U2 wordles - complete!

No Line On The Horizon (2009)

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004)

All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000)

Pop (1997):

Zooropa (1993)

Achtung Baby (1991)

Rattle & Hum (1988 - including non-U2 lyrics)

The Joshua Tree (1987)

The Unforgettable Fire (1984)

War (1983)

October (1981)

Boy (1980)

Tax Day Tea Party

Taxpayers Gather To Protest Spending, Taxes, Growing Debt

A Leadership of Cowards? Why is Eric Holder embarrassed about enforcing civil rights in Noxubee County?

Shock & Awe Meets the Four Prosperity Killers

In a surprise move today, the Bernanke Fed launched another shock-and-awe stimulus plan that will expand the Fed’s balance sheet another $1.2 trillion through the purchase of $300 billion in long-dated Treasuries, $750 billion in mortgage-backed securities (Fan/Fred), and another $100 billion in U.S. agency debt. The Fed also is launching its Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), which could go as high as $1 trillion when it’s all said and done.

The money quote in the FOMC statement: “To provide greater support to mortgage lending and housing markets, the Committee decided today to increase the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet further . . . .” The decision was unanimous — no dissents.

In response, Treasury rates plunged at the long end (as prices were bid up in expectation of Fed buying) and yields fell 50 basis points. Gold surged $45. The greenback plummeted. And stocks moved up 91 points, continuing the rally of the past week.

Of course, the Fed wants to get mortgage rates down toward 4 percent, and some on Wall Street will cheer this. However, it all has a 1970s feel to it.

The Obama budget raises tax rates on investors and businesses, and supports a cap-and-trade tax, universal health care, and various regulations for unionization. Meanwhile, a spate of trade protectionism is breaking out with Mexico and China. All of these are anti-growth policies. And now the Fed is ramping up its monetary pump-priming. So the obvious risk is too much money chasing too few goods producing a stagflationary recovery.

The dollar is out the window. Monetizing debt is back in style.

I go back to Art Laffer’s four prosperity killers: inflation, higher tax rates, re-regulation, and trade protectionism. You can put a check mark next to each box.

While the country is bashing AIG for its ridiculous bonus payments to the traders who blew up the global credit system — and AIG deserves to be bashed — the bigger reality is that economic policies appear to be moving in the wrong direction.

We will get an economic recovery. And there’s a pretty good short-term stock market rally in the cards. But you just have to wonder where all this is leading. Supply-side economics is out, along with hard money.

At a dinner two months ago with Nobelist Robert Mundell, one of the authors of Reaganomics along with Laffer, Mundell told me that we should stabilize the dollar, slash the corporate tax rate, and declare a two-year capital-gains tax holiday. Instead, top marginal tax rates are going up and the dollar’s going down. It can’t be a good thing.

So Many Democrats, So Much Phony Outrage

Obama Received a $101,332 Bonus from AIG

Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are - Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.

The A.I.G. Financial Products affiliate of A.I.G. gave out $136,928, the most of any AIG affiliate, in the 2008 cycle. I would note that A.I.G.’s financial products division is the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps and "misjudged" the risk.

The Washington Post reports a "mob effect" at A.I.G financial products division:

A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all.

With the anger and rage that is being exhibited against A.I.G., perhaps the bonuses Obama received from A.I.G. explain Obama's A.I.G crocodile tears.

Now that the Wall street Journal has revealed that A.I.G. paid bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 employees, it's time to ask if recipients of A.I.G. "bonuses," including President Obama, will give what now ought to be taxpayer money back?

Dodd: Administration pushed for language protecting bonuses

(CNN) -- Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN Wednesday that he was responsible for language added to the federal stimulus bill to make sure that already-existing contracts for bonuses at companies receiving federal bailout money were honored.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, appears on CNN's "The Situation Room" on Wednesday.

Dodd acknowledged his role in the change after a Treasury Department official told CNN the administration pushed for the language.

Both Dodd and the official, who asked not to be named, said it was because administration officials were afraid the government would face numerous lawsuits without the new language.

Dodd, a Democrat, told CNN's Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer that Obama administration officials pushed for the language to an amendment designed to limit bonuses and "golden parachutes" at those companies.

"The administration had expressed reservations," Dodd said. "They asked for modifications. The alternative was losing the amendment entirely."

On Tuesday, Dodd denied to CNN that he had anything to do with adding the language, which has been used by officials at bailed-out insurance giant AIG to justify paying millions of dollars in bonuses to executives after receiving federal money.

He said Wednesday that the "grandfather clause" language "seemed like innocent modifications" at the time. Watch Dodd's interview with CNN's Dana Bash »

"I agreed reluctantly," Dodd said. "I was changing the amendment because others were insistent."

Dodd said he did not speak to high-ranking administration officials and the change came after his staff spoke with staffers from Treasury.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.

On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, AIG chief executive Edward Liddy called the roughly $165 million in bonuses "distasteful" but necessary because of legal obligations and competition.

"We have to continue managing our business as a business -- taking account of the cold realities of competition for customers, for revenues and for employees," Liddy told a House Financial Services subcommittee. "Because of this, and because of certain legal obligations, AIG has recently made a set of compensation payments, some of which I find distasteful."

