ARE WE SEEING A Singularity Backlash?

MICKEY KAUS: Fear of Rationing: Obama Asked For It. “They brought it up! It wasn’t the Republicans who billed health care reform as a cost saving, budget-balancing measure that would start to deny payments for treatments deemed ‘ineffective,’ or (as one acolyte put it) when ‘a person’s life, or health, is not worth the price.’ And to think when they heard that people started to worry about rationing!”

MORE ON THE MANCESSION.

With a scary graphic.

Why is it happening? That’s discussed here. Also here: “Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a ‘downturn’ for women but a ‘catastrophe’ for men. Men are bearing the brunt of the current economic crisis because they predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007. Women, by contrast, are a majority in recession-resistant fields such as education and health care, which gained 588,000 jobs during the same period. Rescuing hundreds of thousands of unemployed crane operators, welders, production line managers, and machine setters was never going to be easy. But the concerted opposition of several powerful women’s groups has made it all but impossible. . . . Our incoming president did what many sensible men do when confronted by a chorus of female complaint: He changed his plan.”

IN THE BOSTON GLOBE, ALEX BEAM:

It is inevitable in modern American politics that each new president inaugurates his own brand of bushwa - rubbish, lies, eyewash, whatever you choose to call it - that reminds one of nothing so much as the previous guy’s bushwa. Mr. Obama is no exception. . . . Remember signing statements? Those were the dastardly little postscripts George Bush attached to legislation that he didn’t completely approve of. Signing statements ignore the “fundamental principle’’ of the separation of powers, the American Bar Association huffed. On the campaign trail, candidate Obama was asked, “Do you promise not to use presidential [signing statements] to get your way?’’ “Yes,’’ he answered. “I taught the Constitution for 10 years, I believe in the Constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We are not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress.’’

That was easy!

Less easy is explaining away his six signing statements so far, an impressive one-a-month clip. “Signing statements serve a legitimate function in our system,’’ Obama now says, “at least when based on well-founded constitutional objections.’’ Mr. President, meet my friend George Orwell, inventor of Newspeak, who memorably wrote, “Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.’’

New bushwa same as the old bushwa? It’s a lot less different than we had been led to believe.

Hope and Change Same!

CNN, AP SPIN misleading employment headlines. Hey, they want to get invited to spend next July 4th partying off the record with the Prez.

UPDATE: Economic reporting, then and now.

AT THE G-8, an area of Franco-American agreement.

Kind of reminds me of this Nixon/Brezhnev shot, only with more agreement.

This, on the other hand, not so much. . . .

YOUR ECONOMIC GLOOM ROUNDUP.

NOW IT NEEDS DEFENDING? Biden defends fed stimulus. But this man can draw a crowd! “About 200 people gathered behind the former American Can company building to hear Biden speak.”

Only some of them were the ones he was defending it from:

Biden indirectly addressed Boehner and a group of protesters gathered outside of the factory. . . . The organizers of the Cincinnati Tea Party, a group opposed to using federal funds for local projects, issued a statement against stimulus spending.

More coverage here:

The Cincinnati Tea Party used the Vice President’s visit to reiterate the group’s opposition to using federal funds for local projects. Mike Wilson, the President of the Cincinnati Tea Party, joined others in a gathering this afternoon to voice their concerns. Wilson said, “We were told that the stimulus was necessary to prevent unemployment from reaching a peak of 9.1% in the second quarter of 2010. We were told that the stimulus would create a lower peak of 8 % in the third quarter of 2009. Last week’s official number of 9.5% showed that the Tea Parties organizers were right and the Obama-Biden administration was wrong.”

And also here. Nice job of piggybacking on the Biden story by the Cincinnati Tea Party folks.

IT’S NOT OVER: Thousands protest in Iran, defying crackdown vow.

THE HILL: More spelling errors plague Obama releases. Does the “Quayle-o-Meter” go to 11? And yeah, this is picayune stuff that shouldn’t matter. But will it? It would sure matter if it were a Palin Administration . . . .

UH OH: Brown Manure, Not Green Shoots: The Situation Is Even Worse Than The Headlines.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Hankamer emails:

Interesting article, and somewhat parallels my experience. I’ve “gone Galt” myself, taking 6 weeks leave without pay. Business is very slow, we’ve already got too many people wasting away on overhead. SinceI don’t need the money (right now), I volunteered to take some time off in the hope that someone else won’t get laid off.

