The Rhodium Less Travelled: Obama Commissions Italian Jeweler to Spread $30K of Metallic Wealth to Wife Michelle. Ah, Capitalism!

After all the empty rhetoric Obama employed to hold himself out as the messiah of the masses, the hero of the working class, deliverer of the non-working poor from the oppression of the rich capitalists, disparager -in-chief attacking the productive and wealthy, threatening them with higher taxes, sharply criticizing even his opponent, Sen. McCain, for having the audacity (there's that word again) to own several houses at the same time-- Imagine.  Several houses. Why that's enough to provide shelter for all of Obama's destitute relatives, at the same time-- comes the revelation that Obama is having a 20,000 pound (USD$29,845) rhodium ring embedded with diamonds created as a "thank you" gift for his radical wife Michelle and her political support of him during his campaign.

Where are the media watchdogs to denounce this flagrant show of opulence as an extravagant and unseemly display of wealth by a young president-elect?  Huh? What? Oh, of course.  It's Barack Obama.  Sorry.  Never mind.

Don't misunderstand, I am a dyed-in-the-wool, hard-core capitalist and defender of the free enterprise system. If a man wants to buy his wife an expensive gift, and it is within his ability to do it, it is his prerogative to do so. But, the same worldview that motivates me also compels me to be a hard-core, dyed-in-the-wool critic and adversary of those who preach soap-box socialism in public and practice self-enriching, greedy capitalism in private. This is disingenuous and detrimental to all who practice it. It is also indicative of a double standard that has always existed in the upper echelons of liberalism-socialism. 

True egalitarianism--enforced equality--like income taxes, is meant only for "little people." As in all socialist countries where this has been tried before, the party elite becomes the new bourgeois and the common people assume an emasculated role in their government-mandated mediocrity as the new proletariat.  The more things "change" the more they stay the same.

The Real Messiah gave a parable two thousand years ago, which I paraphrase here (Paul's Non-Inspired Version): Be not censorious and magisterial about the splinter that is in your brother's eye, while you ignore, minimize, deny and seek to conceal the beam that is in your own. For that is what the unbelieving scribes, Pharisees, politicians and hypocrites do to get elected; and these you shall always have with you, especially since you keep voting them into office, year after year. (Note: last verse not found in the original, earliest manuscripts.)

Here's another verse that is more to the point: "Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." (Matthew 23:28)