Excellent post Kim. I just set my t.v. to record the repeat of Olberman tonight.

What say me??? I think history will show that this president has done a terrible injustice to our country as a whole. However, I don't think it will show that we (the people) had any success in stopping him.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
also at Women 4 Hope and CatherineBlogs.com

Bush and Cheney absolutely should resign, but they won't. What Olbermann really should have done is call for the Democrats to grow some balls and move for impeachment -- Cheney first, and then Bush. They should both be tried for treason.

I'm sure Bush did what he did figuring he's got nothing left to lose politically by doing so. His act was far more evil than mere cronyism, though and is likely to fall outside the rules for commutation, given that he has a personal interest in what Libby can, or cannot, testify to.

The true evil, though, will be what the people of this nation will be doing if they allow this to go on unchecked and unanswered. Silence is as much of a crime as the crime itself.

karoli (odd time signatures)

It's laughable how we impeached a president for lying about getting laid, yet tolerate wholesale violations of law in the conduct of domestic and foreign policy.

I'm ambivalent on the notion of impeachment, another round would tear open the wounds to an even greater extent than now exists.

There is a huge and very ugly divide currently in this country, and we need to heal. We've been polarising for 25 years, to the point where we are now entrenched literally left and right.

America is first and foremost a moderate nation, neither conservative or liberal in the sense of how both would self define. And the answers we give on issues depends a great deal on who asks the question and how it is framed.

I've yet to decide who will get my vote this go round, but this need to heal will be prominent in my mind. Which candidate carries the greatest ability to bring forth this healing? When I look at things this way... my compass needle starts moving a bit towards a certain direction, but...

Having lived through presidents from Eisenhower to W, this guy wins the booby prize on the awful meter. I really don't think it's him so much as the atrocious staffing around him, who clearly had an agenda that focused on paper ideals, believing every action they took would carry popular support, be this within the country or in other nations.

And as usually happens, when it did not, they became increasingly paranoid, began to resort to tactics like spying and being just plain vindictive (Plame, Valerie outing) to audacious (US attorneys.)

They ignored some evidence to grasp onto what matched their belief. They felt no one had a right to disagree. Have taken venerable institutions (CDC) and reworked it's website to give idealogical misinformation.

There are lessons to be learned about who we choose as our leaders. Then again, we faced those same lessons in the early to mid 1970's, and here we are again.

I've digressed, but... no, no impeach, least not with the current information we have on hand. Let's just remember come November 2008 that we backed off and waited for that day for our chance to move forward.

nelle

Of course they should resign. Hello. Dick Cheney should put on an orange jumpsuit and go to Guantanamo Bay as an "enemy combatant" and George Bush should put on a military uniform and join a guard patrol in the streets of Baghdad in a deteriorating neighborhood. Whatever. Ain't gonna happen. Questions like "Should they resign" are useless in the face of reality. Plus, it's all fine and well to say "They should do x," while not thinking about what WE should do.

What SHOULD happen is that the American people should wake the f*ck up and start demanding accountability from their elected officials. We're not their subjects, THEY WORK FOR US. It's not just the administration that's failed, we've failed as a nation in not demanding the highest quality from our people, in not voting in the muscle to act, in not taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions.

Olberman gives fantastic and impassioned lectures that are not actionable and end up as little more than well scripted accusations. Meh, so Keith Olberman has accused the administration. So what? We get all heated up because he eloquently presents what's been getting up our noses all the time. But we're still taking the Hummer to the mall (you know I mean the abstract we, right?) and not demanding justice from the people we elected to give it to us.

I heard my rep, the outrageous and controversial Jim McDermott speak some time back. He said that when asked why he voted the way he did on any issue, he points at his mail. "Because the people TOLD me to." I don't believe we've told our reps enough about what we want. We sit here, stewing, deriding the state of the union, but then, we go get a latte. I strongly feel that our complacency as citizens is as much to blame as the policies of the administration.

