Oh When the Fools Come Rushing In...

It's become a popular pastime among the left to bash President Obama for the contents of the financial reform bill. And there's little question that the bill, despite some useful measures, does little to prevent investment banks from once again becoming too big too fail. But is Obama really the villain here?Passage of even this modest bill remains in doubt because genial idiot Scott Brown opposes a $19 billion fee on banks and hedge funds, a fee intended to pay for the costs of the legislation. Democrats have agreed to drop the fee, which amounts to a whopping .001 per cent of a $15 trillion economy, in the hopes of attracting Brown's vote. How can Obama or anyone else even attempt legislation to break up politically powerful investment banks when the the slightest reform can be derailed by someone whose intellect falls somewhere between those of Sarah Palin and a barnacle?...

Schadenfreuede Dept: The New York Times reports that Louisiana's response to the BP/Halliburton Catastrophe has been less than impressive. Among the revelations:

1. The state's response plan is incomplete and out-of-date, in part because Governor Bobby Jindal cut its entire R&D budget;
2. Delays to the vaunted plan to construct barrier islands arose not from federal inaction but from the scale and complexity of the plan;
3. Jindal has deployed barely any of Louisiana's 6,000 National Guardsman;
4. Despite Jindal's claim that "local leaders know best," state officials are not exactly major players at command table meetings...

Regardless of the Louisiana National Guard's minimal impact, the local police have found time to serve as uniformed security for BP...

The president is doing what he said he'd do: Try. But senators are already talking about compromise before even submitting the energy bill. It's not a matter of defeatism or cravenness (even if Toadstool Joe is one of the senators), but of what Lincoln called, in a different context, the awful math. Fifty-nine votes is not sixty votes. Period. There's no way around it. Reconciliation can occur only after sixty senators have voted for a piece of legislation; anyone making noise about reconciliation doing anything else is doing just that: making noise...

Thanks to Momma Politico for the above two nuggets. Today, she also publishes a telling list of Judge Martin Feldman's personal holdings. Let's just say that the words "energy," resources," and "drilling" make repeated appearances...

JUST A SONG: Still stuck in the moment of Tennessee time...

With silver bracelets on her wrist and flowers in her hair...

Rollin' in my sweet baby's arms: