That headline is just a slight variation on Andrew Malcolm's.

Speaking on behalf of millions of Americans who've grown angry and frustrated over the president's 32-month ineffective inactivity on the job creation front, President Obama on Thursday told members of Congress they really have to do something about the crummy employment situation -- and do it quickly.

Citing the plight of millions of struggling Americans whose wishes for jobs Obama ignored for most of the 961 days he's been in office while chasing shinier healthcare and financial reforms, Obama said it was time that Congress stop blaming others. He said it was time members take responsibility for their inaction and halt their phony partisan games and political circus acts that pervade Washington culture.

Because the Americans Obama hasn't been listening to are really hurting now. And -- who's....

....counting? -- but it's only 424 days until Nov. 6, 2012. No plan yet to pay for Obama's ideas. But he wants immediate passage of his American Jobs Act anyway.

As IMAO put it...

So the plot, as I understand it, is that Obama has great ideas for creating lots of jobs, but waited 2 and 1/2 years to unveil it.

The attempt at a desperate jui-jitsu move here is obvious. It is Obama who has been president for nearly three years; the Republicans have controlled the House for eight months now. And yet it seems it is the latter which is to be accused of dawdling and wasting time.

And why are we talking about a Stimulus to right the economy now? Shouldn't we have passed such a stimulus in 2009?

Oh right, we did, with similar confident predictions and dire warnings about inaction.

The speech mostly gave us a sense of déjà vu. From the president’s language, you would never know that Congress already has acted under his watch to save jobs — the $800 billion stimulus plan passed shortly after he took office.

“Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs,” Obama proclaimed in a speech to a similar joint session of Congress on Feb. 24, 2009. We’re not sure about the jobs saved part, but the country has certainly not created net jobs since then — there are almost 2 million fewer jobs since he made those remarks 2 1/2 years ago. That gives a sense of the economic burden he will carry into his reelection campaign.

So hereÂ’s a pop quiz. Which of the following quotes came from the 2009 speech, and which quotes came from the speech this week?

That's the Washington Post, and their quiz about which line came from which speech is illustrative. It's the same damn thing. Most of the proposals are in fact just continuations, extensions of what was passed in 2009.

The RNC collected up quotes from a lot of Big Media noting the obvious problems here.

The Detroit News: “President Barack Obama's much-anticipated plan for putting Americans back to work turns out to be a scaled-down version of his original stimulus package, which is well on its way to becoming one of the most monumental economic policy failures in the nation's history.” (Editorial, “Obama Offers Stimulus Lite,” The Detroit News, 9/9/11)

The Wall Street Journal: “We've had the biggest Keynesian stimulus in decades. The new argument that the 2009 stimulus wasn't big enough isn't what we heard then. Americans were told it would create 3.5 million new jobs and unemployment would stay below 8% and be falling by 2011. It is now 9.1%. But this stimulus we are told will make all the difference.” (Editorial, “The Latest Jobs Plan,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/9/11)

Chicago Tribune: “President Barack Obama didn't use the S-word even once Thursday evening, but his American Jobs Act proposals to grow U.S. employment fully qualify as another stimulus package. … We view as sincere — and not just self-protection — Obama's effort to help those who are out of work. But we've witnessed the failure of Keynesian stimulus programs to dent this nation's jobs crisis. This is the wrong time for a president to tell Americans, ‘I'm from the government and I'm here to spend.’" (Editorial, “The Wrong Stimulus,” Chicago Tribune, 9/9/11)

Did history really begin two weeks ago? Does Obama expect us to forget his predictions and prophecies from 2009?

Now, he informs us, with ginned-up confidence to match the authentic but misplaced confidence he showed in 2009, these new stimulus measures investments and infusions will begin working positive change in the economy immediately.

But we were told the same thing in 2009. It is now almost three years later and we continue waiting for the $847 billion in stimulus to work its magic.

