Obama promises blanket pardon to Bush & Co.....

http://www.charlotte.com/breaking_news/story/308764.htm...

ROCK HILL --
...
But, Obama said, he would not use the Department of Justice to investigate the administration if elected. "I don't want to waste time as president spending all our time looking backwards. I want to look forward," Obama said, adding the caveat that if evidence of criminal activity arose, he would expect it to be pursued by the Justice Department.
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He just lost an old white males vote , period! Under no circumstances whatsoever will I vote for a man so stupid as to promise in effect a blanket get of jail free to war criminals, common criminals pedophiles and grand thieves and traitors! NEVER!

------------------edit-add-----
Here is the link to the DU discussion:politics from whence this came. the link worked over there.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3586255

of criminal activity arose, he would expect it to be pursued by the Justice Department.

...evidence until investigated. Obama made a blunder, not a mis-step a BLUNDER! He is unelectable. This would be used against him 24/7 and it would stick and we would wind up with another Repugnant on our hands.

If he won the primary, the Democrats wouldn't use it against him -- they want him to win, remember?
The Republicans wouldn't, either -- they don't want investigations.

Who's left? The Greens? Nader? Do you really think they can get anything in front of the national consciousness 24/7?


Oooh, a blunder.A BLUNDER! :eyes:

Investigate this misadministration of Bush.

admin is gone, the DOJ will not be answering to them; we might even get some honest people over there.

will come forward with evidence once the specter of retribution from the BFEE ceases.

The president properly does not decide which direction investigations should take. That precisely is one of the things for which the Bush administration should be investigated!

The president should appoint good people to the various posts in the justice department, and rely that those individuals, doing their jobs, will follow evidence of criminal wrongdoing where it leads.

:hippie:

So the mountains of evidence of their lies and multiple violations of the Constitution are... what, exactly? Imaginary?

He's saying he wouldn't waste his own personal time, but he'd expect the Justice Department to pursue any wrongdoing.

Second of all: I get an error message on the link. So I don't know whether you're completely distorting the article. I have my suspicions, though.

Third of all: You quote yourself in your signature.

Fourth of all: Were you really planning to vote for Obama anyway?

link that works: http://www.charlotte.com/540/story/308764.html

>Second of all: I get an error message on the link. So I don't know whether you're completely distorting the article. I have my >suspicions, though.
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I just edited the original giving the link back to the politics DU discussion thread that this came from. The link there seems to work


>Third of all: You quote yourself in your signature.

...and ????????????? Should I perhaps use someone elses name?


>Fourth of all: Were you really planning to vote for Obama anyway?

I have made it absolutely flat-assed certain that I will never, ever again vote fro a Republican! Not after this administration.
That does not mean that I will vote FOR any Democrat either. Yes, yes, yes, a vote not cast is a vote against yadayadsa. To not vote for the presidential candidate requires they reach a threshold beyond which ggod conscience cannot go...A remark such as Obama made falls into that category, as far as I am concerned. How it affects others is there problem, I can only deal with my values. Unlike a large segment of the American population I do NOT try to impose strict rules of behavior on peers!

I am sure you could be if you tried really, really hard.

I don't know if this merits further inquiry, given the size of the firm, but it is noteworthy that Obama worked for White House connected Sidley Austin.

Come on.

Do you know what a summer associate is? It's a law student, who takes that job because there's a good paycheck and a good learning opportunity. Plenty of good progressives take summer associate jobs at big scary firms for big scary Republicans, then do something else once they graduate. Plenty of good progessives take full-time jobs with big scary firms because they pay well, and law graduates have staggering debt.

Obama never became a full-time associate. His wife did. So what?

Most large firms have well-connected Republican partners AND well-connected Democratic partners.
The FCC chair under Kennedy was a partner there.

And that's giving the OP the benefit of the doubt.

I had high hopes for Obama. I understand his motivation here, but what he must realize is that the swamp is full of nasty critters and they are not all going to go away when Bush checks out of that hotel. The swamp must be drained, and that requires the very investigation he just foreswore. Were he elected, these asshats are bound to cause his administration a lot of problems.

I can't support this.

2 for surers off My list now

Is it a presidents duty to direct the investigations the DOJ does, or should the DOJ investigate wrongdoings it knows/finds?

