Should be McChrystal fired ??

Keith Olbermann Special Comment

Special Comment on the self-destruction of General Stanley McChrystal. "We have the highest respect for General McChrystal and honor his brave service and sacrifice to our nation. General McChrystal`s comments, as reported in ` Rolling Stone,` are inappropriate and inconsistent with the traditional relationship between Commander-in-Chief and the military." Senators Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman, and John McCain said that. They left out the far greater truth, that the comments are inappropriate and inconsistent with the traditional relationship between military and civilian authority and are thus intolerable. We can honor his service, the way we honor the service of General Curtis LeMay, or the way we honor the service of General Douglas MacArthur, forever blemished, forever compromised, forever instructive that however much credit each heroic soldier deserves, he and his comrades are not the masters of this country, but its employees. It is the fundamental tenet on which this nation rests; it is what has kept us from any serious dalliance with a militaristic government in all our long history; it is the simple balanced poetry that has saved us from the threat of military overthrow and dictatorship for 234 years, while nearly all the other great nations of the world, from Germany to Japan, have succumbed to it, again and again.

And what happens next should be no surprise to anybody: General McChrystal will walk into the White House tomorrow and offer his resignation, not just from his leadership position in Afghanistan, but from military service itself. And that, Mr. President, is when you should thank him for that service. And you should thank him for whatever admission he makes about the chain of command. And that is when, Sir, presuming he recognizes his rank stupidity and his erasure of that inviolable line between the military and the civilian, you should say you are heartened that he realizes the depth and breadth of his idiocy. And that is when, Sir, you should take General McChrystal`s resignation, and fold it up, and put it in your top drawer, and tell him that that is where it will remain, and that as of now you are not accepting it. Correct. He tenders his resignation. You tell him to get the hell back to Afghanistan because he`s not getting out of this morass he helped create, and tell him to make sure we get the surge troops withdrawn on time or faster if he can. And then, Sir, you sit back and watch the political world`s collective jaw drop. This would not be mere contrariness, nor even the satisfying destabilization of the entire political climate, although those would be fun, too. Consider the last Administration. Let`s look at the list alphabetically. General John Abizaid of CentCom expressed public skepticism about the Bush surge in Iraq, replaced. General George Casey, Iraq, expressed public skepticism about the Bush surge in Iraq, replaced. Admiral William Fallon, ex-head of CentCom, told " Esquire Magazine" we should not use force against Iran, retired by Mr. Bush. Dr. Larry Lindsey, director of the National Economic Council, told Mr. Rumsfeld estimated that war in Iraq would cost 60 billion dollars. He said, no, 200 billion. Rumsfeld called that "baloney." Lindsey was fired. It was "baloney." It cost three trillion dollars. General Eric Shinsecki, Army Chief of Staff, warned that the Rumsfeld troop estimates were disastrously low, hundreds of thousands would be needed for occupation, "vilified, then marginalized" by Bush. General Anthony Zinni, Marines, Retired, Middle East Envoy, said that the President had far more pressing foreign policy priorities to face than Iraq, and that the trouble would start in Iraq after the war itself ended, not reappointed. Remember, this from the previous President whose empty, but lovely- sounding catchphrase was `I listen to the commanders on the ground.` It was true. He did listen. And then he fired all the ones who dared to tell him the truth. It cannot be argued that General McChrystal has said anything as controversial, as jarring, as upsetting to the status quo as any of the men Bush ignored, and in ignoring, led to the deaths of Americans, and to the wasting of money and our international goodwill. McChrystal made, to be blunt about it, a fool out of himself. He called a lot of people names. He has previously been involved in the leak of his own complaints demanding more troops and faster decisions in Afghanistan. And most heinously -- and this is the toughest part of this pill to swallow -- he was the facilitator in the cover-up of the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman. It is difficult to bypass an opportunity for retribution and humiliation against such a man. But more opportunities for that will come in time. It is not McChrystal that matters right now. It is doubtful he is an irreplaceable general officer. It is doubtful he will influence Afghanistan much one way or the other. That mistake has been made already by this military and this President. But, Mr. President, consider the after-math of McChrystal`s resignation or firing. If, in the America of 1951, the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur, a strutting peacock of a soldier with a corncob pipe prop and a messianic complex, could turn the politics of the time on its head because Harry Truman had had the temerity to fire him after he said we should use nukes against the Chinese and create an impassible radioactive zone in the Far East-- if that happened then, what exactly will the ouster of General McChrystal provoke, no matter how justified, in our stupid, under-informed, constantly propagandized America of 2010? Who will be the first to identify McChrystal as a martyr to the evil Obama Administration? How many Americans, still looking for a rationalization to justify their rage at a Democratic president, or a black one, or an intelligent one, will have new fuel to feed their blind hatred? Keep him, Mr. President. You will not merely neuter the political blowback, you will present a front of force and calm and intelligence and a willingness to, dare I use the phrase Sir -- a willingness to listen to the Commanders on the ground, even when they shoot off their big brass-covered bazoos. You can own this man, Mr. President, and own the political aftermath, which is now pregnant with opportunities for your critics. The General can be your voice to speed up the de-escalation. My goodness, he could be your mouthpiece if you suddenly saw the morass for what it is and decided to declare victory and get the hell out now. Who would fight with you on that, Sir? You would be the President who defended General McChrystal after he humiliated himself. You would be the leader sensitive to the military, and its needs, and its failures, and its pressures. President Obama has pushed the Abraham Lincoln thing from the day he declared his candidacy. It may serve him well tonight to consider the third of the eight generals Lincoln employed to run the Union Army during the Civil War. After the Antietam disaster, Mr. Lincoln cashiered General McClellan, the hugely popular "Young Napoleon," promoted John Pope of Illinois. His advisors were horrified. Pope, as Shelby Foote recalled in Ken Burns`s documentary, was a liar and a braggart. Yes, said Lincoln, in fact I knew his family back in Illinois. All the Popes were liars and braggarts. I see no particular reason why a liar and a braggart shouldn`t make a good general. Pope did not win the Civil War, but in appointing him, Lincoln made it plain that what he needed from his Generals was usefulness, not etiquette. And which is more useful to this President and this nation right now? A martyred ex- General, around which an irresponsible and potentially dangerous opposition can coalesce? Or a spared and humbled General, surely no worse than any potential replacement, whose retention can recalculate the political formula, without a drop of blood, or a drop of tears, being shed? Good night and good luck.

