Isn’t this like locking the barn door after the horses got out?

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.): While the middle class disappears and poverty increases the wealthiest people in our country are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else. The United States must not become an oligarchy in which a handful of wealthy and powerful families control the destiny of our nation.

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Dorothy Stowe, Greenpeace founder, 89,

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Do you believe the sheer balls of these bastards? David Sirota:

In a very solid piece about what the fight over Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP) is really about,ABC News includes this revealing snippet from the Financial Services Roundtable, one of the most powerful corporate front groups in Washington:

The financial industry, for its part, would like Obama to pick someone more likely to see their side of the issue, not just the consumers’ side.

“We believe the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should focus on both ends of the transaction,” said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable in Washington.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the new agency is called the ConsumerFinancial Protection Bureau, it is not called the Bank Financial Protection Bureau (as, frankly, you might call the rest of the government). Indeed, the new agency’s whole mission is to protect consumers, meaning it shouldn’t “focus on both ends of the transaction.” It should see issues exclusively through the prism of consumers. That’s its very r’aison d’etre.

The fact that the banking industry, after winning so many concessions in the financial regulatory bill, is nonetheless now insisting that the miniscule consumer protection agency must be captured by financial interests – well, it’s certainly audacious but hardly surprising. Financial firms know that if they are able to crony-ize and thus capture an office with the “consumer protection” name, they will not only be able to control that office’s regulatory actions, but perhaps even have it stamp banks’ usurious behavior with a “consumer protection” seal of approval.

This is why the banks’ assault on Elizabeth Warren is so vehement – it represents both a defensive and offensive move. They want to prevent a savvy, eminently qualified and – here’s the key quality – genuinely independent regulator from being vested with power to oversee (or at least expose) the financial industry’s predatory business model. They also want to make sure that a crony gets the job – a crony who won’t blow the whistle on such predation and who therefore will effectively legitimize the financial status quo.

I don’t think that’s the whole story. Geithner and Bernanke et al have contructed a large and fragile house of cards that rests on the notion that we will all pretend that the banking system is fine — until it actually is fine, and then it’ll all be fine! In other for Warren to do this job as she sees fit, she’d have to acknowledge the financial instability of the banks, and they’re not going to stand for it. Nope.

In other words, they’re doubling down on the strategy that’s destroyed our economy.

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These people really give me a headache. Really, show me a left-wing partisan WHO MAKES SHIT UP. The false equivalence is just astounding.

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If you remember the Insect Trust, you’re a freak!

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Cheryl Wheeler:

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Tracy Nelson:

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This is one more thing to look out for:

Contrary to popular belief, wading in the ocean to heal cuts and scrapes isn’t always the best idea.

A little-known, deadly bacteria called Vibrio vulnificus, which naturally occurs in warm coastal waters, can infect the open wounds of beachgoers and incite a life-threatening illness in those with weakened immune systems.

Between 2005 and 2009, 138 people were infected with the bacteria in Florida — 31 died, according to the Florida Department of Health.
“The high mortality rate makes it a big deal,” said Juan A. Suarez, a regional environmental epidemiologist for FDH, who said the bacteria proliferates in waters where temperature and salinity are increasing, particularly between the months of April and November.

There are two main ways of contracting an infection from the bacteria: Through direct contact between sea water and an open cut or by consuming raw or undercooked shellfish, particularly contaminated oysters.

In Miami-Dade County, there have been two Vibrio vulnificus deaths in the past five years.

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Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros with one of the best songs I’ve heard in a long time:

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