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The New York Times Opinionator Blog on the Rick Santelli Controversy
15 comments on “The New York Times Opinionator Blog on the Rick Santelli Controversy”
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Santelli had better watch his back. I’m expecting we’re going to get a lot of personal data leaked to the press on him soon, ala “Joe the Plumber.” We know more about Joe’s tax and marriage issues than we ever did about Obama’s associations with marxist terrorists or racist preachers, and I suspect we’ll know everything there is about Santelli soon, too.
#1, that’s all part of the “fairness doctrine.”
[blockquote]Along the lines of Cole, Sirota frames the debate as one between market populism (Santelli) and grassroots populism (Bernero)[/blockquote]
I don’t think it’s an “either-or” sort of “populism” at all. The populi I speak to think bank shareholders and executives should foot the bill to pay off accounts held at their institutions and that if people attempt to own houses that were priced over their heads, well, hello, time to downsize!
“watch his back?”
Ah yes, I remember. You think Obama’s a marxist and was close with Ayers, in contrast to the evidence. They have pills for paranoia.
Joe the plumber? Well, I think he dug himself a hole once people got to watch the depth of his political analysis. Not the brightest bulb in the planet.
Santelli will be revealed to be a hypocritical blowhard, perhaps. In the end, resentful ranting vs. a government trying to solve the problems average Americans are having. Who will win that one?
Yes, John, watch his back. It was less than a week before Democrats in Ohio had done unwarranted searches of confidential files and leaked information to the press on JTP for his temerity to ask a hard question of Obama (which he fumbled). Santelli will more than likely face the same sort of defamation from you tolerant types. Even here, he’s being slandered as a “hypocritical blowhard,” a propos of nothing. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that dissent was no longer the height of patriotism.
It must be nice to be so in love with Obama that one cannot see his true nature. However, freedom of speech is in danger of becoming an endangered species. Chairman Pelosi has already silenced the Republicans in the House, it won’t be long before any dissent is listed as treason.
RE: “In the end, resentful ranting vs. a government trying to solve the problems average Americans are having. Who will win that one?”
Well we know it won’t be average Americans.
[blockquote]Well we know it won’t be average Americans. [/blockquote]
Indeed, as some 92% of Americans are paying their mortgages normally at the moment the average Joe is, by definition, not the one Obama is bailing out. The Average American will be the bailer, not the bailee (not that we’ll be given the credit…that will go to the Master of the Unicorn)
The New Deal didn’t get us out of the Depression, but they made people happy. It’s currently the rage locally to crow about the WPA projects that made this city what it is: libraries, parks, the convention center, and so on. I doubt the Obama bailouts will work, but you can bet they are going to look marvelous.
I think John needs to read Michael Savage’s book “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder” and see what he can do to be cured. 🙂
I happened to see Santelli’s “rant” live, and he closed it by saying that the people who trade in the pits these days are not the rich, Ivy League speculators of days gone by, but hard working guys/gals who put out a lot of effort for a lot less than the breathtaking sums people seem to think they make.
The real robber barons are the Harvard/Yale/etc. types who take their liberal arts degrees to Goldman Sachs et. al., make obscene amounts of money and then assuage their liberal guilt, but not enough to significantly crimp their lifestyle, by supporting liberal causes that tax the heck out of most of us.
Heh – Daniel, if I were just a liberal, perhaps I would need to be cured. I’m a pragmatist and have no particular ideology. I think Arthur Bentley, Henry George and Keynes were generally right.
I’m a bit confused by your last sentence. “Liberal causes that tax the heck out of most of us.” The Iraq war? Um… its the blue states that actually pay more taxes than the red states. It’s the conservative states that get most of the government largess. I’m always a bit amused by people who get angry at people who went to Harvard and Yale. And again, I don’t have a problem with people making money. I do think that those who make money should recognize that it’s finally all God’s money, and they are lucky to have it.
RE: “I’m a pragmatist and have no particular ideology.”
Well, other than that of a deconstructionist socialist who is also a progressive Episcopalian.
Other than those three ideologies, none at all.
One can pretty much predict all of JW’s responses on this blog merely using those three as a grid. You can also do the same with my ideologies — but I don’t spend my time claiming I “have no particular ideology” which claim would be as transparently false and amusing as JW’s is.
[blockquote]I’m a pragmatist and have no particular ideology.[/blockquote]
So that’s what Maxwell House looks like on my monitor.
Sarah, have you been reading Donna Haraway again? I do think she’s quite the provocateur, but I think she’s a little too optimistic. Unless you mean the school of literature: in which case tend to read things for either their aesthetic or historical value.
As far as being a socialist, well I don’t know what you mean by that. I tend to think that distributivism or Georgism (Henry George) is far more viable and religiously justifiable as economic frameworks. But yes, I admit I often think my family in Europe has a pretty good deal. Most tend to be on the conservative side in their countries, but I think you would probably find them to be “socialistic” because they think that poverty in a rich country is wrong – and they are willing to pay the taxes for it. By and large they see the benefits of taxes: high quality of life, health care, free opera, low crime.
By and large, we prefer to make bombs and prisons with taxes. It’s an expensive trade off, and one I know you are happy to make.
However, I think the market tends to distribute wealth more cooperatively than other forms of government; and yet, it needs to be regulated and managed (not planned) to maintain fairness and discourage greed.
RE: “As far as being a socialist, well I don’t know what you mean by that.”
Oh, you’ve described it just fine, JW, over the course of your remarks. You just don’t want to name it — which gets back to the deconstructionism.
Like I said . . . you’re fairly easy to label and your ideologies are crystal clear to most commenters here, despite your zeal for attempting to hide them.
Deconstructionist.
Socialist.
Progressive Episcopalian.
Pretty simple really and the past four years of comments make that all clear.
What is disturbing, of course, is not those ideologies, but your attempts to hide them. Thankfully — they haven’t been well done.