At risk of being a "too frequent" poster, ran across this and couldn't help but bring it to your attention, just in case you've missed it.

Apparently there is some question about whether or not Rick Santelli's rant was as random as it seemed, or rather the carefully planned trigger for the "anti-Obama" campaign.

According to Playboy Magazine  (now don't have a heart attack! I ran across it through another channel and went back to the original source rather than send you on a circuitous route to get to it! - I can hear it now...What is Stilli doing reading Playboy???)  the website that  launched the "Chicago Tea Party" revolt (www.ChicagoTeaParty.com) within hours of the rant, got it's domain name back in August of last year, and has been associated with some interesting characters in the Republican Party.

What we discovered is that Santelli's "rant" was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a "Chicago Tea Party" was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society."

The article that sent me to this link has some other links you may find interesting.

Hmmmmm...it's just a lttle smelly.

There have been a few posts lately about the potential for some some huge changes in our country with the election of President Obama and the horrific downturn in the economy. Most people are scared, and I think there is much to be scared of. No one wants to contemplate what 10%, 20% unemployment is going to look like. A lot of people go to bed every night wondering if they will be included in the next round of lay-offs. Many people are beginning to wonder what a post-consumer driven economy is going to look like.

But, I'm wondering if, just possibly, that this downturn, this wake-up call, might just be a good thing, albeit a heavily disguised one at the moment.

I know that the poor and the lower middle class are going to feel the pain disproportionately during the process, and that thought deeply saddens me. But I'm beginning to think that in the long run, it may turn out to be a good thing.

What if we are able to come out the other side with some better values as a country? Like a greater respect for those who don't have a lot of money.  Like a realization that "stuff" doesn't bring happiness. Like doing the "right" thing is far better than doing the convenient thing.

What if housing prices go down enough, and everyone has health insurance, so that only one person in the family needs to work, and now one parent can stay home and raise the kids? Not only would kids be raised by people who love them instead of strangers, BUT, the need for so many jobs would go away.

What if families started living in these big ol' houses together...Mom, Dad, the kids, AND Grandma/Grandpa, instead of one family in a house they can barely afford and the other several states away?

What if we decided that one television per household was enough, that we don't need a land line and cells phones, that everyone in the family doesn't need their own computer, that we don't need to "own" every DVD or CD ever produced?  What if we went back to giving ourselves pedicures, mowing our own lawns, cooking our own dinners, cleaning our own houses? What if we lightened our loads a bit so that all our "extra" stuff didn't need to go into "storage" and we actually had enough room in the garage to park our cars? And that we could reduce our insurance premiums because we didn't have so much to insure? What if we started wearing our clothes until they wore out, instead of until the "fashion police" told us we were behind the times? Would life really suck that bad?

What if kids started playing outside again, reading books instead of playing meaningless and violent video games?  What if mom (or dad) taught them their ABCs and 123s and they started school in kindergarten instead of spending four years in preschool? What if libraries and city parks once again became places of wonder?

What if the reduced stress in our lives made it so we could better manage our marriages and divorce was the exception rather than the rule? What if we hiked and rode our bicycles instead of going to the gym? What if going out to dinner and movie was a real "treat" again?

Would the "less,"  the "lower" standard of living we are all so afraid of, be such a bad thing? I'm just wondering...

Economics is not my strong suit, but it is my husband's, and some of his knowledge has rubbed off on me. So during this financial crisis I have understood enough of what was going on to have a semi intelligent conversation on the subject, but not well enough to explain it to anyone else. Much of the language is enough to make your eyes glaze over, like listening to a foreign film, where you don't have the benefit of the visual to help you figure out what is going on.

Since I have read many comments indicating a lack of understanding of the basic problem, and not understanding it well enough to shed light on it myself, I have been keeping my eye out for a simple tutorial on the problem, and have finally found one. It breaks the credit crisis down into its simplest components and explains it in terms that anyone can understand. It is a two-part video. 

 

 

Additionally there was a good special on CNBC which originally aired on February 7th that put some faces on the problem.  Interestingly enough good old Greenspan's fingerprints are all over this. That special will be replayed on March 1st. It is scheduled for 7pm here, but if you are interested in seeing it, you'll want to check your local listings...It is a 2 hour show, but well worth the time if you want to understand what happened.

***Major goof-up...The name of the special is House of Cards!!! Highly recommended...

Well, to watch the financial shows today, you'd think that president Obama had just declared war on the upper class, by suggesting that the wealthiest 2% of Americans were going to be asked to pay a little more in taxes! It's like poking a stick in an anthill and watching the ants scurrying around in an uproar!

On CNBC the commentators were beside themselves decrying the class warfare and how awful it was going to be that the wealthiest among us were going to be asked to pony up a little more to get us through this mess (never mind that a bunch of them are the ones who got us here to begin with!)

