This is what happens when you give bullies your lunch money instead of studying kung-fu

Almost one in every five Americans of working age is out of a job. Retirement savings, such as they are, have been decimated. Millions who ARE still working are barely getting by. Thirty years of conservative policy, and gutless Democrats who refuse to stop it, have brought the middle class to the brink of extinction.

So what do have have to look forward to if the Republicans take Congress in the fall?

A new economic plan that works? Hardly.

A strategy for ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? You gotta be kidding me.

Policies to help the middle class back on its feet? Yeah, right.

No, friends, if you liked the Republican Congress during the Clinton years, you'll LOVE what it has planned for Barack Obama:

President Barack Obama has stubbornly taken a "look forward, not backwards" philosophy to possible criminal acts during the Bush administration. But Republicans are sending signals that they will not take such an approach if they are able to win back the U.S. House of Reprsentatives in the November elections.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is strongly indicating that he will launch numerous investigations of the Obama administration if he becomes chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Issa already has raised questions about possible White House interference in U.S. Senate races in Pennsylvania and Colorado. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Issa made it clear that aggressive investigations are coming if he replaces Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) as chair of the Oversight Committee.

Regular Americans could wind up paying a huge economic price for Obama's timidity.

As we have stated on this blog several times, Obama could pay a heavy price for his decision to let Bush officials off the hook. Reports the Post:

From his perch as the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Issa has spent the last 15 months constantly blasting the Obama administration on nearly every controversy and calling for countless investigations that the Democratic-controlled committee refuses to order.

But Issa is finally starting to hit some of his targets. He was one of the leading Republicans in pushing the White House to reveal more details about its discussions to persuade Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) to forgo a Senate primary run against Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in return for a possible government job. Sestak won the primary, and now another Senate candidate challenging an incumbent Democrat, Andrew Romanoff in Colorado, has acknowledged having similar discussions with White House officials. Issa has suggested the White House violated the law and may have offered Sestak "a bribe" in the process, assertions that have not been proved.

Issa, however, is not a single-issue attack dog. He has shown that he will go after Obama from multiple directions:

He is also demanding the administration release details of Cabinet officials' travel to events that might benefit Democratic candidates, continuing to cast Obama as embracing "politics as usual."

"It is abundantly clear that this kind of conduct is contrary to President Obama's pledge to change 'business as usual' and that his administration has engaged in the kind of political shenanigans he once campaigned to end," he said.

Veteran journalist Robert Parry has written numerous times at Consortium News about Bill Clinton's decision to let apparent crimes of the Reagan and Bush I presidencies go uninvestigated. Republicans rewarded Clinton by promptly launching investigations of the president when they took back Congress in 1994. Clinton was hampered for the final six years he was in office, and his presidency never fully recovered.

Parry writes in a recent piece at Consortium News and Truthout that Obama appears to be heading down the same path:

If Republicans gain control of at least one house of Congress, they would surely launch a wave of investigations against Obama, much as the GOP did against Clinton.

Because this country has nothing else to worry about, right?

I just wonder one thing: If there is another attack on this country while the Republicans are sniffing around the West Wing, who will be blamed?