Or rather, you would, if it weren't for the European credit crisis, high US unemployment and other assorted economic heebie jeebies. Fact is, you can't have everything, including that air rifle.
The largest Santa school in the U.S. has been advising its students on how to lower children's expectations in the economic downturn. When confronted with a huge list of 'I wants', Santas are being told to tell them that they can't have everything. They should also take a look at the children's parents and 'size them up' before promising them something that their mother and father can't afford.
My knee jerk reaction is to say that Santa Claus shouldn't be a killjoy. But then, I have a feeling if I was down on my luck and my kid was wearing crummy old shoes, I'd appreciate if Santa Claus took this in and downplayed the latest iPod, too.
Here is a decent piece from the Wall Street Journal, which talks about how many blue collar job there are out there, and how few people there are to fill them.
It dovetails nicely with a piece I saw in the New York Times a while back, about law schools that keep pumping out more and more lawyers every year, without a thought to quality or job availabilty. And why shouldn't they? As the piece shows, running a law school means big bucks.
Law school has an image that high school grads and their mothers dig. Plumbing apprenticeships do not. Hence, a lot of lawyers and not so many plumbers. This is why I have a bone to pick with the headline editor of the WSJ piece. The headline says Help Wanted: In Unexpected Twist, Some Skilled Jobs Go Begging.
An unexpected twist? Since when? Society's been telling kids for decades that the only way to get ahead in life is to graduate from university. The university grads - unemployed or otherwise - shouldn't be surprised now that their toilet's stuck and their call goes straight to voicemail.
"Learn a trade." It was advice I heard a lot when I was younger. If things didn't work out, "Learn a trade."
As it happens, I didn't go to school for a trade, but it was good advice back then, and it still is now.
As a note to the kids who have been watching too much TV, a tradesperson is still cool at parties. A carpenter and a surgeon deserve equal respect in my books, and as far as I can tell, they both get that respect. If it'll make you feel better, just say you're a "contractor." The doctors and lawyers immediately nod and say, "Wow, a contractor," and start thinking about renovations.
Economics professors that ignore economic truths crack me up. Actually, they usually crack me no matter what their take on the economy, if only because they turn out to be dead wrong so often. Whenever the economy takes a powder, there's lots of economics guys telling us how to fix the problem. Nobody ever seems to ask, "Hey, genius, why didn't you see this coming in the first place?"
Anyway, take Robert H. Frank, an economics professor at Cornell. He wrote a piece in the New York Times that is full of all kinds of baloney (he also wrote a book that has the words "Common Good" in the title, so obviously he knows how to live your life better than you do; which is to say, he's full of it).
These people have apparently not read Robert Frank.
His latest piece is about Black Friday, the day when Americans race out to buy discount goods and sometimes beat each other up or pepper spray each other over $2 waffle irons. Frank doesn't like this. He thinks it's bad. He thinks you should be in bed at a reasonable time on Thanksgiving Eve, and that you shouldn't be out shopping too early in the morning. Frank, like many of his Ivy League ilk, thinks you need some guidance in the game of life. In this case, his way to get you out of the stores and back with your mother-in-law is to...tax Black Friday.
Let's just tiptoe through the tulips of Robert Frank's nonsense. It is an essay that reeks of arrogance:
In recent years, large retail chains have been competing to be the first to open their doors on Black Friday. The race is driven by the theory that stores with the earliest start time capture the most buyers and make the most sales. [It takes a univeristy professor to figure this out?] For many years, stores opened at a reasonable hour [which hour is reasonable?]. Then, some started opening at 5 a.m. [Oops. I guess 5 a.m. is unreasonable], prompting complaints from employees [name three of them] about having to go to sleep early on Thanksgiving and miss out on time with their families.
He has to be kidding. I find it hard to believe that Robert Frank stays up at night worrying about people that have to work the night shift. Besides, if it's a case of missing out on time with families, why doesn't Frank worry about gas station attendants, steel workers, cops, nurses, firefighters, late night bartenders, and 7-11 clerks? My guess is because those jobs don't have an anniversary date in the headlines, and they don't have the icky "consumerism" vibe that guys like Frank dislike so much.
Though I smell a rat when it comes to Frank's family-bleeding-heart-syndrome nonsense, I'll give him another crack at it:
Last year Toys “R” Us opened at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving. This year, Wal-Mart will do the same. The costs to store owners and their employees and families are enormous: millions must now spend time away from home on the one occasion that all Americans, regardless of religion or cultural background, share as a family holiday.
