It seems the president has a new trick up his sleeve to convince us his bloated "stimulus" packages are solving our economic woes: deception.

ABC News called out the Obama administration the other day when, on the official Recovery.gov Web site, the administration reported "jobs added" in Congressional districts which didn't even exist.

Now, those responsible for the Web site say they're just reporting the number they're given, and Vice President Biden has told them to fix it. So that's all good, right? We're in the clear; the president is on top of it.

Not likely.

This is the transparency we were promised? Huge sums of money going to clearly unknown places to create clearly nonexistent jobs? In Oklahoma alone, this Web site tells us $19 million went to parts nonexistent. $11 million in Iowa. $48 million to Puerto Rico. $34 million in Arizona. $140.5 million in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

That is, we think. But as none of the districts mentioned in Oklahoma, Iowa, Arizona, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands seem to exist on any Congressional map, we really have no idea. Perhaps we're stimulating Tolkein's Middle Earth, instead!

Even these fictional stimulus projects seem unable to do much. That $19 million in Oklahoma only managed to create 15 jobs. Nice salaries, those.

This isn't simply a matter of changing a few numbers on a Web site, a mistyped district there, an extra "4" over there. No, this is a desperate floundering to appear to meet unmet promises.

Even in the real districts, these numbers, this great transparency we've been offered, mean nothing. If someone thinks a transaction saved someone a job, it gets counted. Not only is that job hypothetical, it's also one of those "saved" jobs, not actually new employment created. Not even the slightest bit of help to an unemployment rate higher than anything we've seen in over two decades. Continued...