It’s Thursday, September 8th, 2011….and in honor of the President’s imminent oratory, let’s talk about jobs, which, as the WSJ‘s Stephen Moore details at around the 1-minute mark of the following video clip from March 25, 2010….

….The Obamao’s been locked-on with his laser-like focus as long as we’ve been unfortunate enough to know him.  So much for change, let alone hope!

Had Aaron Burr, John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolg0sz, Lee Harvey Oswald, Arthur Bremer, Mark David Chapman and Gavrilo Princip been possessed of the Boy Blunder’s preternaturally keen marksmanship, Alexander Hamiltion, Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy as well as John Lennon might have lived to a ripe old age, George Wallace would have worn out far more pairs of shoes….and tens of millions might not have suffered and perished in two world wars.

The reality is, as this photo forwarded by Tom Bakke suggests,….

….Tick-Tock Barack is absolutely out of airspeed, altitude and, most importantly, ideas.  Quite literally, he couldn’t be any more befuddled and bewildered if he’d lost his teleprompter(s).

And like most if not all grossly inexperienced leaders finding themselves in deep over their heads, he’s falling back on the only thing he understands: more spending and bigger government equals continued control.  No matter such policies have never once in human history lifted an economy out of recession or depression; this isn’t about us….it’s all about HIM!

Now….here’s the Gouge!

First up, when it comes to explaining exactly HOW this next tranche of $300,000,000,000 of “stimulus” will actually be funded, Team spokesman Jay Carney has….

….NO FRIGGIN’ IDEA WHATSOEVER!

For more on the President’s upcoming infomercial, we turn to James Taranto and Best of the Web:

The Special-Needs Economy

Nancy Pelosi works out on the euphemism treadmill.

“Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Democrats have dropped the word ‘stimulus’ from their vocabulary,” the Hillreports. The news comes on the eve of President Obama’s history-making speech before a joint session of Congress, in which, as Bloomberg’s Al Huntreports, the president is expected to propose a $300 billion “jobs plan” that “follows the contours of his $830 billion 2009 economic [CENSORED] package.”

The Hill report adds that “the House minority leader and her caucus are still pushing an economic [CENSORED] agenda,” but because the 2009 whatchamacallit was a ruinously expensive failure, “they’ve radically changed their rhetoric.” Do the Nolabelists know about this?

“Democrats are now being careful to frame their job-creation agenda in language excluding references to any [CENSORED], even though their favored policies for ending the deepest recession since the Great Depression are largely the same,” the Hill adds:

The Democrats’ signature “Make it in America” platform aims to create jobs by increasing infrastructure spending, providing financial help to struggling states and expanding tax credits for businesses, all of which were key elements of their 2009 economic [CENSORED] bill.

Recognizing the unpopularity of the 2009 package, however, Democratic leaders have revised their message with less loaded language–“job creation” instead of “[CENSORED]” and “Make it in America” in lieu of “Recovery Act”–in hopes of tackling the jobs crisis.

Pelosi is working out on the “euphemism treadmill.” Cognitive scientist Steven Pinkerdescribed this metaphorical fitness machine in a 1994 Baltimore Sun op-ed: “People invent new ‘polite’ words to refer to emotionally laden or distasteful things, but the euphemism becomes tainted by association and the new one that must be found acquires its own negative connotations. ‘Water closet’ becomes ‘toilet’ (originally a term for any body care, as in ‘toilet kit’), which becomes ‘bathroom,’ which becomes ‘rest room,’ which becomes ‘lavatory.’ “

Another example: “Idiot,” “imbecile” and “moron” are now insults, but they originated as clinical terms referring to various degrees of low intelligence. “Retarded” became the euphemism of choice until it too took on an insulting connotation. (But enough about former-Speaker Pelosi!) Now there’s actually a website, R-word.org, whose goal is “to eliminate the demeaning use of the R-word.” Meanwhile, the people to whom the R-word referred when it was a euphemism are said to have “special needs.”

Maybe Pelosi and Obama could take a cue from the R-worders and start a site called S-word.org to eliminate that hurtful $830 billion word. For that matter, why doesn’t Obama explain that the purpose of the $300 billion he’s going to ask Congress to blow is to help the economy with its special needs? The Republicans probably wouldn’t have a response to that!

Oh wait. “Republicans have decided they’re not going to give a rebuttal to President Obama’s jobs speech later this week,” FOX Newsreports, adding that Pelosi is taking the decision “as a high affront to the White House”:

Pelosi said the party’s “silence” would “speak volumes about their lack of commitment to creating jobs.”

“The Republicans’ refusal to respond to the president’s proposal on jobs is not only disrespectful to him, but to the American people,” Pelosi said.

