Almost two years ago I warned you about what is about to happen... (when you let crime pay)

Obama was elected to succeed the most criminal regime in modern US history. A regime in every negative sense of the word, a cabal who seized power by fraud and initiated an unprovoked aggressive war on a distant nation that posed no threat, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. A regime that announced its doctrinal contempt for the Constitution and rule of law, that legitimated torture, the "unitary executive" and shadow government.

Investigating the crimes of this regime was not only the right thing, it was a vital national priority to assure that the criminals and their party would not be able to return to power. If crime pays, criminals are empowered.

These predictions did not require magic or complex math, just a bit of historical memory.






More below...

It was also the only politically pragmatic course available to the new government. To think that you could just "look forward" and ignore the immediate past of a lawless regime is naive. The past experience of the Clinton years demonstrated what will happen: he didn't investigate the crimes of Iran Contra and the Central American covert wars, but two years later the Republicans were willing to investigate fictional and trivial transgressions of Clinton, waging a paralyzing four-year campaign of bullshit accusations that, absurd as it was, ended with Clinton's impeachment for trying to cover up a blowjob.

The "triangulation" strategy that saved Clinton is unlikely to be available to Obama. Two key factors are different: First, the economic disaster that the Republicans caused, but is now blamed on the Democrats, whose leadership unfortunately chose to cooperate with the Republicans in the aftermath, instead of following the lead that FDR once gave.

Second, we're in the age of Citizens United. You just saw the effects of $2 billion in anonymous right-wing donations for attack campaigns to sway the electorate. What do you think it will be like in 2012, when the total will be more like $10 billion or $20 billion in anonymous donations?

Justice should have been turned inside out and new people installed who would pursue the 'People's Interest.' That should have been job 1. It was not. In one of his flowery speeches, Obama said that he would certainly 'look into it' and if crimes were committed, follow up with investigations. It was neither investigated nor followed up on in any way.

When asked about our platform plank of choice, Mr. Obama said that he believed that it was a MORAL issue...and then ducked into whatever church was handy ending the discussion.

His appointments...sheesh.

We had the momentum and the power to use it...and we piddled it all away on nonsense.

They'll be spending that money, and running their ads, starting now!

It's not going to stop. It obviously pays off well for those who do it.

2012 is going to be the nightmare we hoped we would never live through. This election was just a trial run, and it worked out for them to perfection, with very little effort.

In our county, which trends blue due to a large turnout of minority voters, went scarlet red this time. Dems made phone calls in person. Repukes ..... every household got about 5 to 6 robo calls per day. Huckabee, Newt, Sarah, all the "stars" of the republican party, had their voices on tape for one or more House or Senate races.

Richard Burr, the repuke senator from NC who was up for vote, had commercials EVERY SINGLE commercial break, on every single channel.

When 2012 rolls along, they're going to be relentless. Grassroots is no match for corporate organization.

And according to the article, almost matched the outside spending of corporate interests. So my question then, what else could we have done?

I got my kids to vote, but I am not the right person to motivate other people's children.

Obama let the kids down. No jobs. We are still at war. Education costs are rising. Banks aren't lending so that young people can buy the foreclosed houses. Wages are stagnant.

And if Obama just had a plan to improve the economy, a plan that he could articulate, a plan that would give young (and old) people hope, Democrats would have prevailed everywhere.

Also, Harry Reid could not get anything passed through the Senate. People would have loved to see a real filibuster. That was the mood. But the Democrats were too timid. Now they have lost their chance.

Thom Hartmann suggested the following tactic on his show this morning. (I love it.) The House passed all kinds of good bills including elder abuse prevention and all kinds of things that really aren't that controversial. The Senate just sat on its hands and did nothing, nothing. So, the Senate should start passing bills. We have enough Democrats to get these bills through. They aren't that controversial. We should do it.

I blame Max Baucus more than any other person for the failure of the Blue Dog Democrats to be re-elected. He was too slow in getting the health care bill through his committee. And there were too many rumors about what the bill had in it. To this day, we ordinary people do not understand that bill. Max Baucus' retardation of the passage of that bill allowed the Tea Baggers to get their momentum. It confused Americans. It made Democrats in Congress look incompetent. Max Baucus, almost single-handedly brought down the Democratic majority.

pushed through before January. Most of it, I hope. I've called for a very strong lame duck session. Now is the time to have one.

What do you think it will be like in 2012, when the total will be more like $10 billion or $20 billion in anonymous donations?


oh, so much worse. and folks, they've already started. just sayin.

sold based on fraud and that the sellers of the mortgages in some cases induced buyers to commit fraud. If you looked at the documents in the files of the mortgage companies, you would find evidence in a significant number of cases. The folks who bought the mortgages to this day do not know that their mortgage lenders defrauded them.

Here is how it worked in cases I know about: The mortgage broker gets the prospective buyer to submit the financial documentation. The mortgage broker sees from the paperwork that the buyer's income and assets do not qualify the buyer for the mortgage. So the mortgage broker goes fishing -- asks the buyer to think of someone, whom we will call the angel, who has just enough income to add to the actual buyer's income so that the two incomes combined will qualify for the buyer for the loan.

The mortgage broker tells the buyer that the angel should move into the the house. Of course, very often the angel is a relative or a close friend and the buyer does not understand what is going on and thinks that the whole thing is kind of a joke -- after all, who will ever know? The mortgage broker knows full well that the buyer and the angel have separate addresses and that the idea that the angel will move in and help pay off the mortgage is false.

The angel, of course, never moves in -- and a few years later, the buyer is foreclosed because his or her income isn't and never was large enough to pay the mortgage after the initial period in which the interest rate was low has passed. The mortgage buyer gets blamed for the fraud. But in fact, neither the mortgage buyer nor the angel understood what was going on. Only the broker understood, and he or she has not even been blamed.

This is just one example of the fraud that caused a lot of this foreclosure mess.

Further, it is impossible that the banks did not recognize that there was a bubble. They hire economists. They have the data on average wages, average costs of living, and the incomes of their own borrowers. They had to have known that housing prices were rising far faster than the wages of the borrowers. My neighbor and I started talking about this with each other long before the crash. We just could not figure out how in the world people could afford to buy houses on our street at the prices they were paying -- ordinary people with ordinary jobs. The LA Times printed an article warning about the loans that charged no interest in the first years.

This was fraud, outright fraud, but virtually no bankers and no mortgage brokers have had to answer for criminal fraud charges. Good heavens. They brought down our economy.

Of course, shoplift a $10 toy of some sort -- you are prosecuted quite efficiently. I'm not against punishing shoplifters, but where is the justice in punishing petty thieves and letting the major thieves get off scott free?

...and you get up with fleas. I wish I could rec this OP a thousand times. War crimes prosecutions would have broken the back of the republican party and the war pigs for at least a generation. It would likely have brought down a number of complicit democrats too, but the real enemies would be exposed for everyone to see and scorn.

Instead, the Obama administration protected the criminals and helped legitimize their crimes. Now the revitalized republicans are biting them in the ass.

You lay down with dogs....

you get up with Republican fleas. Sure, the blue dogs that stopped so much good - from prosecutions to a Public Option - got spanked big time, but they got replaced with Republicans. I just hope that SOMEBODY learns a lesson from this (though as the thread posits, ain't likely).

The "complicit democrats" and all of the other criminals infesting our system of government are the Corporate Megalomaniacs' personal whores. Perhaps, I should just say that the uber wealthy and the political elite are ALL whoring themselves for the almighty dollar.

These criminals have succeeded in proving they can do just about anything, and the hoi polloi still focuses OUR attention on jobs (because, yes, we need to eat) and health care (because, yes, we need to be healthy). The criminal cabal doesn't think a revolution will happen here, because so many of the hoi polloi have swallowed their wealth carrot meme, or because we are perceived to be fat, lazy, stupid, and mesmerized by the magic box that beams pretty pictures into our homes (with a sweet glaze of 'Bernays' sauce).

I say, watch out, Corporate Megs! The hoi polloi can only take so much. When we have nothing left to lose, those pitchforks and plowshares are going to come in mighty handy.

Also, Mr. Obama lost my support when he elected not to prosecute Bush, Cheney, and their fellow vile criminals (complicit democrats, as well). He iced that no-support cake when he appointed Arne Duncan to dismantle public education. I will NOT support his candidacy in 2012, especially not on the vapid excuse, "I'm so much better than the other guy!"

In summation, we ARE at war--here within our own borders. We just haven't snapped to it, yet.

inherited.

and sadly that hasn't happened --

W inherited a huge surplus and peace --

FDR inherited a serious depression ---

at most, a slap on the wrist fine that is the cost of doing business.

We are finished as a country. Done. Stick a fork in us already.

because i allegedly had 45 grams of cannabis....in one fucking bag

Did you have it in one of those nifty bags that you can vacuum into a fraction of its original size?!

As a math teacher, I despair over our 'educated' elites' serious dearth of math skills...

inside an even larger one to keep the smell down; all the grass was in one bag but because there was a plastic bag with the bag of weed in it they said i had it broken up for sale and asked for 10 years. i paid 10 000 dollars cash to a lawyer who got the judge changed and then went and played golf with the new judge 3 days before the trial. i was found innocent in 3 minutes.... it helps to have money (dad's money anyway) and to be white. they had no US flag in front of their courthouse, only the rebel flag.... weirdo fucking hicks

cuz you're just such a threat to our society...WAY worse than some corporatist walking away with over 700,000,000 in profits from selling his stock a mere two weeks before it became worthless...

a small bribe.... i imagine that is how it works on all levels but the price of the bribes goes up

were allowed back in to key positions because it was not prosecuted. This country lost big time not following the rule of law. So, it's okay for crooks and liars to be in key positions in our government--they have done so much harm to this republic it is beyond obscene.

That's why I believe there is the backroom deals and the people are not pulling the strings, but some of the big corporate, wealthy players are. If they attempted a coup on FDR, did they finally succeed? I'd say some of the players, using our money and resources, to play their war games for accessing more resources and power, play us as pawns.

Now you have the bleating teabaggers crying their masters' song--deregulation, destroy anything to help those worthless people, let the markets prevail (even though they may kill us for a buck). With corporations from all over the world having access to change elections, we, the american people, are royally screwed-however, part of our citizenry are helping them along the way.

In what crystal ball did you see that?

Do you think there is no relation between the criminal activities of the Bush regime and "the economy and the jobless numbers"?

I'm telling you the pragmatic way to have dealt with those problems would have been to first deal with the political wrecking crew who bear so much of the responsibility. Otherwise, they would do exactly what they did - obstruct. Next, they will show absolutely no hesitation or shame about "investigating" Obama. Funny how that works.

would have created even MORE jobs in environmental research and manufacturing.

The DC GOPs would have been forced to retreat in shame for supporting Bush and Cheney's crimes against the country IF They had received greater scrutiny and exposure through official hearings. Instead we got a replay of the way CLINTON handled the outstanding matters in BCCI - deepsixing those matters, IranContra findings, and CIA drugrunning....all for his pals Poppy Bush and Jackson Stephens. And we ended up with Bush2, 9-11, and Iraq war.

Chess masters, by the way, mostly live by the maxim, "Attack, attack, attack."

In this case, it was the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.

and RW corporatists who OWN them and their mortgages.

Get RID of the 'strategist' class and go directly to doing the RIGHT thing by the American people and the historic record....scrutinize, expose, and hold BushInc accountable once and for all.

Since Republicans have no answer for the structural issues facing this country, they'll need to distract the masses with bogus 'investigations'. George Santayana was correct about why history repeats itself...

If not now, when?

Right on the money.

we really needed in our national priorities.

To finish off The Republicans once and for all. They did not protect our national security-- they crashed it and our economy.

I thought exposing their war crimes would prepare our country for making really significant moves toward greening our way of life to stave off the accelerating effects of global climate change by dramatic reductions in our carbon emissions.

Greening and saving our country that way would have been the bright counterpoint to the devastating impact of examining the Bush war profiteering and torture.

That investigation and prosecution could also have empowered those who want a new national security for our country, more nimble, less dependent upon hard energy and brutal bombing, more fitting for the 21st century.

