I don’t know. Taking down the big banks and holding Wall Street accountable could have caused some real problems. We would have had people showing up at political rallies with guns and comparing Obama to Hitler/Mao/Stalin.  Wouldn’t want that, would we?

And we certainly would have seen a resurgence of Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin screaming about how Obama is destroying capitalism and then people would have shown up at protests carrying signs comparing him to Hitler and stuff and we can’t have that.

Don’t be surprised to see the Republican presidential candidate of 2012 produce an attack video very much like the one that the Obama administration put together on McCain.

I certainly will be surprised. Based on the current rate of decay, by 2012 the GOP will consist of a shrieking drooling blob that brings to mind a creature from a Lovecraft story.

Oh, and [slurp, slurp, slurp] financial reform without knowing exactly what you want to want to reform will result in assholes exploiting a new set of loopholes. The S.O. has been explaining this stuff to me for a couple of years and I can just about manage to nod intelligently at some of his LESS esoteric comments.

Frankly I’d rather see the SEC headed by a former bouncer armed with a 2x4 before they started on additional reform.

I totally get why Obama is moving slower than some libs/progs/Dems would like on a multitude of issues (Kool-Aid! ... slurp ... slurp ...slurp), but financial reform isn’t one of them.

The S.O. has been explaining this stuff to me for a couple of years and I can just about manage to nod intelligently at some of his LESS esoteric comments.

HTP, what’s the “S.O.”?

HTP, what’s the “S.O.”?

i think HTP is referring to significant other.

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Digby and her collection of retard commenters aren’t calling for more financial regulation.  They’re calling for random people’s heads.  They don’t know anything about law or finance but goddammit somebody must pay.  They’re basically left-wing teabaggers.

Digby and her collection of retard commenters aren’t calling for more financial regulation.

Lumping Digby in with her commenters is unfair. I guess that makes me a “left-wing teabagger,” too. Her commenters have always been far more extreme and irrational than her. I have no idea why. It’s one of the great mysteries of the blogosphere.

Kevin, I hope nobody holds you responsible for me being a fucktarded commenter. ;)

Her commenters have always been far more extreme and irrational than her. I have no idea why. It’s one of the great mysteries of the blogosphere.

Was not always like that. Its more of a recent thing. I began commenting at Digby’s when she first opened Hullabaloo years ago, when there were only a handful of commenters, when Digby was actually a regular participant in her own comment threads. It was definetly different than it is now. But Digby’s blog has always been kind of like a repeating thematic lecture class… wherein she more or less gives the same lectures year in year out. Like some kind of required college lecture class. The nature of the lectures more or less remain the same over the years to a large degree, but the nature of the audience she is speaking to has changed (changed a LOT in my opinion). The great mystery to me is why she allows the kind of half-cocked grabass that distorts her comment threads to continue unabated. Maybe she just stopped reading her own comment threads.

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i think HTP is referring to significant other.

Yes. He understands this stuff.

To summarize: A quick fix would involve lining up 85% of the people involved in finance (private sector, public sector, unholy combinations of the two) shooting them, and then hanging them up on the White House fence as an example.

Then you’d have to wait until the corpses were all nasty before the lesson finally sunk in to the surviving greed-heads.

Then you could start reform.

Since shooting/creative corpse display is out, more people will have to be arrested for things that can’t be sorted out with a few attorney phone calls. And in a lot of instances the government is going to need the crooks to explain exactly what the fuck happened. Kind of like the FBI retaining known hackers.

Kevin, I hope nobody holds you responsible for me being a fucktarded commenter. ;)

Oblo, I’d be honored to have then hold me responsible for your comments.  You’ve turned ass-kicking into an art form.

Was not always like that. Its more of a recent thing. I began commenting at Digby’s when she first opened Hullabaloo years ago, when there were only a handful of commenters, when Digby was actually a regular participant in her own comment threads.

Yeah, you’re right, the farmer. “Always” was a bad choice of words. Hell, you and I may have been commenting in the same threads (2004 or so?).

To summarize: A quick fix would involve lining up 85% of the people involved in finance (private sector, public sector, unholy combinations of the two) shooting them, and then hanging them up on the White House fence as an example.

That’s a start. But, yeah, I get what you’re saying.

Appreciate the input from everybody.  It’s just that the weakass shit I’m seeing from, say, the pay czar seems so minimal and half-hearted I’m really worried about Obama losing not only the votes in the squishy middle, but also from the left.

Lumping Digby in with her commenters is unfair.

Well, I was all set to agree, then I jumped over there on my RSS reader and caught her calling Volcker a “shock doctrine guy.” I’m not really sure what she thinks she means by that, but I can’t really think of any way that can make sense without being stupid.

Digby was great once upon a time, and she’s still lucid here and there (her stuff on police is great), but she went around the bend somewhere around August-September of last year.

you and I may have been commenting in the same threads (2004 or so?).

yeah, 2003, 2004, 2005, etc… seems to me her comment threads have become more and more crazy and stupid just recently but i dunno becuse sometimes i go for weeks and months wthout ever looking at em so i’m not really sure how steep a decline it may have been. But they sure have sailed off for cloud cuckooland recently.

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