What is it about university professors that make them think they know how to run a store better than a store manager, or work the night shift better than a working father of three? And why does Frank feel that he knows how you should spend your Thanksgiving? Want to collect some overtime? Want to surf Facebook? Want to do handstands on the corner of 5th and Main? Want to play handball with a piece of cement? As long as you're not breaking the law or writing crappy stuff for the New York Times, I don't care, and neither should Frank.
"The cost to store owners and the employees and families are enormous." Frank seems to forget that nobody is dragging these people into the store and forcing them to work under the whip. What these people are doing is called working. They have what is called a job. It gives them this thing called money, which they can use to put food on the tables of the families that Robert Frank is so worried about.
Note to the arrogant writer: these people aren't working at Wal-Mart and Target because they want to give you something to write about. They work there to make a living. If it wasn't worth it, they wouldn't do it, and neither would the stores. This is called "economics," Mr. Economics Professor.
As every mature adult realizes [take that, you damn immature conservatives!], we have to tax something, and the revenue from my 6-6-6 plan [his plan - besides having a horrible number for the marketing people to deal with - is to tax everything sold on Thanksgiving Thurs/Fri between 6pm and 6am at 6%] would make it possible to reduce taxes on other activities that are actually useful [name just three activities you would reduce taxes on, Bobby; I beg you]. Best of all, it would encourage Americans to spend Thanksgiving night where they really want to — in bed.
The arrogance is astounding. "Other activities that are actually useful...Encourage Americans to spend Thanksgiving where they really want to..." How does this guy know what people want? Robert Frank, just because you don't think cheap t-shirts and discount toys for the kids aren't useful, doesn't mean the single mom working on minimum wage won't appreciate the sales.
I'm getting tired of the people that are so worried about the poor that they decide to hammer the poor for being poor. Who does the man think is shopping at Wal-Mart and Target at 5am? Rockefeller? Black Friday is a time of year that a hurting family can grab some stuff on the cheap, while the employees can pick up some extra hours and overtime (and there's my arrogance; does it have to be poor people shopping at 5am? No. It could be anybody. And it's their business, not mine - pun intended).
If it's the odd Black Friday violence you're worried about, sure, the odd idiot might throw a punch here and there. That's life in large crowds. It draws headlines and makes people like Frank wet their pants, but it's few and far between. It's hardly a good enough reason to hose the guy who's looking for a cheap leaf blower.
When Robert Frank sits down at his computer on Sunday to tell people yet again how to live their own lives, I hope there's thousands of football fans saying what a great deal they got on their 50-inch TV. It should at least please Frank that they're spending time at home.
Update:
From CNN: Preliminary reports for Black Friday indicate that retailers may have seen their strongest sales ever during the all-important kick-off to the holiday shopping season.
Retail sales on Black Friday climbed 6.6% this year to an estimated $11.4 billion.
I don't know how this squares with Frank's funny theory that everyone in the country wants to stay home on Thanksgiving, but maybe he'll explain at a later date. Photo: Michael Nagle/Getty Images
Via Hot Air and Michelle Malkin. Here's Democratic Representative of California Pete Stark: "You get the f*ck out of here or I'll throw you out the window."
The clip's actually a year old, which goes to show that you can do and say pretty much anything and survive as a politician these days.
The bigger laugh for me comes when Stark constantly asks the interviewer if he has an economics degree, a master's degree, or has ever taken a class in economics.
Which would prove what? All the economic eggheads in America were running the show last year and the economy took a mammoth powder. Personally, I'd feel much better with a plumber running the economy. At least the guy would do some basic math and figure out that spending far more than he earns will put him under.
Maxim: when a man with basic common sense confronts a self-described intellectual, the intellectual will lose his temper first.
Maxim: when someone asks if you have a college degree, you have won the argument.
