From the NY Times:

"President Obama traveled here on Friday to salute the hiring of 25 police recruits whose jobs were saved by the $787 billion recovery plan he signed into law last month."

Evidently, Pres. Obama considers 25 jobs such a success. he felt he had to travel there to celebrate such an accomplishment. During his campaign, he promised 2-5 million jobs in the next four years. At 2 million jobs, at an average of 2739 per day, since his inauguration, he's only 125.969 jobs behind (not counting the additional 2 mil+ jobs lost).

WOO-HOO!

You go Obama. That’s the way to spend $787 billion!

Way to overstate a headline, NYT!

I'm sure 25 police officers do not make $787B in their lifetime.

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and sadly if those new cops are to keep their jobs their city will have to find the money by december or they are once again out of a job

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

So the " stimulus " that funded this is going to pay every year ?
Bill Clinton had a similar " program" that tanked.

It's amazing how little local municipalities are will to pay to keep their citizens safe

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

It's amazing how little local municipalities are will to pay to keep their citizens safe

Maybe because those same citizens vote against tax increases that would fund a larger police force.

A liberal wakes up to liberalism:

"President Obama's team, unlike Bush's team, demonstrates a thinness of skin that shocks me. When I somewhat obviously and empirically judged that the populist Obama administration is exacerbating the crisis with its budget and policies, as evidenced by the incredible decline in the [stock market] averages since his inauguration, I was met immediately with condescension and ridicule rather than constructive debate or even just benign dismissal. I said to myself, 'What the heck? Are they really that blind to the Great Wealth Destruction they are causing with their decisions to demonize the bankers, raise taxes for the wealthy, advocate draconian cap-and-trade policies and upend the health care system? Do they really believe that only the rich own stocks? What do they think we have our retirement accounts in, CDs? Where did they think that the money saved for college went, our mattresses?" --MSNBC's Jim Cramer

Gee the stock market crash and a Rooseveltian effort to relieve the country from what could possibly be an even greater Depression than the One. Yep always be critical then be amazed when it works. Better to be hopeful that thinks work out. If thinks don't then we just have to do something different.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Is Obama a socialist? The New York Times finds out

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Barack Obama took that adage to heart when he dialed up The New York Times to clarify his answer to an earlier question posed by their reporter about whether the president is a socialist. We here know the correct answer is "yes," but Obama decided to dance around the issue.

We might note that Obama without a teleprompter is like a fish out of water. He began, "See, uhhh, I -- I -- eh -- Just one thing that, uhh, I was thinking about as I was, uhh, -- as I was -- getting off the, uhhh, copter 'cause, I -- uhhh -- you know, it was hard for me to believe you were entirely serious about that socialist question." (Hat tip to Rush Limbaugh's team for the painful transcript.)

Obama continued, "Uh, and so I think that, uh, it's important just to note, uhh, when you start, uhh, hearing folks, uhh, throw these words around, thaaat, um, uh, we've actually been operating, uh, in a way that, uh, is entirely consistent with free market principles, uh, and that, uhhh, uh, some of the same folks who are uh, throwing the word 'socialist' around can't say the same." And he wasn't done yet: "I -- I -- I -- I just think it's c-clear that by the time we had, uhhhhh. By the time we, eh, uh, got here, uhhh, ummm, there already had been, uh, an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system, aaand, eh, eh, eh, y-y-yuh-y-y-yuh.... The thing I constantly try to emphasize to people is that, if coming in the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me, uh, to stay out of it. Uh, you know, I -- I -- I have more than enough to do, uh, without having to worry about the financial system. Uh, and the fact that, uh, we've had to take these extraordinary measures, uh, and intervene, uh, is, uhh, not an indication of my ideological preferences."

While Obama does have a point about some of the fiscally irresponsible policies enacted by the Bush administration, the truth is that Obama didn't rise to oppose them, either in Congress or on the campaign trail, for being too big, but rather that they were not big enough.

Instead of coming up with a new plan of attack after seeing the failure of last spring's stimulus checks, the TARP money and all the other bailouts, it appears that the only idea President Obama and his economic Keystone Kops have is to throw good yet-to-be-printed money after bad existing debt.