Let me walk you through an idea I had for an advertisement for a financial institution, maybe a bank.  It starts with a young girl (NOT Sarah Palin, I'm done), it shows the young girl now a teenager graduating from high school.  Now she's a woman getting married.  Now her and her husband stand outside what we presume to be their first home.  Now she's pushing out a bunch of stupid kids (Maybe Palin, heh heh, okay I'm not done), and now her kids are growing up and moving into their first homes.  And years later, her and her husband sit in rocking chairs on the deck of their home.  Now a man steps forward.  Smiling.  Trusting.  And the message?  That on every step of your life's journey he was there with you.  This is followed by the aforementioned financial institution's logo across the screen.

If my idea sounds entirely unoriginal it's probably because you've seen it a thousand times in one form or another.  It's the message which reminds the viewer of the services that banks and lending insitutions provide:  Sound financial advice.  We'll work through this together and find what's right for you.  And in many ways the message is very similar to what one would like to believe of other trusted experts, namely doctors or attorneys.  They provide solutions.  If the individual knew as much as the specialist or expert he wouldn't need their advice.  This is not the same as getting a blowing credit on a television or purchasing a new car that you can't afford, a home is a major life decision and it requires sound advice from a person whose sole duty is to provide it.

What I'd like to know is why I constantly hear politicians and economists and other talking heads blaming people who took out loans they couldn't afford to buy houses that were far out of their price range.  While we live in an information age that allows everyone greater access to the same tools used by professionals, we are not all professionals in these areas.  If a person goes to a bank because they are looking to buy a home they place trust into that institution to use a degree of professional scrutiny and work out a solution that is right for them.  If it's out of their price range or they can't afford it or there's any risk, that's the exact point at which we expect the expert to speak up and provide a different solution.

Some have used the term "predatory lending", which is misleading.  It assumes that there was a small portion of Guy Smiley Trickster's out there who were going door-to-door in poor neighborhoods with promises of a better tomorrow if you just "signed here" (those would be the Army recruiters).  In truth I think that most of those who took out these bad loans were people who looked at the economic conditions around them and went to the bank to see if this was something they could be a part of.  They expected scrutiny.  They expected to be placed under a microscope.  But they expected that within their own financial circumstances the person they were speaking to would provide a solution that was right for them.  Blame them for not being skeptical enough, but don't blame them for being misinformed.

What I see are a number of politicians and leaders throwing the foreclosed under the bus to appease this deep sensibility we have in this country of hating anybody who has had an easier time acheiving something than they did  (just look at people discuss Affirmative Action).  I think this goes back to the Great Depression, and a lot of old hawks whose daddies had to live in boxcars and fight each other over pieces of string cheese.  And ironicallly enough, while these old bastards lived through an era where pensions and social security was granted without individual responsibilty, the rest of us live in an age of total insecurity where we have to make each decision for ourselves and hope that our decisions are well-informed. So is expecting that level of accountability from the homeowner fair?

We have a health care crisis.  Speaking from personal experience I constantly see people getting treatments, expensive treatments, that are completely inappropriate that would yield very little results.  But the doctors push for them anyways and the patients want to see every option exhausted regardless of whether they can afford it.  Surely we wouldn't begrudge the patient for that (not yet).  But should we apply the "it's all on you" philosophy of banking to the health care crisis?  Is the patient responsible for his own diagnosis, irregardless of what the doctor is pushing?  When will these leaders start blaming people who got themselves into medical debt for not having the foresight to look beyond what advice was being provided by their doctor?

This may be off topic, but I was listening to Air America today (I'm a sucker for pain, amirite?) and they kept talking about this Air America Cruise in the coming months.  I heard Rachel Maddow urging me to sign up to get a cabin aboard the ship.  There will be panels on important progressive issues.  There will be drinks.  You can sit on a deck and hear about important liberal beliefs.

I thought about it.  I think I would rather spend 7 days on the Titanic's maiden voyage being mouth-raped by Chewbacca than trapped on a boat hearing about global policy and gun control.

Not that I have anything against the progressive cause, but what kind of sick freak pays to get aboard a boat full of mouthy liberals?  I'm liberal and I can't stand them.

Did McCain really just say that this bailout is as a result of failures on Main Street?

