ABC News reports:
The Obama administration, under fire for inflating job growth from the $787 billion stimulus plan, slashed over 60,000 jobs from its most recent report on the program because the reporting outlets had submitted “unrealistic data,” according to a document obtained by ABC News. A document from the Office of Management and Budget obtained by ABC News shows that before an Oct. 30 progress report on the government stimulus program the administration asked the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to remove information from 12 stimulus recipients that contained “unrealistic data,” including “unrealistic job data.”
This, of course, adds to the sense that the Obama team is resorting to phony numbers to justify the boondoggle-ridden stimulus, which everyone but the most fervent pro-Obama spinners regards as a bust. Keep in mind that it’s now November, and the stimulus package is still the primary and most highly touted “accomplishment” of the Obama domestic agenda. With each revelation, there is even less to tout.
Moreover, this news report comes at the very time the Obami are trying to jam through a massive health-care plan, far more dubious in its promises and more controversial than the gargantuan stimulus bill. If the biggest hurdle to health-care reform is Americans’ innate distrust of big government, more evidence that we can’t really trust what is coming out of Washington will plainly make harder the task of ramming through that reform.
Simply put, the last thing the Obama team needed was evidence that it is prone to spend too much, is too cavalier with the facts, and delivers too little to the American people.
While it is irrelevant in the current circumstances, I am bothered by the fact that the U.S. public was not aware of Pakistan’s bomb until after they tested it. We were informed that India had the bomb years before.
I’m again troubled by the fact that there are kilograms of Uranium 235 and/or plutonium floating around in these weapons.. they don’t even HAVE to explode… that stuff can kill millions just by spreading it around.
Imagine if the fundies got hold of that nuke program. They would probably discard the missiles, or else fill them with plastique and fire them at Israel, kind of a macabre July Fourth-type party…
Then they’d take the plutonium or uranium 235 and dice it up, powder it, and put it in conventional bombs by the hundreds or thousands, and send out the attack crews to plant them in major US cities. Remember that they don’t care if they die while doing this work, so the expensive and technically difficult job of staying safe from the radiation would be unimportant… they’d just find volunteers to do it.
The bombs would all explode on the same day, and our cities would become no-go zones for a thousand years. End of America, end of world economy, and in the chaos, the strongest horse wins.
Perhaps they’d save a couple of missiles to try for the EMP thing, but they won’t have to count on it… it would just be a bonus.
If I, an ordinary guy down here in Texas, no college degree from George Washington University or Yale, no prep school, no importance or wealth or connections, can conceive this while sitting in my living room typing on my laptop, then the Islamists have already thought of it, and are likely planning to do it.
Charming.
Dave in Texas
http://davogrande.blogspot.com