Rick Santelli's mortgage rant

CNBC's Rick Santelli "poked a vein of populist anger," said David Roeder in the Chicago Sun-Times, when he ranted against President Obama's mortgage bailout from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade on Thursday. Santelli got cheers from traders as he complained that the plan "rewarded bad behavior," and, as traders booed the policy, Santelli (click here for the CNBC video) gestured toward them and said, "This is America!"

Somebody had to say it, said the Colorado Springs Gazette in an editorial. The government is sending the message that people who bought houses they couldn't afford win, and those who live within their means foot the bill. Santelli's rant was one "for the ages, full of wisdom and truth," by a man who "understands the danger of a country that rewards all failure, by taxing all success."

Give me a break, said Jason Linkins in The Huffington Post. "Everyone from Matt Drudge to Matt Drudge is freaking out" and thanking Santelli for "straight-up fomentin' a revolution." Santelli and his trader buddies are mad that Obama won't "immediately foreclose on everybody and kick them out into the streets," but it's the financial types who got us into this mess by pushing "risky lending."

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Plenty of people across the country are as mad as Santelli, said David Brooks in The New York Times. But in an interwoven economy, sometimes you have to "shower money" upon greedy idiots who have dug themselves a hole. "At some level, we're all in this together. If their lives don't stabilize, then our lives don't stabilize."

It's "perfectly reasonable" to be outraged by Obama's mortgage subsidization program, said Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic. But the gripe Santelli and Drudge, who posted the video on his site, seem to have is that "the equity markets hated the plan." But "our experience should tell us that what's good for Wall Street isn't necessarily what's good for the economy."