Voted for Kucinich in the 2004 primary. Not ashamed.

To be completely honest though, I was a Dean supporter in 2004 (Largely because of Thom Hartmann’s experiences of Dean as Governor of Vermont). By the time California got to participate in the primary, it was completely symbolic anyways: short of mind control rays making every Californian vote for Dean, Kerry was the candidate.

So I voted Kucinich’s policy to make my voice as a progressive heard, then bit the pullet and voted straight democratic that election.

Then got the fuck out of America and back to Canada.

I keep saying it. Whee the people, the constituency, ceased to have any power sometime in the nineties. We were too busy with our tv and our sports and our celebrities and our genitals to notice, but we are no longer part of the equation. The beltway elite (teh villiage) and the power structure, comprised of corporations and organizations with money, and the entirely compromised actors who play politicians on tv, will continue to utterly disregard everything that the people, you know, what used to be called without irony “the electorate” cares about or for and will continue to drive this country over the cliff of ideological suicide for no better reason than it’s the most politically expeditious thing to do.

We’ll get our country back when we take it back. And, sadly, blood, a lot of blood, some of it awfully good, will be spilled. And it might not even happen. I can think of four scenarios. I don’t like any of them. But one of them WILL happen.

I’ve got very little left to care about. But I’m not gonna lead this fight. But by gawd, you find us a leader, brave and charismatic and visionary, and I’ll show you a few tricks.

We’re not done. But we’re damn close…

mikey

The MSM is generally paid not to notice these things. It feels vaguely conspiracist to say it, but it’s just the simplest explanation. Telling the truth is bad for your career, unless you’re Keith Olbermann.

I would so much prefer to have a president who said “I saw a weird light in the sky, and I felt peaceful and happy,” than one who said “God done told me to get out there’n bomb me up a whole mess o’ Iraqi folks!” you know?

Telling the truth is bad for your career, unless you’re Keith Olbermann.

But why? This is utterly snark-free. Why? Why can Olbermann do it (almost said “get away with it”) and not anybody else? I’m just not buying it. As far as I can tell, Olbermann’s career is fine. Telling the truth doesn’t seem to have hurt him in any meaningful way, so why don’t the other MSMers do it?

Damn, I’m back to the old dilemma: incompetent, or malicious? So hard to decide . . .

“Kucinich, for all his flakiness, just isn’t in the same league as the Bush administration. ”

Let’s get real here. NOBODY is in the same league with the Bush administration, except maybe Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. Oh and I forgot Torquemada.

Smiling Mortician,

Clarke’s Law + Hanlon’s Razor =

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice

My best guess as to Countdown is Olbermann was supposed to fail, just get creamed by O’Reilly every day. I certainly would have expected mediocrity from him.
Then he did too well to be able to pull the plug on.
Just a guess.

Stinky, bingo!
And herein lies the problem: the Constitution protects a President who is dumb and incompetent. this Administration has been extremely super careful and fiercely defensive with the letter of the law, exactly for the reason that they cannot be impeached for fucking up stuff, but can be impeached and prosecuted for breaking the law. On the other hand if you lie under oath about a blowjob, technically you have broken the law.

The people in these polls do not get this intricacy. In their mind fucking up the whole world, wasting thousands of lives and quadrajilionz of $ is waaay worse than wiggling about a blowjob. Unfortunately, that does not quite take into account impeachment technology.

Same thing in business: you can destroy a company and waste everyone’s money, if it is done “in good faith” it’s OK. While on the other hand, if you hire your cousin to clean up the toilets without disclosing it to shareholders, you can get in trouble for conflict of interest.

Most MBAs I know (and Bush is an MBA, lets not forget) know this very well and are very careful to keep an appearence of legality at all times, while at the same time lining up their pockets and fucking up everything…

For months I’ve been trying to figure out how someone can disapprove of the job Cheney is doing but not of Bush. Now I’ll be trying to figure out how someone can think Cheney should be impeached but not Bush.

My own theory of Olbermann FWIW is that the network didn’t expect much from a former ESPN anchor, kind of like the New York Times probably didn’t expect much from a buttoned-down Princeton econ professor.

Bush has admitted to violating FISA. He told Harriet M. to ignore a subpeona. Each of those acts was a felony. He should be impeached immediately. With Cheney, the issue is less clear. (The presiding officer of the Senate can tell a Member to “go fuck yourself” without violating any laws.) Perhaps his refusal to obey Texas law on shooting someone in the face has relevance; I’m not a constitutional scholar.

Doctorb–

The “B” is for “bargain!!!”

Hasn’t the Iraq War been a bargain?

HASN’T IT???

Oh, right.

The loss of moral rectitude, national solvency and world opinion plus US$2trillion vanished without a trace is a drop in the bucket compared to the imminent threat of Saddam’s ruthless Sand Pounding Battalions and Buried Air Force.

It’s like picking up a ’74 Pinto for $US 20 million.

You’ve still got a car, right?

A new American Research Group poll finds that 55 percent of voters believe President Bush has “abused his powers” in a manner that rises “to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution,” yet just 34 percent believe he should actually be impeached.

So, 21% of those surveyed are fully aware that Bush has committed impeachable offenses but don’t think he should be impeached. That fits with my conception that the core of his support are actually turned on by the idea of an absolute ruler. They know he breaks laws with impunity and they love him for that, not despite it.

Mikey, I’d love to hear those four scenarios. I can only see one and it looks a lot like Japan or Germany in the early ’30s.

@mikey: oops, wrong thread…

Amazing! Hit the link above and it takes you to George Soros’ Think Progress, hit that link and it takes you to Daily Kos, hit that link and it takes you finally to American Research Group.

Nothing like having all of your information filtered for you.

Now I’ll be trying to figure out how someone can think Cheney should be impeached but not Bush.

NOBODY thinks Cheney should be impeached, not Bush.

Kucinich has submitted articles of impeachment against Cheney so that the Kool Kids in the Democratic Party and the “left” punditocracy cannot argue that we shouldn’t impeach because “if we impeach Bush, we’ll just get Cheney as President.” Kucinich’s plan is to impeach Cheney, then impeach Bush.

Of course, Kucinich is being too clever by half here. “Serious” Democrats don’t need to base their “case” against impeachment on quasi-rational arguments like the Cheney-as-President scenario. The Democratic leadership and their supporters by and large simply ignore Kucinich or just make fun of the way he looks. To take one, very minor example, check out Garance Franke-Ruta’s empty dismissal of Kucinich’s articles of impeachment.

The fact is, you are dum.

Amazing! Hit the link above and it takes you to George Soros’ Think Progress, hit that link and it takes you to Daily Kos, hit that link and it takes you finally to American Research Group.

Nothing like having all of your information filtered for you.

What did Exalted Leader Soros and Field Marshal Kos filter out exactly? Actually, never mind, what my masters don’t want me to know, I don’t want to know.

Jose Chung:

I found something else that will really disturb you. To verify many of the facts that are asserted in the book that I am reading I have to look up the source in the endnotes. What is worse, many of those sources have sources.

Why do economists have such an obvious liberal bias? I’ll bet George Soros is responsible somehow.

But what percentage support waterboarding Cheney until he tells us what he really knows about 9/11? Inquiring minds want to know!

Oh wait, he’d just melt, and we wouldn’t get any good information. Drat.

The thing that bugs me about Kucinich is all the people I’ve met in DC who call him crazy but have never bothered to read a damn thing about him or his policies. Then they stick with the short thing. And these are the people that work in politics. The incompetency reaches all the way to the bottom.

Impeachment is the one method the Democrats will categorically, absolutely not utilize — because the Democrats are a crucial, inextricable part of the identical authoritarian-corporatist system that has led us to these horrors. They have all worked toward this end over many decades, Democrats and Republicans alike, and now the horrors manifest themselves explicitly, without apology, even with the sickening boastfulness of the mass murderer who is proud of what he has done, and who vehemently believes he is right.

Thus spake Silber-thrustra

There are certainly things I disagree with about Kucinich, especially his forays into New Age woo. But as far as people taking principled stands on issues he believes in (and frankly, that I believe in), I have a lot of admiration for the guy too.

But yeah, the quick dismissal of Dodd, Kucinich and Gavel just drives me nuts. And it’s NOT limited to the media. The GOP base looks at Guliani, a fascist’s wet dream (complete with stockings), and says “NOT ENOUGH”. The Democratic base meanwhile ignores the genuine progressives out of hand as “unelectable”, then proceed to whine that there’s no good progressive Democratic nominees.

Krassen — I don’t really think impeachment is solely (or at all) about “the letter of the law”. Gerald Ford put it “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

Why? Why can Olbermann do it (almost said “get away with it”) and not anybody else? I’m just not buying it. As far as I can tell, Olbermann’s career is fine.

It could also be that he is more a commentator than a reporter. It seems reporters, especially for print, spend too much cultivating ‘sources’ and are loathe to upset them and possibly be denied ‘access’. and the beltway reporters actually think they are party to decisions, privy to great secrets etc.. stockholm syndrome?