What Exactly Is Economic Stimulus?

To listen to some high profile politicians, stimulus is spending money to create a job.  Not only is there no scope associated to performance of spent dollars, but there is an assumption that any money spent should be considered stimulative.

I'm sure that there are a number of things in the package which are short term in that they provide an instant job that will perform a task and then end.  At the end of that particular "job", the money is gone, and a product such as a road or government building is the result.  This does not scale in terms of long term economic growth.

Equally stimulative (in many ways) would be to create short term jobs by providing politicians with an account for hiring prostitutes.  It would create "short term" jobs while creating no lasting stimulative effect as there was no scalable product produced.  The prostitutes would be getting paid, the politicians would be getting something of interest, and the money would work it's way back into the market.

Are we still supposed to believe that ANY spending by the government to hire somebody to do something constitutes stimulus that will recover our economy?