Keith Olbermann Comment on SOTU night

OLBERMANN: There is doubt among those who elected him that this president has proved the leadership requisite to regaining control of this country. From the banks, from the insurers, from the corporations, and given to the people.

There should also be no doubt that this president is capable of that leadership. Others have been, in times bleaker still, with fewer weapons at hand. “Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that government is best, which is most indifferent.” So said Franklin D. Roosevelt on the 31^st of October, 1936, as he sought a second term against those who would freeze government spending and comfort the banks, while letting the people founder.

Change begins with saying aloud that which is wrong, saying it loudly and clearly, challenging those who would defend the wrong. The rest of it is best heard as Mr. Roosevelt said it, just three blocks from here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs.

And we know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before, in all our history, have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: And there, Mr. President, is your template. Welcome their hatred. Seize the mood of this nation, identical tonight to what it was in 1936, nearly, as Mr. Roosevelt perfectly captured it. “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.” And aspire also to what he added. “I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.”

Olbermann: U.S. government for sale

With no limits on campaign financing, corporations will take over the government

SPECIAL COMMENT

By Keith Olbermann - Anchor, 'Countdown'

updated 9:29 p.m. ET Jan. 21, 2010

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the Supreme Court's ruling today in the case titled "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission."

On the cold morning of Friday, March 6th, 1857, a very old man who was born just eight months and thirteen days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted; a man who was married to the sister of the man who wrote "The Star Spangled Banner;" a man who was enlightened enough to have freed his own slaves and given pensions to the ones who had become too old to work read aloud, in a reed-thin voice, a very long document.

In it, he ruled on a legal case involving a slave, brought by his owner to live in a free state; yet to remain a slave.

The slave sought his freedom, and sued. And looking back over legal precedent, and the Constitution, and the America in which it was created, this judge ruled that no black man could ever be considered an actual citizen of the United States.

"They had for more than a century before been, regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

The case, of course, was Dred Scott. The old man was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States of America, Roger Brooke Tawney. And the outcome, he believed, would be to remove the burning question of the abolition of slavery from the political arena for once and for all.

The outcome, in fact, was the Civil War. No American ever made a single bigger misjudgment. No American ever carried the responsibility for the deaths and suffering of more Americans. No American ever was more quickly vilified. Within four years Chief Justice Tawney's rulings were being ignored in the South and the North.

