Olbermann "Special Comment" On Violent Rhetoric At McCain-Palin Rallies

Once again, Keith Olbermann takes the thoughts out of my head and crafts them into words with impact:

(For transcript: Click Here.)

MSNBC REMOVES OLBERMANN, MATTHEWS FROM ANCHOR SEAT

CALL, WRITE, E-MAIL NBC-- THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. The only news anchor that ISN'T A BLATANT MOUTHPIECE FOR THE CONSERVATIVE RIGHT-- KEITH OLBERMANN -- is being removed from his anchor position during the coming political debates and election night. This, despite Countdowns' "higher television rating than any other show in the troubled 12-year history of the network."

Read and weep:

MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat - NYTimes.com

Also See:

• t r u t h o u t | MSNBC Demotes Keith Olbermann

Technorati tags: MSNBC, NBC, News, Media, 2008 Election, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Demotion. Anchor, Politics

Olbermann: Mr. President, the War Isn't About You

MSNBC:

"Olbermann reacts to President Bush's recent interview with Politico.com and online users of Yahoo. Olbermann takes issue with Bush's claim he gave up golf to honor dead GIs ...."

As usual, Olbermann shows how well the title "Idiot in Chief" describes the current occupant of the Whitehouse:



For complete transcript and video: Click Here.

Also See:

• Will Bunch | President Bush Committed Political Treason Today

  "I've seen a lot of sad things in American politics in my lifetime -- the resignation of a president who became a national disgrace after he oversaw a campaign of break-ins and cover-ups, another who circumvented the Constitution to trade arms for hostages, and yet is now hailed as national hero. And those paled to what we have seen in the last seven years -- flagrant disregard for the Constitution, the launching of a "pre-emptive" war on false pretenses, and discussions about torture and other shocking abuses inside the White House inner sanctum.
  
  But now it's come to this: A new low that I never imagined was even possible...."

Technorati tags: Keith Olbermann, Countdown, Special Comment, Bush, Iraq War

Keith Olbermann: Special Comment on Clinton & Ferraro

"This Is Not a Campaign Strategy, This Is a Suicide Pact"

Trouble viewing this video? Click Here.

For a complete transcript, Click Here.

Also See:

• Cafe Talk | Talking Points Memo | Hillary's Plan of Selfish Deception


• Cafe Talk | Talking Points Memo | Take a ride, why don't you, on the Clinton logic train:)


• Cafe Talk | Talking Points Memo | I've Had It! (and I'm doing something about it)


• Cafe Talk | Talking Points Memo | Jim Crow Hillary: Worse Than Bush

Technorati tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Geraldine Ferraro, Keith Olbermann, Special Comment, MSNBC, Politics, Democratic Party, 2008 Presidential Election, Race

Olbermann: Bush Puts Telecoms Ahead of Citizens

Another special comment from Keith Olbermann worth watching:



Transcript:

In a Presidency of hypocrisy; an Administration of exploitation; a labyrinth of leadership, in which every vital fact is a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma hidden under a claim of executive privilege supervised by an idiot, this one, is surprisingly easy.

President Bush has put protecting the Telecom giants from the laws ahead of protecting you from the terrorists.

He has demanded an extension of the FYCA law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but only an extension that includes retroactive immunity for the Telecoms who helped him spy on you.

Congress has given him, and he has signed, a 15-day extension, which simply kicks the time bomb down the field, and has changed nothing of his insipid rhetoric, in which he portrays the Democrats as 'soft on terror' and getting in the way of his Superhuman efforts to protect the nation when, in fact and with bitter irony, if anybody is 'soft on terror' here it is Mr. Bush.

In the State of the Union Address, Sir, you told Congress, "if you do not act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist threats would be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger."

Yet you are willing to weaken that ability!

You will subject us, your citizens, to that greater danger.

This, Mr. Bush, is simple enough even for you to understand: If Congress approves a new FYCA act without telecom immunity and sends it to your desk and you veto it, you, by your own terms and your own definitions, you will have just sided with the terrorists.

You got to have this law, or we're all going to die. But you might veto this law!