I am still in pain from our Speaker having taken impeachment off the table way back when. I guess there was concern that too many Democrats would be culpable too?

bush and cheney were not investigated because by doing that it might have revealed some democrats
that were also guilty. I was reminded of the way the church hid the pedophiles to save the church.
It seems the same thing is going on in our government. Hide the crimes because we do not want the government
to be harmed. Both miss the point by not investigating and getting rid of the criminals both the church and the government
stand a very good chance of being destroyed by the hiding and not the crime itself.

It would expose an establishment, industries of subterfuge and war, too many barbaric realities at the heart of the sytem. They were a cabal, but how was the field around them so fertile? Everything would change in a way most of us would believe was too much to take, but is actually necessary to avoid far greater disasters. It would be a moment of high confrontation - I don't believe it would be a civil war, but the world's top thugs would not go down without fighting, dirty, all the way. It's necessary, but risky.

So here we are, on the same course as before...

of ancient Greece and Rome

If that is the case then I would rather rip the filth out of the top
and start with a cleaner slate.

and timely. This growing contingent of the informed among the hoi polloi gives me hope, despite how grim things seem to be.

I recommend a little book that flamed out soon after it was published (because, heaven forbid we should look at our species' ubiquitous tendency to avoid personal responsibility): The Dog Ate My Homework by Vincent Barry.

think about how long it took for the Church's crimes to catch up with it. We don't have that long.

It made me sick to my stomach. Yes, it's fiction, but Barry Eisler spent 3 years in a covert position with the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Short summary: They are all complicit in the most heinous crimes imaginable. Obama knows.

My Bush-era bumper sticker -

Impeach. Prosecute. Convict. Execute.

I still think that obeying the law would have been a good idea.

Obama STILL isn't listening. I don't think he's capable of hearing reason and reality.

Obama was a huge disappointment in this regard -- and shockingly as a lawyer

and Constitutional teacher to say he say "no reason" to impeach Bush is mind-blowing!

What we need, folks, is a Plan B -- !!!

You nailed it, Jack.

They will decimate the Democratic party as we should have done to them while Obama had political capital. By not doing this, we've let the teabaggers in the house! That's what burns me the most... :grr:

... NOT complicit in making sure that the WAR CRIMINALS never see the inside of a courtroom. Mission accomplished, Barack, those that have authorized and committed CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, now again CONTROL our Nation. WTG.

only the most general understanding that no one gets to the top without being vetted by national security state and corporate media, or they'll be caused to crash and burn.

It's not like the Bush regime principals, who are exposed having done great crimes both of mayhem and corruption, in so many cases openly with announcements that they had the right.

First we need to focus on the obvious. The failure of the (elected) Obama administration to rein in the lawless policies and especially to investigate the war of aggression of the Bush regime is an important body of evidence.

no pun intended.

you dont let criminals walk but our wise leader wanted to move forward thus legitimizing the deads of the previous administration.

a bigger error in judgement by my political party I have not seen in my lifetime.

the GOP could have been put to sleep for years but lets all get along :puke:

Short-circuiting the on-going prosecutions by Clinton (remember, a number of Iran/Contra figures WERE prosecuted, but were later redeemed), and the primary challenge to Carter that set up Reagan's win (which I most ashamedly admit I joined in on).

is going to have it made in the shade. He or she will have the unchecked powers to make Bush/Cheney look like a pair of cub scouts.

it is more important to move forward they said, we just wanted ponies they said.

who the patsy now?

how ruthlessly big money's self-interest in government works.

because the country has to learn!!!!!!! the houses of our government have to be cleaned or....else.

when he embraced colin powell i knew we would never get that and the game was over. i expected nothing but corporatist shit from obama and that's what i got.

more fucking excuses for making the rich richer and continuing imperialist war. same as it ever was.

third party or revolution...there are no other choices. the democratic party is worse than useless, it is complicit.

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The criminals are just getting stronger, richer and their corruption is turning into a social disease. Corruption is one thing that does trickle down.

The number didn't change when I hit the recommend button.

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." Sydney J. Harris


:dem:

Sure...

This has absolutely nothing to do with the loss. When you ask 65+ independents why they voted R not one will tell you because the Obama administration failed to bring Bush and Cheney to justice (they don't even know or care what happened with those two).

