Obama to Wall Street: Join us, you lying sons of …

Actually the headline in The New York Times today was: “Obama to Wall St.: ‘Join Us, Instead of Fighting Us’.”

The fuller quotation down in the story from Obama’s Manhattan speech was: “I want to urge you to join us, instead of fighting us in this effort. I’m here because I believe that these reforms are, in the end, not only in the best interest of our country, but in the best interest of the financial sector.”

He was also quoted as saying, ““Unless your business model depends on bilking people, there is little to fear from these new rules.”

I could not help but recall other quotations from the president I’d read in an editorial in the previous day’s Wall Street Journal.

There Obama was quoted as calling an opponent of his financial institutions reform “cynical” and their words “just plain false.”

Then there were the references to “fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”

On AIG: "This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed."

On General Motors investors: "a small group of speculators" who "were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none."

During his health care address to Congress he called opponents of the measure "cynical and irresponsible," spreading "misinformation," and making "bogus," "wild" or "false" claims through "demagoguery and distortion."

And some accuse the Tea Party crowd of ratcheting up the rhetoric.

Never mind the words of Obama ally and former President Bill Clinton who called the opponents of Obama’s policies seditious.