VIDEO: NYT REPORTER ADMITS OBAMA KNEW NO 'SHOVEL-READY' PROJECTS EXISTED

Much was made this week about the Sunday New York Times magazine article by Peter Baker in which Obama admitted that he knew there were no 'shovel-ready' projects that stimulus dollars could fund, even though that was the whole point of the stimulus package. Perhaps as equally troubling as that admission is an admission from New York Times' resident Conservative in Name Only (CONINO) David Brooks, who said Obama admitted the same thing to him a year ago.

Brooks, while appearing on PBS' News Hour with Jim Lehrer claims that it was "obvious" there were no shovel-ready projects but said he didn't report on it because Obama wouldn't tell him on the record. The least he could have done was taken a position that opposed the stimulus if that claim is true.

Via Michelle Malkin:

MARK SHIELDS: How would you like to be a Democratic member of the House fighting for your life right now, getting hit over the head for having voted for the stimulus bill, and have the president say in The New York Times Sunday magazine, there’s no such thing as a shovel-ready project?

JIM LEHRER: Yes. That was — that’s the piece that’s been — that particular quote has really been drawing the flies — the fleas, has it not?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, I shouldn’t have confessed this. He said this to me off the record about a year ago. But it hasn’t…

JIM LEHRER: Off the record? So, then you can’t talk about it.
(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, because Peter Baker is a better than I am, because I couldn’t get him to go on the record with that thing.
(LAUGHTER)

JIM LEHRER: He said this to you a year ago?

DAVID BROOKS: It was obvious. I mean, you are trying to build a stimulus package. And when they were trying to build it, believe me, they would have loved to have filled it with infrastructure jobs. But the projects just didn’t exist. They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t find them.

Let there be zero doubt that David Brooks is a liberal in conservative clothing. Fast forward to the 10:00 mark to watch this exchange between Lehrer, Brooks, and Mark Shields.