No surprise
The ridiculous posturing on debt talks continue, even as the President has decided that appearing the “reasonable man” is more important that Social Security, Medicare and other advancess of Twentieth Century American government. While eyes were on which version of right-wing pandering he might be able to persuade the now insane Republican party to please accept, a smaller drama was taking place. The question was whether the face of liberalism, the supposed leader of progressives, would select Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (an agency whose rules she largely created). Anyone who thought this drama had any suspense is unfamiliar with our President. Barack Obama would be the greatest liberal in our political history, if only everyone in Washington was to the left of him. Unfortunately, he listens to only one siren, and that out of his right ear. So the “drama” was not suspenseful, but neither is Macbeth because you know what will happen. This drama, however, wasn’t even artful. Elizabeth Warren was not selected. After all, she is smart and knowledgeable enough to help reign in the power of our new plutocrats, who rake in their gain not like the old robber barons, who at least provided (low paid and non-union) jobs and produced goods, but rather by manipulating the rules of modern capitalism and by evading regulation. And if they occasionally overstep propriety by bankrupting themselves (and incidentally the rest of us), they now know that they can count on us to give them a hand to get them back on their feet so they can foreclose on the rest of us.
The President had already given an unambiguous tell a while back: when his fundraising numbers were revealed. A President can’t amass that kind of treasure for his re-election if he plants to harm in anyway those who are enriching themselves at our country’s expense. So Warren ends up in the same trash heap that the other liberal programs of this President who had to appease his friends, the plutocrats. From the stimulus (padded with tax cuts for the people who didn’t need a stimulus), to health care reform (which required a vig to Big Pharma), to the public option (which had to be trashed for the benefit of the health “insurers”), to the Bush Tax Cuts (because the wealthy need more money too), to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (the Ninth Circuti judicial order against, this Administration has opposed). The President has answered the riddle: What talks like a liberal and walks like a liberal and raises $68 million for re-election? A conservative who talks and walks like a liberal.
Hidden Cause, Visible Effects 
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