The President Has One Shot Left to Jump start Housing

The American Jobs Bill is taking water fast since the Speaker and the boys have already said they won't increase taxes for nuthin. Uh Uh. Not going to do it. The fourteen month countdown is here and like the wrestler ahead by two points all they have to do is hang on and let the economy tank and it's game over for Obama and crew. But the President does have one bullet left and it will be his last shot. It could save the economy and his Presidency.

Here it is. Forget about the Jobs Bill. It is too scatter shot anyway. What he should do and really has to do is give the American people back their homes. He can do this and he won't need congress. He can order Fannie and Freddie to immediately change their guidelines and refinance anyone with good credit regardless of the the value of their homes. Anyone. Millions would move to lower rates and get two months off in the process and get their escrow money back. Massive cash infusion for the middle class.

Secondly. Give a ten thousand dollar incentive for anyone buying a new home. It worked before and it will work again. Get people buying homes again. Third. Order all the banks who hold second mortgages to subordinate to the first lien position. The second loans are strangling homeowners by not allowing them to refinance. Third. Give the market back it's equity. Make it illegal to count foreclosures and short sales in comps for appraisals. These should not be counted. They are aberrational and taking away the value for homeowners who have been paying their mortgages on time.

Why do this? Because the crash started with housing and it will end with housing. This was not a normal boom and bust cycle. The crash occurred because lending was broken when the derivative market blew. The middle class backs their hand with their homes. Everything they do comes from this asset. Give the housing market back it's value and middle class people will start to buy again. Hiring will follow. But here is the real reason: The effect would be immediate.

Forget about tax cuts for businesses. Nothing will trickle down. It has to go up. This is what the economists don't get. This is what mortgage brokers and real estate agents know. The President could save his Presidency by doing this. But he has to do it now. He has to focus. Because this is his last shot.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man...sometimes a house is not a home

Priming the Pump

We had a Briggs and Straton lawn mower when I was a kid that refused to start. I would have to pop off the spark plug and pour gas into the cylinder, blow out the gap in the plug, put it back and start pulling again. The mower would start with a quick burst and then sputter. I had to do this three times before the mower heated up and ran again. Dad called it priming the pump and when I got minibikes and motorcycles then snow blowers it became my go to method to get an internal combustion engine running again.

This is what we need now. We need to prime the pump with some raw gas and get things going. If an economy is a motor then ours just wont start. Middle class people are the gas of an economy. Sorry but they are. Without buying power it doesn't matter how many times the spark plug fires there can be no combustion. People have no buying power anymore, no gas. We have to pull off the plug and pour rag gas into the cylinder and see if can get the motor to catch now. It is a last resort but that is where we are.

Do not insult me with trickle down nonsense. Nothing trickles down. Let me say it again. Nothing trickles down. The rich stay rich and companies say fat. They will not suddenly release all their millions and employ people. They will find things to do with their money no doubt, but we now need to put the gasoline directly into the cylinder. We do need New Deal style muscle.We need to give people jobs. Any kind of jobs. Call it Grow Up. But the gas must be poured into the engine and not sit in the tank.

People need money to spend. This is how the economy gets rolling. Oh but it will sputter. The stimulus didn't work. Bull and so what. Something is better than nothing. Forget about rich people bailing us out.  That Republican mantra is just bull. We will bail ourselves out by giving to the people who will spend the money to buy the goods and get the economy rolling.

A lot of times I had to put the gas in several times before the mower would start. We will probably have to do this several times also. But priming the pump does work, and eventually, the motor  starts again.

The New Guy is going to have to Punch Back

When I moved from Baltimore to Chicago I was the new guy. I had a weird accent and I dressed weird and I had bad hair. And I had no friends. We had moved to a suburb of low tolerance for weird. We had moved into a town of Midwestern guys who wore checkered shirts and blue jeans and boots. I dressed like a refugee from the seventies and grew my hair to Afro length. A clash of cultures. My parents were Kennedy liberals and we had moved into a red enclave of button down Yankees. But I was a kid, what did I care?

