During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama liked to say that one voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it can change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world.

Progressive bloggers already knew that.  We spoke out against the criminal administration of Bush and Cheney when no one else would, because we’ve known all along how important one voice can be. That’s why we started blogging.  We knew an entire nation had lost its way, we knew the corporate media was a wasteland of lies, but we knew one voice can make a difference, we knew that the voice of justice must be heard, so we became the voice of justice.  We would not be silent while a war was unleashed for oil and profit, while war crimes were committed and elections were stolen and justice was crucified on a cross of gold.

We knew that one voice can change the lives of everyone who hears it, that one voice of compassion can touch a million hearts, that one voice of reason can change a million minds, that one voice can become many voices and echo through history for all generations to hear.  We knew that if enough people stood up and spoke out together, our future would be in our hands.  We believed in justice, we didn’t give up, and now a few solo voices on a few blogs calling for justice in 2003 and 2004 has become a nationwide chorus of voices calling for justice.  

The Nuremberg Retributions were one of the lowest points in 20th century history.  The aftermath of the Second World War should have been a time for looking ahead, not for laying blame for the past. Unfortunately, too many people failed to understand that well-intentioned Germans accused of war crimes were just following orders and acting in good faith.  Those dedicated patriots in the Whermacht and hard working public servants in the SS were men of integrity, they didn’t shirk their responsibility to keep the German homeland safe from Jewish, Polish, Russian, Rumanian, Yugoslavian, French, British, Danish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, American, Greek, Dutch, Norwegian, Canadian and Belgian fanatics, extremists, and non-combatants.

Unlike 50 million human beings, this Dedicated Defender of the Homeland Paradigm survived the Second World War.  With a vengeance.  It was alive and well in Bush and Cheney’s White House, and it’s alive and well in Obama’s White House.  Take notes everyone, that patriotic act in the photo wasn’t a war crime, it was just defending the homeland . . .

I’ve learned recently that the aftermath of the Second World War should have been a time for reflection, not retribution.  Everyone should have respected the strong views and emotions of Germans who defended their country through a war crime or two, just as much as they respected the strong views and emotions of the people whose loved ones were executed and dumped in a ditch, bombed, tortured, gassed, burned in ovens, and condemned as subhuman parasites unfit to exist.

But vengeance prevailed over common sense.  Retribution was insisted upon by persecutors waving the “rule of law” in everyone’s face, they rambled on and on and on about “justice” but all they were really after was payback and revenge.  So many German children who loved their dedicated fathers had to watch with tears in their eyes while their fathers were slandered in the newspapers and demonized by finger pointing trial lawyers parading around for the newsreel cameras.        

Sam Stein weighs in on Obama’s pre-approved, bipartisan-tested, generic excuse for not enforcing the law against BushCo criminals . . .

Asked for the first time to respond to the likelihood that Spanish prosecutors will target officials in the Bush administration for sanctioning torture at Guantanamo Bay, Barack Obama stressed, once again, that he prefers to look forward, not backward.  “I’m a strong believer that it’s important to look forward and not backwards, and to remind ourselves that we do have very real security threats out there,” said Obama.

I think it’s important to remind ourselves, Mr. President, that war criminals are still running around loose all over Washington D.C.  Their smug faces can still be seen on national television, they’re writing op-eds in the fucking Wall Street Journal, they’re getting million dollar book deals and are still wined and dined at Georgetown cocktail parties, while the victims of their war crimes can’t look forward to anything ever again because they’re dead, or are still in Gitmo, or have been shattered physically and psychologically by American torturers acting upon the orders of an American president and vice president, who paid American lawyers to tell them it was legal to violate the law, the Constitution, and the Geneva Conventions.

“Legal cover”, bought and paid for . . .

with 30 pieces of silver.

You want to focus on the very real threats “out there”, Mr. President?   I’m just a nobody who worked his ass off to help get you elected, but I think you need to focus on the very real threats to the Constitution and American democracy that are staring us all in the face right here in the United States.  Those very real threats are not “out there” in Afghanistan or Pakistan, they’re right here in America, entrenched in the CIA, the NSA and the Pentagon, they’re in those Wall Street banks you keep bailing out, they’re in the leadership and rank and file of that mindless cult of subversion, racism, and corporate fraud that used to be the Republican Party.

