This is the last weekend of the winter, at least the way I see it. It is the last weekend that will pass without a Red Sox game to occupy some of the time, and to accompany me while battling the forces arrayed against us. Next weekend, I will be listening, perhaps not intently but with at least one ear, to Joe Castiglione and whoever happens to sit with him as he describes games that do not count, but against the Twins, the Reds and the Northeastern Huskies. Spring training games do not require one's complete attention, of course.  The scores do not matter, and most statistics don't either.  Every so often, someone will make a nice play, or a situation while arise which you would like the Sox to cash in on (or get out of) even if the "Sox" are players who will spend the season in Pawtucket or Portland.  Still, there are things that matter:  it would be nice to see Papi hit a home run early in the spring, for Mike Lowell to just be able to play, and for  Josh Beckett, Brad Penny, and Takashi Saito to show that they are over last year's problems.

But mostly spring training, like spring itself is all about hope.  President Clinton, who is famously from Hope, expressed the view yesterday that President Obama does not convey enough hope among the dour messages he keeps sending, but I think Mr. Clinton is not looking hard enough. Our new president is all about hope:  it almost pours out of his being into the populace.  Hope we have.   

It is telling, though, that the message from the White House is not sufficiently upbeat for President Clinton.  He and his inane successor were all about message and the message was, frequently, to remind voters to vote for the President's re-election or that of politicians who will support him.  The idiot who succeeded President Clinton carried this to an the extreme of having no actual issue at stake while campaigning almost always.  It should hardly be surprising that, a month after being told that bin-Laden was determined to attack the United States, the President was reading to school children when the attack took place:  campaigning for re-election only nine months after taking office, rather than meeting the obligations of the office he held.

President Obama is faced with the legacy of these eight years without a government, following another one often too occupied with stupid issues concerning the President's personal problems.  We cannot expect there to be no consequences from eight years of what we just went through, nor that the damage that was done will just disappear after a stirring inaugural address.

Yet, by next week, I am sure, it will be announced on cable tv that the stimulus was obviously a failure since nothing has happened.  Against this constant drumbeat of the politically addled, or just plain stupid (such as the people who had to be told that a "stimulus" bill involved government spending or the newly elected chairman of the Republican party who explained that the government never creates jobs, just work), a President needs to educate, and not just lead "feel good" sessions.

The new director of intelligence (talk about making jobs, I think we could go back to just having a CIA director and leaving it at that, but what do I know) has said that  the global economic crisis is as likely to result in dangerous times as any actual terrorist attack and I am sure he is right about that.  CNBC spent much of Thursday congratulating themselves for the attention of their supposed reporters got for expressing the pigheaded view of the people who got us into this mess complaining that to aid people who might otherwise lose their homes was nothing more than rewarding  "bad behavior" requiring taxpayers to "subsidize the losers' mortgages."
They stopped sounding so pleased with themselves when they found that across the country these remarks were taken not as the call to arms reminiscent of "Broadcast News" but, at least among the many who have placed their hopes in their new president of an attitude among financial professionals which, because it went unchecked in the Bush years, has caused the disruptions with which are now faced.

So, yesterday, the President's press secretary fought back, directly and on point.

 I'm not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives, or in what house he lives, but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, stay in their job, pay their bills, to send their kids to school, and to hope that they don't get sick or that somebody they care for gets sick and sends them into bankruptcy.

I think we said 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...

This plan, though, I think it's important for the American people to understand, was designed to help those that have been responsible.

As the President has said, if your neighbor's house is on fire or if several houses are on fire, you don't debate it; you get a hose and try to put the fire out. That's what's most important. This plan will stop the spread of those foreclosures because it addresses those that are -- that potentially could be in trouble but aren't there yet, get the help they need so that the foreclosure sign doesn't go up on their front yard.

But I also think it's tremendously important that for people who rant on cable television to be responsible and understand what it is they're talking about. I feel assured that Mr. Santelli doesn't know what he's talking about.

We will not get out of this by people tackling one another and calling each other names.  A mess has been made, by people who were permitted to let their greed get in front of what is good for the country and common sense. President Roosevelt thought he had set up regulatory devices to prevent this stuff from happening again but he did not reckon on the Ronald Reagans, George Bushes and their acolytes on cable tv and hate radio, who would break down all those protective devices (they tried to destroy the most important of them---social security---but failed).

Against that only education and the continued struggle against those whose greed surpasses any feeling of communion with their fellow Americans will get us out of this mess.  Not happy talk.  Hope has its place, and for now I place mine in the President of the United States and, of course, Theo Epstein, Terry Francona and the Boston Red Sox.  That's it.