Dear President Obama, I got me a bad dose of the "what ifs?"

[IDemo]

by Bill Cope
Boise Weekly
April 13, 2011

Delighted to hear you're running for re-election, sir. You can count on me. But before we get started, I have a question. When you're sitting alone in the Oval Office, in between crises and catastrophes and budget confrontations and having to put up with attacks from creeps like Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump and Michele Bachmann, do you ever wonder how things might be different today if right after you took office, you'd told Nancy Pelosi and Eric Holder to go ahead and investigate the hell out of the Bush bastards?

I got to thinking about it last weekend, while watching that movie about Valerie Plame. Fair Game. I recommend it most highly if you and Michelle haven't seen it. Both Naomi Watts and Sean Penn are near to perfect in it. Plus watching Penn act always makes me reflect on how those Hollywood liberals the whiny conservatives are always bitching about have all the talent and intelligence, while all the right has is Chuck Norris and Dennis Miller.

But listen, if you do a Redbox run, I'd get something else for Sasha and Malia because Fair Game probably isn't something they'd enjoy. What we did when our girl was their age, we'd rent Free Willy or Babe whenever we got ourselves something too grown-uppy for her. 'Course, you need two DVD players and two TVs if ... ah, but look at me here, telling you how to raise your kids. Don't mind me, Mr. President. You're doing just fine without any advice from me.

And that's not why I wrote, anyway. The deal is, Fair Game was ultimately a damn depressing movie because going into it, I already knew how it turned out, which is, essentially, that all the vermin in the Bush administration got away with it. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney exposed a CIA agent, ruined her career and got away with it. Scooter Libby, the little sap actually convicted of the treason, was given a full pardon and got away with it. And need I say, Mr. President, the larger offense is that they lied America into an endless war, killing and maiming thousands of U.S. soldiers and God only knows how many Iraqi civilians in the process, and got away with it?

http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/dear-president-obama/Content?oid=2188338

[bertman]

1. Ingrate!!! The guy can't do everything at once. Give him a break.

He just got around to standing up to the Republicans three days ago. He's getting warmed up. By 2019 he'll get around to prosecuting them.

REC.

[yurbud]

6. real change takes TIME. Unless it's starting wars, rolling back regulations & union rights, bailing

out Wall Street...

Actually change takes time if it helps the middle and working class, but happens instantly if it helps the wealthy.

[CelticThunder]

2. Dear Bill: No. Signed, President Obama.

[NothingRight]

3. Man I know what this guy is feeling

I can't tell you how many times I have wondered this same thing. From the Gitmo torture practices, and Valerie Plame to the entire reasoning behind us going to war in Iraq, there is a part of me that wanted to see us finally have the stones to stand up say that just because you are the executive ruler of the most powerful country in the world does not mean you run the world as your own little sandbox.

Nixon resigned from office for what comparatively speaking was a mild version of what the Bush war machine called "the Patriot Act".

Then the realist in me wakes up and reminds the idealistic part of me that once we open Pandora's Box, there is no closing it, and the disgusting underbelly of our nation becomes further reason for the rest of the world to look at us with a less than approving position, including some of our allies.

The idealist argues that maybe that is what we need, a good slap in the face to remind us that while we may be a great nation, we are not immune to the rule of law simply because we carry the biggest stick.

In the end, exhausted from the debate inside my own head, I realize that even if the decision was made to prosecute, it would be by the same people that could only find Barry Bonds guilty of Obstruction.

And thus we kick the can.......

[Doctor_J]

4. Yup, he screwed that up badly

We would well on our way out of this mess if Bush & Rove had been sent to Marion and Cheney & Rumsfeld had been handed over to the Iraqis. No punishment = no behavior modification.

[Citizen Worker]

5. Dial it back a few more years. If Clinton would have enforced the law and went after Reagan/Bush

many of the same criminals who ended up in the Bush II administration might well have been in prison. Had Clinton and congress gone after Reagan/Bush the Bush name may have been so tainted that the Village Idiot may have stayed out of the 2000 presidential race. Now that Obama has refused to go after Bush/Cheney we're going to end up with Jeb Bush in 2016 and he'll win by a landslide. More on this later.

[yurbud]

7. no kidding. Robert Parry wrote about this going back to LBJ & Nixon

LBJ had just about negotiated terms for ending the Vietnam War before the 1968 election, but Kissinger told the North Vietnamese to wait and Nixon would give them a better deal. The better deal was five more years of war before taking the same terms the North offered LBJ.

[txlibdem]

8. Don't you worry, Mr. President. We are behind you 100%

Even if you promised so many things that have turned out to be outright lies.
=Helping the young people - now one of the groups with the highest unemployment rates
=Closing Guantanamo - we knew you weren't really serious about that
=Closing the gap between rich and poor - we understand that you are now a multi-millionaire and do not expect you to go against "your own."
=Fair tax system, removing tax loopholes the rich get but the poor and middle class cannot - hey, they're "your peeps" not us so we forgive you.
=Improving education - well, destroying education is really close to improving it so just keep going with that charter school program!
=Making college affordable - that one was our fault. You didn't say you were going to make it affordable for "us"
=Credit card reform - we're sorry we misunderstood. We thought you were going to limit the outrageous interest rates. That's our bad.
=Banking reform - we're too stupid to notice that your banking reform changed nothing in their practices - they're doing the exact same things that crashed the economy. You get a pass on this because we aren't paying attention.
=Your failure to crack down on these election stealing computer vote tabulators (with no paper trail) - we know you just need a few more decades to tackle that: we're willing to be patient Mr. President.
=Your tossing out single payer before debate on health care even began - we understand you were employing a time honored debate tactic: unconditional surrender. We respect that you own up to it and hold your head high, even though you have doomed hundreds of thousands of sick people to die.

So don't you worry. The blacks, the young people, those pissed off about ripoff credit rates, anyone who has been screwed by a bank, anyone who had money in a 401k (had is the operative word there), and anyone who has or will ever get sick, we're all going to work "extra hard" to make sure that you get re-elected. That is our promise to you: have hope that our doubts about your ability and your true allegiance will change.

[humbled_opinion]

9. Jeez I guess you fogot to pick up your

magic Obama glasses the ones where you look through them and you see all the wonderful things you had hoped for in Obama .... Its a simple question one I am sure someone will eventually ask him on the campaign trail..... "What Changed"

[txlibdem]

10. If it's not asked then it darn well should be.

But I know what changed: when he said all of those "Progressive" things he wasn't a millionaire and now his net worth is over 10 million dollars.

Do I think that a multi-millionaire is honestly going to go against his own self-interest and do the right thing for the poor and middle class? Not a chance.

[humbled_opinion]

11. If thats true

It would be so so shallow... but it also would explain a lot of my own observations...

[Keith Bee]

12. Alas,

life is full of "what ifs," be you a pauper or a president.