If you missed yesterday's extraordinarily bitter and nasty hearing before the House Oversight Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs (yes, they really call it that), everything you need to know about the tenor of the event is summed up in this exchange between Chairtoddler Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10) and Assistant to the President Elizabeth Warren:
The exchange was captured as it happened, posted almost immediately
here at Daily Kos, and then started blazing around the blogosphere—including a posting on
Warren's own Facebook page.
No wonder, then, that McHenry's office voicemail was soon filled to overflowing, and his Facebook page crammed with angry denunciations of his petulance.
And in one more step toward being forever immortalized in the meta-world, the incident has spawned its own spin-off animated .gif, of Warren's shocked and disbelieving "Oh no you didn't!" face:
This how the only person in DC tasked with protecting consumers gets treated on Capitol Hill. If only she'd had the foresight instead to blow up an oil rig and dump millions of gallons of crude into the sea, she might be able to expect an apology from the Republican Chairman.
And let's not dismiss this as some sort of accident. As David Dayen alertly pointed out on Twitter:
People are surprised McHenry called Warren a liar today? He called her a liar in his PREPARED TESTIMONY. http://fdl.me/...
McHenry hasn't just stepped in it. He's taken his shoes off and is stamping up and down, squishing it between his toes.
