That is how much it cost to make that many jobs instead larger claimed number:

Michigan received $3.7 billion is stimulus money, of which $620 million was to be used to “create and save” jobs, while the remainder will be used by Granholm to backfill the budget deficit that she has created with her overspending so that she doesn’t have to make any substantial cuts before she leaves office. When she walks away, she will have lost more than 1,000,000 jobs in a state with a population of only 10 million. A few days ago, Granholm claimed that stimulus money “created or saved” 19,500 jobs (Enron accounting: Stimulus saved or created 19,500 jobs in Michigan). Turns out, the number is an utter fabrication, as I suspected when I wrote that prior post. Fact is, that $620 million “created or saved” 397 jobs.

That works out to about $1.5 million per job – oh, and Granholm isn’t the only governor using Spendulus money to fill in the State budget…lots of States are doing it just as we here at Blogs for Victory predicted.

You poor, sad, little liberals – you thought that Obama was going to usher in a grand, new era. Well, he’s not – because he’s the product of a corrupt, Democrat machine as are all the other leading Democrats. People who rise by corruption don’t tend to be straight arrows. You’d be better off with the likes of Jerry Brown and Dennis Kucinich – you’d hardly ever win, but at least you’d have some reasonably honest (and highly entertaining) leaders. Right now, you’ve got political barnacles who are mostly interested in feathering their nests and dodging the hard choices until they are out of office, or at least in their second term.

The money is going to favored groups and individuals, for the most part, and that which isn’t being spread around as payola is being used to hide fiscal malfeasance. I hope that you eventually wake up from your stupor, but I don’t have much hope of it.

Just in case anyone out there is breaking out the champagne over DOW 10,000:

…While in absolute terms the Dow may cross whatever the Fed thinks is a necessary and sufficient mark before QE begins to taper off (Dow crosses 10k just as Treasury purchases expire), the truth is that over the past 10 years (the first time the DJIA was at 10,000) the dollar has lost 25% of its value. Therefore, we present the Dow over the last decade indexed for the DXY, which has dropped from 100 to about 75. On a real basis (not nominal) the Dow at 10,000 ten years ago is equivalent to 7,537 today! In other words, not only have we had a lost decade for all those who focus on the absolute flatness of the DJIA, but it is also a decade where the US Consumer has lost 25% of purchasing power from the perspective of stocks!…

Fiat money – ie, money not backed by a hard asset, such as gold – is the perfect invention of Big Government. Used to be, when the government wanted to debase the currency, they had to call in all the coins and re-mint them with a lower gold content…and you could dodge this by holding on to the old coins. But with fiat money, its so much easier – all that had to happen is the Fed saying, “hey, presto!” and there are several trillion more fiat dollars in circulation…which means, of course, that the dollars you foolishly saved (in a bank, in a stock fund, under your mattress: doesn’t matter) have now become worth less than they were before.

This doesn’t hurt government – in fact, it helps government: it allow government to pay us back with bad money for the good money we lent it via bond purchases. It also doesn’t tend to hurt the very rich, as they either own hard assets (which will naturally climb in value as the dollar goes down), or they get returns equal to or greater than the amount Uncle Sam is stealing from us. Since we started down the road to fiat money – in 1913, with the creation of the Fed – our dollar has lost 99% of its value; Obama and the Fed are going for broke…trying to see if they can make our money absolutely worthless, and then they’ll pay the bondholders (this is why China is rather ticked off at us, by the way).

Sheer class:

On Apologizing To Rush

No, it didn’t make me throw up in my mouth. I’m a little sick that I got it wrong, as I should be. But not sick that I have to apologize to Rush. The thing is this: I don’t think that you guys expect me to get it write right 100 percent of the time. I think you expect me to try very hard to be accurate, and immediately acknowledge when I’ve failed to do so. I don’t fear losing readers because I was wrong. I very much fear losing readers because they think I’m not being honest.

You can’t say fairer than that – all of us, I think, have sometimes rushed too quickly to seize upon something we think hurts the other side; it shouldn’t happen, but we’re human, and so it does…but what matters what you do when you make a mistake, and you know it. Ta-Nehisi shows us all how its done.

And I hesitated before bringing it up – the inhumanity of our age, as expressed by abortion, is graphically on display. Don’t read this unless you’ve got a strong stomach.

