Obama Administration Essentially Admits That Some Banks Are Too Big To Jail

We are going to find out what we should have learned in Obama's first term, he is an tool of big business. The failure to criminally prosecute any banker for the massive fraud of that bank is...criminal. More and more we are learning that Occupy Wall Street was right. The government rescued the banks for their criminality rather than prosecute them. The truth can no longer be covered-up:

One of the great things about being too big to fail is that you're also too big to jail, apparently.

So saith the Obama administration, via the New York Times, in its front-page story on Tuesday about HSBC's settlement with the government over money-laundering charges. Though the British banking giant had to pay a wrist-stinging $1.9 billion, the settlement helped it avoid formal criminal charges. The NYT quotes anonymous government officials who say they were skittish about indicting HSBC because formal charges would amount to a "death penalty" for the bank, potentially roiling the financial system.

This is at least three very specific flavors of bullshit.

Obamacare Architect Also Lobbied for Big Pharma

This report from the The Young Turks shows how totally corrupt Washington is. Liz Fowler is a top lobbyists for the pharmaceutical companies. She is also an "author" of Obamacare. While she was pushing the healthcare plan she also worked on behalf of the companies who stood to profit from it. And they did. She was essentially a double-agent for the healthcare industry. And it happened with the knowledge and support of her employers the Obama White House and Senator Max Baucus.

Salon: Obama Using the Karl Rove 2004 Playbook

Like his predecessors, Obama will do anything and everything to get re-elected. Many of his followers will go along because they've been brainwashed into believing the 'ends-justifies-the-means' because he is the 'lesser-of-two-evils' argument. And as a result we will get more of the failed policies that have been destroying this country for decades:

Barack Obama’s presidency was born from nothing so much as his repudiation of George W. Bush’s administration — its policies and politics, its style and tone. One of Obama’s most effective 2008 stump speech refrains was his promise to end the era of “Scooter Libby justice, ‘Brownie’ incompetence and Karl Rove politics.”

But the political dynamics for winning a second presidential term often differ markedly from winning the first. So don’t be surprised by many eerie parallels between Obama’s 2012 reelection bid and Bush’s 2004 campaign. The president may not rely upon “Karl Rove politics” in the strictest sense, and nobody would confuse David Axelrod with Rove. But Obama’s reelection route and rhetoric may bear more than a few Rovian hallmarks.

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Prisoner gets 41% against Obama in WV Primary

How appropriate. They're all crooks anyway:

President Obama is so unpopular with some West Virginia Democrats that they voted for a prisoner in yesterday's primary.

A prisoner in Texas, no less.

Keith Judd, who is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas for making threats, actually got 41% of the vote against Obama in the West Virginia Democratic primary.

Gallup Poll: 50% of Americans Support Gay Marriage

This explains why Obama is flip-flopping on the issue. This President won't take a principled position unless it helps his chances for re-election. He is the consummate politician: leadership by following the polls.

Reporter, Jessica Yellen, said that the President had made the "convoluted" decision to not support gay marriage because the issue is unpopular among African-Americans and other groups. He is making assurances that once he got elected he would come out for gay marriage. This explains Biden's recent ambiguous comments on the topic. They are playing with their gay supporters. And many of them are not having it. Pro-gay marriage groups are threatening to withhold campaign donations to the President.

Obama has done nothing but betray his supporters since moving to the White House. The duplicity on gay marriage is typical of Barack. How many times does he have to lie to us before we wise up. He's a typical politician. Don't believe him anymore.

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Transcript: Obama Re-election Campaign Kick-off Speech (5-5-12)

Nothing has changed since 2008:

"We came together in 2008 because our country had strayed from these basic values.  A record surplus was squandered on tax cuts for people who didn’t need them and weren’t even asking for them.  Two wars were being waged on a credit card.  Wall Street speculators reaped huge profits by making bets with other people’s money.  Manufacturing left our shores.  A shrinking number of Americans did fantastically well, while most people struggled with falling incomes, rising costs, the slowest job growth in half a century. 

"It was a house of cards that collapsed in the most destructive crisis since the Great Depression.  In the last six months of 2008, even as we were campaigning, nearly three million of our neighbors lost their jobs.  Over 800,000 more were lost in the month I took office alone.

But he is forced to admit his failure. No sense lying a woeful record:

 OBAMA: "Of course not.  Too many of our friends and family are still out there looking for work.  The housing market is still weak, deficits are still too high, and states are still laying off teachers, first responders.  This crisis took years to develop, and the economy is still facing headwinds.  And it will take sustained, persistent effort -- yours and mine -- for America to fully recover.  That’s the truth.  We all know it.

Full Transcript

Obama administration urges freer access to cellphone records

This President has as bad or worse record on civil liberties as George W. Bush:

The U.S. Congress should pass a law to give investigators freer access to certain cellphone records, an Obama administration official said on Thursday, in remarks that raised concern among advocates of civil liberties and privacy.

[...]Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican House of Representatives member Jason Chaffetz of Utah proposed a bill last year trying to detail a legal framework, including requiring a warrant for acquiring location information for a person; however the legislation has not advanced.

