Lucid Thoughts on Obama Mortgage Bailout

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The Miami Herald opinion pages are getting more interesting these days. The selection of two non-liberal columnists as an effort to add some much needed ideological diversity to that paper is starting to take fruit.

Yesterday we had Jackie Bueno Sousa’s debut column in the metro section which highlighted personal responsibility and defended George W. Bush. Today we have Glenn Garvin’s second column discussing the Obama mortgage bailout plan:

There’s a reason that English is the most widely spoken language on the planet: It’s the most highly adaptable, capable of evolving to meet new needs in the blink of an eye. For example: Just last year, offering mortgages at a cheaper-than-market teaser interest rate with little or no money down was known as ”predatory lending.” But conditions changed — specifically, the party occupying the White House — and now we call that style of lending “national policy.”

The new definition was provided by Predator-in-Chief Barack Obama last week while making his daily announcement of a new bailout plan, this one for homeowners who took on mortgages they can’t afford during banking’s go-go days earlier this decade. Offering them cheaper new terms on their loans — at taxpayer expense, of course — will help us bolster ”those core values of common sense and responsibility, those are the values that have defined this nation,” Obama said.

…

To be perfectly fair, there’s a big difference between Obama’s ARMs and the ones the banks offered — instead of the banks being on the hook when the hapless borrower goes delinquent on his payments, you will. Obama’s plan calls for the government to spend $200 billon buying up these loans through its mortgage zombies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You may recall that Fannie and Freddie went broke in September because they held so many worthless mortgages and had to be propped up with $200 billion in taxpayer money. But what’s another bailout among friends?

Ouch!

Liberal Herald readers who have understandably grown accustomed to being coddled by like-minded columnists and editors must be going nuts right now. Now they know how conservatives feel when we’ve had to endure the dribble written by the likes of Leonard Pitts, Jr, Ana Menendez, et. al.

Here’s the column in its entirety.

7 thoughts on “Lucid Thoughts on Obama Mortgage Bailout”

  1. There’s already some people online who are claiming she plagiarized the speech from Bull Durham. It’s obvious to me as a huge fan of the movie that she paraphrased that speech as a sort of manifesto knowing people would recognize it.

  3. Not only is it ridiculous to accuse someone of plagiarizing a common phrase that entered the vernacular in 1963, it’s even more ridiculous — and clearly indicative of congenital stupidity — to actually post about the “controversy” at all. Stupid is as stupid does.

  4. I went back and looked at the blogs mentioning the potential plagiarism, and their case (if they’re indeed making one) is quite weak. I now recall the scene from the movie. I mean, you have to be either a rookie journalist or pretty stupid to use the Lee Harvey Oswald reference in the manner Sousa did – in the exact same manner – WITHOUT it being an intentional reference to Costner’s Bull Durham speech. Sousa is a veteran journalist, folks. I for one am very happy to see different sides and viewpoints presented in the Herald, not just one side. The majority-left-leaning South Florida blogosphere’s response to Sousa and Garvin is a clear indication that they have been coddled way too long by only one viewpoint. Instead of debating the issues, many of them are resorting to dirt-digging and flimsy accusations.

  5. Glenn Garvin co-wrote a book “Dieary of a Survivor: Nineteen Years in a Cuban Prison” – I highly recommend it…if you can find it. He used to write pieces for Reason Magazine, back when it was worth ready and was a great reporter for Herald when he was posted in Latin America. He knows his S***. He has been truly wasted writing about TV.

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