Nice (in the original sense) NYTimes column from Joe Nocera on “The Travails of Elizabeth Warren“:
… As she saw it, her job became, in part, to serve as the punching bag. “I would have all-hands meetings. I would say we’re under attack. My job is to worry about that. Your job is to keep building the agency. I couldn’t stop them from going after me, but I could stop the impact of their efforts.” […] __
Her last hearing took place a week ago. It was before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which includes McHenry. Its chairman is Darrell Issa, one of the meanest men in Congress. Warren was the only witness.
__
Though it began with an air of faux civility, its true purpose quickly became clear: to box her around the ears one more time. Issa accused her of “excessively redacting” Freedom of Information requests. McHenry claimed, absurdly, that her “evasive nonanswers” were contributing to the country’s economic woes. Several other Republicans chimed in with accusations of their own: she wanted to abolish payday lending (heaven forbid!); she was hiding how the C.F.P.B. was spending its money; she had “secretly” helped the state attorneys general devise a settlement with the big banks over the robo-signing scandal. (The Republicans have found her involvement in the efforts of the attorneys general — which she did at their request and which was perfectly legal — particularly infuriating. Shelby, for instance, accused her of being involved in a “shakedown” of the banks.)
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I happened to watch that hearing on the Web site of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to openness in government. The foundation had a few bloggers commenting in real time, and lots of financial data scrawling across the screen, much of it culled from Open Secrets, a kindred organization. When Representative McHenry was hectoring Warren, the screen showed that he had received almost $45,000 from Bank of America and another $15,500 from Wells Fargo. Connie Mack, a Florida Republican, had received $68,000 during the last election cycle from the financial services industry. Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, I discovered later, had given a combined $1,957,522 to Republicans in the last election, nearly twice as much as they gave to Democrats. They’ve certainly gotten their money’s worth.
__
As for Warren, she is being urged by the Democratic Party to run for Scott Brown’s Senate seat in Massachusetts. She’s a long way from deciding whether to do so, and, in any case, she has Harvard Law School to return to in the fall.
Yes, there are still good people out there fighting the good fight. So, once you’ve read the whole column — what’s on the schedule?
stuckinred
The boss’s butter beans are under attack from the dreaded kudzu bugs so I’m going to try a Neem attack before it gets too hot.
stuckinred
Kudzu bug
MikeJ
TdF time trials.
JPL
Stuckinred, Good luck squishing that bug. ugh!
metalgirl
Very muggy here (Raleigh, NC) and supposed to be 102+ today so I’m going to run while it’s still possible. This will be a weekend for indoor chores. Very sad about the people killed on Norway.
Jeffro
Jennifer Rubin, up to her usual bs, only even more so this time:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/norway-bombing/2011/03/29/gIQAB4D3TI_blog.html
Phyllis
It’s the hubby’s 57th b’day, so I’m taking him to Charleston SC for the weekend.
Mark S.
@Jeffro:
Ha! No retraction, no apology. That’s the Kaplan Daily Fishwrap.
A Mom Anon
It’s so humid here it’s hard to breathe. Blech. Since I have no car at the moment(thanks to yesterday’s wreck) and the Husband is working today I think the kid and I are going to make a big batch of triple chocolate ice cream and just hang out at the pool with the dog. And watch all the previous seasons of No Reservations on the Netflix instant thingy,
The madness in Norway makes my heart hurt. Those kids are in the same age range as my son. WTF is wrong with people? Maybe I’m just hyper sensitive(having an autistic teen that’s been bullied repeatedly for years makes one a tad testy) but the world seems a lot meaner than it used to be. It seems like so many people just revel in hatred and find being nasty and mean a form of entertainment. Mean People Suck(and they are why we can’t have nice things). Ack.
PurpleGirl
A Mom Anon — sorry your son gets bullied. Mean people do suck. And they’ve always been around. As a kid, in fact up through high school, I got teased and bullied because I stutter.
kdaug
(1) Pulling down a dead peach tree with a pole saw. (And yeah, chainsaw, I know).
(2) Keeping the dogs from running around with the sticks from said peach tree.
Not that we object to the dog’s having sticks. Just that they have a tendency to sneak them inside and proceed to shred them on the living room carpet.
Hurts like hell when you step on them barefoot.
PurpleGirl
After several days of being house-bound due to the heat (and my living room being air conditioned), I’m hitting a Borders store and then going to a book fair in Harlem. The lady I do typing for will be showing/selling her book there.
A Mom Anon
@Purple Girl
I know mean people have always been there, it just seems like there’s more tolerance of it now. Like most reality tv is purposely designed to bring out the absolute worst in people and the shit is incredibly popular. It could just be me,I know I’m sensitive to this,but it seems like even the nature of bullying is different now. The goal seems to be to completely destroy the victim,not only to intimidate or hassle them.
JPL
Jeffro, An update would be nice but maybe she is not skilled in how to do that. I love this comment though…
Cermet
Why is the FBI not putting undercover agents in teabagger groups? If what happened in Norway had been done by leftest, every left leaning group would be spyed on – this is why those rup-a-thugs have passed laws to attack our freedoms – they are the terrorist.
billy rae valentine
i saw real time with bill maher last night and he had a libertarian guest who was very intelligent but also a smug asshole. i finally understood why you call them glibertarians. he never missed an unprovoked opportunity to talk down to every other guest, insult them directly, and pat himself on the back as a “totally not a dem or a repub” independent.
when elizabeth warren came up he trashed her. he said i hope she runs for the senate so she can lose and we’ll never see her again.
hating elizabeth warren and talking about her like she’s a buffoon? i watched with my friends who are non-political (never follow it) and they, too, thought he was a prick. anyone know the guy’s name? anyway, weaksauce.
kay
CNN is just as bad. I turned it on briefly (which I immediately regretted) and the “terrorism expert” was already spinning like mad.
