Barack Obama knew full well how bad things were when he promised he'd cut the deficit in half, when his economic team said that if his stimulus package passed, unemployment would not rise above 8 percent, and much of the rest.

What this means, then, is that Barack Obama's only excuse for his failures is a myth and a mirage — a manufactured, after-the-fact effort to escape accountability for his own words, his own commitments, and his own failings.

Barack Obama appears on the Late Show. Not only does he say “we don’t need to worry about [the national debt] short term”, but then he can’t even tell David Letterman how much the national debt even is when asked.