Rick Santelli bailed out on The Daily Show. Bad move. Stewart uses old CNBC clips to demonstrate just how wrong they've been in the past -- over and over and over. Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, AI effing G for heaven's sake. Did these goobers get anything right?
Via Open Left, that Rick Santelli rant about the Obama's housing plan -- maybe it wasn't so spontaneous after all. Playboy reporters Mark Ames and Yasha Levine have done the digging that was just too much work for the mainstream media.
Last week, CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli rocketed from being a little-known second-string correspondent to a populist hero of the disenfranchised, a 21st-century Samuel Adams, the leader and symbol of the downtrodden American masses suffering under the onslaught of 21st century socialism and big government. Santelli’s “rant” last-week calling for a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest President Obama’s plans to help distressed American homeowners rapidly spread across the blogosphere and shot right up into White House spokesman Robert Gibbs’ craw, whose smackdown during a press conference was later characterized by Santelli as “a threat” from the White House. A nationwide “tea party” grassroots Internet protest movement has sprung up seemingly spontaneously, all inspired by Santelli, with rallies planned today in cities from coast to coast to protest against Obama’s economic policies.
But was Santelli’s rant really so spontaneous? How did a minor-league TV figure, whose contract with CNBC is due this summer, get so quickly launched into a nationwide rightwing blog sensation? Why were there so many sites and organizations online and live within minutes or hours after his rant, leading to a nationwide protest just a week after his rant?
One tipoff? The website ChicagoTeaParty.com was actually registered last August by Zach Christenson, producer for a rightwing Chicago talk radio host who pushed the Obama/Bill Ayers/Weather Underground/Obama's pallin' around with terrorists story. ChicagoTeaParty.com came to life shortly after Santelli's rant. Christenson's crystal ball must be a real doozy.
Alabama's own Robert Gibbs -- currently White House Press Secretary -- makes it plain that Rick Santelli's rant about the housing plan (see it below the fold) is just plain wrong. Imagine that. A cable news guy runs off at the mouth about something he hasn't read and gets it wrong? Not exactly breaking news, is it?
The nice thing about having a Southerner as White House spokesperson is how easily that friendly, mellow drawl can transition from offering to buy the guy a cup of coffee to essentially saying Santelli doesn't know Jack @#%.The knife is inserted so smoothly the victim doesn't know he's dead until he hits the floor.
I've watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so. I'm not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives. But the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, stay in their job, pay their bills, send their kids to school, and to hope they don't get sick or that somebody they care for gets sick and sends them into bankruptcy.
I think we left a few months ago the adage that if it was good for a derivatives trader that it was good for Main Street. I think the verdict is in on that.
This plan helps those who have acted responsibly, played by the rules and made their mortgage payments. This will help people who aren't in trouble yet keep from getting in trouble. You can't stay in this program unless you continue to make mortgage payments. ... Here's what this plan won't do: It won't help somebody trying to flip a house. It won't bail out an investor looking to make a quick buck. It won't help speculators that were betting on a risky market. And it is not going to help a lender who knowingly made a bad loan. It is not going to help somebody who has long ago known they were in a house they couldn't afford.
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I would encourage him to read the President's plan. And understand that it will help millions of people, many of whom he knows. I would be more than happy to have him come here and read it. I'd be happy to buy him a cup of coffee. Decaf. (laughter)
[brandishing the plan...] This is a copy of the president's home affordability plan. It's available on the Whitehouse website. I would encourage him to download it, hit print, and begin to read it.
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But I also think it's tremendously important that for people who rant on cable television to be responsible and understand what it is they're talking about. I feel assured that Mr. Santelli doesn't know what he's talking about.
Santelli is now saying it was just a "philosophical rant," perhaps to excuse the fact that it wasn't fact based.