Way i see it, Obama would choose the proper course by not personally getting involved in DOJ business(aside from hopefully hiring a number of good people to work there)

once he is in office in whatever means he has. If he's too afraid to say it out loud now, then don't say you arent' that interested in holding them accountable.

he should have just shut up on this, or done the usual 'non answer' with nifty words.

his duty is to hold the criminals accountable - SOMEBODY'S GOT TO DO IT!

to lead the country if president and its the DOJ's duty to hold criminals accountable

unless i'm wrong a fair number here tend to talk about how Bush controls the DOJ and how the DOJ is supposed to be independent of the presidency, am i to assume that once an democrat becomes president direct DOJ control is good?

what I am saying is what a candidate says, has great bearing on how/if an investigation is started and handled by popular opinion.. If Obama said he wanted to hold bush and his administration accountable for his many crimes against the american and iraqi people, I am sure there would be a red carpet of acceptance of that idea. People would flock to help and things would unfold naturally. If he said that as his main running theme he would open doors and eyes in some surprsing places. The absence of this kind of talk frm most of the candidates is heart sucking painful.

but he won't even say it. he won't say what is on most everyon'e mind : why is it okay to mass murder, mass theive, but someone's nephew gets sent to a labor camp for having a bit of marijuana on him.

somebody has to start talking real. somebody has to start yelling about the absence of Justice. and when Obama - and the rest - has the gall to actually say ITS NOT THAT IMPORTANT, LETS LOOK FORWARD, or some crap. I want to cry. I want to puke. I want that I never had children for god's sake what's it going to be like in 5 years or less? in 10 or more?

that if evidence of criminal activity arose, he would expect it to be pursued by the Justice Department.

Thats actually as far as he should go(with the exception of hireing good people that actually do their job)

Obviously if they ask him for some help i'd be happy if he aided them

the public must be the judges. the public must become so angry that the Justice department may remember who they actually should be representing.

and if he does become president(which i hope even tho i live in Norway) i am fairly sure there would be a number of people resigning or being fired from the DOJ and new people hired

n/t

A real man would have them easy over.

Goddamnit

... what condiments did he choose to add to his eggs? I need that info prior to developing an informed opinion.

and look where that got us.

why bother investigating/persecuting ANY crime by ANYBODY, if the idea is to always be looking/moving "forward" ?

as long as criminals are continually let off the hook, there will continue to be ever-increasing numbers of criminals.

We all know how this is going to go down: Hillary will win the nomination, mainly on name value, probably take the Whitehouse. Anyone who wants BushCo investigated will be told "it's history" and "the country needs to move on". The extra-Constitutional powers Bush has appropriated will remain the property of the executive, BushCo will never be charged with anything and over the next ten or twenty years, the right will "reclaim" (i.e. lie about) his accomplishments in the same way as they have done with Reagan.

THAT was what killed Ford's chances for re-election.

I understand WHY he said it (I think), but it was a fatal statement to make. The media only talks about Shrub's unpopularity, but they don't ever say just how deep the hate really is, and how many people really want to see him and his enablers punished!

and will play well with 98% of the American people. The 2% who happen to be very vocal on this site will of course object. For them, everything revolves around their hatred for Bush and getting revenge. Actually repairing the damage he has wrought doesn't matter much to them.

You let these creeps get away with this stuff once, and they'll just keep doing it.

You know, there's a lot of taxpayer dollars that are unaccounted for or went to contractors who didn't do anything.

Remember Reagan ran in part on getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse so that we could have lower taxes.

Waste, fraud and abuse still works in my book.

He's lucky that the Pubbies won't be able to challenge him on that.

I sincerely hope that someone does, because I want those wasted tax dollars back!!!!

Between this and the things that Obama says about the sixties, I sometimes think that he wants to look forward at all costs because he doesn't know enough about the past, even the recent past, to look back wards.

Does anyone have this guy's reading list?

And I started out impressed with the guy.

If Watergate would have been prosecuted to the hilt, most of today's neocons would have been thrown in jail and never been allowed in public office again.

If that didn't happen, but Iran/Contra would have been prosecuted, the same thing would have happened -- the same set of jokers would have ended up in jail in the early 1990s instead if the mid 1970s.

Letting these clowns loose again ENSURES that they will try the same crap again! Why not? It makes them literally BILLIONS of dollars (off the massive suffering of others) and there is absolutely no downside. Absolutely no downside. Billions made from massive death and destruction. No downside (for them).

