I keep trying to better understand my own feelings about the inadequacy of my own government.  I was so excited when Barack Obama was elected President, and have – conversely – been disappointed since – that I am constantly taking pause to figure out the origin of this disappointment and what I think needs to be done to change it.  I’ve expressed this from MANY angles since Obama took over the White House and I’m always uneasy when I write something less than complimentary about our new President, because the WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN, in my view, is a return to Republican rule.  It was the Republicans, after all, who created ALL THE PROBLEMS we are still suffering from.  President Obama’s decisions, however, have slowly put him in a position to “own” some of the “mess,” and I think that is what bothers me the most about what has happened since he took over – plus, the fact, at least in my opionion, that his decisions are making the possibility of the return of the Republicans much more of a possibility than I could ever have imagined last November.

 President Obama had a very AMBITIOUS agenda when he took office.  I’m sure he (and everyone around him) felt this was absolutely necessary.  Where I think they made their TERRRIBLE mistake was in the decsion to “look forward” – therefore allowing ALL THE MISDEEDS of the Bush/Cheney era to go UNCHALLENGED (except on the internet in places like this).  I understand why they thought this was the right choice.  I’m sure their thinking was that the distractions of an investigation – and the subsequent prosecutions – would interfere with the agenda they were so intent on passing.  They played it exactly opposite, in my view, to how they should have.

They made some terrible miscalculations.  First, I believe President Obama was confident he could “pry” a few votes from the Republican caucus.  The Republicans showed where they were coming from when three of their members voted for the “stimulus” package after negotiating out several parts that would have been job creating in return for additional unneeded middle class tax cuts.  The uproar from the Republicans – based on these three votes – caused Arlen Specter to switch parties and sent a message to Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine that they had better stay in line – OR ELSE!  Essentially, President Obama cannot count on a SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTE on any legislation of consequence – PERIOD!  The only thing on the Republicans’ minds is causing President Obama to fail!  They have proven that their own political future (hopefully, it’s not much of a future) is more important to them than the future of this great nation! (The Republicans have been very upfront about wanting Obama to “fail”)

By looking the other way from the crimes of the Bush administration Obama and his supporters miscalculated the American people’s, in general, short memory.  For most of them – I’ve talked to many – the FACT there were no investigations led them to believe that the Bush administration didn’t do anything wrong.  Most of the people I’ve talked to – SADLY – believe that if the Bush/Cheney administration had actually TORTURED anyone, they would have been prosecuted.  Therefore, since they weren’t prosecuted THEY MUST NOT HAVE DONE IT (despite the fact they admitted to authorizing waterboarding on national TV) – what everyone who’s paying attention KNOWS IS THEY DID!  Can you tell I’m frustrated?  Additionally, I know several really good people who are Republicans – kind of by default because of their misinformation regarding the abortion issue – who were ready for the “change we could believe in.”  They are middle class people who have been productive members of the work force for 30+ years and they lost their jobs.  THE REASON THEY LOST THEIR JOBS WAS BUSH’S INCOMPETENT MANAGEMENT OF THE ECONOMY.  However, the lack of action to create jobs – what appears to be a crisis on the “back burner” due to the health care legislation – has these people now looking to Obama when they look to place blame.  And, if something drastic isn’t done soon to boost the creation of jobs in this nation – I DON’T BLAME THEM.  They’ve been without a job for a year, the prospects are depressing, and they can’t remember who caused the problem – they only know that, in their minds, nothing’s being done to help them.

Barack Obama has put it all on the health care bill.  And, what is seemingly going to come out of all the negotiation – IF THERE’S A BILL AT ALL – is something that is going to be REALLY DISAPPOINTING to Obama’s base.  Remember, the Republicans are not going to support Obama NO MATTER WHAT HE DOES – so it has been very curious why he has seemed to be more willing to negotiate with them than with his own “side.”  I have to say that when all is said and done with this health care bill it’s going to be all about Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche Lincoln.  The willingness to “sell out” to these so-called “blue dog” Democrats and ignore what is OBVIOUSLY in the best interests of the Amercan people is discouraging.  It appears to me that the ENTIRE PROCESS WAS MISMANAGED from the start.  And, now it’s probably too late to fix the bill and it’s also probably too late to go back and fix the real problem which energized the partisanship from the “right” – letting Bush/Cheney off the hook.