Pennsylvania Rep. Paul Kanjorski, the hearing's chairman, responded to Liddy's statement by arguing that AIG should have refused to pay all the bonuses -- regardless of its contractual obligations with the bonus recipients.

"Let them sue us," said Kanjorski, a Democrat.

Liddy, who joined AIG after the bailout, said some employees have returned their bonus money.

Senators and representatives have vowed to get the bonus money back, but questions have arisen about why Congress didn't act to prevent the bonuses in the first place.

"Well, the only lever we have in this is the fact that these corporations have come to the Congress of the United States and want a taxpayers' bailout," Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Wednesday on CNN's "American Morning."

"If it weren't for that, we would not have any leverage on how any individual corporation is being run, and we don't pretend to have any leverage on any corporation today in the United States that's not seeking federal help," said Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. Related: Grassley defends 'suicide' comment

AIG, an ailing insurance giant, has received more than $170 billion in federal assistance. Taxpayers now own nearly 80 percent of the company.

In a letter to Congress on Tuesday, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo confirmed that AIG paid 73 employees bonuses of $1 million-plus each this year after it received federal bailout money.

AIG will have to return the $165 million it paid in executive bonuses to the Treasury Department, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday.

Grassley and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, on Tuesday introduced a plan that would impose a hefty tax on retention bonuses paid to executives of companies that received federal bailout money or in which the United States has an equity interest. Watch Grassley describe how the tax would work »

Other lawmakers, such as Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York, said it would be unfair to use the tax code as punishment, but Grassley said it's not a question of being fair.

"It's unfair what they did to the taxpayers by paying bonuses when they don't have the money to pay bonuses," he said. iReport.com: Sound off on AIG

AIG Chairman and CEO Edward Liddy has defended the bonuses, saying the company needed them to retain top talent and because of contractual rights. He has pledged to reduce 2009 bonus payments, which AIG refers to as "retention payments," by at least 30 percent.

Libby is testifying Wednesday on Capitol Hill. He's likely to face tough questions from lawmakers despite not being at the helm of AIG when the financial fiasco happened. He took over about six months ago. Who's insured by AIG? »

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, said Wednesday that Congress can't just pass a law to abrogate any past contracts because that move would not hold up in court. Instead, he argued the executives don't deserve bonuses under the contract. Watch what Frank says about the bonuses »

"We own this company in effect, and we're not asking that these bonuses be rescinded because we have lent money to the company. I believe we are saying as the owners of the company, we do not think ... we should have paid bonuses to people who made mistakes who were incompetent," said Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. See facts, attitudes and analysis on the recession »

DFW Luncheon Series - Building Brand Loyalty in a World of High-Velocity Change: How to Embrace and Build a Successful Career in the Multilogue

Wednesday 18-Mar-09 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM CDT

We were unable to register you for this event as the event deadline has passed or the maximum number of seats available has been reached.

Speaker: David Chamberlin, Sr. Vice President
MS&L (a member of Publicis Group)

We were unable to register you for this event as the event deadline has passed or the maximum number of seats available has been reached.

Brookhaven Country Club
3333 Golfing Green Drive
Dallas TX 75234
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Phone: (972) 243-6151

Details for "DFW Luncheon Series - Building Brand Loyalty in a World of High-Velocity Change: How to Embrace and Build a Successful Career in the Multilogue"

Brand identity remains critical in today's marketplace, but brand loyalty diminishes as consumers become more and more focused on price. This is especially true in our current economic climate, when getting the best deal is more important than ever.

Join us at Brookhaven Country Club and hear David Chamberlin, award-winning international public relations expert and senior vice president of MS&L (a member of Publicis Group), discuss the five forces reshaping the American marketplace, including building brand loyalty through the multilogue — harnessing the power of word-of-mouth to promote your brand through social networking and collaborative tools such as online video, Widgets for syndication, wikis, message boards, forums and more. You’ll leave his presentation with an increased understanding of:

• Marketplace reality and influencers

• C-Suite — the empowered consumer

• The power of influence

• Ten ways to get ahead in the multilogue

Speaker David Chamberlin

David J. Chamberlin is an award-winning, public relations professional who has international senior level experience building and developing global and domestic communications programs and teams that take advantage of his extensive co-branding, community, gov't and constituent relations, crisis management, product and services marketing, and corporate and financial communications experience. He has worked with and directed internal and external teams for Fortune 500 companies, technology and financial services leaders, and the leading agencies in a number of the world's major markets.

Register by Tuesday 17-Mar-09 5:00 PM CDT
Pricing
Before 11-Mar-09 Before 17-Mar-09 After 17-Mar-09 Member: $28.00 $35.00 $45.00 Non-Member: $38.00 $45.00 $55.00 Student Member: $20.00 $25.00 $25.00 Become a member! View our membership application form.
We were unable to register you for this event as the event deadline has passed or the maximum number of seats available has been reached.
Event Contact	Event Coordinator
Linda Beheler	D' Forman
ama_dfw@yahoo.com	d@formangroup.com

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The Dissing of Laura Bush

By choosing Fort Bragg for her first official trip outside the capital last Thursday, Michelle Obama signaled that she will use her position as First Lady to promote one of America's most deserving causes: our military families. Plainly the families loved it. Just look at the smiles on those children as she read them "The Cat in the Hat."