Impatient gay-rights groups keep pressure on Obama

Obama knows in the end the gay rights groups will come back running to him:

The refrain sounded by his aides is accurate: Barack Obama has done more for the cause of gay rights than any president before him.

Nonetheless, gay-rights activists and organizations are on the president's case these days, pressing him for further steps on two fronts and suggesting that political timidity is holding him back.

One source of frustration is Obama's stance on same-sex marriage - he has yet to endorse it even though he advocates equal rights for gay and lesbian couples. Tensions may mount as activists and many leading Democrats call for the Democratic National Convention to support marriage equality in the platform it will adopt in September.

The other dispute involves a months-long campaign by gay-rights advocates urging Obama to issue an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Congress Revolts On Obama Plan That Would Ban 'Buy American'

This President proves once again that he has no loyalty to American workers. And still unions plan supporting this anti-labor administration. It is astonishing that Obama continues spit in the eye of working people and the poor and we still just keep buying his lies. He has betrayed his supporters and party. WAKE-UP. Don't be conned any further. Think for yourself. Barack Obama is a fraud:

A group of 68 House Democrats and one Republican sent a letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday urging him to reconsider an element of the controversial free trade agreement currently being negotiated by the administration. If approved in its current form, the pact would effectively ban "Buy American" policies in government contracting.

Although the deal, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, has received relatively little media attention in the United States, it has sparked international friction among consumer groups and environmental activists who worry that terms demanded by the Obama administration will eliminate important public protections. Domestically, however, the deal's primary source of political tension is from a portion that could ban "Buy American" provisions -- a restriction that opponents emphasize would crimp U.S. jobs.

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Obama Fails to Stem Middle-Class Slide He Blamed on Bush

Sadly there are still millions of Americans who still believe in the fraud who is Barack Obama. He lied to us. We should not be surprised. Democrats and Republicans have been lying to us for decades. So why should he be any different:

Barack Obama campaigned four years ago assailing President George W. Bush for wage losses suffered by the middle class. More than three years into Obama’s own presidency, those declines have only deepened.

The rebound from the worst recession since the 1930s has generated relatively few of the moderately skilled jobs that once supported the middle class, tightening the financial squeeze on many Americans, even those who are employed.

“It started long before Obama, but he hasn’t done anything,” said John Forsyth, 58, a railroad-car inspector and political independent from Lebanon, Ohio. “He kept pushing this change, change, change, and he hasn’t done anything.”

Underlying the erosion of the middle class, defined by some economists as the middle 60 percent of income earners, are trends that stretch back decades, including competition from lower-wage workers overseas and technological advances that allow factories and offices to produce more with less labor.

As a candidate in 2008, Obama blamed the reversals largely on the policies of Bush and other Republicans. He cited census figures showing that median income for working-age households -- those headed by someone younger than 65 -- had dropped more than $2,000 after inflation during the first seven years of Bush’s time in office.

Yet real median household income in March was down $4,300 since Obama took office in January 2009 and down $2,900 since the June 2009 start of the economic recovery, according to an analysis of census data by Sentier Research, an economic- consulting firm in Annapolis, Maryland.

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Obama appoints top campaign bundler to Netherlands ambassador post

"Change" you can believe in?

President Obama has nominated a top campaign bundler to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, following in a rich presidential tradition of granting diplomatic posts to big-dollar fundraisers.

The White House announced this past week that Maryland lawyer Timothy Broas would be nominated for the Dutch ambassadorship.

According to the Obama campaign, Broas has helped raise more than $500,000 for the 2012 reelection effort. By law, Broas cannot contribute all that money himself -- so he, like other so-called "bundlers," serves as a fundraising point person and collects money from others to donate to the campaign.

These bundlers are frequently rewarded with prestigious positions -- in the administrations of President Obama as well as his predecessors. The Center for Responsive Politics estimated that Obama nominated two-dozen fundraisers to ambassador positions within his first year in office.

Biden to fundraiser crowd: 'You all look dull as hell'

This administration has nothing but contempt for it's supporters:

"I guess what I’m trying to say without boring you too long at breakfast –- and you all look dull as hell, I might add," he told a crowd of more than 200 fundraisers from the Turkish and Azerbaijani communities in Washington DC. "The dullest audience I have ever spoken to. Just sitting there, staring at me. Pretend you like me!”

The comment was met with laughs, per a White House pool reporter on the scene of the $2,500-per-ticket fundraising breakfast.

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ACORN founder says Barack Obama helped bring down group

Obama has thrown all his biggest supporters under the bus. Unfortunately, there are still fooled by this fraud:

Conservative videographer/activist James O'Keefe, and the late Andrew Breitbart, a right-wing Internet publisher, still get the credit for toppling ACORN. But ACORN founder Wade Rathke of New Orleans said President Barack Obama deserves credit for an assist.

In an online book salon on the left-wing site, Firedoglake, Rathke, who relinquished the ACORN helm before the O'Keefe/Breitbart controversy, said the group's fall also had something to do with the fact that the former community organizer that ACORN helped put in the White House buckled under the pressure mounted by Breitbart and O'Keefe.