Want more fun from the "intellectual" Stark? No problem. Here it comes, from an incident in 2004:
In May 2004, Stark responded to a constituent Army National Guard member's letter critical of Stark's recent vote on the war in Iraq by immediately calling the service member's telephone and leaving a feisty response on voicemail which was later broadcast on San Francisco's talk radio station KSFO.[8] Stark's harsh voicemail was transcribed as follows:
“Dan, this is Congressman Pete Stark, and I just got your fax. And you don't know what you're talking about. So if you care about enlisted people, you wouldn't have voted for that thing either. But probably somebody put you up to this, and I'm not sure who it was, but I doubt if you could spell half the words in the letter, and somebody wrote it for you. So I don't pay much attention to it. But I'll call you back later and let you tell me more about why you think you're such a great goddamn hero and why you think that this generals [sic] and the Defense Department, who forced these poor enlisted guys to do what they did, shouldn't be held to account. That's the issue. So if you want to stick it to a bunch of enlisted guys, have your way. But if you want to get to the bottom of people who forced this awful program in Iraq, then you should understand more about it than you obviously do. Thanks.
For the record, the clown's been in office since 1973. Must be a pretty brilliant guy.
Remember that gaffe Obama made a while back about the Post Office vs. UPS and FedEx? It was a blooper that everyone promptly buried, especially the man himself.
Not Jesse Jackson, Jr, though. He thought it sounded great and now goes after it whole hog:
"Look at it this way, Larry. There's Federal Express, there's UPS, and there's DHL. The public option is a stamp. It's email. And because of the email system, and because of the post office, it keeps DHL from charging $100 for an overnight letter. Or UPS from charging $100 for an overnight letter, because of the public option. Some of us don't have a problem buying a stamp, rather than going that route."
These guys are either crazies or drunk.
1) UPS and FedEx can't compete with the post office in letter delivery by law, so the comparison is useless unless you're trying to make the exact opposite point that Jackson is. 2) Since when was the internet a "public option email system" in answer to the outrageous corporate monsters at DHL and UPS? 3) It's pretty frightening, but the poor guy seems to think - I'm taking him at his word; sue me - that if the post office folded tomorrow, FedEx, DHL, and UPS would all charge $100 for letter delivery.
Nevermind that anyone with enough cash for a fleet of Cessnas and a few bicycles would wipe out FedEx by doing it for a buck. And then DHL would charge 98 cents. And then UPS would charge 94 cents. And then Sean Berry's Quickie Delivery would charge 75 cents. We'd trade prices until one of us goofed, charged too little, couldn't get out from under, and went bust. The other guys would find the market value - ie, what people are willing to pay before telling you to stick it - and settle into making decent profits while offering the odd special and concentrating on customer service and faster delivery time to draw customers away from the competition. Until yet another guy came along with a more efficient way of doing it and charged less, forcing the competition to either meet that price or start calling themselves "high end" and chasing the mail snobs.
See, that's how the market (I know, I know - it's a scary place, don't get caught there after sundown) operates. Unless it's providing them with boffo campaign donations, clowns like Jesse Jackson Jr don't have a clue. Or they're lying. Take your pick on which is worse.
The only place geniuses like this will run health care is straight into the ground.
I saw this in a Newsweekpiece, describing what a great life it is to grow up in France:
His [a French person's] education, from grade school through university, will be essentially free.
Er, define "essentially" and then define "free."
I love France. Loved it when I stayed there, loved it when I was just visiting. But "essentially free" is a lie. If education in France is truly free, then I have to assume that university professors do not get paid, buildings are erected by construction workers that never eat, and books are printed on thin air.
Maxim: whatever and wherever it is, somebody has to pay for it.
I was telling someone the other day about this little girl who runs a lemonade stand just down the street. She's there every now and then. While she sells lemonade, another little girl, perhaps her sister, draws art on the sidewalk with sticks of chalk.
I've bought lemonade from her stand for two reasons. 1) Lemonade's pretty good. 2) You should always support a budding capitalist. My only complaint is that her serving cups are damn small and the last time I bought lemonade there, I felt jipped.
In any event, she seems to enjoy the venture, and so should we. It teaches her the value of a buck and how the world works. While everyone else is running around worrying about the economy and begging for government handouts, this little girl shrugs and starts earning some cash. Pretty cool. Right?
Out in California, another little girl is learning how the world works, too. Running a small business? Get ready for Mister Regulator:
Eight-year-old Daniela Earnest has made lemonade out of lemons in more ways than one this week.
Hoping to raise money for a family trip to Disneyland, the Tulare girl opened a lemonade stand Monday. But because Daniela didn't have a business license, the city of Tulare shut it down the same day.
A radio station caught wind of it and gave her some tickets to Disneyland. Under that PR pressure, it looks like the city is going to cave and let the little girl have her lemonade stand.