So it was just a little disconcerting the next morning to hear the First Lady explain how she came to this issue during last year's campaign. "I think I was like most Americans," she told ABC News. "Pretty oblivious to the life of military families. Sort of taking it for granted."

Perhaps Mrs. Obama did take these families for granted. Surely, however, it's extraordinary to suggest that "most Americans" did the same. Certainly not the McCains, the Bidens and the Palins, each of whom had at least one son in uniform. More to the point, the presidential campaign in which she says the issue started "taking shape" for her came nearly seven years into a war that has inspired millions across America to step forward to help our troops.

The informal help includes everyday things such as providing meals or rides for a neighbor or church member whose spouse has been deployed overseas. The Web site AmericaSupportsYou.mil lists many of the more formal initiatives, which range from sending CARE packages overseas to helping homefront spouses find jobs. Under the category "military family support," the Web site provides links to more than 200 programs or organizations.

If the ABC interview was a one-off thing, it would be easy to overlook. But these days the reporting seems to reflect an assumption that if the Obamas haven't done something, nobody else has, either. Certainly the Washington Post did not challenge the First Lady's social secretary when she said, "one idea Michelle had was to have an event for military families -- here they are sacrificing so much for the country and many of them probably have never been invited to the White House."

This uncritical reportage does Laura Bush an injustice. In hundreds of ways -- picnics on the South Lawn, fund-raising for scholarships for the children of sailors on the USS Texas, unheralded visits with the wounded and families of the fallen, the work she did for military kids under her Helping America's Youth initiative -- Mrs. Bush showed our troops and their loved ones how close they were to her heart.

Possibly the difference in treatment owes something to Mrs. Bush's graciousness. Though she had many of her own initiatives -- from improving opportunities for Afghan women to giving voice to the advocates of democracy persecuted by Burma's ruling junta -- she also picked up some of the work of her predecessor, Hillary Clinton. For example, whenever Mrs. Bush spoke about her Preserve America program for national monuments, she would also give credit to Hillary Clinton's Save America's Treasures initiative.

That graciousness, alas, seems only to feed the orthodoxy that condescends to any American woman deemed insufficiently progressive on the received wisdom. This Stepford Wife treatment was on embarrassing display in a recent New York Times profile of Mrs. Obama. "[I]n a departure from her predecessor," gushed the Times, "Mrs. Obama has also begun promoting bills that support her husband's policy priorities." It repeated the point later in the piece.

Only one problem: It's not true. To mention just two, Mrs. Bush took a lead role in the reauthorization fights for No Child Left Behind and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Her advocacy included holding coffees in the residence with key legislators, working with Cabinet members, and promoting these policies in high-profile speeches in places from Africa to the National Press Club. It's just flat-out wrong to suggest otherwise, and the Times owes Mrs. Bush an apology.

Alas, as bad as the slights are, the compliments can be worse. In another recent article on Mrs. Obama, the Associated Press did include a paragraph about Mrs. Bush's work on Burma, Africa and so on. That paragraph was introduced by this sentence: "Even Laura Bush, widely viewed as a traditional first lady, broadened the role."

Even Laura Bush. In that gratuitous "even," the curtain is pulled back on the small-mindedness of an entire class.

Michelle Obama is an accomplished professional and the loving mother of two beautiful girls. In the coming years, she will make her own contributions to a more hopeful America. As she does, is it too much to ask our national press corps to find a way to give Mrs. Obama full credit for these achievements without denying Mrs. Bush the credit she deserves for hers?

Blender Reviews No Line on the Horizon

Immodesty fuels a great, alienated album from the universe’s biggest rock band. Reviewed by Rob Sheffield

