Give Us Liberty

I Wanted to Impeach Bush. Now I Want to Impeach Obama

March 16th, 2011 Below is an article written by a left-wing activist who called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush. Unlike so many of his comrades, he believes that since Barack Obama is carrying out many of the same policies set in place by his predecessor, Obama deserves to be impeached, as well. While conservatives may disagree with some — though perhaps not all — of the author’s criticisms, he is joining a growing number of leftists and Democrats angered, nervous, or ready to jump-ship on the Obama presidency. A recent poll posted on DailyKos found 13 percent of liberals support impeaching Obama. Whatever their motivation, we applaud their consistency in calling out a president of their own party. If enough conservatives speak out, perhaps a few Congressmen will show the same courage. Click here to sign the petition to impeach Obama. — The Ed.
David Swanson, American Chronicle

Richard Nixon’s White House Counsel John Dean, while Bush was president, predicted that Bush’s successor would be one of two things, either the best or the worst president in history. He, or she, would either undo the damage and prosecute the crimes, or protect the criminals and continue the abuses. Obama has protected the criminals, continued many of the abuses, more firmly established the power to commit those abuses, and expanded abusive powers beyond what Bush ever attempted. I’m not trying to quantify and determine whether Obama has grabbed “more” new abusive powers than Bush did. I’m simply pointing out that, as with previous presidents, Obama has retained the powers bequeathed him and added some…
The Education Department pushes corporatization, privatization, and testing. The trade agreements are all corporate…President Obama is taking the budget from the Bush years, adding to the military, and cutting or freezing everything else. The budgetary crisis in state governments and in people’s homes continues to worsen. The Wall Street and corporate bailouts that Obama helped Bush impose on us have only escalated since Obama moved to the White House…Obama has not added as much to the military budget as Bush did, but he has added to Bush’s largest military budget, enlarging it further each year — and with activist groups and news reports tending to falsely report that he’s cutting it…For a time, Obama had more troops and mercenaries in the field than Bush had ever had.He stood in front of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives and tossed habeas corpus into the trash bin…This is Bush-Cheney-level secrecy with the pretense that it isn’t. And it’s worse. Obama has set records for rejecting Freedom of Information Act requests and for prosecutions of whistle blowers…
So why not impeach Obama? I clamored for the impeachment of Bush. I say Obama is as bad or worse. Why am I such a corrupt hypocrite that I haven’t built a movement to impeach Obama? Well, I’ll tell you, as I’ve told people more times than I can count. Obama should be impeached and convicted and removed from office. Obama should be prosecuted for his crimes. So should his subordinates. (Emphasis added.) So should his predecessor, his subordinates, and all corporate co-conspirators. The reason I can’t get 20 people into the streets to demand Obama’s impeachment (and if I did, they’d want him impeached for being born in Africa to aliens from Planet Socialism) is that nobody in Congress is even pretending to give a damn. We were able to produce a sizeable movement for impeachment when Bush was in office, because a lot of Democrats in Congress, especially in 2005 and 2006, pretended they were on our side. I say “pretended” as a way to indicate not that they didn’t agree with us, but that they were not committed to trying very hard.
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