There is increasing anxiety throughout the imploding banking industry that the Obama Administration might insist upon management changes if the stress tests of the 19 biggest banks, which are due to be completed within three weeks, indicate that they are still fucked up beyond all recognition, despite being handed God only knows how many trillions of dollars through the Fed and TARP.  

Aware that this FUBAR Factor and the gory details of their financial fuckery to the Nth degree will be exposed for all the world to see, and intent upon keeping their jobs, bonuses, private jets and all of their Superstar of Wall Street perks, many bankers want out of the TARP program, are criticizing the conditions the Obama Administration set for paying back the TARP money, and are calling them unfair.  

Digby summarizes this latest development quite well and observes that these bankers . . .

are such short sighted, greedy, self centered jackasses that they refuse to be saved unless they get to fuck things up all over again.  (Oh, and make a killing doing it.)  I’m not against these banks paying back the TARP money but they have to live up to the agreements they made when they took the money — just like I do when I have to pay a penalty for early withdrawal. After all, they have a rather nice alternative. They could just loan the money to someone, which was the intent of the program.  But then they’d have to live under the threat that the big bad gummint is coming to take their bonuses and that’s just unacceptable to these pampered princes.

A New Rasmussen Poll reports a rather amazing decline in the support of Americans for capitalism:  

Bad news for those fearful of “creeping socialism” in the United States–only 53 percent of Americans now believe capitalism is the better system, according to a new poll Thursday. Fully 20 percent in the Rasmussen Reports survey said that socialism was their preferred economic system–a startling number that suggests growing disaffection as the “land of the free” fights its worst recession in decades.

Millions of wingnut heads will explode when they hear this.  Their formerly favorite pollster will be condemned as a socialist/fascist/neo-Marxist hack.  Obviously, he is in league with George Soros and vicious left wing hate sites like this one, has become a dirty fucking commie hippie, and is conspiring with those two notorious liberals, Beelzebub and Mephistopheles, to destroy capitalism.    

Geithner’s in the basement,

Mixing up the medicine,

I’m on the pavement,

Thinking about the government.

Bankers in trench coats,

Every one’s a Madoff,

Say they got toxic debts,

Wanna get ’em paid off . . .

The banking system is rubble.  The economy’s imploding.  How did it come to this?   Why didn’t our “representatives” in Washington D.C. see this crisis coming?  Because they were too busy kissing Wall Street’s ass and K Street’s ass and Bush’s ass and the ass of every CEO in sight, that’s why they didn’t see this coming.      

We saw it coming.  We’re progressives.  We don’t need a fucking weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

We told America a hard rain’s gonna fall.  But America wouldn’t listen.

We saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it

We saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,

We saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin,

We saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin,

We saw a white ladder all covered with water,

We saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,

We saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.

Bill Moyers Journal:

In an explosive interview on PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal, William K. Black, a professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, alleged that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called “liars loans” could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive “fraud” at the epicenter of US finance.

But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America’s financial insolvency from its citizens.

Gosh.  Why would a Wall Street insider like Geithner be reluctant to admit that Wall Street criminals turned the US financial system into a giant Ponzi Scheme?

I’m stumped.

Fortunately, Professor Black has an explanation . . .

What we do in life echoes in eternity.  

What we’ve done as individuals, what we’ve done as a nation that tortured human beings, will echo in eternity.

John Donne, Meditation XVII . . .

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.  

What language were we speaking when we locked human beings in cages?  What language were we speaking when we tortured human beings to death?  We were speaking the same language Inquisition torturers spoke, the same language Stalin’s NKVD torturers spoke, the same language Hitler’s SS torturers spoke, the same language Khymer Rouge torturers spoke. That’s the language we were speaking.

It’s a sadistic language, a degenerate language, an obscene language only psychopaths speak.  Yet we as a nation spoke that language.  We spoke the language of torture.  We did not stop what was being done in our name.  We were all holding the leash . . .

Barack Tells Detroit to Drop Dead . . .

