The time for referencing former President Bush is past dead.

Yes, he committed the United States to $700 billion in TARP funds (Trouble Asset Relief Program). These institutions received TARP funds.

Was TARP necessary and — moreover — did it work?

Ultimately, what TARP did was to provide funds for the government to take an ownership interest in private firms. Nationalizing our financial and industrial firms is not in the public interest. The federal government now owns 80% of AIG and 61% of GM. TARP was not necessary. It didn’t work. And what it actually did was undesirable.

Unfortunately, Bush set the stage for the rapine of the United States. Our Hero took that ball and ran with it, expanding exponentially upon the track set by GWB.

Mr Obama swore that, without the billions and billions of dollars required by his stimulus packages, there would be massive failures of banks, double-digit unemployment, a true recession, bankruptcies of businesses “too large to fail.”

And yet, all of those things have come to pass despite billions and billions of American taxpayer dollars — essentially PISSED away and unaccounted-for UNDER Mr Obama. No, NOT under Mr Bush; under Mr Obama.

I might cite, as an example, FoMoCo. Ford, which elected not to take any government monies, recently returned profits of nearly a billion dollars in this third quarter. GM and Chrysler are stumbling at best. Conversely, CIT Group, taking $2.3 billion of government funds, plans for bankruptcy.

With that in mind, the smallest state elections on Tuesday now take on massive implications.

I write this late Tuesday night with few returns extant.

Mr Obama’s plans and sycophants will be supported and exonerated or this will be the beginning of a very rough time for the Demorats and Leftists.

I suspect the latter.

I also suspect a change in the national political machine on most every level. The times are changing; Texas Fred believes this as well. We may very well be seeing a slow but inevitable and inexorable leaning towards a third party. Not yet. Not now. Not this year. Not the next.

This ties into a clump of ephemeral and emotive votes — the vote in 2008. I can actually write now (and it will be acknowledged): Obama was elected not because everyone believed he was an Actual Savior (as portrayed by the American media, already “in the bag” for him because of his melanin and background) but because his was an anti-Bush vote. Or: anyone but Bush. Obama was there. Hence: Obama.

But there are many people who are not only done with Demorats, but done with the GOP as well.

I suspect we’re witnessing the cusp of an American Political System in serious flux.

These interim elections don’t look good for the Donks.

At this early point the GOP takes Virginia, and the GOP takes New Jersey.

The Obama Administration says:

The Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus bill directly saved or created about 650,000 jobs as of the end of last month, administration officials announced this morning.

Bloomberg says this is a “made up metric.” I’ll write it outright: lies. Malkin writes here. Hot Air here.

The Associated Press embarrassed Mr Obama by writing:

An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

For example:
_ A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced.
_ A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending.
_ A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees.

There’s no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report. But administration officials seized on the 30,000 figure as evidence that the stimulus program was on its way toward fulfilling the president’s promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

The reporting problem could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.

So, I suppose Mr Obama created 650,000 new jobs.

Wait — wait. Do you feel it? Did you see it?

I created 173 new jobs just now.

Because I said I did.

BZ