The media bullhorn given to the plutocrats and Villagers-for-life continues its free profitable and responsibility-free call for our destruction. They get to make ALL the money, they get to be the ONLY voice that matters, and they get to pick the targets when we need to bomb yet another country so we don’t get rusty.

And who better than Evan Bayh to emit the dreck?

When will the Village stop churning out these “both sides do it” pieces?

Liveblogging of the Senate Banking Committee hearing on foreclosure fraud continues. Senator Richard Shelby was actually pretty good, but then Sens. Mike Johanns and Bob Bennett went to some length to try to pretend the banksters weren’t doing what they were doing.

This hearing is the latest example of national policymakers getting involved in the foreclosure fraud issue. The Congressional Oversight Panel warning of the enormous risk from the failures of servicers was the first report of its kind at the federal level to take full measure of the situation, and this is the first Congressional hearing. Senators on the Democratic side like Jeff Merkley and Sherrod Brown are sure to press the bank representatives aggressively on why foreclosure mitigation programs have failed, and why they used false documents to evict people from their homes. The ranking member on the Republican side, Richard Shelby, wants to investigate failures at the major loan servicers.

First called pick-up of the night, in a state where the incumbent is sitting on ten million dollars he hated raising. Go figure, does this guy have a future in politics or what?

At present we have an inefficient federal legislative branch with members chosen on the basis of geography and population. What is needed is a bold refashioning of government — a constitutional amendment to replace our present gridlocked mess with a far more elegant and effective system based on the proven efficiencies and priorities of The Market.

“If Washington DC could be more like Indiana,” siad Bayh, “then Washington would be a better place.” Also, the fried Pike would be better.

Someone hand me the large polo mallet.

Help me welcome Laura Clawson, senior writer at the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America (and also front-page blogger on Daily Kos…shhhh. Don’t tell.). Laura joins us today for our discussion.

You’d have to be living in a cave, or in a willful veil of ignorance, not to know how people in this country are suffering in our broken health care system. If you have health insurance through your job, that’s one more reason to be desperately afraid of losing that job (with unemployment at 9.4 percent, no less;), if you get it as an individual or a family, you have to worry that your insurance company will find a reason to dump you the minute you need it most (whether you’re insured through your job or on your own, your health care costs are exploding. Then, of course, there are the 47 million people without insurance in the United States.

Blah blah blah.

But did you know that the lolcat community is suffering? If, so far, you’ve been able to push the health care crisis to the back of your mind and put off making your voice heard, how does it make you feel to see that Dr. Tinycat can’t get care because he’s out of network?

Evan Bayh is once again going to act as Big Oil’s best friend in the Senate, refusing to commit to passing renewable energy standards.

As Yglesias notes, even Rich Boucher — who represents a coal-heavy Appalachian district that went 59% for McCain — is on board with Waxman’s compromises on the American Clean Energy and Security Act.