Nerd's Eye View

there were little green men invading planet Earth and nobody would care, just like nobody cares about this foolish suggestion.

hehehe..that's funny and so true.

Wheat Among Tares

Alright, I need to jump in here.

I worked closely with Keith Olbermann during 9-11 and after as we were live on KFWB, so I feel as a professional colleague it would be remiss if I did not speak up.

Jshott writes above,
"Olberman is pretty much a nobody in the arena of political commentary, and his opinion is roundly ignored by most sensible people. He could issue an opinion that there were little green men invading planet Earth and nobody would care, just like nobody cares about this foolish suggestion."

Calling Olbermann "pretty much a nobody" in the arena of political commnentary couldn't be further from the truth.

From Wikipedia-

"Olbermann's show, Countdown, posted the largest gain, 76%, in total viewers (52% in viewers aged 25 to 54) for the first quarter of 2007 over the first quarter of 2006 in the 8pm timeslot, while O'Reilly's gains during that period were 5%, Nancy Grace's 12%, and Paula Zahn's suffered a loss of 10%.

While Bill O'Reilly still commands more viewers, Olbermann's numbers are steadily rising and he is taken seriously in various political circles-but obviously not in the ones JShott runs in.

I would love to claim the O'Reilly's and Limbaughs mean nothing in the world of political commentary, but I'm a realist-As I think you should be when you claim Olbermann has no pull.

I think you should also note Olbermann did not call for these resignations on the Libby incident alone-in fact it seems to be a footnote in his commentary. We are all well aware of history, and I look forward to the day this current administration is judged in history. It won't be pretty.

Politics & News Contributing Editor
Queen of Spain

Hopefully, sensible people don't listen to O'Reilly or Limbaugh either.

I think the point is that it's a lot of rhetoric. Where are the people moving forward with impeachment and resignation cries? It's like the Will Rogers' quote (or maybe Mark Twain?) "Everybody's always talking about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it."

What is the actual effect of such a statement other than to get people to say, "Yeah...they should resign!"

It makes for good TV, but will congress be saying the same thing on the floor of the Houses of Representatives?

Wheat Among Tares

The way he explained his commuting of Libby's sentence with a simple, "I did what I thought was right." I cannot imagine that our leaders have so little regard for their citizens, constituents, and the wellbeing of human kind.

But to me, Libby isn't a big deal. Clinton pardoned Marc Rich as he was living office; it was sleazy. The Libby situation is emblematic of a much larger problem with Bush and Cheney, which is that the people have no control over our leaders. They are two crazy men on a mission and no one else seems to be able to weigh in. Libby did, but we know what happened to him...

These men DO NOT listen to us. It is the most frustrating thing in the world, because yes, they do work for us, but they don't care.

It seems as if the comment that What's-His-Name wrote has been deleted from this thread..

May I ask why?

I don't recall him saying anything obscene or particularly abusive. Was it deleted simply because he disagreed?

Commenters are not permitted to delete their own comments, at least as far as I can tell. Does that mean an administrator deleted it? If so, why?

Wheat Among Tares

Huh. I just noticed that too.

No idea. I wonder if you can delete your own? Going to see if I can do it...just to try.

Politics & News Contributing Editor
Queen of Spain

Hi Kim

My very first comment on this thread was in response to Jshott. He had basically dissed Keith Olbermann, upsetting some other commenters in the process.

If you look at my first comment here, you'll see that it doesn't make any sense in relation to everything else, because it was made to the now-missing comment.

I guess maybe we can delete our own comments.? If so, I wish I would have known that before! :-) I could have done a disappearing act in threads that eventually got too heated.

Wheat Among Tares

Kim,
I didn't think that you would delete a comment simply for disagreeing, I just hadn't seen that happen before.

Lisa,
Thanks for explaining the *mysterious, disappearing comment.* :-)

Wheat Among Tares