According to the Express, Barack Obama is going to be paid $2.5 million dollars for a speech he’s giving in Milan today. This follows on a $400,000 speech he gave on Wall Street a while back, and a $65-million advance he and his wife were given for books they (or someone) will be writing.

Mind you, as far as I’m concerned he’s welcome to get what he can for his road-show. If that desiccated harpy Madonna can go on tour and pull in $300 million, why shouldn’t Barack Obama put his snout in the trough? (I almost said “more power to him”, but I think we’ve had quite enough of that for a while, thank you.) I will, though, just remind Him that He once told us “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” (In fairness, I suppose we should keep in mind that he never said what that “certain point” actually is.)

So: why am I bringing this up? Not, I assure you, to try to enforce some sort of ethical consistency on the part of a Machiavellian left-wing ideologue and preening, unshameable narcissist; I might as well holler up a drainpipe. I’m simply presenting it as evidence that such consistency is nowhere to be found, that those who tell you otherwise are at best fools, and more often liars, and that those who take the moral high ground to lecture us about civic virtue are usually found, on closer inspection, to be standing atop a large and growing pile of dollars.