The opportunity for ‘change and transparency’ have come and gone within the past 50 days of President Obama’s Administration and so far I have seen nothing but mendacity, hypocrisy and an imperious attitude coming from a naive cadre of individuals that have been labeled as bright, intelligent and talented.

A $410 billion spending package was signed by President Obama today behind closed doors that were not so transparent, because there were 8,000 earmarks of pork, depicted appropriately so by the adorable picture of pig on the top of this column. This was unlike a number of recent signings that took place with fanfare.  Here is a bill rammed through the Congress that no one read, including the President.

If Obama really wanted change, as he promised during his campaign, he would have stood behind his campaign words by vetoing this bill, mired with pork.  But within the short period of time he has been in office, he has given us politics as usual in DC.

This is a President that is spending more money than all of our Presidents combined since George Washington, a spending spree that will take generations of Americans to pay back.

During his campaign he didn’t have many good words about lobbyists, but shortly after being elected he sure put them into key positions in the Defense Department and Tresurery.

As for tax cheats, well we have Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary, who is going to oversee the IRS, who failed to pay $42,000 in back taxes and didn’t rectify the situation until after a vetting process;  and of course Senator Tom Dashle, didn’t pass the vetting process, withdrew his nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services because he failed to pay $140,000 in back taxes until they were drawn to his attention. And of course there were others that bowed out when it was revealed they too were tax cheats.

Now if this is not enough, we have house Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has repeatedly requested military aircraft to shuttle her and her colleagues and family around the country.  E-mails uncovered by Judicial Watch showed repeated attempts by Pelosi aides to request aircraft, sometimes aggressively, and by Department of Defense officials to accommodate them.  These were the very Dems who critizied auto industry executives for taking corporate jets to DC to testify for bailout money.  At least at the time they weren’t flying on taxpayer money as Pelosi has been doing for some time.

Further hypocrisy prevails with Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the tax writing committee who is under investigation about his personal finances and unpaid taxes on a beach house in the Caribbean.  Rangel also has a rent controlled apartment overlooking Central Park, which is coming into some questioning about taxes.  Rangel is Chairman of the Ways & Means Committee.

Now do you remember when Republicans were admonished by President Obama during a White House meeting not to listen to Rush Limbaugh?  And the Dems launched a campaign against Limbaugh because he wished that Obama’s policies would fail.  Well now it turns out that more democratic hypocrisy rears its ugly head.  The Democratic political operative James Carville — who criticized Rush Limbaugh for hoping Obama fails — was himself hoping George W. Bush would fail the morning of 9/11.

Just minutes before learning of the terrorist attacks on America, Democratic strategist James Carville was hoping for President Bush to fail, telling a group of Washington reporters: “I certainly hope he doesn’t succeed.”

Carville was joined by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who seemed encouraged by a survey he had just completed that revealed public misgivings about the newly minted president.

“We rush into these focus groups with these doubts that people have about him, and I’m wanting them to turn against him,” Greenberg admitted.

Minutes later, as news of the terrorist attacks reached the hotel conference room where the Democrats were having breakfast with left wing reporters, Carville announced: “Disregard everything we just said! This changes everything!”  And the media didn’t print a word until today.

Mendacity!