They are obsessed with stealing our privacy, flout the Constitution, and lie as easily as they breathe. They even lie to Congress, and that's apparently fine.

As far as I can tell, they've done nothing substantially helpful, just suck our money, spy on us, and enrage the rest of the world.

It's like keeping measles as a pet.

Damn, are we stupid.

With Sibelius bowing out, soon only one of the DLC's New Team will hold a national position. Of course Emmanuel can still cause great mischief, but his territory is much more limited now.

Hopefully soon they'll all be happily retired to lives of great luxury, torrents of Wall Street cash and fantastical jobs for their offspring.

But much has proven true, and none has proven false.

So it's not Snowden who's crazy, it seems.

Why, just today, the CFPB Sen. Warren started took $800 million from Bank of America and gave it to cheated consumers, to settle claims against said bank.

Sen. Warren can take banker money as well as anyone in government. She just doesn't keep it for herself, that's all.

Senator Harry Reid.

Harry calls it like it is. He's the only Democratic leader who's consistently said no to cutting Social Security, refusing to pretend that chained CPI is not a cut.

During the 2012 "fiscal cliff" negotiations, he got pulled from the job of chief Democratic negotiator because he wouldn't [strike]cave[/strike] be flexible enough. In the end, only one-third of the Bush tax cuts were repealed. (Shockingly, a year later when Democrats refused to give in during the recent government shut down, Democrats got everything they wanted. No, seriously, I'm shocked. Really.)

In an epic flip-off of Wall Street, Reid appointed Elizabeth Warren to the Senate Banking Committee. I think we all know how that's going - for the first time in decades, someone with juice is putting serious pressure on the folks who cheat us at every turn. And last summer, Warren and the other Dems Reid appointed to that committee prevented Larry Summers from having another crack at us.

A few months ago, Reid outright refused to allow a vote on fast-track status for the TPP, which was needed to slide the thing through before The 99% would even know what was happening. Now that the thing can't be done in secret, notice how it's dropped off the map?

And now, he's mooning the Koch Brothers every chance he gets, making them scurry around in the light of truth. And that light is not very flattering to them.

Certainly, there are some things I'd like to see Reid do differently, but I suspect that he's got some limits as to what he can do given his position as Majority Leader. I get that.

But here's the thing: Harry tries. Harry calls it like it is. Harry is in the fray, not above it. Harry throws punches.

Not all Democrats have the fire of Elizabeth Warren. But if all Democrats were Harry Reids, we'd be in pretty damned good shape right now.

Thanks Harry. Please keep kicking ass for us little people.

Could that money have been used for something else? Could lives have been saved by it?

Thoughts?

Edit: to be clear, I'd love to find the victims, and to find out what happened. But at what point does it become too expensive given the odds of finding survivors and/or actionable information.

Sometimes I read DU and, frankly, it's disturbing. We need to restore some decorum to DU, and there's no time to lose.

I'm talking, of course, about phrases like "water boarding" and "submersing people in ice water until they're nearly dead". Thanks to lots of research spending, America has advanced mightily in the area of using water to extract confessions. While a bit distasteful, and condemned by all civilized peoples, these techniques are needed to stop those who are after our precious bodily fluids.

But those phrases... Ugh! We need happier and more-descriptive replacements that help us to remember the end benefits of water play. "Freedom dunks"? "Bobbing for Liberty"? What do *you* think? Please share your thoughts!

Let's make the world a brighter place for our beautiful minds, shall we? Also, As long as the screams are in soundproof rooms, their screams don't really count.

Regards,

Third-Way Manny.

No, they're not. Here's why I'm pissed:

Daily Kos, "Chart of the Day: Median income"



The blue line is *real* median income, after accounting for inflation.

The 1% have been bailed out mightily - they're doing better, far better, than ever before. But the rest of us... let us eat cake.

Relax. Parody. The Daily Current.

I figure GD is appropriate because of the current situation with the Mozilla CEO, but please disabuse me of that notion if I'm wrong.