Presidential Follies

• How ironic that President Obama committed the gaffe on the Tonight Show of comparing his bowling skills to the Special Olympics right after I changed my appraisal of his term so far from "incompetent" to "retarded". While his poor judgment in joking tells us how ill suited he is for the presidency in terms of demeanor, the comparison he made, while meant to be self-effacing, in fact reveals his biggest problem: he's a poser. He's not up to the job and he's trying to overcome that by pretending that he is.
  
  In addition to the Special Olympics remark, mostly overlooked are the jokes about flying in Air Force One and wearing the Presidential Seal. This is not the first time his fascination with the symbols of the office has been made apparent. Think back to last summer when his campaign made up its own quasi-presidential seal and to the elaborate staging of the (very disappointing rhetorically) speech in Denver. Obama is all about style and little about substance. It matters now that he actually has the office. A real operator like Putin will make mincemeat out of him if it ever comes to blows. And it will.
  
  
• The AIG mess continues to spiral out of control. I don't think the Obama administration meant for it to be more than a quick detour to distract from other problems, but now they've got a mob mentality going.
  
  We don't know a thing about these AIG executives except that they got bonuses to which they were contractually entitled. In any group of people there are those deserving of their success and those who are not. So I'm sure there are some sleazeballs among these people. But no doubt there are some who have, through hard work, determination, risk, and making their own luck, made it to the big leagues of finance work and earned every penny of the bonuses through work that saved assets, saved jobs, and protected their company and the economy at large from further damage than was already happening.
  
  The Obama administration and their hangers-on have demonized these people as if they are stealing money from the taxpayers because the government is involved in their business. By this logic we should also go after the baseball players who get huge salaries in a sports organization to which the government has given a monopoly. Certainly a huge portion of Oprah's exorbitant income and assets should come back to the people because her medium is subsidized by government regulation. And Ted Turner? Why should he own so much land, having made his fortune off access to the government via CNN? And how about all these state lottery winners? Why should they make off like thieves with taxpayer money? The payoff should be smaller and more of the money kept for education or roads or whatever. Certainly the lottery executives shouldn't be making more than, say, $250k per year.
  
  The fact is, whether it's poor kids from Puerto Rico who make it big on the diamond, a black nobody like Oprah Winfrey whose father was a barber in Nashville, or a Ted Turner whose father committed suicide, they all present stories of immense, and I think most people would say deserved, success through the free market system. And all of their success is secured by what? CONTRACTS. Contracts are the basis for all business, all economic activity, in the free world. If you don't honor your contracts, you are soon history.
  
  Sometimes it hurts like hell to honor a contract. Business turns sour after you make a deal, or you find out you didn't make the deal you thought you were making. This is where due diligence comes in. Caveat emptor. Congress, with President Obama's blessing and guidance, made really bad deals on the various bailouts, stimulus bills, and other recent legislation. But it's the deals they've made. It is incredible hypocrisy to try to welsh on the deals now by attacking the businesses and individuals to whom they have forked over piles of cash. It is not those entities' fault that they assume their contracts are valid. It is the administration's fault for neither reading the bills they shepherded through Congress with such haste nor allowing public review of them.
  
  
• There is an incredible churning of stomachs going on right now among those thinking people who supported Obama for president. While those of us on the conservative side feel an awful despair or impotence in the face of one lunatic act of legislation after another, some of which are even aided by supposed conservatives like Lamar Alexander, what we don't realize is that there is a very huge pool of influential people who may still support Obama on the surface, but only to save face or stall for time to find another option. They are eaten up with remorse and shame for their support of this bumbling, destructive man.
  
  
• It is not a fun time to be in business whether as worker or owner. But it is an amazing time for history. Not for all that hogwash about the first black's being elected. That's only impressive to bigots, which I believe the vast majority of Americans are not anymore. What's so interesting is how the American system is going to react to this fly in the ointment. I really don't know. And I don't think anyone else does either.