So I walked into the lunchroom past a group of football players when one of them calls out. "Now there goes a real faggot." I stopped, dropped my lunch, and saw the blond haired blue eyed Captain of the football team. I didn't know he was the Captain, but I also knew from Baltimore days that you had one chance to set your line. So I threw my lunch on the ground and walked up and pinned "Randy" against the wall, not knowing I had just grabbed the most popular guy in the senior class. "Who are you calling a faggot?" I screamed.

Randy turned red and struggled against my grip. Hey...Hey! He finally got free with his face burning and told me to get my lunch, but his homeboys were in shock. Somebody had pinned the Captain against the wall. This is what the President has to do now when he gets back.  He has to pin anybody who tries to bully, extort, or blackmail him again against the wall. He has to set a line for these guys. A funny thing is once you take down the leader, then all the other guys slink away. But he has to do it now.

A week later I saw Randy in an empty hallway. I had not seen him since the lunchroom. We walked past each other and then he nodded to me. I nodded back.

Rocket Man Has Been Released

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Kindle Download of Rocket Man

The funniest serious novel since Richard Russo’s Straight Man, rich with the epic levity of John Irving and salted with the perversion of Updike." - Chicago Sun Time

"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." - James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

Obama walking the Wisconsin line

Brats outside of bait shops. Cheese and really crappy Wisconsin wine.  Curds from the men who sit in the bars. Oh hey there. Lakes and lakes and lakes. Bars on every corner. Journey and Reo Speedwagon blasting out of a T Top. Shiny union jackets and women who eat too many BRAAATS and drink too many of Milwaukee's Best. Welcome to Wisconsin just a hop skip and a jump away from Chicago where we all escape to swim and putter around in boats and get some RR among the cornfields and small lost Germanic towns.

Chances are Obama shot up there when he was hanging out in Hyde Park. Maybe he saw it the way we all see it and the way it is. The Land Before Time. At least the land in the seventies where facial hair is still cool and guys wear their hair like Steve Perry still and woman still layout to get that orange glow. Good times. Meat and potatoes baby. Except now the land before time is getting caught up in our twenty first century mess and the President is trying to walk the Wisconsin line. Fiscal responsibility, but leave the Unions alone. He can't seem to make up his mind.

Tough line to walk. Like the Chicagoans the Wisconsinites tolerate but need their tourist dollars, he is conflicted. Unions are big supporters but the political winds are deficit driven and the states are broke broke broke. Now the Teaparty is descending. To have a brat or not have a brat. Maybe a little ice fishing. Maybe a little water skiing. Pick up some leaches and head out. But something has to give and the President is trying to figure out which way to go.

All eyes on the Cheese heads who kicked our Bears butt. It had not been a happy season for anyone North of Chicago except for the Packers. So it will be interesting to see if the President decides to partake of Wisconsin hospitality or be that guy who says the seventies are over and Trans Ams really are gas hogs and Journey broke up a long time ago and Unions are kaput. Brats and beer or sushi. Hmmm. Hard choice.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in April

Is our Literary American Dream Dead?

Maybe the President should stop the town hall meetings. It looked pretty bad when the African American woman said she was about to start eating hot dogs and beans. The President smiled, looked really prosperous, then spun into his answer. Or the guy who asked him point blank...tell me, is the American Dream Dead? He was sincere. And the President had no answer. I guess you have to decide what the American Dream really is.

Horatio Alger is our first stop on the trail of the American Dream; these books published in the late nineteenth early twentieth century were the poor boy who raises up to take over the company and become rich. Very much part of our culture. Anyone can become rich. Anyone can become President. We see this played out in our movies and books constantly. We constantly hold up the lowly outsider who rises to fame and fortune and achieves greatness.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby is the classic questioning of this economic nirvana. The price is just too high for Gatsby's dream and Nick Caraway returns to the Midwest looking for salvation in old traditional values in a world vanishing from twentieth century America. Then our dream was updated through television and questioned in novels such as Revolutionary Road. Our modern American dream is not so much the self made man, but the man or woman who plugs into a corporation and gets security and a job and a house that appreciates along with a 401K. That is the American dream that was destroyed in the crash.