Donny Deutsch (a guest on the panel) and self-professed wealthiest person in the building was the ONLY one to speak up and say this was a wise proposal. That he didn't mind one little bit being asked to pay more. I was embarrassed for all the others on the panel.

I would LOVE to see a report on exactly how much money they would actually have to pay, and exactly what they might have to cut out of their budgets to pay it.

I would venture to guess they will be able to pay their heating oil bills, and keep the Mercedes (even both of them!) and still go to the gym, and get the mani/pedi once a week. I doubt they will have to fire the gardener or the housekeeper (okay, maybe the live-in might have to go...) Vacations might have to be scaled back a bit...perhaps only 3 weeks in the south of France. A few might have to give up the 2nd (make that the 3rd) home. In rare cases they may have to fly coach instead of 1st class. The new matching Rolex's may have a wait. They may have to do without the $200.00 a bottle of wine and learn to love the $50.00 swill. That designer coat might have to last 2 years instead of just one season...You can see how traumatic it will be.

Now contrast that with those who have to decide whether to pay the heating oil bill or buy their kids medication. Those who are underwater with their mortgages and have to decide whether to struggle to keep paying it even though the house is not worth as much as they owe (even though they put 20% down on it!) or to walk away from it with the inevitable damage that will be done to their credit rating. Those who have played by the rules their whole lives, and now, through no fault of their own, find themselves with no health insurance and are being forced to declare bankruptcy because they can't pay their medical bills. Those who have to feed their children from the dollar menu at McDonald's because it is cheaper than buying real food at the grocery store.

Think about those who are one paycheck away from losing their jobs and can't sleep at night worrying about how they are going to keep their family from living in their car, if they still have one.
Imagine the children going to sleep hungry, day after day after day, and the pain of parents who have to watch it.

We have never in our lives made even close to the kind of money that will be the starting point for the higher taxes, not even when we were both working. Yet we've managed to send 3 kids to college, own two homes, and spend seven weeks in Maui this year. We have a comfortable life. It makes me physically sick to my stomach to watch them cry over the tiny little blip this will be in their lives, compared to the REAL hardship so many Americans face.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

And you know what? Just like I got a perverse enjoyment over watching the ants scurry out of the anthill when I was a child, I have to confess to getting that same feeling watching them running around this morning crying poor pitiful me...

I resisted confronting that reality. As many of you know, I'm on an extended vacation. I never even considered going without my laptop. I need to stay in touch, I told myself. Week one, no problem. Just me and my husband and we both spend a lot of time on our computers and we are good with it. Week two, kids and grandkids arrive. I'm trying to balance family life, the 5 hour time difference and my desire to stay in touch w/ what's going on on TPM. By week three the comments begin...."Are we going to the beach? Or are you just going to blog all day?" "Don't worry, I'm sure your friends on TPM need you more than we do?"  "Gaga, can you quit blogging and play fairies with me? (I think they put her up to that!) Week four, I'm getting a little testy...why can't I have it all? Why do I have to choose between my family and my blogging? I begin hiding my blogging...waiting until they are all in bed, even though no one is around and I'm 12 hours behind the current conversation. An occassional quick comment before anyone notices I'm gone.

Week five...I can't take it anymore. Their nagging is impinging on my enjoyment of my blogging...I go cold turkey... For 2-3 days, I'm okay. Life is going on. I'm enjoying my family, and I'm not in too much pain. I can do this. Just a week and they'll be leaving, and I can go back to blogging. Or maybe I won't need it anymore and I can go back to being a regular person. Yeah. A regular person. I'll go back to being a regular person.

I relapse. I decide just reading wouldn't be so bad. If I don't comment, it won't be like really blogging. No one will know. Isn't there a patch or something? Methadone for bloggers? Oh, God...Justice lived in the same down I did, at about the same time. I comment...Bwak notices and says everyone misses me. I'm F$&#ed.

That's when I had to face it. I'm a junkie. And not an apologetic junkie. I am a full fledged, card carrying, can't wait to get my next fix junkie. I didn't want to believe it. I thought I could quit whenever I wanted. I wish this admission made me feel ashamed, but it doesn't. I've examined my addiction, and I can accept it.  I don't want an intervention. I don't want to stop. I like myself just fine, just the way I am.

Now, don't get me wrong. I adore my family, and if I REALLY had to make a choice, they would win. But, thank you Jesus, I don't have to, so I'm going to keep feeding my habit. I may have to hide it some in order to project some semblence of normalcy to the people who are entrusting their children to my care in a couple of months, but I can do it. Weeks six and seven will be okay. It's back to me and my husband...I'll miss them, but at least I don't have to have white knuckles...I'll figure out the details  when we return home in just under two weeks.

I'm a junkie, and they are just going to have to find a way to deal with it.