President Obama re-started the health care clock, threatening Congress with yet another deadline [insert eye-rolling emoticon here] to push the moribund health care insurance reform package across the finish line on March 31st.

So does this mean that once he signs off on the original bill’s skeletal remains, he’ll finally turn his full attention to the barons robbing this country blind? If not, I’d suggest he reprioritize, because those amoral parasites are hurriedly reinflating bubbles left and right in order to rip off the American people of their very last pennies. Again.

It would also be in the White House’s best interest, publicity-wise, to get its shit together on reinstating some sort of meaningful banking reform. According to the New York Times, the public is exceedingly interested in seeing these sociopaths brought to heel:

Three-fifths of Americans supported tougher regulation of Wall Street in April 2009, according to Pew Research Center polling. Despite rising disaffection with government, three fifths still supported it last month.

Not everyone, however, thinks Wall Street should be spotlighted for its socially and economically destructive behavior:

Alex Castellanos, a Republican consultant, pointed to another edge: with Americans most anxious about unemployment, calling for stricter regulation of Wall Street is “not a growth argument, it’s a punishment argument.”

You know what? Fuck you for missing the point, Castellanos. Wall Street deserves to be punished for its rapacious hoarding and compulsive deceit that has co-piloted this country right off the cliff. It would be one thing if these “too big to fail” banks were actually returning something to the American public, but they’re not. Despite taking massive payoffs, they’re still not extending credit to homeowners, they’re still not lending to small business, they’re still not taking any action that will help to resuscitate U.S. employment. They’re simply playing round robin with great heaping piles of cash, passing them from one bank to another and back again, and slapping the public with usurious interest rates and the processing fees. The only Americans they’re helping are themselves.

What’s worse, the banksters honestly believe they deserve all this filthy lucre. By now, we’re familiar with the vindictive, un-ironic indignation expressed by the professional victims at AIG-FP, the organization that, with the “assistance” of the syndicate’s kingpin, Goldman Sachs, brought this whole house of cards down on us in the first place:

Another was even more irate, lashing out at the public for scapegoating AIG employees. “To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved.”

“They only care about the next election, just like we only care about the next bonus. Well, none of them cares about the country, none of us cares about the institution,” he said, adding: “They really don’t care, and I really don’t care. And frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine.”

With that kind of institutionalized histrionic personality disorder, Obama had better be willing to get tough — I mean REALLY tough — with these fucking pit vipers, and not “preemptively compromise to conservative elements that won’t get on board no matter what substantive deals they’re offered[.]” Otherwise, we’ll be forced to once again watch as the usual Republican obstructionists and special interest piranhas pick the bill’s bones clean of any significant reform and the American people are left holding the empty bag.

Not really a strategic way to head into the 2010 elections.