Winners and losers

So it's Feb 18th, 2009 and President Barack Obama has just stepped to the mic to unveil his foreclosure crisis plan. I spent some time leading up to this moment watching some cable news and absorbing the viewpoints of various political reporters.

They were wondering how the Plan would address various aspects of the "crisis." Within minutes I am fuming and frustated by these guys as they bemoan the "complexity" of this issue. But the trouble is, it's not complex! It's actually very simple.

It's called a housing bubble. Starting a few years back interest rates were low and home prices were sky rocketing. Banks made a lot of risky loans and a lot a people bought homes they could not and would not be able to afford. Well guess what? What goes up must come down. Bubbles burst and good times don't last forever.

So what are we about to get? Artificial solutions designed to prop up home values and keep people in the homes they still can't afford. This won't solve the problem because it can't. In life, people make good decisions and people make bad decisions and if we don't accept the consequences of these actions there can be no resolution.

Obama simply wants to deny and delay the consequences of these horrible decisions.
John F. Kennedy said it best: Life is not fair. And neither is this plan. This will flush more tax payer dollars down the toilet so that people won't have to lose.

And where there are no losers there can be no winners.

Is this it?

So maybe this is what this blog is about: Pop-culture politics and analysis.

Not so much an in-depth probing of policy minutiae, or wonkism if you will, but rather how politics are reported on television, magazines and the internet. Because the average American is very busy working, taking care of their family, running the kids to soccer, helping out their neighbors and just generally living their lives, it's safe to assume they have only a few minutes a day to digest politics and public policy, eh?

Perhaps this blog will offer a venue to discuss what makes it through the collander of news and opinion.

Take today for example. Since before he took office President Obama has been in Chicken Little mode regarding the economy. He wanted a stimulus package on his desk the day he took office. Any delay would mean disaster for America. Of course we know it took a few weeks to stuff this bill through the house and senate before he could sign it. So what did he do when the bill was ready on Friday? He took a long weekend and said he'd sign when he got back to work on Tuesday.

Why the wait if the fate of the nation was in balance? Um, the media cycle of course. If he signed it the moment the ink dried on Friday night he would've missed the maximum impact of the news cycle. Same if it he signed on Saturday, or Sunday or even Presidents' Day on Monday.

To me, the whole thing is just another cynical exercise in the show business of governance. If a bill has to be passed TODAY or thousands of jobs will lost but that same massive chunk of legislation can sit on the President's desk for four days waiting to catch the upswing of the news cycle, then you tell me what's really at play here.