Apparently, unbeknownst to the Rara Avis Lincoln scholar in the White House, he actually needed a $1.3 trillion stimulus, and is here now to tell us he made a slight error in his earlier calculations.

Don't even think about it, don't even question -- Just Pass this Bill.

Pass this bill, and we suddenly have plenty; pass this bill, and we all have economic security.

Don't pass this bill, and you hate jobs.

We heard this same song in early 2009. Our neophyte president was so confident that the $847 billion stimulus was all our economy needed for repair that he immediately took the next two years off to pursue liberal policy goals, intermixed with telling the country about all the green shoots in the Summer Recovery and oh by the way America is Back!

But now he means it, I guess. Before he was just lying to us, or misinformed (turns out, there was no such thing as shovel-ready jobs); but now he's got the facts at his fingertips.

We've already spent trillions on saving one single job -- Obama's -- and now, panicking he might get a long-deserved pink slip, he tells us he just needs five hundred billion more.

Oh, only another half a trillion dollars? Why didn't you say so in the first place.

Even More Expensive Than The Last One: Terrific. Nevermind that we just fought to get a mere $7 billion clipped from next year's budget, and that will now be swamped by $447 billion in new spending.

But pass this bill.

Obama's job is riding on it.

Like a crazed gambler, he just needs another extension of credit, because the next hour of betting, he's due for a big win.

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Posted by: Ace at 01:23 PM | Comments (336)
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Now, see, I didn't know when the Republican Party was founded, exactly. But, gun to my head, I would have guessed that it wasn't Lincoln who founded it, because I probably would have heard that before.

But Barack Obama is just making all sorts of discoveries lately.

Earlier, an extra seven or nine states, now, Lincoln's less well-known accomplishments.

Posted by: Ace at 12:26 PM | Comments (452)
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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumpka, conspicuously present at the President's request at the big speech last night, has released a statement calling for union workers to 'redouble their activism' and implicating Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the usual cast of 'right-wing extremist' boogeymen in the divisiveness, hatred and violence that has mushroomed lately. Pot meet kettle much, you disgraceful thug?

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:47 AM | Comments (150)
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This certainly can't be posted on 9/11, but it must be posted.

This isn't even the first TrutherPop song. I remember another one, two or three years ago, that was very, very curious as to why a building in free fall would fall at nearly the speed of free fall.

Yeah, I don't get this myself: For some reason they find it suspicious that something you'd expect to fall at nearly g does in fact fall at nearly g. And I don't know what the suspicion is supposed to convince me of. Think about it: WTC 7 did in fact fall at nearly g, so is their claim a building can't fall at nearly g?

But I just saw it do that. So even if you think it was an "inside job" or whatever, the fact is, either way, a building does seem capable of falling at nearly g.

It's like claiming that you know Lee Harvey Oswald didn't kill Kennedy, because no man shot in the gut would double over in pain, as he did at his own jail transfer assassination.

But he did double over in pain from a gut-shot, whether he was part of a conspiracy, or just a patsy, or whatever.

This whole "free fall" theory seems to rest upon the assumption that something that plainly did happen couldn't happen, and therefore we should be suspicious that... I don't know. That the government can change the law of gravity in specific locations of the earth?

The level of derangement here is simply extraordinary.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:31 AM | Comments (437)
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This story is two weeks old, and was a sidebar item, but I thought it should get more prominence. The media didn't seem to think so.

Google will pay $500 million to settle federal government charges that it has knowingly shown illegal ads for fraudulent Canadian pharmacies in the United States, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday.

The federal investigation, which was first revealed in May, found that Google was aware that some Canadian pharmacies that advertised on its site failed to require a prescription for substances like the painkiller Oxycontin and the stimulant Ritalin. Google continued to accept their money and assisted the pharmacies in placing ads and improving their Web sites, according to the Justice Department.

Illegal online pharmacies have been a challenge for regulators, because the Internet makes it easy for them to operate under the radar and emerge under different names when they get shut down.

