Calling bullshit on the White House and the SOTU - "Building a country ... where everyone is accountable for what they do"

this does NOT sit well with me...

White House aides said Monday that Obama will build on a speech he gave in Kansas last month. In it, Obama laid out what he called the two competing visions, a Republican blueprint for survival of the fittest that trusts unregulated markets to lift the country, and his vision, which asks the government to take an active hand.

"The State of the Union will be a bookend to the president's speech in Kansas last month about the central mission that we have as a country and his focus as president: Building a country and an economy where we reward hard work and responsibility, where everyone does their fair share, and where everyone is held accountable for what they do," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

boy, i sincerely hope obama uses those very words in the SOTU because they deserve to be hung around his neck like an albatross... obama came into office with one of the biggest opportunities to demonstrate and enforce accountability that have been given to any president in the history of this country and he not only blew them off, he made the principles of accountability and the rule of law in the united states global icons of hypocrisy...

i'm not going to chronicle the multiple instances where obama has given the finger to accountability... i've posted on it more times than i care to count along with folks like glenn greenwald, chris hedges and others... obama's record on accountability is nothing short of shameful and that he could even be considering pushing accountability as a focus in the sotu is beyond laughable... and yet he continues to add fuel to the fire as dean baker points out in today's piece on the mortgage fraud "settlement"...

Is the Obama Administration Soft on Crime?

That would seem to be the case from the leaks about a mortgage settlement which would reportedly give the banks and their executives immunity for all their misdeeds connected with the housing bubble in exchange for $20 billion in principle write-downs on underwater mortgages. And, Naked Capitalism reminds us that this $20 billion need not even come out of the banks' pockets. This includes write downs on mortgages that they are servicing, which means that the money would come out of investors' pockets.

Apart from the limited money at stake, the question is why would there be a reason to grant immunity for criminal wrong-doing? If people at these banks committed fraud, for example by lying about possessing documents that they did not possess, lying about the terms of loans to mortgage applicants or misrepresenting the mortgages in pools to investors, then why would we want to give them a get out of jail free card?

If no such fraud was committed, then there is no reason to include this sort of immunity in a settlement. The only reason to grant immunity of this type is if fraud was committed and the Obama administration wants to let the bankers off the hook.

i really don't want to watch the sotu tonight but probably will only if i have a good supply of anti-nausea medication on hand...

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