Frank Rich is determined to join the ranks of the clueless editorial hacks

[ProSense]

Rich

Meanwhile, we’re hearing of behind-the-scenes Congressional softening of perhaps the most promising component of the White House’s modest financial regulatory package, a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Real-estate brokerages are being exempted from its purview, and banks will not be required to offer “plain vanilla” mortgages. As in health care, the question of what the White House will really fight for in financial reform remains open. While the ostentatious daily predators’ ball at Ristorante Tosca is a bad omen, we don’t know yet whether that omen is for the lobbyists, or the Obama administration, or both.

This is history that the president still has the power to write. It will be written in the bills he will or won’t sign into law. We can only hope that he learned an important lesson from his stunning failure to secure Olympic gold for his political home of Chicago last week. If the Olympic committee has the audacity to stand up to a lobbyist as powerful as the president of the United States, then surely the president of the United States can stand up to the powerful interests angling to defeat his promise of reform.

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Will or will not? That's definitive. Maybe Rich can stop the distortion long enough to realize that this is still on track:

Obama unveils biggest regulatory overhaul since 1930s

As for Rich's idiotic comment about "stunning failure," here's a message:

Outdumbing the stupid

by Jed Lewison

So let's just submit that President Obama's trip to Denmark to boost Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics wasn't exactly the best moment of his presidency. At best, it was a bitter disappointment. At worst, it was a complete waste of time.

Against this backdrop, you'd think conservatives would sit back and shut up, satisfied to to let the plain facts of the matter speak for themselves. Rather, you'd think they would do that if they were smart.

But they aren't smart. And if President Obama's trip was a little bit stupid, the conservative response has been even dumber. Instead of biting their tongue, they decided to get out in front of the story, whooping with glee and using this setback as an opportunity to celebrate what they see as Obama's defeat.

As Rachel Maddow points out though in her must-see recap of the right-wing's reaction, this wasn't a defeat for President Obama. Chicago lost. America lost. And conservatives are celebrating this bad news for America as great news for themselves.

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