Search engines like Google drive much of the traffic to these sites, say researchers who study online pharmacies. Web sites are liable for advertising that breaks federal criminal law.

Since 2009, when it became aware of the investigation, Google has taken significant steps to chase illegal pharmacies from its site.

Google actually helped these drug-sellers optimize their ads. And note they only began to "take significant steps" once they became aware of the investigation.

$500 million may seem like a steep fine -- except it's mostly not really a fine. It's a disgorgement of their profits from running these ads. Meaning, having paid the fine, they have not really suffered; they have merely lost revenue which, by their own agreement, was unlawfully procured in the first place.

A fine would actually put the malefactor in a worse place than when he began. If you only fine a bank robber the profits he makes from robbing banks, you really aren't punishing him. It's not a disincentive -- if you catch him, he gives up his takings from the bank, but that just leaves him in his starting position, none the worse off.

So why just a loss of improperly-gained profits for Google?

The forfeiture, one of the largest ever in the United States, represents the gross revenue received by Google as a result of Canadian pharmacies advertising through GoogleÂ’s AdWords program, plus gross revenue made by Canadian pharmacies from their sales to U.S. consumers.

Only that last part -- coughing up the profits made on the sales themselves -- actually punishes Google. What fraction of the fine is that?

Given that Google knew damn well that what it was doing was contrary to the law, it seems a light penalty. The government brags about the size of the fine, but the size of the fine mostly just indicates how ridiculously profitable it was for Google to ignore the law for six years or so.

And given the fact that Google is in the bag for the Democratic Party, yes, I do wonder if they were let off with a slap on the wrist. The Obama Administration seems to have one rule for businesses generally -- punish 'em -- and another rule entirely for businesses helpful to their political ends.

The dirty little secret that the Media-Government Complex doesn't want you to know is that while Republicans are pro-business generally, Democrats are pro-business in a targeted fashion.

Chuck Schumer isn't taking donations hand over fist from the banking industry because he's riding herd on them.

If a party is anti-business as a general matter, what special incentives does it have to offer its favorites to keep that precious corporate cash flowing?

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (87)
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Very pungent essay about what environmentalists don't like to talk about -- the fact that their narrow-minded quest for debatable, abstract "goods" just so happens to impose a horrific cost in terms of human impoverishment, sickness, misery, and, yes, deaths.

Put that in your superior pipe and smoke it, Al.

This is probably the most vicious aspect of leftist thought: That millions of people may be killed, and that is considered an acceptable price to pay for some ridiculous abstraction.

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 AM | Comments (179)
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At Sipsey Street Irregulars (quoted by Fox in their story), and originally at FoxNews.

A third gun linked to "Operation Fast and Furious" was found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, new documents obtained exclusively by Fox News suggest, contradicting earlier assertions by federal agencies that police found only two weapons tied to the federal government's now infamous gun interdiction scandal.

Sources say e-mails support their contention that the FBI concealed evidence to protect a confidential informant. Sources close to the Terry case say the FBI informant works inside a major Mexican cartel and provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry.

Unlike the two AK-style assault weapons found at the scene, the "third" weapon could more easily be linked to the informant. To prevent that from happening, sources say, the third gun "disappeared." (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)

In addition to the emails obtained by Fox News, an audio recording from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent investigating the Terry case seems to confirm the existence of a third weapon. In that conversation, the agent refers to an "SKS assault rifle out of Texas" found at the Terry murder scene south of Tucson. (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)

The FBI refused to answer a detailed set of questions submitted to officials by Fox News. Instead, agency spokesman Paul Bresson said, "The Brian Terry investigation is still ongoing so I cannot comment." Bresson referred Fox News to court records that only identify the two possible murder weapons.

However, in the hours after Terry was killed on Dec. 14, 2010, several emails written to top ATF officials suggest otherwise.

In one, an intelligence analyst writes that by 7:45 p.m. -- about 21 hours after the shooting -- she had successfully traced two weapons at the scene, and is now "researching the trace status of firearms recovered earlier today by the FBI."

