Instead of taking that money and lending to consumers and cleaning up their balance sheets, the banks started to pocket record profits and pay out billions of dollars in bonuses. Because you bowed to pressure from the banks and refused to resolve them or force them to clean up their balance sheets and clean out the management, you have created zombie banks that are only enriching their traders and executives. You are repeating the mistakes of Japan in the 1990s on a much larger scale, while sowing the seeds for the next bubble. In the same letter where you refused to admit any responsibility for inflating the housing bubble, you also admitted that you do not have an exit strategy for all the money you have printed and securities you have bought. That sounds to me like you intend to keep propping up the banks for as long as they want.

Even if all that were not true, the A.I.G. bailout alone is reason enough to send you back to Princeton.

– US Sen. Jim Bunning, R-KY, being mean to US Fed Chief Ben Bernanke, who’s seeking re-confirmation

There have been few things Jim Bunning has done that don’t stoke the underlying anger we sane, god-fearing Americans harbor for our elected officials. His support for warrantless wars and wiretapping, his atavistic views on social issues and supply-side economics and a general, all-purpose cantankerousness make Bunning a poster child for much that is wrongheaded and stubborn about The Powers That Be. (Might we interest you in a montage of shame and hilarity?)Yet Senator Bats’ recent motion to block the confirmation of US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben “Beard O’ Death” Bernanke reflects a weird kind of righteousness that can only come from (1) a man who isn’t seeking a re-election himself or (2) happens to be a filthy, card-carrying socialist. While Bunning was quick (and proud) to point out that he was the only senator whom didn’t vote for Bernanke’s initial confirmation in the wake of former Chairman Alan Greenspan’s departure, we wish he would’ve displayed this kind of fact-based veracity when it came to, say, authorizing the war in Iraq or making racist comments about his opponents ethnicity.

Instead, Bunning towed party lines with the worst of them — voting 89 percent of the time with his party — and it’s only now ,when he usurps the populist mode of civil chastising, do we realize what might’ve been for the junior senator whom just recently slept through health care reform meetings. Oh well.

Via HuffPost (Courtesy of MSNBC) : Streaming video!

Highlights thus far:

1. The Bearded One declared we will see the end of the recession by 2009, and that 2010 “will be a year of recovery.”

2. When asked whether the continued bailout plans posit a kind of “moral hazard” out of step with the American way (i.e. boot strap-ism, ingenuity, et al.), Bernanke responded with the following analogy:

Say you live in a neighborhood of densely packed wooden houses, and you’ve got a neighbor who likes to smoke in his bed. Now, in order to teach that neighbor a lesson one could prohibit the fire department from coming to his aid in the event of a fire — and in so doing burn down the entire neighborhood.

While all of the high falutin’ analogizing is all well and good, here’s a question: Why not move to another neighborhood altogether? Because I hear the concrete and mortar bungalows on Socialist Democracy Boulevard are quite the catch these days.

3. All Americans will recieve free pancakes today courtesy of their local iHop.