Within five, President Lincoln at minimum contemplated arresting him. Within seven, he died, in poverty, while still Chief Justice. Within eight, Congress had voted to not place a bust of him alongside those of the other former Chief Justices.

But good news tonight, Roger B. Tawney is off the hook.

Today, the Supreme Court, of Chief Justice John Roberts, in a decision that might actually have more dire implications than "Dred Scott v Sandford," declared that because of the alchemy of its 19th Century predecessors in deciding that corporations had all the rights of people, any restrictions on how these corporate-beings spend their money on political advertising, are unconstitutional.

In short, the first amendment — free speech for persons — which went into affect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886. In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations or unions or other giant aggregations of power to decide our elections.

None. They can spend all the money they want. And if they can spend all the money they want — sooner, rather than later — they will implant the legislators of their choice in every office from President to head of the Visiting Nurse Service.

And if senators and congressmen and governors and mayors and councilmen and everyone in between are entirely beholden to the corporations for election and re-election to office soon they will erase whatever checks there might still exist to just slow down the ability of corporations to decide the laws.

It is almost literally true that any political science fiction nightmare you can now dream up, no matter whether you are conservative or liberal, it is now legal. Because the people who can make it legal, can now be entirely bought and sold, no actual citizens required in the campaign-fund-raising process.

And the entirely bought and sold politicians, can change any laws. And any legal defense you can structure now, can be undone by the politicians who will be bought and sold into office this November, or two years from now.

And any legal defense which honest politicians can somehow wedge up against them this November, or two years from now, can be undone by the next even larger set of politicians who will be bought and sold into office in 2014, or 2016, or 2018.

Mentioning Lincoln's supposed ruminations about arresting Roger B. Tawney, he didn't say the original of this, but what the hell:

Right now, you can prostitute all of the politicians some of the time, and prostitute some of the politicians all the time, but you cannot prostitute all the politicians all the time. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts this will change. Unless this mortal blow is somehow undone, within ten years, every politician in this country will be a prostitute.

And now let's contemplate what that perfectly symmetrical, money-driven world might look like. Be prepared, first, for laws criminalizing or at least neutering unions. In today's Court Decision, they are the weaker of the non-human sisters unfettered by the Court. So, like in ancient Rome or medieval England, they will necessarily be strangled by the stronger sibling, the corporations, so they pose no further threat to the Corporations' total control of our political system.

Be prepared, then, for the reduction of taxes for the wealth, and for the corporations, and the elimination of the social safety nets for everybody else, because money spent on the poor means less money left for the corporations.

Be prepared, then, for wars sold as the "new products" which Andy Card once described them as, year-after-year, as if they were new Fox Reality Shows, because Military Industrial Complex Corporations are still corporations. Be prepared, then, for the ban on same-sex marriage, on abortion, on evolution, on separation of church and state. The most politically agitated group of citizens left are the evangelicals, throw them some red meat to feed their holier-than-thou rationalizations, and they won't care what else you do to this corporate nation.

Be prepared, then, for racial and religious profiling, because you've got to blame somebody for all the reductions in domestic spending and civil liberties, just to make sure the agitators against the United Corporate States of America are kept unheard.

Be prepared for those poor dumb manipulated bastards, the Tea Partiers, to have a glorious few years as the front men as the corporations that bankroll them slowly unroll their total control of our political system. And then be prepared to watch them be banished, maybe outlawed, when a few of the brighter ones suddenly realize that the corporations have made them the Judas Goats of American Freedom.

And be prepared, then, for the bank reforms that President Obama has just this day vowed to enable, to be rolled back by his successor purchased by the banks, with the money President Bush gave them his successor, presumably President Palin, because if you need a friendly face of fascism, you might as well get one that can wink, and if you need a tool of whichever large industries buy her first, you might as well get somebody who lives up to that word "tool."

Be prepared for the little changes, too. If there are any small towns left to take-over, Wal-Mart can now soften them up with carpet advertising for their Wal-Mart town council candidates, brought to you by Wal-Mart.

Be prepared for the Richard Mellon Scaifes to drop such inefficiencies as vanity newspapers and simply buy and install their own city governments in the Pittsburghs. Be prepared for the personally wealthy men like John Kerry to become the paupers of the Senate, or the ones like Mike Bloomberg not even surviving the primary against Halliburton's choice for Mayor of New York City.

Be prepared for the end of what you're watching now. I don't just mean me, or this program, or this network. I mean all the independent news organizations, and the propagandists like Fox for that matter, because Fox inflames people against the state, and after today's ruling, the corporations will only need a few more years of inflaming people, before the message suddenly shifts to "everything's great."