The doom and gloom headline goes:

Arctic Sea Ice Extent is Third Lowest on Record

Wow! Third lowest! Incredible! But, wait…

Arctic sea ice reached its minimum extent around September 12… According to scientists affiliated with the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), sea ice coverage dropped to 5.10 million square kilometers (1.97 million square miles) at its minimum. The ice cover was 970,000 square kilometers (370,000 square miles) greater than the record low of 2007 and 580,000 square kilometers (220,000 square miles) greater than 2008…

…The four lowest ice extents on record have occurred between 2005 and 2009, with the record minimum reached during a dramatic drop in ice cover in 2007 that was exacerbated by unusual polar winds.

So, the ice cover hit nadir in 2007 and has increased substantially in 2008 and 2009 – and the worst year was partially caused by unusual winds. Anyone sense a trend here? Now, if you go in to the story you’ll see that the claim is that ice cover is 34% lower than it was 30 years ago…but, then again, we were in a warming trend during that time and it does make a bit of sense that ice would recede…meanwhile, for the past decade we’ve been in a cooling trend, and now we see the ice sheet expanding, again. Anyone want to bet me that in 15 years or so it will be back where it was 30 years ago?

Meanwhile, the zealots are still at it, asserting that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years(the article has a picture of people sun bathing in the Arctic…so that you liberals out there can understand)…nice of them to put it out that far, long after a presumptive passing of “cap and trade” and other screwball enviro-fascist bills…

From Bloomberg:

The cost of living in the U.S. rose at a slower pace in September, showing inflation will not be a threat as the economy emerges from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The 0.2 percent gain in the consumer-price index followed a 0.4 percent increase in August, as forecast, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. Excluding food and energy costs, the so-called core index also climbed 0.2 percent, more than anticipated and pushed up by health care and a rebound in auto prices. Rents dropped for the first time in 17 years. (emphasis added)

First time in 17 years. For you liberals out there, I’ll say that slowly: first – time – in – 17 – years.

Still have faith in Obamunism?

HAT TIP: Mish’s

From Reason:

Watching Washington policymakers in action, I sometimes think they make mistakes because of unrealistic goals, flawed thinking, blind obedience to party, or dubious information. And sometimes I think they make mistakes because they are—how to put this?—clinically insane.

There is no other way to explain what is going on at the Federal Housing Administration, which provides federal guarantees for home mortgages. Given the collapse in real estate prices, the weak economy, and the epidemic of foreclosures, banks are acting with more caution than before. They now commonly require home buyers to make down payments of 20 percent to qualify for a loan. But the FHA often requires only 3.5 percent.

That’s the equivalent of playing pool with a guy named Snake, and it’s had two predictable effects. The first is that the agency is insuring about four times as many home loans as it did just three years ago. The other is that the number of FHA-approved borrowers who are not repaying their loans is climbing. Since last year, the default rate has jumped by 76 percent.

Read the whole thing.

Andy McCarthy opines on Rush and race:

I’m hunkered down on some projects and just heard about the phony attacks on Rush by the race-hustlers extraordinaire, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. I know Rush has big shoulders and he’ll handle it just fine. But everytime one of these stories comes up, which is all too often, I can’t help but think it says a lot more about us than whoever happens to be in the cross-hairs. Why do Sharpton and Jackson have careers? Why aren’t they shown the door for serial racism and dishonesty? Why does anyone give a damn what they say? Why does the press treat them like they matter when they’re a walking, talking parodies?…

…There’s only one way this nonsense ever goes away: When we say “enough!” and tell the race-baiters their time is up. It’s too much of an industry, so it probably won’t happen tomorrow. But the Sixties ideal is crashing and burning before our very eyes, and I think it’ll take a lot of its warped obsessions down with it.

Unfortunately, this stuff won’t go away no matter how much or how often we say, “enough!”. It can go away, however, if we say “budget cuts”. You see, by one means or another, the left is largely funded on the tax payer’s dime – either directly via government grants, or indirectly through tax breaks for donating to leftwing causes.

We actually send taxpayer dollars every year to Planned Parenthood – the nation’s largest abortion provider gets taxpayer funds…supposedly to help people, but no matter how you slice it, it frees up funds for Planned Parenthood to then go about putting political pressure on the system to advance abortion. We’re paying for them to fight against the laws we pass to place common sense restrictions on abortion. We also consider it equally worthy to send money to Catholic Charities as to the Environmental Defense Fund – we pay for environmentalists to pressure government to restrict our freedoms and increase our cost of living.