"I'm not saying (ACORN"s leadership) thought they were going to be sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom, but unlike an old, cynical street organizer like myself, they may have thought unrealistically that they would have some access and some input," said Rathke.

"When Obama turned tail and ran from them in the election and then threw them under the bus on the video ... I think that sucked the soul out of some of the folks who had strategized a new role for ACORN and its members from his presidency. That was clearly never going to happen anyway, but to the degree some were betting heavily on that as a way to pull out of the spiral, it was clearly not going to occur."

Source

Obama oil margin plan could increase price swings

Source: Reuters

President Barack Obama's bid to dampen the influence of oil speculators by having regulators set trading margins could backfire, potentially making prices even more volatile and leaving crude dominated only by those with the deepest pockets.

Robert Reich: What Obama's plan for fixing the economy should be

Come to think about, when is the last time you heard President propose an idea for creating jobs:

President Obama’s electoral strategy can best be summed up as: “We’re on the right track, my economic policies are working, we still have a long way to go but stick with me and you’ll be fine.”

That’s not good enough. This recovery is too anemic, and the chance of an economic stall between now and Election Day far too high.

Even now, Mitt Romney’s empty “I’ll to it better” refrain is attracting as many voters as Obama’s “we’re on the right track.” Each man is gathering 46 percent of voter support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. Only 33 percent of the public thinks the economy is improving while 40 percent say they’re still falling behind financially — an 11 point increase from 2008. Nearly two-thirds are concerned about paying for housing, and one in five with mortgages say they’re underwater.

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LA Times Editorial: Obama anti-gun? Says who?

Just another example of the fraud who is Barack Obama:

Obama hasn't proposed any anti-gun legislation in his first term, and has rarely mentioned the topic. This makes us wonder how long the NRA and the politicians who do its bidding can continue to pretend there's a wolf at the door before people look outside and discover that wolves are an endangered species.

The answer, based on last week's annual NRA convention, is apparently forever.

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Ted Nugent Threatens Barack Obama

This kind of talk is traitorous:

Ted Nugent -- the proud gun-owner, poorly coiffed Michigander, and washed-up rocker -- has said some silly and offensive things in the past, and not just while performing "Cat Scratch Fever." In 2007, he said the following during a concert: "Obama, he's a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary [Clinton], you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch."

So that's his level of political discourse. Of course, he seems to be speaking figuratively if distastefully. But he made another rather appalling statement over the weekend at the NRA convention in St. Louis:

If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year.

Growth of Income Inequality Is Worse Under Obama than Bush

Finally we have someone on the Left willing to expose the Obama fraud. There are some who are going to stick to their principals and not sellout:

Yesterday, the President gave a speech in which he demanded that Congress raise taxes on millionaires, as a way to somewhat recalibrate the nation's wealth distribution. His advisors, like Gene Sperling, are giving speeches talking about the need for manufacturing. A common question in DC is whether this populist pose will help him win the election. Perhaps it will. Perhaps not. Romney is a weak candidate, cartoonishly wealthy and from what I've seen, pretty inept. But on policy, there's a more interesting question.

A better puzzle to wrestle with is why President Obama is able to continue to speak as if his administration has not presided over a significant expansion of income redistribution upward. The data on inequality shows that his policies are not incrementally better than those of his predecessor, or that we're making progress too slowly, as liberal Democrats like to argue. It doesn't even show that the outcome is the same as Bush's. No, look at this table, from Emmanuel Saez (h/t Ian Welsh). Check out those two red circles I added.

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White House Opens Door to Big Donors, and Lobbyists Slip In

So really think Obama listens to you? Not unless you have thousands of dollars lying around to give to him. And if you plan to donate $100 to the campaign forget about getting invited to the White House. You ain't a player. Although, there is the occasional lottery-drawing-type invite for the little people:

Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard. Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits.

More broadly, the review showed that those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times.

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President Obama’s Secretary Paid Higher Tax Rate Than He Did

Maybe we should call it the "The Obama Rule." Don't expect the President to mention this omission during his campaigning swings:

President Obama today released his 2011 federal income tax, with he and his wife reporting an adjusted gross income of $789,674. The Obamas paid $162,074 in total tax – an effective federal income tax rate of 20.5%. The Obamas also reported donating approximately 22% of their income to charity — $172,130.

President Obama has been making a big political push for the “Buffett Rule,” which would require millionaires to pay a minimum of 30% of their income in taxes. To illustrate the point, the president has pointed out that billionaire investor Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than does his secretary.

President Obama’s secretary, Anita Decker Breckenridge, makes $95,000 a year. White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage tells ABC News that Breckenridge “pays a slightly higher rate this year on her substantially lower income, which is exactly why we need to reform our tax code and ask the wealthiest to pay their fair share. ”

Maybe this is why the President extended the Bush tax cuts. We won't be having this discussion if Obama had allowed the dreadful Bush tax cut to expire in the first place. But that would make this President other than a typical back-stabbing politician:

 It should be noted that president would not be impacted by the Buffett Rule, though he would see his taxes go up if the so-called Bush tax cuts on higher income wage-earners were allowed to expire, as the president says he wants.

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