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How could I have said such bad things about President Obama? How could I have said he was the leader of the grow-the-government-at-all-costs liberal wing of the Democratic Party? How could I, like Charlie Kraauthimer use the term Social Democrat, even when others were using the more pejorative Socialist? How could I have ever suspected that by taking over the auto industry, trying to take over the banking industry, writing legislation to take over the medical industry that Obama was really the candidate of fiscal responsibility and small government? Federalization? Heck no, we’re all Republicans here, now.

The Left must be in horror watching Obama Reagan, just as the rest of us were when we watched Obama Marx. Jon Stewart is just fit to be tied, brutalizing the once deified savior of activist government, the New York Times is on suicide watch. Lord knows what Jessie is thinking.

But the chameleon in chief knows…

I heard this morning about the President’s Nobel Peace Prize. It was followed by laughter, and the running joke of the morning: “I thought I was reading The Onion” people said. The incredulousness is deep on both the left and the right. Mr. Obama needs to think long and hard about accepting this award. The vapidity of the criteria used for his selection could ratify in the public mind the vapidity of his prior and current achievements.

When I was young, civil disobedience was the tool of choice of the left. Now it has become the tool of the right. In August conservatives filled town halls. Today they filled the Washington Mall.

While the right is not really comfortable, yet, with the tactics of Gandhi – they stand stiffly, wear pastels and khakis, their signs have none of the humor of the old 1960’s banners, they look like they are going to overheat in the sun, and no one burns their bras or even takes off their cloths – the crowds are big and growing.

This must be bitter sweet for President Obama, our community organizer in chief…

Yep it’s a lie. After the summer of discontent, and the President’s speech last night (with its heckling) I’ve written up my thoughts on the current health care debate.

I wish we were talking about the issues that would actually solve the problem and stop all the lies. But then again, it’s not really about health care, right?

One of the things I’m surprised about is the resiliency of the economy. Things are flattening out, opportunists are making their moves on low prices in many industries. Business is starting up again, mostly because credit is beginning to flow out of the banks.

I really thought it would have been much worse. Given the environment of the crisis, regime change in Washington being the largest and most disruptive, I would have thought by now the pavement would have been fracturing, buildings collapsing, that there would be revolution in the streets.

I said this to Shannon yesterday as we walked cross town on the way to a meeting of one of her non-profit groups that works with disabled vets, and she stopped cold in the middle of Park Avenue.

“You? I can’t believe it….

Back when I was in commerce we’d watch a young executive making a play for relevance and import and say, “Big heros don’t solve small problems.” It’s a version of the old “make a mountain out of a mole hill” idea, but much more dangerous if you let it get out of hand.

On April 3 Eamon Javers at Politico reported on Obama’s meeting with the nation’s finance executives (Inside Obama’s bank CEOs meeting) One could call it a staff meeting since everyone in the room now works for Obama.

The description of the meeting went…

“Dimon (JPMC CEO Jamie Dimon) also insisted that he’d like to give the government’s TARP money back as soon as practical, and asked the president to “streamline” that process. But Obama didn’t like that idea — arguing that the system still needs government capital. The president offered an analogy: “This is like a patient who’s on antibiotics,” he said. “Maybe the patient starts feeling better after a couple of days, but you don’t stop taking the medicine until you’ve finished the bottle.” Returning the money too early, the president argued could send a bad signal. Several CEOs disagreed, arguing instead that returning TARP money was their patriotic duty, that they didn’t need it anymore, and that publicity surrounding the return would send a positive signal of confidence to the markets.”

But you see all this isn’t about confidence in the economy, is it? The government has its hooks in the banks now and it is not going to let go.

“Just don’t call it a surge”.

From a policy perspective I guess I should be happy. The Obama administration is pursuing policies that look identical to those from the last administration, even if they are named differently. It’s become so blatant that even the New York (Obama is the messiah!) Times has begun to report it, and Jon Stewart is laughing at it.

Tens of thousand of troops are pouring into terrorist enclaves. (We used to call that “the surge”)

Know enemies of the state will be detained indefinitely (Close Guantanamo, but move the prisoners to an other secret facility, and keep some there, perhaps, forever)

Pay cap restrictions are being circumvented (The administration is building loop holes into the Pay for Performance act and providing instruction to their employees at the banks on how to use them)

We no longer are fighting a war on terror, now we have “overseas contingency operations” to prevent “man-caused catastrophes” (Listening to Hillary say these ridiculous phrases makes me think of the sweetness of political revenge. No woman from the Midwest can say those words without sounding churlish.)

