The Only Thing Between Bankers & Pitchforks: Obama?

This is from The Politico. How does it sound to you?

The bankers struggled to make themselves clear to the president of the United States.

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves.

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

How would you interpret this?

Is this the new politics of inclusion?

Is it hope, or change? Or neither?

Since when has it become a crime to pay, or receive, high salaries?

Since when is it a political tool to threaten American citizens with pitchfork-toting mobs?

If this is true -- and no one has come forward yet to deny it -- as an American I must say I am appalled, and ashamed.

If this is true -- and the anecdotal evidence of a trend is beginning to lean in that direction -- we have allowed the barbarians inside the gates. They are not those bearing pitchforks, but those with security passes inside the White House.

The fresh details of the meeting — some never before revealed — come from an account provided to POLITICO by one of the participants. A second source inside the meeting confirmed the details, and two other sources familiar with the meeting offered additional information.

The accounts demonstrate that despite the public comments on both sides that the meeting was cordial, the tone in the room was in fact one of mutual wariness. The titans of finance — men used to being the most powerful man in almost any room — sized up a new president who made clear in ways big and small that he expected them to change their ways.

We elect a president to run the executive branch of government and be commander-in-chief of the armed services. He can propose legislation and national policy, and the Congress can follow along or dispose of his ideas. Tell me, is threatening to unleash the pitchforks against the bankers very presidential?

He is not Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. economy.

But he's acting like it.

We know that someone paid ACORN "volunteers" to demonstrate in front of the homes of the AIG executives, and chartered and paid for the buses that carried them. Many of the execs were in fear of their lives, and the lives of their innocent spouses and children. Even though they had worked for $1 for the past 12 months, many returned their bonuses.

Who orchestrated and paid for this demonstration? Who do we know who has previous ACORN and community "organizing" experience?

Now that ACORN is firmly funded with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, are we going to see stronger tactics including, perhaps, pitchforks?