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh don't even realize it: today, John Roberts just cut their throats too. So, with critics silenced or bought off, and even the town assessor who lives next door to you elected to office with campaign funds 99.9 percent drawn from corporate coffers — what are you going to do about it? The Internet!

The Internet? Ask them about the Internet in China. Kiss net neutrality goodbye. Kiss whatever right to privacy you think you currently have, goodbye. And anyway, what are you going to complain about, if you don't even know it happened? In the new world unveiled this morning by John Roberts, who stops Rupert Murdoch from buying the Associated Press?

This decision, which in mythology would rank somewhere between "The Bottomless Pit" and "The Opening Of Pandora's Box," got next to no coverage in the right-wing media today, almost nothing in the middle, and a lot less than necessary on the left.

The right wing won't even tell their constituents that they are being sold into bondage alongside the rest of us. And why should they? For them, the start of this will be wonderful.

The Republicans, Conservatives, Joe Liebermans, and Tea Partiers are in the front aisle at the political prostitution store. They are specially discounted old favorites for their Corporate Masters. Like the first years of irreversible climate change, for the conservatives the previously cold winter will grow delightfully warm. Only later will it be hot. Then unbearable. Then flames.

And the conservatives will burn with the rest of us. And they'll never know it happened. So, what are you going to do about it? Turn to free speech advocates? These were the free speech advocates! The lawyer for that Humunculous who filed this suit, Dave Bossie, is Floyd Abrams.

Floyd Abrams, who has spent his life defending American freedoms, especially freedom of speech. Apparently this life was spent this way in order to guarantee that when it really counted, he could help the corporations destroy free speech.

His argument, translated from self-satisfied legal jargon, is that as a function of the First Amendment, you must allow for the raping and pillaging of the First Amendment, by people who can buy the First Amendment.

He will go down in the history books as the Quisling of freedom of speech in this country. That is if the corporations who now buy the school boards which decide which history books get printed, approve. If there are still history books. So, what are you going to do about it?

Russ Feingold told me today there might yet be ways to work around this, to restrict corporate governance, and how corporations make and spend their money. I pointed out that any such legislation, even if it somehow sneaked past the last U.S. Senate not funded by a generous gift from the Chubb Group would eventually wind up in front of a Supreme Court, and whether or not John Roberts is still at its head would be irrelevant.

The next nine men and women on the Supreme Court will get there not because of their judgement nor even their politics. They will get there because they were appointed by purchased presidents and confirmed by purchased Senators.

This is what John Roberts did today. This is a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little actual Democracy is left in this Democracy. It is government of the people by the corporations for the corporations. It is the Dark Ages. It is our Dred Scott. I would suggest a revolution but a revolution against the corporations? The corporations that make all the guns and the bullets?

Maybe it won't be this bad. Maybe the corporations legally defined as human beings, but without the pesky occasional human attributes of conscience and compassion maybe when handed the only keys to the electoral machine, they will simply not re-design America in their own corporate image.

But let me leave you with this final question: After today who's going to stop them?

© 2010 msnbc.com Reprints

"Right Wing Encourages Racial Profiling" by Keith Olbermann

OLBERMANN: This is the second day of a new feature, a pair of short comments each night. This would, thus, be the first of those for tonight.

There is nothing that racists in this country like better than an excuse to tell themselves that they are not being racist, just a coincidence that it‘s a black president who‘s, quote, “destroying,” unquote, this country—when in fact he has done very little that a white Republican president would not also have done. Just the coincidence that the Christmas Day terror attempt in Detroit has led to repeated right-wing calls for a special profiling of all people who are like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, people from Nigeria, students from Yemen, big fans of British soccer?

No. If you are an 18 to 28-year-old Muslim man, then you should be strip-searched, so says Tom McInerney, a frightened ex-general who works for FOX. Racially profile all Muslims, so says Peter King, a frightened ex-national guardsman who works in Congress. And at the airports, quote, “There should be a separate line to scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed,” so says Mike Gallagher, a frightened ex-radio station manager who works on the air.

Here‘s a question to Mr. Gallagher and Congressman King and Lieutenant General McInerney and it‘s a two-word question and it‘s in the form of a name. Richard Reid?

Also to Mr. Gallagher, there‘s one special flaw in your plan, what would you do if everybody, the suspect and the pious alike named Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed suddenly changed his name to Mike Gallagher?

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