The reason I dislike Mister Regulator is because his mission in life is to make sure you don't make a buck. He makes his living by trying to stop you from doing same. In this case, Mister Regulator was "Richard Garcia, a Tulare code enforcement officer, [who] happened to be at the same intersection to remove illegal signs left behind by someone selling tetherball poles."
I get that. Signs hanging all over the place are ugly. But think about his job: constantly looking for ways to cheat someone out of making a living. It must be a glorious little place, the mind of Mister Regulator: "I am important. I am the boss. Scourge of lemonade stands and tetherball enthusiasts."
Imagine the officious moron you would have to be to see a little girl selling lemonade, then bust her for not having a business license. It's almost inconceivable that someone could be that stupid.
Almost, but not quite, because these clowns are everywhere.
Here's the gist: "A report just came out yesterday. Said things were even worse than we thought back when we knew what we thought. Get it? So even though the stimulus package sucks, it's actually doing well. Not because it's doing well - but because things were more sucky than we thought. And no, the stimulus wasn't supposed to 'stimulate.' It was just supposed to 'put the brakes' on the recession, which, as I said, was really hard to do because the recession was even more sucky than we thought. So. Not my fault. Everything's cool. It's not that the stimulus isn't working, it's that the recession was worse than I told you it was. Cheer up, sport."
And that's all in the first thirty seconds. Revisionist history is such a gas. Maxim: lower the bar enough and you can make even cow dung look like Everest.
I swear I've just watched the :25 to :31 part of this clip half-a-dozen times. It's the funniest thing I've seen in ages. I have to hand it to him. The chutzpah it takes to say that line with a straight face is unreal. I also love the usual "Since I took office" stuff, as if he's Zeus just down from Olympus, and not a Senator who could have opened his mouth about the dangerous brink ahead any old time he felt like it.
If a free market fan wanted to show the government that they didn't want politicians in their lives (not to mention cars) then there's one thing they should do: make it a Ford.
It looks like it's become a popular idea. Here's some news from today's Washington Post:
Ford Motor on Thursday posted a surprise profit of $2.26 billion for the second quarter, ending a streak of four straight quarterly losses.
In recent months, the carmaker has claimed market share from its American rivals, General Motors and Chrysler, while those companies struggled to restructure their operations in bankruptcy court.
The article doesn't mention it, but GM and Chrysler took government cash while Ford didn't. GM immediately found out what it means to dance with the devil when the President of the United States canned the president of their company, instantly making GM stand for Government Motors.
Result? The only US automaker not to take government cash is making money.
The Salesman in Chief is having a splendid month, isn't he?
The US House of Representatives, determined to obliterate the American economy, passed their whacko "green bill" by a close vote yesterday. Time and again I heard the words, "To keep us from being held hostage by foreign oil."
Neverminding most of the junk in the bill, and all of the lunacy that comes from trying to scale back an economy during a recession, the one thing that bugs me is the "foreign oil" bit. McCain and Obama both harped about it during their campaigns, and many politicians have used the, "Importing oil from people that don't like us very much" excuse, or as one guy said yesterday, "People that fly airplanes into our buildings."
For the record: Canada is the number one provider of US crude and petroleum imports. Nobody else even comes close. Though the numbers fluctuate for imports from other countries, Canada always tops the list. Mexico generally comes in second, with Saudi Arabia around second or third. Last year, the US imported 2.532 million barrels of petroleum per day from Canada. That's more than double Mexico and Venezuela combined, and roughly 1 million more barrels per day than Saudi Arabia. That's a lot of petroleum. And a lot of money for Canada.
So I'm guessing that by "people that don't like us very much," the American politicos mean Canadians. Which, if you read a Toronto Star op-ed, is understandable. But it's time to give it a rest on the Middle-East-Oil-Bogeyman.
It's also time for Canadians to give it a rest on the Obama Love. Every time you turn around, the guy's trying mess up the Canadian economy. Buy American came first, now it's "Wind over foreign oil."
AP: The Obama administration says it will use bailout money repaid by large U.S. banks to support additional capital infusions for smaller banks.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the repayment proceeds expected from some of the largest banks will be used "to reopen the application window" for banks with total assets under $500 million.
Whoa. Let Berry the Sceptic dust off his economics degree and ask a question. To whit: isn't this what Bernie Madoff is in jail for?
All right, it may not be the exact definition of a Ponzi scheme, but it's as close as you can get. Let's say a buddy of yours lends your money to another guy. He tells you, "Don't worry. He'll pay it back in a couple of months. It's something I like to call 'repayment.'"