It's bad enough, Sir, that you are demanding an ex post facto law which would clear the phone giants from responsibility for their systematic, aggressive, and blatant collaboration with your illegal and unjustified spying on Americans, under the flimsy guise of looking for any terrorists stupid enough to make a collect call or send a mass e-mail.

But when you then demanded again, during the State of the Union address, that Congress retroactively clear the Verizons and the AT&T's, you wouldn't even confirm that they actually did anything for which they deserved to be cleared!

"The Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend America."

Believed?

Don't you know?

Does the endless hair-splitting of your presidential fine print, extend even here?

If you, Sir, are asking Congress, and us, to join you in this shameless, breathless, literal, textbook example of fascism; the merged efforts of government and corporations who answer to no government, you still don't have the guts to even say the telecom companies did assist you, in your efforts?

Will you and the equivocators who surround you like a cocoon never go on the record about anything?

Even the stuff you claim to believe in?

Silly me.

Of course Mr. Bush is going to say "believed."

Yes, it sounds dumber than if he had referred to himself as "the alleged president," or had said today was "reportedly Thursday," or had claimed "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq.

But the moment he says anything else, any doubt that the telecoms knowingly broke the law, is out the window, and with it, any chance that even the Republicans who are fighting this like they were trying to fend off terrorists using nothing but broken beer bottles and swear words couldn't consent to retroactively immunize corporate criminals.

Which is why the Vice President probably shouldn't have phoned in to the Rush Limbaugh Propaganda-Festival yesterday.

Sixth sentence out of Mr. Cheney's mouth.

The FYCA bill is about, quote, "retroactive liability protection for the companies that have worked with us and helped us prevent further attacks against the United States."

Oops.

Mr. Cheney is something of a loose cannon, of course.

But he kind of let the wrong cat out of the bag there.

Because Mr. Bush and the corporations he values more than people didn't want anybody to verify what Mark Klein says.

Mark Klein is the AT&T Whistleblower who appeared on this newscast last November... who explained, in the placid, dull terms of your local neighborhood IT desk, how he personally attached all of AT&T's circuits, everything carrying every phone call, every e-mail, every bit of web browsing into a secure room — Room Number 641-A, at the Folsom Street facility in San Francisco, where it was all copied so the government could look at it.

Not some of it; not just the international part of it; certainly not just the stuff some truly patriotic and telepathic spy might be able to divine had been sent or spoken by or to a terrorist.

Everything.

Every time you looked at a naked picture, every time you bid on eBay, every time you phoned-in a donation to a Democrat.

"My thought was 'George Orwell's 1984,'" Mr. Klein told me, reflecting back, "and here I am, being forced to connect the Big Brother machine."

You know, Mr. Bush, if Mr. Klein's "Big Brother Machine" the one the Vice President conveniently just confirmed for us if it was of any damn use at all at actually finding anything, you could probably program it to find out who started that slanderous e-mail about Barack Obama.

Use Room 641-A to identify that assassin, Sir, and I'll stand up and applaud you.

Yeah, I'm holding my breath on that one, too.

But of course, Sir, this isn't about finding that kind of needle in a haystack. This isn't even about finding a haystack. This is about scooping up every piece of hay there ever was, and laying the groundwork for the next little job which you have to outsource to AT&T and Verizon.

It was your Director of National Intelligence, Mr. McConnell, letting this one out of the same bag.

The need for Homeland Security to stave off cyber-attacks against the government's computer networks.

And how do they do that, Sir?

By constantly monitoring the internet, the whole internet.

And who actually, physically, does that, Mr. Bush?

Right. The same Telecom giants for whom you want immunity, quickly. So quickly, you wouldn't believe it.

Because this previous domestic spying, and this upcoming policing of the internet -- they may be completely evil, indiscriminate, unlawful.

So you have to dress it up, as something just the opposite.

It isn't evil it's "to protect America."

It isn't indiscriminate it's "the ability to monitor terrorist communications."

It isn't unlawful it's just the kind of perfectly legal thing, for which you happen to need immunity!

There's yet another level to this, and here we move from Big Brother to Sleazy Son.

Mr. Bush's new Attorney General, Mr. Mukasey, the one who has already taken four different positions on water-boarding, and who may yet tie that record on this subject of telecom immunity, he has a very personal stake in this.