It doesn’t matter if it’s not Islamic terrorism, because our home-grown Right wing extremists are using the tactics of Islamic terrorism. Oh. Okay!
Fertilizer bombs and picking off innocents using a personal arsenal are the tactics of Muslim extremists? Really? To CNN’s viewers in the US, that is a laughably false statement. It’s ludicrous.
Svensker
@ Billy Rae
Nick Gillespie. Famous intellectual libertarian. Also, too, prick.
stuckinred
JPL
The house republicans are our terrorists and they don’t need to physically blow up buildings and mow us down with guns to destroy us.
JPL
stuckinred, who won the battle of the bugs?
Maude
Today’s Republican Talking Points are:
Obama has no experience.
Obama is a liar.
If these don’t stick, there will be more tomorrow and Monday.
A Mom Anon
Also too,I’m thinking of starting one of these here bloggy things of my own. Are there any decent free blog hosts for the hopelessly technically challenged among us? Thoughts? Pros and Cons of different hosts? Any suggestions appreciated.
Steeplejack
One more shift of week this afternoon/evening before I begin my weekend. Unfortunately, this will involve walking to the bus stop (and waiting) in 100° heat. So I am huddling in the man-cave this morning and mentally amassing body coolth.
Watching European golf, which this week is in nice, green, wet, cool Sweden.
MikeJ
Thor Hushovd was wearing a black armband. (right arm, right above the garmin logo band in blue)
jeffreyw
@A Mom Anon: You might have a look at Tumblr, I set up a site w/o much trouble.
Steeplejack
@Jeffro:
Jennifer Rubin is spectacularly wrong on so many levels. First, her piece (called “Norway Bombing”) uses a bonehead quote from Thomas Joscelyn of The Weekly Standard—
—as a springboard to warn against “those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists” and against cuts to the U.S. defense budget.
She throws in a quote from former Missouri senator Jim Talent in testimony July 7 to the House Budget Committee:
(As a side note, I love how he identifies the “hollowing” as occurring in that brief late ’70s window between Nixon-Ford and Reagan-Bush.)
Her big finish:
Because, you know, a bigger Navy and more bombers would have totally prevented those attacks in Norway.
harlana
That was the Fonzi of Freedom there.
Linda Featheringill
@A Mom Anon:
You’re alive and kicking! How are you doing?
Citizen_X
Damn. That’s getting right close to Jim Hightower’s suggestion to have politicians wear logos of their sponsors on their clothes, like race-car drivers. It should be done across the board.
PurpleGirl
Re J. Rubin: If our armed forces are so behind the times with its weaponry and ships, why is the DOD budget so damn large? What has happened to the fruits of all that research and development we pay for? Or did we have newer stuff and use/destroy it all Iraq and Afghanistan?
/sort of lame snark/
gelfling545
I’m trying to keep my dog in the air conditioned part of the house but she’s not liking it. She’s a pug & they do not do well in hot humid weather because of their peculiar breathing apparatus. Due to the proximity of Lake Erie we did not actually hit 100, thanks be to whatever. We’re in luck though. It’s supposed to be “only” 88 today. Unfortunately, I’ll need to turn on the oven to prep for the family “Iron Chef” cooking competition tomorrow.
MikeJ
@PurpleGirl: The new littoral combat ships are melting.
stuckinred
JPL
The Neem works ok but the experts at the farmers market say they don’t really do any damage to legumes.
A Mom Anon
@29 Linda
I’m OK,a little sore but ok. The kid and I cleaned all the stuff out of the car a little while ago and he started to cry a little. Poor guy.
jefft452
Steeplejack
“The Navy has fewer ships than at any time since 1916.”
OK, I think Dreadnaughts are cool,
but do Rubin and Talent really believe that “count the battleships” is a good measure of naval prowess?
RalfW
Check this out in the latest Weekly Standard!
Is this an attempt to 11-dimension destroy her in left-leaning circles? Or have some people woken up and realized that the GOP is so far out of control that they actually need some countervailing forces in the Senate next cycle.
Can’t fathom the politics, but it’s interesting reading (which in itself is shocking considering the source)
eta: link added
WaterGirl
@ A Mom Anon
I was about to say that you guys can’t seem to catch a break, but then I realized that nobody being seriously hurt was catching a break. :-)
Is the son who was in the car accident with you the autistic teenage son you mentioned elsewhere? Because that would make the whole thing trickier, wouldn’t it?
El Cid
I like how now every policy which is rational and which is aimed at improving the lives of the vast majority of Americans is “populist”.
You know, reasonable policies are now just a style of politics and economics.
Because, hey, “populism” is irrational, bombastic, just there to play for the crowds.
Mature, emotionally sound policies openly or effectively screw over the majority of the population.
Nylund
Does anyone brief people like Warren on how much cash these Congressmen have accepted from the parties being discussed?
I’d love for someone in a situation like this to say, “I understand your anger. You were paid $50,000 by the financial sector to show anger towards me after all. Now, him, the gentleman to your right, he was paid $68,000 by the banks, so I suspect he’ll be even angrier. I’m kind of curious to see how much sanctimonious BS $68,000 can buy.”