A couple of months go by and the guy shows up with your money. He hands it to your friend and your friend turns around and gives it to another guy. You're standing there empty handed and say, "Wait a sec. I thought that was my money. What happened to the 'repay' part of 'repayment?'"
To which your buddy says, "Oh. You thought you would get the money back."
"Yeah," you say. "You told me I'd be 'repaid.'"
"Since when? I said they'd repay the money. I never said they'd repay it to you."
"But it's my money."
"No it isn't," he says. "It's mine now. You gave it to me."
"But--"
"Listen man, I hate to break it to you but somebody's gotta say it: it's not my fault you're a sucker."
AFP: "In November, I announced a new rate of income tax of 45 percent on incomes above 150,000 pounds -- the top one percent of taxpayers," [Chancellor] Darling said in his budget speech.
"In order to help pay for additional support for people now, I have decided that the new rate will be 50 percent and will come in from next April -- a year earlier."
That title doesn't quite match the Leonard Cohen lyrics for driving fear into your heart. But maybe it should:
After her sport utility vehicle sideswiped a van in early February, Shirley Kimel was amazed at how quickly a handful of police officers and firefighters in Winter Haven, Fla., showed up. But a real shock came a week later, when a letter arrived from the city billing her $316 for the cost of responding to the accident...
Such cash-per-crash ordinances tend to infuriate motorists, and they often generate bad press, but a lot of cities are finding them hard to resist. With the economy flailing and budgets strained, state and local governments are being creative about ways to raise money. And the go-to idea is to invent a fee — or simply raise one.
As the White House Chief of Staff said, never let a crisis go to waste.
What a great way to keep the economy moving. Make an accident more expensive for the driver so they can't repair their car, pay the rent, afford food.
According the above article, the city expects either Shirley Kimel or her insurance company to pay. So no big deal, right? Shirley can fob it off on her insurance tab and carry on with life. Fat chance. The article states that in most cases, the insurance company does not cover the cash-per-crash fee. But how about the cases where they do? You can bet the farm that every insurance company is going to take a close look at a city's cash-per-crash laws and hike insurance premiums accordingly. Vacation? Out. DVD player? Not this year. Hire an extra employee? Forget it.
The decline of democracy is not being caused by a war from without. It's being caused by a war from within. A political class is scaring you into believing you owe them more, and more, and more, and they're here to collect. They're not the "public servant." You are.
Sometimes I like to do a little ego stroking, then I remember that only rocket science is rocket science. Other stuff is actually quite simple. Like the economy.
"The failure of Lehman Brothers and the near-failure of Merrill Lynch raised the interest rate at which profit-seeking lenders were willing to lend to highly leveraged investment banks. The market thereby forced Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to change their business models drastically and to convert to commercial banks. If that isn't effective regulation, what is? Protecting firms from failure (Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup) and mitigating their losses with bailouts renders this most appropriate form of regulation much less effective."
I said this before, and I still believe it: the system did not fail. The system worked perfectly. People tried to game it for political and financial reasons, and the system chopped their hands off. That's the way systems should work. When you cheat them, they make you pay. Today's crying about a failed system is a smoke screen. The only thing that failed were the cons and tricks that the players used to try and make a buck. They goofed.
Left to itself, there is no doubt that the market would rebound. Yes, some jobs would be lost, and some money would go up in smoke, but probably no more than the taxpayer money that is being poured into the stratosphere every day trying to stave off the inevitable.
Granted I am no economist, but even I understand what happens in a marketplace. Borrowed too much? Expanded too quickly? Built lousy cars? Let unions drive your payscale through the roof? Went billions into debt? Paid your CEO hundreds of millions? Guess what? The market is going to screw you.
I like mine better. I should also point out that "probably no more than the taxpayer money" should now read "definately no more than the taxpayer money." It's been five months since I wrote that post. That was before the $800,000,000,000,000 spending bill signed in February, and the $410,000,000,000,000 spending bill signed yesterday. One trillion two hundred ten billion in two months? Thank God these incredibly smart experts know what they're doing.
Fat chance. The economy is not difficult, no matter how these gurus want to dress it up. Maxim: a little girl with a lemonade stand who sees rain on the horizon will be able to tell you as much about economics as any finance executive.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience on Friday "never waste a good crisis," as she highlighted the opportunity of rebuilding economies in a greener, less energy intensive model.
