

This is a recipe for more leaks and more compromised CIA operations. Congress claims it needs to better monitor Presidential intelligence decisions. But the real lesson of the last few years is that Congress wants to know about, and often second-guess, intelligence decisions without being responsible for the result. Mrs. Pelosi could have objected to waterboarding but didn't at the time, becoming a critic only when it became a political uproar. Senator Jay Rockefeller could have resisted warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda but instead wrote a letter and stuck it in a drawer.

....House Members who are willing to put the politics of protecting their Speaker above national security can't be trusted with adult decisions on intelligence and war-fighting."

Krauthammer:

"There's a truth issue, and there's a politics issue. On the truth, we need to hear from the head of the CIA, what he said.

He's not going to tell us in detail, obviously, what he said in a closed session, what was it, [but he can give] the general area, where in the world, what time, was something concealed or lied about? And he is the one who would know.

In the meantime, the politics of this are puzzling. The only advantage I can see that Democrats are gaining is to blacken the name of the Bush administration, which is, of course, an exercise in redundancy. There is no advantage in that. It's been done.

On the other hand, it hurts the Democrats in two ways. First of all, as Mara indicated, it puts the Democrats, who are in charge of the Congress and the executive, at war with their own CIA in wartime. It's insane. And it's going to undermine Panetta in the CIA he is supposed to actually lead.

And secondly, if it was an attempt—and it looks as if it was an attempt—to cover for Pelosi and her accusations of lying—(a) it doesn't work, because, as we heard earlier in the show, this lapse [in CIA disclosure], if it occurred, was not about interrogation, and her issue was interrogation.

So, (a) it will not help her in substance. And (b) it raises the issue of her veracity, her changing stories, which had hurt her a few months ago, and had been dormant. Now it's revived. It's on the table again."

These cretins deserve all the damage they bring upon themselves.

Our national security doesn't.

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Elsewhere in the blahgosphere, you'll read that 'liberal media bias is a myth'.

It's coming from the Blue Bozo Brigade's Usual Suspects, near and far, including those on the local scene who always exclaim "Who, me?", when confronted with their thinly veiled propaganda .

Information like this exposes that particular babble-on "progressive" theme, and those who enable such a theme, as completely bogus:

Noteworthy:

"In the week since South Carolina’s Republican Governor announced he had flown to Argentina to carry on an extra-marital affair, the broadcast morning and evening news shows have gone full bore on the scandal, cranking out 49 stories even in the midst of other major stories like Michael Jackson’s death and the continuing repression in Iran.

The morning after Sanford announced his affair, on the June 25 Good Morning America, longtime correspondent Sam Donaldson used the scandal to broadly charge Republicans with being 'sanctimonious. They thump the Bible. They condemn everyone else, and when they [act] human, they don’t have much credit in the bank for forgiveness.'

Unlike when New York Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer was caught consorting with a prostitute in March 2008, all three broadcast networks immediately identified Sanford’s Republican Party ID.

A number of top Democrats are enmeshed in embarrassment or facing allegations of wrongdoing, but the networks have far less interest in publicizing those cases."

ABC,CBS, NBC Morning and Evening
Show Coverage of Various Scandal Figures

January 1 to July 1, 2009

Rep. Charles Rangel (D) zero

Rep. John Murtha (D) 3 stories

Rep. Pete Visclosky (D) zero

Rep. James Moran (D) zero

Ex-Rep. William Jefferson (D) 2 stories

Gov. Mark Sanford (R) (6/24-7/1) 49 stories

More:

"Mark Sanford’s trouble is of his own making, of course. But the liberal networks seem a lot more excited about airing his dirty laundry than exposing the problems of top Democrats."

Imagine that!

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Following the money that's propping up Obamacare

Michelle Malkin provides details about the "progressive" Daddy Warbucks financiers, and their warchests, who want to grow their political, social, and economic clout under the Obamanation.

Key points:

"On Thursday, a national 'grassroots' coalition called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) will march on Capitol Hill to demand universal health care. The ground troops won't have to march very far. HCAN, you see, is no heartland network. It is headquartered at 1825 K Street in Washington, D.C. -- smack dab in the middle of Beltway lobby land.

In fact, 1825 K Street is Ground Zero for a plethora of 'progressive' groups subsidized by anti-war, anti-Republican, Big Nanny special interests. Around Washington, the office complex is known as 'The Other K Street.'

The Washington Post noted in 2007 that 'its most prominent tenants form an abbreviated who's who of well-funded allies of the Democratic Party. . Big money from unions such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, as well as the Internet-fueled MoveOn, has provided groups like those at 1825 K Street the wherewithal to mount huge campaigns.'.......

....The objective, in other words, is to piggyback and exploit Obamacare to improve and protect their political health. The 'grassroots' movement is not about representing Main Street. It's about peddling influence and power at 1825 K Street."

As well we know, this whole thing is NOT and NEVER HAS BEEN about "health care", "covering the uninsured", "keeping costs down", and other such propaganda talking points.

It's about "progressive" power and control, and it's just the current chapter of MANY more chapters to go in the Agenda Manual.

Always has been, always will be. Of that, you can depend upon like the sunrise.

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The man behind the Iranian "reform" movement is no reformer

With the news coming out of Iran, it's important to keep the proper perspective on the situation. That proper perspective is clear: Mousavi's cabal is part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

Noteworthy:

"But there is very little evidence that the label of 'democratic reform,' attached to Mousavi and many of his followers, is anything but a masquerade.

Mousavi is not some democracy-minded reformer. All candidates for elective office in Iran are handpicked and only allowed to run for office by the express permission of the Supreme Council of Guardians and its leader Ayatollah Khamenei. All candidates agree to follow orders. On issues that matter to the West -- Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, threats of genocide aimed at Israel, interference in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for Islamist terrorism and any reasonable compromises with the West on these issues -- the two candidates were virtually the same.