The one positive in all this is that I think that (at my marginal tax rate) I’ve denied the (state and federal) government some $4,000 in income taxes.

Well, that’s something.

PAPER TIGERS? ACORN and MoveOn marchers outnumbered 10-1.

They were also outnumbered in North Carolina.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll emails: “As Richard Geno and I discussed in my video (and I saw firsthand), the pro-socialized medicine protesters were very much outnumbered in San Jose on Sunday. Scroll to about 5:20 in the video for our conversation, as well as the footage I shot at the scene.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader points out that last time ACORN sent out the troops they were outnumbered by the media. Yeah, but the media are their troops too, right? So I’m not sure that one counts . . . .

IS YOUR PET FAT?

DEMOCRACY VS. OBAMA AND THE DICTATORS: PJTV REPORTS FROM TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS.

Maybe Honduras should ask for foreign volunteers to help defend it. A sort of Lincoln Brigade . . . .

AIN’T NO SUNSHINE.

GIGANTICO: An interesting future-oriented blog.

MICKEY KAUS CHARGES HYPOCRISY: “If he were a GOP, TPM would be all over it, no? Sen. Inouye acts on behalf of a constituent, who turns out to be in large part himself (a troubled bank in which his ownership share makes up ‘the bulk of his personal wealth’). … Yet Josh Marshall stays silent.”

But hey, it’s not as if Marshall pretends to be balanced or nonpartisan. And there are plenty of other bloggers to cover it. On the other hand, a lot of Big Media folks rely too narrowly on TPM and Kos. . . .

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Sizing Up The Tea Parties. Maybe it’s better if this stuff happens below the national-media radar. . . .

IS THERE A PEE-POWERED GADGET in your future?

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH FOUND ON EASTER ISLAND? Well, sort of.

CASH FOR CLUNKERS: See if your car qualifies.

ME AND KATHERINE MANGU-WARD AT THE L.A. TIMES: Who’s the next GOP star?

TRAVELING WITH your own coffee grinder? That would be taking things too far.

My Capresso grinder, by the way, just quit working the other day. I mean, when you turn it on it makes noises and things go round and round, but somehow no coffee gets ground. I took it apart, cleaned everything and saw no problems, and put it back together, but it still doesn’t work. Maybe I’ll go with that KitchenAid.

SO MUCH FOR THE FIERCE MORAL URGENCY (CONT’D): Indefinite Detention, With Or Without Trial. “So the Obama administration is all for due process, as long as it produces the correct result. Obama already has said that Guantanamo detainees who cannot be successfully tried by military commissions or civilian courts can still be imprisoned indefinitely if they are considered too dangerous to release. Now Johnson is saying that even those who are prosecuted can be kept imprisoned regardless of the verdict. The only point of prosecuting them, it seems, is to create an impression of due process while continuing the Bush detention policies that Obama condemned during the campaign.”

A LOOK AT cyber-security in the United States.

POLITICO: Independents begin to edge away from President Obama. “In a potentially alarming trend for the White House, independent voters are deserting President Barack Obama nationally and especially in key swing states, recent polls suggest.” He ran as different kind of politician than he’s governing as. He hopes to ram through stuff that will cement his position before the rubes catch on. It’ll be close.

STEVE CHAPMAN: The Secret of Palin’s Staying Power: Why Sex Appeal Matters in Politics.

PROTESTS AND GENERAL STRIKE IN IRAN: Michael Ledeen is updating.

HOUSING: The rental market stinks, too.

SO IF THE ATLANTIC’S SALONS ARE ETHICALLY IFFY, WHAT ABOUT THIS? White House Press Corps Spent the Fourth of July Hanging Out With Obama, Off the Record. Or is it just wrong to get cozy with corporate bigshots?

Much of the White House press corps spent the Fourth schmoozing with White House staffers, catching performances by the Foo Fighters and Jimmy Fallon, and watching the fireworks from the most exclusive vantage point in the D.C. metro area, all off the record—not to mention off-the-Facebook and off-the-Twitter. These are the same people who just a week ago were whining in the press briefing about Obama’s malicious and dastardly attempts to “control the press.” . . .

