Republicans learn the hard way that when they hold a hearing to rail against Wall Street reform, they may want to lock the doors before Elizabeth Warren walks through them.

Courtesy of Salon: 

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans on the Banking Committee decided to finally hold a hearing to “assess the effects of consumer finance regulations”– little more than another attempt to rail against Wall Street regulation like the Dodd-Frank law. Ostensibly, the hearing would have granted Republicans the opportunity to shed their “do nothing” image while simultaneously continuing to espouse their mantra of deregulation. Too bad Elizabeth Warren also showed up for her day job on Tuesday, completely eviscerating the Republicans’ main witness and destroying their tired talking points. 

“Of all the people who might be called on,” Warren said of Republicans’ lead witness Leonard Chanin, former Deputy Director of the Division of Consumer and Community Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board, “I am surprised that my Republican colleagues would chose a witness who might have one of the worst track records in history on this issue.”

I actually thought that Warren would climb over her lectern and throttle Chanin when he claimed there was no data that predicted that the mortgage bubble was about to crash.

Warren is a rock star and I am still holding out for the idea of Hillary Clinton picking her to join her on the Democratic ticket in 2016.

P.S. By the way if you want a real understanding of the 2008 financial crisis I cannot suggest a better source than the 2015 movie "The Big Short."

I watched it last week and it is excellent and just a little tirade inducing.

I could not agree more.

I am just NOT a fan of camping anymore.

Every summer somebody guilts me into taking them camping, and every time I spend the entire trip wishing I was back home in my warm bed.

Summer is here again, so I know what's coming.

Now don't get me wrong, when I was younger I went camping all of the damn time.

I even spent the night on a mountain top with no tent or sleeping bag for protection.

Hell I once slept in a damn tree!

But come on, do you have any idea how much my mortgage payment is? Why would I spend all of that money and then to sleep under a swarm of mosquitoes, only to wake up with my clothes soaking wet from a surprise rainfall.

And then I have to spend the next several days trying to work the kink out of my lower back, while answering the hundreds of e-mails that arrived while I was gone.

I live only a few minutes away from great hiking trails, plenty of fishing streams, and more nature than many people see in a lifetime. And all of it is only a handful of minutes away from my very own bathroom and internet.

Now if I can only convince everybody else.