“My ego’s not really the enemy,” Bono confides on the new U2 album. “It’s like a small child crossing an eight-lane highway/On a voyage of discovery.” Eight lanes? Keep counting, boyo. All over this record, he paves whole new interstates of ego, with exit ramps darting in and out of every verse, and that’s exactly how it should be. The days are gone when U2 were trying to keep it simple—at this point, the lads have realized that over-the-top romantic grandiosity is the style that suits them, so they come on like the cosmic guitar supplicants they were born to be. No Line on the Horizon is U2’s third killer in a row—by now, it’s bizarre to remember that just 10 years ago, everybody thought they were headed toward the dinosaur band tar pits. But ever since they went from midlife crisis to midlife rejuvenation, with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, they’ve been on a roll. Here, they go for the abstract, Euro vibe of Achtung Baby or The Unforgettable Fire, piling on the cathedral-size keyboards. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois are back on hand, giving the production a dub-like reverb without quashing the momentum. One song (“Fez—Being Born”) rolls along on the melodic pointillism of minimalist composer Steve Reich; while another (“I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”) bites the piano hook from Journey’s “Faithfully,” and that gives a rough picture of how far U2 range on Horizon. “Moment of Surrender” is the high point—seven minutes of Bono in gospel mode, lost in the late-night city (“I was speeding on the subway/Through the stations of the cross”), questing for salvation and finding it in Adam Clayton’s bass. The Edge fleshes out the yearning with some piercing crazy-diamond guitar. It’s the kind of gimme-divinity anthem that U2 cut their teeth on, except it really does seem like they’ve gotten better at these songs now that they’ve picked up some bummed-out adult grit. Bono actually sounds scared of something in this song, and whether his nightmares are religious or sexual, the fear gives his voice some heft. Compared to “Moment of Surrender,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” just sounds like a callow kid trying to snag a date at Bible camp. “Unknown Caller” is another vivid picture of spiritual jet lag—usually when rock stars use their cell phones as metaphors, it seems like they got bored at the airport, but this one truly puts on the chill. Bono reaches Bowie-in-Berlin levels of arty alienation (“I had driven to the scene of the accident/And I sat there waiting for me”), while the guitars crackle in the album’s finest Edgemanship. “Get On Your Boots” is a manic low-end rocker a la “Vertigo,” with phased ’70s-style synths, buzzing guitar and a breathless vocal from Bono that brings back fond memories of the days when the Edge tried to rap. (All the talk about “sexy boots,” community, joy, war, Satan and bomb scares—well, it’s typical of the jumble of eroticism, politics and spirituality that defines this album, and, probably, Bono’s BlackBerry. ) The songs get slower and less compelling toward the end; that’s how U2 always pace things. Yet they achieve liftoff in the rockers, especially “No Line on the Horizon” (yet another lonely party girl who wants more than a party) and “Magnificent” (yet another hymn to the powers of love). You can hear Eno’s touch all over: “Moment of Surrender” opens with an organ solo straight from “The Big Ship,” on his 1975 classic Another Green World. But it’s Bono who dominates. He hasn’t crammed in this many words per song in over 10 years—to be specific, since the least-loved item in the U2 catalogue, Pop, the grim, slow, morbid flop they tried and failed to sell as their ironic techno statement. The difference now is that they’re no longer apologizing for their messy emotions or their lofty ambitions. Ego really isn’t their enemy—it’s their instrument, and on No Line on the Horizon they just plug it in and play. DOWNLOAD “Moment of Surrender,” “Unknown Caller,” “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight,” “Breathe”

Tim Hawkins Things you don't say to your wife

Subway by Tim Hawkins

Chick-fil-A song

President Hamlet

After a youth spent as the indulged and inevitable prince, he has become the king that Hamlet would have been had he enjoyed the services of Axelrod and Plouffe, instead of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
by Sam Schulman
03/09/2009, Volume 014, Issue 24

