Happy July 4th; Watch Olbermann's brilliant Libby rant

By John McDaid | Wednesday, 4 July 2007

While you're kicking back tomorrow, think back to a simpler time when the twisted old crook Richard Nixon realized that he had pushed his luck too far and resigned. Keith Olbermann sketches a brilliant analogy between the Saturday Night Massacre and the Libby Pardon, and I think you can guess where it leads...

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them — or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them — we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time — and our leaders in Congress, of both parties — must now live up to those standards which echo through our history:

Pressure, negotiate, impeach — get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

And for you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task.

You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed.

Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone — anyone – about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Good night, and good luck.
— Crooks and Liars has the video.

Just for giggles, another quote for the Fourth...

The history of the present [...] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.[...]

Sound familiar?

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Comments

English

Wed, 07/04/2007 - 8:35am

Olbermann put into words what I've been feeling/thinking the past few days. I feel at such a loss to combat this administration's unbelievable hubris. I can only hope that like most acts of hubris, this results in a downfall. Unfortunately, I don't think it will be Bush-Cheney (Rove) who will suffer the downfall, but rather the America people and our ideals. I am tired of letting them turn dissent into treason, disagreement into anti-Americanism, free speech into something that must be sacrificed for the illusion of safety; that they forget that when soldiers fight and die in the name of the U.S., they do so so we can criticize the government openly and seek an avenue for "redress of grievances".

And some random thoughts on this important day:

My partner is in Europe on business today and each time he goes he has to answer questions about why our government is doing what it's doing. He was fully expecting to have to explain that the vast majority of Americans are outraged by this commutation of Libby. It's one "WFT!" after another.

I am extremely proud of the high school students who presented Bush with a letter condemning torture; I am sickened and saddened by Bush's too-easy lie in response, and even sicker and sadder in my hunch that this is the truth to him, that he recreates his world in his own image each morning. (There is a good blog from one of the students here - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leah-anthony-libresco/what-i-learned-at-th...)

595 days seems like a long time, but I know his last day will finally get here. My fear is that it still leaves a lot of days in which to do damage in this age of a dearth of checks and balance.

I would love to see Bush wave from the tarmac and fly away from the White House as Nixon did, but as I watch Cheney's claims that he is not to be held accountable for his actions because of loopholes in the vice president's role, I highly doubt he would join Bush. President Cheney would hardly be a step forward, and Rove escapes the whole mess unscathed and still intact.

I tried to find the quote from A Separate Peace about the fat men in suits who make the decisions while the soldiers fight and die, but I was able to find this poem by WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon, and I'll leave you with it.

Base Details

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say -- "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die -- in bed.

Siegfried Sassoon

Happy Fourth! Now more than ever, it's important to not be silent or silenced.

English

John McDaid

Wed, 07/04/2007 - 10:45am

Hi, English...
Thank you so much for your comments -- I thought the high school students did an awesome job of speaking truth to power, an inspiration and a reminder of what we should all be about.

Couldn't get the full quote from Separate Peace either (Chapter 8 is not available in the Google Books search, but I did find a non-authoritative version on one of the many online term paper mills (at least they have some purpose...)

"That kept the people who were young in the thirties in their places. But they couldn’t use that excuse forever, so for us in the forties they’ve cooked up this war fake…The fat old men who don’t want us crowding them out of their jobs."

That reminds me of a description of war in my favorite novel, Gravity's Rainbow which is as on-target today as it was in 1972.

"Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and the violence are self-policing and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of the Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. Organic markets, carefully styled "black" by the professionals, spring up everywhere. Scrip, Sterling, Reichsmarks continue to move, severe as classical ballet, inside their antiseptic marble chambers."
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, Bantam ed. p152

And that was back in '72, when the Novus Ordo Seculorum was only a twinkle in Dick Cheney's eye.

Best,
-j

Karen

Wed, 07/04/2007 - 11:44am

While not as eloquent as the musings and quotations from English and John, here is KO's preview of coming attractions, from yesterday's "Worst Person in the World."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYGd8C95VEM

Happy 4th!