Sat. a.m. 5/16/09. Great minds think alike: a very large THANKS!! for your piece on credit unions. Over the past month, I've sent out this message countless times:

WHAT TO DO WITH THE BANKS?

TURN THEM INTO CREDIT UNIONS!!

I don't flatter myself that this had any influence, but it's so damned OBVIOUS!!

The reason that Obama doesn't turn to the credit unions, is that they were probably not contributors to his campaign. As for all the disappointed lovers, alas, one can only say "I told you so." Obama was hired to try to rescue capitalism from itself yet one more time; otherwise, he would never have been allowed to run.

The only answer, in my opinion, is the General Strike, but the consciousness for that does not exist in this country. How do we begin to build that?

Keep up your good work; we need you!!

"I don't recall" is now "that would depend." While then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, when testifying before Congress, was oddly unable to remember anything prior to that morning's breakfast, now Attorney General Eric Holder is oddly unable to forecast what, if anything, he will do to hold government officials accountable to the rule of law.

On Thursday, Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman Brad Sherman asked Holder what he would do if a government official was clearly and blatantly violating the law, was misspending funds on a project they had not been appropriated for, or was refusing to make public information in a manner clearly and explicitly required by law. Sherman asked about specific current examples and didn't get a straight answer. He then asked a more general hypothetical question, and still didn't get a straight answer. Sherman asked a third time, and still got nowhere. Holder avoided saying that, even as a general principle, he would ever prosecute a government official. (Here's video).

There are many reasons why progressives will mobilize behind the campaign of Marcy Winograd, who announced on Monday that she’ll challenge incumbent Congresswoman Jane Harman in the 2010 Democratic primary.

Some will speak of Harman’s pro-war record. Some will recall her support for warrantless wiretapping, followed by her irony-free indignation when it turned out that NSA snoops had taped her own phone conversations. Some will recount Harman’s long public silence after being briefed on torture by the U.S. government.

And then there’s the extensive evidence that Rep. Harman has gone over the top to do the bidding of the Israeli government and some of its most extreme supporters in the United States.

But what may be most significant about Winograd’s race to unseat Harman in 2010 is that it reflects -- and is likely to help nurture -- a growing maturity among progressives around the country who are tired of merely complaining about centrist Democrats in Congress.

Many progressives are getting a clear take-home message: Let’s stop griping about lousy members of Congress and start defeating them.

As hundreds of our hard-earned billions are being poured into corrupt, greed-driven, lethally inefficient banks, the Administration, Congress and corporate media have studiously avoided the one sector of the banking industry that actually works---the credit unions.

Throughout the United States there are hundreds of these people-powered banks that have succeeded and prospered while all around them the traditional banking has collapsed into ruin, taking our general economy with them.

Why?

Because unlike those private banks, the America's 10,000 not-for-profit credit unions are controlled by the people who deposit their money there. Loans are made only to members. The deposits are federally insured, and investments are monitored by the depositors and, allegedly, by federal regulators.

For the most part, their decisions are made democratically. Their boards of directors are elected. Increasingly those decisions have been oriented funneling resources into new green industries whose future is bright, and that actually serve that public rather than raping it.

The sister of the Rove IT guru whose small plane crashed shortly after he became "exhibit A" in a 2004 Ohio vote-rigging lawsuit has now voiced doubts that the crash was an accident.  She told a Wisconsin newspaper:

"At first, it was really hard for me to believe Mike was dead because somebody wanted him dead.  But as time goes on, it's hard for me not to believe there was something deliberate about it."

Mike Connell was to be a star witness in an Ohio 2004 election lawsuit which alleges that the election was stolen from John Kerry.  Audio here of an interview on Air America with Steven Spoonamore, the Republican IT expert who blew the whistle on Rove, Connell, and others.   Connell was hired as one of Rove's IT wizards after the Republicans took power in 2000.