There is a cosmic irony at work here: The party was “closed press.” (Ha!) It was covered, under onerous restrictions, by a pool reporter—the Baltimore Sun’s Paul West. West was ushered in by White House staffers for a mere 40 minutes, so he could record the president’s remarks. He was kept in a pen so that he wouldn’t run amok and interview someone. He shouted questions at Obama as he worked the rope line, which the president ignored. Then he was taken away. West wrote up his blindered account of the party and then e-mailed it to the White House press corps, many of whom were actually at the party, outside of the pen, hanging out with all the other guests. And then, because they had temporarily signed away the right to do their jobs in exchange for facetime with staffers, a few cold Stoudt’s American Pale Ales, and some corn on the cob, their news organizations picked up that pool report and used it to tell their readers what happened at the party. This is how the press covers the White House.

Covers, sucks up to, whatever. Jack Shafer, call your office!

THE ADMINISTRATION WILL BE HAPPY: GMC adds Yukon Denali Hybrid SUV. Too bad hybrid sales are plummeting. Maybe by the time this is out gas prices will have risen.

LONGEVITY UPDATE: Drug extends life: “A study published Wednesday found that rapamycin, a drug used in organ transplants, increased the life span of mice by 9% to 14%, the first definitive case in which a chemical has been shown to extend the life span of normal mammals.” It’s a long way from being a useful anti-aging drug in humans, but it should provide some useful data.

DRINKING while breastfeeding.

JOHN TIERNEY on cats.

IN THE MAIL: A big PR package with a copy of Atlas Shrugged. The press release is headlined: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years.

MICHAEL YON: Girl With No Future.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: A “Reset” with Russia Won’t Cut It.

STIMULUS AS PAYOFF: Billions in aid go to areas that backed Obama in ‘08. “Billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year’s presidential election. . . . Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows.”

FUNNY HOW HONESTY STANDARDS FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS seem so much higher than those for other journalists.

GLENN LOURY: Yes we can!

FABIUS MAXIMUS: A new news media emerges for our new world, unseen and unexpected.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: I didn’t vote for Barack Obama.

Which means, I don’t have to have the scales fall from my eyes over the President’s decision to claim “post-acquittal detention power.” To be sure, I agree with Mark Kleiman (no, that is not a typo) that we can keep prisoners of war for as long as necessary, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Obama Administration is essentially going to engage in show trials when it comes to a lot of the detainees affected by its most recent decision on detainee policy. In the strictest sense, the legal status of the detainees is affected by whether they are found guilty or not-guilty in these trials, but as Kleiman writes, if someone has engaged in warfare against the United States, that person “should be held as long as the conflict lasts, even if that turns out to be forever.” So irrespective of the outcome of a trial, the defendant will remain in prison, and that will mean that many of those trials are going to have no effect whatsoever on the lives of the defendants in question. And that means that the Obama Administration’s guarantee of a fair trial or due process for these defendants is utterly meaningless.

And yet, before the election it was a matter of fierce moral urgency. Plus this: “It looks like Dick Cheney was right. Despite Candidate Obama’s promises, President Obama does not have, and never had any intention whatsoever to give up the powers of the ‘Imperial Presidency.’”

BYRON YORK: AmeriCorps stonewalls questions of White House involvement in IG firing. “A top official of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the government agency that oversees AmeriCorps, has refused to answer questions from congressional investigators about the White House’s role in events surrounding the abrupt firing of inspector general Gerald Walpin.”

And I love this:

Investigators asked Trinity whether he was claiming executive privilege, something that could only be authorized by the president. Trinity answered again that it was a White House “prerogative.” When the investigators pointed out that, in the words of one aide, “there is no legal basis whatsoever” for such a claim, Trinity still declined to answer.

Remember the fierce moral urgency of replacing Bush with Obama so we’d see an end to this sort of thing? I do . . . .

PLAIN DEALER REPRESENTATIVE calls bloggers “a bunch of pipsqueaks.” This is so 2002. But anyway, the inevitable conclusion:

We’re just going to ignore the phrase “public journalists,” OK? It’s a bizarre formulation — as opposed to, what, private journalists? — but he probably meant something like “citizen journalists,” and we’ll just mark it down to speaking off the cuff. But why, representative of us readers, is it kind of unfortunate that Schultz gave Jarvis a lot of ink? Back to Diadiun:

“… which I thought was kind of unfortunate because Connie’s column is read by 25- or 30,000 people a month, which has to be many times more than this guy gets on his blog, and she gave him more publicity through that column than he would get on his own anytime.”