It was a winter's day, and the frost stuck to the windshield of my old Ford truck like Winter rust as I pulled up the driveway to the Palin house. I had to ring the doorbell twice, and when the door opened, she was standing there. "Miss Palin?" I gulped. "Sorry, I was just in the shower. Are you here to fix the cable?" She asked. I became nervous. There was the luscious Sarah Palin, wrapped like a slippery banana in a white towel. Her hair still dripping wet. Beads of water on the nape of her neck. Steam fogging the lenses of her glasses. "Don't worry. My husband Todd is out fishing," she said, motioning me to come in. "I hope you brought your tool box," she said, in a suggestive manner. I stepped inside the house, wiping my feet off on their mat. "We're having all kinds of remodeling done this week," she said as she sat on the couch. "A boy just like you was here earlier this week laying carpet." "So where is the cable box?" I asked, feeling the temperature rise inside me. She motioned to a wall unit across from the couch where she was sitting. I stepped carefully across the new carpet and began turning her television to work on the cable. Fox News anchor Michelle Malkin was on the screen, talking about the Iraq War. "Do you follow politics?" She asked, as she dabbed her hair with her towel. "Not really." I answered, knowing what work needed to be done. "I've been following this surge," she said. "It's interesting the type of men who look at a rough situation and think that we need to pull out." She pulled her towel down. "Do YOU believe in pulling out?" She said, biting her lip...

Palin continues to yammer on about being a "maverick" and a "reformer" and I think it's cute.  It's like when my nephew puts on his little OshKosh B'Gosh's and a hat and calls himself a "cowboy".  Obama continues shelling out support in that "I"m just broken up about having to do this" way that Democrats use to have their base and eat it too.  Bush threatens financial apocalypse, Cheney keeps stroking a cat in his hollowed-out volcano, and McCain tries to buy himself a few days to suck air from a paper bag and wait for his do-over.

Rich people lost imaginary money last week.  I know it's more complicated than that, but on my level of the socio-economic ladder I very rarely catch a glimpse of the dream or what that's like, so I can only surmise from the photos of Wall Street bulls clutching their foreheads (which is hilarious btw) that they aren't having an easy go.

And on top of this bailout, consuming close to a trillion dollars, the McCain folks are leading the charge to let this kerfuffle consume the spectacle of the American political coliseum that is the great debate.  I think I speak for all of us, Republican and Democrat, when I say that I was looking forward all week to seeing these two filthy dogs tear into each other for our amusement.  Nothing allows the tired citizen a better way to vent than betting on fighting pigs.  In a way it hurts McCain on a deeper, more limbic part of the voter psyche when he tries shutting down this prize fight like a nanny reaching for the remote.  The mob wants to see somebody fed to the lions.

And I was sure that Obama would respond to his proposal by making chicken noises.  I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't call McCain out on this act but somebody who is as much of a complete tool?  Amirite?

Sure enough, a bunch of rich pigs losing some money is enough to bring the entire world to a screeching halt.  And what I find to be a fascinating look into who we are as a people is the way this Wall Street crisis is being treated.  You would have thought with all this grandiosity and call to country that there had been a natural disaster or another terrorist attack.  Surely we're not treating a bad day on the stock market the same way we would treat a horrible, gut-wrenching loss of life, are we?  Nothing died this past week but fairness and the belief that all our needs are equal.  But you can't really call for a moment of silence on something that you helped suffocate years ago.  I would make a joke about how the Red Cross should set up an 800 number that we can use to donate money to the rich families affected by what happened on Wall Street last week but then I remember this bailout and it fills me with homicidal rage.

If change comes from the bottom up, it appears that true leadership should follow that path as well.  What I don't see at this moment is the working class figure really sticking it to government and Wall Street for all us regular folks.  In earlier days that would have been a Martin Luther King Jr. or a Cesar Chavez.  Or in some simpler version, a Michael Moore.  (back when Corporate Crime was his beat...before went crazy and said things about hurricanes being a gift from God against Republicans).

I'm waiting for the guy named Jacques One who has a blueprint of the Bastille and a plan.  Until then I'm voting for the ticket of Coffee/Cigarettes.  That ticket actually does something to help me through each day.