Had the President allowed the Justice Department and the Congress to investigate the wrongs of the Bush/Cheney administration the FAULT of the mess they’ve had to try to fix would still be clear in EVERYONE’S MIND.  Because Obama didn’t want the distraction of the investigations he’s risking everything we all fought so hard for when he was elected.  It really felt to me as if I had been betrayed.  Bush/Cheney were SO BAD that I wanted President Obama to make sure no one would ever do the things they did EVER again.  I’ve listed them on this site ad nauseum, but since I appear to have a bunch of new visitors let me make a short list again – IT’S REALLY ASTONISHING when you look at it that an American administration would be so ARROGANT!  For starters, lying us into Iraq instead of finishing the job on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda (at Tora Bora) was UNBELIEVABLE.  When you read the information out there about how they blatantly lied – and in one case created a false “memo” in an attempt to support their actions – you wonder how anyone could “look forward and not backward.”  I mean, something like a million Iraqi’s are DEAD and several million displaced, injured, or out of the country PLUS over 4000 American troops DEAD and tens of thousands injured – not to mention the PTSD which will probably NEVER BE TOTALLY accounted for.  Bush/Cheney left two MISMANAGED wars for Obama to figure out, they had authorized (both admitted to this on national TV) war crimes, it has been documented that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others profited in the hundreds of millions of dollars from the two wars – via NO BID CONTRACTS – and UNBELIEVABLY – there’s been NO INVESTIGATION!  Only in America could leaders get away with such injustice.

But, there’s much more!  Cheney OUTED A CIA agent!  Lewis “Scooter” Libby took the “fall” for him – but, even the prosecutor suggested that Congress should investigate further implying their investigation would go right to the Vice President’s office.  Outing a CIA agent is TREASON!  As bad as this is, there’s never been further investigation.  Bush/Cheney ILLEGALLY wiretapped American citizens.  They violated the FISA law probably THOUSANDS OF TIMES.  Not only did Obama and his Attorney General not have the “balls” to investigate this, they have been defending Bush’s actions in court.  The ONLY REASON I can figure for that one is that President Obama is also using the abusive wiretapping laws that Congress passed to protect Bush – after the fact – to “data mine” the phone calls and emails of his own citizens.  If I’m correct on this one, when that becomes general knowledge Obama’s problems with his “base” will magnify.

Not only did Bush/Cheney commit war crimes with the torturing, they authorized secret prisons which resulted in an untold – and without investigations it will always be untold – number of “enemy combatants” who “disappeared.”  There have been reports of truckloads of so-called “enemy combatants” – many of them innocent Afgans or Pakistani’s who were “sold” to the Americans by money hungry war lords who Bush/Cheney were not only supporting with money – but “looking the other way” from as these people jump started the Afgan drug trade into a world-wide illegal drug nightmare – entire truckloads of “enemy combatants” dying of suffocation as they were transported in trucks without ventilation to the secret prison sites.  I have read reports that 80%, or more, of the illegal heroin that comes into the United States comes from Afganistan via these warlords – and our troops were ordered to “look the other way” during the 7 years after 9/11 by Donald Rumsfeld.

Bush/Cheney TOTALLY UNDERMINED our Justice Department.  Not only were they taking “loyalty oaths” from prospective prosecutors – many who were totally UNQUALIFIED and recent graduates of discredited universities, but they stocked their office of legal counsel with unscrupulous lawyers who were willing to write whatever the President and Vice President requested – AND CALL IT LEGAL.  As long as I live I will never forget John Yoo’s answer to a question regarding torture at a Congressional hearing.  Yoo was asked by a member of Congress, who was incredulous at his answers regarding what was or wasn’t torture in Yoo’s mind, “If a person was buried alive, but dug up before he/she died, would you (Yoo) consider that torture?  Yoo’s UNBELIEVABLE answer was that he would have to look at the circumstances as to why he/she was buried!  I (and the Congressperson asking the question – I can’t remember his name) took that to mean that Yoo felt there could be circumstances where that wouldn’t be torture – as long as you dug him/her up prior to death!  Jay Bybee is a sitting Federal Judge (with a lifetime appointment from George W Bush) after writing the infamous torture memos that enabled the so-called “enhanced interrogations” which included “waterboarding” – a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.  These people felt like they didn’t need to follow the Geneva Conventions, evidently because we’re the United States and we can do whatever we want.  By “looking forward and not backward” Barack Obama has enabled this behavior!  The Justice Department, under Bush/Cheney were prosecuting people based on partisan politics – ie Donald Siegelman the Democratic ex-governor of Alabama and an “enemy” of Karl Rove.  This wrong has never been “righted.”  The list goes on and on, (remember the 9 US attorneys fired for not prosecuting enough Democrats?) and by “looking the other way” Obama is allowing the people of this nation to possibly lose confidence in our judicial system – which, should that happen – we’re ALL IN TROUBLE!

