The GOP's love-hate relationship with Cordray

The Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee  are seeking a way to deny Richard Cordray a job by resorting to a variation of the tune sung by the late Jerry Falwell:  Love the sinner but hate the sin.  Where else except in  the loony political atmosphere of  GOP America would you find conservative senators praising the key witness for his competence while trying to strip him of the job he was hired to do?

Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general, is the still-unconfirmed director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a self-explanatory title. Republicans have all but declared the agency to be a front for Shariah Law. They insist Cordray would have too much power to raise hell with anyone ripping off consumers.  They assured Cordray that they mightily admire his good work, but...

But really, folks, how are these stonewallers qualified to recognize good work?

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More hilarity  from Capitol Hill:  The Paul Ryan Show,  one-man stand-up  comedy that has played before, is continuing to amuse observers who scored more than a c-minus in arithmetic.  In a revival that could reach Broadway for its impudent gag lines, Ryan has retrurned to his self-styled abacus to present a budget filled with what can only be described  as a mathematical non-sequitur. Undismayed, Ryan invites everyone to come back in 10 years, when he  will be able to show you that even if the numbers don't add up, they work.

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As if John Boehner doesn't have enough on his plate, a former Ohio Republican congressman who is back in street clothes from a prison term, has some untidy things to say about the Speaker in a  new memoir.  Bob Ney,  who spent 11 months in a federal prison for political corruption from his illegal handiwork with Jack Abramoff,   charges in the book that Boehner is a  "chain-smoking, relentless wine drinker" who engages in the high life of "golf, women, cigarettes, fun and alcohol."

An alcoholic himself,  Ney admits that his own crash "whichever way I look at it, was wrong, illegal, unethical and immoral."  He says he has found peace  through meditation   inspired by the Dalai Lama.  Will he now play nice and share the path with Boehner?

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Finally, another "rising star". As you may be aware, I'm keeping a list of the designated rising stars in politics while the supply lasts.  Today's comes from the Associated Press,  which described George Prescott Bush, Jeb's son, a "rising star among Hispanics."
G.P announced Tuesday that he's running for Texas land commissioner.  A Bush grandfather,  an uncle and a father, and now a land commissioner?  How many stars can the universe accommodate?  No problem, George Prescott Bush says on his website:  "Texans are exceptional."

Bob Ney, the new radio showman

TRIED TO REACH  a reporter at a West Virginia newspaper today and this is how it went:

ME:  Let me have the city desk, please.

VOICE:  OK (With all of those commercials about the paper rattling on in for several minutes)

VOICE: (Finally)  Nobody is answering.

ME: I know that.  Get me somebody else.

VOICE:  I'll try Heather.

ME: Who's Heather?

VOICE: (PAUSE)  Not answering, either.  

ME: How about your political reporter.

VOICE: NO (A  few other words undistinguishable)...I'll try somebody else.

ME: How about somebody who puts in your radio and TV news?

VOICE: The Associated Press does that.

I hear another voice on the line now.  

ME:  Hi. I have a question  about a radio station there, WVLY-am.

VOICE:  Who?

ME:    A radio station.

VOICE:  We're a newspaper.

ME: Don't you think I know that?

VOICE:  This is a newspaper.

ME: Yes, but I'm asking a question about a radio station, WVLY-am.

VOICE: I've never heard of it.

ME:  Isn't it in the Wheeling area?

VOICE:  This is a newspaper.  I've never heard  ---

ME:  Click....

I suffered through this to get some simple information on a radio station (which I wasn't able to reach by phone, either)  on which the former Ohio congressman and felon, Bob Ney, will now have an afternoon talk show.  Ney, you will recall, was sent to jail for conviction on corruption charges rising from the the Jack Abramoff investigation.  Ney spent 17 months in prison. 

One of Ney's topics (I'm not making this up) is...ethics.  Why am I not surprised?