But somehow I am dishearten by the disingenuousness of it all…

The first good news to emerge since the start of the Financial Crisis came out yesterday as the remarkably dumb regulations requiring Mark-to-Market accounting were repealed. Maybe the government can do some good, after all.

Mark-to-Market (MtM) accounting, along with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) were the two prime regulatory failures leading to the current crisis. Coupled with public mandated policy to extend mortgages into sub-prime markets through the facilitation of Fanni Mae and Freddie Mac, Mark-to-Market caused, and then accelerated, the financial crisis and lead to the failure of major banking institutions around the globe.

“But I thought it was the greedy bankers that did this?”

Yes, that is what you are being told. Targeting a small group for blame is easier than telling you the truth, that those bankers were working in a system created by gasp Washington.

It is nearly impossible for the current administration to say this becuse they have a vested interest in villifying a secret enemy of those that ‘did’ rather ‘that’ which did, because the ‘that’ is them. Now however, having exausted all other options their only recourse has been to do what works and change some really bad regulations. It took the French and Germans to beat it out of poor Mr. Obama though.

SOX and MtM came out of …

They are Looting My Tax Dollars!

Neil Cavuto, who can be like a rabid dog off of its meds, dressed down Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) Tuesday over the “Pay for Performance Act,” a bill Grayson is pushing on the Hill. You can’t miss the clip, it’s all over the web.

The bill is, of course, not about performance. It’s about power. It allows the Treasury to arbitrarily set the pay of all employees; or all employees at companies receiving federal money, which is pretty much the same thing, or will be soon.

There are no guidelines in the bill defining reasonable pay, just authority and full discretion given to the Administration to bypass the market and set pay by non-appealable fiat.

During the interview, Cavuto created …

Populist outrage, it’s all the rage. Everyone’s doing it. Newsweek’s cover story screamed about it. Barney (“I want a list of names!”) Frank is leading it. Anarchist children in London are sharing their view of a utopian future by breaking windows (“In the future we will let in fresh air!”).

But, what it’s all about is a communal display of “blame the other guy, because I’m not at fault.”

The lack of integrity that is washing out of America, and that has now become a global virus, is a vast disgrace. Perhaps the greatest executor of this hideousness is Paul Krugman who had the temerity to insult every American this week in the Times. The severity of Krugman’s egregiousness comes for the fact that he knows better. Or should….

Leaders lead from the podium. Those who say otherwise do not understand how leadership works. Regardless of your political stripes, few dispute that somewhere along the path of the last eight years George W. Bush stopped leading the country, primarily because he failed at the podium of public opinion.

President Obama has been something of national Rorschach inkblot test. People see in him what they want. His (fabulous) inauguration speech today was no different. Many will see in it what they want.

Here are my picks of favorite quotes. What do they say about me, and what does all this say about us?

Is this the end of cynicism?

Obama’s soaring victory speech in Chicago last night was an oratorical flourish of positivism, such as has been missing in public discourses in America for years.

But what does this victory mean to the future tone of discourse in America? Is this the end of cynicism, the tone of voice which has become the best way to identify one as an American? Now that the revolution is over how will we speak, casually and formally, without the ability to mock, snark or deride the archetypes built since the 1960’s?

Certainly the old rebellion is over, so what will replace its messenger, which has been the sound of sarcasm in our voice?

John Renesch runs a thoughtful blog over at The Global Dialogue Center.

His recent post was called “Wall Street Skull and Crossbones”. I took issue with his emotional characterization of bankers as pirates.

He wrote: “Their sole purpose is to make a profit, and to do so with the least amount of capital as possible.”

John: You say that like it’s a bad thing…

I’m not sure I know how to react to the news today that the House of Representative defeated the bill giving Treasury the ability to purchase mis-priced assets from the banking system.

As the market collapsed, $1.1 trillion was destroyed in falling share values held by Americans. That is much more than the $700 billion that Treasury requested. So we no longer have the $700 billion, and we lost another $400 billion. I can’t think of a better definition of “stupid”…