Seriously.

will take seriously any crimes that are brought to his/her attention. At least I hope so. The pardon thing doesn't sit well for me as it seems to only apply to the rich and powerful. And W has killed WAY TOO G*DDAMN MANY people to be let off the hook that easily.

are trying to cloak it in defense of the Constitution. Who cares about crimes of the past? We need to prevent crimes of the future! So Republicans -- don't be criminals, 'kay? :eyes:

I HATE that language, and how easily it's accepted; no one seems to question the basic irredeemable idiocy of the statement. "I don't wanna look backwards, I just wanna look forward!" Really cheerful bullshit rhetoric... can anyone tell me what this rearview mirror thingy is on my car. or what it's supposed to do? What's the point of that???
"Yes, let us embrace global tunnel-vision! ALL BLINDERS ON, CITIZENS! Let us all seal our minds off from even the briefest glimpses of reality!"
YAY!
Fucking blind "leaders"...
Besides, no matter how scary and unfortunate our recent past may be, it pales before the future we are currently looking at; if we're NOT going to investigate and prosecute and bring things back to some semblance of balance again then I say fuck it, I don't WANT to look forward anymore...
BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO... EXCEPT MORE OF THE SAME... MORE WARS AND PERSECUTIONS AND COVERT BLACK OPS AND REPRESSIONs AND SUBTERFUGE AND VIOLENCE AND POINTLESS, MISDIRECTED HATRED, MORE DESPERATE PARANOIA AND CONSTANT BULLSHIT, 24/7, WALL-TO-WALL AND SEA TO SHINING SEA...
Wow, Obama... thanks for your assurances of complete surrender and capitulation to the worst threat to humankind that this world has ever known...and so early on!... it IS a factor I do tend to consider in voting... thank you for that...

Yeah, the future looks so bright I gotta wear shades...



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would/will prosecute or even investigate wrongdoings..

It's just what we always do.. It's WHY we have the same criminals floating in and out of office over decades, and changes of party leadership..

If they can manage to stall long enough, they almost relish the change of party administration, because they all "know" that a new administration does not WANT a hangover investigationg taking up time and energy..


Instead, they all brag about how "civilized' we all are..

Too bad they don;t feel the same about ordinary people's misgivings.. a lady downloads music..send that woman to jail and fine her.. a guy holds up a 7-11 with a comb in his pocket (pretending to be a gun)..send that guy to the slammer..

but a gang of thieves destroys the constitution, empties the treasury and gets possibly hundreds of thousands of people killed?,. let him "retire", only to return with a vengeance in a decade or so..:grr:

*This* is why we haven't gotten anywhere since the days of Nixon. All this "looking forward" has let so many wrongdoers wriggle off the hook. If the disaster that has been the past administration doesn't impress the fact that we need to expose their malfeasance, nothing will.

THE most important issue for the next administration, bar none, is doing to bush/cheney, inc. what we did not do to nixon. the exposure and prosecution of their crimes is EXACTLY what the u.s. needs to BEGIN healing. i'm very, very sorry that obama does not want the people to learn from history. i am, however, not in the least surprised.

He's in with the big fish now.

This country needs an overhaul. An oil change ain't gonna do it.

Welcome to DU T.Ruth2power!

:bounce: :toast: :bounce:

Mr. Feingold -- hat back in the ring, please.

What a friggin loser. Won't look into war crimes and violations of our Constitution.

As I have suspected for many months now -- a pretty face with no substance. Might as well vote for Paris Hilton.

The Obama-haters are getting desperate.

Really.


I am leaning toward Hillary, but Edwards looks good too, for various reasons. But a pledge not to investigate the previous admin for what most can see are obvious crimes, against our constitution and basic laws of humanity - nah, sorry, you're pledging to avoid justice for crimes against the American people and the world. Sorry. That does it.

And if its the same for Hillary and Edwards, well, forget them as well.

You either uphold the laws of this nation, or betray them.


Justice cries out to be served regarding attacking and invading Iraq.

Just for starters.


You pledge to shun our laws and principles just doomed you to me, Obama.

:disgust:

He's willing to let crimes be committed and ignored. Shame on him. If evidence of criminal activity arose???? Is he fucking kidding me?!@#$%^%$#@ 7 years of crimes have been committed! Take your pick! Sheesh.

when busy building an empire.

Obama is a pleasant smoke, but I have yet to find the fire.

What does race have to do with it? :eyes:

The unsavory characters pardoned by Poppy and Clinton will be laughable compared to the pardons Bush will grant on his way out of office.

and he can't pardon himself.

....to remember some words of wisdom from the past:


- K&R

probably negotiations taking place. "I'll cover your husband's ass, if you cover mine."

Obama just wants a piece of the action.

Before he's even the nominee he's pardoning people?
With experience, perhaps he'll become more anti-Republican.

I doubt it would be any different with any of the others with the possible exception of Kucinich.

"Looking backwards" IS looking forwards -- preventing this nightmare from happening again. Typical political CYA.

It takes a lot more than hearsay to distance
me from a candidate.

And the link doesn't work, anymore.