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Not going home for the traditional 4^th of July recess seems to have exacerbated a certain group of senators’ predilection to put partisanship before anything else – DC is a pretty insular place.  Well, anything except their sycophantic quivering at the loins of their Wall Street bosses, as their continued intransigence over raising the debt ceiling – and their ridiculous semantic gymnastics in justifying their position – illustrates.  Today, however, brings news of a fresh bitch slap to the face of every consumer in the country, as all 44 republican senators have vowed to block the appointment of ANYONE to head the newly created Consumer Finance Protection Bureau -  Machiavelli, Grover Cleveland, J. Edgar Hoover, Mickey Mantle, Elvis…anyone.

No, they are still pissed off that they couldn’t block creation of the agency last year when it was created so now they will just symbolically take their ball and go home, once again doing the bidding of their corporate overlords, who look at any kind of regulation of the high stakes poker they play with other peoples’ money like you or I look forward to a colonoscopy from a jittery, doped-up internist with a grudge.  And they are so sure that the public is going to get sucked into their “If Obama’s for it, we’re against it” tiny-brain nonsense that they just come right out and admit it.

They propose that, instead of a single person running the agency, a 5 person board be appointed, that it is subject to the always-political plate of spaghetti that is the appropriations process  and that bank regulators have greater oversight – essentially insuring it will never accomplish anything and turning it into a gelding.  Having an agency run by committee with greatly reduced power to get anything done is now the in-your-face strategy republicans are employing as a fall-back position to try to protect the ability of the big money boys to run amuck. 

This kind of partisan gamesmanship may play well with the Tea party knuckle draggers and Wall Street lobbyists but to most of the rest of the country, it looks more like a bunch of pimps and double-dealers more interested in one upping Obama and taking care of the fat cats who write the checks.   Again…

I was very happy to see Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley call these disingenuous pricks out in no uncertain terms, saying what has been obvious since Obama was elected – the primary goal of the republican party ever since has not been fixing the economy, crafting intelligent foreign policy, punishing the criminals who brought the house down in the first place or providing a loyal opposition – it has been to make sure Obama loses in 2012, period.  And you gotta love it when another politician just comes right out and calls a spade a spade: "They know that their formulations, their policies of less revenues and less regulation badly failed our country and plunged us into this recession. So their only way of evening the playing field is to keep the president from being successful in the jobs recovery.”  He went on to say that, "through their intransigence, they have cleverly set up a situation for America's economy to fail, either by needlessly driving us to default, or needlessly driving us into massive public sector layoffs."

You could barely hear yourself think for the resulting, outraged harrumphing spewing out of republican headquarters like some bilious fart straight from between Michael Steele’s butt cheeks.  He called it an “unhinged partisan rant”, a nice turn of phrase but a laughable example of pot kettle black, coming from the spokesman for John Boner.  The republicans as born-again deficit hawks remind of when I was eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War in the early 70’s and the guys who were always first in line for the fraternity house gang bangs suddenly found Jesus and became conscientious objectors. 

The same snarling anti-deficit attack dogs today were puppies rolled over on their backs hoping for a belly rub when Bush was racking up deficits and spending the surplus accumulated during Clinton’s two terms.  Now they want to write republican – Wall Street – economic priorities into the constitution in exchange for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling, something they are bound by their oaths of office to do anyway.  No way, fellas – that kind of cynical, transparently self-serving bullshit is so noxious that even with the full support of Faux News the public will see through it in the end.  My advice to you guys would be, make a deal.