So we still spin this question around. The classic economic model of the American Dream seems to be dead. Our happiness came from our gratification in the land of plenty. Maybe the American Dream needs to be revised. Maybe the American Dream will have to fall back to this is enough, because there might not be anymore for a long time to come.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel is Rocket Man. A story of the American dream in reverse
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Pragmatist

So he fired the CEO of GM. Don't look for him to cry over that one. Obama grew up the same time I did--in the heat of the sixties. We grade schoolers had only one question--what was everyone so upset about? We thought all that demonstrating and carrying on was ridiculous. For my part I wore a Nixon T shirt. You couldn't get more practical than that and I came from a family of privilege in Virginia. Imagine the pragmatist in a black man who bulls his way into Harvard then to the top of the law review.

Smart. You bet. You got to be smart to overcome those odds. You can't look to the main for anything. So don't look for him to cry over the Unions when he busts them in bankruptcy because GM is going bankrupt. Shareholders and workers be dammed there is a new sheriff in town and he will bring the new economy with him. What do you want him to do? Give the fat white guys another chance? They had many and blew it and one thing a pragmatist knows is no one really changes and no one gives up power. You really think GM is going to come up with great fuel efficient cars on their own? I don't think so. Why pay for the milk when you can get it for free? And they have been getting the milk for free for so long we are talking generations who were on the tit.

Political Pundits call it suicide. Hang the unions around the Democrats neck. The party that busted up GM. So what. Somebody has to do it. GM couldn't make the changes without concessions and the pragmatist knows nobody gives up power and money unless they have to. And the Unions will have to in a bankruptcy. So its bye bye Obama according to the talking heads. Maybe so. But if you are a black man running the free world you can't bet on the status quo. The only chance you have is to actually do the right thing. You have to bring in the new economy because it is the only chance you really have. In case you haven't heard, the old economy is DOA. Aint no one buying overpriced cars that eat gas anymore. So really, what's a smart man to do?

You get rid of the old wood. Start with the car companies and work your way down. Auto workers will be upset. Welcome to the displacement party. We have all been displaced. Publishing, real estate, brokering, banking...we are just warming up. If you think you are slipping through this transition doing business as usual then guess again. That would presuppose there is still some gas in the old economy tank and there really isn't. Even the quick fill ups by the government don't last because that world is gone. There are no buyers. So even if Obama was a different man and went along with all the goofy old white guys and gave GM ten more restructuring band aid the result would be the same. A desert of economic demand. There is none. Not for the old models anyway.

So here we are. Canned the CEO of GM and he is just warming up. Listen up bankers. You are next. Welcome to the new economy. Dreamers need not apply.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

The Domino Theory

When we were in Vietnam they said that if Vietnam fell then the rest of Indochina would go Communist. They invoked the Domino theory to say one thing will cause another. Ten years later we left and Vietnam became a Communist country and nothing else happened. Then they said that if we didn't go in and take over Iraq they would have a weapon of mass destruction and throw it our way. The domino theory again. If we don't act then certain doom. We went in and could not find a weapon of mass destruction. We are still there. Then they said that if we didn't reelect the President the evil doers would come over and attack us and by the way we are on high alert for another attack. The other candidate looked very wimpy after some well placed swiftboating and we added torture and wiretapping the entire population to our Bill of Rights. Then they said that if we did not immediately give seven hundred billion dollars to the banks all hell would break loose. We gave seven hundred billion and all hell broke loose anyway. Then they said that if we did not bail out AIG to the tune of one hundred and seventy billion then the entire financial system would disintegrate. We gave AIG the money and they gave it to foreign banks and brokers and other people who they won't even name. The financial system might fall apart anyway and AIG is probably going away. The domino theory only works on fear and it has worked well for forty years. When I was a kid I used to line up dominoes on the floor and push one down and watch them fall. It was pretty cool. But sometimes, for no reason at all, the dominoes just stopped on their own. Go figure.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

