-- Congress ripped the presidents of Chrysler and General Motors for flying to D.C. to ask for federal handouts. And Obama blasted federally infused Citibank for possessing a corporate jet, saying: "If the taxpayers are helping you, then you have certain responsibilities to not be living high on the hog." Yet Obama chose to sign the stimulus bill not in the White House but in Denver -- requiring a six-hour round-tripper aboard Air Force One, which burns about 6,000 gallons of jet fuel per hour.

-- Any employee of the Internal Revenue Service with the tax lapses of newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (who oversees the IRS), would have been lucky to get off with just being fired.

-- Another Obama appointee with tax issues: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. As a Congressman, he paid nothing to live for five years in a house owned by Connecticut Democratic Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and her husband, pollster Stan Greenberg. Emanuel (a) paid no taxes on the DeLauro gift of a rent-free living arrangement, and (b) contrary to congressional ethics rules, failed to disclose the gift.

-- In another example of erasing the past a la Big Brother, the Obama administration has renamed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) the Financial Stability Plan, because TARP got its name from the dread Bush administration.

-- During inaugural festivities, Obama skipped the military inaugural ball -- apparently the first time a newly installed president has failed even to show up.

-- A study of 600 private colleges by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that presidents do not always take home the biggest paychecks on campus. At the schools studied, 88 employees earned more than $1 million. The highest-paid among them? At $4.4 million (more than quadruple the compensation of the University of Southern California's president), Pete Carroll -- USC's head football coach.

-- In declaring the economy will recover, Obama stands in a distinguished line. Herbert Hoover, in May 1930 (the Great Depression would last 10 more years): "I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover." Franklin Roosevelt, in 1935, two years before a surge in unemployment and a further collapse in the Dow Jones Industrial Average: "Never since my inauguration in March, 1933, have I felt so unmistakably the atmosphere of recovery."

-- Ah, but this time around surely there's comfort in the statement of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke: "We're not completely in the dark."