To the relief of his friends and the consternation of his doubters, President Obama found his presidential voice last week in his congressional address. "It came a bit late, but Barack Obama finally gave his inaugural address," Richard Cohen rejoiced on his Washington Post blog. "He is president at last--and not a minute too soon." The speech's magniloquence and grandeur only partly account for the jubilation of Obama's admirers. The balance is their expression of relief. They hope that his oratorical performance proves that Obama has recovered from the first 40 days of his administration, in which he acted not like a triumphant winner, but with a defeated joy. Five weeks of disappointments followed in grim procession. There was the great disappointment that, despite the boasts of a grand and visionary plan for economic recovery in his inaugural morning coat, he hit the ground delegating. As he said last week, "as soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President's Day." Rather than present a Goolsbeean masterstroke, Obama beguiled Nancy Pelosi to give us more of what had caused so much woe. And the cabinet! Instead of the brain trust we expected, Obama ennobled a long procession of ethically tainted and self-interested men and women. But if it was not done well, it was not done quickly either. Fruits of office were offered and then withdrawn, as with General Zinni, or spit back on the presidential silver salver, as with Senator Gregg. Worst of all, the president seemed edgy, unsure of himself, every bit as irritable as his press secretary, indecisive about dog breeds, short-tempered with reporters, impatient with Joe Biden. What about the flurry of executive orders which flew like angels and ministers of grace off the president's desk in the first days? After a few weeks, they all now have missed their target or fallen flat--and clearly there was no Plan B. Iran responded to Obama's hand of friendship by setting preconditions of its own for a meeting and running more centrifuges. Our NATO allies, asked nicely for more support in our Afghan venture, replied, nicely, that they would prefer not to. Guantánamo turns out to be completely in harmony with the letter and spirit of the Geneva Accords--and, according to the attorney general, a nice place to visit even if you wouldn't want to live there. Bush's anti-terror policies remain largely in place. Worst of all, Obama's magnificent instrument of power, his voice and tone, seemed to have escaped his control. He frightened small children and investors with his dark prophecies of doom should the stimulus bill not be passed without delay, review, or criticism of any kind. He frightened grown men by his insouciance when he fled to Chicago for a yuppie family weekend of shopping and gossip, leaving the vital bill unsigned on his Oval Office desk. I suspect that Obama was as disappointed in himself as we were--and even more puzzled. He expected that his bold words would produce bold action. Instead, he finds himself appointing committees of graybeards to study at leisure the very Gordian knots that his snazzy executive orders were meant to slice through. None of us--not even those who wanted him to fail--expected this kind of incompetence and inelegance, mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage. I think we are seeing something very different, and very special, and to those who know their Shakespeare as well as they know their Obama, something poetic. Obama is not a hypocrite, a programmatic radical, or an incompetent--anyone with the patience to read his books can see that he is a 20th-century liberal of a very conventional type: incurious, superior, and vain. What is unique about him is what is unique about Hamlet. Obama avoided the path that so many ambitious men of his own generation have followed--Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo--from law school to bigger and bigger government offices. Instead, he followed Hamlet's course. He deliberately prolonged his youth, avoided responsibility and serious challenges, put his great gifts to work in the tiniest possible ways--all in order to protect his illusions from contact with very much reality. And now, in this particular job, he is up against the real world for the very first time. Obama's trajectory is Hamlet's, a youth spent as the recognized, indulged, and inevitable Prince, untrammeled by responsibility or experience. But now he is a character in a play that Shakespeare never wrote: Obama has become the king that Hamlet would have been had he enjoyed the services of Axelrod and Plouffe instead of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I don't mean to suggest that Obama is the Hamlet of the newspaper cartoons--indecisive, melancholy, of antic disposition. He is something very different. He is Shakespeare's Hamlet as he saw himself, a man of action who knows himself through and through--but is neither. Both princes have spent their youth waiting for an opportunity that is worthy of their talent to take off their inky cloaks and reveal themselves. Obama is precisely like Hamlet in his conviction that his eloquence proves his leadership ability and his self-knowledge. And, like Hamlet's, his preparation for high office consisted of playacting, speechmaking, and self-examination. Hamlet is obsessed with finding and playing a role--and uncertain that he is quite up to the task. Such is the Obama we have watched for the first 40 days. For Hamlet, the role he must play is rather simple: He does not expect to combine in himself the qualities of Lincoln and Roo-sevelt, as our unenviable president does. Hamlet only has to be an avenger. Hamlet's dream of his father assigns him this role in the first act, and, for the rest of the play, poor Hamlet repeatedly tries and fails to live up to it. Instead of taking action, Hamlet whiles away the time until his death despising, envying, and imitating the single-minded souls who can play their appointed role in life without agonizing self-consciousness. He tries to imitate them all--young Fortinbras, Laertes, his dead father. To do so, he devises over-complicated rhetorical tricks--writing speeches for the strolling company of actors, pretending to be mad, writing love letters, ordering secret renditions for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, throwing Polonius and Ophelia under the bus. Hamlet dies--and inadvertently achieves his revenge--only because he is so jealous of Laertes's fencing skill that he agrees to the fatal one-on-one that ends the play. Hamlet's trajectory describes exactly what is unique about Obama's pathway to power--what he didn't do. Most young men of Obama's generation with presidential yearnings have tried putting their hands on the steering wheel of a smaller vehicle, like an attorney-generalship. A state AG's office is an excellent place to practice the swordsmanship that a president needs. Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo prepped this way. Rudy Giuliani matriculated as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Spitzer was the most presidential of all, because he didn't bother with actual lawyering but merely harried and bullied businessmen with something to lose--no indictment necessary. At the same stage of his life, Obama--skill, intelligence, and training outmatching Cuomo's and Spitzer's, and with even more ambition--didn't burden himself with such responsibilities. He prepared himself purely through the exercise of rhetoric. A brief speech at a student anti-apartheid demonstration gave him a vision of power, he took an assistant professor's salary from a charity to become an organizer of community protest for such causes as asbestos removal. Most of all, he wrote autobiographies. In his books he rehearsed a vision of himself as leader, solving problems with ease that no one had ever solved before. And the key to leadership, he discovered in his very first autobiography, was not the exercise of authority but the telling of stories. He argues that black people in America do best for themselves when they stick to the truth of things, when they share the "absence of delusions [perhaps he means illusions] that continued to operate in the daily lives of most black people" that he had met as a neighborhood organizer. So he decides that what will save his community--preserve its self-esteem and bring about a better world--is to write down his own life story. Or as he puts it more eloquently, to "struggle to align word and action, our heartfelt desires with a workable plan." "Our sense of wholeness" must find root in "Mrs. Crenshaw's story and Mr. Marshall's story, in Ruby's story and Rafiq's"--and, most of all, the prince's own. When rival princelings like Spitzer and Cuomo were accumulating executives' scalps, the future President Hamlet was rehearsing his own story in a couple of bestsellers. Within their covers he could count himself a king of infinite space. As a storyteller and speechifier, Obama didn't need to come up with new plans--his new budget is pretty much what Stevenson, Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, and Kerry would have shown us. Nor did he waste his time assembling allies among the movers and shakers, as Hillary did. Instead of superdelegates, Obama, like a real prince, assembled around him a court and filled it with courtiers--hundreds and hundreds of his closest and cleverest friends. During the campaign, Obama admitted to having over 300 unruly knights among his official foreign policy advisers. And each of these courtiers regarded himself or herself as valued for a unique insight and point of view. Among so many, is it any wonder that the courtiers include Zionists and anti-Semitic crackpots, free-traders and protectionists, education reformers and ed-school apparatchiks? And even today, the Obama administration draws names from among the courtiers seemingly at random--Israel-lobbyist Hillary Clinton yesterday, Saudi-lobbyist Chas Freeman today. The jobs to which they are appointed are as symbolic as the members of a coronation procession. Dennis Ross, the long-promised "point man on Iran," might have been happier as a Guardian of the Royal Robe than he will be trying to live down his new job description: What Dennis is going to be charged with doing, is trying to integrate policy development and implementation across a number of offices and officials in the State Department. .  .  . He will be also trying to ensure that there's a coherence in our policies and strategies across the region. Let me be clear, he's not an envoy. He will not be negotiating. He'll be working on regional issues. He will not be--in terms of negotiating, will not be involved in the peace process. .  .  . To the untutored eye, the Obama administration can seem merely lazy. Economic stimulus? Let Nancy do it. Give a heavyweight like Bob Gates a job that would affront the dignity of a Guildenstern--make him plead with the Europeans to help us in Afghanistan, but force him to admit that his boss hasn't made up his mind about whether to protect NATO members against the new Iranian/North Korean missiles. Close Guantánamo one of these days soon, decide even later what to do with its population. But it's not laziness; it's the way that a Hamlet thinks the world works. To a Hamlet, a leader like himself "who can inspire the American people to rally behind a common purpose" issues a decree. And that's all that needs to be done. For Hamlet and Obama, leadership is something that one can imagine or speechify oneself into. Hamlet feels that the only thing that stops him from being as effective a king as Fortinbras--or the Player-king--is that he lacks their sincerity and self-delusion. Obama thinks that being FDR is a matter of making FDR-like speeches--so FDR-like that Richard Cohen had a vision of an amber cigarette-holder while Obama spoke! He needn't bother to study how FDR connived, threatened, charmed, lied, and manipulated to get his way. In Obama's Hamlet-like world of leadership, he has no need for men like the grumpy, incorruptible Harold Ickes to serve as reality principle and enforcer. There is no brilliant, vain, and unreliable Harry Hopkins to stimulate the economy. There are certainly no fixers like Tommy the Cork or Jim Farley to make things happen in the states and cities. Instead, the administration is filled with Poloniuses. There's one sitting in the vice president's chair in the Senate. Another runs the EPA. And Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns fill the high offices at State and Treasury. Only Shakespeare could write the mise-en-scène of my lords Summers and Geithner on their knees before the Earl of Dodd, entreating him not to ruin the king's money-lenders with a salary cap--and failing. To our new and unseasoned King Hamlet, it must have seemed like a good idea. FDR would have sent Harold Ickes and Jim Farley, and Dodd would take a long weekend at his Irish cottage, half frightened out of his wits, half convinced he was the next appointment to the Supreme Court. Obama could fill half a dozen New Deal-era brain trusts with the courtiers still hanging around without appointments. But our President Hamlet takes the estimable people he attracts and turns them into airy nothings. He does so not out of malice or cunning, but from utter innocence of how the world works. The weakness of the Obama administration is not that it is a permanent campaign, but it is a permanent court, in particular with the fecklessness and jealousy that characterizes the court of a crown prince unsure of his power. Whatever the talent of the courtiers, what they learn to study most of all is caution. That is why there was no one among them with the courage to tell the king that if he doesn't deal with our foreign enemies now, there will be no way to cut military spending later. Fear about their futures meant that no one had the nerve to point out to Obama that raising taxes on the rich will produce not more income but less. And none was suicidal enough to remind Obama that undoing welfare reform would return the urban black population--the great beneficiary of reform--to its prior misery. Hamlet never became a king in his own eyes, or even managed, except by accident, to avenge his father's death. A Hamlet, prince or king, can never overcome his own self-doubt, and Obama's self-doubt, unresolved by his books, may remain impervious to the fact that he has indeed made himself president. I fear our president will only fitfully be a president to himself. This fitfulness, coupled to his deeply held belief that heartfelt desire, gorgeously expressed, must inevitably lead to workable plans, will set the pattern for his administration. I expect four years of drama, muddle, and self-regard. Hamlet was a tragedy, but fortunately for Denmark Hamlet died in the last act. We perhaps reluctant playgoers will have the privilege of seeing its sequel. Sam Schulman, a writer in Virginia, was publishing director of the American and publisher of Wigwag.