You've Got To Be Kidding

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, start a revolution. You have got to be kidding. AIG now is taking the money the government gave them and paying out MILLIONS of dollars in bonuses. Listen up all my friends who work for a living...they are taking your dollars (we now own eighty percent) and paying out not thousands, not hundreds but MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to individuals. Some people are receiving a million dollars and more in one check! You are going to love the rationalization--it would be illegal not to pay them. Oh OK. WHAT!!!!!!!!!! You mean the company that bought tons of bad derivatives, the very people the financial arm of AIG the very people that bought this stuff...THEY ARE THE ONES GETTING THE MONEY! It would be like driving a bus off a cliff and then getting paid a million dollars for doing it. The treasury department raised a stink but determined the bonuses are LEGAL. WHAT???????????? So, a company that would not be in existence except for tax payer money (EIGHTY PERCENT) is saying that legally they have to pay the people who bankrupted the company. COME ON. Tell me they would pay them if they went bankrupt. This is straight highway robbery. You have to love the CEO justification. They can't attract quality people unless they pay them well. WHAT! Quality people! A bag lady who did nothing but sit at a desk could have done a better job than these guys--she at least wouldn't have thrown the money away on worthless mortgage back securites! These are the people who threw the company under the bus and now us. GIVE ME A BREAK. I mean if you are going to rob a bank and steal money at least use a gun and call it what it is. But to say it is legal is an insult to every person with an eight grade education. Even a kid knows when they are being gypped. And we are being gypped in the worst way. And here is the real shot between the eyes. They don't want to tell anyone what they are doing with the billions they are paying out. That money is going to Bank of America and others through back door insurance policies. So we are giving the money to more people who are paying other people bonuses and giving them trips.
The United States=Plutocracy. Rule by the wealthy. Plutocrats. A-I-G.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

A Raisin in the Sun

President Obama does not like the White House. It is easy to see that. He takes every opportunity to book out of there...to Chicago, Denver, Washington. He just doesn't like it. He and Michelle hit a school and hang with the kids, saying they had to get out of the White House. They were doing what parents do, going to school functions, taking a breather from life. I mean, really, can you blame him? He's from Hyde Park, which for those of you who don't know is hip, interracial, collars the city, South side, close to the Lake, intellectual, has the University of Chicago, bohemian and well, cool. He went from Greenwich to to the suburbs in one quick jump and he just didn't go to the suburbs, he went to the stuffiest, whitest suburb in the land--The White House. We won't even touch the name but it ain't exactly inviting. So he does what everyone who has ever had to move for kids or a job does, he busts out for the city at every opportunity to get out of weird land. And not only did he move to a white bread suburb he is now stuck in the equivalent of a Home Owners meeting everyday. Homeowner meetings are uptight and usually have covenants so anal you have to get your Christmas lights approved. Home Owner meetings only attract people with nothing to do, people who want to get into other peoples business, people who want to tell other people how to live. So here he is, this dude who likes to play basketball, hang with the fellas, eat at his favorite hip spots, go to his favorite place to get his haircut and now he's stuck up on the North Shore with the Guess Whose Coming to Dinner crowd. Even Sidney Poitier would have a hard time with this crowd. So you cant' blame him for firing up Air Force One and pointing it toward Chicago every chance he gets. In Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, an African American family moves from the South Side of Chicago to the white suburbs. The movie ends with the family packing up their apartment and leaving. The assumption is that they fit in and had a better life. I wonder what the sequel would be to that movie... possibly that same family moving back, shaking their heads, "nope, ain't gonna live with all them uptight white people." Too bad President Obama doesn't have that option.

http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf

A President That Talks

Wow. I don't know if you caught the news conference last night with Obama, but it was really something we haven't seen for a long time. A President that talks. Amazing. Someone would ask a question and he would give an intelligent answer. There were no soundbites. No evasion. The President responded to questions with cogent, well thought out arguments on why he was pursuing his policies. The Press wasn't quite sure what to do. They were used to a man who evaded, obfuscated, mumbled, shrugged, grimaced, then just walked off. We haven't had a President like this since...since...I don't know, maybe Kennedy? We are in new territory. This man is smart and he stays at a level that demands everyone else be smart also. What did the right wing pundits have to say last night. He was acting confident. He's not really confident. He is hiding behind a mask of confidence. Very good acting then. Best line..."Everyone thinks I was all ginned up to spend eight hundred billion when I came in....I wasn't." True. We cant' even blame him for our troubles. A President who doesn't communicate in a clear forthright manner lets us off the hook. We can say it is the President's fault. Not this time. If we are going to blame this man for our troubles we better study up, because there is a new sheriff in town and he is not a dumb man. The pundits may call him the anointed one or disparage him for being arrogant or falsely confident, but the truth is the era of moron is over and the idiots know it better than anyone else.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

