But it isn't. Mr. Obama has been given a pass, just like GWB was given a pass on Iraq.

Shameful conduct on behalf of the man who swore to change this country's political system. Instead, he surrendered to those who empower him, and that's not us.

A new PBS Frontline report examines outrageous steps Obama's administration took to protect Wall St. Wall Street from prosecutions.

What Obama justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious criminality. Indeed, financial elites were not only vested with impunity for their fraud, but thrived as a result of it, even as ordinary Americans continue to suffer the effects of that crisis.

Worst of all, Obama justice officials both shielded and feted these Wall Street oligarchs (who, just by the way, overwhelmingly supported Obama's 2008 presidential campaign) as they simultaneously prosecuted and imprisoned powerless Americans for far more trivial transgressions.

Feeling betrayed yet?

Attached article by Glenn Greenwald.

Everyone raise your hands who believes we will get a leader from either side that does not "side with their masters"?

Get rid of corporate lobbyists/citizens united and return the country "to the people".

Or we can vote for someone who has no chance of ruling, just to feel better about ourselves.

The small amount of spine that President Obama shows to the neoconservatives' call for war with Iran brings howls of criticism. Senator Hagel's nomination brings out the long knives. How much independence does any administration have?

The problem is structural; the problem is our current system of governing



.

Italy is having an election, and there's an uproar regarding the purchase of Lockheed F-35 jets whose performance to date warranted a report from the Pentagon on the problems that need to be addressed.

they are exactly what our pilots fly, with all of the same bells and whistles. doesn't mean that what it used to mean - they're inheriting all the problems of our military/industrial complex.

The role of the Egyptian military is complicated in the post-Mubarak era; the generals could move against Morsi.

A rischio fulmine i jet F-35 che compra l'Italia. Il Pentagono: "Volate lontano dai temporali"

Pentagon report cites "lack of maturity" of Lockheed F-35 jet

And anyone is surprised by the lack of legal redress for some of the greatest fraudulent institutions and activities in human history?

This post just reminded me of Stan Freberg's version of Shaboom.

I can only speak for myself.....I am a realist. I have a fair understand of the political system, not as much as I would like but enough to realize that no President can be and probably does not want to be all of one mind of completely Liberal or Conservative.

Truth of the matter I do not think the Conservative want what they are made to believe they want. If they got the austerity idea they say they want they would be using their guns to blow their brains out.

The little understanding of our political process prevents any President from being able to do all of what I would like as a Liberal. Both Republican and Democratic Party supporters should be angry because what the people want will always take a back seat to Corporation because we allow money to rule.

Ah well, the first of 20 F16 fighter jets were delivered to Egypt day before yesterday, and 20 Abrahm tanks will follow. I suppose that will help Morsi take out those descendants of apes and pigs as he refers to the Jewish people. Oh, and they are free, we'll just have the 1% pick up the tab.

Incorrect. The number of Abrams tanks to be delivered is 200. Will a correction be forthcoming?

Facto, I thought you would have sooner picked up on the assertion that they are "free".... nothing is free.... or, that the 1% are picking up any tab or paying anything close to more than their "fair share" which has been disproved time and again... or the fact that the political structure in Egypt is so fragmented re the military and Morsi that to equate the two is nonsensical... or, that the post has nothing to do with the Op but is rather, a desperate, absurdist fling of poo in the hopes that something will stick or that anyone, someone would hopefully react too.... oops... my bad.

Where were you when Regan sold those helicopters, and trucks to Iraq? The same type of helicopter that fired chemical weapons on Iran killing hundreds of thousands. The administration claim was the vehicles were not equipped with any fire power and were sold for medical military use. I bet you believed exactly what the stated use was for when God Regan was in office.

nancy nailed it, the problem is the system.

But the title of this thread is a little confusing. Too late for what? To put Romney in office? Yeah, cause he was idealogically pure ::sarcasm::

Isn't this the norm for most threads with an exclamation point in the title?

Harrumphing leads to more harrumphing.

His speech, Monday, was great, but I don't expect that he will follow through with anything he said. Just throwing red meat to his base.

The only good thing I can say about him is that he's not as bad as Romney would have been.

Imo, this thread would be a discussion of real value and worth if the sour grapes weren't smashed all over it with a "sore loser" tone as deeply embedded as possible.

I can claim no such understanding. I know that money talks and in many ways controls. I know that it's smart to keep your enemy close and beholden. I know that pissing off radical factions will hurt....but that's all I know. I am clearly much more poorly informed than others here therefore I will not make myself look stupid by speaking of that which I know nothing of.

North Africa is a very, very scary place.....

A reputable source would discuss the other groups that are dissatisfied with the current rule in Jordan and the various calls for change.

"And your opinion of what this means to world security and what the US action should be is ??????"

oh jeez, I didn't link to a liberal website, where truth abounds.....

Is truth important to you?

Why not some really centrist outlet such as the Christian Science Monitor? What about the BBC?

From the Southern Poverty Law Center (lots more at the link):

WorldNetDaily (WND)... is the brainchild of Joseph Farah, a self-described "radical" and longtime antigovernment propagandist and apologist for the Confederacy who believes "cultural Marxists" are plotting "to transform our political system, to change the way we think, to attack our values, to demean our faith in God, to reduce that shining city on the hill to the status of a drab public-housing project."

Together with a coterie of antigovernment "Patriots," anti-gay activists, white nationalists, Muslim-bashers, conspiracy theorists, end-times prophets and ultraconservative hardliners, Farah -- who did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article -- has built WND into a modest media empire including a book imprint, an online subscription-only "intelligence resource," and a glossy, full-color monthly magazine...

WND's point of view is best described as a cross between the now-defunct supermarket tabloid Weekly World News, which was famous for reporting on Elvis sightings, and The New American, a monthly magazine published by the far-right, conspiracist John Birch Society. In its 15 years online, it has introduced readers to a smorgasbord of bizarre ideas, specializing in anti-gay, anti-Muslim, and anti-liberal propaganda; antigovernment conspiracy theories; and end-times prophecy.

It featured a six-part series claiming (falsely) that soybean consumption causes homosexuality and promoted Scott Lively's vile opus The Pink Swastika, which says that gays were behind the Holocaust. It has identified the first "leftist" as Satan, and declared that Muslims have a "20-point plan for conquering the United States by 2020." It has warned of secret plans to create a North American Union, advised readers to invest all their assets in gold, and promoted myriad, if conflicting, theories about when and how the world will end.

Its most enduring claim, by far, is that President Obama is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president because he supposedly is not a "natural-born" U.S. citizen.

WND's stable of writers includes "birther" conspiracist Jerome Corsi; Bob Unruh, a former Associated Press reporter who once sued his fifth-grade daughter's school after it forbade her to distribute promotional materials for his wife's "vacation bible school"; black neo-secessionist Walter E. Williams, who in a 2002 WND column wrote that the Civil War was an unconstitutional exercise of "federal abuse and usurpation;" and a panoply of other far-right and ultraconservative voices.

The online paper is also a launching pad for a new generation of extremists. Kevin DeAnna, founder of the white nationalist student group Youth for Western Civilization, was recently hired as marketing coordinator. DeAnna, 29, also has written articles for WND -- including one that asserted that Earth Day falls on April 22 in order to honor Lenin's birthday. Another young pundit who benefits from WND's patronage is Jason "Molotov" Mitchell, 33, a self-declared "Christian Supremacist" who wants his co-religionists to reject "effeminized American Christianity" and start "advancing the Kingdom on earth."

It is too late. For this information to come out after the election. Of course you knew what I meant.

What did you think about Glenn's article? Is Glenn spot on or full of it? Or is the title still tripping you?

Progressives have been complaining about the closeness with Wall Street for years with the first complaints about the GS people that Barack Obama had as advisors during his first campaign. Robert Scheer -- late of the L.A. Times, a contributer to The Nation, and with his own site, Truth Dig -- has been particularly good covering the lapses of the Obama Administration re prosecution of Wall Streeters. William K. Black has also been scathing in his criticism of the Obama Administration's handling of the WS debacle.

I don't know what you're trying to prove; but I stand by my claim that the problem is structural and has much to do with campaign financing. If it were not Holder and crew dragging their feet, or looking the other way, another AG in a different administration would be doing something similar.

As far as information coming out after the 2012 elections - if this is the first article you've noticed on the problem, you're very, very late to the party.

Soon the statute of limitations will expire and the banksters and other fraudsters can breathe easier.

Don't forget the banks doing the drug lord's money laundering with a penalty equal to a couple weeks' work. Surely no one thinks that we are a democracy any more, amirite?

That was kind. It's nice when people are genuinely interested in others ;)

faato: "Is truth important to you?"
That was kind. It's nice when people are genuinely interested in others ;)

So, is truth important to you? Continued evasion is reasonably taken as a "no".

They were kept out by the strongmen keeping them in line. Now that they are gone, they are spreading out. Gonna be a bloody few years unless you can put the genie back in the bottle!

As far as "Obama is giving a billion dollars in aid to the Muslim Brotherhood" that is a ridiculous Foxnews oversimplification
that has been thoroughly debunked.

As far as "Obama's Failure to Punish Banks Should Be Causing Serious Social Unrest" is an oversimplification to create a talking point.

This is about the Department of Justice under President Obama's new administration in early 2009. We just don't know what evidence they had of actual fraud and how deep and thorough their investigations went. It would have been difficult to prove actual fraud and therefore the DOJ chose not to bring cases that would be costly and would likely fail. Also, Presidents Bush and Obama acted to prevent the financial market from crashing rather than focusing on dismantling it and risking further harm to the economy.

My thought is that even if the DOJ under the Bush or Obama administrations would have brought charges against top Wall Street and Bank Executives those prosecutions would not have helped the economy recover, even if successful.
In hindsight perhaps the better course would have been for Bush and Congress to have fashioned the TARP in a different manner.
I criticize all of them including Presidents Bush and Obama for not conditioning the TARP bail-out in a way which would have allowed more people to keep their homes. The temporary imposition of mandatory statutory interest rates for home mortgage loans including ARMs is one thing I believe would have slowed the foreclosures and at least slowed down the snowball. Congress also could have required banks to write down principal on home loans that exceeded market value.
Foreclosures on those mortgages ended up hurting everyone and benefited no one.

So really, hindsight is 20/20 and that is really what this is about...water over the bridge. Time to move forward and stop the whining.

- lack of resources at the SEC - deliberately underfunded.
- who can afford to hire the best lawyers and drag out a case for years?
- then they have to prove deliberate malfeasance.

This posterboy never went to jail ...

begin quote: "Another day, another corporate titan suffering from devastating amnesia. This time, the memory-loss patient is none other than Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide Financial.

Deposed in the landmark lawsuit between the monoline insurer MBIA and Countrywide/Bank of America, Mozilo professed not to know the difference between "verified" income and "stated" income. He also made some incredible remarks regarding his notorious "Friends of Angelo" lending program, in which, among others, political figures like North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad and Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd received Countrywide mortgages on highly advantageous terms just because they were tight with the CEO.

As chief of Countrywide, Mozilo headed the single most corrupt subprime mortgage lender in America during the period preceding the crisis. Charged with mass fraud and headed for trial in October of 2010, Mozilo and the SEC ultimately settled four days before opening arguments were set to begin in Los Angeles. Ultimately, Mozilo got away with no jail time, paying a $67.5 million settlement, $20 million of which was covered by Countrywide, which by then had been acquired by Bank of America, a major bailout recipient. Just in the years between 2000 and 2008, Mozilo made over half a billion dollars - $521.5 million, according to one corporate research firm.

If you were going to assign blame to any single person for the financial crisis, Angelo Mozilo would rank right up there with people like Lehman's idiot CEO Dick Fuld, deranged credit-default-swap peddler Joe Cassano of AIG's Financial Products unit, and deregulatory pioneers like Bob Rubin and Phil Gramm. Mozilo's role, however, was probably the single most shameful, as he represented the conscious decision of mortgage underwriters to abandon lending standards in order to claim ever-larger chunks of market share.

Mozilo was actually deposed last June in the MBIA lawsuit, but the Mozilo depo only just became public recently. In the suit, the insurer claimed to have been fraudulently induced to insure mortgages that did not conform to Countrywide's stated underwriting standards. The "Friends of Angelo" program was therefore highly relevant to the MBIA action, because Mozilo was apparently unilaterally approving loans for people who didn't meet underwriting guidelines simply because Mozilo knew them.

In the deposition, Mozilo, demonstrating admirable chutzpah, claimed that the "FOA" program (which he denied was organized - "it was not a program," he said, adding that people would just put things on his desk marked "FOA") was not just for the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, but also for "taxi drivers" and other such ordinary folk:

Waiters, taxi drivers, limo drivers, stewardesses, gardeners - and I'd give them my card, and when they called, I put those loans into our underwriting system. My people decided to label "FOA." They were not friends. But it was business. snip

more at the link