The list is REALLY LONG – but I would be remiss in not talking about the economy.  The combination of deregulation under Bush/Cheney, abusive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, encouragement of corporate abuses domestically and internationally, putting people in charge of government institutions who were trying to undermine the very institutions they were in charge of, and “looking the other way” regarding Wall Street abuses led to the “crash” of 2007/008 which could still morph into the second GREAT DEPRESSION if Obama and company don’t take more drastic action to reign in the greedy multi-national corporate plague that is destroying Wall Street and eventually could destroy “main street.”  Boy, that was a sentence!  Henry Paulsen came up with emergency legislation which amounted to an UNBELIEVABLE amount of corporate welfare – devised by the so-called “free market” Republicans – legislation which SAVED the very company Paulsen was CEO of before he took the reins of the Treasury department – and, not even a whimper from Obama and the Democrats.  I think back to the investigations of Bill Clinton over a failed land deal (Whitewater) that lasted some 8 years – a land deal that essentially hurt no one – and yet, we have no investigation of Paulsen throwing BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars at Goldman Sachs and others – not only to “save” them, but presumably to save his ENORMOUS financial interest in them.  I’m guessing that Paulsen’s personal interest in Goldman was in the hundred’s of millions – and, yet, no willingness to investigate this. (I wouldn’t have expected Republicans to want to get “to the bottom of this,” – I mean when they were in the majority there wasn’t even the thought of an investigation after ENRON almost took down the economy – but, what is the Democrat’s excuse?  “We the people” have to be able to depend on someone, don’t we?)

Even if one wouldn’t have the partisan view of all of these fiasco’s – AND THERE ARE MANY OF THEM, I HAVEN’T LISTED THEM ALL, understanding what happened seems to me to be IMPERATIVE!  This crap is going to happen again – and probably sooner rather than later – because of the lack of investigations.  And, I’ve kind of come to accept this – but the thing that’s really bothering me today, is the FACT (at least in my mind) that President Obama is undermining his own administration by “looking forward” as he puts it.  The American people can hardly remember the Bush administration at this point.  Millions of them will never think anything wrong was done and they are looking at what’s going on and thinking that the Democrats can’t govern so the obvious answer is more Republicans.  The mess President Obama assumed was so huge that he needed the cover he would have received from these investigations.  I believe, under the best of circumstances, we were looking at 5 to 10 years to reverse the effects of what Bush/Cheney did to this nation.  IT WAS IMPERATIVE THAT IT ALL BE MADE PUBLIC!  I’ve read something on the order of 25 books about all that happened under Bush/Cheney, but the average person in this nation has read NONE!  I work with teachers who have master’s degrees who don’t have the will to find out what has really gone on in our government under Bush/Cheney.  Even many of them aren’t sure any laws were broken – they assume that if there were, people would be prosecuted.  That is, isn’t it, the American way?  No one is supposed to be above the law – Obama even promised that if there was evidence of wrongdoing there would be investigations and prosecutions where warranted.  But, that was in the campaign – and once elected, for some strange reason, he changed his mind.  AND IT’S BACKFIRING on him BIGTIME!  Even if the health care legislation passes, President Obama is now on shaky ground.  He’s turned off a significant number of the people who voted him into office to threaten his very agenda.  I believe the number of people who agree with me on this is in the MILLIONS!  I believe the very opposite of what he was thinking about these investigations is true.  I think he thought that the “distraction” of the prosecutions would have disrupted his attempt to pass health care reform, and other important legislation.  When, in actuality, the distractions he was worried about would have exposed the Republicans for what they really are – TO MILLIONS OF UNSUSPECTING AMERICANS – and would have given him the “cover” and time he needs to turn around a nation that’s headed for disaster because of the very people he’s “letting off the hook.”  Allowing investigations of the Bush administration would have improved the chance for passage of Obama’s “agenda” dramatically!  I can only pray that President Obama changes his mind on this – if it’s not too late already to do so.  Aside from everything else, the American people have the right to know EVERYTHING that’s been done in their name.