It seems to us it’s highly respectful to the American people. After all, the president decided for whatever reason to schedule his speech right before the opening game of the NFL season. Maybe that wouldn’t be a big deal if a crummy team like the 49ers were playing, but this is the Packers vs. the Saints, the last two Super Bowl champions.

This is also the first time we’ve ever heard a rebuttal from the opposite party cast as a show of respect to the president. We suppose one might plausibly understand it that way, but it seems to us that Pelosi and other Obama supporters don’t do the president any favors by constantly complaining about imagined slights. It makes him look as if he has some sort of special need for deference–or, to put it bluntly, as if he’s weak. (Or….retarded!)

Meanwhile, the WSJ details why spending any more of our tax dollars on failed policies, however it’s termed, will the equivalent of….

Why the Stimulus Failed

New research on what actually happened to a trillion dollars.

Even zero jobs growth in August doesn’t seem to have disrupted President Obama’s faith in the economic policies of his first three years, so one theme we’ll be listening for in tonight’s speech is how he explains the current moment. Why did his first jobs plan—the $825 billion stimulus—so quickly result in the need for another jobs plan?

For readers who want to know, an important account is offered in a pair of new Mercatus Center working papers by the George Mason economists Garett Jones and Daniel Rothschild, who did field research on what they call the supply side of the stimulus.

The Keynesian theory was that a burst of new government spending would take up some of the slack in aggregate consumer demand. This was justified in 2008, again in 2009, and is still defended now based not on real-world observation but on abstract macroeconomic models that depend on the assumptions of the authors. The Congressional Budget Office’s quarterly studies—often cited to claim the stimulus created tens of thousands of new jobs—are based on such a model. By informative contrast, Messrs. Jones and Rothschild interviewed actual people who received stimulus dollars and asked how they spent the money.

In the first paper, the authors survey 85 different businesses, nonprofits and local governments across the country and conclude that “As is often the case when economic models are transferred from the blackboard to actual public policy, there was a gap between theory and practice.”

One of the major patterns Messrs. Jones and Rothschild uncovered was that the top-down stimulus was poorly targeted. In one redolent example, a federal contractor said he was told to use smaller, nonstandard tiles that are harder and more expensive to install in order to increase the cost of the project. That way, the government could claim the money was moving out the door faster. The famous Milton Friedman line about government ordering people to dig with spoons to employ more people comes to mind.

In another case study, a budget shortfall forced a mid-size city to lay off 185 public workers—but the city received a $4 million stimulus grant to improve municipal energy efficiency. The manager of a construction company received funds for “the last thing on our list; and truthfully, the least useful thing.” It happened to be a crane and a forklift.

The authors are careful to note that such anecdotes do not mean that all of the stimulus was a waste, and they did find some success stories. The problem is that all but the most reductionist Keynesians of the Paul Krugman school believe it matters what the government spends money on. A dollar that eventually will be taken out of the private economy through borrowing or higher taxes to fund pointlessly expensive projects—a la the tiny tiles—is not the way to nurture a recovery.

The second paper suggests that the stimulus did not “create or save” nearly as many jobs as the models indicate. On the basis of 1,300 interviews, Messrs. Jones and Rothschild estimate that merely 42.1% of the firms that received grants hired people who were unemployed. Instead, they poached workers from their competitors.

“This suggests just how hard it is for Keynesian job creation to work in a modern, expertise-based economy,” they write. The stimulus “was implemented at a time when the Keynesian model had every chance of succeeding on its own terms. The high level of unemployment and the rapid deadline for spending created both the supply of workers and the demand for workers. If the job market results are so lackluster in this setting, economists should expect even weaker stimulative results during more modest recessions.”

The lesson of such on-the-ground knowledge is that the stimulus was a lost opportunity. In practice it became a shotgun marriage between an economic theory justified by computer models and 40 years of liberal social priorities (clean energy, Medicaid expansions and the rest). This produced the 9.1% unemployment we now have.

The economy would have benefitted far more if the government had instead improved the incentives for people and businesses to invest, produce and grow. The President probably won’t mention any of this, but it does explain why he has to give his latest speech.

We can hardly wait….for the Packers-Saints game!

Next up, our pick as the highlight of the GOP debate: Newt calls out Politico‘s John Harris for the biased douche pump he is….

 Which brings us to the Lighter Side….

Finally, we’ll call it a day with Car News, and this just in from South of the Border:

Introducing Mexico’s First High-Performance Sports Car

The Mastretta MXT, which retails for $58K, travels from Ensenada to East Los Angeles on a single tank of gas, seats 5, hides 17 more and can outrun every vehicle in the current INS inventory! 

As Speed Mach’s rodent equivalent might say, “Holy frijoles; that thing runs faster than me!  Andale, Andale! Arriba, Arriba! Yiii-hah!”

Magoo