There happens to be a partner in the law firm of Bracewell and Giuliani, named Marc Mukasey. And Bracewell and Giuliani and the Attorney General's son Marc, just happen to represent Verizon.

You know, Verizon — Telecom Giant.

And all of a sudden this is no longer just a farce in which "protecting the Telecoms" is dressed up for us as, "protecting us from terrorist conference calls."

Now it begins to look like the bureaucrats of the Third Reich trying to protect the Krupp Family industrial giants by literally re-writing the laws for their benefit.

And we know how that turned out: Alfried Krupp and eleven of his directors were convicted of War Crimes at Nuremburg.

Nevertheless.

For those of us watching a President demanding this very specific law (the one the Germans had was called the "Lex Krupp") there is one surprising bit of comfort in all this:

Clearly, Mr. Bush is at his hyperbolic worst here.

Consider how his former chief of staff Andy Card came on and scolded Chris Matthews and me after the State of the Union address.

"The President's address tonight was very important," Card said, "because it really was a sobering call to reality for us.

"And the reality is, we have an enemy who wants to hurt us. The primary job of the president to protect us.

"He talked about protecting us. He talked about the needs to have the tools to protect us."

Indeed, Mr. Bush.

The primary job of any president is to protect us.

Not just those of us who own Internet and Telephone companies all of us.

And even you, Sir, with your intermittent grasp of reality, even with your ego greater than a 100-percent approval rating... even with your messianic petulance, even you could not truly choose to protect the corporations instead of the people.

I am not talking about ethics here.

I am talking about blame.

Even if it's you throwing out the baby with the bathwater, Mr. Bush, it still means we can safely conclude, there is no baby!

This is not a choice of protecting the telecoms from prosecution, or protecting the people from terrorists, Sir.

It is a choice of protecting the telecoms from prosecution, or pretending to protect the people from terrorists.

Sorry, Mr. Bush. The eavesdropping provisions of FYCA have obviously had no impact on counter-terrorism, and there is no current or perceived terrorist threat, the thwarting of which could hinge on an e-mail or a phone call going through room 641-A at AT&T in San Francisco next week or next month.

Because if there were, Mr. Bush, and you were to, by your own hand, veto an extension of this eavesdropping, and some terrorist attack were to follow, you would not merely be guilty of siding with the terrorists, you would not merely be guilty of prioritizing the telecoms over the people, you would not merely be guilty of stupidity, you would not merely be guilty of treason but you would be personally, and eternally, responsible.

And if there is one thing we know about you Mr. Bush, one thing that you have proved time and time again under any and all circumstances, it is that you are never responsible.

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive

Technorati tags: Keith Olbermann, Special Comment, telecoms, Bush, video, MSNBC, Countdown

Unfit to Serve

Olbermann: "You, Mr. Bush, are a bald faced liar."

"A Special Comment about the President’s cataclysmic deception about Iran."



Trouble viewing this video? CLICK HERE.

For a complete transcript CLICK HERE.

Technorati tags: Keith Olbermann, Bush, Iran, CIA, Youtube, video

Olbermann to Bush: This is YOUR War -- YOU fight it.

Tonight on Countdown, Keith Olbermann "delivered a powerful special comment about the leaked Bush Administration letter that blames Senator Hillary Clinton and all war dissenters for President Bush’s own failures in Iraq."

Crooks and Liars has the video and transcript. Must see.

"This, sir, is your war. Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations.

Go there and fight, your war…yourself." -- Keith Olbermann

Transcript:

Good evening from Los Angeles.

And we begin with a Special Comment, on this day’s ominous, almost indescribable events.

It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons, of history.

A country — a government — a military machine — can screw up a war seven-ways-to-Sunday… it can get thousands of its people killed… it can risk the safety of its citizens… it can destroy the fabric of its nation.

But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain… or even gain power.

The Bush Administration has, tonight, opened this Pandora’s Box, about Iraq.

It has found its scapegoats — Hillary Clinton — and us.

