" Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected," President Obama joked earlier this month at a Jobs and Competitiveness Council in North Carolina. The joke was in reference to a key element of the president's failed stimulus plan, which was meant to provide cash for quick projects that in turn would supposedly create jobs. And although unemployment is now at 9.2 percent (1/10 of a percent higher than it was when the president made the joke), Obama's not taking it back: