Barack Obama didn't mince words in his speeches back in January and February. We were warned of the dire consequences that lay in store if we ignored his calls for action. Crisis would become catastrophe, a bad situation would become dramatically worse and so on and so forth. In a now-familiar pattern, Obama, speaking of our economic crisis, went so far as to tell us and Congress that if they didn't act immediately, "we may not be able to reverse it." The party that had accused the Bush administration of "fear-mongering" for acting against an enemy who had slaughtered 3000 civilians in cold blood, was now sounding the alarm that our entire economy would surely collapse if we failed to pass Obama's stimulus bill that very night; never mind that there was no time to read it.

  Today, five months later, more than 2 million additional Americans have lost their jobs. In a knee-jerk power grab, the banking and auto industries have been largely nationalized following the fascist model. Huge new tax increases have been proposed and are being debated in Congress where Democrats appear to be willing to do whatever Obama asks. The economic crisis, despite the passage of Obama's stimulus, has crept up on the verge of becoming the catastrophe he warned us about in January and February. The stimulus has had no discernible effect in remedying what ails the economy but we're told it's because the spending has happened too slowly. They need time to prevent corruption and misuse of funds, you know?

  Today, VP Joe Biden, he of the boundless tongue, told us that they had "misread how bad the economy was." He went on to say that we were only 120 days into the stimulus so he's expecting way more job creation. Is it just me or does none of that make any sense whatsoever? Which part of "this crisis will become a catastrophe" or "we may not be able to reverse it" demonstrates that the administration had unfounded confidence that the economy wasn't so bad? Why was it imperative that Congress pass the stimulus overnight without reading it when it is now OK to have spent less than 10% of it 120 days later? Are the two million additional unemployed people OK with this? How about the next two million who are waiting for word on their employment status? Should they be patient waiting for this stimulus to have some, or any, effect? Or should they just be satisfied that Obama will sit on the funds until next year when he can use them to buy votes just before the mid-term Congressional elections?

  These actions have been brought to us by the same people who whined for over five years that "Bush lied". Certainly, Bush made mistakes and acted on faulty or incomplete intelligence. But when it comes to bold-faced lying with impunity, the Obama administration has taken less than six months to set a new standard for executive deceit.