The lies and terror-tactics with which it deluded this country into war — they had nothing to do with the abomination that Iraq has become — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place — the most disastrous a geo-political tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process — that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

The criminal lack of planning for the war — the total “jump-off-a-bridge-and-hope-you-can-fly” tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein — that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

The utter, blinkered idiocy of “staying the course” — of sending Americans to Iraq, and sending them a second time, and a third, and a fourth, until they get killed or maimed — the utter de-prioritization of human life, simply so a politician can avoid having to admit a mistake — that had nothing to do with the tens of thousand individual tragedies darkening the lives of American families, forever — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating, or containing, or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11 — the total “Alice Through The Looking Glass” quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for Al-Qaeda — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault!

The fault, brought down — as if a sermon from this mount of hypocrisy and slaughter, by a nearly anonymous Under-Secretary of Defense — the fault has tonight been laid on the doorstep of Senator Hillary Clinton and, by extension, at the doorstep of every American — the now vast majority of us — who have dared to criticize this war, or protest it, or merely ask questions about it, or simply, plaintively, innocently, honestly, plead, “don’t take my son; don’t take my daughter.”

Senator Clinton has been sent — and someone has leaked to the Associated Press — a letter, sent in reply to hers, asking if there exists, an actual plan for evacuating U.S. troops from Iraq.

This extraordinary document was written by an Under-Secretary of Defense named Eric Edelman.

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,” Edelman writes, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.” Edelman adds: “such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.”

A spokesman for the senator says Mr. Edelman’s remarks are “at once both outrageous and dangerous” and those terms are entirely appropriate and may in fact understate the risk the Edelman letter poses to our way of life, and all that our fighting men and women are risking, have risked, and have lost, in Iraq.

After the South was defeated in our Civil War, the scapegoat was Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and the ideas of the “Lost Cause” and “Jim Crow” were born.

After the French were beaten by the Prussians in 1870 and 1871 — it was the imaginary “Jewish influence” in the French Army General Staff, and there was born 30 years of self-destructive anti-Semitism, culminating in the horrific Dreyfus case.

After the Germans lost the First World War, it was the “back-stabbers and profiteers” at home, on whose lives the National Socialists rose to prominence in the succeeding decades, and whose accused membership eventually wound up in torture chambers and death camps.

And after the generation before ours, and leaders of both political parties, escalated and re-escalated, and carpet bombed and re-carpet bombed, Vietnam, it was the protest movement and Jane Fonda and as late as just three years ago Senator John Kerry, who were assigned the kind of blame with which no rational human being could concur, and yet which still, across vast sections of our political landscape, resonates, unchallenged, and accepted.

And now Mr. Bush, you have picked out your own Jefferson Davis, your own Dreyfus, your own “profiteer” — your own scapegoat.

Not for the sake of this country…

Not for the sake of Iraq…

Not even for the sake of your own political party…

But for the sake of your own personal place in history.

But in reaching for that place, you have guaranteed yourself tonight, not honor, but infamy.

In fact, you have condemned yourself to a place among that remarkably small group of Americans whom Americans cannot forgive. Those who have sold this country out, and who have willingly declared their enmity to the people at whose pleasure they supposedly serve.

A scapegoat, sir, might be forgivable, if you hadn’t just happened to choose a prospective presidential nominee of the opposition party. And the accusation of spreading “enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,” might be some day atoned for, if we all didn’t know — you included, and your generals, and the Iraqis — that we are leaving Iraq, and sooner rather than later — and we are doing it, even if to do so requires first, that you must be impeached and removed as President of the United States, sooner, rather than later.

You have set this government at war against its own people, and then blamed those very people when they say, “enough.”

And thus it crystallizes, Mr. Bush.

When Civil War General Ambrose Burnside ordered a disastrous attack on Fredericksburg in which 12,000 of his men were killed, he had to be physically restrained from leading the next charge himself.

After the First Lord of the British Admiralty, Winston Churchill, authored and enabled the disastrous Gallipoli campaign that saw a quarter million Allied Soldiers cut down in the First World War, Churchill resigned his office and took a commisson as a front-line officer in the trenches of France.

Those are your new role models, Mr. Bush.

Let your minions try to spread the blame to the real patriots here, who have sought only to undo the horrors you have wrought since 2002.

Let them try it, until the end of time.