The Coal

The problem with the stimulus bill is there is nothing in there for coal. Steam engines need coal. Big sleek ships and trains and even cars once upon a time ran on steam. You didn't really care about the men in the bowels of the ship shoveling all that coal into the boilers because you couldn't see them. You were far above eating your dinner or enjoying a cigar in the bar or lounging topside while the men sweated down below. So when the ship pulled into dock they loaded it up with food, champagne, caviar, fruit, cigars, wine, all the necessities for life and then tons and tons of coal. Because the ship's captain and everyone else knew that without coal the rest of the food, booze and cigars didn't matter much. Seems like there is one thing missing on the good ship's Obama's manifest for the stimulus plan--COAL. Middle class people are the coal of the economy lest you forget this go into Home Depot or Menards of Best Buy. There are no people. The employees outnumber the customers two to one. There are mountains of inventory and one cannot help wonder who is carrying the cost of all that inventory. So the steam engine has stopped. We know from our oligarchy who has taken all the coal. They are still in Washington and on Wall Street laughing their asses off that the American public bought into Tarp. See the one page article in the New York Times by Wells Fargo explaining why employee junkets are still necessary for the great work their employees do. The masters of the ship are tweaked someone would mess with their cigars and fine champagne. But even as the gilded glide far above us top deck, they too our a little worried that maybe the reluctance to order in coal might bring the good ship Lollipop to a halt. So how do we get our coal bins replenished? Bite the bullet and bypass the banks and make a national bank and start lending. Or...shock..shock...give money directly to the people. Not six hundred dollars, thousands. Prime the pump directly. It is interesting that the great populist nation is quite willing to take thousands of dollars in tax money, but recoils at the thought of giving it back. If income tax was never intended to be a permanent institution, let's make good now and give back some of the money. Nebulous promises of jobs will not replace the directness of giving credit to the middle class. Infrastructure jobs will put people back to work, but how many, how soon, remains to be seen. Our bins have been empty a while now and a bold President needs to take bold steps. Throw out the play book. Don't even look for precedent. Do the bold thing and put coal into the boiler now. The hard fact is you cannot operate a ship without coal, providing only for first class passengers. You really need some fuel.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

Dear Mr. President

New guy huh? Listen. I know what it is like to be the new man. I am constantly the new man at my jobs and I have had many. Now that you have your cubicle (Oval Office in your case) you can take a little time and get organized. Now you are going to notice a lot of OWG's (old white guys) at the company. Don't worry about these guys. They will never be on your side. A lot of times when I start somewhere I find out who the real decision makers are and I concentrate on them and ignore all the lifers. They are just hanging around to get their pensions. Besides, the only people that can fire you are the people that put you there. Now, go down and get a candy bar or something during your first couple of weeks. Vending machines are a great place to get to know your coworkers. Again, watch out for the OWG's they are not your friends and never will be. I make it a point to, you know, chitchat, get to know who the real players are. Now when you get back to your cube(Oval Office in your case) at some point you are going to have to make a decision about the OWG's. You can try and be nice to them, but it wont' really matter. The way I play it at my new jobs is I try and be low key for the first few weeks, which you are doing a pretty good job at, but then, I let the people know there is a new sheriff in town. If people don't want to play ball with me and they aren't my boss and I don't think anyone is your boss, then *&&% em. You don't need them. There was another guy at the company from a long long time ago, went by three initials... FD something. Anyway, he had to deal with the OWG's and you know what he did? He just went right through them. Rammed through his legislation and even when they tried to declare it all unconstitutional, he just kept on with his programs. He had nuggies. But he never let the OWG's get to him. He just didn't care. That's my advice to you . Ignore them. They'll eventually get tired of hanging around and take their pensions. So, get comfortable, put your feet up on the desk, then tomorrow, bust some ass.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com

