Stimulus Jobs: ‘Saved or Created’ or Imagined?

We’re paying them to pretend they’re creating jobs:

Though unemployment is at 9.7 percent, and just six percent of Americans think the government has created jobs, President Barack Obama will hold a White House reception on Wednesday to mark the one-year anniversary of signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the economic stimulus bill.
Meanwhile, administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden and cabinet secretaries, will travel to 35 locations across the country this week to promote the $787 stimulus, which was designed to revive the economy – a reported $272 billion of the $787 billion has been spent since the bill became law in February 2009.
Administration officials have insisted that the legislation is on course to “save or create” 3 million jobs. However, more than 2.65 million jobs have been lost since the passage of the legislation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics . . .

Meanwhile, 52% of Americans say Obama doesn’t deserve re-election, which means that 48% of Americans need to be whomped upside the head.

Is Fabius Maximus a Congressman?

by Smitty

Fabius Maximus has always been a blog to trigger thought. I suspect it’s a gang blog, with a group of academics driving the posting. The blog has been an equal opportunity offender, handing out well-researched drubbings in every direction. This post raises a speculation about the author, emphasis mine:

So the recovery must appear by March or April, the last opportunity for Congress to enact another round of stimulus programs. If no strong recovery, it will be a depression for Congressmen (in a recession you lose your job; in a depression I lose my job).

But conservatives have convinced a substantial fraction of the American people that stimulus programs do not work. That’s like a stroke victim demanding that his respirator be turned off (or parents refusing to have their children vaccinated).

First question: is Fabius a sitting member of Congress? Meh. I think the I/you are figurative here.
Second question: is Fabius in a lefty mood, with the bit about the respirator? Wouldn’t an improved variant be “…stroke victim demanding that the quack doctor quit giving him the medicine from the bottle marked X-X-X that is causing the strokes?”
Third question: is Fabius really Billy Squire?

Movie Star Robert Pattinson Is a Horrible Hatemongering Vaginaphobe

OK, so Details magazine arranges a photo shoot (NSFW) of the Twilight star surrounded by naked fashion models. His reaction?

“I really hate vaginas. I’m allergic to vagina. But I can’t say I had no idea, because it was a 12-hour shoot, so you kind of get the picture that these women are going to stay naked after, like, five or six hours. But I wasn’t exactly prepared.”

Five or six hours surrounded by beautiful naked women. And he “wasn’t exactly prepared”?

Dude.

Why Is Bob Belvedere Monopolizing All the Christina Hendricks Hotness Today?

He’s bogarting all the blog action on the redheaded Mad Men bombshell in lacy lingerie.

And nothing can compete with that, not even redheaded Victoria’s Secret model Cintia Dicker in a bikini. She’s cute, but too skinny to compete with those bodacious Christina Hendricks curves.

UPDATE: You want to talk about “targeted marketing”? Look what just arrived in my inbox today:

Dear Mr McCain
I am writing to you to ask for your support for The Great British Redhead Festival, which will take place on 10th April, this year.
This will be the first ever UK national celebration of all things redhead/ gingerish/ auburn/ strawberry-blonde and carrot-top. We have had some good publicity in the newspaper media, this week, which has brought considerable interest. For convenience, I include the links as follows:

We anticipate media interest will be self-generating over the next two months and this would be a great if you felt you could be linked with this new and unique national dynamic ginger event.
It is a free event, no-one is being paid, and essentially it is just a fun day to make a light-hearted celebration of all things gingerish. There is no political angle, no bureaucrats and nobody taking offence at being called ginger.
A similar event in Holland, last year, attracted thirteen thousand visitors of which three thousand were genuine redheads. It also attracted considerable worldwide media coverage.
We would be delighted if you could support our event.
I look forward to hearing from you.

Richard Simpson
The Great British Redhead Festival

OK, how many of you guys will hit the tip jar to send me to cover that historic occasion? C’mon, we’re talking about professional journalism here . . .

The Protocols of the Elders of CTHULHU VIII. Legal Ambiguity

by Smitty (INTRODUCTION)

So the figures, a dozen in all, silently entered Schloss Braunschlag, unsure of the protocol.

The door opened, and a functionary in a robe, face hidden in a deep hood, entered. The functionary carried a tray with a fishbowl, filled with water, and a glass, half full of water.
He walked around the head of the table and stood by the feet of the fallen man. The functionary placed the tray on the table, picked up the glass and knelt near the head of the old man. The man faced the table, eyes rolled up to stare at me at the far end of the table writing all of this, as he lay in death. Something odd in the man’s right nostril; a hint of motion. And the speaker continued.

“The legal system shall be among our premier tools.

We must search out in the very finest shades of expression and the knotty points of the lexicon of law justification for those cases where we shall have to pronounce judgements that might appear abnormally audacious and unjust, for it is important that these resolutions should seem to be the most exalted moral principles cast into legal form.

More will be elaborated later, but consider the son of an important political family. He is a wretched piece of human wreckage, moreso than most. He manages to kill a young girl. This is helpful news.
From a legal standpoint, we’ve an opportunity to demonstrate that equal protection before the law is a fine abstraction, at best. Those beholden to us will be more equal, every time.
Over the course of a career, he becomes a turd magnet. Each otherwise decent person whom we coerce into collaborating with our turd puppet becomes gradually dirtier.
In the end, even the most noble hater of capital punishment, contorted into a filthy knot supporting this wretch, shall find the homicide of the woman justifiable, for all he served us. We are moved in the direction of laughter.”

The functionary held the glass below the dead man’s nose, and a squid-like being pulled itself out, into the glass of water, with a ‘PLOP’!
The functionary then conveyed the little squid up to the fishbowl and quickly poured it into the larger vessel. As the functionary set the glass down on the tray, a bolt arced up from the surface of the water, and into the hood.
With an ionic ‘ZNIT’ sound, the functionary joined the old man in death. The squid in the fishbowl was visibly enlarged.

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Major Publisher Pays Liberal for Book Smearing Glenn Beck

The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank gets a contract from Doubleday to write a biography tentatively titled, Tears of a Clown.

Yeah, I’m still waiting to hear back from Random House on my proposed Keith Olbermann book, Tears of a Pathetic Asshole.

That  contract should be arriving any day now . . .

UPDATE: There’s another liberal anti-Beck book due out in June: Alexander Zaitchik’s Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, published by Wiley & Sons.

Meanwhile, no word yet from Harper Collins on my proposed book, She Ate My Dog: Rosie O’Donnell and the Triumph of Morbid Obesity.