If he's lost Katie, Obama has lost America

I expect more and more news reporters in the coming months will look at administration numbers and conclude that "they are not worth the paper they are written on." Because they're not. Clinton's numbers were tricky, Bush's numbers were rigged, but Obama's are simply cut out of whole cloth.

But even if they were real numbers, even if Obama's $787 billion dollar stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do, it would still be a colossal waste of resources, a blunder so epic that only a Keynesian economist could possibly justify it without choking to death on laughter. $787 billion to save or create 3 million jobs still works out to about 7 or 8 times the national average income*. Only the government could spend $8 to create $1 worth of "job." But even then, they're not real numbers.

Everyone who's been paying attention knew they weren't real even before they came out. But if CBS News has figured it out - and is willing to tell people** - then the press is in as much trouble as the president. They have relied for so long on government announcements, government press handouts, and cooked government numbers that I wonder if they have anyone who remembers how to find news.

* And if they're creating jobs for day care workers and entry-level truck drivers, you can probably make that 10 or 12 times the average.

** then again, this is CBS news; it's possible no one actually saw it.