Of course your 65 independents weren't affected, because no issue was made, so even if they remember the accusations about the Bush regime, it's all chalked up to "partisan" politics and at best "they're all the same."

It would have been very different if the administration had been willing to dip even a little into the poison depths of Bush regime crimes. Even if they'd limited themselves to matters of corruption, conflicts of interest, plunder of the treasury. (The same is also true of the failure to investigate and prosecute the systemic corruption of the banking industry. Instead they saved Bank of America and the rest without limiting their activities, and you've got them doing their propaganda on the TV daily. America's back, did you know?)

Their choice was to highlight the real Bush crimes, or to be attacked for fictional ones, even before Obama was in office. There was no other way to avoid the latter, no way whatsoever to stop the Republicans from following the same script they wrote under Clinton, or to stop them from crying "Socialist" and "Muslim" and "Nazi."

There were only two options: go after the real crimes, or (as you are about to see) let the Republicans grandstand on bullshit "crimes."

Watch. Apparently we never learn.

that Would have not been able to proceed if he had not been elected.

By Fall of 2008, everyone in this nation was sick of Bush. Even my RW maniacal neighbor voted for Obama.

But he had indicated to his Controllers pre-election that he would merrily continue to let the printing presses flow to the banks (Oops, redact that, according to Bernanke, the Fed doesn't give The Big Banks cash to help them deal with their half quadrillion bucks in derivative losses. Instead, they give them electronic Digitized Money in electronic accounts. Which as nothing to do with us tax payers, says Ben.)

Obama is not now and was never meant to be about Peace and Justice and restoring the democracy to the people. He was meant to be a place holder - one who would allow for two of the Hugest Wealth Transfers ever. Those transfers were Main Street's money to the Top Financial Firms via Bailout Mechanisms,
and secondly, the mandate of every working American to purchase insurance at inflated prices that few can afford, all for the benefit of Big Pharma and Big Insurance.

as far back as? LBJ?, or Carter? definitely Clinton

They were derelict in their duties. Whatever happens I don't care.

from the start to I.D. the high crimes and the criminals--this was an open secret and the 2 Bush ghoul crew is still chiper and throwing first pitches out togehter-sickening.

They also could have had the exposures rain down as though from heaven.

Oops, look at these files we just released. We had no idea THAT was in there!

They had a chance to appoint all 92 US Attorneys (as is the usual practice with every government before Obama) with determined, honest people and tell them to root out corruption wherever they found it.

Right now, Tom Delay faces a possible life sentence. Imagine where all those money trails into his office lead...

There was never a more target rich environment or a better time to go after macrocriminality.

Bill Richardson was my first choice in '08, because he was saying the strongest stuff about bringing our troops home. Then I went to Edwards, for the sole reason that he was from the South and we need help there. I would have supported Hillary, but I had to draw a line at support for the IWR, so my attention turned to Obama and when I heard he was getting crossover interest and "Independents" liked him, my first thought was, okay, so WHY?????? is that, which would give us some idea of WHEN they might turn on him, and, therefore, what do we do when they cross back, or go be "Independent" elsewhere?

It lemds credence to the "soft on crime" cliche. But for some reason, R's don't see it that way.

no amount of pointing out it has a legal and moral obligation to do so (and there was precious little of that, except for here on the liberal forums) will make them do it. I have no idea what would. They are the law. When they decide not to enforce the law, citizens are simply screwed.

"The beast that brought you the recent disasters is still running free, people."

Not only is the beast running free they just added to their power by buying an election in which about half the American people were willing, gullible dupes. They were only able to do this because the rocks weren't turned over exposing the vermin to the light of day. And this is truly a legitimate argument for the impeachment of President Obama. It is called dereliction of duty.

I thank you for your courage to post this...!

I thought the writing was on the wall when this president said 'we must look forward' and chose not to investigate the horrific crimes of the Bush regime. Obama's failure to investigate the crimes of the previous administration will be part of his legacy, and history will not judge him kindly...to put it mildly.

Now if it would only matter.

and warned people...

But you know what? "elections have consequences," and there is a reason why they can get away with... democrats are wimps.

But at this point we have people telling us we need to stay the course... since it's worked so well...

:sarcasm:

What is the definition of insanity?