Obama's Tangled Webs

Today is Earth Day, so if you haven’t already, sprawl yourself on the ground 
and give Mother Earth a great big hug. The president and vice president 
decided to mark Earth Day by hightailing it to New York City. I know: New 
York City isn’t exactly the most logical place to spend Earth Day: acres of 
earth are paved over and under for high rises, streets, and subways. But 
Earth Day wasn’t the reason they trekked to the Big Apple. They had another 
reason. Obama was in Manhattan to deliver a sanctimonious dressing-down of 
Wall Street. (Biden just came to sit for a hard-hitting interview with 
the ladies of “The View.”)

At the same time Obama was blistering the big banks, we learn that the head 
of the Biggest, Meanest, Greediest Bank, Goldman Sachs, has been to the 
White House at least 4 times for meetings with Obama and his chief economic 
adviser, Larry Summers—WHILE Goldman’s lawyers were negotiating with the 
SEC over civil fraud charges against Goldman.

Now THAT’S weird! The president who pledged to bring a new kind of politics 
to Washington, stripped of conflicts of interest and lobbying and big money 
and special favors seemingly engaged in all of those things? At once?!

Say it ain’t so! Of course, it’s so. In the immortal words of Obama’s 
former pastor, Jeremiah Wright: “No messiah here, just another politician.”

Obama was on Wall Street today, acting the hypocrite. He went on about the 
damage done by the big banks while he and his White House are up to their 
eyeballs in the big banks. They love them well enough to take—and 
keep—their money. They love them well enough to schmooze with their 
Chairmen. They love them well enough to court their votes.

But in public, they wield the plastic pitchforks in a faux populist kabuki 
dance. Obama has turned his campaign tagline—“hope and change”—into a 
punchline. The only problem is that no one is laughing.

To quote Sir Walter Scott: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we 
practice to deceive.”