Our Herbert Hoover

In the waning days of his administration, it is said that Herbert Hoover sat in the White House and literally didn't know what to do. The nation had slipped into a depression and the best he could say was that the economy would have to take it's course. This was after the famous, Prosperity is right around the corner speech. Hoover was a rich man who didn't understand struggle and the nations woes just seemed like a distasteful mess that was beyond repair. He did not like Roosevelt. He did not understand a man who had become a cripple and seemed to exude a confidence and enthusiasm that should have been his. Riding to the inauguration, neither man looked at each other.
Now we have our Hoover. The automakers are closing. Interest rates are at zero. Credit is frozen, people are losing their jobs in a tidal wave of corporate panic. Yet our Hoover sits in the White House and does nothing. After the firecracker of the Great Bailout, we are left with a man who just wants to go back to his ranch. You can see it in his face. I didn't make this mess fairly screams out at you. He is busy giving oil companies their last shots at Federal Land out west and pardoning cronies and putting his boots by the door. Time to go back to Texas and live like a rich oil baron again. Maybe it is his due. But the truth is he doesn't know what to do. Like Hoover, Bush is a duck hit on the head with the concussive effects of nuclear force bad news. The waves just keep coming and he is not a man for this type of crisis. Like Hoover, Bush has always been a rich man comfortable with steering the ship, not charting new courses. Like Hoover, his best effort was to reassure the American public the economy was fundamentally strong before handing over the keys to the bankers to keep their own respective ships afloat.
Now the car manufacturers are dying. They are looking to Washington for help, but Hoover is not thinking about that anymore. He is thinking about that final ride into the sunset where the world is right and let's leave it to that new guy. While not a cripple, Obama climbed out of obscurity and he knows how to fight. The ride to the inauguration will be a repeat of two fundamentally different men sharing a common space. Then they will both be on their own.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

THAT ONE

That one. McCain's slip of the toungue--the Greatest Generations gaffe. THAT ONE. Maybe you saw the debate and remember the moment: You know who voted for the bill...THAT ONE. Does it get any more racial? That one. Color it how you want it. Read the polls that show everyone around McCains age is voting for him. Now why is that? Experience. The Greatest Generation is big on experience, but they are bigger on being white. Black guy with Ray Bans. I don't think so. Skinny black guy in a suit who talks alot and twists the English language around to roll out a call to change. No way. Not to make the world safe for democracy. They didn't have skinny black guys running for President then. Take the old guy pointing the finger in the rumpled suit who talks about war and patriotism. Not that one. He's the other. He's the secret in the voting booth the Greatest Generation will eliminate with a quick alzhaimer moment--he's that black guy...that one! Nope. Pull it for the Irish white guy. Not that one, you know his name....some Muslin name. Nope. Krauts. Japs. Whops. Kikes. THAT ONE. Cha ching! Done. Pull back the curtain. God Bless America.

Jacksonian Democracy and Palins Demise

When Sara Palin imploded in the Katie Couric interview it brougth up a painful question: Do we, as Americans want someone smart or dumb to run our country? We picked someone dumb for the last eight years. He made us feel safe. He made us feel like he was one of us. No one felt left out with Bush. The moron vote as it came to be known. Actually, this all goes back much further, back to Andrew Jackson. He was just a solider who became President, but what he did was he took the spoils system one step futher and put all his friends in his cabinet. Quite literally there were no politicians in Jackson's admistration and Jacksonian democracy came to be called rule by the common people. So what do we have in Palin? When Couric asked her what Supreme Court decisions did she not agree with, she had no answer. She stumbled. She talked nonsense. Suddenly the hockey mom was in the car telling junior not to forget his skates and his mouth guard and oh, you forgot your bottled water. Sara Palin had suddenly reached her level of incompentence and it was painful. It wasnt' so much that she couldnt' answer the question, it was that she didn't have the authority to say, you know what, I'm not that familiar with Supreme Court decisions, except for Roe V Wade. Instead she stumbled around because of intellectual insecurity. It was painful to watch. Now she is going to debate and maybe she will pull it out, but the cat is out of the bag and the hockey mom just can't quite get by with her sassy mouth and good looks. At the national level people dont get points for just looking good or being witty--you have to deliver something. And like the Jackson administration, people are horrified. We prattle on about rule of the common man, but we have Congress now staying up all night to pass a bailout because rule of the common man did not work out. George Bush is common in that he is not a smart man and we had decided somewhere as a nation we didn't like smart people anymore. Unfortunately for Sara Palin, the country just changed its mind and decided maybe smart people arent such a bad thing. Democracy is good in theory, but let's not get carried away. Let the hockey moms be hockey moms, and let's leave politics to someone who at least can face down Katie Couric.