Geithner-Obama Economics: A Joke That's Not Funny

The Obama depression

A prodigal administration on its way to wasting a national heritage | Marvin Olasky

Washington news keeps marching in like a lion, and only t

Illustration by Krieg Barr

he Lamb can stand against it.

Throughout the election campaign I wanted to think the best of Barack Obama. Because of his stand on abortion and other matters I opposed him, but still kept in mind a big positive: Obama as role model, showing some among our most alienated the fruits of education, hard work, and marriage.

I hoped that maybe, just maybe, a President Obama would graduate from campaign mode and apply cool rationality not just to winning votes but to strengthening our economy and America's position around the world. That hope has evaporated.

Obama's role model is Franklin D. Roosevelt, yet Obama evidently is not familiar with Amity Shlaes' fine book, The Forgotten Man (Topical Depression, March 8, 2008). Obama says he is embracing "experimentation—if that doesn't work, then you do something else." Shlaes shows that what FDR called "bold, persistent experimentation" deepened and lengthened the 1930s Depression: Businesses faced with ever-changing rules didn't know whether to invest or hunker down.

At least, though, FDR famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." He tried to raise the nation's spirits. Obama, though, has repeatedly dampened them with his self-fulfilling prophecies of gloom. Why? Well, look at what the Bush recession did for Obama: It got him elected president, and it has now given him hundreds of billions to spend pretty much as he and his appointees see fit.

