Selectively Deaf?

OK, hissy fit of self-pity over. Back to business.

I watched the NBC Evening News on the web last night and saw the performance put in on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange by Rick Santelli, the CNBC reporter.

Pardon me, I know that the MSM has a particular slant these days, depending on the network news you watch. Fox purports to be fair and balanced, when it's actually a fair and balanced look at things from the right wingnut direction. The BBC certainly has a particular slant, backed by the 'tax' imposed upon anyone owning a television in the UK, even though its charter requires it to be absolutely impartial.

I actually thought that reporters, be they working for a newspaper or in the television/radio media, are there merely to 'report' the factual news and not offer opinionated comment. Leave the latter to the domain of op-edders and social commentators.

But last night I witnessed this CNBC bod giving the performance of a lifetime, on the eve of the Oscars, in radging Chicago's finest, when it comes to making money, into a frenzy of consternation at the President's proposal that taxpayers should - shock, horror - use their taxes to help bail their 'neighbours' out of titchy mortgage predicaments. Santelli's outburst rivalled the sublime hissy fit Lindsey Graham threw on the Senate floor last week, stamping his foot against the Recovery Package. Santelli made Obama's mortgage rescue sound like the ultimate last bastion of forced philanthropic socialism.

It's not.

There followed various and sundry man-in-the-street interviews with concerned citizens who railed against their tax dollars being used to bail out some poor Joe who was remiss with his mortgage payments, some deadbeat.

But ... the plan's not like that.

The night BEFORE this diatribe, I actually listened to the President unveil this plan in Arizona, John McCain's home state, no less (and they say the Americans don't understand irony). I listened to his words. Maybe, in the confusion of diverse and various vocabulary milling about in my brain, I didn't hear or comprehend him correctly. Maybe in a rush of surplus estrogen, I played the adolescent and heard what I wanted to hear, but I honestly don't think so.

I heard the President say that this plan wouldn't help everyone. That it was designed to help those people who'd brought their homes in good faith, who'd paid religiously every month their mortgage payments, who'd lost a job or had a downsize in employment, who'd used their savings et al to help with the payments, who'd opened the 401K ... in short, people who'd paid regularly, despite their personal circumstances, until their funds etc had been depleted and they were now staring foreclosure in the face. I also heard him say it would not benefit the property speculator who sought to buy a house and sell within a few months at a profit, only to buy another. And I heard him say that it wouldn't benefit those people who'd bought houses they couldn't afford, with no intent to pay. And on the selfsame Nightly News last night, I heard another reporter say that 92% of Americans with mortgages, pay these on time.

So Santelli whips the public into a frenzy about 8% of the mortgage-holding public. First, you have to ask yourself how many Americans HAVE mortgages; then, you have to take 8% of that figure. Finally, you have to spread that figure over the United States as a whole.

Hardly a neighbourhood, is it?

I suppose we can congratulate ourselves on finally reaching the theta-clear of Thatcherism: the 'I'm All Right, Jack' philosophy of, as long as I'm doing ok, fuck the rest of you people. The ordinary Joes interviewed had better stop and think of the repercussions of having even one foreclosed house located down the street from their own. (Pssst! There goes the neighbourhood. It doesn't look good. It devalues your home, in the event that you want to sell or that you - dare I say it - die). So it's actually moot that a bit of good old fashioned socialism is using your involuntary tax contribution to help your fellow citizen stay in his home and pay his mortgage on time.

You have to look at it this way. In these most uncertain of times, it could actually happen to you; then you'd be singing from a different hymnal.

After all, what is socialism but 'to each according to his ability, for each according to his means'? It's sort of compassionate government, and we're totally unfamiliar with that concept.

Wanted: US President: Train on the Job

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Prize Package or Trojan Horse?

Well, it passed the Senate, and of course, it's not to everyone's liking. My faux Conservative friend from Virginia e-mailed me today whingeing about the fact that his son and all his as yet unborn grandchildren were going to be the inheritors of a 'massive debt' due t0 our rapid descent into socialism. My heart bleeds for him ... not. I've lived under semi-socialism and it's not that bad. Honestly.

From what I can glean from the bill the Senate cut, pared and finally passed is that they're proposing a system by which the government 'buys' all the bad banks and sort of cleans them up and re-positions them. This is similar to what was done not too long ago in Norway; only there the bigger banks absorbed a lot of the smaller, less solvent ones under the bigger banks' aegis. I suppose our plan is semi-socialistic. I don't know. I can't pretend to understand economy as I've never been quite the one for maths, science and the lot, especially maths.

I know the Republicans are moaning about there not being enough tax cuts, but I can't see what that would accomplish. In an economically hard time, if you hand people more money in the form of tax cuts, middle- and working-class people are going to put this money aside in savings. Hand a tax cut to a wealthy person or a wealthy business establishment and they might spend; but we all know that trickle down simply didn't ... er, trickle down. The Republicans' behaviour has simply astounded me during the past week or so, especially in the Senate.

Talk about sour grapes. They're dangerously echoing the stated sentiment of their real leader, Rush Limbaugh, in wanting, willing Obama to fail. And I must admit, I've been more than a bit perplexed and critical of Obama in the past seven days, for his repeated attempt at 'peace, love and understanding' the Republican party in the name of bi-partisanship.

Mr President, these are not nice people. You've made your point. You've tried. They just aren't that into you as a President. They're bitter, twisted, angry, jealous, old and white. They tried. They failed. They're not going to get over it, so you and the Democratic party better develop some backbone and fast. Charlie Crist might be an exception; but Charlie Crist isn't sitting in Congress or the Senate with that disapproving old maiden-faced Mitch McConnell breathing down his neck or Lindsey Graham throwing hissy fits.