The White House says neither GM nor Chrysler submitted acceptable plans to receive more bailout money, setting the stage for a crisis in Detroit and putting in motion what could be the final two months of two American auto giants.  President Barack Obama and his top advisers have determined that neither company is viable and that taxpayers will not spend untold billions more to keep the pair of automakers open forever.

But American taxpayers are supposed to keep spending untold billions more to keep those predator banks on Wall Street open forever, aren’t they, Barack.  GM and Chrysler aren’t viable according to you and your fiend Tim at the Treasury Department, but those big banks that imploded and turned America’s financial system into a black hole of toxic debt are still viable.  Yup.  They’re as viable as it gets, they’re so viable they only need a trillion dollars every few months so they don’t China Syndrome themselves right through the planet, blast the Great Wall of China into rubble on the other side, and soar off into space to boldly go where no Masters of the Universe have ever gone before.        

Let’s summarize what’s been happening, shall we?  The big banks tell Barack to jump and he asks them how high. They tell Barack to fetch a stick and he fetches a stick.  They tell Barack to hand them another trillion dollars and lay back down by his dish like a good dog, and he hands them another trillion dollars and lays back down by his dish like a good dog.        

It’s still not too late to take our economy back, but we can’t depend on Obama to do it, we’re going to have to take it back ourselves.  Starting on March 19th.

The Village Voice:

Credit derivatives are breaking and will continue to break the world’s financial system and cause an unending crisis of liquidity and gummed-up credit.  Warren Buffett branded derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction.”  Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who organized the bailout of New York a generation ago, called them “financial hydrogen bombs.”

Corporate elites have been waging class warfare against us for decades.  They’ve riddled us with Bankruptcy Bill bullets, napalmed us with NAFTA, massacred our labor unions, turned our healthcare system into the Bataan Death March, and now they’re dropping financial hydrogen bombs on us.  

According to The Village Voice, one of their deadliest and most lethal weapons has been the AIG Financial Products office in London, where a large proportion of those radioactive credit derivatives were written.

AIG had placed this unit outside American borders, which meant that it would not have to abide by American insurance reserve requirements. The president of AIGFP, a tyrannical super-salesman named Joseph Cassano, was an executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the now-defunct brokerage that became the pivot of the junk-bond scandal that led to the jailing of Michael Milken, David Levine, and Ivan Boesky.

During the peak years of derivatives trading, the 400 or so employees of the London unit reportedly averaged earnings in excess of a million dollars a year. They sold “protection”-this Runyonesque term was favored-worth more than three times the value of parent company AIG.

Those talented people are demanding the bonuses they’ve earned for that bang up job they’ve done hydrogen bombing everything in sight into radioactive rubble.  As Emptywheel warns, if we don’t give them their bonuses, they’ve threatened to trigger a default event that will cost the US government hundreds of billions of dollars.  

Sirens ring, shots ring out,

A stranger cries, he screams out loud.

He’s scared.  He has reason to be.  This economy was Dead on Arrival when Obama took office, and no matter how many tubes he sticks into it, it’s going to stay dead.  We need a new economy, a new economy based on worker’s rights, on economic justice, we need an economy that rewards the middle class for its contributions, an economy that cannot be exploited by Wall Street criminals and corporate magnates who don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves.  

And the same black line that was drawn on you,

Was drawn on me

That black line of consequences is getting blacker, it’s getting longer, it’s tightening around the necks of unemployed Americans like a noose.  More job losses, more home foreclosures, more evictions.  The consequences of Wall Street greed, the consequences of corporate media deceit, the consequences of Beltway arrogance and conceit, the arrogance and conceit of America’s political ruling class, America’s corporate masters, America’s war industry tycoons and oil barons and criminal bankers.   That black line of consequences has drawn me in, it’s drawn you in, it’s drawn everyone in . . .

In “The Big Dither” Paul Krugman warns:

There’s a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama’s failure to match his words with deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern.

Here’s how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators.  Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again.

Welcome to Monty Python’s Flying Bank Bailout Circus.  Everything is under control.  Nudge, nudge.  Wink, wink . . .    

Say no more, say no more.