Thirty thousand readers a month “has to be many times” what Jarvis gets on his blog? Wait, that sounds like one of those unsourced, unreported assumptions you might get from … from … A BLOGGER! Diadiun actually started to say “is,” but than corrected himself and phrased it “has to be.” That was an admission, however subconscious, that he didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. He was guessing to make his point.

Why is it so common for print people who criticize the low standards of the Web to go on the Web and say and write things they would never say or write in print? Does Diadiun just guess at stuff in his newspaper column?

Since Jarvis has more than 20,000 followers on Twitter, I would guess that Schultz’s 30,000 monthly readers, as reported by Diadiun, do not dwarf Jarvis’ readership. But I don’t like to guess — even in a blog! — so I did something crazy. I got all newspapery and responsible. I asked Jarvis how many readers he has.

“My web stats say I had 106,000 unique vistors in May,” Jarvis answered via e-mail. “I had about 20,000 RSS readers, last I knew,” though he confessed to having forgotten his password to re-check that figure.

I suspect that a lot of bigger-deal columnists than Diadiun have smaller readerships than Jarvis’s. Newspaper circulation numbers are padded to begin with, but those numbers don’t reflect how many people read any particular part of the paper. Does everyone who picks up the New York Times turn to Maureen Dowd? I doubt it. But everyone who reads Jeff Jarvis reads Jeff Jarvis.

MORE ON JOURNALISTIC ETHICS AND THE ATLANTIC’S SALONS, from Mickey Kaus. “The problem with Bradley’s salons, like the problems with WaPo’s similar, now-cancelled events, is that they create two big conflicts: 1) The need to avoid pissing off the corporations who fund (and then some***) the salons in the hope of getting access to influential journalists and administration bigshots; and, even more corrupting, 2) the need to suck up to the administration bigshots to get them to show up at the salons where they can be accessed by corporations who are paying for them.”

Meanwhile, Megan McArdle reports: “I’m not going to comment much on my employer’s salons except to say that I’ve been to them, and there’s no scandal there. At the paid ones, where the journalists talk, the journalists dictate what we say, and the sponsors are told they have no control. At the unpaid salons, it’s–well, it’s an off the record briefing, of the sort that every other journalist is well familiar with. Either way, I’ve never said or done anything that I wouldn’t say at a regular interview, and neither have the other journalists.”

Looks to me like David Bradley is leaving no revenue source untapped. . . .

INSTAVISION: Who Killed California’s Economy? I talk with Joel Kotkin, author of The City: A Global History, about “gentry liberalism,” media bias, and California’s disastrous economy. Plus, what it means for the rest of America. (Bumped).

UPDATE: Viewers liked Kotkin’s use of the term “Soft Putinism” to describe today’s politicized media. I prefer the term “An Army of Ezra Kleins.” . . .

HOPE AND CHANGE SAME! Administration Using the Same Stimulus Job-Creation Number Obama Did on May 1. Yeah, but the gap between those numbers and reality has expanded, so that’s something.

TIGERHAWK: The 35% Solution: “Because its efforts have been broken into separate initiatives with different justifications, few people other than news junkies have noticed how extraordinary Barack Obama’s agenda is. Perhaps a number will help: 35%. That is the aggregate percentage of United States GDP produced by the three industries that the Democrats hope to restructure from the top down: Health care (17% of GDP), energy (9.8% of GDP), and financial services (8% of GDP). Think about that. Without even considering the transformational impact of proposed anti-business laws of general application, such as the Orwellian ‘employee free choice act,’ the Obama administration wants to redesign 35% of gross domestic product from the center. And he proposes to do it all in a rush this summer, lest the decline in his popularity and that of the Congressional Democrats erodes his power to do so.”

NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE fires nearly 200 workers because of race. Can this be true?

SMART DIPLOMACY: White House misspills President Obama’s name on diplomatic dokument.

SHIKHA DALMIA: Wanted: Honesty on Health Care.

