Chains We Can Believe In

The Beltway media bubble is exploding over Joe Biden's latest supposed gaffe -- that Republicans want to "put y'all back in chains" via their nefarious plot to eviscerate Dodd-Frank financial reform. Which begs the question -- how on earth do you eviscerate watered-down gruel? But be that as it may, the remark is being universally lambasted as a "dog whistle" to his largely African-American audience. If you vote for Romney, black people, expect an imminent return to slavery. There hasn't been this much outrage since Hillary Clinton complained on Martin Luther King Day 2006 that Congress was being run like a plantation. "And you know what I'm talkin' about" she told her black audience in a really bad imitation of 1930s Hollywood slave dialect.

The Dems are defending the Bidenism, claiming he was simply using the Republicans' "we're being shackled by too many regulations!" complaint against them. Even President Obama, who has shied away from anything remotely racial* ever since the "Beergate" debacle, weighed in. In full folksy g-droppin' populist mode during his campaign bus tour through Iowa, Obama told the People (!) gossip rag:

"The truth is that during the course of these campaigns, folks like to get obsessed with how something was phrased even if everybody personally understands that's not how it was meant.That's sort of the nature of modern campaigns and modern coverage of campaigns. But I tell you, when I'm traveling around Iowa, that's not what's on people's minds."

You can say that again, Barry. And while we're on the subject of dog whistles, they've been blowing fast and furious since right before the selection last weekend of Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate. On selection eve, the Obama Administration, purely as a coincidence, announced that Goldman Sachs will not be prosecuted after all, because it's just too hard to punish bankster fraud, especially in an election year when donations are starting to dry up and they are not as flush with cash as they would like. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi grouses that Attorney General Eric Holder has no balls. Actually, he and the rest of Team Obama have balls of ice cold steel. They have the chutzpah to announce they are fully in the tank for Wall Street while simultaneously purporting to empathize with what's on "people's" minds.

And just in case Wall Street still doesn't get the message that they will be absolutely safe during an Obama second term, the Administration today sent out still another dog-whistly signal to its financial overlords. Pay no attention to the Bidenism. There will also likely be no prosecution of MF Global, nor of its CEO,  Obama bundler, former NJ governor and Goldman Sachs chief Jon Corzine. That is indeed chutzpatic, given that Corzine has "lost" the life-savings of many an Iowa farmer for whom the president so smarmily claims to care. As Azam Ahmed and Ben Protess write in today's New York Times:

After 10 months of stitching together evidence on the firm’s demise, criminal investigators are concluding that chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear, according to people involved in the case.

The hurdles to building a criminal case were always high with MF Global, which filed for bankruptcy in October after a huge bet on European debt unnerved the market. But a lack of charges in the largest Wall Street blowup since 2008 is likely to fuel frustration with the government’s struggle to charge financial executives. Just a few individuals — none of them top Wall Street players — have been prosecuted for the risky acts that led to recent failures and billions of dollars in losses.

Meanwhile, the chutzpatic and chaotic Mr. Corzine is "weighing" whether to start yet another porous hedge fund in which to play with other people's money. Right now he's reduced to playing with his own family's vast fortune, according to The Times. Still, the ignominy has not stopped his listing as a major bundler (raising more than $500,000) on the Obama Victory Fund's website. And in an attempt to boost his cred even further, he may even cooperate with the government in throwing one of his former female minions at MF Global under the bus. Balls of cold, cold steel. Balls and chains. We're being yanked, y'all.

* I stand corrected. Reader Blank Paiges reminds me of President Obama's statement following the Trayvon Martin shooting. The Beergate incident was an example of a political gaffe, or an off the cuff remark that was construed as a political gaffe. His Trayvon statement, of course, was nothing of the sort. On whole, though, the president has shied away from involvement in racial politics. Read Black Agenda Report (on my blogroll) for further insight.