Mr. President, We’re Not All In The Same Boat

I just read the biggest bunch of horse pucky to come out of the Obama marketing machine since all of the false “outrage” over the AIG bonuses.

According to a story on the Reuters business wire tonight, President Barack Obama will meet with bankers on Friday and tell them, “We’re all in the same boat.”  His press secretary, Robert Gibbs, explains further:

“The president looks forward to getting an update on what they’re seeing happening in the economy,” Gibbs said on Wednesday of the banking chief executives who are slated to meet with the president later this week.

He said Obama’s message at the meeting would be to say that what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street.

“We’re all in the same boat,” Gibbs said. “We have to understand that … what is good for one has to be also good for the other.”

This is becoming the schizophrenic presidency.  One day we get Obama, hero for the middle class.  This Obama campaigns on a middle class tax cut – a true middle class tax cut, not Republican trickle down – and puts it in his budget.  The next day, after attacks from Capitol Hill, the middle class tax cut is suddenly a “maybe.”  One day we get President Outrage – angry beyond belief at those bloodsuckers on Wall Street for taking advantage of the taxpayer.  The next day we get a trillion dollar pledge from the President’s treasury secretary to use more taxpayer money to further front toxic assets.

Today, this is just President Bad PR.  Do taxpayers want to hear the President coddling bankers?  “We’re all in the same boat?”  Give me a break.  We’re all in a barrel headed over the Niagra Falls – a barrel the bankers and brokers put us into.  So far, in this recession, this financial crisis, the bankers and brokers have been sailing aboard the Queen Mary.  I mean, come on — they made all the mistakes and we’re stuck footing the bill.

I know I’m not in the same boat with the suits Obama will speak to on Friday.  When they fuck up, Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke are like the OJ Simpson Dream Team, pulling Wall Street’s chestnuts out of the fire.  When you or I fuck up – we’re just fucked.