Highlighting Europe's unease the day after Russia warned that gas exports to the EU via Ukraine might be halted, she also condemned the use of energy as a political lever.
AP: The Rocky Mountain News will publish its last edition Friday.
Owner E.W. Scripps Co. announced on the newspaper's Web site Thursday that its search for a buyer for the paper was unsuccessful.
"Today the Rocky Mountain News, long the leading voice in Denver, becomes a victim of changing times in our industry and huge economic challenges," Scripps CEO Rich Boehne said.
Sad in a sentimental way, I suppose, but that's the way it's going to go from here on out. For the time being, clicking is free while the newsstand isn't.
Stories like this make me see about a dozen shades of red:
First thoughts:
1) If you receive a notice of foreclosure, you are not, by definition, a home "owner."
2) If you are a bus driver and mother of 2, and your husband isn't loaded to the gills, then you have to be out of your mind to purchase a house worth $800,000.
3) Buying a house and using it as a credit card is stupid. You deserve to pay.
4) When someone buys a house worth 800 large, then cries to the president to "stop the foreclosures," I say, "Why?"
5) "If people are losing houses, losing jobs, what are we going to do?" Move. And get another job.
6) "Like countless other Americans, Garcia admits she and her husband bought more house than they could afford..." And now the taxpayers have to keep you in "your home" so you can relax? Get over yourself.
7) "The lender made it all too easy..." This one kills me. Kills me.
Today I had to buy two laptops for my business. Just two laptops. They wouldn't break me, but I didn't want to get taken by some high school geek, either. I studied all of the websites. I got the flyers from Staples, Future Shop, Best Buy, and Office Depot. I compared all of the computers. I considered saving by buying a couple of desktops, but no, I needed the portability of the laptops. I thought $700 was way too high for the work the laptops would be doing. I needed some cheapies, but not so cheap that they'd crap out in a couple of weeks. I decided to sacrifice some RAM to get more harddrive space. I made my decision, walked over to the store, and bought them. That's how I look at the purchase of laptops. Now, am I supposed to feel sympathy for people that buy a house worth $800,000, know they can't afford it, and turn around to blame the lender? And, to top it off, they're now calling for the president of the United States to "stop the foreclosures" and have the taxpayers bail them out? It stinks. These people were gambling that the house would increase in value. If they get bailed out, then the craps players in Vegas should be bailed out, too.
This recession stuff is tough. It makes me sound like a hard hearted jerk. To hell with it. From lollipops, to laptops, to houses, take responsibility for your life. If you take risks, fine, but the consequences should be yours to keep. Funny thing: so will the rewards, though I'm sure these innocent "home owners" would have poured millions into the charities of America if their house had doubled in value.
CNBC is having some fun with Rick Santelli's declaration that he'll hold a Chicago Tea Party come summer. Here's the video. You can go here to vote on whether or not you'll join in.
After looking at Friday the 13's box office haul of $43 million (THR has it as $45.2 million) I checked out how the rest of the weekend movies fared. Pretty well:
THR: Collectively, the Presidents Day weekend registered a whopping $224 million in a record performance that surpassed last year's holiday haul by 34% and 2007's then-record tally by 19%, according to Nielsen EDI.
Yes, that economy. Quite a catastrophe. It's so bad that the American people dropped a quarter of a billion dollars on movies in 4 days. Note to Obama: need a stimulus plan? Do something useful and produce a Nightmare on Elm Street remake.
Think I'm crazy? Think about it: the president has a ton of Hollywood friends. Remember that dumb pledge video where all of the stars said they'd do his bidding? Time for those sanctimonious goofballs to put up. They'll work cheap. Imagine the screenwriters and directors who will be begging for a pitch meeting in the Oval Office. He'll have the pick of the best talent around. He can put "Produced by Barack Obama" on the movie posters. People will flip out. The lines will be huge. Every Obama zealot will go to see the thing, and the press will give it a load of free advertising. He is virtually guaranteed a nice profit, if not an outright blockbuster, and an Oscar is in the bag. He'll even be able to smoke in public, using one of those long cigarette holders like the old-time directors used to sport.
"A Barack Obama Film." That has a nice ring to it. It sounds like a cash register. The Chrysler bailout will be chump change, and anytime there's a scandal his press secretary can say, "The president's in his trailer," until it blows over.
If he puts his mind to it, he can do it. Yes, he can.