In another email, deputy ATF-Phoenix director George Gillett asks: "Are those two (AK-47s) in addition to the gun already recovered this morning?"

Evidence tampering?

Asked about the content of the emails, a former federal prosecutor who viewed them expressed shock.

"I have never seen anything like this. I can see the FBI may have an informant involved but I can't see them tampering with evidence. If this is all accurate, I'm stunned," the former prosecutor said.

“This information confirms what our sources were saying all along -- that the FBI was covering up the true circumstances of the murder of Brian Terry," added Mike Vanderboegh, an authority on the Fast and Furious investigation who runs a whistleblower website called Sipsey Street.

It's being called obstruction of justice... by the FBI.

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 AM | Comments (130)
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Happy Friday!
Taking a break from banging my head against a wall to bring you some amazing news.

As a Connecticut native, I could not be prouder.

The $569 million busway to Hartford would be an environmental bonanza for central Connecticut by reducing air pollution and blocking urban sprawl, proponents declared at a state hearing on the project Wednesday night.

Building the busway could save some Hartford children from developing asthma, and would encourage developers to salvage long-abandoned industrial properties along the route, speakers said at the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection hearing.

Emphasis mine. This is an exciting day in the world of science and medicine.

Unrelated: the capacity of liberals to float enormous, laughably transparent lies in public never ceases to astound.

Nine miles. Just nine miles of fugly, town bisecting, concrete-enclosed busway can save the children. At merely three to ten times the per-mile cost of a highway.
In that case, it's a bargain!

Even though the state itself acknowledges these buses will be vastly underutilized and will have to be subsidized annually at about 7.5 million per year by Connecticut taxpayers. Even though buses - mostly empty- already run between Hartford and New Britain.

Even though they will have to pave over a preexisting rail line to run....buses. Say, I just had a thought...does anybody know if A TRAIN costs less than half a billion dollars? If it costs less than $200 million, we can get two! Let me know, kthx.

...even though after the busway is finished, we already know that one end of it will have to be torn off, rerouted, and rebuilt because there is a known conflict with another construction plan for I-84 through Hartford in the future. No matter. Let us press on! We'll cross that bridge appropriate that billion dollars when we get there.

We're a blue state. This all makes sense to us.
Because, JOBS.

*goes back to banging head against wall*

If any of you Morons could do me a solid and write to John Boehner, requesting that he nuke Connecticut's request for federal funds to be used on this boondoggle, I would be very grateful.

Oh, that's right, I forgot. You-all will be paying for this, too.

Posted by: LauraW at 08:14 AM | Comments (227)
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Sienna poll: Republican Turner leads Weprin Grade Stupid by 6.

("Weprin Grade Stupid" thanks to Gnu Breed. Perfect. This is the guy who had to guess at the size of the nation debt in a New York Daily News interview, and then guessed four trillion.)

Weprin is all-in on Mediscare. It isn't working as well as it needs it to, obviously.

Usually we just look at the Independents but here, in mostly-Democratic New York, a decent candidate could probably get by if he was pulling all of the Democrats. Weprin isn't, though, because there are a lot of Orthodox Jews here, and they're not fans of Obama's Israel policy. Or, I'm assuming, his economic record. Update: And gay marriage. Weprin voted for it as an assemblyman, and that's very unpopular in this district.

PPP is also doing polling. They haven't released the results yet, but their blooger has tweeted about the data as it's coming in:

My pretty straight forward take on the first night of our NY-9 poll: Dems in BIG trouble. It deserves the caps.

Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. produced a viral ad for the contest, posted below.

Thanks to Charles and CAC for the poll tips. Both tipped me last night to PPP, and then CAC tipped me to Siena this morning.

Posted by: Ace at 07:23 AM | Comments (233)
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FRIIIDAAAAY! more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:53 AM | Comments (581)
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