Mr President, kick ASS. Start by respectfully retiring that Mormon gentleman, Harry Reid. (A Mormon and a Democrat? That's an oxymoron, if ever there was one - or should I say oxyMormon?) I suggest making Jim Webb Senate majority leader. He's a man who takes no quarter and doesn't suffer fools gladly. (The fact that he's also a Virginian and from my native state, is an added bonus).

And listening to Tim Geithner's explanation of the bailout package .... well, hmmmmmmmmm, is all I can say. Part of it sounds suspiciously like stuff Bush propounded: like not holding the banks who got themselves up shit creek responsible for the dodgy mortgages and cruddy loans made to people who, unfortunately, didn't have repayment means.

Finally, I'm amused and dismayed and more than a bit peeved at the reaction of Mike Huckabee to the Stimulus Package. Governor Huckabee is one of the more likeable Republicans. He seems a nice man, in a Christian sort of way - and there's the rub. The very aspect that makes him likeable, also makes him 'unlikeable' as well. He reared the ugly head of Christianity when he slammed the fact that the Stimulus Package prohibited higher education funds from being allotted to Schools of Divinity. Quite bloody right. Someone's FINALLY thinking along Constitutional lines now in the Senate, especially after Obama's less-than-subtle wink in the direction of those people in the US who define themselves as secular. Federal money shouldn't be given to divinity schools. We have no established church nor do we have an established religion, and in no way should the government fund the education of clergymen or men of faith. It's a private matter. I see also, he went on to slam some of the agencies to which federal money had been allotted - like those evil women socialists who front Emily's List.

You know, they say the Republicans won the first round of the PR war last week with all their posturing and pirouetting about how bad the proposed Stimulus Package was; they did this with their usual 'fear tactics', with smear and appealing to the base, yet again. I was worried that some people, people who would normally have endorsed a Republican candidate, might have reverted to type in this first crisis of the new Administration. Therefore, I was glad the President moved swiftly, both in his Press Conference and in his visits to communities in Indiana and Florida. Obama is a great communicator. You have only to listen to him speak and then listen to some jumbled garbage propagated by Bush to understand the difference. The former speaks the people in the audience. He speaks directly to them. Take 49 people out of an audience of 50 and Obama would still sound the same way, as if he's speaking directly to the people. And he is. Maybe I'm naive, maybe I've been out of the country too long, maybe I'm just stupid and starstruck that after 8 years we have a President who can string a subject and a predicate together and come up with a coherent thought; but I trust Obama. I trust him in a way I've never really trusted any government leader in my voting lifetime. He seems sincere. I believe he's sincere, although I might be wrong. Listening to his predecessor was a painful exercise in anger management. I cannot believe the stupidity levels of American voters to have elected a cretin like George Bush, and to give him a second term and free reign to rape and pillage the Constitution. That single act by the American people gave credence to the addage that people get the government they deserve.

Well, we finally got one right, it seems - at least for the moment. I think Obama did the right thing in making those two trips and playing them out before the public. I hope he does more of that. Why? Because it will galvinise the people to contact their representatives and hold their feet to the fire in supporting a President who wants to work for his people - and not just the people who elected him, but those who didn't either. Maybe I'm wrong about Obama, but I hope not. A week after the Inauguration, I was speaking with one of my aunts in Virginia. She'll turn 80 this year. I asked how she liked the new President.

'Just fine,' she said. 'I've lived long enough to see a People's President.'

I have as well.

Lindsey Graham: GOP Drama Queen

I wasn't going to post any blog today, but I caught sight of the Senate debate on the Stimulus Package and I just had to vent my spleen.

Lindsey Graham, mouthpiece of McCain chicanery, was blowing hot air in a desperate and, at times, condescending attempt at filibuster in order to scupper the President's economic recovery plan. The minute I clued into this, reminded me of why I turned my back on Southern manhood collectively and sought refuge in the arms of the British. As in any chemical reaction, opposites attract, and when I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish and often found myself, at university, in two rather serious relationships with Southern boys of the Republican persuasion. They had the charm, they had the manners, they talked the talk and - on occasion -they walked the walk too. But they had an ugly side to them and it reared its ugly head again today in Lindsey's petulant performance on the floor of the Senate. I spewed my gin and tonic when he actually used incorrect grammar ('ain't')! It wasn't even deliberately rhetorical, I actually think it was a genuine rube slip-up. It showed his crackerness; it was embarrassing.

He acted like a spoiled bubba who didn't get his just desserts. He was patronising to the President as a man and he dissed Barbara Boxer, who was classy enough to school him on his inadequate performance. Post-feminist that I am, I don't practice gender politics; but Graham didn't even have the grace to respect Senator Boxer as a person, much less a woman.

Watch this spectacle. I don't know if I feel sorrier for Southern boys from Deliveranceland being raised to aspire to this sort of adulthood, or those poor dumbass Southern belles who bag a beast like this and think they've got something. All I know is, men like Lindsey Graham make Brits look bloody good; and the thought that this Neanderthal is an elected representative in the United States, scares the living bejaysus out of me.

Lindsey, sorry ... I'm just not that into you. I may have tipped you the wink in the Seventies from my elitist Virginia perch, but even I wasn't that desperate then. The election was over in November. You lost. Have a mint julep and get over it.

http://http://www.c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-R-15146