Though the words might be erased from a million books and a billion memories, though the world be covered knee-deep in your lies, the truth shall prevail.

This, sir, is your war.

Senator Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq?

Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush.

Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations.

Go there and fight, your war…yourself.

Technorati tags: Keith Olbermann, Countdown, Special Comment, MSNBC, Bush, Hillary Clinton, Scapegoating, Iraq War, news, video, commentary, Crooks & Liars

Bush And Cheney: Resign Now

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for posting tonight's Special Comment by Keith Olbermann: "You Ceased to be the President of the United States." Tonight's comment is not only one of Olbermann's most powerful and timely; it is literally the only thing that kept me from chartering a plane to anywhere but the USA after watching Snow-Job's press conference and Bush's "statement" about his commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence. (I don't know about the rest of you, but It was blatantly obvious to me that there was a voice (Karl Rove?) in Bushie's ear feeding him every carefully-selected-to-protect-him-legally-and-politically-word; it was as maddening as it was pitiful.

Then along comes Olbermann, and immediately I am reassured that I am not the only person on earth that realizes that we are allowing criminals to reside in OUR WHITE HOUSE.

Watch Keith for yourself. There is also a transcript available at the same link.

Then please, act. Demonstrate, protest, demand Bush/Cheney resign, demand they be impeached, whatever you have to do to rid this country of the vermin who have sabotaged it.

Technorati tags: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, Bush, Cheney, Politics, Scooter Libby, Justice, news, video, commentary

Olbermann: Betrayal

Olbermann's lastest "Special Comment" -- about the "Democrat's deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq--and to do so on his terms" -- is superb.

Watch and/or read the transcript:

Olbermann: The entire government has failed us on Iraq

"For the president, and the majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal...."

Technorati tags: Keith Olbermann, Special Comment, "Betrayal", Democratic Party, Republican Party, Bush, Iraq, video, MSNBC, Countdown

Olbermann: Republicans Equal Life; Democrats Equal Death?

Another astute "Special Comment" from Keith:

A special comment about Rudolph Giuliani’s remarks at a Lincoln Day dinner in New Hampshire:

Transcript:

Finally tonight, a Special Comment about Rudolf Giuliani's remarks at a Lincoln Day Dinner in New Hampshire last night.

Since some indeterminable hour between the final dousing of the pyre at The World Trade Center, and the breaking of what Senator Obama has aptly termed "9/11 Fever," it has been profoundly and disturbingly evident that we are at the center of one of history's great ironies.

Only in this America of the early 21st Century could it be true, that the man who was president during the worst attack on our nation, and the man who was the mayor of the city in which that attack principally unfolded, would not only be absolved of any and all blame for the unreadiness of their own governments, but, more over, would thereafter be branded heroes of those attacks.

And now, that Mayor - whose most profound municipal act in the wake of that nightmare was to suggest the postponement of the election to select his own successor - has gone even a step beyond these M.C. Escher constructions of history.

"If any Republican is elected president - and I think obviously I would be best at this - we will remain on offense and will anticipate what (the terrorists) will do and try to stop them before they do it. "

Insisting that the election of any Democrat would mean the country was "back... on defense," Mr. Giuliani continued:

"But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have. If we are on defense, we will have more losses and it will go on longer."

He said this with no sense of irony, no sense of any personal shortcomings, no sense whatsoever.

And if you somehow missed what he was really saying, somehow didn't hear the none-too-subtle subtext of 'vote Democratic and die,' Mr. Giuliani then stripped away any barrier of courtesy, telling Roger Simon of Politico.Com, quote....

"America will be safer with a Republican president."

At least that Republican President under which we have not been safer ... has, even at his worst, maintained some microscopic distance between himself, and a campaign platform that blithely threatened the American people with "casualties" if they, next year, elect a Democratic president - or, inferring from Mr. Giuliani's flights of grandeur in New Hampshire - even if they elect a different Republican.

How dare you, sir?

"How many casualties will we have?" - this is the language of Bin Laden.

Yours, Mr. Giuliani, is the same chilling nonchalance of the madman, of the proselytizer who has moved even from some crude framework of politics and society, into a virtual Roman Colosseum of carnage, and a conceit over your own ability - and worthiness - to decide, who lives and who dies.

