American International Group, an insurance company that has received about $180 billion in taxpayer funds, last week paid $165 million in bonuses to executives whose bad judgment is largely responsible for the financial mess we're in.  Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, wants the government to take back the bonuses.  This is a change of heart for Mr. Dodd, because it was he who inserted in the "stimulus" bill an amendment which specifically protected from restrictions on executive compensation "contractually obligated bonuses agreed on or before Feb. 11, 2009."  The amendment applied principally to AIG. Why might Sen. Dodd have been so solicitous of the welfare of the AIG execs?  Perhaps because last year he was the single largest recipient of contributions from American International Group's political action committee and its employees:  $103,100, according to opensecrets.org, which derived the information from Federal Elections Commission records.  The second largest recipient of AIG largesse?  Barack Obama, $101,332.  Chris Dodd is just another corrupt politician.  The One was supposed to be different.  Now we are discovering he isn't.

I plopped onto a barstool at the HFR Saloon and ordered a Maximus.  "So you're into Double IPAs, eh?" noted the bartender as he served it in a frosty mug.  "Best beer in America," was my response. "Well, you look like you need a best of something," he observed.  "What I need is a refuge from insanity.  That's why I come here - the HFR Saloon is a refuge from the insane asylum America is becoming.  Just today, the big headline in my paper [The Washington Times] is "Obama Vows to Get Tough on Earmarks."  He said this as he was signing legislation that had 9,000 earmarks.  If the nation doesn't laugh itself silly over that, then we have a nation of retards. "But maybe the whole world is going insane.  Again today, the guy who runs Blackstone declares that "45% of the world's wealth has been destroyed" in this global economic meltdown.  What does that mean?  That close to half of all the homes, cars, commercial buildings, all the gold and silver in bank vaults, all the stuff that everybody owns in the world has been demolished?  Is this guy nuts?  And yet it makes headlines.  I paused to quaff my Maximus.  I was beginning to draw a crowd.

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Those in the Obama administration blame the Bush administration for the current mess. Yet the markets have continued to fall since President Obama was nominated (S&P down 48 percent), elected (down 28 percent) and assumed office (down 15 percent). Worse yet, the markets are down to less than half the level they were when the Democrats took over Congress two years ago. The markets are clearly registering a vote of "no confidence" in the Democrat Congress and the Obama administration. Markets are leading indicators, and so it is only a matter of time before the general public registers its vote of no-confidence in the Obama administration. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is on a witch hunt to find people in government and the private sector to threaten and blame.  This is ironic in the extreme, given that Mr. Frank was, and continues to be, a major part of the problem. 

Warning to tourists - it is now illegal to take a photo of a London policeman or "bobby." The time-honored tradition of tourists having their pictures taken with London cops is being dealt a silly death blow by those who control the British nanny-state. The British are not only losing their economic prosperity, but their civil liberties as well. Will Britain again become the "sick man of Europe"? A quarter-century ago, Margaret Thatcher led Britain out of an economic wilderness and enabled it to have the fastest-growing economy among the four big countries in the European Union. Today, however, under Gordon Brown's Labor government, Britain is rapidly rushing backward with pre-Thatcherite economic policies.  At the same time, civil libertarians on both the left and right are increasingly concerned that Britain is drifting toward becoming a police state.

Americans anxiously watching their 401ks melt away may not have noticed the Obama administration is off to a rocky start in foreign policy, too. We were told often during the campaign that Mr. Obama would repair relationships with foreign governments allegedly damaged by the "cowboy" diplomacy of George W. Bush.  But in his first weeks in office, President Obama gratuitously has offended allies, and has made clumsy overtures -- contemptuously rebuffed -- to adversaries. Most puzzling has been the back of the hand treatment the president has given to our closest ally.  The British were ecstatic when Mr. Obama was elected.  They aren't any longer.

When I walked into the HFR Saloon today, everyone at the bar was laughing their heads off.  "What's so funny?" I asked.  "Haven't you heard?" came a reply.  "Our messiah-in-chief has a new title.  He's now President Teleprompter." "Yes, even the New York Times is saying he's addicted - can't give a speech or make the simplest announcement without it," my barmate continued.  There's even a website now: teleprompterpresident.com "And this guy has the audacity to make fun of Rush Limbaugh - who just spoke at that CPAC conference for 90 minutes straight without a single note.  Can you imagine what would happen to Zero if he had to debate Rush one-on-one?  He'd be a joke." "He already is a joke, and a quite tasteless one," I responded.  "That's why he's being called ‘Jimmy Obama,' after the disastrous bad joke of the Carter presidency."  I ordered a pint of Guinness. "But he's already blown way past Carter incompetence.  So I think we should start calling him ‘Richard Obama' - after Richard Nixon." Everyone at the bar gave me a blank stare. "Ah, how did Nixon's presidency end?" I asked rhetorically.  "He resigned, he quit.  Our country literally cannot afford four years of Zero - our economy and our national security will be ruined, no joke, no exaggeration.  We need this guy outta here ASAP.  We need him to suffer the fate of Richard Nixon." Everyone promptly ordered another Guinness with which to properly reflect on this.

Few did more to reassure Jews it was "safe" to vote for Barack Hussein Obama - which they did by 78% - than Martin Peretz, financier and editor in chief of the New Republic magazine since 1974. "Can Friends of Israel -- and Jews -- Trust Obama?" he asked in an article in January of last year. His answer was yes.  "Obama's points, which he has made many times, should reassure anyone who is concerned about what his presidency would mean for the security of Israel," Mr. Peretz wrote then. But Mr. Obama's appointment of Charles "Chas" Freeman to be director of the National Intelligence Council is causing Mr. Peretz second thoughts.  A lot of Jews are starting to have "buyer's remorse" regarding Mr. Obama.  It's about time.