K to C

Hot on the heels of yesterday's new media/new media merger comes today's: Keith Olbermann is reported by The NY Times as headed to Current TV. That's a move from establishment cable media to new media grassroots, continuing the narrative one day later.

Current TV is a public affairs channel which was co-founded by Vice President Al Gore. If Olbermann goes there, he would be landing at a much smaller channel than his former home, MSNBC. (The Times notes that Current is only available in 60 million homes, whereas MSNBC is available in 85 million homes.) He would also not be able to start for some months; the deal he made with MSNBC upon his departure stipulated that he not appear on television for at least half a year. But the move would allow Olbermann to potentially bring a whole new audience to Current.

It's a social media world. The new broadcast channels are Facebook and tablet apps. The gates of international broadcast have been blown open, there's a huge populist train riding through -- and picking up both speed and passengers, and both AOL and Olbermann have jumped on aboard.

Hello, 2011.

Rice Party

I'll laud any U.S. Presidential efforts towards peace between Israeli and Palestinian factions in the Middle East, even Mister Bush's. And it's certainly better than nothing that he's got the Israeli Prime Minister and the head of the once vilified PLO agreeing to negotiate. However, like most sentient followers of Bushie behavior, I'll believe it when I see it that he's going to "devote himself to ending the six-decade conflict in the 14 months he has left in office."

Sure, he could use a Hail Mary Pass on his legacy. But he's going to have to do more than, as Keith Olbermann explained tonight, show up for a couple of hours for a photo op, mispronounce the names of the two men leading their peoples in negotiations, and not be able to say what his actual involvement is in "devoting himself" thus far.

President Bill Clinton, as some may remember, actually led the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during the twilight of his term. This time it's really Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's show, and one imagines she's hoping to make this her place in the history books, rather than failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks as National Security Advisor even though the memo was staring her in the face, lying to Congress, and enabling the Presidents Cheney and Bush to misdirect our war against al-Qaeda by invading Iraq and allowing the destruction of that country from the inside.

There is, of course, the question of a negotiation without including Hamas, which actually won the last democratic election in the Palestinian territories. 49 countries involved but no seat for them -- undoubtedly the Administration is hoping to marginalize them enough that they don't win any more elections over there.

All that being said, I can only hope that some sort of effective peace comes out of this. With various parts of the globe regionalizing economic power, it will hopefully be in the best interest of the regional Mideast countries to come together, somehow, someday.

With or without Mister Bush's direct help.

Get It Together

If the Democratic Congressional leadership doesn't get it together soon, they will really have blown their one opportunity to take control of the public discussion on all these major Bush crime issues facing the country, like getting us into the Iraq War and using the war to gut the U.S. Constitution.

But even The New York Times is telling them they should have let the Republicans filibuster on the Webb Amendment to save our soldiers (you know, what they pretend to call "Support Ze Troops"); hell, they should have made them do it:

The current Republican leadership, now in the minority, has organized its entire agenda around the filibuster. In July, the McClatchy newspaper group reported that Republicans were using the threat of filibuster more than at any other time in the nation’s history.

Remember, this is the same batch of Republican senators who denounced Democrats as obstructionist and even un-American and threatened to change the Senate’s rules when Democrats threatened filibusters in 2005 over a few badly chosen judicial nominees. Now Republicans are using it to prevent consideration of an entire war.

Josh Marshall has some similar reactions from smart readers, with this being my favorite:

TPM Reader AC:

Politics is the art of the possible. And when nothing concrete is possible, that leaves theater. I am baffled at Democrats' continual willingness to concede the stage. Veto or no veto, making the GOP filibuster a bill like Webb's is not pointless. It puts vulnerable GOP moderates on the hot seat, it puts the blame for obstruction on the minority where it belongs, and it may force a series of unpopular high-profile vetoes from Bush.

Bag news Notes boils it down to a photograph of Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) after he's been thrashed -- even though his party had a simple majority:

Although I can feel the reflex rolling around in there, I'm decidedly not going to feel Jim's pain. Instead, I'm going to appreciate ... no, relish the fact that Jimmy learned something yesterday -- a hard lesson about what it's like to seek compromise with people who feel nothing.

And Keith Olbermann put the focus back where it belongs -- squarely on the "President", who seems more and more like a poltergeist from a previous century, like maybe the Tenth.

Corpus

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) have a bill to rescind the evil legislation signed by Bush with his GOP Senate enablers a year ago, the one that essentially suspended one of the bedrock rights our great nation was founded on, habeas corpus.

You know, post-9/11 thinking. You know, creeping fascism.

Habeas corpus means you have to be charged and know that charge. They can't just come and throw a bag over your head, and whisk you away into some unknown hellhole forever.

Let Keith Olbermann and his guest, Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley explain it.

Oddly enough, all the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee besides Specter voted against the bill. Voted against protecting our Constitution. Essentially voted against America.

Patriots or Tories?

Inaccurate Gonzo

Monica Goodling, under immunity, nails Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' coffin shut.

More details including damning White House involvement from Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) on Kos in what he so accurately calls "Goodling Testimony Revealing (Except to Republicans)":

Third, we learned the White House was intimately involved in the process of terminating the US Attorneys, from the beginning through final sign off, and Ms. Goodling believes Mr. Rove was involved in the process.

Crimes, crimes, crimes.

Today it was announced that Rove's, I mean Bush's General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan committed a huge crime by violating the federal Hatch Act which makes it illegal to use government workers in partisan political activities, like when she did a big presentation where she allegedly asked GSA political appointees during a January briefing how they could "help our candidates" win the next election.

Like an good Republican lawbreaker getting caught, she's attempting character assassination on her accusers.

And Bush's candidate for head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, senior lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers (you know, corporations that hate regulation) Michael E. Baroody, pulled his name from consideration today, avoiding facing a certain Senate vote against him. Reasons why Baroody was a choice only the Bush/Cheney/Rove gang would make:

His nomination began to founder after the disclosure last Wednesday that he would be receiving a $150,000 special payment from the association, and that the severance package was amended by the association in January, shortly after he was identified as the top candidate for the post.

You know, bribery.

But even with all these GOP criminals, the biggest excoriation of the day was Keith Olbermann's merciless shredding of Democratic Congressional cowardice in the face of Bush's veto. I'm assuming the end of this one is the Congressional Republicans lining up behind the weak new bill, while progressive Dems and politically savvy ones vote against it, a squeak by with a divided Dem party.

I can only hope for some ju-jitsu, in the offing, like the bill actually goes down in flames. But it is, indeed, a dark hour.

Leadership. Needed.