If a recession offers such privileges, what about a depression? Imagine an Obama Corps with millions of workers. Imagine, if much of the nation's wealth dissolves, the opportunity to educate children in the virtue of government requiring everyone to "share."

Ah, isn't there political danger here? Won't Democrats pay at the polls in 2010 and 2012 if the economy doesn't improve? Not if Obama and his media soulmates play it right. Already the drumbeat has begun: The problem with the stimulus bill is not pork and the power it gives to Obama to reshape America in his own image. The problem, according to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, is that the stimulus bill should have been twice as big.

Look at Newsweek's March 2 cover story. Jonathan Alter wrote that Obama "can look successful even as hard times continue. . . . The package is so big, and stretches across so many states, that it provides him at least four years of photo ops. . . . Once these mental pieces are fastened in place and we're fully 'in recovery,' to use therapy lingo, the enduring problems won't seem so terrifying anymore. . . . The longer the recession lasts, the more points Obama will put on the board. . . . Obama will likely package and sell health-care reform, a new energy policy and even national service as 'recovery and reinvestment.'"

Obama has billions of reasons to keep us in a state of crisis. Every time through the end of February that Obama opened his mouth, the stock market went down: Accidental? One equities manager, Peter Kenny, explained an afternoon decline on Feb. 25: "As we came close to the bell we got the curveball: our president came on TV."

Some evangelicals are responding to Obamania by heading to the hills: Y2K hysteria in 1999 was a false alarm but this new administration is a four-alarm fire. Maybe, but if you're tempted that way, read one of the Bible's great history chapters, Hebrews 11, and then its conclusion in chapter 12: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus. . . . Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted."

Is our present situation painful? Hebrews 12 continues, "Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives. . . . For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

If you have a question or comment for Marvin Olasky, send it to molasky@worldmag.com.

Obama's Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth

It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama's high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration. Indeed, a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true. The American people are coming to express increasingly significant doubts about his initiatives, and most likely support a different agenda and different policies from those that the Obama administration has advanced.

Polling data show that Mr. Obama's approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama's net presidential approval rating -- which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve -- is just six, his lowest rating to date.

M.E. Cohen

Overall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president's performance. This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.

A detailed examination of presidential popularity after 50 days on the job similarly demonstrates a substantial drop in presidential approval relative to other elected presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries. The reason for this decline most likely has to do with doubts about the administration's policies and their impact on peoples' lives.

There is also a clear sense in the polling that taxes will increase for all Americans because of the stimulus, notwithstanding what the president has said about taxes going down for 95% of Americans. Close to three-quarters expect that government spending will grow under this administration.

Recent Gallup data echo these concerns. That polling shows that there are deep-seeded, underlying economic concerns. Eighty-three percent say they are worried that the steps Mr. Obama is taking to fix the economy may not work and the economy will get worse. Eighty-two percent say they are worried about the amount of money being added to the deficit. Seventy-eight percent are worried about inflation growing, and 69% say they are worried about the increasing role of the government in the U.S. economy.

When Gallup asked whether we should be spending more or less in the economic stimulus, by close to 3-to-1 margin voters said it is better to have spent less than to have spent more. When asked whether we are adding too much to the deficit or spending too little to improve the economy, by close to a 3-to-2 margin voters said that we are adding too much to the deficit.

Support for the stimulus package is dropping from narrow majority support to below that. There is no sense that the stimulus package itself will work quickly, and according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, close to 60% said it would make only a marginal difference in the next two to four years. Rasmussen data shows that people now actually oppose Mr. Obama's budget, 46% to 41%. Three-quarters take this position because it will lead to too much spending. And by 2-to-1, voters reject House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's call for a second stimulus package.

While over two-thirds support the plan to help homeowners refinance their mortgage, a 48%-36% plurality said that it will unfairly benefit those who have been irresponsible, echoing Rick Santelli's call to arms on CNBC.

And although a narrow majority remains confident in Mr. Obama's goals and overall direction, 45% say they do not have confidence, a number that has been growing since the inauguration less than two months ago. With three-quarters saying that they expect the economy to get worse, it is hard to see these numbers improving substantially.

There is no real appetite for increasing taxes to pay for an expanded health-insurance program. Less than half would support such an idea, which is 17% less than the percentage that supported government health insurance when Bill Clinton first considered it in March of 1993.

While voters blame Republicans for the lack of bipartisanship in Washington, the fact is that they do not believe Mr. Obama has made any progress in improving the impulse towards cooperation between the two parties. Further, nearly half of voters say that politics in Washington will be more partisan over the next year.

Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose giving bankers any additional government money or any guarantees backed by the government. Two-thirds say Wall Street will benefit more than the average taxpayer from the new bank bailout plan. This represents a jump in opposition to the first plan passed last October. At that time, 45% opposed the bailout and 30% supported it. Now a solid majority opposes the bank bailout, and 20% think it was a good idea. A majority believes that Mr. Obama will not be able to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term.

Only less than a quarter of Americans believe that the federal government truly reflects the will of the people. Almost half disagree with the idea that no one can earn a living or live "an American life" without protection and empowerment by the government, while only one-third agree.

