If the Republicans in the Senate were really as concerned about a renegade presidency as they claim to be on Twitter and in anonymous mumblings to various reporters, they’d join with Democrats to block [Mnuchin’s] nomination. It only takes three of them, and they all could cite Mnuchin’s dubious testimony to the committee as a very plausible reason for doing so.
There was absolutely no chance of that ever happening, however. Nobody—except Bernie Sanders, who said it all the time—wants to get up and state flat out that the business model of people like Stephen Mnuchin, the people who immiserated millions out of sheer animal greed, was plain vanilla bunco fraud. This was really the last chance to make that point before these gombeen yahoos do it all over again.
Tag: Charles Pierce
The Invisible Hand
Charles Pierce has some suggestions for a simple, straightforward set of debate questions:
Mr. Romney, please explain in detail how $56 million diverted [by PG&E] from safety measures to incentive bonuses [and directly resulted in an explosion that killed eight and destroyed 38 homes] really is a victory for all Americans in pursuing their American dream in this, the greatest country on earth and the shining city on the hill.
Mr. Gingrich, please explain in detail why a culture of dependency and moral laxity is inculcated among the poor by $200 a month in food stamps, but why it is not inculcated by millions of dollars of “diverted” funds among the executives of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Mr. Santorum, please explain in detail why two happy gay people who get married is an existential threat to the moral foundation of this country, but sucking up money you gouged out of the ratepayers, allegedly to protect them, is not.
Dr. Paul, please explain in detail why markets work better for all of us when they’re unregulated, and why the real solution to an exploding pipeline that kills eight people and wrecks 38 homes is the fact that, because its pipeline killed eight people and wrecked 38 homes, PG&E will suffer a public-relations problem in the marketplace.
Shrill, but Lincoln-Douglas shrill.