On and on it goes like that – Southern Poverty Law Center, Code Pink, PETA, ACLU Foundation, NPR, etc, etc, etc…all tax exempt and donations are tax deductible…and while all of these groups will claim non-partisanship, does anyone want to say that they ever, even in a million years, advance anything center/right? These groups employ liberals who attack the center and right at every opportunity and who follow the party line rigidly – they might as well all be in one organization, because they all work together to advance the left. And we’re subsidizing them!

So, we need to adjust things – first off, to stop all government grants for leftwing groups, secondly to change the definition of “charity” to actually mean “a group which does charity work”. What do we mean by “charity work”? You know – getting out there and actually providing some physical help to the suffering. Not “advocacy” – advocacy never filled a single belly. If you want to do it, fine: but do it on your own dime. If you really think it important, then you’ll gladly sacrifice yourself to do it.

Once we get back in to power, de-funding the left will have to be a major effort – in fact, its a lot more important, in the long run, than passing things like tax reform, spending curbs, etc. It is the means by which will force the left out of politics – the left has never been popular and was never able to advance seriously in American political life until it got its hand in the taxpayer’s pocket. If we can de-fund the left, we’ll have ensured the dominance of the center/right – which is only natural, as America is a center/right nation. A center/right nation which has, unfortunately, paid leftists to undermine itself.

In addition, getting the liberals out of their well-paid sinecures will force them to get real jobs…and once they experience life in the real world, they’ll start to modify their asinine views.

A long way out, but still good news:

Republican-turned-Democratic Senator Arlen Specter trails potential GOP challenger Pat Toomey by five points in an early look at Pennsylvania’s 2010 Senate race. But another Democrat, Joe Sestak, runs dead-even with the likely Republican candidate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Pennsylvania voters shows 45% would vote for Toomey if the election were held today. Forty percent (40%) would vote for Specter, while six percent (6%) prefer a third option. Nine percent (9%) are undecided.

If Sestak wins the Democratic nomination, however, the race is a toss-up: 38% for Sestak and 37% for Toomey. In August, Sestak trailed Specter by 13 points in the race for the nomination.

The bad news is that Democrats are figuring out that Specter may be a sure-loser…on the other hand, Democrat leaders never give a darn what rank-and-file Democrats want, and so they might muscle Specter through…which would be good news for us. Even if Democrats are smart enough to nominate Sestak, there is still a very good chance we’ll win in PA next year – the Democrat “brand” is becoming more toxic by the day, and with unemployment set to be 10% or higher all through 2010, there’s not much chance Democrats will be able to burnish their image.

It got the DOW to surge above 10,000 for the first time in a year; what was it?

Well…

JPMorgan Chase & Co. posted its highest profit since the subprime mortgage market collapsed in 2007, relying on a surge in investment-banking revenue to weather higher losses on consumer loans…

…The investment-banking unit generated $1.92 billion in profit during the quarter, or more than half the bank’s total…

..Profit in the corporate and private-equity business was $1.29 billion, compared with a loss of $1.78 billion last year, because of trading gains on investments…

Woohoo!!! What a performance! Everything is going perfect! Except…

…The retail bank posted net income of $7 million, a decline of $57 million from a year earlier, as the bank set aside more money to cover credit losses. Home-equity charge-offs climbed to $1.14 billion from $663 million and are expected to reach about $1.4 billion “over the next several quarters,” the bank said in slides posted on its Web site. Prime-mortgage losses rose to $525 million from $177 million.

Credit cards, a division Dimon has said is unlikely to make money this year or next, lost $700 million, compared with income of $292 million in the third-quarter of last year. The net charge-off rate, excluding some bad loans acquired in the takeover of Washington Mutual, climbed to 9.41 percent, from 8.97 percent in the second quarter and 5 percent in the year- earlier period.

Card Forecast

Dimon said on the conference call with analysts that credit cards may lose $1 billion in the first quarter.

“The capital markets portion of the industry was very strong in the quarter, while there are continued problems in the traditional banking part of the company…(emphasis added)

So, what happened? A large bank played around with stocks and made a huge profit during a big sucker rally … meanwhile, what it normally does for a living was a complete disaster and is expected to get worse. And this means that unless the stock market continues to climb, J P Morgan will be in very deep doo-doo.

Oh, and the good news from China? Exports were only 15% lower than last year…this is considered good because it wasn’t a 21% drop…