Criticisms of Bain Capital make Wall Street sad

Pity them. Wow, this "Obama is hurting Wall Street's fee-fees" stuff just never gets old, does it? I swear the New York Times could devote whole sections to it:

Last week, a few dozen hedge fund and investment executives arrived at the Park Avenue home of Hamilton E. James, president of the private equity firm Blackstone. Each had paid $35,800 to spend two hours at a fund-raiser with President Obama, but the timing proved awkward: A few hours earlier, Mr. Obama's campaign had begun a blistering attack on Mitt Romney's career in private equity, the same business in which Mr. James has earned his many millions.

'Campaigns do what campaigns have to do,' Mr. James later told friends. But not everyone was as forgiving. 'People were incredulous,' said one person who attended the dinner. 'They could have waited a week.'

Oh noes! The horror! Imagine having enough money to throw around that you can spend a spare $35k on a two hour event, but still having to listen to mild, indirect criticism of someone who is in the same general line of business as you! I am very sad just thinking about it.

What do we need to do here to make this better? Wait, I know'let's put Wall Street bankers in more top-level government positions. We're jam-packed with them already, though, so we'll have to invent some entirely new departments just to wedge more Wall Street folks in there. Maybe a Bureau of Gutting Financial Regulations In a Super-Duper Expedited Fashion? A cabinet position dedicated to the private jet industry? What the hell, let's give Wall Street bankers their own aircraft carrier. God help us if we have to listen to how terribly oppressed and downtrodden they all are. (Although if any Wall Street tycoons want to pay me $35k to sit down with me for two hours and gripe about how terribly oppressed they are, I'm all ears. For that price, I'll even provide the bag of chips.)

Most Democratic lawmakers are sympathetic to their concerns, because Money. There are, however, some exceptions:

Former Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said Wednesday that while he 'didn't like the tone of the attacks on Bain,' he thought the party's relationship with Wall Street had shifted with good reason.

'Wall Street screwed up the nation's economy and the world economy,' Mr. Rendell said. The White House's approach to regulation was reasonable, he added. 'What do they want us to do?'

I think the answer to that question has been pretty sincere, on their parts. They want taxpayer-funded bailouts without consequence, a promise that nothing they've ever f--d up will ever be subject to any new anti-effing-things-up regulation, and a recognition that wealthy people who professionally gamble with other people's money are the Titans of All Industry, to be honored as such. Given that they have something close to all of that already, now the new sticking point is that you're not allowed to make them feel bad about it, either.

I swear. There are large swaths of America who get yelled at by politicians every damn day, often for decidedly more ridiculous reasons, and don't have anything to show for it. These guys get access to government that even other ultra-wealthy power groups could only dream of (A mere oil tycoon? Pfft, I spit on your having-an-actual-physical-product industry. Oil derivatives is the true gentleman's calling!), and still they spend their time carping to reporters about how insulted and misunderstood they feel.