Mousavi is a longtime proponent of Islamist triumphalism and terrorism, a hardliner on Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program and an anti-Semite who has called for Israel to be destroyed. He was a key aide to Ayatollah Khomeini during the Islamic revolution in 1979 and played a part in the decision to overrun our embassy and take American diplomats hostage. As Iran's prime minister between 1981-89, Mousavi was vociferously anti-Western and anti-American. He had a major hand in the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon. His handpicked interior minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashami, was Mousavi's liaison when the Iranian government formed and funded that terrorist group. One of Mohtashami's first major operations was the murder of 240 US Marines in Lebanon."

Meet the New Boss.

Same as the Old Boss.

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Obama: 'Oh, by the way. we're going to cut ANOTHER $313 BILLION from the amount we pay to providers, so that we can have Obamacare'

"And we're going to FURTHER reduce Medicare reimbursements while we're at it. And you will like it, whether you like it, or not"

Key points:

"Mr. Obama prefers to talk about how his plan will cut the cost of health care, but most of those changes he emphasizes are long-term goals aimed at altering the way medicine is practiced. In the short run, he and his congressional allies need to find immediate savings to pay for the subsidies they want to offer the uninsured to buy coverage.

These cuts to government spending aren't expected to reduce the cost of care for people with private health insurance. In fact, some would argue that health-care providers will simply increase rates they charge others to make up for cuts from the government.

In February, the White House outlined cuts to federal health-care spending that wound up totaling $309 billion over 10 years. The administration also proposed $327 billion in tax increases, for a total of $636 billion—what officials called a "down payment" toward the full cost of the health-care package.

Those proposed health care spending reductions included a big hit to health insurance companies, reducing payments made to the Medicare Advantage program."

In addition to all the other horrific implications of the full Obamacare agenda, it's clear that the Obamanation wants to kill off Medicare Advantage. If you're not familiar with that program, it's the privately administered alternative to original Medicare popular with many savings because it offers better coverage, lower premiums (sometimes at no cost to seniors), in many cases including prescription drug coverage.

Medicare Advantage poses a threat to any form of government health care because it is an indication that free market solutions to health care coverage are significantly better than government "solutions", which are less effective and more costly, despite what "progressive" economists and other agenda drumbeaters want you to believe.

Many fixed income seniors find Medicare Advantage to be a blessing, because original Medicare has outrageously high deductibles (Part A, the hospitalization portion's deductible is over $1000 per admission), and the cost of a Medicare Supplement policy, which helps cover these expenses, generally has a much higher premium than the Medicare Advantage programs, and prescription drug plans are an additional cost.

The savings to the beneficiaries who choose Medicare Advantage can be dramatic, but with the stealth plan to eliminate it, these seniors will pay a cruel hidden tax, one that many can't afford.In its place, we get diversion and the "Hope 'n Change" song and dance from the Obamanation and the Obaminator.

Meanwhile, we get more expensive, lower quality health care for all, and a significant portion of our citizens (joining with the other postions of the population) will end up suffering dramatically, all to fulfill a cherished "progressive" worldview social and economic agenda item.

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Education is next on the Obamanation's takeover agenda, after Obamacare is safely institutionalized

You don't think so?

Hide and watch.

Noteworthy:

"Barack Obama is leading the progressive parade, and his wagon is hitched to a team of horses that includes a compliant Democrat Congress, well-funded liberal think tanks, a shill media, and the collective mindset of a progressive movement active since the early 20^th Century.

The Great Depression chaos gave FDR the opportunity to dramatically alter the nation's socio-political landscape. Likewise, the implosion of the credit market in 2008 gave the Obama administration the chaos needed to cram down its progressive initiatives with breathtaking speed."

....and:

"Federal control over 'some kind of equal opportunity educational system' might lead to more equal development of innate skills, but it would need to be supplemented by a redistributive tax system that spreads the wealth to accompany an equalization of skills. A twofer, as it were.

Unless the nation pushes back against the trend, local communities will lose control over their neighborhood schools and a Beltway School Czar will be in our future."

I never thought it possible, but it looks like our "public school system" will turn out to be a turbocharged version of the current Government Schools/Libthink Indoctrination Centers, as we exchange one set of entrenched local bureaucrats with an even more dangerous and egregious federal version.

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Phony job creation claims

Just like so much of his destructive rhetoric and the (non) "stimulus", the Obamanation's job creation claims are pure fiction. And, as always, the Tanksters Obama's alternate PR team the Media slobbers all over themselves in the reporting of the smoke and mirrors.

Noteworthy:

"(Former Bush Administration spokesman) Mr. Fratto sees a double standard at play. 'We would never have used a formula like "save or create,'' he tells me. 'To begin with, the number is pure fiction -- the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being "saved.''And if we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it.'

Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures "jobs saved." As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama's jobs claims are "based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs." Nice work if you can get away with it.

And get away with it he has. However dubious it may be as an economic measure, as a political formula 'save or create' allows the president to invoke numbers that convey an illusion of precision. Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw calls it a 'non-measurable metric.' "

...and:

"If the 'saved or created' formula looks brilliant, it's only because Mr. Obama and his team are not being called on their claims. And don't expect much to change. So long as the news continues to repeat the administration's line that the stimulus has already 'saved or created' 150,000 jobs over a time period when the U.S. economy suffered an overall job loss 10 times that number, the White House would be insane to give up a formula that allows them to spin job losses into jobs saved.

'You would think that any self-respecting White House press corps would show some of the same skepticism toward President Obama's jobs claims that they did toward President Bush's tax cuts,' says Mr. Fratto. 'But I'm still waiting.' "

We are ALL still waiting, Mr. Fratto.

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