Patriot that I am...let me start by saying that today I drove about 70 miles (bridges and highways included), went through 30 some traffic lights, patronized 2 gas stations, 1 restaurant, 1 coffeeshop and the various utility companies at my home. In Obama language, I created somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,472 jobs.

  Prove I didn't.

  By now we're all feeling the effects of the recession to some degree. Even if by perception only, at a minimum you're likely watching what you have a little more closely, and forecasting the future with a little more scrutiny. We're almost entirely blanketed by some degree of fear.

  "When will things turn around?"

  "How close to home will it hit?"

  "How bad can it really get?"

  "Why me? Sweet mercy...why, oh why me?"

  Obama's flagship selling point for rushing his and Nancy Pelosi's stimulus bill through was to alleviate these fears. At the heart of that sale is the promised creation of 4 million jobs. Nevermind the reality that the objective, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office shows almost scientifically the long-term damage that will ultimately be done as a result of this bill. Nevermind the Nobel prize winners and countless economists who see an American limb being hacked off where stitches would have sufficed. Nevermind the reality that none of your Democratic leaders who voted for it actually bothered to read, let alone consider, how almost 1 trillion dollars of your money will be spent. Nevermind the possibility that thousands of those jobs may be chalked up to saving wild mice in California (a measure for which tens of millions of dollars are set aside within the now active "jobs creating, stimulus" bill). Forget all that. Forget all the wasteful spending that has absolutely nothing to do with job creation or stimulating the economy, and serves exclusively to meet liberal agendas through the use of fear-mongering during these now apparent, very difficult and vulnerable times. All Obama and Pelosi need or want you to hear is that passage of the bill means the creation of 4 million jobs.

  So now what? Great news, right? Job creation means many good things for our economy: the unemployed will once again have work, they will begin pumping money in to the economy, banks will eventually start lending again, Peggy Joseph won't have to worry about paying her mortgage or putting gas in her car, Henrietta Hughes can rest peacefully knowing our tax dollars will keep her fat and happy, and Nadya Suleman can pop out another 20 or 30 kids. Back to normal, and then some - when you factor in the counter productive entitlements that are embedded in the 33 new government programs, and the expansion of 73 others.

  The reality is, Obama's claim to create 4 million jobs is nothing short of an outright lie. His contention is that because the government is going to spend a lot of money on building and revitalizing roads and bridges, jobs will be created in the process. This promise of "new job creation" can be mirrored exactly to you getting in your car, picking up a homeless/jobless person, bringing him/her home to wash your dishes, paying them $50.00, and sending them on their way. Yes, you created a job...but what now? Are you going to keep him/her gainfully employed for decades to come? The government can't create jobs, it can only create "work". And when that work is done? Well, no more jobs and those people are right back where they started.

  "But something had to be done!"

  True. Something also had to be done about my frozen pipes earlier this winter, but I didn't dynamite them to once again enjoy the flow of water. Still, the boost of short-term work is not a bad thing, but it's what's in the rest of the bill that makes it such an abomination...and it was largely the lipstick of "job creation" that nurtured the passage of these fraudulent, wasteful and dangerous ulterior measures embedded in the remaining 1,070 pages of the 1,073 page bill. And now that it passed, and our government will have grown and embedded itself in the private sector moreso than ever before in our history, to reverse these ultimately counter-productive effects will be nothing short of unprecedented.

  So what about actual government jobs? What about jobs created within the federal, state and local government institutions that amount to more than short-term, short-lived, before-long-you're-right-back-where-you-started private sector "work"? Fair enough. But here, you're ultimately robbing Peter to pay Paul, because the government can't create "wealth" either. As long as taxpayers pay the salary, you literally cannot call this "stimulus". Sure, there's always the communist hope that someday we'll all be working for the government, but where would that get us? Our nation would be one, long DMV line...producing just enough to get by, and eventually lapped in to obscurity by the hungrier, competing nations who are already out performing us at the grass roots level.

  Now we get to my favorite: the jobs "saved" clause in the 4 million Obama promises to create. Most of what you're reading or hearing leaves this convenient caveat out. Simply, regardless of how much short-term work is created (ie "jobs"), Obama will still claim to have created 4 million jobs - because he's gone ahead and already speculated all the jobs that WOULD HAVE been lost, had this wasteful spending bill not been gouged out of your paycheck. So no matter what, with doom and gloom loading each of his chambers, good or bad, Obama will be preaching about all the jobs he "created"...as he speculates jobs saved and uses that math to prove a negative. In case you missed it prior to right now, you can't prove a negative.

  Prove that I didn't create 12,472 jobs today.

  Prove Obama won't have saved 4 million.

  Sure, he'll get caught in a lie or two. But as has become common practice from our media, the lie will be removed from the headlines as quickly as it was hoisted there. For instance...among Obama's proudest moments in trying to garner even a shred of Republican support - he said, "Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off."

  What did "Jim" (Jim Owens, CEO of Caterpillar) say when asked to back Obama's claim up? "The reality is we'll probably have to have more layoffs before we can start hiring again."

  Oops.

  Whether it's in defining "job creation", or "stimulus", or "urgency"...whether it's one of omission as it relates to the findings of one of Washington's few useful arms (the CBO), or the imaginary conversations he has with our country's top CEOs...all you can be sure of so far, is that Obama is a more dangerous liar than he is a good salesman.

  No? Okay....

  Let's put all this another way: You're all alive today only because President Bush took a tough stand against terrorism. Prove otherwise. Prove that had he not waged a costly, unpopular but clearly effective war on the terrorist regimes who want you dead - they wouldn't have been able to focus less on our resolve, and more on rallying their efforts...eventually leading to far worse and more frequent attacks than what we experienced in September, 2001.

  You can't have it both ways. Either Bush saved your life and the lives of everyone you love, or Obama is a dangerous liar whose only interest is increasing his own power. Which is it? If we're relying on negatives for proof, you can't argue one and not the other.

  So what happened to that one last job Obama planned to "create"? Why does it say "3,999,999" instead of "4,000,000" at the top of this page? If you're able to read this with an open mind and retain the level of honesty and logic that you should have mastered by the time you turned 15 years old...you'll be waving goodbye to that last job with me in 2012.

  Step up, stop making excuses for yourself, and stop patting yourself on the back when you make excuses for others. There's a level playing field in America that rewards responsibility and the progress-inducing nature of competition. Some need additional support, but imagine how much more would be available to them if it weren't so easy for the rest to take advantage, and if they weren't encouraged and enabled by our leaders on the left? The Democrats in 2009 need you and those you pity through rose-colored lenses to stay poor, because it's through that false victimhood that they keep Peggy, Henrietta, Nadya and others dependent and falsely believing they have a right and/or need to be. You want to give? Give. Give yourself the freedom of clarity and your neighbor the gift of responsibility and the independence that follows it. Charity can't and won't happen in a voting booth, and rather than rewarding yourself for your imaginary belief to the contrary - let this be YOUR first act of personal responsibility: vote Republican, and save America.