So, financial regulation. Let's try to talk about it for a second. Blanche Lincoln suddenly wants to ban banks from derivative trading, which is awesome, but who knows how the rest of this thing will shake out.

We know that the GOP has already begun to engage in attacks so ridiculous that it will make "death panels" look like responsible policy debate. And we know that when Mitch McConnell says something that is literally the precise opposite of the truth, it will lead to a lot of people debating whether or not his blatant lie was "fair" or not, and responsible, respectable outlets will say "most experts dispute McConnell's characterization of the financial regulation bill currently under consideration" instead of saying "Mitch McConnell is a shameless liar."

So none of that is news!

But we do not have very much hope for any of this emerging from the legislative process as anything other than a few cosmetic changes to the status quo of the late-90s through a couple years ago.

The question at this point is whether or not Democrats want to continue being incredibly good at fundraising, which cozying up to Wall Street helped them to become back in the dark days of the end of the Reagan era, or if they'd like to maybe attempt to win some elections in the future and perhaps prevent the entire country from going broke again. We'll see! (Blanche Lincoln, rather surprisingly, has come down on the side of winning elections and not destroying the nation.)

Hah, and there was word earlier today Republican Susan Collins, formerly of the "one of the good ones" caucus, had not signed on to the letter from Mitch McConnell about how all the Republicans hate the financial regulation bill because it is "permanent bailouts," that talking point we mentioned earlier that is actually literally the exact precise opposite of the truth, but it looks like she's signed on! They're all fucking idiots. Once again, the political calculations trump everything else. America's Senate still proudly broken!