Despite the economic stimulus that Congress just passed and the budget and financial and mortgage bailouts that Congress is now debating, just 19% of voters believe that Congress has passed any significant legislation to improve their lives. While Congress's approval has increased, it still stands at only 18%. Over two-thirds of voters believe members of Congress are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping the American people. When it comes to the nation's economic issues, two-thirds of voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress.

Finally, what probably accounts for a good measure of the confidence and support the Obama administration has enjoyed is the fact that they are not Republicans. Virtually all Americans, more than eight in 10, blame Republicans for the current economic woes, and the only two leaders with lower approval ratings than Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.

All of this is not just a subject for pollsters and analysts to debate. It shows fundamentally that public confidence in government remains low and is slipping. We face the possibility of substantial gridlock along with an absolute absence of public confidence that could come to mirror the lack of confidence in the American economy that the Dow and the S&P are currently showing.

Mr. Schoen, formerly a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is the author of "Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two Party System" (Random House, 2008). Mr. Rasmussen is president of Rasmussen Reports, an independent national polling company.

Increased Number Think Global Warming Is “Exaggerated”

The Obama Rosetta Stone

Barack Obama has written two famous, widely read books of autobiography -- "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope." Let me introduce his third, a book that will touch everyone's life: "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise. The President's Budget and Fiscal Preview" (Government Printing Office, 141 pages, $26; free on the Web). This is the U.S. budget for laymen, and it's a must read.

Turn immediately to page 11. There sits a chart called Figure 9. This is the Rosetta Stone to the presidential mind of Barack Obama. Memorize Figure 9, and you will never be confused. Not happy, perhaps, but not confused.

One finds many charts in a federal budget, most attributed to such deep mines of data as the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The one on page 11 is attributed to "Piketty and Saez."

Either you know instantly what "Piketty and Saez" means, or you don't. If you do, you spent the past two years working to get Barack Obama into the White House. If you don't, their posse has a six-week head start on you.

Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists, are rock stars of the intellectual left. Their specialty is "earnings inequality" and "wealth concentration."

Messrs. Piketty and Saez have produced the most politically potent squiggle along an axis since Arthur Laffer drew his famous curve on a napkin in the mid-1970s. Laffer's was an economic argument for lowering tax rates for everyone. Piketty-Saez is a moral argument for raising taxes on the rich.

As described in Mr. Obama's budget, these two economists have shown that by the end of 2004, the top 1% of taxpayers "took home" more than 22% of total national income. This trend, Fig. 9 notes, began during the Reagan presidency, skyrocketed through the Clinton years, dipped after George Bush beat Al Gore, then marched upward. Widening its own definition of money-grubbers, the budget says the top 10% of households "held" 70% of total wealth.

Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute criticized the Piketty-Saez study on these pages in October 2007. Whatever its merits, their "Top 1%" chart has become a totemic obsession in progressive policy circles.

Turn to page five of Mr. Obama's federal budget, and one may read these commentaries on the top 1% datum:

"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."

"Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected."

"There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few. . . . It's a legacy of irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it."

Wonder Land Columnist Daniel Henninger on the latest autobiographical work from Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama made clear in the campaign his intention to raise taxes on this income class by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. What is becoming clearer as his presidency unfolds is that something deeper is underway here than merely using higher taxes to fund his policy goals in health, education and energy.

The "top 1%" isn't just going to pay for these policies. Many of them would assent to that. The rancorous language used to describe these taxpayers makes it clear that as a matter of public policy they will be made to "pay for" the fact of their wealth -- no matter how many of them worked honestly and honorably to produce it. No Democratic president in 60 years has been this explicit.

Complaints have emerged recently, on the right and left, that the $787 billion stimulus bill will produce less growth and jobs than planned because too much of it goes to social programs and transfer payments, or "weak" Keynesian stimulus. The administration's Romer-Bernstein study on the stimulus estimated by the end of next year it would increase jobs by 3.6 million and GDP by 3.7%.

One of the first technical examinations of the Romer-Bernstein projections has been released by Hoover Institution economists John Cogan and John Taylor, and German economists Tobias Cwik and Volker Wieland. They conclude that the growth and jobs stimulus will be only one-sixth what the administration predicts. In part, this is because people anticipate that the spending burst will have to be financed by higher taxes and so will spend less than anticipated.

New York's Mike Bloomberg, mayor of an economically damaged city, has noted the pointlessness of raising taxes on the rich when their wealth is plummeting, or of eliminating the charitable deduction for people who have less to give anyway.

True but irrelevant. Mayor Bloomberg should read the Obama budget chapter, "Inheriting a Legacy of Misplaced Priorities." The economy as most people understand it was a second-order concern of the stimulus strategy. The primary goal is a massive re-flowing of "wealth" from the top toward the bottom, to stop the moral failure they see in the budget's "Top One Percent of Earners" chart.

The White House says its goal is simple "fairness." That may be, as they understand fairness. But Figure 9 makes it clear that for the top earners, there will be blood. This presidency is going to be an act of retribution. In the words of the third book from Mr. Obama, "it is our duty to change it."

Write to henninger@wsj.com

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