Keith Olbermann Worst: Rick Santelli's Rant

Rick Santelli, on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show Monday, suggested that the White House was threatening him and that his kids were unnerved. Via ThinkProgress:

SANTELLI: He started that press conference saying, "I don't know where he lives, I don't know where his house is." This is the Press Secretary of the White House. Is that the kind of thing we want? Is that --

LIDDY: It's a veiled threat.

SANTELLI: It really is. [...] I don't really want to be a spokesman, but I really am very proud of a) the response I'm getting, which is overwhelmingly positive, and b) discourse, that is debate. That if the pressure and the heat I'm taking from the White House - the fact my kids are nervous to go to school - I can take that, okay.


Santelli made similar comments on Mike Gallagher's radio show. In saying that he did not know where Santelli lived, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was pretty clearly suggesting the CNBC reporter was out of touch with ordinary Americans, not threatening him.

* * * * *
Rick Santelli, the CNBC reporter who went into a certifiable rant against the Obama housing plan Thursday, found himself in the White House bullseye 24-hours later: the object of scorn and humorous derision from the president's press secretary Robert Gibbs.

"I'm not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives," Gibbs said during the daily briefing. "But the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, stay in their jobs, pay their bills to send their kids to school, and to hope that they don't get sick or somebody they care for gets sick that 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."

Ouch. But from there it got almost more personal. Gibbs picked up a hard copy of the housing plan from the briefing room lectern and implored Santelli to "download it, hit print and begin to read it." Gibbs added: "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." The press in the room laughed
The substance of the debate wasn't avoided either. Gibbs, striking an defiant and occasionally emotional tone, insisted that nothing in the president's proposal to keep 9 million people in their homes would help speculators, people trying to flip houses, or those who bought a house they knew they couldn't afford. He added that preventing foreclosures would be beneficial even to those whose mortgage payments were stable, keeping neighborhood property values from spiraling downwards.

Gibbs expanded his critique to cable news in general, saying that the campaign coverage was completely out of touch:

"If I hadn't worked on the campaign but simply watch the cable news scorekeeping of the campaign, we lost virtually every day of the race," he said. "If I would have just watched cable TV, I long would have crawled into a hole and given up this whole prospect of changing the country."

The politics of the exchange are as telling as the substance. There are plenty of Republicans who have aired critiques of the Obama housing plan. And the president's communications staff has long insisted that they neither care nor respond to the punditry of people on cable news. So why respond to Santelli? Maybe Gibbs was worked up by the CNBC reporter's widely-aired rant, or maybe it was something more calculated. There are few people less popular today than derivative traders or Wall Street loud-mouths. Choosing Santelli to be the poster child of the opposition is smart politics for the Obama White House, just like making Rush Limbaugh the face of the anti-stimulus movement was during that debate.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/20/gibbs-v-santelli-he-shoul_n_168645.html

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[icouce]

Olbermann absolves the American people of any responsibility for the pickle we're in and lays it at the feet of business people. How convenient for him.

For a story of unfettered greed, let me direct you to an electorate applauding the raping of our economic future to the tune of trillions of dollars that don't belong to them, so they don't have to suffer the effects of decades of profligacy we the people demanded as our birth right! We have our heads so far up our own arses it's pathetic.

[stg2lewis]

Yeah, that's right. The government saved us from these people. How about the lack of restrictions on the housing industry that congressional republicans warned about in 2003 and 2005. Those don't matter to you because that's not what MSNBC says.

Plain and simple, this country thrives when leaders cut taxes and reward success, not promote FAIRNESS. It's a matter of ideals vs. logic. You sir have the ideals, I have the logic.

[moocowdad]

@stg2lewis it was theBush republicans who deregulated the banking/lending industry and allowed the sub prime crises

[666sigma]

Olbermann is full of shit, which probably explains his bloated misshapen belly.

Wall Street belongs in jail. The Democrats that backed CRA, Fannie and Freddie belong in jail. AIG executives belong in jail and so does Little Timmy Geithner who bailed out AIG at Goldman Sachs' insisrence. Goldman Sachs belongs in jail because they sold crap to their clients and bet against it.

Obama is another piece of Wall Street garbage like Bush.

[punktillidie27]

keith olberman thinks that santelli wanted the wallstreet ballout?! what a piece of shit talk about propaganda holy shit!

[mathman43]

Was this the show where Keith Olbermann started crying?

[strangeyoungman]

God damn right! We're fucking DROWNING because selfish creatures that Rick Santelli enables are demanding our money.

[namenderkrieg]

If people take advantage of easy credit to take out massive mortgages, and then find themselves unable to repay said mortgages, whose fault is that? It's not the fault of the lenders! People need to take responsibility for their own actions.

I thought American liberty was founded upon the time-tested principles of individual prudence and personal responsibility. Why is their left-wing establishment trying to bail out irresponsible speculators? They're just encouraging a culture of dependency.

[fr6313]

It's amazing that you right wing idiots blame the mortgage crisis on homeowners and not the banks or traders that caused the.debacle. For your information the bank bailouts were started under Bush and his administration . For you intellectually challenged idealogues, if nearly every member the Senate and House had voted against the bill as you dimwits suggested Obama, by law ,would not have had the power to put the policy in place . So he did force this law into place by himself

[gutsyt123]

@elder99

ahhhh, I see what you did there, clever and funny

[fasteddie847]

Go Fuck yourself Olbermann