CROSSING A VERY BIG SEA in a very small boat. “There’s madness, and then there’s crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a 21-foot fishing boat designed for shallow water. Ralph Brown of Florida is doing just that. Go ahead and call him crazy. He doesn’t care.” I think he’s crazy. . . .

THE NATIVES ARE GETTING RESTLESS: That’s great. Now fix the economy.

OBAMA’S Moscow Retreat.

WHAT CALIFORNIA STATE WORKERS think of the taxpayers.

BLOOMBERG: Democrats Split on Stimulus as Job Losses Mount, Deficit Soars. Well, the whole deficit-soaring thing is no surprise. But who knew that shoveling out cash to cronies wouldn’t prevent unemployment from mushrooming? Plus this: “The Treasury is increasing debt sales to pay for the spending. After more than doubling note and bond offerings to $963 billion in the first half, another $1.1 trillion may be sold by year-end, according to Barclays Plc. The second-half sales would be more than the total amount of debt sold in all of 2008.”

IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Katherine Mangu-Ward and I talk about Sarah Palin.

IOWAHAWK: Fans Flock to Mourn California, 1849-2009.

DETROIT, CALIFORNIA, AND NOW THE WHOLE U.S.? Beware the Economic Doomsday Machine! With bonus Star Trek video.

UPDATE: Locusts.

MORE LISTS: Best 2009 Albums You (Probably) Haven’t Heard, but Should.

Plus, Best Americana Music of the Year… So Far. The latter reminds me that the Nebraska Guitar Militia really needs to put out another album.

NANOTECH UPDATE: A new solar-cell design could cut costs and is suitable for large-scale flexible panels.

TIME-LAPSE VIDEO of a 1990 mall. I’d really like to see time-lapse, on a scale of years, for my local mall, say from when it opened to now. I have a couple of photos from the 1970s and my daughter can’t believe it’s the same place.

FOUR NEXT-GENERATION MEDICAL TREATMENTS. Faster, please.

A LIST: The Best Books of the Year, So Far.

CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS: The “Mancession” is Upon Us.

SILICON GRAFFITI: Ed Driscoll posts video from the July 5th Tea Party protest in San Jose, where about a thousand folks turned out.

THE BIG PUBLIC-PENSION SQUEEZE.

TURKISH STUDENTS CREATE Hydrogen-Powered 1300-MPG Car.

LET’S HOPE: Incandescent Bulbs to Close Efficiency Gap with Fluorescents?

TAXPROF: Does Judge Sotomayor Have A Tax Problem?

UPDATE: Related item here.

GORDON CHANG: What the riots in China really mean.

UPDATE: Angry Chinese Mob Turns on ABC Reporters, Crew.

THE FEYNMAN PATH to nanotechnology.

AN OPTICAL TRANSISTOR made from a single molecule.

IT’S OKAY TO QUESTION your patriotism!

THEY WATCH YOU. THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO WATCH THEM. Police chief denounces ‘cowardly’ iPhone users monitoring speed traps.

MORE ON THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL SCANDALS. “Notes from a contentious meeting of the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service are sure to raise more questions on Capitol Hill about whether the firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin was rooted more in the agency’s desire to get him off its back than legitimate concerns about his ability to perform his official duties.”

TODD ZYWICKI: Treat Borrowers Like Adults: The problems with a financial products safety panel..

VOLKSWAGEN ROUTANS RECALLED because their owner’s manuals don’t include a required warning not to put items on or near the airbag. Good grief. But the best line is from the comments: “I just purchased a Routan. I really like it. My friends tell me it’s a Chrysler. I firmly say ‘No!’ to them. I proudly point to my Routan and announce that it’s an American engineered German branded Fiat, manufactured in Canada, using some Japanese parts, by a company that is majority owned by American taxpayers. They stare.”

HOPE AND CHANGE SAME! Detainees, Even if Acquitted, Might Not Go Free: Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely. Gosh, remember the fierce moral urgency of getting Obama in to end all those awful Bush policies? I do . . . .

REPORT: The First Three Days of Singularity University.

IN THE MAIL: From Glen Cook, An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat.

MICHAEL YON POSTS another report from the Philippines.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Reminding the Russians about Alaska.

UPDATE: Setting off the “Quayle-o-Meter.” “That’s the way to ‘hit the Reset button’, Mr. President. Remind the Russians of perhaps the stupidest thing they ever did.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Maybe Obama’s just covering for Joe Biden.

