Now that Barack has been anointed in corn….It is time to ask some tough questions.
He has said that the country needs to be united, and it is tough to argue with that! The question is ….how? Will he attempt unity through healing the wounds George Bush and friends have inflicted on America and the world? Or by sweeping them under some national rug of unity?
My hope is he sees the necessity of beating back the very forces that UNunified the country through their incredibly destructive and self serving partisanship. WE didn’t start this fire, Karl Rove and newt Gingrich did, the power mad Republicans in the WH and in Congress did. Giving them a free pass on both their crimes and on the damage that their brand of burn the house down politics has done, in the utopian idea of some form of unity with these lying sacks of hackery and deceit won’t help. Bush will be gone, but his accomplices in Congress will still be there. And in the worst case scenario, the scariest one, they play Obama’s good intentions like a fiddle, mouthing platitudes while sharpening their very bloody knives.
Of course the race is not over and I am certainly not anointing Obama, I would be asking these questions of whoever had won in the cornfields. But the specter of naivete and gullibility do hang over Barack’s head more than the other two candidates, both due to his inexperience, some past statements about cooperating with Republican politicians, and his well….niceguyness.
IF he is speaking of a Unity of The People, that is indeed a worthy goal…if on the other hand he is speaking of Unity with the remains of the Bushco crime family that will linger like a bad smell…that is a different matter all together.
So here is the question, candidate Obama, phrased in political speak (Since no pol will announce that he/she is “going after” Bushco when they take office.)
Will you appoint and independent investigator to hunt down and expose the evidence of wrongdoing by your predecessor?
Will you roll back the Unitary Executive powers that Bush has claimed?
Will you take the necessary steps to restore Habeas Corpus?
Will you restore the Fourth Amendment so that citizens will be safe in their homes from their own government?
Will you close Gitmo and the Secret Prisons?
Will you launch FULL investigations into the politicization and subversion of the DOJ and the intelligence agencies?
When you take office, will you remove all remnants of “The Bushies” in the DOJ and instruct your newly staffed Department of Justice to vigorously pursue investigations in to the many and various….and many….criminal and suspect activities of the Bush Administration?
Or will you announce, as so may others have done before you, on so many occasions that the “past is past” and that we “must move on” and let the outrages and illegalities of the previous eight years fade away?
Please remember that many of the perpetrators of todays injustices were also involved in Watergate, were involved in Iran Contra and the Death Squads in Central America. That these people have continued in power, continued to pursue their own agendas out of their twisted ideologies, that these in fact are the very people that have CAUSED the disunity in America that you decry.
The People of America and the world simply cannot unite and heal our differences while these cancers on real democracy exist in our midst, unexposed and unpunished. In order to unite us into a new and healthy nation and restore our role as a world leader, this cancer must be excised.
Will you be able to do that President Obama? If your promise of hope and unity for America means anything, that is the first step, cleaning house. Can you make that promise to us? Can you deliver on that promise?
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based on my many years of hoping people are actually better than they they really are, I love to believe in the better angels byt find them balanced by the worse devils. Too often have found the fight is between perception and reality. Obama is tap-dancing on the head of the change pin which is exactly what he has to do to win because Clinton has too much of a record to be credible on anything except the experience pin.
So my cynicism says NO, he will not fight to impeach on any of the items you lay out before he becomes the nominee or after if he does, and no, he will not retroatively prosecute if he does become president because his only agenda then will be to unite the entire country and that would be the most divisive thing he could possibly conceive of doing. His major task will be to please all the people all the time and we all know that is impossible, but because of who he is and the symbolism of race will prevent it, but then the same would be true of Hillary as well. From that perception actually Edwards probably is the only one who would because he knows that to win a trial you have to fight to the death and pick off your opponents along the way. He would truly have nothing left to lose and that is still the only freedom that motivates a fight to the death. Ask any gladiator.
Mind you I would not hold that against Obama because i can’t see any other Democratic candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning the nomination and the presidency of doing any different either.
The American people have shown a predilection for preferring to just take a magic pill that will make everything alright rather than do the seriously hard work of psysiotherapy, self discipline, responsibility and accountability that is really required to change the direction of the nation.
That is the key to Obama’s immediate star status, he can fool us into hoping that we can all get thin by eating as much as we want. I hope that too but I sure as hell don’t believe it.
Stop asking silly questions Buhdy, there is still a lot of shit to shovel before this Augean stable is clean and shining and smell free.
To be fair to Obama, I believe this will happen no matter who attains the WH.
Whether or not any candidate, will actually give up the unconstitutional powers of president that Bush obtained is questionable. If a Dem attains the WH, IMO the Republicans (unlike the Dems) and the MSM will not allow him/her to use these powers. They will be rolled back until the next Republican president is ready to assume the throne.
from December 22:
That’s a pretty good answer. It shows that Obama is aware that he would every reason to prosecute various members of the Bush Administration.
But I don’t get the sense that Obama would. My sense is that he thinks moving on is more important than holding to account.
But on that note, I would quote this other answer:
And that means Obama understands that there will be no moving on, as far as the world is concerned, unless we do hold to account.
And I don’t think he’ll do it. I just don’t. If I’m right, then there is a real problem here, right within Obama’s own position. This bears thinking on some more.
to the question that you ask….
improbable in the extreme……
even if he tried he would not be allowed to upset the apple cart…..
besides who says the vote is even real any more ?!?…..
simplify it a bit and we should keep pounding this message… seminal to this whole mess and back to that thing you discussed the other day…
That way, the possibility remains that someday the full criminal scope of Bushco’s criminal conduct can be exposed.
Whoever becomes president, he/she will follow Ford’s precedent–and pardon bushco. It is disgusting–it is wrong–it is inevitable. If Edwards announced he would allow congress/the courts to carry out the correct procedures, he would polarize the country–70/30 in his favor. Obama and Clinton don’t want to upset their money people, and won’t do the right thing.
This could not be better nor more succinctly said. This is what must be asked of those who could win the nomination.
Say “NO” to another-after-the-election
PELOSI-SHAM!
At first I must confess I spent the whole night laughing at Obama’s speech. It wasn’t a pretty laugh, and it was an ugly feeling. It was a “physician, heal thyself” laugh.
From my perspective the Obama campaign has practiced anything but “unity” in this campaign. His campaigns use of homophobes, and the very ugly apologia afterwards, lent me this feeling.
But after having had a few days of thinking about it I think I understand what was meant by this. It’s not for a candidate to have practiced in the prior sense what he preaches in a victory speech, nor really talk about specifics — and I confess, I believe I was hearing contentless platitudes, especially “hope” without explication of what is to be hopeful about, or “change” without any talk about what that change really means. Obama had an opportunity to talk, really talk, with people who had up until now not paid much attention to him, and he blew it — but in fairness it was a traditional victory speech.
What was really meant is for the candidate themselves to be lodestones around which “unity” naturally forms. This is not a racial or a minority thing, or even a new thing, because I remember after Kerry became the nominee.
What is meant by unity is really unity by opposite. Should Obama become the nominee, the Republicans and conservatives will launch baseless and vicious attacks against him — as they would against all Democrats. They will accuse him using the bigot dog whistle of being Muslim or having been taught by muslims (as if that matters). They will accuse him of being a drug dealer. They will dig up every mistake or miscue he’s ever made. The attacks against other Democrats, while being based on different lies, would be no less vicious or simply mean spirited.
And once again, as I was when Kerry was the nominee, I will be roped just by the sheer nastiness of the Republicans, into defending him.
And then, to risk questioning Obama on more serious, substantial, real things will be an anathema. “Unity” on our side will be achieved by the sheer nastiness and baselessness of the Republican attack machine. And after the election, “Unity” will mean unity with the Republicans that did this — also known as “bipartisanship”.
It’s the kind of unity Obama talks about I have a problem with. It’s not a unity that proceeds from the top down that says we all should have an equal share no matter who we are — and I say that as a gay atheist man in Obama’s case. It’s the kind of unity that says that first we lay aside any concern for ourselves and people like us, while from enlightened self interest, supporting others as well, and instead support in a quasi-authoritarian manner the banner of our party leader. Then, perhaps, a trickle down will flow the opposite way.
I must confess I am sincerely dismayed by this phenomenon in our society. It is a sickness and leads to cynicism and despair. But until we get a candidate who is willing to practice unity — real unity — not just preach it, this is what we will get.
Some Things Elections Can’t Change. My point was to think not about what Bushco has done, but what we the US citizens have done and how we let them get away with things.
It was based on an article by Gary Kamiya titled “Why Bush Hasn’t Been Impeached” at Salon (I’d give a link, but you have to go through all that registration bs). Here’s the quote:
I share all that to say that I’m beginning to wonder if Obama doesn’t understand this as well. And he knows that the first thing he needs to do is get the PEOPLE united around a vision based on hope instead of fear. And I wonder if that’s not just what we need before any of these other things can be addressed.
will answer these questions!