Nocturnal Warrior Monologue 9/23

(This is the opening monologue from Tuesday night’s Nocturnal Warrior show, heard 9:00 PM on No Quarter Radio. You can listen to the actual delivery of this monologue by clicking on the No Quarter Radio link on the lower right hand part of the page. Shortly after the monologue, the entire show falls apart thanks to technical issues, so if you like train wrecks, do listen. On the other hand you can just read this.

It is written for how I am going to speak it and thus follows no grammatical rules what so ever. Since I actually do bother to write it out, here it is. Actually, it’s just an easy way for me to come up with another post without doing any extra work. Typical radio person, I am.)

Blog casting live from a dead end, located somewhere on the fringe, this is No Quarter Radio…And I am your Nocturnal Warrior. Tuesday Night September 23rd. Only 6 more Tuesdays until Election Day.

What has been truly amazing about everything that has gone in since we started doing this program back in July, is how much the landscape can change in a single week. Every week seems like a lifetime in this year’s political cycle. You know how the last two minutes of a football game can take about an hour and a half to play. That’s what this election season has felt like since March. And the ebb and flow keeps changing.

When we got together last week, we knew that Lehmann Brothers had failed and were hearing that AIG would likely be bailed out. We had a sense that the economy was really in the crapper this time, but had no idea the extent of it all.

We still don’t know the extent of it all. But our government has been kind enough to send us a bill for all this. If you want to pick up the tab, it will set you back about 700 billion dollars. That is your government in action. They can sit there in Washington for 20 years and not come up with one solution to ease our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels, they can rubber stamp Bush administration policy on Iraq without ever offering a real alternative and bitch and moan about it on end, they can do nothing to protect your right to privacy, they can ignore the problems of illegal immigration. They can sit their and watch as homeowner after homeowner signs the dotted line on ridiculous loans that they can not afford and certainly do not understand…

But tell your government that Wall Street as we know it might collapse and they can come up with a price tag and a plan in about 48 hours. That is our federal government in action… And it’s not a Democratic issue and it’s not a Republican issue, because both parties have been swimming in the deep end of the Wall Street pool for a very, very long time.

But do you think 700 billion is the end of it all. Somehow I think not. There’s about 73 million homeowners in the United States. The average price of a home in this country is $230,000. Not of all these homes and mortgages have been purchased in the last five years. Heck, some people pay cash up front and others have owned their homes long enough to pay off their mortgages. Yet the estimates of mortgage debt in this country now stand at somewhere around 10 Trillion dollars. How the hell does that happen…and nobody says a word? I am no financial genius and I could not explain to you in the most rudimentary details how our markets work. But as a guy who occasionally balances a checkbook, can tell you that the math there doesn’t add up. How do you get to 10 trillion dollars of mortgage debt on 73 million homes with an average price of 230,000? How do you let that happen and not expect the end result we are in now? Some reports say there is all of 800 billion dollars in equity on that 10 trillion dollar debt.

And what is the response of our presidential candidates? They have a race to see who can create the most advertisements linking the other guy to Wall Street and mortgage money.

The first Presidential debate is Friday… And I am going to tell you right now who is going to get my vote. It is going to be the first candidate who admits that after taking another 700 billion dollars out of our economy that the government will not be able to function without raising taxes. John McCain is going to tell you that any kind of tax increase would be the worst thing to do for our economy. Barrack Obama will tell you that he wants to send you about $1,200 or what in the Obama house is known as two sets of earrings. He will also tell you that 95% of Americans will get a tax break from him and only those making more than $250,000 will see an increase. Folks, that is not going to replace $700 billion dollars, not to mention the deficit we already have, not to mention the rest of that 10 trillion dollars in mortgage debt that the government will now be essentially holding the paper on.

Be honest with me. Show me, the time for politics is over…And you get my vote… And since we know, that isn’t going to happen… I am still stuck voting present come Election Day.