VOTING ON A BILL THAT’S too long to read.

MICHAEL BARONE: Americans are getting cold feet over Democratic proposals. “The $787 billion stimulus package, the cap-and-trade bill’s utility rate increases, the public health insurance package — all these seem to generate more apprehension than enthusiasm. So does the prospect of doubling the national debt, as the Congressional Budget Office estimates, from about 40 percent of gross domestic product to about 80 percent. That’s about where it ended up after World War II. Americans evidently regard our current economic situation, though negative, as not enough to justify the magnitude of deficit spending that was appropriate in an all-out world war.”

TAXPROF: Judge Sotomayor’s Law Practice: A Tax Dodge? Always happy when one of my tax thoughts makes TaxProf. But I was just following Ralph Winter’s advice from my Business Associations class in law school: When you see a business arrangement that doesn’t seem to make any sense, just say “it’s probably for tax reasons,” and you’ll be right nine times out of ten.

WILLIAM JEFFERSON UPDATE:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A federal jury has seen video of a former Louisiana congressman accepting a suitcase filled with $100,000 in cash outside a northern Virginia hotel.

The videos played Tuesday are a key piece of evidence in the bribery trial of William Jefferson, a Democrat who represented parts of New Orleans. He’s accused of accepting more than $400,000 in bribes to broker business deals in Africa.

No word on whether there was a camera in his freezer.

ERIC SCHEIE: Michael Jackson Still Dead!

MATT WELCH: California Screaming: The Golden State’s political class comes unglued in the face of a citizens’ revolt. “Rarely has the chasm between elite political discourse and grubby popular opinion been displayed in such sharp relief. The implications of this citizen revolt—and the hostile reactions to it—stretch far beyond Nevada’s western border. California is the Ghost of Federal Government Future. . . . Faced with a political class that ignored bureaucratic inefficiency, that demanded higher taxes, that filled the newspapers with scare stories about people who will literally die as a result of budget cuts, the citizens of one of the bluest states in the nation collectively said we just don’t believe you anymore. If even California’s famous fruits and nuts can call the statists’ bluff, there may be hope for the rest of the country. “

PROLONGED SUNSPOT DROUGHT coming to an end?

HOMELAND SECURITY REMAINS A JOKE — A SEEMINGLY ENDLESS SERIES: Security at Federal Buildings Fails to Catch Bomb Materials in Undercover Tests, Report Says.

Related: U.S. Government’s Cyberdefense System Doesn’t Work.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Welcome to government for the benefit of government officials and their hangers-on.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Medicare’s Mythical Administrative Cost Savings.

HOW TO cut up a whole chicken. You’d think everybody knew this already, but you’d be wrong.

UPDATE: Deboning video, thanks to reader Mark Mecca.

WASHINGTON POST: Power of Stimulus Slow to Take Hold: Rising Joblessness Blunts President’s Plan for Recovery. Well, at least it demonstrates that shoveling cash out to your political supporters doesn’t do much to boost employment. But here’s the pro-stimulus spin:

The measures we have taken have certainly prevented things from getting much worse.

That’s inspired Scott Ott to produce this stirring Democratic bumper sticker for 2010:

With a slogan like that, how can they lose?

UPDATE: Reader Tom Baker writes:

Glenn,

“The measures we have taken have certainly prevented things from getting much worse.”

I have been hearing this a lot lately from Obama voters. They assert, without any support whatsoever, that the “Stimulus” Bill is still a success because things would be much, much worse had it not been passed.

So, I guess they would agree that the invasion of Iraq was a success because it prevented another terrorist attack in the U.S.? They wouldn’t agree with that? BIG surprise….

Heh.

YOUR ECONOMIC GLOOM ROUNDUP:

Why Unemployment Could Hit 14%.

The Labor Market Is Worse Than You Think.

U.S. Workers Hired at Slowest Rate in 9 Years.

Stocks Hit 10-Week Low.

Consumer Loan Delinquencies Rise to Record Levels.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Look How Silly The Russians Made Obama Look.

MATTHEW HOY: “My advice to democracy lovers everywhere: If you’re going to overthrow a strongman, kill him.”

THE COST OF controlling the press.

JON HENKE: The End of the Libertarian Democrats.