Compared to some on the right, Sen. Graham is the new GOP voice of reason. That’s some scary shit.

The US Senate would be hilarious, if its actions didn’t affect actual people.

They really don’t give a sweet pidoody about people. It is all politics and power all the time. Lindsey is a sick and tortured individual and should be in counseling rather than Congress.

Geez ,I always thought the C in C-Span stood for comedy

Repubs want a weak or dead climate bill. Repubs want Dems believing the immigration debate will actually help more than hurt Dems this fall. Graham appears to be accomplishing both. Obama doesn’t mind. He only cares about the issues and midterms insofar as they help him for 2012. Feckless would be a kind characterization for this Dem Congress. We fall for it every time. If anyone needs therapy, it’s the gullible Dems.

Good morning, pups. It’s Dowd and Friedman today. In “Olive Oil and Snake Oil” MoDo says Goldman’s wise guys heard lectures on ethics and casino metaphors on Capitol Hill, but the firm’s stock price rose on Wall Street Tuesday. The Moustache of Wisdom, in “Failure Is Not an Option,” says while our lawmakers in Washington are stalling on a bipartisan climate/energy/jobs bill, Beijing is celebrating. When will I stop hearing the word “bipartisan?” Gawd…

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got toasted Thomas’s English muffins with your favorite jam. I’m running late, so I’m going to turn into a little pink blur and get ready for work. Have a great day.

Good summary from MoDo. Goldman is too smart to break laws, and anyway, they pretty much define the rules of the game that become regulation. They are greedy but not sleazy, they don’t need to be. For better or worse, that’s what came across yesterday. The Fed and not Congress is the only entity that can really touch Goldman, and that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. Discouraging. The nation’s best and brightest should go into more productive, social value adding lines of work.

Check the Brain Bleach supplies – after that Sally Quinn imagery, it will soon be running low

I suppose it would be tasteless to call Lindsey a drama queen, but if the high heel fits …

Edit: No!!!!! Already used in “Related Posts”. Life isn’t fair.

For a group that’s “too smart to break laws” the Goldman folks yesterday spent an inordinate amount of time trying to tell us how dumb they were.

So much for being so smart. They can’t be both

Good morning all. Loved teh video. Perfect for the topic.

Talk about falling for it every time. GS seems to have caught you, hook, line & sinker.

Well that was probably their strategy for the hearings. Look dumb for the public who aren’t their customers. The financial institutions who are their customers knew what they saw. Market was down 2% yesterday, Goldman’s stock was up.

Wiley, sleazy, greedy. They are smart alright but they seem to think that they are smarter than anybody else and that is what makes them vulnerable. Arrogant pricks.

Well, I figure being a petulant jackass knows no boundary of race, sex, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

Well, except for the fucking flemish — those people are AWFUL! ;-)

…while Carl Levin gets the Marcy Wheeler treatment because of Sally Quinn’s virginal ear (the one on the left only).

ayep. I called that one mid-live-blog. for the record, I also called that Tom Coburn, who was actually asking some pretty damning uh, darning, questions during the hearing, would nonetheless get up and vote to continue filibustering the main bill. check, and check.

I’d give myself a tiny pat on the back, but the fucking R’s are so predictable that it’s not like it took any great insight or anything.

What did you think of Blankenswine yesterday? I had the impression that he would rather be in contempt of Congress than get caught for admit fraud.

Hi eCAHN. Another one of your famous abbreviations. I better go get some coffee and see if I can figure out what “GS” means!

Goldman Sachs.

I’m no fan of Goldman. Wish they would go out of business. The message would be healthy for the financial system and the general economy. No one sends a signal to the industry like Goldman. Guess we can keep our fingers crossed.

Oh. Thanks.

…what “GS” means!

Goldman Sucks !

Attempting to look dumb and play Sgt Schultz when confronted by evidence out of their own mouths (and fingers) is not the way to keep the regulators from the doors.

Not so sure about that. Here’s a short version that that’s exactly what GS lawyers advised. I watched a couple of hours of Blankfein’s performance and I think they didn’t lay a finger on him. Yes, they made him look like an asshole, but he doesn’t care. They didn’t get him to admit to doing anything wrong, let alone illegal.

Besides, you make the erroneous assumption that regulators are supposed to regulate, where the evidence seems to suggest that one can’t get a job as a regulator in D.C. unless one has no intentions of regulating, even enforcing the weak ones still on the books.

Finally, my substantive criticism of the senators’ performances is that they kept peppering witnesses with details (‘shitty’ got old awfully fast) with no attempt to summarize the general behavior in a substantive way. Oh sure, lots of crying for Main St., but no tying the details to how they added up to the fraud on Main St.

Most of the Senate needs counseling. Proof that people will rise to their highest level of incompetency.

Simpler hypothesis: senators are doing exactly what their campaign contributors are paying them to do.

If I actually thought that either the climate change or immigration legislation would actually lead to meaningful reform, I’d care about this drama. This is all the same kabuki that we have grown accustom to in Congress.

This just adds to the tension so that when the bill comes to the floor and is turned to swiss cheese and passed we can all get “oh so excited” at this piece of crap bill that will undoubtably betray the Democratic base.

This is all trash. Pure trash.

Oh, I’m sure they were all doing as their lawyers told them to do.

But it does destroy their claims for why they need obscene bonuses and that they are so much smarter than the rest of us.

Even senators can figure that much out (and maybe even react appropriately)

Simpler, more accurate, and more distressing.

Like with the housing bubble, many real people (or is that ‘real Americans’) can figure out what is going on. That does not mean it will stop.

Its no wonder that Americans remain hooked on reality shows. The Senate is the real life Survivor, up to the point that every action by every Senator is scripted for the most impact on the mindless observers. I would guess that if you polled the Pups, you would find overwhelmingly that very few of us watch reality TV.

We need to vote all the assholes off the island.

What is reality TV? *g*

The refuge of the mindless masses.

I can testify that I have never watched it except flipping thru channels on the remote. I think it took me a couple of years after it started before I knew what it was. A truly disgusting manifestation of U.S. culture.

Rating agency folks’ testimony being replayed on cspan3. One guy just testified that he couldn’t get FICA (is that the right abbreviation?) or loan-to-value ratios on a real time basis. Levin did not follow up with: So how could you rate the deals without that essential information?

Being a big fan /s of Lieberman I can’t help but notice how he and Graham and McCain have been the three musketeers lately. In fact I think they’ve cloned each other. When two of the three musketeers sign on to a climate bill, I’m aghast. Usually those two are working on curtailing civil rights (see enemy combatants, belligerant bill referred to committee. Bill probably includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer watchers as well). When John McCain supports Az Papers please Bill because he’s running to the right of Mussolini, I’m not surprised. When Graham and Lieberman declare “immigration reform dead”, threaten to hold up climate bill &etc, I’m sensing a pattern too. WTF is up with Pres. Obama including these guys on immigration reform, climate etc. McCain is weak. Lieberman is even weaker (25-38% in CT). So please don’t tell me these guys have some kind of mandate.