Obama's always been long hope, and short change.

as foul and corrupt as things are, and endemic and well-entrenched the causes, any actual change would necessarily have to be radical. you're right about obama. and that makes him almost worse than dubya in my eyes.

Indeed, some are not only above the law but make the law by fiat. That's the definition of a dictator, i.e., "one who dictates."

This is a horrendous precedent that the Obama team is in the process of solidifying.

This is change we can believe in?

centrism:
-neither ignore nor restore the constitution
-neither above nor beneath the rule of law
-neither acknowledge reason or liberty nor exercise them

U.S. Military Preparing for "Violent, Strategic Dislocation Inside the United States"; Possibly from "Economic Collapse"

yes! let's be!

northcom, infragard, ammo sales, empty new prisons, police/military exercises on mexican border, plan mexico, mexico's top cop taking cartel payola, Xe with now 'aviation support', a thundering lack of frankness from obama, not to mention Change. someone didn't just pull the drain plug on america, they're plunging down on top of the swirling pile. patently, both parties need be ousted in favor of others. patently they're practically in cahoots -center my butt. hence, we're in deep doodoo as we know -and bluntness is way overdue.

and no longer the singular purview of the tin foil hat brigade.

dm. Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security. It could trigger, he said, a return to the “violent extremism” of the 1920s and 1930s.

Really, but didn't the U.S. government perpetrate most of the violence during that period?

tell us of the provocateurs of yore!

On a related note, smart kids should look @ startribune.com tomorrow for a major new twist upon this important side of American political history.

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Hongpong.com

Fixed Link

hm.

good point to bring up. strikes may well be the [first] central events of demonstration. remember those 25,000 west coast dock workers striking last year?

25,000 Dockworkers Shut Down West Coast Ports in Historic Antiwar Protest

do we even still have any National Guard troops left and not deployed overseas? Northcom as strikebreakers, anyone?

Why is taking time to examine something and think about it such a negative?

What is there to "examine"? There is nothing in law or precedent for executive privilege on this scale whatsoever, so what is there to "study." The only thing to "study" is whether President Obama wants to establish the (dictatorial) precedent set by Bush.

The Obama administration is waffling on this instead of being decisive. There have been congressional subpoenas out on Rove, Meyers, and Bolton for some time. It's like the war crimes/torture "question.' It is already established that war crimes have been committed. There is no option under the Constitution to prosecute war crimes or not. This is required, not optional. There is nothing to study or talk about. Check out constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley on the Rachel Maddow Show if you haven't seen what he has been saying for some time.

This, coupled with the way they are handling the looting spree financial crisis, is conveying the impression that in spite of what they say, the reality is there is a two-tier system in place — one for the privileged and another for the rest of us.

If this administration goes ahead the way it is proceeding, it is going to cost the Dems big in 2010, and they will lose the presidency in 2012. The GOP is not being obstructionist as much as letting the Dems hang themselves.

Hm. For example take AIG. AIG has had their heads up into all the biz of the CIA and the bad boys for decades - including their execs acting as CIA agents, a large amt of private aircraft for fun, GOP-friendly insurance fraud with clever 'anti communist' charities in the 1980s.

More embarassingly the CIA was going to use a new Chinese AIG building as their HQ for fun - and so the Chinese construction people riddled the building with bugs, they say.

So today it has to be kept solvent lest the books be opened in bankruptcy. That's a serious undertaking.

There are lots of documents and things lurking under the surface, which, if exposed, would easily shatter careers, as well as shift the perception of the nature of institutions.

From an instrumental (cynical) perspective, well even if Obama is authentically trying to address Maslow's heirarchy of needs, the exposure of Wall Street's/intelligence communities vast illegal games of drugs, human trafficking, etc., as well as the infinite singularities of interlocking red ink, (all of which can be found around some side or era of AIG), that wouldn't really help the nation.

In my view the structures are fried and have to be discredited anyway, and its widely recognized they are discredited now, but there's still an overhang of the old mental frame, all the cognitive dissonance (the edges of which sound like "f*ck these tinfoil hat people").

on MSNBC as I type, Pat Buchanan's saying "confidence" needs to bring the economy back. I think that means blowing out these opaque corrupt mega-monoliths. And everyone's pouting that Geithner isn't charismatic enough to launch the housing PR campaign.

Chuck Todd on whether the black hole banks will be revealed: "I have plenty of sources that tell me they were willing to this, and then something stopped them." This is actually getting interesting... Todd fingers Larry Summers as the guy on the breaks. Zombie banks.

I think this is sort of like pornography - for oddly similar psychological reasons?? The "gaze" of a public upon a legitimate game is prized - but the power over so many things relies on opacity - and the appeal of privileged information within the security clearance system...

My original point: Rove is the tip of the DOJ opaque iceberg, underneath which lie a staggering level of financial fraud, espionage conducted by foreign players, and cheated elections. He is happy to chirp away on http://twitter.com/karlrove and get put on air by every relevant TV producer in America, but he sure as shit won't legally guarantee he's not lying. If he had to then the transparency / sunlight / etc would leach right through the core of what remains.

EDIT: As Chris Matthews just said, it's like there's a conspiracy to bring down the American economy - thru overbuying and asset crashes - and we insure it to make it happen. and he's making fun of the SEC guy.... On the upside, they'll scurry in all directions, I would say.
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Hongpong.com

It's like the war crimes/torture "question.' It is already established that war crimes have been committed. There is no option under the Constitution to prosecute war crimes or not. This is required, not optional.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty certain that prosecution is optional, even for felonies.

Say somebody commits murder, but its likely in self defense. The prosecutor can choose whether or not to move forward on a basis of whether a conviction is likely, and whether justice would be served by a conviction.

However... I agree it would be a bad precedent for Obama to in any way influence what the Justice Department does... but it would be freakishly odd for Obama to establish his dictatorship by coming to the defense of his most vocal and most partisan critic.

I hope after a long pause he concludes "it would be improper for any president to interfere with the workings of the justice department."

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http://bexhuff.com
Of COURSE you can trust the US Government! Just ask the Indians.

If the US doesn't do it, then the international community is very likely to. Needless to say, this would be very bad PR for a country that represents itself as the standard-bearer for human rights. Under Bush, the US is now seen as a malefactor instead of as an inspiration. Obama has a chance to fix that, but the window is closing.

It is not optional for the president not to prosecute crimes against the state (Constitution) either, since he has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.

The Bush administration brazenly admits to war crimes, and there is prima facie evidence of crimes against the state, i.e., direct violations of Constitutional requirements that the president is sworn to uphold.

The role of the DoJ is crucial, because it is the DoJ that proceeds. If the president prevents this, it is obstruction of justice in a constitutional case.

The only way that the president can be held to account in the final analysis is impeachment. That the Dem Congress failed to proceed in this regard is establishing a precedent that Obama seems very close to solidifying.

This is bad, bad, bad. Bad for progressives and disastrous for the country and world. The "shining light on the hill" is getting dimmer by the hour.

Bad PR internationally or not, odds are low that Obama would opt for prosecutions. I'm just hoping for a truth inquiry, and for these folks to go down in official history as war criminals.

More than that is unlikely... because powerful men almost always get away with murder.

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http://bexhuff.com
Of COURSE you can trust the US Government! Just ask the Indians.