Obama's oratory

"Sheesh, the guy is Jimmy Carter."

Michael Wolff, of Vanity Fair, doesn't even care for President Obama's speeches.

The Unbearable Lightness of Obama

OK. He can deliver a great speech, at least when the teleprompter is on. He looks good--plug in Joe Biden's remarks from the Democrat primary. But can he govern? Does he even want to govern, as opposed to just being President, which is undeniably a cool gig? I would say the jury is still out, or would be, if he had gotten around to picking one.

Very soon, people are going to start taking him at his word when he says: "blame me."

Where is our country headed?

There has been a slew of articles recently about the direction our country is taking. Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker asks Are We a Banana Republic?. Powerline also has a cartoon that captures the current tone of Washington (scroll down about 3/4ths of the way).

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn writes about The Outrage Kabuki now taking place in Washington.

Finally, Peter Robinson has some disquieting perspective from two people who have first-hand knowledge about banana republics.

Do I share their concerns? Absolutely! The claim that we are a nation of laws, not men may quickly be turning into the tag line of a bad joke. There are two related phenomena here: the refusal of our elected representatives to take responsibility for their own frantically-enacted laws (see my earlier post on this), and their efforts to scapegoat private citizens and enact punitive laws against them. Neither bodes well for the country.

This certainly isn't the change I was hoping for.

Who is in charge of our government?

Apparently the British aren't the only ones unable to get the Treasury Department to answer their telephones. Representative Paul Kanjorski (D.), Chairman of the House Capital Markets Subcommittee, says that he knew about the AIG bonuses more than a month before they were issued. He further stated that, if Secretary Geithner claims that he only found out about the bonuses after they were issued, he should check with his telephone and mail departments. He repeatedly contacted Treasury about this issue for more than a month before the bonuses were awarded. The video is here.

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn wonders whether the teleprompter is running things at the White House, and, if so, why it isn't doing a better job.

Obama's priorities

Although President Obama has warned us repeatedly that the country is facing an economic "crisis" that could turn into a "catastrophe," numerous commentators have noted that his stated priorities do not address, much less solve, the underlying causes of the economic downturn. In his State of the The Union address, the President stressed that we need cap and trade for carbon emissions, universal healthcare, and education reform . Each of these policy initiatives can be debated on their merits, but none of them address our core economic problems. So, is the Administration tackling our economic problems?

The British are beginning to wonder (HT: Jonah Goldberg). The head of the British civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, made a rare complaint about the new Administration. Sir Gus and his minions have been trying to consult with the US Treasury regarding the upcoming G20 world economic summit. But he can't get anyone to answer the phone. "There is nobody there," he said. "You cannot believe how difficult it is."

Obviously, this does not bode well for the country or even for the world economic order. Moreover, it reinforces the impression that this Administration is not ready for prime time. Saturday Night Live may wish to take notice.

The cost of Obama's proposed mortgage bailout plan

A New York Times article reports today that the administration's mortgage bailout plan is estimated to cost about $75 billion to "help as many as 4 million people avoid foreclosure . . .." I did the math: it works out to $18,750 per homeowner. While I don't have any benchmark, we should be able to accomplish this for a lot less .

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Obama's first month in office

Does anyone really know what the blizzard of plans that Obama has put forward in his first month in office really entail, other than a massive increase in the size of government and government spending? I doubt it. Certainly not the legislators who have voted and will be voting on these various plans. I don't believe a single one of them read the full spending bill that just passed before voting on it.

This rush (panic really) to legislate is tragic, perhaps catastrophic. Nancy Pelosi's ludicrous claim that every month that passed without the passage of the spending bill would cause the loss of 500 million American jobs is emblematic of the lack of serious consideration these proposals have received.

The military says that speed kills. In the legislative arena, speed leads to the frantic passage of bills written by nameless staffers and passed by elected officials who don't even know what is in them. What we do know is that all of this, if passed, will cost a staggering amount. And President Obama's proposals to pay for all or even most of this new spending are voodoo economics on stilts. And it will be with this for a very long time, even if it turns out we don't like it.

Mark Steyn sums this up better than I can. He certainly does it more wittily.