Rather than a reasoned discussion - rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications - you have bypassed all the intermediate steps, and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right ... but as an act of suicide.

This is not the mere politicizing of Iraq, nor the vague mumbled epithets about Democratic 'softness' from a delusional Vice President.

This is casualties on a partisan basis - of the naked assertion that Mr. Giuliani's party knows all and will save those who have voted for it - and to hell with everybody else.

And that he, with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, is somehow the Messiah-of-the-moment.

Even to grant that that formula - whether posed by Republican or Democrat - is somehow not the most base, the most indefensible, the most Un-American electioneering in our history - even if it is somehow acceptable to assign "casualties" to one party and 'safety' to the other - even if we have become so profane in our thinking that it is part of our political vocabulary to view counter-terror as one party's property and the other's liability... on what imaginary track record does Mr. Giuliani base his boast?

Which party held the presidency on September 11th, 2001, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party held the mayoralty of New York on that date, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party assured New Yorkers that the air was safe, and the remains of the dead, recovered - and not being used to fill pot-holes, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party wanted what the terrorists wanted - the postponement elections - and to whose personal advantage would that have redounded, Mr. Giuliani?

Which mayor of New York was elected eight months after the first attack on the World Trade Center, yet did not emphasize counter-terror in the same city for the next eight years, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party had proposed to turn over the Department of Homeland Security to Bernard Kerik, Mr. Giuliani?

Who wanted to ignore and hide Kerik's Organized Crime allegations, Mr. Giuliani?

Who personally argued to the White House that Kerik need not be vetted, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party rode roughshod over Americans' rights while braying that it was actually protecting them, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party took this country into the most utterly backwards, utterly counter-productive, utterly ruinous war in our history, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party has been in office as more Americans were killed in the pointless fields of Iraq, than were killed in the consuming nightmare of 9/11, Mr. Giuliani?

Drop this argument, sir. You will lose it.

"The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us," Mr. Giuliani continued to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner last night. "Never, ever again will this country be on defense waiting for (terrorists) to attack us, if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense."

There is no room for this.

This is terrorism itself, dressed up as counter-terrorism.

It is not warning, but bullying - substituted for the political discourse now absolutely essential to this country's survival and the freedom of its people.

No Democrat has said words like these. None has ever campaigned on the Republicans' flat-footedness of September 11th, 2001. None has the requisite, irresponsible, all-consuming, ambition. None is willing to say "I Accuse," rather than recognize that, to some degree, all of us share responsibility for our collective stupor.

And if it is somehow insufficient, that this is morally, spiritually, and politically wrong, to screech as Mr. Giuliani has screeched ... there is also this: that gaping hole in Mr. Giuliani's argument of 'Republicans equal life; Democrats equal death.'

Not only have the Republicans not lived up to their babbling on this subject, but last fall the electorate called them on it.

As doubtless they would call you on it, Mr. Giuliani.

Repeat, go beyond Mr. Bush's rhetorical calamities of 2006.

Call attention to the casualties on your watch, and your long, waking slumber in the years between the two attacks on the World Trade Center.

Become the candidate who runs on the Vote-For-Me-Or-Die platform.

Do a Joe McCarthy, a Lyndon Johnson, a Robespierre.

Only, if you choose so to do, do not come back surprised nor remorseful if the voters remind you that "terror" is not just a matter of "casualties." It is, just as surely, a matter of the promulgation of fear.

Claim a difference between the parties on the voters' chances of survival - and you do Osama Bin Laden's work for him.

And we - Democrats and Republicans alike, and every variation in between - We - Americans! - are sick to death, of you and the other terror-mongers, trying to frighten us into submission, into the surrender of our rights and our reason, into this betrayal of that for which this country has always stood.

Franklin Roosevelt's words ring true again tonight.

And, clarified and amplified, they are just as current now, as they were when first he spoke them, 74 years ago.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself" - and those who would exploit our fear, for power, and for their own personal, selfish, cynical, gain.

Good night, and good luck.

Technorati tags: Keith Olbermann, Countdown, MSNBC, Special Comment, Politics of Fear, Rudolph Giuliani, news, video, YouTube